SHARING FROM LUKE 14:1-24
The chapter 14 has brought together two parables about feasting.
Verse 1-14: The first parable is from verses 7-14 – this is not always recognised as a parable, because it looks simply like a piece of good social advice, of practical wisdom – if you want to avoid embarrassment in front of your fellow guests, take the advice to conduct yourself and take a humble position. But in verse 7 specifically, it was written that Jesus told them this parable.
The parable, although it touches on conduct during social occasions, not to be proud and arrogant; the real meaning is to be found in the warning against pushing oneself forward in the sight of God. During Jesus’ time, it was all too easy for the well-off and the legally trained to imagine they were superior in God’s sight to the poor, to those without the opportunity to study, let alone practise, the law. The wider meaning would be warning the Jews not to discriminate against non-Jew believers (many would become Christians within Luke’s lifetime) and to stand apart from them in pride and religious arrogance.
Note: The small-mindedness which pushes itself forward and leaves others behind is confronted with the large-hearted love of God; Christians are called to demonstrate God’s love and the same generosity in sharing it with those in need. This should be characteristic of those in God’s kingdom.
Verses 12-24
This is often known as the Parable of the Great Banquet.
The story is about people who very rudely snub the invitation to a splendid banquet. They made excuses of the usual kind. The householder, having gone to all the trouble of organising and paying for the banquet, is determined to have guests at his table even if he has to find such ones from unconventional background and locations.
Since the original guests have ruled themselves out, others have been invited to take their place.
Jesus has been going around Galilee summoning people to God’s great supper, that is, to God’s kingdom. The nation of Israel has been waiting for the Messiah and although the time has arrived, those who were invited long ago have refused to come to Him, giving all sorts of reasons and excuses. Some other people have been delighted to be invited and to be included in the celebration with Jesus. Here, the warning to the Jews who were waiting for the kingdom of God that has now arrived in Jesus, that they would miss it because of more pressing things that were occupying them.
The implication also is the challenge to Christians to work in churches and societies to invite people to celebrate in God’s kingdom, and these people may apparently be at the end of the line; the guests at the banquet (which subsequently include Christians from OT and NT) are expected to be Hosts in their turn to those who are least expected to be invited to celebrate in the banquet.
We may not claim Jewish heritage but we may have participated in Christian ceremonies – baptism, church weddings – we may have heard the essentials of Christianity and we may have made a profession of faith, but life has become too busy for us to have time for God and religion. There are deals to be done in our business and careers, holidays to enjoy, and pleasures to pursue, all without any reference to God. In the end, they are excuses – weak excuses; as far as God is concerned, such excuses are downright insulting to Him!!
THE CENTRALITY OF JESUS CHRIST
We have studied the Gospel of Luke and noted the coming of the Messiah (Jesus), his call for repentance and faith to enter into God’s kingdom, the necessity for his suffering and death to inaugurate this kingdom, and God’s eternal purpose to institute a new humanity in the new heaven and earth, with Christ as the head, and bridegroom of the bride, the church of God (comprising all believers from the OT and NT, Jews, Gentiles from all nations and all tribes).
We noted also how the Messiah was rejected by the physical nation of Israel in general, and not only that, the Messiah who came to deliver them as the God-man was murdered and crucified by them. The true spiritual children of Abraham, according to the Bible, are not those of physical descent, but are those who share the same faith in God as Abraham’s – and this would be those who collectively form the church (believers from OT and NT).
At this juncture, it may be needful to crystallise some essential points to help us understand why Jesus Christ is central in God’s plan of salvation, in the formation of God’s kingdom, not only on earth, but also in the eternal future.
Salvation and all its benefits not only come to us through Christ but are to be found exclusively in Him. Union with Christ brings the believer into fellowship with Christ, crucified, resurrected, ascended, reigning, and returning. Through faith in Christ, all the blessings of the gospel are available to believers. The lives of the believers must be rooted and grounded in fellowship with Christ.
The incarnation is necessary: A mediator adequate for man’s needs must be both divine and human. The atonement required can only come from man; but fallen man disqualified himself from making atonement. God the Son incarnate (Jesus Christ) is alone free from sin and able to offer himself as an atoning sacrifice.
Christ’s task was to restore us to God’s grace as to make us children of God and heirs of the heavenly kingdom; he took what was ours as to impart what was his to us to make what was his by nature ours by grace. Thus everything lacking in us is given to us by Christ, everything sinful in us is imputed to Christ, and all condemnation merited by us is borne by Christ (NOTE THE GREAT EXCHANGE).
Salvation and assurance lies in the extent to which the Son of God has come near to us in his incarnation, actually entering into our situation, tasting our experience from the inside, and exchanging his strength and confidence for our fears and failures. In other words, Christ enters into our life and bears the cursed condition from underneath, as it were, so that we may make the faith-discovery that all is lacking in us to to be found in Christ!
THE QUALITY OF THE HEART IS MOST IMPORTANT
In society, when we speak of the “heart” in the metaphorical sense, we are referring to our selfhood; or we are thinking of the emotional intensity within. The Bible views the heart as the deep source of our character and purposes, of our attitudes and responses, of our self-image and self-projection. In short, the heart in the Biblical sense refers to the total human being that each of us is.
The Bible also reveals that God looks at us and evaluates us according to the quality of our hearts; that is, we are good or bad according to the quality of our hearts. Jesus says, “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart” (Matthew 15:18). A bad-hearted person is like a bad tree producing bad fruit (Matt. 12:33-35).
We have considered the parable of the sower: the seed sown in the good soil represents “those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience” (Luke 8:15).
Today, we often assess people from the outside in grading them by their skills, and we labour good people, despite their moral lapses, as long as they use their skills to do a good job. God, however, assesses everyone from the inside out, measuring us entirely by the state of our hearts.
We would then understand why some will not understand or accept what is revealed by God in his Word and in the Gospel; to the Pharisees and leaders of his time, Jesus branded them as ‘white-tombstones with dead men’s bones within’. On the outside, they appeared religious, but inside, they were those with hardened and wicked hearts; this caused Jesus also to pronounce his “Woes” on them and their fellow religious teachers and lawyers.
John the Baptist, who heralded the coming of Jesus, told the religious leaders who came to him to be baptised, the following: “You brood of vipers, who told you of the judgment to come”. He then exhorted them to bring forth fruits of genuine repentance.
Come to think of it, ‘repentance’ simply means a real change in the heart and mind, turning away from the old negative sinful ways to moving on to a good and righteous path in the eyes of God. In other words, it points to the spiritual fruit in the hearts of those who truly repented.
Do not be deceived; those who claim to be good believers but produce ‘fruits’ that are ‘evil’ and ‘rotten’ are those with negative and poor quality of the hearts in the sight of God. Do not be misled by such ones. By our ‘fruit’, we shall be judged by God.
In Luke 11, the Jews were clamouring to see more signs and miracles from Jesus. Jesus did not comply to their demands. Enough miracles and signs had been done by Jesus and yet, they would not believe. Their problem is the problem of the heart. In their hearts, they had made up their minds not to believe. The religious leaders, when seeing the miracles by Jesus, were more concerned about their religious positions (that they were in danger of being replaced); they did not respond positively and genuinely to the Person and Works of the Lord Jesus. Instead, they plotted to remove him and to kill him.
Many in those days as well as today would choose not to believe or to respond positively to the revealed Word of God in the BIble and the gospel (good news) because basically their hearts have been hardened and not open to the truth. Jesus in Luke 11 also pointed out that their their ‘eyes were bad’ and the ‘light’ could not come through”; this refers to the ‘eyes of their hearts’ – their vision of the truth is marred because the spiritual eyes were bad – either spiritually closed or having distorted visions. Only if the “light of God’ can come in and enlighten their vision and hearts will there be true conversion, faith and repentance, which invariably would lead to fruits that are good and positive in the eyes of God.
It is no accident that the Bible tells us to “keep our hearts with all diligence, for, from within come the true and real issues of life”.
Today, if we hear the ‘voice of God’ calling us to respond to Him from our hearts, do not linger. If you have not believed, the Spirit of God is exhorting you to open your hearts and respond.
If we claim to be Christians, the Spirit of God may be telling us to check our hearts and our lives; are we having hearts that are sound in the eyes of God, and would they produce good religious fruits that would glorify and honour God, particularly on the day of judgement?
Like the crowd in Jesus’ time, are we still clamouring for more ‘signs’, more ‘proofs’ even though the Lord God has been speaking, through the Bible, through creation, through incidents and circumstances in your lives.
“Today, when we hear His voice, do not harden our hearts”.
LOVE NEEDS LAW AS ITS EYES; LAW NEEDS LOVE AS ITS DRIVE
We have pondered upon the fact that the quality of the heart is most important in the eyes of God. We now turn to the manifestations of the heart’s response and outworking in terms of the application of the LAW and LOVE as detailed in Scriptures.
Not too few believers think that the Ten Commandments are no longer applicable today; and basically because they are law, naming particular things and areas that should, and should not be done. People dislike law (and this is in fact one sign of our sinfulness), and the idea that Christians should not be led by law but only by love is rather widespread among believers.
It is important to realise that law needs love as its drive and love needs law as its eyes, for love is blind. Only as we observe the limits set by God’s law can we really do people good and truly love them.
Jesus himself affirmed the Ten Commandments as having authority forever (Matthew 5:18-20) and as central to true religion (19:17-19). He expounded them, and made a point to insist that he himself keeps them (Luke 6:6-10).
When John the apostle says, “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments (1 John 5:3), his words remind us that Jesus defined love and discipleship to himself in terms of keeping his own commands (John 14:15,21-24; Matthew 28:19-20). Commandment-keeping is the only true way to love the heavenly Father and the Son. And it is the only true way to love one’s neighbour.
When Paul the apostle says that ” the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8), he explains himself by showing that love to neighbour embraces the specific prohibitions of adultery, murder, stealing, and envy. He does not say that love to neighbor cancels those prohibitions.
The Christian’s most loving service to his neighbor is to uphold the authority of God’s law as man’s one true guide to true life (recall The parable of the good Samaritan by the Lord Jesus to demonstrate who is the neighbor and how we should interact with him). God’s law, when kept by God’s love, is in fact the family rule of Christians and the church.
So do not be misled by some who claim that they indulge in adultery because they are in love – it does not hold water in God’s eyes. Similarly, to claim that it is alright to murder or to steal because of our needs (for revenge or for lifestyle and sustenance) is certainly out of order before the judgment seat of God; to justify the grounds for envy and jealousy is out of place before God, and the list goes on.
Hear what John the apostle says: “We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Those who say, ‘I know him,’ but do not do what he commands are liars, and the truth is not in them. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him; whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.” (1 John 2:3-6 TNIV)
So those who continue to disobey God and break his laws, and, at the same time, quote Scriptures, and even pray, are those who truly do not know God and surely displease Him and would face His wrath.
Those who claim to keep his laws, and yet not from the hearts, in their external display and formalism in religion, are branded as hypocrites by the Lord Jesus; those who do this more convincingly, and yet are driven by false and negative motives in their hearts, are practising legalism – all would be seen and known on judgement day.
“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does ‘not love does not know God,….” (1 John 4:7-8a) Love for the neighbor seeks what is ultimately good for him; and this is often overlooked – seeking what is ultimately good for the neighbor involves warning him of the dangers coming his way, and correcting him out of genuine love and concern. It is not just pleasing him and allowing him to ‘damage’ and ‘destroy’ his life ultimately.
AUTHORITY AND SUBMISSION
Believers are familiar with the “Great Commission” in Matthew 28, but at times, we forget to ponder over the qualification prior to the commission:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18).
When Jesus Christ gives the command, the call to obedience, the call to submission, he is backed up by this fact that ALL Authority is his (the extent – in heaven and on earth above all things, all beings, power, physical or spiritual – everything in the universe – nothing is above him in authority).
It follows therefore that to disobey him and not to submit to his authority would imply judgment and severe negative consequences for all, in heaven and on earth.
