The Sin Factor

The miracle of the Cross is not sublime!  There is a mistaken teaching that has been passed around for hundreds of years that when Jesus Christ was crucified, he magically erased our sins, blotted them out as it were like divine suds.  That is not the case at all.  He bore our sins; took them into His own body and they putrefied within Him, sucked the life out of Him, and each one added to His misery.  Why is the Church so reluctant to see sin as the monstrosity it is?  Each sin we commit today adds to the shame and horror of the crucifixion Jesus endured two thousand years ago.  Only God could do this; bear sins committed tomorrow and not just the ones of yesterday.  As we sin and sin unthinkingly, we strike Jesus ourselves with the whip, drive the stake deeper in through his feet, take the rod and break it more ferociously upon his back and sides.  The sins of today are not nothing; they pry out of Christ's body more blood and break His heart even worse.  We may be free of real guilt but that does not mean Christ is.  He bears them all, the sins of yesterday as well as the ones of today and at some point, won't we just stop it?  Won't we fiercely reject the notion that we can sin freely and easily, and it doesn't matter?  John the Apostle says we don't have to keep sinning willy-nilly; we can put an end to it...not because we are evolving into righteousness, but because the Holy Spirit lives in us and empowers righteousness.  We are such fundamentalists when it comes to getting our garbage sorted among the various recycling options, but do we give the same care to the very sin that brought this mess upon us?  Pray with ferocious determination that God would keep you from temptation.  The Christian who comprehends the horror of sins will begin to loath the points where they invade the soul.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV

Feasting on God

Matthew 26:26-28 NIV

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body."  Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

Why Have the Lord’s Supper?

Perhaps you have wondered why we have the Lord’s Supper.  Of course Jesus commanded us to hold the Lord’s Supper and so we do it but that does not explain why He wants us participating in it.  Christian and quasi Christian groups have a variety of explanations for its regular practice.  Some believe that we literally eat the physical body of Christ when we take the bread.  Others say it is just a symbolic ritual that helps us reflect on Christ and what He did for us.  Many think that you gain salvation by eating the bread and drinking the grape juice.  So is it just a religious ritual without any real benefit to us other than getting us to think about God or does its practice have eternal consequences for those who do or don’t participate?

Let us for a moment reflect on the actual words Jesus used when He told His disciples to eat the bread he offered them and drink from the cup.  "Take and eat; this is my body."  Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  Consider the two parts to this: 1. Take and eat.  This is my body.  2. Drink from it all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.  In the supper, it is the body of Christ and the blood of Christ that is at the center of it.  What are we told to take into ourselves?  It is the body of Christ and the blood of Christ.

Lest we get confused in this, we are not physically eating Jesus’ flesh or swallowing His blood.  That would be a grotesque violation of God’s law as even after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, the Church is commanded not to drink blood.  Eating human flesh is just as revolting.  Yet consider what the body and blood are.  The body is the substance of Christ; what makes Him who He is.  It is Jesus Himself…His personality, His character, His way of life.  If you want to know how that looks, what His personality and lifestyle is, go no further than the Sermon on the Mount.  There you find how He thinks, the way He does things, His habits and approach to every relationship and task He undertakes. 

The blood is the life of Jesus.  When God commanded His people not to drink the blood of any creature, He insisted, "You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off."  (Leviticus 17:14 NIV)  It is the blood that keeps you alive, what makes you alive.  Without the blood, there is no sustaining force to empower you.  The blood is how you are able to live and thrive.

So what does Christ give us with His body and blood?  We have Him: His personality, His character and the force of His life.  Consider this statement of the Bible.  I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Galatians 2:20 NIV)  What an amazing assertion!  Christ can actually live in us.  Not figuratively or symbolically but in reality He becomes a part of you when in faith you accept His entrance into your life.  Jesus made the promise that, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:23 NIV)  We have here the spectacular declaration by Jesus that as close as the Father and the Son are, so are the Father, Son and any of us who love Christ and obey Him.  This is a real union within the Christian; all God possesses in His nature, His holiness, goodness, faithfulness and love becomes the believer’s.  Remember what Jesus taught in John 15?  He is the vine and we are His branches.  His life flows through ours and empowers us in every way.  Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.  "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5 NIV)

Jesus made the promise that His people would do the same kinds of things He did.  I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. (John 14:12 NIV)  He was not pushing for imitation.  He was describing how we would look if we are connected to Him as branches are attached to a vine.  He is comingled with us so that it results in the impossible circumstance of in any way being able to separate where we end and He begins.  We become one.  Consider this declaration in the Bible.  But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. (1 Corinthians 6:17 NIV)  Could this be any clearer?  Much like how bread and grape juice become inseparable from the body once it is digested, so too, when we unite ourselves with the Lord, we become one new being that cannot split into two.  One in spirit is much more than just some sort of fraternal partnership, it is the actual joining of Christ and you into a new creation.

