17 May
SOME REFLECTIONS FROM THE TESTING OF JESUS BY THE DEVIL
Satan probably knew who Jesus was; even the evil spirits yelled in recognition that Jesus is the Son of God, the Holy One. Yet, why did he still embark on tempting Jesus – how can you successfully tempt the Son of God?
The evil one also knew that Jesus, the Son of God (declared by the Father at Jesus’ baptism by John) had taken on ‘flesh’ and somehow, the Son had limited his divine powers to live within the ‘sphere’ of being perfectly human. How much Satan knew regarding God’s plan of salvation for mankind is ‘unclear’; but this much he knew – if only he can take advantage of the ‘humanness’ of Jesus and make him ‘fall’, he would have succeeded to foil God’s plan somehow.
The enemy knew that Jesus, as fully man, can be hungry, can be affected emotionally, can perhaps be led astray when he used the very Scripture to lure him on the wrong path and decision. But we know that Jesus did not succumb, but He was victorious.
Satan knows, in his war on the people of God and the church, in which temptation is his method and destruction his immediate goal, it is a rather grim law that the higher one’s exposure and the greater one’s influence as a leader, the more one’s personal standards and wisdom will be put under attack. This he applied to Jesus but failed.
It is obvious that disgracing or distracting the leader is an excellent way of daunting, holding back, or otherwise sidelining the followers. People trust their leaders and follow in their steps; if leaders can be allured into bypaths and blind alleys, they will take many with them, and Satan will score heavily.
So leaders must be very vigilant; followers also must not just follow blindly if the leaders are on the wrong track (remember the Berean believers who checked the Scripture even on Paul’s teachings). In some sense, we get the leaders we desire and deserve, and if we are ‘blinded’ by their shortcomings (which affect God’s glory and kingdom), we cannot just blame the leaders for what goes wrong subsequently; we are also responsible for the wrong and negative developments in God’s work and kingdom (the degree depends on God’s judgement).
When we consider how Jesus, as the perfect man, countered the enemy, we might just conclude his responses to the enemy at the superficial level. Jesus’ quotations of Scripture (particularly Deuteronomy) seem to be the answer; however, I am aware that some believers, who have memorised many portions of Scripture, have been guilty of “throwing’ portions of Scripture at those in distress at the wrong time and in the wrong context, hence causing more pain and negative consequences rather than being ‘victorious’ in helping others. We can read and memorise the words in Scripture like those who study ‘Religious studies’ in schools and institutions – such studies do not necessarily result in having the living Word of God assimilated in our lives, and using it as the Lord Jesus used it in his encounter with Satan. To many such students, the Bible is just plain literature. Not so with the Lord Jesus and those who are imparted the living Word of God.
What we need to recall is that Jesus, not only was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness, but he was constantly filled, ministered to, and guided by the Spirit from womb to tomb. The Father was also ‘overseeing’ every situation – recall the sharing on the TRINITY.
But what is helpful is to note that Jesus, as the perfect man, filled and led by the Spirit, was applying spiritual thinking and reasoning in every situation that the Father allowed him to be in; we must not go away with the idea that thinking and reasoning have no place in Christian living and spiritual warfare.
The Christian’s intellectual vocation is to think about all things in such a way that his life of thought is part of his life of faith and homage to God. Whereas the non-Christian is led by faithless reason, the Christian should be guided by reasoning faith.
The function of reason in relation to faith is threefold:
The first is to receive the teaching of God. God teaches the church through the Word; accordingly, the Christian seeks the help of the Spirit to enable him to learn what Scripture teaches – his mind is necessarily active in this. I have heard believers saying that some scriptural passages are “too deep” to be understood – so it is best to leave them to the leaders – this is a big mistake and it makes such believers vulnerable to the manipulation of the evil one who is only too glad to interpret the passages for you.
The second task of Christian reason is to apply the teaching of God to life to bring it into constructive relationship with our other knowledge and interests, and to work out its bearing on the practical problems of daily life and action – moral, social, personal, political, aesthetic, or whatever they may be.
The third task is to communicate God’s truth to others. The duty of Christian witness involves reasoning. Faith is not created by reasoning, but neither is it created without it.