Subjection to the authority of Christ involves subjection to the authority of Scripture. Anything short of unconditional submission to Scripture, therefore, is a kind of impenitence; any view that subjects the written Word of God to the opinions and pronouncements of men involves unbelief and disloyalty toward Christ. Types of Christianity which regard as authoritative either tradition or reason are perversions of the faith, for they locate the authority not in the Word of God but in the words of men. Hence we realise the gravity of knowing, loving, and understanding the Word of God revealed in Scripture, written by the Holy Spirit, and applying them wholesomely in submission to the Triune God.
Jesus himself walked straight into the jaws of death, and “learned obedience” – that is, learned both the practice and the cost of it – “through what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). He was shamed, and scourged, and he died on the cross, in an agony that felt like agony every moment until the ordeal was over. It was an expression of resolute, though pained and aching, submission to a loving heavenly Father when he said in the garden, “Not my will but thy will be done”.
It has been truly said, “Christ leads us through no darker rooms than he went through before.” Although authority in heaven and on earth belongs to him, he submitted himself to the authority of the Father for our sake, ‘for the joy that is set before him’, for he knows that there is no other way to effect God’s salvation plan for the fallen people of the first Adam, except that, in love, in obedience and submission to the Father, he carried out the “great exchange” such that we can return to God’s fold and be part of the new humanity and community in the new heavens and new earth.
Longing for freedom from restrictions (including submission to authority) are for many people the strongest of life’s driving forces. It has become modern man’s obsession. It has its root in philosophy: in dreams of the perfectibility of man, in Rousseau’s idea that civilisation squeezes you out of shape, in the educationists’ fancy that inside each little demon is a little angel waiting to come out as soon as mechanical pressures relax and interest is wooed. It is rooted in experience too – bad experiences of harsh and stifling authority at home, at school, in church, with the boss, or the police, or elsewhere, have fueled fires of revolt.
The effect is that all forms of authority are seen as prison walls, which makes the quest for freedom feel like a great escape from some ideological prison camp, and anyone who respects authority stands out as odd.
Modern man may claim to have come of age, but from this standpoint he seems to have regressed to adolescence (Adolescents are always first to insist on their own adulthood). Surely, today’s rebellion against authority is a sign not of maturity but of its opposite. It is a form of folly, not of wisdom. It leads only to decadence and spoiled lives.
The truth, paradoxical yet inescapable, is this: ‘There is no freedom apart from external authority. To say “I am my own authority’ is to enslave myself to myself – the worst bondage of all. Only as I bow to an authority which is not myself am I ever free. The Son of God, freely chose to submit to the will of the Father, in love and obedience, so that we may truly taste true freedom from the guilt of sin, the penalty of sin, the power of sin, and ultimately the presence of sin, and be with Him in the glorious consummation in the new heavens and new earth.
He who has all authority in heaven and on earth lovingly tells us to submit to Him so that we may truly be free to be what God desires us to be!
We are called to submit to a perfect loving Master, not an evil one with evil desires, and evil intentions.
“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” (John 3:16).
THE TRANSFIGURATION AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD
The Transfiguration was recorded in three of the Gospels, and it was significant in the revelation of Jesus’ deity, as well as the revelation of the Kingdom of God.
As Jesus prayed in Luke 9:29, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendour, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfilment at Jerusalem (vv. 29-31).
It was a momentary transition from the concealing of his divine glory that marked his days on earth to the revealing of that glory when he returns and we see him as he is.
The bright light that shone from Jesus through his clothes as his face changed was the glory intrinsic to him as the divine Son, “the radiance of the glory of God” (Hebrews 1:3). The voice from the cloud confirmed the identification that the vision had already given.
The Transfiguration was also a significant event in the revelation of God’s kingdom – the kingdom of the Messiah, God’s prophesied Saviour-King. Moses and Elijah represented the law and the prophets witnessing to Jesus and being superseded by him. The “departure” which they and Jesus talked about must have been his death, resurrection and ascension – this was not just a way of leaving this world but also a way of redeeming his people, just as the exodus from Egypt that Moses led was to redeem Israel from bondage.
The Transfiguration was evidently planned by Jesus for Peter, James, and John to see and later, to testify to. John, in the Gospel John 1:14, wrote “We have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father”. Peter also testified in 2 Peter: “For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eye-witnesses of his majesty. He received honour and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain”(2 Peter 1:16-19). The eye-witness of the apostles is now passed on to us who believed, in the church; we are to know for sure without any doubt that Jesus is the God-man (the glorious divine Son of God, the one testified to by the heavenly Father with the voice from heaven). His glory was concealed while he was on earth but the Transfiguration ‘removed’ it temporarily and the apostles saw the divine Son of God in all His glory and majesty. In the same way, the kingdom of God here on earth is ‘hidden’ and what is happening in this kingdom is not seen clearly, but like a ‘mustard seed’, it is growing in life, power and glory, and would be seen in all its fullness at the second coming of the Lord Jesus.
Jesus himself told the Jews, ‘Before Abraham was, I am”, testifying to his divinity and causing them to accuse him of blasphemy and arrogant claims. Jesus answered Philip who requested, “Show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered, “Don’t you know me, Phliip, even after I have been among you such a long time. Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me” (John 14:8-11a). Notice that even Philip, one of his disciples, who has been with Jesus for such a long time, failed to recognise the divinity of Jesus.
John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus, remarked, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”. Yet, many days later when John was imprisoned by Herod, he sent word to Jesus via his disciple, asking whether Jesus was truly the Messiah, the one who would baptise with fire and with the Spirit.
Notice that many, including his disciples and those closest to him, did not fully recognise who He is, and they carried with them some doubts and queries. His identity was concealed; his kingdom he came to inaugurate was hidden in some ways (although the demons recognised who he was; and the Holy Spirit came down upon him like a dove at his baptism by John the Baptist and filled him for his mission and ‘departure’).
Today, let us be sure, without any doubt, who He really is – he is not just a great teacher, or a great prophet – he is God-incarnate. He is coming again in all his glory and majesty. In the meantime, those who do not believe in Him are given the opportunity to believe in HIm by faith through repentance; those who are HIs are exhorted not to doubt, at any moment, His power, majesty, divinity, and authority. He is ruler of the universe; He is also close to each one of His people, present to them in the Holy Spirit, interceding for them, empowering them to persevere and to endure until He comes again. The Kingdom of God is already here; the Kingdom of God is yet coming, and will be seen in all its glory at the consummation and end of the age. But not all will be in this kingdom; only those whom He knows and those whom He welcomes to enter through the ‘narrow door’. Do not be caught outside when that time comes and end up knocking frantically for the door to open, to no avail. Our eternal destiny is at stake. Do not make the fatal mistake; do not think that we still have all the time in the world to make a commitment. It may be too late.
INTERPRETING OLD TESTAMENT NARRATIVES
I have shared on “Why bother with biblical interpretation?” previously, and this is on the website http://www.livinginthelasdays.com; but we need to look at interpreting Old Testament narratives as this is the single most common type of literature in the B\ible – the Old Testament itself constitutes three-quarters of the bulk of the Bible.
If you are a believer, the Old Testament is in fact your spiritual history – the promises and calling of God to Israel are your historical promises and calling. The concern is that we often ‘force’ incorrect interpretations and applications on narrative portions of the Bible – the intended value and meaning are replaced with ideas read into rather than out of the text.
Of course, we cannot expect to cover all issues that prevent dangerous pitfalls in our endeavour to be faithful to interpretation of OT narratives; but certain guidelines and qualifications may be helpful for us to take note of in this task.
Narratives are stories – stories that retell the historical events of the past that are intended to give meaning and direction for a given people in the present. The story, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is not so much our story as it is God’s story – and it becomes ours as He “writes” us into it. To appreciate this story, we will need to know some basic things about narratives – what they are, and how they work. At the basic level, Biblical narratives tell us about things that happened in the past – there are three basic parts: characters, plot, and plot resolution. The characters are the “protagonist” (the primary person in the story), the antagonist” (the person who brings about the conflict or tension), and the “agonist” (the other main character in the story who gets involved in the struggle). In the biblical story, God is the protagonist, Satan (or evil people/power) are the antagonists, and God’s people are the agonists.
The basic “plot” of the biblical story is that the Creator God has created a people for his name – in his own “image” – who as his image bearers were to be his stewards over the earth that he created for their benefit. But an enemy entered the picture who persuaded the people to bear his ‘image’ instead, and thus sto become God’s enemies. The plot resolution is the long story of “redemption,” how God rescues his people from the enemy’s clutches. restores them back into his image, and (finally) will restore them “in a new heaven and new earth” (this is in fact the story of salvation and the Gospel with Jesus Christ in the center of it all).
Note that the story is being told on three levels. The top one has to do with the whole universal plan of God worked out through his creation – i.e. the initial creation itself, the fall of humanity, the power of sin, the need for redemption, and Christ’s incarnation and sacrifice; the second level is the story of God’s redeeming a people for his name – these people are constituted twice – by a former covenant and a “new” covenant, the story of the people of Israel, the call of Abraham, the tracing of the lineage of Abraham through the patriarchs which includes their enslaving in Egypt, the ‘Exodus’, the covenant at Sinai and the conquest of the promised land of Canaan; and their frequent rebellions and disloyalty, ending with the breaking up of the nation into northern Israel and southern Judah, their exile and their restoration after the exile.
The first level – here is found all the hundreds of individual narratives that make up the other two levels – it is important for us to ask ourselves how these first level narratives fit into the second and third levels of the biblical story. When Jesus taught that the Scriptures ‘testify about me’ (John 5:29), he was speaking of the ultimate, top level of the narrative, in which his atonement was the central act, and the subjection of all creation to him is the climax of its plot. He was not speaking about every short individual passages of the Old Testament. Individual passages, including narratives, that are messianic and otherwise identified as typological of Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 10:4) are an important part of the Old Testament, but these constitute only a small portion of its total revelation.
We need to be reminded how Narratives in the OT are not to be understood:
They are not allegories or stories filled with hidden messages;
Individual OT narratives are not intended to teach moral lessons – they are to tell us what God did in the history of Israel, not to offer moral examples of right or wrong behaviour;
Even though the OT narratives do not necessarily teach directly, they often illustrate what is taught explicitly and categorically elsewhere. This represents an implicit kind of teaching by illustrating the corresponding explicit teachings of Scripture.
In any biblical narrative, God is the ultimate character, the supreme hero of the story – we must not miss this – precisely because of explicit statements about God’s presence in the narrative, we should be aware of God’s presence in more implicit ways (although they are not clearly stated). For instance, in the book of Ruth, God is not clearly stated; however the story is actually the story of God’s kindness being played out in the lives of three people – the foreigner who showed kindness assumes a place in the royal lineage of King David. The implicit teaching is clearly present in the story but not stated in so many words. What we need to find is what is thus implied in the story, that which cannot be read right off the page. Being able to distingish what is explicitly taught can be fairly easy. Being able to distinguish what is implicitly taught can be more difficult. It requires skill, hard work, caution, and a prayerful respect for the HOly Spirit’s care in inspiring the text.
Some cautions:
The BIble is a great resourc. It contains all that a Christian really needs in terms of guidance from God for living. But this does not mean that each individual narrative is somehow to be understood as a direct word from God for each of us separately or as teaching us moral lessons by examples. There is a danger of Moralizing – that is, the assumption that principles for living can be derived from all passages. The OT narratives were written to show the progvress of God’s history of redemption,not to illustrate principles – they are historical narratives, not illustrative narratives.
Deconstextualising – If we take things out of contexts enough, we can make almost any part of Scripture say anything we want it to. There is a danger of picking and choosing specific words and phrases to concentrate on while ignoring the others and ignoring the owverall sweep of the narrative being studied.
Most useful caution: No Bible narrative was written specifically about us. The Joseph narrative is about Joseph, and specifically about how God did things through him – it is not a narrative directly about us. As such, we can never assume that God expets us to do exatly the same thing the Bible characters did or to have the same things happen to us that happened to them. Bible characters are sometimes good and sometimes evil, sometimes wise and sometimes foolish. They are sometimes punished and sometimes shown mercy, sometimes well-off and sometimes miserable. Our task is to learn God’s word from the narratives about them, not to try to do everything that was done in the BIble. Just because someone in a BIble story did something, it does not mean we have either permission or obligation to do it too. What we can and should do is to obey what God in Scripture actually fcommands Christiean believers to do. Narratives are precious to us because they so vividly demonstrate God’s involvement in the world and illustrates his principles and callinag. They thus teach us a lot – but what they directly teach us does not systematically include personal ethics. For this area of life, we must turn elsewhere in the Scriptures – to the various places where personal ethics are actually taught categorically and explicitly.
