Following Jesus More, Loving More

On Sunday, I read a tribute about a member of a sister congregation in Ohio, that finished with these words: "He loved the Lord Jesus Christ with all his heart." That's about as good as anyone could write about anyone, I think. That's far above accomplishments, work, golf scores, or anything else I can imagine. That love, responding to God's love for us through Jesus, is what

What's Your Purpose in Life?

It's easy to get sucked into the rhythm of work, bills, sleep (not enough), chores (too many), and the drudgery of life. Years pass and we're no closer to our dreams than before. Life coaches tell you to explore the deepest desires of your heart, then start pursuing those. But what is

Sons and Daughters, not Slaves

From another blog, a post quoting John Stott's commentary on Galatians: 
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/gospeldrivenchurch/2014/07/30/the-life-of-sons-and-daughters/

Here's the quote:
“The Christian life is the life of sons and daughters; it is not the life of slaves. It is freedom, not bondage. Of course, we are slaves of God, of Christ, and of one another. We belong to God, to Christ, to one another, and we love to serve those to whom we belong. But this kind of service is freedom.
“What the Christian life is not, is a bondage to the law, as if our salvation hung in the balance and depended on our meticulous and slavish obedience to the letter of the law.
“As it is, our salvation rests upon the finished work of Christ, on His sin-bearing, curse-bearing death, embraced by faith.”

Jesus' Life, Your Life Made New

How would you like a makeover? A whole new life? You have one in Christ. Paul says, in 2 Cor. 5, that we have new bodies waiting for us at Jesus' return; and the older I get, the more I'm wanting one of those! He goes on to tell us in v. 17 that we are, already, a new creation! But I have to tell you,

It's Not Over Yet

This past Sunday, we celebrated the resurrection from the dead, to new life, of our Lord Jesus Christ. That event changed

Where You Really Live

Where do you live?  Some people live in a house, some in an apartment or a trailer or a condo.  Some live in huge refugee camps, some in shanty towns, and some out in the open.  But the Bible says everyone lives in
God.  How is that possible?

Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles (and anybody else who would listen) told the people of Athens, recorded for us in Acts 17:28, "For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’"  Now, wait -- these were rank pagans, people who worshipped so many gods they had a blank altar out there, just in case they left a god out accidentally.  They had no clue about the true God, the creator of the whole universe, the One whom Paul was describing.  So how could they be "in him?"  And why would Paul agree with the poet, even if the poet didn't know who he was writing about?

Paul saw that the only way there is to live, is in God.  Paul saw God not only as creator and life-giver, but he also recognized the Son of God, the man Jesus Christ, as the source of everything, including our lives.  Jesus, who was God born into flesh, gave the entire human race a new starting place (Rom. 5:6-21), including life for everyone:  "Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone" (verse 18).  So the only place we can live, is in Christ.  Our only way of living is in him.  Our only purpose for life is in him.   

Our reason for living is to move outward from our center in Jesus Christ, and to be a bubbling spring of life and love and peace and hope for everyone we know.  Some of the people we know are probably like the pagans Paul met, with no knowledge of God and no love in them, and maybe they're hard to love sometimes.  But Paul said they "live and move and exist" in him just like we do.  They too have been given "new life" by God through the life, death and resurrection of his dear Son.  Like the Athenians, they don't know it yet, but if somebody will tell them, some of them will believe.

Like Paul, when we approach people graciously and patiently and lovingly, we'll find ways and times and even the words to pass along this wonderful message of peace.   When we focus on "living in" God, he will move us to love, and as we let him love others through us, we ourselves will experience more of his love and joy than ever. 

How to Please God

I've spent most of my life trying to please God, working harder and studying more, beating myself up for my failings -- and only recently starting to find out what really does please him.  It's much simpler than I used to think! 

My wife, The Amazing Joanne, puts it this way:  God can do anything he wants for fun, and he decided to adopt us!  That's a paraphrase of Eph. 1:5, which says "God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure."  (See Genesis 1:31, where God calls us, as part of his creation, "very good.")  So in that broader sense, you have already pleased God, just by existing!  But how do you know what to do after that?

Imagine you were an orphan living on the streets in the wrong part of town, hungry and dirty and sick and alone, sleeping in your rags at night.  One day an incredibly rich family sees you, loves you that instant, and takes you home to their mansion, where you have more food, clothing and love that you ever imagined existed in the whole world together.  How could you show that family appreciation for their love and generosity?  Would you reject their gifts and insist on earning them first?  You would be wise to decide that, since they've been so good to you, then you should learn their values and ways, and find how to be good to others also.