The right understanding and reasoning from above (Triune God) results in wisdom from within, divine illumination and discernment, devotion and sanctification – it manifests in a spiritual life which expresses itself in thought, speech, and decisions that are marked by divinely wrought understanding and thinking.
23 May
GOD’S DISPLEASURE
“The word of the Lord came to me:”Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them:’This is what the Sovereign Lord says: woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? (Ezekiel 34:1-2).
“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them” (34:10).
The context Ezekiel was prophesying: he was one of those who had been taken by the Babylonians in the earlier attack on Israel, and he was prophesying on the impending final destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.
Even with the sober warnings, the leaders, priests, false prophets (the shepherds) continued in their wickedness – making themselves rich, fending for themselves and their own welfare, giving false prophecies – and these are not hidden from the Lord God – God warned that these shepherds that He is against them and would remove them and discipline them!
The situation today in the churches all around the world may not be dissimilar. The pastors, leaders are quibbling among themselves – ‘church politics’ is not remote – some positive leaders are ‘thrown out’ – while those who take over are not caring for the flock, but basically fending for themselves. In the early church, the elders (shepherds) serve as leaders as a matter of responsibility – the church is not dominated by just one leader who always have his way and others are ‘cowed’ to indifference, because it is better to be in the ‘comfort zone’ than to be confronted and also ‘thrown out’ of their ‘status’ and positions. The elders of the early church were not paid a salary (that is not to say that it is wrong to pay pastors and to care for their welfare); but knowing the weaknesses of men, it is better to please those in power and those who hold the ‘purse-strings’ – it is difficult to speak against the wrong-doings of those who are ‘in charge’ and pastors are ‘restricted’ from pointing out sins and serious deviations happening in the church.
As for the members and those who were and are among Gods’ people:
“As for you, my flock, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will judge between one sheep and another, and between rams and goats. Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample on the rest of the pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? Must my flock feed on what you have trampled and drink what you have muddied with your feet? (34:17-19)
The parallel today is to ‘contaminate’ the spiritual food – giving distorted teaching, preaching and ‘feeding’ the people with ‘untruths’ that would cause them to be ‘spiritually ill’. “Boasting” of their apparent spiritual well-being, and looking down on others as not being spiritual (not belonging to the elite club) is in fact displaying “legalism”, fueled by spiritual pride and elitism (remember the story of the proud Pharisee contrasted with the repentant tax-collector).
We have noted before that the people get the leaders they desire and deserve. The reference to the ‘rams and goats’ reminds us of what the Lord Jesus declared that the sheep shall be separated from the goats – there will be wheat and tares among those in the church and God would separate them finally. Being oblivious to the ‘wrongs’ and being indifferent to what is going on do not excuse us from the judgment of God. Being proud and spiritually arrogant is even worse.
When Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot” (Matt.5:13), Jesus likens his disciples to salt. Implicitly, he is saying that apart from his disciples the world turns ever more rotten. Christians have the effect of delaying moral and spiritual putrefaction. But if so-called believers do not display such an effect, but in fact are even more immoral and ungodly than non-believers, what should be their outcome?
Jesus also said, “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds, and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:14-16).
Christians are the light of the world – a world which by implication, is shrouded in thick darkness. The darkness can be a terror and a symbol of all that is evil. The light is the “good deeds” performed by Jesus’ followers – performed in such a way that at least some men recognise these followers of Jesus as sons of God, and come to praise the Father whose sons they are (5:6).
But if the deeds of so-called believers are ‘bad’, or even worse than that of unbelievers – where then is the light? We need to note that good deeds are good as seen and evaluated by the Lord who sees the motives of the heart – they are not hypocritical deeds displayed to men, but the motives of the heart are ‘dark’ and evil. Have Christians lost their witness? How sad is it to hear non-believers saying that they do not want to be Christians because of certain so-called believers who are hypocrites and certainly not ‘light of the world’.