OTHER MAJOR POINTS TO NOTE IN INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE
We first begin with an important statement demonstrated by Ezra in Ezra 7:10;
“For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel”.
THE STATEMENT
Before we teach the Word of God to others, we need to practice it. We must practice what we teach and preach. But before we practice and teach the Word, we have to know what it says. So we must study it.
For everyone of God’s servant who preaches and teaches, this statement is so very important and relevant. It means that if we have not studied the Word of God, we cannot know what it says; and if we do not know what it says, we are not in a position to teach it faithfully. And if we teach the Word to others, and not practice it, we are no better than hypocrites (actors who play a part but are not really what they appear to be). So we see the solemn and sober positions preachers and teachers are in. These individuals, in one sense, are representing God and His words as they preach and teach – there is no place to be frivolous or disrespectful when it comes to handling the Word of God.
Coming to the other major points to note in interpretation and application of the Word.
1. Genre – establish guidelines for interpreting a passage’s style of literature.
Eg. We cannot interpret a psalm (poem) in the same way we interpret a
narrative.
2. Textual criticism – we must establish the original wording. Here understanding the original language (‘Hebrew’ in OT and ‘Greek’) is very helpful. But even if we are not proficient in the original language, comparing translations and
having lexicons and other ‘helps’ can help us come to as close as we can to
establish the original wording.
3. Understand the role that a passage plays in its whole book -literary context
4. Biblical Theology: Study how the whole BIble progresses, integrates and
climaxes in Christ.
5. Historical Theology: Survey and evaluate how significant exegetes and
theologians have understood the Bible and theology.
6. Systematic Theology: Discern how a passage theologically coheres with the
whole Bible.
7. Historical-Cultural context: Understand the situation in which the author
composed the literature and any historical- cultural details mentioned.
8. Practical Theology: Apply the text to yourself, the church, and the world.
Looking at the above, we see how much work and study have to be put into them before we are sufficiently ‘competent’ to preach, or to teach. Individuals who are preachers and teachers must realise that they have to give an account to God for their roles and responsibilities.
The ministry of preaching and teaching is learned, in dependence on God, in prayer and in looking reverently to the Holy Spirit.
Not only must the individual be ‘apt to teach’ (implies knowledge); above all, the minister must be godly. Someone rightly said that ‘ten minutes on your knees’ will give the minister a truer, deeper, a more operative knowledge of God than ten hours over the books.
Remember, God chooses to speak through the faithful preacher, or teacher, and when God speaks, there would be consequences seen in the response of the listener or learner, either good or bad, as seen in eternity.
THE DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES FOR CHRISTIANS AND UNBELIEVERS
God designed the believer to live in and by one’s hope, and part of the real Christian’s joy, is to look forward to eternal life in resurrection glory with the Father and the Son.
The children of our secular materialistic culture refuse to live in terms of the world to come, and this, along with actual irreligion and egocentric immorality, constitutes the inward deformity which Christianity sees in fallen human beings. Do not be distressed or alarmed when we see the ‘ugliness’, ‘rebellious spirits’ of those without God and without hope for eternity – do not be disturbed when we experience their hostility and arrogance toward God’s people – they are storing up the wrath of God for themselves and they would face it at God’ own time.
However handsome the face and however beautiful the body, the soul – that is, the real person – is out of shape and ugly. The deformity leads to a constant diffused discontent with things as they are – and they assert themselves with pride and an attitude of selfishness that are manifestations of sin against God and authority.
The Christian’s vision of each unregenerate individual is accordingly a tragic ruin – a noble creation originally, but one now spoiled and wasted, and tragically so by reason of the great potential and for joy that has thus been lost. When we face persecution and ‘violence’ from them, do not lose heart and feel that God has abandoned us; instead long for the ruins of their lives to be rebuilt – hence evangelism is service of each person’s deepest need and is thus the truest love of one’s neighbour.
In the book of Revelation, the Lord Jesus encouraged the churches to overcome, even in the face of persecution, imprisonment, false teachers, and even death. The Lord reminded some not to have a name that they were spiritually alive when they were dead; He told them to wake up; he warned them not to be luke-warmed; he enjoined them not ‘to lose their first love’ for him. All these exhortations were communicated through John at a point of time when the churches in Asia Minor were enduring intense and great persecutions from Rome; the sufferings, imprisonment, death alluded to – they were not imaginary or theoretical – they were in the very midst of them when they received the letters from the Lord Jesus through John the apostle.
Further on in the book, the Lord communicated, through John, that things would get worse before they get better; and the greatest crisis facing the Christians is to remain loyal, faithful, immovable, steadfast until Christ comes again and removes evil completely and institutes the new heaven and new earth.
In the book, some martyrs were seen asking God “How long?” with reference to the sufferings of believers and the vengeance that God would enforce on the persecutors – and they were told to ‘rest’, for there will be more martyrs that will come in before God unleashes His wrath and judgment on the devil, his minions and the rebellious people of the world. The Lamb will consummate his kingdom for God’s glory by saving his people and judging his enemies. The purpose of Revelation is not to confuse us or to entertain us or intrigue us or give us a train schedule for future events It is to comfort and encourage and exhort Christians by revealing future events and providing a heavenly perspective on present earthly difficulties.
So as we go through life here on earth with all the difficulties, perplexities, as Christians, do not lose sight of our heavenly perspective as we view various situations and circumstances, Revelation reveals God sitting on the throne even as persecutions and pain affect His people; He is in control; at the end of Revelation God banishes sin and destroys death, and he lives among his people in the Most Holy Place itself.
THE CHAIN OF SALVATION
“And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Romans 8:30 ESV).
The above verse has often been referred to as the “golden chain” or the “chain of salvation.” In this verse, the apostle Paul seemed to be describing four links in a chain that has been forged.
Notice the sense of completion: “Those He predestined He called, those He called He justified, those He justified He glorified.”
Paul has been talking about the trials of life. A few verses later, Paul will be addressing situations that might threaten our sense of security in the love of Christ: tribulation, distress, persecution, nakedness, danger or sword. That last threat was, in fact, the final threat Paul himself faced – execution by beheading, under the emperor Nero.
But the apostle’s confidence in the face of these facts lies not in himself and in his own plans. Rather, his security and confidence rest in God, in the reliability of God’s purposes, and in His ability to accomplish them. God’s purposes cannot be broken; they will not fail.
When we see these words as a chain, we relate predestination, calling, justification, and glorification to each other, one link closing around the next link, ant that link closing around the next and so on.
But hold on! By linking them together to each other in this way, we have not left any room for the Lord Jesus; it is as if predestination, calling, justification, and glorification exist on their own apart from Christ.
And here is where we need to look at Romans 8:29:
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first among many brothers.” And this flows on to verse 30 starting with “And those whom he predestined…” leading on to calling, justification and glorification. The four “items” do not exist in splendid isolation; rather, they belong to something else – they are aspects of something even bigger. But what could be bigger than these things?
It is this: “Those whom God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son (vs 29). These wonderful privileges in Romans 8:30 are actually four aspects of our union with Christ and lead to our becoming like Him.
So if you are born again by the Spirit; if you are a child of God, if you belong to those whom he foreknew even before the creation of the world; if you can cry out “Abba” from within your heart by God’s Spirit – then you can have full confidence that God who has predestined you and called you from the beginning would justify you and glorify you ultimately despite persecution, tribulation, distress, nakedness, sword or death – indeed “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:28)
It is not us – not our faith, not our strength, not our endurance, not anything that is in our power or life that can make this chain possible – it is not what people think of us, not how people treat us or belittle is – it is Christ Jesus; it is our union with Him in our salvation and regeneration that makes it all possible. NOTHING CAN SEPARATE US FROM HIS LOVE!!!
Brothers and sisters, TAKE HEART AND BE STEADFAST, IMMOVABLE, ALWAYS ABOUNDING IN THE WORK OF THE LORD, KNOWING THAT IN THE LORD YOUR LABOUR IS NOT IN VAIN (1 Corinthians 15:58)
SALVATION HISTORY AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD
We have been looking at ‘INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURES’ in the past several sharings; we covered some principles of interpretation, exegesis, and also the need to bear in mind not to read our ideas into the Bible in our preaching and teaching. In this light, we refer to the various aspects of the importance of considering Genre, text, historical-cultural context, biblical theology, historical theology, systematic theology, and practical theology in our approach to exegesis. Not all Christians are in a position to study all these aspects in detail, but an awareness of them to a certain extent would go a long way to help Christians and the church to be ‘rightly dividing the Word of Truth’.
Recall what was highlighted: Before we teach the Word to others, we need to practice it; we must practice what we teach and preach; but before we practice and teach the Word, we have to know what it says – so we must study it.
We have stated that revelation from the Lord God is progressive: the Old Testament and the New Testament together form one whole in God’s revelation to His people.
At this juncture, it may be helpful to look at how God gradually ‘formed the people of Israel for himself’ (Isa. 43:21) so that they would develop an outlook and a way of life different from those of all other people. It took centuries of loving creative discipline under his Word, and its providential control of every aspect of their lives for this to happen. Yet gradually God wove mercy and judgment together in all his dealings with them so that finally their Messiah could be born; God’s purpose was finally fulfilled in Jesus and his Church
Throughout the whole series of events in the OT, God’s purpose has always been gradually to show us the kind of person He was. Each event was intended to bear the stamp of His nature. God saved the people of Israel, not only for their own sake but for the sake of His holy name (Ezek. 35:22; Isa. 48:9; Ps. 106:8).
Every aspect of Israel’s history can be understood as a declaration of His name. He declared HIs unfailing generosity in the blessings and gifts He showered upon them in their need, His omnipotence whe, having been crushed by ruthless enemies, He marvellously delivered them, His righteousness when He strictly punished disobedience. It was especially in the way He held on to them in face of their own continuous wilful rejection of His leadership and kindness (Is. 63:5) that the fullest revelation of who He was became enacted.
In the midst of His witness to what He was doing, God speaks of himself quite directly at times in the Bible, and we are as dependent on such self-utterances for understanding Him as we are on the history. God’s interaction with the prophets and others could indeed become so intimate and deeply personal and self-revealing on His part that He could speak to them as being His friends. When He spoke to some of the prophets He shared with them not merely His thoughts and purposes but also HIs feelings and sufferings. In the case of such prophets as Moses (Ex. 32:7-19), Hosea (Hos. 1-3) and Jeremiah (Jer. 20:7-18, we find Him actually putting them through a faint measure of the kind of suffering He himself felt so that they could speak about Him later with all the deeper sympathy.
When we want to understand God’s revelation of Himself in the Old Testament thought we have indeed to pay as much heed to the statements made about God and by God, as to the history that reveals Him. Here is how the history of Israel is meant to be read. Here is God’s pure self-revelation. The history of Israel is meant to be read as if it was ordained by God and set in motion to be, throughout the centuries, a quite unique and distinct stream of history moving within universal history; it is only by looking back from what was brought to light in the Cross that we can understand fully what God was telling Israel about Himself all through their history.
Even in the Old Testament there is the beginning of a destined new age for mankind, an age called the ‘Kingdom of God’. It is to be thought of as a history kept in motion and guided to its God-ordained goal by the constantly intruding divine Word. It is to be understood not simply as a history of revelation but as a history of salvation. It was set in motion not simply to reveal the character and nature of God, but to fulfil the saving purpose of His reconciling love, to bring about the redemption of all mankind from the sin, corruption and death under the judgment to which we have brought ourselves by our alienation from God.
In choosing the best way to bring about this salvation He has not concentrated His energy on an attempt to mould and control universal history. He has chosen rather to bring about the universal salvation of mankind by working within and through what is to happen as this one nation fulfils its destiny. Having begun with Abraham this history pursues its course through progressive stages, during the rise and fall of many other nations and empires, ‘to its God-ordained goal in Jesus Christ. It was set to find its climax in his life, death and resurrection (according to the Scriptures’ 1Cor. 15:3-4. It then begins to manifest its universality as it moves on through the centuries of the Church to bring about the consummation of all things (cf. Matt. 19:28) when He returns in power and glory.