Consider carefully this insistence in the Bible of just how profound is your union with Christ.  It is because of him (God) that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God — that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. (1 Corinthians 1: 30 NIV)  Let us look closely at this statement for a moment.  It is because of God’s decision that we are put into Christ and made a part of Him.  Because of that, each Christian has His wisdom and not only that, His righteousness and His holiness and His deliverance or redemption.  The union of you and Jesus Christ is complete.  It results in all His perfection becoming yours.  And how can this be?  It is by faith in Christ, that simple acceptance that He truly did die for your sins and raise you up into a new life with Him joined to you.  When you eat the bread and drink the grape juice, you do so with the same faith that saves you from your sins.  You eat it and it becomes a part of you just like the love and holiness and goodness and rightness of Jesus is a part of you.  We do take God into us when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  Not in reality but in actuality.  The bread does not become His earthy flesh and the juice does not become His gooey blood but better than that, He actually becomes a part of us because by faith we take the bread and the grape juice and make it ours in a union between us and Christ that truly make us one.

Deep Cleansing

1 Thessalonians 5:23 NIV

 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

How Clean Do You Want To Be?

When I was in high school I had a pretty severe case of acne.  I used to lay out in the sun for hours trying to dry out my back and face and sometimes was in serious pain from sunburn.  My mom brought me to a dermatologist and I got a prescription for a topical skin lotion as well as pills that were supposed to reduce the oiliness of my skin.  I must say it did work.  If you look at my senior picture, you can see the effect it had on me.  It caused my face to tan and for two or three weeks I had dark brown skin and my pimples faded.  But then, like something from a fairy tale, my skin started peeling, small sections coming off at a time so that part of my face was like the girl from Ipanema and the rest like the Riddler.  Then I was back to my normal blotchy complexion until the combination of the sun and my medication began to interact again.  The pills used to turn my skin so dry that my hands inside the knuckles would split open and I had to put band aids around my fingers to be able to play basketball.  I endured this because  I was desperate to get rid of my acne.  What I needed was some sort of deep cleaning treatment that would clear my pores but I never found anyone who could do that for me.

Have you thought about the possibility that you might need a deep cleansing of your soul?  You may contend that you don’t need any radical work done in you.  Perhaps you just have a few issues that you could use fixing but nothing really critical, nothing very important.  If that is how you see things, then you are like most people who feel like they could use a little tweaking but nothing dramatic like psychological counseling or psychiatric care.  Perhaps there is a gnawing sense of inadequacy in you or a slight throbbing that something is not quite right.  At the risk of sounding melodramatic, most alcoholics never go to an AA meeting and how many commit suicide without ever attending a session with a counselor.  It is the natural tendency for nearly all of us to ignore what is wrong with us for as long as possible  and this may be true of you too.  Perhaps there is something of great value God could do in you, something necessary that you would one day be most grateful for Him to have done.   You would not be the first person to be thankful for God doing something new in you, that He brought changes to you that you did not realize you needed.  Consider the possibility that there is more to having Christ build His life in you than you expected.

Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit wrote out a most enlightening prayer in 1 Thessalonians 5: 23.  May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (NIV)  This prayer stretches across the centuries to you and it is just as valid now as it was in Thessalonica in 55 AD.  He is asking God to sanctify you through and through.  The Greek term translated “sanctify” is a tricky word to translate.  It could be rendered “make holy” which is perfectly fine except many misunderstand what the term holy means.  The second important term is one Greek word that is rendered here “through and through”.  It means to be completely or all the way or the whole of you made something.  A picture of this is a sponge that is so completely saturated that there is no room in it for anything else.  It is what you see in John 2 when Jesus tells the servants at the wedding to fill the water pots all the way to the top so that not another drop could be put in them or they would spill over on the ground.