26 May
THE REVELATION OF JOHN (C)- THE ANTICHRIST
When we study the book Revelation, Antichrist is mentioned. The same Author John also mentioned the following in 1 John 2:
“Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many Antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they have belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.” (2:18-19)
Paul, when he wrote to the Thessalonian Christians to dismiss the rumour that the day of the Lord had already come, refutes this error by unfolding the fact that the parousia cannot take place until the rebellion and coming of the Antichrist (2 Thess. 2:1-12).
However, even during this period of restraint, and before the Antichrist is revealed, ‘the secret power of lawlessness is already at work’ (v. 7a). His anti-social, anti-law, anti-God movement is at present largely underground. We detect the subversive influence in atheism, totalitarianism, materialism, moral relativism and social permissiveness. But one day secret subversion will become open rebellion, when the lawless one is revealed. Then we can expect a period (mercifully short) of political, social and moral chaos in which both God and law are impudently flouted, until suddenly the Lord Jesus will come and overthrow him. In the current context, as believers, are we conscious of the increasing subversive influence around us and growing in the world? Are we wondering why so many do not believe in God, or even refuse to believe in Him even when sufficient evidence is presented? Are we shocked by the open rebellion towards morality and social norms; are we taken aback by how so many pursue wealth relentlessly, materialism, and worldly success? What about the cry that there are no absolute moral values – everything is relative, they say, and anything goes?
John, in recording Revelation, revealed to him by the Lord Jesus, wrote of such scenarios – things would get from bad to worse; men and women would continue to harden their hearts against God despite God’s speaking to them in various ways, including allowing natural calamities, famines, wars, and pandemics. At the same time, those who stand up for God and remain loyal to Him would encounter persecution, opposition, physical suffering and even death. It would be a choice between loyalty to God or loyalty to Antichrist! The devil, the Antichrist, the false prophet – all three parties would seek to be the false Trinity – against the Triune God, and there would be a great cost to pay to remain true to our God and Lord.
In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus called the crowd and said,”If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (8:34). Jesus moved at once from his cross to ours, and portrayed Christian discipleship in terms of self-denial and even death. Historically, the Romans reserved crucifixion for the worst criminals and compelled those condemned to death by crucifixion to carry their own cross to the place of execution. So if we are following Christ and bearing a cross, there is only one place to which we can be going, and death is inevitable.
Christian discipleship is much more radical than an amalgam of beliefs, good works and religious practices. No imagery can do it justice but death and resurrection. For when we lose ourselves we find ourselves, and when we die we live (Mark 8:35). In the previous sharing on the mission of Jesus, we ask what did he come to do? In a nutshell, we can say – to serve, to suffer and to die. And what does he ask of his disciples? To take up the cross and follow him through the death of self-denial into the glory of resurrection.
And what he asks of us would be sorely tested, not just in the current context, but much more so with the arrival of the man of lawlessness. In the book of Revelation, we are told that the faithful disciples of the Lord overcame by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death (Rev. 12: 11).
Will we be among those who overcome? Looking at the state of believers today, we have to come to the sad conclusion that many of us will not overcome. We are not even referring to the process of truly dying to self for Jesus’ sake; we murmur and complain at every ‘inconvenience’ and ‘discomfort’ in our Christian life; we demand that God relieves us of every pain and ‘suffering’, and continue to expect healing, prosperity and good health.
We expect ‘resurrection’ without going to, and through the ‘cross’. Today in the worship service, Philippians Chapter 3 was referred to.
“I want to know Christ – yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” (3:10-11)
Paul is expressing his desire to live in the knowledge of Christ, being identified with Christ crucified and risen. This means knowing the power of his resurrection in daily experience and sharing his sufferings by dying to the self-centered life that is natural to us and being willing to face difficulty and hardship that the gospel of salvation may go out to all people. These two realities must always belong together in any genuine Christian life of discipleship.
We must not be mistaken; Paul was not just wanting the power of the resurrection for self-glory – the power of Christ’s resurrection is ‘tied up’ with sharing and participating in Christ’s suffering – they belong together.