If we are united to Christ we are at the same time being oriented towards and caught up in the powerful thrust of this salvation history as it moves all things towards the consummation of all history in the age to come.
John 15 reminds us that if we ‘dwell in Christ and allow him to ‘dwell’ in us, cultivation a deep personal bond of friendship with him, we will find ourselves inevitably caught up into the works that he is doing as he controls the developing history of the world. Those of us in Christ belong to a new family of which our membership gives us a new past history. We are no longer ‘alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise’, but are even here and now ‘fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God’ (Eph. 2:12-19), In Christ, we have become ‘the offspring of Abraham (Gal. 3:219) an in the Epistle to the Romans, using another metaphor, we are to regard ourselves as having been cut out of what is by nature a ‘wild olive tree’, and by God’s kindness ‘grafted ‘ into the ‘rich root’ of the new olive tree which He has laboured throughout the whole of Israel’s history to produce finally in Christ.
We can now become more open to our new future allowing ourselves to become more and more caught up in the forward thrust of the salvation history that is still being worked out in Christ!
THE EXCELLENCE OF SCRIPTURE
We have spent some time looking at the ‘Interpretation of Scripture’. Why is this so important? For one thing, there have been many wrongful interpretations over the years in the church; this affects the health and ministry of the church of God significantly.
The Reformers’ whole understanding of Christianity depended on the view that Scripture is the only guide for conscience and the church, the only source of true knowledge of God and grace, and the only qualified judge of the church’s testimony and teaching. This view rests upon a series of principles which Christians and the church would do well to pay close attention to.
God’s people need God’s instructions because their minds are ignorant through sin, and it is beyond their power to work out any true knowledge of God for themselves.
The Scriptures were so directly produced by the Holy Spirit that whatever they teach, God Himself teaches. Scriptures’ teachings are sufficient for our guidance in all matters of faith and life.
God intends to enlighten and teach us, bringing us to faith and knowledge of Himself in Christ, by the Spirit through the Scriptures – that is why the Scriptures exist.
It therefore follows that wrong interpretation of Scriptures leads to wrong knowledge of God; it also leads to wrong guidance and outworking in the Christian life which in turn.
Subjection to the authority of Christ involves subjection to the authority of Scripture. Anything short of unconditional submission to Scripture, therefore, is a kind of impenitence; any view that subjects the written Word of God to the opinion and pronouncements of mean involves unbelief and disloyalty towards Christ. Types of Christianity which regard as authoritative either tradition or reason are perversions of the faith, for they locate the seat of authority not in the Word of God but in the words of men.
SOMETHING NEW\ – RENEWAL
We have looked at the ‘history of salvation’ and the ‘kingdom of God’; this was set in motion even before the creation of the world, not just to reveal the character and nature of God, but to fulfil the saving purpose of His reconciling love, to bring about the redemption of all mankind from the sin, corruption and death under the judgment to which we have brought ourselves by our alienation from God and our rebellion against the Almighty.
We saw how God chose to bring about the universal salvation of mankind by working within and through what is to happen as this nation fulfils its destiny. Having begun with Abraham this history pursues its course through progressive stages, during the rise and fall of many nations to its God-ordained goal in Jesus Christ – finding its cllimax in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
The kingdom of God was inaugurated by the Lord Jesus’ fulfilment of His mission and the church (comprising of saints from OT and NT) was born.
The Son of God, after accomplishing His mission on earth, continues to carry on His work and task by His people (the church) from His exalted position at the right hand of the heavenly Father through the ministry of the Holy Spirit (sent by him and the Father).
The kingdom is ‘already’ but still ‘not yet’. Before the culmination at the end of the age when God would ‘make everything new’ (Revelation 21;5), the process of renewal of His people, the empowering of them through the Spirit and the fulfilment of the Great Commission (Matt. 28) begins.
In all its respects, renewal of the Christian people is a theme for humble, penitent, prayerful, faith-full exploration before the Lord, with a willingness for change and be changed, and if necessary to be the first to be changed, if that is what the truth proves to require.
To absorb ideas about renewal ordinarily costs nothing, but to enter into renewal could cost us everything we have, and we shall be very guilty if, having come to understand renewal (in God’s kingdom), we then decline it. It would be better for us not to touch the study of renewal and total commitment at all if we are not ourselves ready to be the first to be renewed.
The renewal of the church is in essence a spiritual and supernatural matter, a work of the Holy Spirit enriching our fellowship with the Father and the Son. Renewal is precisely God doing a new thing, and though every work of renewal has basic qualities or dimensions in common with every other, we must recognise that the contours of the cultures within which the church has from time to time lost its vitality, and also the contours of that loss in itself, have varied.
As stated, the renewal of the church and God’s people is in essence a spiritual and supernatural matter; this is in line with the fact that the kingdom of God is a spiritual and supernatural kingdom. Jesus, before Pilate, declared that His kingdom is not of this earth – it is a heavenly kingdom.
“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that may also be glorified with him.”(Romans 8:14-17 ESV)
Here it is clear that the process of renewal involves moulding into the image of Christ as fellow-heirs and children of God (reflecting HIs character); it also involves suffering with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
Paul went on the state that ‘the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”(vv. 18-22)
We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies; the creation has been groaning as well to be set free from bondage to decay.
In the meantime, before the glory that is to come, both creation and ourselves would have to go through ‘sufferings’ but the promise is that the glory that would appear would be far beyond comparison!
God is doing something new now; He would make all things new at the close of the Age with the establishment of His eternal kingdom. This is our glorious hope.
THE CHURCH AND SUFFERING
Whenever the subject of ‘suffering’ is discussed, oftentimes Christians refer to the Great Tribulation in the Last Days.
But we need to note that there were periods in the first century when the church, in one place or another, felt the pangs of suffering and hardship. Such trials were distressing, and the Christians were at times perplexed as to the purpose of all these things in their experience. So if we hear some so-called believers claiming that there is no suffering for Christians and this is complemented by the ‘prosperity gospel’, we need to look afresh at Scripture and the history of the church.
In the book of James, dated at about A.D. 45, probably the earliest book in the New Testament, it reflects trial in the church not long after the time of its inception (Acts 2). It describes trials from without (1:2) and within (1:13-15), recalls suffering as seen in earlier days by the prophets and Job (5:10,11), and exhorts the suffering person to pray (5:13). The book of James is really a treatise on the faith that endures in the face of all types of obstacles.
Hebrews, written to Jewish converts, makes references to the sufferings of believers. Written at a later date (probably A.D. 70), it is an exhortation to Christians to press forward, to endure, even in the face of serious pressures. It reflects the serious conditions existing at that time, near the end of the reign of Nero in Rome.
First Peter is also concerned with this problem of suffering. The word ‘suffering’ occurs seventeen times, being used both of the suffering of Christ and His people. The problem is particularly reflected in 4:12-19. By this time (about A.D. 63-65) the presence of Nero’s persecution of the Roman Christians may have been felt in some of the provinces as well or at least the threat was present. Peter therefore wrote to give hope by furnishing a proper perspective.
In James, it is noteworthy to note that in this epistle dealing much with testing and suffering, the opening words include “all joy” (1:2). Joy is a result of life with God. There are over 400 instances of vocabulary relating to biblical joy – joy comes from God and furthers the Christian’s sanctification, especially during trials. However, today, as Christians go through trials, the noticeable absence is joy in their lives – instead there is much murmurings, grumblings against the circumstances, against people, and invariably against God (although not so obvious in some cases).
The chief purpose of trials is that it might bring about endurance (the literal meaning of ‘patience’) and completeness. The word ‘temptation’ used by James has reference to outward pressures that bear hard upon the Christian. They are there by God’s permission (but many of us question this), designed to test (or prove) his faith and, when overcome, hold promise of reward (1:12). There is also temptation that comes from within (1:13-15), due to man’s own sinful nature, which does not come from God.
True faith is productive; this is due to its vital character – that which is alive is active. James discusses the important facet of truth under the subject of ‘faith and works’ (2:14-26).
The central plea of the book of Hebrews is for the believer to “go on unto perfection” (6:1), not to digress or turn back to his former ways. The solemn warnings are interspersed throughout this book – danger of neglect, unbelief, immaturity, and apostasy – one is not to turn away from the truth and the privileges of the Gospel despite suffering and trials. The superiority of Christ is emphasised to a degree not found in any other book in the NT. He stands above men, angels, and ceremonies – He is the final revelation of God (1:2) and the mediator of a new and better covenant (8:6). Hebrews 11 on the “heroes of faith” shows what it means to walk with God, to live and die in dependence on His promises. Christ is the greatest example of all – ‘the author and finisher of our faith’ (12:2). We are to consider Him (12:3) and learn that God, in permitting trials and in chastising us, is dealing ‘with us as with sons’ (12:7) to bring us to maturity and ultimately, perfection. Do we see this clearly, ‘the already and not yet’ needs testing, trials, suffering to mould us to become like Christ and to attain maturity. If we fail to realise this adequately and fail to go through suffering with such a perspective, we would end up ‘miserable’ and ‘spiritually defeated’.
But note also the warnings in this epistle – these can all be summed up in the words of 12:25, “See that you refuse not him (God) who speaks.”
We are warned against absolute refusal to heed what God has spoken (12:25-29). The one who ‘fell away’ cannot be renewed in repentance; the one who”sins willfully” after knowing the truth is left without any sacrifice for sins.
Peter in 1 Peter gives a ray of hope in the darkness to those suffering affliction and persecution. What is the Christian to do and think in the face of temptation and sufferings? Peter’s answer is given by the use of the word “hope” found in 1:3,13,21; 3:5,15, and by the assurance that God has a very definite purpose in permitting these difficulties in our lives.
They are meant to prove our faith that we may be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ (1:7). It is actually a privilege to “suffer for righteousness sake” (3:14); our Lord has suffered on this account. Partaking of Christ’s sufferings will result in rejoicing at His coming (4:13)l
God knows what He is doing. We are to continue to do well despite our circumstances. We have been called as God’s children to share His glory. He HImself shall “make you perfect, stabalish, strengthen, settle you (5:10). Our hope is on the grace of God and on God Himself (1:13,21;3:5). The very hardships we face become opportunities for witnessing for Christ!
But if we respond negatively in the face of hardship and difficulties, the unbelievers would be wondering what is the difference in being Christians as compared to non-believers? Do we reflect the character and glory of God in our lives, even in difficult circumstances, and in the face of opposition and suffering?? The early Christians and the early church did respond remarkably well to the point that the Gospel spread so quickly as men and women looked with awe at their lives and their responses of love, faith and hope.
What about us today? How are we responding as disciples of Christ and the new community inaugurated by Christ??
SUFFERING AND THE CHURCH (C)
We now take a look at the subject of suffering and God’s people as revealed in the book of Revelation:
The apostle John was writing to fellow-believers who were companions in his suffering. Although the writing was specifically targeted at Christians in Asia Minor, the message of Revelation is ‘current’ to God’s people in the last days – Jesus told John, “Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this.” (Rev. 1:19 ESV)
In the seven letters (Rev. 2 and 3), note the repeated “to those who are victorious”; the fifth seal (6:9-11), which follows the devastation wrought by the four horsemen, reveals Christian martyrs who have been slain because of the “word” and the “testimony”; and the exile of John himself (1:9) to Patmos.
In Revelation 7:14 the great multitude, who will never again suffer (7:16), has “come out of the great tribulation.”
Suffering and death are again linked to bearing the testimony of Jesus (12:11,17); and in 13:20 the suffering and death are specifically attributed to the ‘beast’ (13:7;14:9-13;16:5-6; 18:20-24; 19:2).
John was made to realise that the suffering of the believers was only the beginning of woes for those who refuse “to worship the beast.” John was also aware that not all the church was ready for what was ahead of them – so John wrote the ‘prophecy’ that he had seen, as instructed by the Lord Jesus.
The church and the state are on a collision course; and initial victory will appear to belong to the state. In that context, the state was Rome, and “Babylon” is the term attributed to Rome.