There is built within the curse of sin in you and me a certain disdain for too much God in us.  It is as if there is a tolerance level fixed by the spiritual and even psychological damage done to us when sin entered our lives that makes it almost painful to have Christ get deeply involved in us.  We see this manifested in common activities.  There is only so much Bible we can read before we need something more entertaining.  There is only so much Christian music we can play before it gets old, only so much preaching we can hear before we are bored, only so far we can go with forgiveness or kindness or generosity or goodness or praying before we grow weary of it.  It is strange but we all seem to have a holiness fill line which if we go past it results in us growing uncomfortable with God and God activities.

There are parts of you, which you aren’t even aware exist, that are wrecked by sin.  Your spirit, which is who you are forever, is in need of a total transformation if you are going to be completely healthy and happy.  The Bible speaks of your spirit needing to be sanctified through and through.  Sanctified, at least when the Bible talks about it, means that God gets worked into every part of you.  You become saturated with Christ.  All of Christ’s personality traits, whether they are His courage, His peace, His loving kindness or His moral purity, become in sanctification your personality traits.  This is much different than trying hard to be like Jesus.  That is impossible anyway if you have nothing in you that Christ has in Him to live like He does!  Imagine a turtle trying to do calculus like a math professor or a walrus trying to make an apple pie like your grandmother.  It is impossible because these creatures have none of the mental tools necessary to undertake the effort.   Without Christ in you, it is impossible to copy His behaviors or imitate His way of dealing with life.

The problem we face is that we have so much damage to us that we are impossibly separated from real goodness and holiness on a consistent basis.  In spurts we are good or at peace or full of faith but without warning it all falls apart.  The ruin is in hidden places that are buried within us.  Just consider the strange case of Saul, king of Israel.  His best and most successful general drove him crazy…literally crazy.  Although David was crucial to Saul’s success and thoroughly loyal to him, Saul could not bear David’s popularity and tried a number of times to kill him. There was nothing logical about Saul’s jealousy.  It wasn’t David’s fault.  The root of Saul’s bitterness was all within his spirit somewhere.  It may have confused Saul and tormented him, this irrational hatred for David but it could not be denied.  Something was very wrong with Saul and he could not fix it.

The same could be said of David himself.  When he sent his servants to fetch Bathsheba so that he could sleep with her, it was irrational what he did.  There were plenty of beautiful single women that David could have had.  He had numerous lovely wives and concubines; so why did he need Bathsheba, who was married to one of his most loyal and courageous officers?  It isn’t like he did not know wrong when he saw it.  When Nathan the prophet confronted David about his sin of sleeping with Bathsheba and having her husband murdered, he did so by telling David a story about lust.  "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.  Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him." (2 Samuel 12:1-4 NIV)

David’s reaction to hearing of this terrible act was appropriate rage.  David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die!  He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity." (2 Samuel 12:5-6 NIV)  Yet the evil David could see in another, he could not find in himself until that evil bore fruit.  This is a universal trait of sin wrecked humanity.  We easily see as Jesus put it, the splinter in the eye of someone else but do not realize there is a beam of wood in our own eye.  Why is that?  It is because the power of evil in us is hidden in deep places of our spirit.  It surprises us when the ugly ungodliness comes to the surface, confuses us and we react to it with the defense mechanism parents use when they hear about the evil acts of their children: denial and befuddlement.  “How could this happen?  She wouldn’t have done that?  She must have been provoked.”

The absurd pockets of evil in your spirit and in my spirit contradict what we think we are.  We get fooled by the initial positive results of becoming Christian into thinking that everything is right in us when it isn’t.  We need a complete reworking, or to put it another way, a deep cleansing of the spirit.  The Bible insists there is much wrong with us that only Christ can fix.  We must face this squarely if we want to be perfect.   This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.  If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. (1 John 1:5-6 NIV)  The difference between the evil we have in us and the absolute goodness found in Christ is a great abyss…an uncrossable chasm.  Yet God Himself can get at those deep places of evil that sin has wrecked in us and cleanse them, or to be precise, purify them.  Consider the immensity of the promise found in1 John 1: 7.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:7 NIV)  Examine this closely.  The tiny word “if” makes clear that we might not walk in the light.  This is not automatic; it is up to us to do.  Walk is a metaphor that means to live and the verse is saying it is possible for us to continually live in the light, to always do what we do with God in charge showing us the way.  We do not have to abandon God or go on our own, we can at every moment walk hand in hand with Him, guided by Him, enabled by Him to live like Christ lives.  There is a second part to the verse. As we walk in the light, the blood of Jesus purifies us continually from all sin.  The term translated “purifies” means to cleanse constantly, to rework every moment of every day.  It is the Greek word from which we get our English word “cauterize.   It is used to describe what happened when Jesus removed the leprosy from those He healed.  When we are in tune with God and giving Him authority over what and how we do things, a miracle occurs during these times.  The blood of Christ works out of us the damage sin has worked in us. 