In Philippians 3, Paul was writing of his own personal commitment to Christ. He was in fact drawing up a kind of profit-and-loss account (the accountants should be familiar with this). On one side of the ledger he puts everything which could be considered ‘profitable’ – his ancestry, parentage and education, his Hebrew culture, his religious zeal and legalistic righteousness. In the other column he puts “Christ”. Then he makes a careful calculation and concludes, “I count everything sheer loss, far outweighed by the gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord (3:7-8). Moreover, this lordship of Christ worked itself out in his everyday being – in joy and gentleness, in freedom from anxiety and in inner peace, in a disciplined thought-life and in contentment in all circumstances (4:4-13). Hence it is no wonder that Paul wrote, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain”.
28 May
THE HUMAN PARADOX
In the last sharing, reference was made to two passages:
Mark 8:34 focused on what Jesus said – whosoever wants to be his disciple must deny himself and take up the cross and follow him.
The other: Philippians 3:10 – Paul shared his desire to know Christ – to know the power of Christ’s resurrection and participation in his sufferings, and to become like him in his death.
In both verses, the reference was made, directly or indirectly, to suffering, death, denial of self – and paradoxically, all these are related to being true disciples of the Lord Jesus, of knowing him in deepening measures, and becoming like him.
What this means is that true freedom is freedom to be my true self, as God made me and meant me to be. But God made me for loving, and loving is giving, self-giving (involving self-denial).
Therefore, in order to be myself, I have to deny myself, and give myself in love for God and others. In order to be free, I have to serve. In order to live, I have to die to my own self-centredness. In order to find myself I have to lose myself in loving.
It is interesting that Michelangelo put it somewhat in similar ideas: “When I am yours, then at last I am completely myself.” Indeed, we are not ourselves until we are God’s and others’.
That brings us to the next verse in Mark – Mark 8:35:
“Whoever will save his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same will save it”.
I find the ‘translation’ in modern English very helpful:
“If you insist on holding on to yourself and living for yourself and refusing to let yourself go, you will lose yourself. But if you are prepared to give yourself away in love for God and your fellow human beings, then in that moment of complete abandon, when you think you have lost everything, the miracle takes place and you find yourself.”
True freedom ls liberation from a preoccupation with my silly little self in order to be free to love God and my neighbour. Self-denial, serving others, not concentrating on self-life and self-centredness – paradoxically lead to freedom – freedom from fear – it leads to the experience of the power of resurrection-life.
One thing is sure: no one who is afraid is free. Jesus Christ holds the key to freedom, because he died to free us from guilt, rose to free us from self and was exalted to free us from fear. (Eph. 1:20-22). Once we have seen them there, they lose their power to terrify.
29 May
SELF-DENIAL, THE CROSS, AND DISCIPLESHIP
In the last two sharings (The Revelation of John(C) and The Human Paradox), we refer to the subject of self-denial, the cross (death), suffering and Christian Discipleship.
“God forbid that I should boast of anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world is crucified to me and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14 REB). It is clear that Christians glory in the cross not only for our acceptance with God, but also for our daily discipleship; for the cross is the way of holiness as well as the way of forgiveness.
Although here Paul mentions only one cross, he refers to three crucifixions on it. The first is the crucifixion of Christ. Then secondly, the world has been crucified to Paul (believer) and thirdly, Paul (believer) has been crucified to the world. So Jesus Christ, the godless world, and we ourselves (the believers) have all been crucified on the same cross.
Christ died as our substitute, instead of us, so that we might not have to die for our sins, but he also died as our representative, so that when he died we died with him.This is in fact an elaboration of Mark 8:34 which we shared before – the call of Jesus to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him.
The cross-bearing and crucifixion were Jesus’ dramatic images of self-denial and Christian discipleship; Jesus is teaching that the road to self-discovery is self-denial; the only way to find ourselves is to lose ourselves, and the only way to live is to die to our self-centredness.
The teaching is so very important today because the church has a constant tendency to trivialise Christian discipleship. People tend to think of it as nothing more than becoming a little more religious and to add a thin layer of piety to an otherwise secular life. Becoming a disciple of Christ involves a change – a radical change, namely dying to the old life of self-indulgence and self-will and rising to a new life of self-control and self-giving, in which the world (which includes the sinful nature with its passions, fanned by negative worldly influence) has been crucified to us and we have been crucified to the world.