After describing who we are -- being securely "in Christ"-- in Ephesians 1-3, Paul finally gives us something to do in the latter chapters.  He says in 5:1-2, "Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children.  Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ."  In verses 8-9, "For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true."  And in verse 10, "Carefully determine what pleases the Lord."  There are other commands and cautions in these verses too, but the core is this:  we are God's children -- adopted through Jesus Christ -- so our new family values are love and generosity and light. 

What pleases God?  That, since we are "in Christ," we live by our new family values of light and love and acceptance, loving others as generously as we've been loved by God, and by following the Holy Spirit's lead, "carefully determine what pleases the Lord."  That's enough to keep us fully occupied the rest of our lives until we see God -- when we will finally start to understand just how much he really loves us. 

Why are you here?

Last week at summer camp, seprockies.org, one of my friends got to reflecting on life's purpose. I encouraged him to think what he wanted on his gravestone, because that's the last word we get.

How about you? What is your purpose in life? Do you know what God says about it? I find my purpose summarized in 2 Cor. 5:15 -- "He [Jesus Christ] died for all, so that those who live would not live to please themselves. But they should live to please him who gave his life for them and rose again from death." This is part of the Great Reversal talked about many times in scripture: that in Jesus, God has both offered and accepted a perfect human life to replace my sinful (even with the best of intentions) humanity. In Jesus, I have (in effect) died, so I don't have the death penalty for my sins hanging over me: "We are certain that if one person died for everyone else, then all of us have died" (2 Cor 5:14) In Jesus, God has offered me eternal life, so instead of just a temporary reality ending in death, I get to live with him forever in the ultimate reality of his presence.

So, what do I do in the meantime? God answers me through Paul, in that same chapter 5, verses 18 to 20: "And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. ¹⁹ For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. ²⁰ So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, 'Come back to God!' "

My job is to speak on behalf of Jesus Christ in saying "Come back to the Father of all things and live with him forever." My calling is to show how God has taken care of the debt caused by our sin and fallenness by his Son, Jesus Christ, and that he welcomes all people into his eternal home. My joy is to talk about the unbelieveable-yet-true love God has offered us, and to show that love to everyone I meet, regardless how unloveable they are, because that is the same love God has shown to me.

Well, it's not just me. Every Christian gets this privilege. Every one of us gets to show and to tell somebody else about this outrageous offer God has made us. Who do you know that needs to hear about this news? How might you tell them about it? Would you use a story, or a song, or a picture, or modeling clay, or what? And if you're worried about whether it will work, are you willing to give it a shot anyway, and let God work out the results? He's really good at that -- after all, it worked for you!

What will your gravestone say? For that matter, what does your Facebook say right now? Or your face? No sense waiting until it's all over to say it...

Why?

Children ask a lot of "why" questions. Why does the sun come up in the morning? Why do birds eat worms? And so forth. Isn't it a shame we tend to lose our curiosity as we get older? Maybe we should get it back. It's a very useful trait.

I've spent a lot of time this last year studying the #1 question of all time: who God is. I think there are, roughly, three ways you could understand God and what he wants from us. They range from great strictness to complete looseness. Here are the first two:

If God is primarily concerned with whether people are doing wrong and then punishing them for it, you have a God of judgment and the primary job of his messengers is to tell people not to sin. If God is primarily concerned with accepting people, then he will overlook or excuse their sins and evil ideas, and the primary job of his messengers is telling people that he loves them and has decided not to care about their imperfections. Those are the two extremes.

There's a third option that addresses both of these: If God is primarily concerned with bringing people into a loving relationship with him, then he has found a way to deal with peoples' imperfections, weaknesses, sins and evil. The primary job of his messengers is telling people that God is passionately interested in a deep relationship with them, and that he has already handled the problem of evil in them and in the world.

This last one is the comprehensive message found in the Bible. It includes God's judgment against sin (overall, our rebelling against his love and instructions in an attempt to do it our own way) as well as his limitless love for us and desire to have relationship with us.

Here's the grand unifying theory, in two passages from the New Testament: "When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God." (Romans 5:6-11)

"For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

God's judgment against our sins, and his love for us, come together and are dealt with perfectly and completely in Jesus Christ, who was the perfect union of humanity with God. That means the Gospel is, truly, good news -- the best news you could ever hope for. And that message is what his messengers live for.

Why are you here?