If you just stay aligned with Jesus, just keep praying to Him as you go through the day and let Him lead you when you sense His guiding, the damage Sin has caused in your personality, your unconscious thinking and in the way you live your life will be removed and healed bit by bit.  There is no cure for certain broken and wrecked parts of you except what Jesus can do if you let Him get hold of you.  This week make a conscious effort to stay close to Jesus, to make Him the center of your concentration as often as possible…no, as often as you are willing to do so. 

Loyalty

 

Mark 12:30 NIV

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'

What Is Your Top Priority?

I was either nineteen or twenty.  I did drive and had my own car and although I lived at home I had the freedom to do pretty much whatever I wanted to do as long as I did not make things tough on my parents.  A friend invited me to her house for her party.   I had a great time dancing and meeting new people.  The music was loud and the lights were dim and the adventure of pursuing a romance that evening electrified the moment.  My faith in Christ was developing rapidly and I was committed to following Him so I wasn’t exactly a wild partier…I was not even a partier at all but this was my opportunity to start.  The smell of marijuana floated about and there were coolers filled with a variety of alcoholic beverages.  Never before had I even tasted a beer so I was walking about in a new territory.  Because everyone else was drinking, I grabbed a beer, popped the top and took a sip.  About ten minutes later I took another sip.  As I mingled through the room, I held my beer with a ferocious tenacity, refusing to let go of it but dumbfounded by its presence.  Now you must realize that I did not have any strong opinions about drinking at the time, did not know of any Scriptures that condemned it, was not certain if the Bible was in favor of drinking or not and had never been warned by my parents about the dangers of alcohol.  Although I had grandparents who died from alcoholism, I was not aware of it at the time.  Yet as I danced and visited with girls and guys I was just meeting, a gnawing certainty came over me that this was an important moment in my life.  Somehow, without any mystical or supernatural form of communique, I knew that a line had been drawn in the sand for me.  God was setting before me a call to loyalty and the point of determination was the beer in my hand.  Would I drink or would I walk with Him.  Of course I know this sounds absurd and I did not have a single clear explanation for why God might be calling me to this life-long standard but as the evening went along, I was certain God was demanding this of me.  Give up alcohol and be His disciple.  With a room full of people who barely knew me, the Lord had pulled me into a corner and asked me who would I serve and who would rule my heart.  With no pastor to guide me and not a single friend to counsel me, I had a decision to make on the outskirts of a dimly lit dance floor.

It is funny how few people are even aware of what Jesus meant when He invited Peter and His brother Andrew to “Come follow me…”  (Matthew 4: 19 NIV)  Perhaps He used the same phrasing to call the other disciples and many more even to go with Him but we can’t say because much is left out of the Scriptures regarding particulars.  We know of at least one other person who was also asked by Jesus to come and follow Him but that man turned away and decided he wouldn’t…at least for the moment.  This does not mean that the famously labeled “rich young ruler” did not have salvation but he did decide not to have the sort of life God offered him.  You can decide to not “follow Christ” and still have eternal life.  You can be as rough and self-driven as you wish and the blood of Christ will wash away all your sin if you take Jesus at His word and put your hope in Him for salvation.  Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  (Romans 10:13)  The question before you today is not whether or not you will have eternal life but rather one much simpler and searching.  Will you follow Jesus?

Joshua asked a question similar to this of the Hebrew people as he came to the end of his earthly days.  A world of promise and opportunity rose before God’s people.  They had just conquered many parts of the Promised Land and were settling into their new homes.  All around them were pagan people who lived however they pleased.  Their morality and values were not taken from God and the Ten Commandments were not sacred to them.  The Israelites could live like their international neighbors or be different from them.  It was up to them.  God would not force His own values upon them.  Generations who followed would be impacted by the decision they were about to make though and the direction they headed spiritually could impact the course of history.  Joshua stood before the fledgling nation and spoke for God.  "Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.  But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living.” (Joshua 24:14-15 NIV)  If that was you standing in the crowd and you had to give an answer to this challenge, how would you reply?  Joshua made it clear where he stood on this.  “But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord."