John thus warns the church that suffering and death lie ahead; indeed, it will get worse before it gets better (6:9-11). John is greatly concerned that the Christians do not capitulate (give up) in times of duress and distress (14:11-12;21:7-8). Note: this concern is also for the church subsequent to John’s time – in the last days, ‘things’ would get worse before they get better, and Christians who are prone to abandon Christ may ‘enjoy respite’ for the moment; and those who refuse to be unfaithful to the Lord Jesus can expect to face suffering and death at the hand of the devil, the ‘beast’ and the false prophet.
The prophetic word in Revelation however is also one of encouragement – for God is in control of all things – Christ holds the keys to history, and he holds the churches in his hands. Thus the church triumphs even through death (12:11). God will finally pour out his wrath on those who caused this suffering and death and bring eternal rest to those who remain faithful.
We must note the distinction between two crucial words or ideas – “tribulation” and “wrath” – and we must not confuse them.
Tribulation (suffering and death) is clearly a part of what the church was enduring and was yet to endure. God’s wrath, on the other hand, is his judgment that is to be poured on those who have afflicted God’s people.
Revelation 7:1-17 has to be interpreted with the above themes in mind. Notice the sealing of God’s servants, the 144,000 from every tribe of Israel – the number 12 from 12,000 from each tribe alludes to the 12 tribes of Israel in the OT.
The great multitude, from every nation and peoples and languages, refer to the Gentile believers who have come out of the great tribulation, standing before the throne of God and worshipping Him. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, implying regeneration, salvation, sanctification and faithfulness in the Lord, in the midst of the tribulation and suffering, and death.
Verses 15-17 are descriptive of their glorious final state in the new heaven and new earth, sharing the glory and rule of God. “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” reminds us of Revelation 21:3b-4), describing the new heaven and new earth: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (ESV)
So Revelation 7:1-17 which promises the sealing and protection of God’s people does not indicate that God’s people would not suffer tribulation or death in the interim or in the great tribulation; rather, it points to the fact that they would not have to face the wrath of God in the end because of their faithfulness and holiness before God. Those who forsake God and the Gospel would have to face God’s wrath, although they may enjoy respite for the moment – they would share the ‘fate’ of the devil, the ‘beast’, the false prophet.
THE CHURCH AND FALSE TEACHING
In the previous sharings, we highlighted the ‘Church and Suffering’. We noted that suffering (tribulation) and death because of faithfulness to God were already happening in the early church. As early as A.D. 45, James wrote to foster the right attitudes and understanding regarding suffering as the church of God,. The books of Hebrews and 1 Peter which followed ‘expanded’ on these themes. Today, the church is again facing tribulation, and the final book of the Bible, Revelation, focused on this theme, and exhorted the churches to overcome in the face of persecution, imprisonment, suffering, and death, and to remain loyal and faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ. The book also indicates that things will get worse before they get better – two words stood out in this book – ‘tribulation’ and ‘wrath’ – believers would undergo tribulation; the unfaithful and followers of the devil would face the wrath of God.
Another issue that is closely related to the “Church and suffering’ is the ‘Church and false teaching’.
The early church encountered false teachings in the realm of Christian doctrine and ethics. Peter, Jude, and John, in particular, warned against those who scorn the authority of the Lord and His Word. LIke false teachers in the Old Testament, they will taste the judgment of God coming upon them. One major false teaching, Gnosticism, professed to be superior; mystic knowledge leading to salvation, their teaching set forth strange views of Christ and the nature of creation. John calls it the ‘spirit of antichrist’ (1 John 4:1-3); such a spirit is already prominent, not just in the early church, but it is already ‘circulating’ and ‘penetrating’ the church in so many ways with the preparation for the coming of ‘the antichrist’ who would appear in the final days.
The key word in 2 Peter is “knowledge” – it occurs at least 12 times in its various forms (1:2; 3,5,6,8,16,20; 2:20,21; 33,17,18). In an epistle that aims to combat false teaching, the knowledge of the truth is the key idea. Together with this, Peter stresses the importance of remembering the ‘truths’ and not to forget these important truths (1:12,13; 3:1) – these truths are the teachings of the Word of God which are normative for the Christian life.
The emphasis on knowing the Word of God; the right and proper interpretation of the Word, wholesome preaching and teaching – all these are related to knowing and remembering the ‘truths’ revealed to us and the church – and this is central in the battle against false teaching, and also essential in the quest to build the church and the believers unto maturity in the Lord. The distorted preaching and teaching prevalent in today’s churches and Christian groups are the main source used by the evil one in spiritual warfare. Remember that the devil can quote Scripture (recall the temptation scenes of Jesus in the wilderness) and it is only when those who are tempted are able and discerning to counter him that his ploys are disabled (Jesus quoted Scripture to counter the temptations of the evil one and He knew Scripture accurately, and the Holy Spirit enabled Him to overcome the temptations despite his hunger, and being in the wilderness ( a desolate place).
This brings us to realise that the Holy Spirit is the author of Scripture and He is the One who illuminates Scripture to us and enables us to receive the truths and to apply them in our lives in obedience to God. That is why we stress so much on the need to know Scripture, to read the Bible from beginning to end; to study the revelation of God in depth, prayerfully, in dependence on the Holy Spirit, and not just looking to commentaries, theological degrees and qualifications, charismatic individuals who can quote Scripture and distort it accordingly, although we acknowledge that there is a place for commentaries, for learning from Bible institutions (but realise that the devil not only has penetrated the church by planting false believers; he has also affected the learning and teaching of doctrines, even among sincere students of BIble colleges – indeed we have a very formidable foe).
The Word of God given by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20,21) is that to which we shou87ld give heed (1:19). Because its source is divine, its message is authoritative. It should be stressed that the chief thrust of 1:20,21 is that the Word of God came not “by the will of man” but by the Holy Spirit.”
Jude wrote to exhort the believers to “earnestly contend for the faith” (vs 3). The chief difference between Jude and 2 Peter seems to be that while Peter warned that “there shall be false teachers”, Jude states that “there are certain men crept in unawares” (vs 4). One anticipates the problem, while the other realises it as a present reality. To be sure, false teaching and false teachers are a present reality in the current church. God has committed the Gospel to the church to be kept inviolate and intact; as a trust. Doctrine, however, is not to be held in detachment from life. Correct teaching must result in holy living, else the practical purpose is lost – this is the error Jude combats – a kind of antinomianism or lawless libertinism that results in a denial of the rightful place of Christ in the life of the individual.
And that leads us to another area that may be problematic, as a result of false and distorted teaching. It is true that the church is called to preach the Gospel and to make disciples; it is also called to missions. But if the distorted Gospel is preached and disciple-making is just superficial fulfilment of attendance of ‘classes’ to prepare various ones to ‘qualify as ‘disciples’ and enable various ones to have the ‘know-how and skills’ (sadly without the spiritual life and the spiritual substance), then we need to ask what we are achieving. The late John Stott in his last book “The radical disciple” lamented that there were many so-called conversions in many third world countries, but the faith is very superficial. The spiritual leaders in these countries confessed that the sad state of affairs; they acknowledged that there were no committed disciples and believers who live out the faith wholesomely.
Imagine sending such ones to missions: and we need to realise that oftentimes, when the preaching is on missions and the call is to go forth with courage and commitment, we may be sending such ones to be ‘missionaries’ – and we should not be surprised that they often ended up as spiritual casualties and their lives and their so-called ministry not only caused ‘damage’ to those they ministered to, but also their own lives are damaged, often seriously.
We cannot send ‘spiritual infants’ to war; Paul the apostle himself wrote that he and his co-workers were often ‘despairing of life’ in their difficulties in missions and evangelism, but he added that they did not lose heart, for they knew whom they have believed and are confident to entrust themselves and their ministry to the One who would keep them against that DAY. But Paul and his co-workers were among those ‘immersed’ and ‘soaked’ in the Word of God; they were those who depended on the Holy Spirit prayerfully (Paul shared that he prayed day and night for some of the congregations – but look at the number attending church’s prayer meeting in many of today’s congregations).
Let us be aware that we cannot afford to be presumptuous in spiritual warfare; we cannot assume our going forth when we are not ready would reap ‘a harvest’ for God. Paul himself exhorted God’s people to put on the whole armour of God so that we can stand at the end (and he added that we are not fighting against flesh and blood but against the spiritual forces in the spiritual realm). Going into this battle without such armours and preparation is like sending children to the slaughter as in the past crusade.
THE COST OF BEING A DISCIPLE OF CHRIST
“Large crowds were travelling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yes, even life itself – such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who see it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.”(Luke 14:25-30 TNIV)
This is perhaps one of the most sober passages for those who desire to follow Jesus and be His disciples: Notice first of all that Jesus was addressing the large crowds travelling with Him; it was not just to a few that He spoke. Also note the definite conclusive phrases repeated by Him “..cannot be my disciples”; this implies that there is no ‘maybe’ but that it is something definite and non-negotiable. This passage certainly does not give the liberty for various ones to be just followers of Christ and not be disciples. Also take note of Jesus’ remarks that various ones who wish to be His disciples must count the cost.
In the above passage, Jesus indicates the stringent demands which accompany His invitation to God’s banquet in the previous passage (Luke 14:12-14). Discipleship means a person’s readiness to place God’s claims upon his life above that of both families and self! Disciples must be prepared to deny themselves completely – whether ‘carry his cross’ means literally to be ready for martyrdom or metaphorically to ‘die’ to all personal desires.
People should count the cost involved in saying “NO” to self before starting on a course which they may not be able to follow to the end. How foolish is the builder who leaves a building unfinished because his funds run out before he anticipated. A disciple who gives up in midstream because the going is too tough is like salt which has lost its taste and is unfit for seasoning food or even for use on the ground; it cannot be made useful again!! (The difficulties, which include persecutions, sufferings, pain, and even death must be expected by disciples who seek to be faithful and loyal to God and the Lord Jesus; the kingdom of God and our eternal place in it is so precious and valuable that disciples must be prepared to sacrifice what is temporal and passing away).
We must realise that Jesus’ shocking statement that loyalty to Him is more important than loyalty to parents and children was indeed a cultural shock to the Jews and Judaism (which stipulates that no human relationship was more important than the one to family).
In addition, Jesus teaches that an unwillingness to “take up a cross” – that is, to face the shame of rejection or even death – makes a person unworthy of him. The point is that anyone who prefers being accepted by his or her family to following Jesus will never embrace Him and find life; because many in a person’s family will reject Jesus. Thus, the one who finds life in this world by protecting it from the rejection and opposition to come will lose true life (this is in fact the most serious ‘crisis’ facing believers as written by John the Apostle in the book of Revelation – it is not so much pain, suffering and death in the last days under the reign of antichrist and his followers – but rather compromise and disloyalty to God and the Lord Jesus in the face of such difficulties imposed by the evil one and the enemies of God – the end result is the loss of true life in Christ!).
On the other hand, the one who loses his or her life “for the sake of the Lord Jesus” will gain it; loyalty to Jesus can result in life even when physical life is lost. Jesus makes it clear how challenging and demanding knowing Him will be for those who follow in His footsteps in a hostile world.
Discipleship cannot happen without Jesus having a place above the family and without a willingness to take up the cross and walk Jesus’ course!! The sufferings and tribulations in the book of Revelation do not refer to sufferings due to our own foolishness in life; they also do not refer to the ordinary trials of life like illnesses, financial setbacks, misunderstandings in working life, etc. Rather, Jesus makes it clear that it is in denying ourselves, carrying the cross, knowing Him and following Him without reservation, and encountering trials and tribulations for His sake and for the value and promise of the Kingdom of God!!
ALL THE WAY…..MY SAVIOUR LEADS ME….
Our local church is having a church camp with the focus on “The Seasons of Life”.
I recall when I passed my 70 years of age, I remember that the BIble speaks of “Three scores and ten”.
Now as I approach my 80 years in a couple of years, the lyrics of a particular hymn came to me in a refreshing way.
I take the liberty to share these lyrics as a worship and praise unto God, as well as a personal testimony to His
goodness, mercy and love – and also with the prayer that the lyrics would still hold true for me when I close my
eyes for the last time on earth, and still be refreshingly true when I, by grace, see Him face to face.
The lyrics from memory:
“All the way my Saviour leads me; what have I to ask beside
Can I doubt His tender mercies who through life has been my Guide;
Heavenly peace, divinest comfort, here by faith, in Him to dwell;
For I know whatever befalls me, Jesus doeth all things well,
For I know whatever befalls me, Jesus doeth all things well”. There are more in this hymn
but I just meditated on these in fellowship and communion with Him.