We noted previously that before Antichrist comes, the spirit of Antichrist is already present in this world in the anti-law, anti-social and anti-God movement – seen in Totalitarianism, Materialism, social permissiveness and moral relativism. This movement will grow in intensity and become severely chaotic with the arrival of the man of lawlessness.
Christians are called to be vigilant in the face of this increasing negative influence and movement.
But unfortunately, believers are already caught up with the perils of an ungodly lifestyle, without being even conscious of it. The temptations in relation to power, money, and sex are also affecting Christians increasingly today. The
taste of success and fame can cause even Christian leaders to be led far astray.
Especially when there is no accountability in the structure of the ministry, pastors and leaders can indulge in greed, extravagant lifestyles, sexual immorality, even misusing Scriptural texts to feed their own personal pursuits.
This explains how those who seek to correct such ones in love are told to leave the ministry, the church or the organisations. We all need people who love us enough to point out our mistakes and weaknesses; but not all of us in responsible positions find it easy to receive correction and rebuke – we become reactive and we seek to justify ourselves and explain away our decisions and acts. Humility is not a virtue easily nurtured in one’s life, especially when many look up to us and for us to accept our mistake would be ‘losing face’ and losing credibility in our standing and ministry.
If believers fail in our current context that is not as intense as when the man of lawlessness appears, there is not much ‘hope’ and ‘confidence’ that we would stand in the days of AntiChrist.
30 May
THE RADICAL CHANGE IN SAUL’S LIFE
We are familiar with what happened to Saul on the road to Dasmacus, and how he ‘met’ Christ and his life was drastically and radically changed.
In the previous sharing, we noted how Paul measured his previous life, with all the human ‘successes’, in comparison to knowing Christ, and his verdict was that all these ‘human achievements’ (including his Jewish pedigree and Pharisaic background) were considered as ‘rubbish’, ‘dung’, in comparison to knowing Christ – hence his declaration – ‘For me to live is Christ, to die is gain’.
Perhaps a modern description of this radical change may be helpful:
“Here was a man who possessed all the marks of privilege within a particular tradition. His pedigree, his tribal status, his religious dedication, his formal education, his personal commitment, had been such that by every standard of Jewish orthodoxy and by every every sanction of national tradition he was justified in regarding himself as successful, superior and secure….Yet he had submitted every part of his historical inheritance to the judgment of the Cross. Nothing could be removed but everything could be interpreted. Those things which seemed positive gain could be judged as of no account to the service of Christ: these things which had seemed to be hindrances and handicaps might well prove positive assets in the new order of living…”. (Dallistone).
Before his encounter with Christ, Saul was also among those who were involved in stoning Stephen to death (Acts) – he was taking care of the belongings of those involved in the actual stoning. When Saul saw how Stephen replied to the accusation of the Jews, how he died so courageously, even praying to forgive those who were stoning him with genuine love, Saul was probably disturbed. How was it that he, with all his study, knowledge, and spiritual background as a Pharisee, could not stand up to the knowledge of Stephen, and did not have the courage, boldness and love of this ‘uneducated’ man?
Then he met Jesus, and that changed his direction of life, and his values drastically and radically. It led him to declare subsequently, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20)
Saul, now Paul, lived no longer for himself but for Christ and for the gospel. He became a champion for the gospel of Christ; yet he never forgot how he was guilty of persecuting Christ and the believers, and he always remembered that it was God’s grace that ‘converted’ him and put him into the ministry. Hence, he considered himself the ‘chief of all sinners’ and ‘least of all the apostles’.
The gospel that he preached reflected the major points he learned from the Lord Jesus:-
1) The plight of man is not merely of guilt and sins, but also of pollution in sin and bondage to sin – the state of being wholly determined by an inbred attitude of enmity to God – hence the need to convince men of their own utter corruption and inability to improve themselves in God’s sight.
2) The issue of sin needs to be seen in terms of hostility to God in the present, as well as God’s condemnation in the future. – there would be judgment from Him.