(Joshua 24:15 NIV)  God does not demand this of you that you serve Him.  It is up to you what you choose to do with this life!

We have in the New Testament a fascinating peek into the personality of God.  As a great number of followers of Jesus decided to walk away from Him, Jesus asked Peter and the other eleven or so who were standing around what they wanted to do.  “Are you going to give up on me too?”  For any of the rest of us that are broken by sin, His question might hint at a tinge of insecurity.  He wasn’t quite sure where He stood with them.  But Jesus, who was pure in His intentions and clear in His thoughts about Himself, asked them so they could decide if they would remain loyal to God or abandon Him.  Peter was certain of what He was going to do.  Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.  We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."  (John 6:68 NIV)  How would you have responded to Jesus’ question?

The last great king of Judah is best known for his tragic decision to take his army and fight against the Egyptians who were on their way to do battle with the Babylonians.  Before that however, Josiah made the most important determination of his life.  Josiah’s father, King Amon reigned only two years but during that time he followed in the footsteps of his father Manasseh who was probably the most wicked and dishonorable king Judah ever had.  

He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, as his father Manasseh had done.  He (Amon) walked in all the ways of his father; he worshiped the idols his father had worshiped, and bowed down to them.  He forsook the Lord, the God of his fathers, and did not walk in the way of the Lord.  Amon's officials conspired against him and assassinated the king in his palace.  (2 Kings 21:20-23 NIV)  Not many move away from the patterns established by their parents and grandparents but Josiah did.  By age twenty-four, Josiah was actively pursuing Godliness and trying his best to re-establish worship of God in his country.  His first major project was to clean out the Temple of God in Jerusalem and make it fit to worship the Lord there once more.  During the renovations, a copy of the Old Testament was found and for the first time in decades, the people understood what God wanted of His people.  The Law was rediscovered and Josiah had to decide if he would follow it or comfortably ignore it.  There was a line for him to cross regardless if any of the people he ruled chose to go with him.  All eyes were on Josiah to see what he would do about the Word of God.  Josiah called all the leaders of Judah together and had the Scriptures read publically at the temple of the Lord.  The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord-to follow the Lord and keep his commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.  (2 Kings 23:3 NIV)  Josiah chose to pledge his loyalty to God and follow Him wherever the Lord took him.  Clearly, based upon the record, Josiah was rare among his ancestors and those who followed him as king to choose God as Lord.  How would you have responded to the scriptural call to absolute loyalty to God?

The Apostle Paul made a statement that is nearly always viewed from God’s perspective but never from Paul’s.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Romans 8:38-39 NIV)  God of course will not let His people be kept from Him.  When Christ died on the Cross, God’s salvation became irrevocable and unassailable.  Nothing could stop His forgiveness of Sin or the salvation He provides from reaching those who turn to Him.  Jesus made certain this was understood when He declared, I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.  My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand.  (John 10:28-29 NIV)

Turn the statement around in Paul’s direction.  Is he also proclaiming that nothing can keep him away from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus?  Demons, angels, height, depth, what is happening now or what might happen in the future are all not going to stop Paul or others like him from having the love of God in his life.  It is perhaps too odd to consider this passage this way but could it not be so?  Might it also be that Paul would not let anything stand between him and God?  Consider all Paul suffered following Christ!  Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.  Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without…  (2 Corinthians 11:24-27 NIV)  He went through all this for one reason.  Paul refused to let anything stand in the way of him living for Christ.   Do you have that same loyalty?

The question is not whether or not you have eternal life.  Nor is it, “Are your sins forgiven?”  Salvation is settled for you by what Jesus did when He took your sins from you on the Cross.  Many Christians never go any further than this.  They never want anything more from God than the knowledge that they have a home waiting for them after they die.  Some though want to live with Christ now.  They cannot bear to dishonor God by how they live.  They are hungry for God, thirsty for Christ, they crave more and greater intimacy with the Holy Spirit.  Is that you?  Are you all in?  Will you go with God regardless of what others do.  Are you, like the Apostle Paul, “not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile”?  (Romans 1:16 NIV)  Are you willing to declare your absolute loyalty to Christ as the Lord of your life?  Take your stand with millions of other Christians across the ages and state before God that you will follow Him wherever He leads you and go with Him loyally wherever He takes you.