As I look back in my seasons of life thus far, I can honestly say that Jesus has
been faithful in leading me all the way; and that means even through times of pain, of
relationship problems; of times of perplexity, near-death experiences, and through difficulties
and struggles of loved ones, brethren, church ministry and setbacks. I cannot say that in the
midst of those times, there were no struggles on my part or ‘failures’ to rest in Him in a
manner that gives Him the glory and honour. But looking back, with the help of Scripture and
God’s Holy Spirit, I know increasingly that He has never abandoned me and He truly keeps
His eyes on me. Truly, what have I to ask beside? His mercies, the heavenly peace, divinest
comforts always come through as I exercise and affirm my faith in Him and HIs Promises.
Thus, I can honestly say and affirm that whatever befalls me, Jesus indeed has done, and is
doing all things well (not necessarily from the human point of view but from the total plan and will
of the Master in seeking to make me increasingly more in His image).
I trust that you, my brethren, may also bear this testimony in your lives, and when things get very
tough and perplexed, do not lose heart, but cling to this reality and promise of God.
Then perhaps, at the close of our lives here, we can affirm that He has done all things well in our
lives and we can say like the saint of old: ‘When I am dying, how glad I shall be, that the lamp of
my life has been burned out for Thee”.
OVERALL VIEW OF “THE KINGDOM OF GOD”
The inaugurated kingdom
The gospel is the good news that heaven has already begun here on earth for those who are Christ’s. The long expected king of Old
Testament prophecy has come. He came in lowliness as the servant Saviour of mankind. Now he is risen and enthroned, and from his
throne he still comes to us by the personal presence of his Holy Spirit; the kingdom of God is here and the powers of the kingdom are
at work already.
One day Jesus Christ will come again publicly in glory as the world’s judge. Those who are his have already risen with him out of their
spiritual death into the life of his kingdom, the life for which eternal life in the New Testament name.
We are risen with Christ. We live with Christ. This is our eternal condition. It will always be so in life, in death, in resurrection, through
judgment and on beyond; those who are Christ’s will be with him in love, joy and glory. That is the truth about the destiny of the Christian
believer, the one born again, the one adopted into the family and kingdom of God.
According to the New Testament, we live in the last days (that is, the period between the Lord’s first coming and the Lord’s second coming).
In these last days, the era of Christ’s kingdom and church and gospel and outworking of his saving purpose for those for whom he died,
there is constant conflict with the devil and his forces opposing Christ and his people. This is how it is going to be in an increasing
measure, until the Lord comes again. Spiritual warfare will be unceasing. The devil is a beaten foe, but will keep on fighting to the end.
Already the Lord is transforming his own people in his own way. He transforms them from inside out; he changes heart and character, though our physical body, that external aspect of our personal being which is given us for enjoyment and expression, remains for the
most part unchanged, and in due course wears out, fails, and is left behind. One day, when the Lord comes again, when we are taken
from the world to glory, we who already have been changed inside will be given bodies to match, bodies that are true and adequate
expressions of the new persons we are in Christ. That will be the fullness of our personal redemption. When Christ comes again, we
shall find that in a moment the whole cosmos, glorious as it is in so many ways in its present form, had been remade into yet greater
glory. New heavens, new earth, it will be a wholly new order of things, and the word perfection will be the only world that will then
describe it. That is the whole biblical perspective; the future fulfilment and completion of what God has already started.
The Scripture in its totality is a book of hope, looking forward to a final consummation, and finding its unity in all its lines of thought
and teaching about the divine action which will bring in that final consummation toward which God is working. The Christian life is
essentially a life of hope, a life in which nothing is perfect yet but the hope of perfection is set before us, so that we may forget what
is behind and reach out to what lies ahead and press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
There are two worlds, not just one; two lives not just one, and heaven really is more important than earth, for heaven’s life is the
goal for which this life is preparation. Our life here is preparation for something more glorious that is ahead of us in the future. We
need to understand the Christian hope to understand the Christian life; only with this understanding would we, as believers, grow to
understand the values of the kingdom of God, the calling and commitment required by the Lord Jesus for those who would be his; the sufferings, opposition and spiritual battles the disciples are called to engage in and to go through, on their journey to the celestial city;
the perspectives and convictions they need to nurture as citizens of heaven, although still living in the world; the ‘already’ and ‘not yet’
with the determination to endure, persevere, and to finish the race into the welcome arms of the Master.
The parousia, the personal return of Jesus, will be a bodily return, a visible return, a sudden return, a triumphant return. It will interrupt.
It will interrupt. It will expose. It will change everything that is going on in the world at the moment when it occurs. Its purpose is threefold:
judgment of all human beings, renewal of the cosmos, and the bringing of the saints into their final joy forever with the Lord. The date of
his return is unannounced; but it is certain – we need to be ready for it every day starting now. The specific signs are the worldwide
preaching of the gospel, and the coming in of the fullness both of the Gentiles and of Israel. Also there will have been signs, that is,
significant events showing satanic opposition to Christ and his kingdom. There will have been anti-Christs; there will have been apostasy. There will have been persecution; there will in addition have been signs showing divine judgment in action, such as wars, earthquakes,
famine, and the destruction of Jerusalem.
All that Scripture teaches about the Christian hope, the future prospects for the Lord Jesus and for the individual believer, admonishes us,
each day be ready to go. One day Christ will come for each one of us. Be ready. Keep short accounts with God and live each day as if your
last. And while our life continues, let us work and pray for the advancing of the kingdom of God. When Christ appears publicly in this world, in
what posture should he find the church?
This is what the Kingdom of God is all about. Is the kingdom among us and in us?
MYSTERY AND VICTORY
“I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and shall all be changed. For the perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory”
O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15: 50-58 ESV)
The above passage is not only a well known passage but it also crystallises further the overall view of the kingdom of God (refer previous sharing).
Power has been given to death because of the universal problem of human sin. It is because of this that death is able to rule, as a tyrant, over the whole human race. The wage that sin pays is death (Rom. 6:23) and that is always so because the power of sin is the law. It is by the law of God, which is itself the expression of God’s perfect righteousness, that sin is defined, and we are pronounced guilty. Indeed, such is the perversity of human nature that the law which is holy and just actually provokes our further rebellion against God, as we resist his commands and refuse to submit to his rule in our lives. Physical death is the entrance gate to that spiritual death of separation from God, under his righteous judgement and wrath, for all eternity. Death could never be conquered by sinners, since we are all born, by nature, under its tyranny; we are guilty by nature and by practice, condemned to be cut off for ever from God.
But thanks be to God, the last Adam (Jesus Christ) became a life-giving spirit! (vs 45). And his victory, as the perfect sinless man, over all the hostile powers that were ranged against him and us, proclaims forgiveness, freedom and newness of life to all who are united to him by faith. On the cross, dying as our representative and substitute, Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, offered his perfect life of obedience to the Father in the place of our rebellious hearts and wills, carried our punishment and made atonement for our sins. He conquered our death by drawing sin’s sting and satisfying the law’s just demands, and in so doing opened the kingdom of God (heaven) to all believers. This gives the background in understanding vv. 50-58 of 1Corinthians 15.
Now we come to this well known verse – verse 58:
Notice Paul beginning with “Therefore”. The certainty of the glorious future must animate and motivate the believer to live here and now in the light of eternity. THEREFORE, says Paul, in the light of all that lies ahead of us, apply all its implications to our present discipleship and service. We are not to live in the future, becoming detached from the present world in an insulated super-spiritual environment of unreality. We are to live now, but always in the light of the future, as citizens of heaven but fully engaged in the Master’s service in this world (remember there are two worlds, and two lives and ‘two citizenships’).
Our outlook will be totally different in this world when we realise that death is a defeated foe, its sting has been pulled, and the experience of the ending of life here is “but the gate to life immortal”. There is then nothing to fear in death, and every reason to devote our energies in this world towards gaining our eternal reward. This is the motivation of “be steadfast, immovable”. Because God’s final plans are clear and settled and because nothing can shake them, we are to be equally immovable, firmly rooted in the Person and work of our crucified, risen, ascended and coming King, and not allowing ourselves to be blown off course, or uprooted, by whatever hurricanes of scepticism and unbelief we may encounter. The risen Lord will return. He will bring every son and daughter home to glory. We shall be changed into his likeness – all of us. We shall live with him forever Such assurances will govern all our attitudes to life in the present, if once we make them our own. And the mark of such faith is active, cross-focused service for the Lord.
Always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord our labour is not in vain (vs 58).
Now is the time for work and labour, and as time is the only one of God’s gifts that is continually decreasing, we cannot afford to be anything other than purposefully centred on the Lord’s work. Such activity is not in vain, because it has eternal value and reward. It is the longest term investment possible and it yields eternal dividends.
True spirituality centres the self-sacrificing love of the crucified Saviour, and that we are called to tread the same pathway. Here is the ultimate incentive to sacrificial service. The outcome of all the suffering, work, and labour is the victory of the resurrection and the everlasting life that Christ has purchased for us. It is because we cannot lose, that nothing we do in the work of this gracious, victorious Lord can ever be in vain!!
THE NECESSITY OF SCRIPTURES
It is clear that God was under no absolute necessity to reveal himself savingly to sinful men. God owes sinners nothing; if he does them good, it is an exercise of free grace on his part; he was not obliged to show it. One may ask whether God’s plans of redemption, sanctification and perfecting a worldwide church through the mediation of one man, Christ Jesus, whose significant universal ministry took place at one particular point in history, did not require the giving of the Scriptures as a necessary means to God’s end. Is the BIble necessary for the preservation and propagation of the gospel, the securing and spreading of true knowledge of God? Indeed it is!!
God ‘s Word is necessary for knowledge of God, because God has commanded that it is used accordingly and appointed for this purpose. The darkened human minds cannot know God apart from the light that Scripture brings.
Scripture alone can and must guide us in living in the praise and pleasure of God. Jesus forbade men to view him as anything other than the fulfiller of the law and the prophets, for he did not believe himself to be anything other than that. He was the divine Messiah of whom the Old Testament spoke; he had come into the world to fulfil the Scriptures, and that was what he was doing. He appealed to Scripture as the sole and sufficient warrant for the things that he said.
We see how important Scripture is for the believers and the church in their quest of the knowledge of God; in their outworking of their Christian lives and calling before God Almighty. It is God’s grace and mercy that cause him to reveal himself to men in their own language and to enable them to know him and his purposes. But this means that believers must know the Scripture thoroughly and accurately through the teaching and enabling of the Holy Spirit if they desire to do God’s will and please Him. There is no other avenue although secondary help through godly teachers and preachers may be helpful.
COUNTING THE COST
In a previous sharing on Luke 14:25-35, we touched briefly on ‘counting the cost of discipleship’. Many congregations would be spending time in church camps in the coming weeks. As there may possibly be extended time for many, it may appropriate to go into more details on this important subject; in the midst of the hustle and bustle of daily life, we may not have sufficient time to meditate on this which greatly impacts the outworking of lives in God’s kingdom as well as the life of God’s church.
Jesus has never concealed the fact that his calling of various ones to salvation included a demand as well as an offer. Indeed, the demand is as total as the offer was free. If he offered men his salvation, he also demanded their submission. He gave no encouragement whatever to thoughtless applicants for discipleship.
Luke tells us of three men who either volunteered, or were invited, to follow Jesus, but not one passed the Lord’s test. The rich young ruler, too, moral, earnest and attractive, who wanted eternal life on his own terms, went away sorrowful, with his riches intact but with neither life nor Christ as his possession. In Luke 14, Jesus told a parable to the great crowds following him; Jesus knew how superficial their attachment to him was, so he spoke of desiring to build a tower but not able to complete it and finish it because those involved did not first reflect on the cost of doing so. Here the Lord was referring to the result from not counting the cost of following him – the Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of half-built towers – the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish.
Such ones have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved; enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great, soft cushion; it protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism. This is perhaps one of the most important contributions to half-baked disciples and believers (who are found in churches, missions and christian organisations); this is also why we encounter many so called believers and followers of Christ throwing in the tower just because of a little pain and discomfort in life affecting areas of insignificance (when compared to eternal issues and the values of God). This leads to ample murmurings and complainings against God, and the lack of faith, trust, joy, and obedience to Christ in Christian lives.