3) The goal of grace is the glory and praise of God, and our salvation is a means to this end. God has chosen to redeem us, not for our own sakes, but for his own name’s sake. In other words, the Triune God need not save us; it is His love, grace and mercy which caused Him to decide, even before the creation of the world, to institute the plan of salvation for a humanity that is fallen, rebellious, and condemned.
4) The sufficiency of Christ in this plan of salvation. We are not to trust in a theory of atonement, but a living Redeemer, the perfect adequacy of whose saving work we should never be tired of extolling.
Hence Paul was never ashamed of the gospel; he toiled unceasingly to bring men and women to this saving knowledge. He did not flinch in the face of persecution, suffering, deprivation and danger, in order to fulfill the ministry God entrusted to him. But we may pause, and declare that we are not like Paul – Paul was exceptional.
But hold it – examine what Paul wrote:-
“All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.
Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do” (Phil. 3:15-17).
But Paul did not stop at that: he went on to warn:-
“For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction,their god is their stomach,and their glory is in their shame.Their mind is set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Phil. 3:18-21).
To which category do we belong? Are we living as genuine disciples of Christ, citizens of heaven, awaiting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ? Or are we living half-hearted Christian lives, behaving as ‘enemies of the cross’ seeking our own self-life and self-centred pursuits? The eternal destiny would be very different for both groups. Paul was so concerned that he wrote with tears, for he trembled at the thought of the coming destruction for those who claimed to be believers but are actually ‘goats’ and not ‘sheep’.
31 May
AFFIRMING THE TRINITY
To be a Christian is, first and foremost, to belong to the Triune God and to be named for Him – this is the heart and core of the privileges of the gospel. Once we were ‘aliens’ and strangers to Christ, without desire or power to please Him – but now, through the Son whom the Father sent into the world to save us, and the Spirit who brings all the resources of Christ to us, we have come to know “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor. 13:4) – note the ‘Benediction’.
Have we ever wondered why we are baptised into the one name that has the threefold pronunciation “Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit?” If those into whose name we are baptised, be not one in nature, we are by baptism engaged into the service and worship of more gods than one (an accusation by non-believers that Christians worship more than one God). In one essence there can be but one person, may be true where the substance is finite and limited, but has no place in that which is infinite – what is beyond human reason is not necessarily contradictory to true and ultimate reason – the finite mind cannot comprehend Infinite Mind. There are places in our quest for understanding where we reach the limits of the human mind. The finite does not have the capacity fully to grasp and understand the infinite.
In the Trinity, there is a covenanted family bond that unites us to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit and unites the Three-in-One to us forever and ever. The Spirit bears witness that we are children of God (Rom. 8:16-17). Being children of God is our supreme privilege and security – and is at all times the supreme incentive for us to pray.
The Christian sonship to God the Father is both by adoption, which bestows the family status, and by regeneration, which is the work of the Holy Spirit renewing the heart and thereby bestowing in embryo the family likeness. Regeneration instils in us a God-centered, God-exalting cast of mind that is inexplicable in terms of anything that was there before, just as the source and destination of the wind are more than any observer can know (John 3:8). Regeneration is an outgoing of the same power that brought the world into being which previously there was nothing there at all – absolutely nothing in existence before God.
Adoption and regeneration turn us into unique people with unique privileges and a unique destiny – although we are not shielded from any of life’s grimmer experiences (like illness, pain, sufferings, persecutions). When bad experiences come, it is vital that we do not forget who we are and what we are.
When the devil attacked Job, he claimed that believers trust God because they are shielded from such negative experiences – if these ‘shields’ are removed, they would straightaway curse God. This helps us to know that our trust and confidence in God do not depend on our circumstances and experiences; they rest in the character, trustworthiness, and love of God, and also in who we are, and what we are in Christ. Sadly, many responded to grim situations like Job’s wife who urged Job to curse God and die, and that would have given much glee to the heart of the enemy.
Ajith Fernando, in an article wrote: “Prominence has come to equal success. Successful people have admiring devotees…..Despite many stories of addiction to prescription or illegal drugs, of suicide, of complicated love and married lives among the rich and famous, many good people wish that thety too would be famous….In a survey conducted some years ago,the majority of young people opted for “a few minutes of fame” as the main desirable achievement.”