Exploring Love

John 15:12 NIV

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

What Does Love Have To Do With It?

When I was in seminary a group of us used to play a board game called Risk.  It is a military game where each player has an army and tries to conquer the world.  It involves rolling the dice and strategically placing your army pieces in such a way that you can best take the armies of other players.  For a while we were playing once a week and it was quite competitive.  I was the new kid in the group so for a number of weeks I got beat rather soundly but after catching on to it, I did pretty well.  After a while, I got too busy to play and had to give up on it but long after I graduated, I maintained a love for the game; I just didn’t have a group to join me in it.  Several years later our church had a picnic and I brought the game just in case I could find three others to play it.  The game takes about two hours and sometimes longer to finish but I figured that since we were all there to relax and enjoy the day, perhaps I could put a group together who would join me in Risk.  I was able to find three others who liked the game so we sat down on blankets and began to play.  Now, the object is to conquer the world, and although it was done with plastic game pieces and no actual weapons are involved, to win, you have to one by one eliminate the other players until it is just two left and then you try to destroy the other player’s army.  This is just nice friendly fun, in theory.  The problem is you have to publicly wreck one player and knock that person out of the game if you are to have a chance at winning.  That is not fun for the players being conquered.  As I destroyed one player’s army and then another and finally the third, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with what I was doing.  I was after all the pastor and as I watched the forced smiles get thinner and thinner as I took out one church member after another, I found it nearly impossible to enjoy my successes.  No one stuck around to see who won.  Actually, no one wanted to see who lost.  It was too painful.  I went home that evening and wondered if it might have been better to have thrown the game so that I did not risk hurting anyone’s feelings.  It is hard to feel like a loving person when you are destroying someone’s army.  It is really hard for that same person to feel loved.

Perhaps you are like me.  You don’t feel like much of an expert on love.  If you took a bucket and it was a “love bucket”, how full would you say yours is?  I would have to admit that mine is pretty shallow.  Do you love like Jesus?  Is your bucket overflowing with love for others or does it have to be tipped way over to get anything out of it?  Are there only a few people who get to take any love from your bucket or is it available to everyone?  Do your enemies get any love from you?  How about relatives you don’t really like?  Does your love bucket have a lid on it or a narrow spout?  How much love do you have for others?

Perhaps the third most famous verse in the Bible mentioning love is found in 1 John 4: 16.  God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. (NIV)  What does that really mean that God is love?  Love, of all the spiritual qualities we can consider is the one most dependent upon relationship.  Faith, hope, courage, honesty, purity and a dozen other qualities can all be expressed without another single being in existence.  Love however requires others for it to exist.  You can “love yourself” but what does that mean?  It is a fruitless endeavor that erodes into self-absorption and selfishness.  Love to exist must extend out to others or it rots and then dies.  You might ask how it is possible for God to be three persons; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but then you must in turn be asked, how it is possible for God to be love and not exist eternally as at least more than one person.  He cannot be love eternally if He is forever by Himself.  Jesus Christ has to be eternal God with other persons as God if He is to be love and to love.  The same is so for the Father and for the Holy Spirit.  No one of them can exist alone and still be love.

Love is the most profoundly Christian character trait there is.  It has no rival.  As the Bible says, And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13 NIV)  When the Lord was giving some of His last instructions to His disciples before He let Himself be crucified, He told them, My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. (John 15:12 NIV)  Later He underscores His demand of them.  This is my command: Love each other. (John 15:17 NIV)  It is His solitary directive.  He does not tell them to be sure to pray more or to take a bold political stand or sing more worship songs or listen to lots of sermons or give lots of money to good causes or study the Bible diligently during these last moments with them.  He says “Love each other”. 