The message of Jesus was very different; he never lowered his standards or modified his conditions to make his all more readily acceptable. He asked his first disciples, and he has asked every disciple since, to give him their thoughtful and total commitment. Nothing less than this will do. And what are the conditions the Lord outlined to all those who wish to follow him and be his disciples?
First, there must be a renunciation of sin, i.e. repentance. Repentance and faith belong together – we cannot follow Christ without forsaking sin. Repentance is a definite turn from every thought, word, deed and habit which is known to be wrong. It is not sufficient to feel pangs of remorse or to make some kind of apology to God. Fundamentally, it is an inward change of mind and attitude towards sain which leads to a change of behaviour. There can be no compromise here, there can be no rationalistion on our part and blame the sin on others. There may be sins in our lives which we do not think we ever could renounce; but we must be willing to let them go as we cry to God for deliverance from them. When God puts his finger on anything, give it up. Jesus told his disciples to pluck out their eye and cut off their hand or foot if these caused them to sin. We are not to obey this with dead literalism, of course, and mutilate our bodies; it is a vivid figure of speech for dealing ruthlessly with the avenues along which temptation comes to us.
Second, there must be a renunciation of self. We must not only forsake isolated sins, but renounce the very principle of self-will which lies at the root of every act of sin. To follow Christ is to surrender to him the rights over our own lives. It is to abdicate the throne of our heart and do homage to him as our King. This renunciation of self is described vividly by Jesus in three phrases.
-It is to deny ourselves: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself. Self-denial is not just giving up sweets or desserts, either for good or for a period of voluntary abstinence. For it is not to deny things to myself, but to deny myself to myself. Iat is to say no to self, and yes to Christ; to repudiate self and acknowledge Christ.
-It is to take up the cross: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” To take up the cross is “to put oneself into the position of a condemned man on his way to execution”. In other words, the attitude to self which we are to adopt is that of crucifixion. Paul used the same metaphor when he declares that ‘those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh (i.e. the fallen nature) with its passions and desires’.
-It is to lose our life: :Whoever loses his life…will save it.” Here ‘life’ refers to our self. The psyche is the ego, the human personality which thinks, feels, plans and chooses. The man who commits himself to Christ loses himself; this does not mean he loses his individuality. His will is indeed submitted to Christ’s will, but his personality is not absorbed into Christ’s personality. When the Christian loses himself, he finds himself, he discovers his true identity.
Jesus does not call us to a sloppy half-heartedness, but to a vigorous, absolute commitment. He calls us to make him our Lord. The astonishing idea is current in some circles today that we can enjoy the benefits of Christ’s salvation without accepting the challenge of his sovereign lordship. Such an unbalanced notion is not to be found in the New Testament!
To make Christ Lord is to bring every department of our public and private lives under his control. This includes our career. God has a purpose for every life – our business is to discover it and do it. What is certain is that God calls every Christian to ‘ministry’, that is, to service, to be the servants of other people for the sake of Christ. No Christian can live for himself any longer. What is not certain is what form this service will take. It is a mistake to suppose that every committed Christian is called to some full-time church work at home or overseas; there are other forms of service which equally deserve the job description ‘Christian ministry’. For example, the calling of many girls to be wife, mother, and home-maker is in the fullest sense ‘Christian ministry’, since she is serving Christ, her family and the community. So is every form of work – medicine, research, the law, education, social service, central and local government, industry, business and trade – in which the worker sees himself as cooperating with God in the service of man.
Another department of life which passes under the lordship of Jesus Christ is our marriage and our home. Jesus once said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a s word. He went on to speak of the clash of loyalties which sometimes arises within a family when one of its members begins to follow him. Such family conflicts still take place today. The Christian should never seek them. He has a definite duty to love and honour his parents and other members of his family. Since he is called to be a peacemaker, he will make as many concessions as he can without compromising his duty to God. Yet he can never forget Christ’s word: “He who loves father or mother..son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” So radical is Christian conversion that our whole attitude to marriage, and to relations between the sexes, is likely to change. We begin to see sexuality – the fundamental distinction between man and woman, and the need of each for the other – as itself the creation of God. And sex – the physical expression of sexuality – is no longer debased by selfish irresponsibility into something casual and essentially impersonal, but becomes what the Creator meant it to be, something good and right, the expression of love, a fulfilment of the divine purpose and of the human personality.
Other formerly private affairs over which Jesus Christ becomes Master, when we commit our lives to him, are our money and our time. Jesus often spoke about money, and about the danger of riches. Much of his teaching on this subject is very disturbing. Most of his command is to an inner detachment rather than to a literal renunciation. The New Testament does not imply that possessions are sinful in themselves; Christ certainly meant us to put him above material wealth just as we are to put him above family ties. We cannot serve God and mammon. Moreover, we are to be conscientious in the use of our money – it is no longer ours. We hold it in stewardship from God.
Time is every man’s problem these days; and the newly converted Christian will undoubtedly have to rearrange his priorities. Christians will have to carve out of his busy schedule time for daily prayer and Bible reading, for setting Sunday apart as the Lord’s day which we instituted as a day of worship and rest, for fellowship with other Christians, for reading Christian literature, and for some kind of service inthe church and the community. All this is involved if we are to forsake sin and self, and follow Christ.
OUR SUPREME MOTIVATION AND INCENTIVE TO PRAY
As we face short-term disappointment and distress in our walk with God in this world, the expression of the persistence of our faith is in the prayer we go on making as we focus on the fact that there is a covenanted family bond that unites us to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. As God’s children, we are united to the Three-in-one forever and ever.
Being children of God is our supreme privilege and security – and is at all times the supreme incentive and motivation for us to pray. The Christian’s sonship to theTriune God 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 instills 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 when previously there was nothing there at all – absolutely nothing in existence before God.
The double blessings of adoption and regeneration, made possible by the completed mission of the Son at the cross, while not shielding us from any of life’s grimmer experiences, do turn us into unique people with unique privileges and and a unique destiny, and when the bad experiences come, it is vital and important that we do not forget who and what we are. We can continue to cry out to God -‘Abba’ and we know in the depths of our beings that He always hears us, and He loves us, and continues to work out all things that we can increasingly be moulded into the likeness of His Son in preparation for our eternal life in the celestial city, where we would experience eternal joy, peace, love, and fellowship with His other children, and in His presence forevermore.
THE CONFLICT FACED BY DISCIPLES OF THE LORD JESUS
Conflict is inherent in the very nature of the glory of what God has already done for us. The magnitude of grace when it impacts fallen humanity in a fallen world, inevitably produces conflict. The conflict is the result of our now being in Christ and yet, at the same time, living in the world. Previously we were dead in sin and used to live according to the fashions of this world, gratifying our own lusts (Eph. 2:1-3). Our new lifestyle is bound to be on a collision course with the lifestyle of this world. Our goals, motives as believers now stand in complete contrast to the world around us (see Rom. 12:1-2).
The conflict is not only external; it is also internal – with the flesh as well as with the world and the devil. I live in the Spirit, the flesh still lives in me (although I am no longer dominated by it, nor a debtor to it). But I continue to live my life with a body and mind marred by sin, and in a world and community which remain dominated by the flesh, although I have been delivered from bondage to the flesh as a believer in Christ.
It is helpful to consider this conflict faced by believers in some details; it may mean persevering in the faith. or throwing in the towel when the going gets rough in the distraught that surfaces in the face of the conflict. In Romans 6:1-4, Paul wrote that ‘we died to sin’.. union with Christ is the way we identify with Him in His epoch-changing death and draw on its benefits. The rebellious person that the Christian used to be has died with Christ, the penalty for his sin has been paid and he has been transferred to the realm of grace and life. It is critical that we do not see being ‘dead to sin’ as being free from sin in our lives in this world; to suppose that we can be sinless now is a cruel burden to place on one another, producing either great discouragement or self-deception.
Paul suggests that understanding our union with Christ will actually motivate us to fight against sin in the present; on the one hand, we know that we have died to sin and therefore freed from sin’s penalty and its ultimate power i.e. death. God’s purpose in uniting us with Christ in His death is that we should be what we have become and live a new life. On the other hand, we also know that in the future we will live to God like the risen Christ, and that the certainty of this destination should also encourage our present obedience to God. The gospel does not promote licentiousness. Quite the opposite: we are to acknowledge what has happened to us and what will happen to us and live accordingly.
We need to see ourselves as we actually are – people who have died to the old realm of sin and death and who have been raised to the realm of life.Yet, until resurrection is complete, we are caught in the tension of living in the overlap of these two eras/realms. Meanwhile we have an obligation to battle against sin – it is God’s will that should do so. This presents us with a constant challenge to avoid putting our bodies, faculties, and gifts at the disposal of sin, but instead to use them all in the service of the God who has saved us. The Christian life should be characterised by a conscious resistance to sin and by a desire to serve God instead. If these two things are not present in someone’s life, we should question that person’s understanding of the gospel! Living with God as our master, we have an obvious obligation to serve Him. So, although we know that we still sin, we are to offer the whole of ourselves, our minds, our bodies and our gifts, in the service of God, doing so consciously and in as much as we are able, in response to His goodness in releasing us from the mastery of sin. The command in Rom. 6:19 calls for careful reflection: to what extent do we put our gifts, our plans, and our time at God’s disposal and in what areas is radical change needed?
To sin wilfully and unrepentantly shows that we are not saved. Verse 15: life under grace might allow us to sin with impunity is thoroughly refused; to suggest that it no longer matters if we sin, because God will forgive us anyway (as advocated in the teaching of “Hypergrace”), is to demonstrate that our allegiance is to rebellion – we show that ultimately we want to serve ourselves. It shows our ignorance of the results of wilful, unrepentant sin. If we continue to sin in this deliberate manner, we will deserve the wage that we are paid, i.e. death. God does not in any way take sinning lightly; we should be wary of the temptation ever to think it does not matter.
However, although sin is no longer the master of Christians, sin still influences the moral bodies of Christians. This is one aspect of the conflict believers face; there is a conflict between the inner being of the Christian, regenerated by the Spirit, and his flesh. As a justified believer, the Christian knows that his inner being has been captured by God, and that at his very heart he has been set free from sin. Now he is a slave to God (Rom. 6:22) and to His Law (7:25), which means that his will agrees with, and delights in, God’s Law, wanting to obey it and therefore hating his constant rebellion. Waging war against the Christian’s inner being is his flesh, referred to variously as his members'(7:23) and his ‘body of death’ (vs 24). This aspect of the Christian remains ‘a slave to sin’, belonging still to the realm of sin and death and so, despite the protestations of the inner being, continuing to do what is wrong and rebelling against God’s Law.
The Christian’s inner being is under the influence of the realm of grace and life but, while living in this world, his or her sinful nature (the flesh) remains in the realm, and under the mastery of sin and death. This constant battle (struggle and conflict) is a certain reality in the life of the Chritian. It is a desperate struggle, but it is not hopeless – the rescue that is accomplished through Christ will bring relief from our struggle with the flesh – the fulfilment of the rescue will happen when our bodies are resurrected, as Jesus’ body was (Rom. 8:11).
We have been set free both from sin (Rom.6:22) and the Law (7:6) by dying with Christ, as a result of which we can and should live to serve God as our new Master. The minds of the Christian and non-Christian, at their cores, have desires that are essentially different. The non-Christian wants what the flesh wants, i.e. to live in rebellion against God, and this is a mindset that results in death. Although the Christian does still sin (Rom. 7:15-23), ultimately he or she wants what the Spirit wants; with this mindset comes the experience of the life and peace given by God’s grace. All Christians are controlled by the Spirit within them and will therefore one day be given new bodies.