He went on, “I once did a study of every time the New Testament asks us to follow the example of Christ. I found 29 passages; and 23 of those were calls to suffer, to be servants or to persevere in patience like Jesus. Of the other six, three were general calls to follow Christ; one was a call to be obedient like Jesus and two were calls to forgive like Jesus forgave. …This is strong evidence for not associating Jesus’ lifestyle with earthly comfort and privileges.” If Jesus’ lifestyle is not dominated by earthly comfort and privileges, why is it that his followers seem to pursue the opposite, and are not willing to follow him in the same path as His? Many Christians behave as if this world will be their permanent abode – hence they measure their ‘success’, their ‘victory’ by looking at their worldly circumstances and easily complain and murmur against God when things ‘go wrong’ (include suffering, sickness, financial drawbacks etc.). They forget that they are just pilgrims passing through, and as citizens of heaven, the circumstances and situations in life should not ‘drag them down’ when God has prepared a rich inheritance awaiting them in heaven.
Our true worth is found in the value Christ has placed upon us, not in the valuation of our self-assessment. It is what He has done (and who He is as the One who has done it) that gives us real value and creates a sense of worth in us. Living for the moment, basking in the temporal ‘prosperous’ circumstances – all these do not truly give us meaning and self-worth.
Christ was willing to become flesh for us; He emptied Himself into human nature for us; for us, He became poor; for us, He was willing for HIs glory to be eclipsed; for us, He became a servant, drinking the cup of divine judgment and bearing the curse of God.
A Christ-valuation of ourselves would dissolve all false self-worth and yet preserve us from pride. Like Paul, we value Him above all, and count everything as loss by comparison.
Just as we have been baptised into the name of the Trinity, we enjoy fellowship with each person in HIs distinctive expressions of grace toward us. As we do so, the frequently sung words of the “Doxology” now better understood, give expression to our affections. For we have been loved by the Father, reconciled through the Son, and are being transformed “from one degree of glory to another” by the Spirit.
KC Quek
Coming back to the Trinity, John writes “God is love” – it is the love of God the Father that he particularly has in view. God the Father is characterised by HIs infinitely gracious, tender, compassionate, and loving nature. But God is love also includes the love of Jesus, and the love of the Spirit;
If we believe that God is love on the grounds that things are going well for us, our confidence will dissolve the moment life turns sour. Many of us believers easily identify love of God with the love of Jesus and that is understandable as Jesus is featured as the one who sacrificed for us; and we often think that outside of Christ, there lies only judgment and wrath (directed to the Father).
But the gospel gloriously affirms the love the Father has for lost sinners. He is the One who sent His Son so that we should not perish but have everlasting life; He is the One in whom we find the benediction of His love. Jesus himself said to his disciples: “The Father himself loves you” (John 16:27).
This love is not manifested apart from His Son; nor do we experience it apart from the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:8; 5:5 – notice again the united manifestation in the Trinity). Many Christians, however, in their heart of hearts, are not deeply convinced that the Father indeed loves them. They are well persuaded of the Lord Christ and his good will; the difficulty lies in what is their acceptance with the Father.
The Father’s love is antecedent to ours; our love is consequent to HIs – we love the Lord because He first loved us. His love is like Him, unchanging and unchangeable; ours is mutable. We often think of the Father as the God of wrath and judgment (apparently depicted in the Old Testament); but we forget that in the OT, the Father is still One full of longsuffering in His love – note the number of times He relented to punish His people even after they rebelled when God sent prophet after prophet to them. Even in His punishment of His people, it was motivated and based on His love to bring them back.
Our inaccurate appreciation of the love of the Father often causes us to conclude that God the Father “is out to get us when we sinned and failed” and all our difficulties in life are due to ‘His punishing us’. The truth is: He never ceases actually to love us; and John 3:16 expresses it clearly, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”.
And what is eternal life? “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)
Jesus described eternal life as knowing God. The forgiveness of sins we enjoy, the peace with God we receive, indeed, our justification and reconciliation are, in one sense, means to this great end – that we might know Him – we were made to know and love God (the Triune God) in all His glory!