Of course there are all sorts of good things we can and should do to be faithful to God but it is all to no avail if we do not love each other like Christ has loved us.  The Bible makes a clear declaration of how important it is to God for us to love each other on His list of priorities for us.  If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 NIV)  Every single ounce of Christian behavior is tied to this one command, “Love each other”.  Listen to this clear affirmation of how Christian people are to live.  For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. (Galatians 5:6 NIV)

Let us be clear about this matter of love.  It is a way of doing things, not a way of feeling about things…at least as it is found in the Bible.  When Jesus clarified what it means to love Him, our Lord said it was behavioral.  Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command. (John 15:13-14 NIV)  Love for God means to do what He tells you to do, not feel good about Him or be attracted to Him.  That may and probably will happen if you love Him but without obedience to Christ, there is no love for Him.  Martyrdom or laying down your life for Christ means that your life becomes God’s to do with as He wishes.  Whatever He commands, you do and that means you love Him and are His friend.  There is nothing abstract about Christian love.  It is practical and concrete.  If you love as a Christian, it means you do something; something for someone else that is a specific act that God would say is loving.

The Bible makes it very clear what sort of behavior is love behavior.  Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NIV)  If you wish to fill your love bucket and please God, you need to pick one of these practical ways of being loving.   Perhaps it would be to keep “no record of wrongs.”  How would you do that?  You just don’t bring up any grievance you have against someone and you stop thinking about it or pray for God to bless that person every time your complaint comes to mind.  Maybe you choose to trust someone who has made the same mistake over and over again. This could cost you…you might be frustrated or irritated by being let down again…but consider how many times Christ has entrusted you with something and you have let Him down.  You might do something kind for someone, something that is even extravagant and because Jesus just does kind things for you without expecting anything in return, you too do your kind deed without expecting anything back or even hoping you will get something back.  Perhaps you fight against your tendency to get angry with certain people.  Relax, say a prayer and smile when someone irritates you or inconveniences you.  Let someone get in front of you, pay someone’s bill, give a back rub, provide a warm compliment, take time to listen to someone else’s story, refuse to make a disparaging remark about someone else.

Love is quite simple.  Loving because Christ loves you is even simpler.  Choose something off this list of love bucket behaviors and do at least one of them today.  Ask Christ to fill you with His saving love for all people and make a choice who and how you will love a person you know or don’t know.  Perhaps something as easy as deciding to pray for God to bless an irritating or frustrating person through the day would be what God wants of you.  Instead of having a “good day”, have a “loving day”.

Risen

Galatians 1:3-5 NIV

 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

What’s Bothering You?

During my sophomore year in high school I decided I wanted to become good at basketball.  Day and night I played on any court where I could find someone to challenge.  I lifted weights, did push-ups, ran and used a jump rope with five pound ankle weights to increase my speed and power.  Every day I shot hundreds of jump shots and played against anyone who came to the courts where I was.  I played so often that the insides of my fingers split open and burned with pain.  My basketball became so worn by constant playing that it was smooth as glass.  To play as often as I did, I had to give up something and it was my homework.  It seemed like a good trade-off for me, basketball glory for a few good grades.  My senior year I finally tried out for my high school varsity basketball team.  I played hard, took rebounds away from players stronger than me, made my jump shots and dunked in the practices.  Finally Friday came and the head coach pulled me off to the side to tell me my fate.  He said I didn’t make the team.

Have you ever been surprised by how things turned in your life?  Have you failed when you knew you would succeed?  Have you tried your best and it wasn’t good enough?  Do you know someone whose health suddenly fell apart, someone who lost his job when he was good at what he did?  Are you ever stunned by how badly things go; your planning of no use, your decisions not working out for you?  What do you think of a world that has so much difficulty?  Do you ever complain about the troubles you face?  Do you get upset about the stock market, distressed over your bad knees, frustrated  that a coworker doesn’t show you the respect you deserve, discouraged with how your career is going or how your kids are doing in school?

Jesus has told you how it will go for you.  “In this world you will have trouble.” (John 16:33b NIV)  If you are expecting everything in your life to work out nicely, Jesus said it won’t.  Let’s get this out of the way, that success and good health are promised you.  They aren’t.  You might not face cancer.  You could have a great career.  Your children might do very well.  But in all of that, you will have trouble.  It will find you and most likely you won’t be prepared when it arrives.  Jesus however does not just dump this bad news on us without a promise.  “But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16: 33c NIV)

God does not look at life the same way most people do.  Nearly everyone cares very much about finances, health and relationships.  If something goes wrong, you try to fix it. It weighs on your mind until your trouble goes away.  Our Lord though has a completely different take on matters.  Consider carefully what Christ prioritized during His physical life on earth.  Several things went quite well for Him.  Great crowds came to hear Him speak, mesmerized by His story telling and insightful teaching.  He performed spectacular miracles that brought health and wellness to vast numbers of people.  There was a movement among the Jews to make Him king after He fed a crowd of five thousand with just two small fish and five barley loaves.  He was a brilliant debater and charismatic leader.  Jesus could have had as much wealth as He desired.  He could send His disciples off to pluck coins out of the mouths of fish if He wanted more money.  Our Lord was on the verge of enjoying one of the greatest lives ever and yet he threw it all away.

At the height of Christ’s popularity, when everything in His life was trending upward, our Lord let it all unravel.  He stopped doing miracles.  He quit preaching to crowds.  He no longer debated with His critics.  He let His popularity disappear.  He did not concern Himself with His health.  He chose to let His successful ministry fall apart.  What could lead to such absolute disregard for one’s well-being?

There is something far worse than deadly diseases, worse than school shootings and child abuse, worse than poverty, sexual harassment, sweat shops and human trafficking.  It is worse than pornography, corporate corruption and even the threat of nuclear war.  It is the reason why Christ gave up all the promise His life held.  The great enemy of all of life; of the entire universe was on our Lord’s mind from the moment He could begin thinking about it.  His whole life had one mission and one alone.  He lived to save the world from Sin.  She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21 NIV)

Sin is the source of every evil in the world, from disease to death; it all springs out of Sin.  Jesus Christ chose for everything to go absolutely wrong for Him, to take every terror sin brings, whether it was pain, hatred, abuse or sorrow and suffer it all for one reason.  By doing so, by letting every bit of sin rip His life apart, He took sin out of us. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24 NIV)

Jesus let His friend Judas betray Him, to even kiss him on the cheek as he did so.  He did not resist as the Jewish guards arrested Him.  Jesus took quietly every slap on the face, every bit of spit that was rained down upon Him.  Jesus let bizarre accusations be hurled at Him without defending Himself.  The blows on the head, the thorns jammed into His scalp, the whips shredding His back and chest and legs and arms, all accepted without protest.  Sin wrecked Him.  And more Sin came and battered Him.  Every sin you committed slugged Him and still He accepted more in His body.  The sins of your neighbors, of your friends, of your relatives long gone, of people you have never met, of enemies that have damaged your heart, of lovers who have adored you and those who turned on you, every sin of every person who has ever been, Jesus let each one come into His body and they all sank into His flesh and pounded it with the pain of ten billion heart attacks, of ten trillion broken bones and concussions.   Each sin of every man, woman and child blasted within Him and exploded with pain and Jesus took them all in without complaint.

The time came, when after so much horror fell upon Jesus and His body became completely filled with all the carnage of Sin, He knew it was finished and came out of His body saturated with all of our sins.  The Bible makes it completely clear that Jesus decided this, that He knew when His work of taking our sin from us was finished.   Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty."   A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips.    When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19:28-30 NIV)

How can we ever thank Jesus enough for what He did for us!  Every sin you committed He took into His body and suffered for each and every sin.  The pain and sorrow each sin brought Him careened through His body like the echoes of a train wreck screeching in the night.  And yet the universe waited in hushed horror as Jesus’ body of sin lay crumpled in the tomb.  His spirit was gone but the body still remained and with it was our death, our sorrow, our pain.  Another day came and the body was still there.  Our dying sat with it and the demons with Satan watched and waited.  The body was dead.  Sin remained within it.  But then the morning of the third day the greatest miracle of all time took place.  The magnitude of that early Sunday morning has been lost to nearly all across the generations but the Apostle Paul reminds us what we have forgotten.

And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:6-7 NIV)  Carefully go over this one more time.  On that day, that first and greatest of all Easter mornings, on that bright and shining morning we were raised with Christ from the dead and brought into the Heavenlies with Him.  Before you were born, before your parents knew your name, before you ever knew you needed a Savior, Christ and you were raised from the dead and made eternal with God.  We cannot begin to express the wonder of this.  We cannot explain it nor do we understand it.  We just know that on Easter Sunday, you were raised from the dead along with Christ and you became glorious as the sun.  Let this sink into you.  Literally the Greek text reads that “He (God) together raised and together seated (us) in the Heavenlies in Christ Jesus”.  Easter Sunday, when Christ was raised from the dead, we were raised from the dead too and in a world of death and dying, of sin and suffering, that is nearly incomprehensible.  Easter, that first Easter of all history is not just the triumph of Christ, it is yours too.  For that, we celebrate!