All Christians are to war against sin in their lives. The attitude is not one of token resistance, but of absolute ruthlessness (cf. mortification of sin and the flesh)’ we are to go on putting to death everything that the flesh desires. This is a great responsibility of every Christian; it means conscious ongoing effort on our part, but not apart from, not distinct from the activity of God’s Spirit, who subdues the flesh as we mortify it in His power, and as we set our minds upon the things of the Spirit. We are not talking about salvation by works; rather this battle results in life; it comes about because the Christian now has a renewed mind, one that is set on what the Spirit desires. This battle is part of the process of pursuing holiness in God; in that sense, obedience to God is part and parcel of walking in the Spirit – it is in fact doing the will of God – to be holy as He is holy. We do not drift into holiness; in dependence on the Holy Spirit, we are to nurture holiness in our relationship with God by battling the flesh, the world, and the devil, and upholding obedience, submission to God and pursuing the will of God constantly in our lives!
We now consider another aspect of the conflict Christians have to face in this world. Although we are God’s children, we are currently caught up in a fallen world and so will have to endure all the hardship that comes with our hostile and decaying environment. Christians are not immune from disease or disaster or suffering of any kind. Although God has certainly promised that we will be released from suffering, the fulfilment of this promise lies firmly in the future. On that day, freedom from suffering will be certain, for we will have resurrected bodies and the world itself will be made new. The same goes for suffering which is distinctively Christian, i.e. our struggle with sins and having to face persecution.
The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness and prays for us according to God’s will, which is that we should be made into the likeness of Christ and so give Him a family of glorified believers. The Holy Spirit is not given to us to enable us to fulfil our potential or our desires, but rather He works according to God’s agenda, which is to get us to heaven and to glorify His Son.
We should have right expectations about the present, and therefore not be surprised by the hardship we endure in this world. Many Christians find suffering to be a potential stumbling block for their faith, but often this happens because we have blurred the distinction that the Bible makes between the future, when God’s promises of freedom from suffering will be fulfilled and the present, the time in which we wait.
Our perspective on the future is to be characterised by a great longing for that which will be immeasurably glorious.
To suffer here is to follow the path that Jesus HImself walked, a path that leads to certain glory. Also, none of the sufferings we face can stop us from being glorified, for we are told that God works in all things to achieve His will. This does not mean that everything will work out well in this world; rather, it means that God is using every situation – however it may appear to us – to bring us to glory; such is His power and sovereignty. This should lift our eyes from our present circumstances, which may often discourage us, and instead to focus our attention both on the future that God has promised and on God Himself, who helps us now and who is at work, through all circumstances, to bring us to that future.
None of our present sufferings, as we live out our lives in mortal bodies within a decaying world, can hinder God’s plan to glorify us, together with Jesus, in the future.
God’s commitment is seen at the cross (Rom. 8:32)
God justifies us: who can accuse us? (v. 33)
Jesus is interceding for us: who can condemn us? (v. 34)
Conclusion: neither anyone nor anything can separate us from Jesus’ love (vv. 35-39).
Let us not be led to think that the Christian life is ‘a bed of roses’. Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, to take up our cross, and to follow Him. Jesus came to inaugurate a new era; to create a new humanity with Him as its head; to bring about God’s desire to have a people of His own. To do that, He did not shrink from the cross; in love, He came to fulfil God’s plan of salvation; He left the glory of heaven to become a man and to live a humble life as a servant, and to die a criminal’s death on the cross. He endured until “it is finished” so that the way back to God is open to all those who repent and believe. It is ‘already’ but ‘not yet’. When He comes again, it will be consummated. In the meantime, God’s people are to persevere, to live by faith, and to overcome despite the conflicts they would face. There is no turning back; there is no giving up half-way on the road to God’s city. We have counted the cost; the temporary suffering and conflict cannot be compared to the glory that awaits us in Christ Jesus!!
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD MUST BE PROCLAIMED
“Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.’ (Matthew 9:35-38)
Jesus summoned His twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. (Matthew 10:1)
Often, when this passage is studied and preached, various ones concentrated on verses 36 to 38:
They highlighted the loving heart of Jesus showing compassion for those who appeared lost, troubled and abandoned. These various ones appeared to be “like sheep without a shepherd”. So the call that follows in the exposition is to show compassion to those who are suffering and marginalised – to go forth to show kindness, extending healing to those who are suffering from physical ailments, emotional, spiritual, and even psychological problems. We are called to serve, through direct outreach to those in need, doing volunteer work in sharing kindness in daily interactions and improving the lives of these various individuals and communities. All these sound ‘attractive’ and positive.
The subsequent verse in 10:1 reveals Jesus summoning His twelve disciples and giving them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. The twelve were to champion the response to lead workers to the harvest field that is plentiful, and again, they were to concentrate, with great power and authority, to serve all those in need, like what is expressed above.
However, verse 35 of Matthew 9 was conveniently overlooked: “Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness”. We need to note that Jesus was teaching and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. We know from the earlier chapters and from the synoptic gospels that Jesus came to inaugurate a new era, the kingdom of God – He came to effect the great reversal; the fallen humanity heading to hell is now given the opportunity to repent and to believe by faith in Him and in the plan of salvation He came to bring into effect. He came to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom of God:
And the major points of the Gospel:-
The plight of man is not merely the guilt for sins, but also of pollution in sin and bondage to sin – the state of being wholly dominated by an inbred attitude of enmity to God. Men, on their own, cannot save themselves or improve themselves in God’s sight.
The issue of sin has to be seen as God’s hostility in the present, as well as his condemnation in the future. A wrong relationship with God is intolerable here and now – there is no way out for fallen humanity.
The only solution to the problem is the atonement by Christ, a living Redeemer, the perfect adequacy of His saving work; He was never less than the divine Son of God, but He was also the perfect man whose love was demonstrated on the cross when He left his eternal glory to be a servant, a sacrifice, a substitute for us – becoming the perfect Mediator between God and man.
The above passage in Matthew 9 states that the people were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.
“I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me” (John 10:14) – Jesus came as the good shepherd to bring the lost sheep back to the fold – essentially they were to come back through the preaching and reception of the gospel of the kingdom of God.
Apostle Peter in 1 Peter wrote: “shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God, and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness” (1 Peter 5:2-3)
“And when the Chief Shepherd (the Lord Jesus) appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory” (vs 4).
The 12 Apostles were summoned to be ambassadors for Christ to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God. Preaching the gospel would be accompanied by meeting the needs of those marginalised – but that is not the main emphasis in preaching the gospel. We may end up as people of compassion but not as servants and children of God whose lives and message centre on the Cross and God’s salvation plan. Even Jesus’ healing of sicknesses was a foretaste of what is to come in the new heaven and new earth – there will be no sorrow, no more pain, no more suffering and no more death.
In the meantime, the focus is on preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. What is essential and most needful may be replaced by social works and efforts to improve the needs of the physical world (and these are not unimportant but they do not constitute the core of the gospel of the kingdom of God. We may miss being born again like Nicodemus although we are trained religiously in the Law of God. We may be doing ‘good works’ and miss the greatest good work done by the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary!
PEACE (SHALOM) BE WITH YOU (John 20:19)
“Peace be with you.” the risen Christ said to HIs disciples in John 20:19 – essentially meaning “Peace with God, peace with yourself, peace with your circumstances. I bring you peace.” And when He said this, “He showed them His hands and His side (vs20). He did not do that to identify Himself, for they already knew who He was. He did it so they would see the nail prints in His hands and the spear wound in His side and be reminded of what He had suffered on the cross in order to make for them His peace that He was now bringing to them.
The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord among them. But then Jesus repeated His greeting: “Peace be with you” (vs. 21). The very fact that He repeated it shows that it was more than a mere greeting. Repetition in Scripture as in daily life, is for emphasis and to enforce significant meaning. It was supremely important to Jesus that the disciples should understand all that He meant when He said to them “Peace be with You.”
Elsewhere, Jesus said to His disciples: “Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me” (John 14:1).
“These things have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
To have peace with God, with ourselves, and with the circumstances in the midst of tribulation and distress – how can this be possible in outworking? We know that the Lord has communicated this to His disciples and also to us disciples today by implication. How can we apply what Jesus said to our own context in these last days?
Firstly, notice that Jesus reminds us how much He had suffered to bring this peace to us – it is only possible to have such a peace as well as the courage when we appreciate how much the Lord had done in effecting God’s salvation plan for His people. Even though there is tribulation in our midst; even though there is pain and suffering and persecution, we can have courage (and be of good cheer [another translation]) because Christ has overcome the world (the devil, and death) and the future is one of hope and joy eternally (recall the Lord Jesus, for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross). He is the ultimate judge; evil would be eliminated, and God would establish justice before the great white throne.
The degree we can experience this peace and courage is related to the depth of our union and relationship with God; and this in turn is established by walking by faith and not by sight. If we live by sight, what looms before us is the terrible situations in this world and around us; but if we live by faith and turn our eyes upon Jesus, the things of earth would grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. That is why the Lord Jesus can say that we can have courage, peace, and joy because He has overcome the world; the kingdom of God has been established. It is present now and it will be in all its glory at the end of this age and at the consummation when Jesus comes again!
Jesus repeated it: “Peace be with you”.
Is it realistic; is it possible? Indeed, it is because it comes from the King of kings and the Lord of lords. United with Him, hiding under the shadows of His presence and love, we can have peace; we can have courage; we can overcome!!
THE WORD, THE HOLY SPIRIT, AND SANCTIFICATION
The Word of God written in Scripture is the revelation of God to His people. The Lord Jesus, while on earth, looked to the Old Testament Scripture as the Word of God and subsequently, He Himself was instrumental in teaching and communicating to the Apostles and disciples, and these later comprise the New Testament. The Bible, Scripture, 66 books in all, established by the canon, written over a span of many years, is the revelation of God – without it, we cannot know God and His desires for creation and His people comprehensively.
Before Jesus departed in the ascension, He told His followers that they will not be alone; He and HIs Father would send the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, to be with them and to dwell in them. The Lord knows that His people would encounter severe persecution, spiritual warfare from a formidable enemy, the negative influence of the world and her values, as well as the struggle and battle against the ‘flesh’ by the spirit (as noted in Romans 7). They will not be able to endure and persevere without the presence and ministry of the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit uses the Word of God to change people, making them more like Christ. In this process, the Spirit operates intellectually, by imparting understanding of Christ and of all the Scriptures as witness to Him, and motivationally, by engendering trust and faith in Christ and sustaining within His people a purpose of cleaving to revealed truth, and in addition behaviourally by inducing the Christlike pattern of action that flows from this state of the soul. Quite a mouthful!
Let’s break it up into smaller portions:
Note that it is the Holy Spirit who uses the Word of God to change people to be like Christ. The Word cannot do without the Spirit; the Spirit communicates and works through the Word of God. Hence sermons, bible studies and the lessons from them must be communicated to the people via the power and teaching of the Spirit; without the Spirit, there is no real life and understanding of what God reveals, despite all the long presentations and intended interpretations that flow and come from those who have apparently been trained in institutions.
The Spirit operates intellectually by imparting understanding of Christ and the Scriptures; that means God’s people need to use their renewed minds and think through what has been revealed of Christ and God from the Scripture- it also means the willingness and the investment of time in studying God’s Word and in communion with God through the Spirit (this does not mean intellectual academic pursuits apart from the revelation of God’s Spirit).
The Spirit motivates God’s people to trust in Christ and to have faith in Him, His promises, HIs teaching of the revealed truth (He is the way, the truth, and the Life). This means walking by faith, walking by the Spirit, trusting Him despite the circumstances, and even the perplexities of life on earth. When God’s people murmur, complain and sink into despair in the face of difficult circumstances, difficult people, sufferings, persecutions, it means this motivation by the Spirit is not well received and nurtured in the lives of believers; it means there is ‘quenching o the Spirit’, and ‘resistance against God’s Spirit’ in outworking.
The Spirit affects the behaviour of believers in inducing the Christlike pattern of action that flows from the state of the souls; the behaviour of believers that depart from the Christlike pattern of action means that believers have not hearkened to the ministry of God’s Spirit to change the behaviour pattern of their lives. It implies self-centred lives and not lives that honour God as various ones see ‘Christ’ in our behaviour, actions and reactions in our daily living.
A great deal of what we call theology today is specialist speculation and does not bear at all on the Christians’ personal existence and outworking of the Christian life. Theology needs, as we can now see, to be a matter of conscientious concern to every Christian who aims at a life of holiness and a life that honours and worships God. For this to happen, we need the Holy Spirit, His ministry, and the Word of God, and the teachability of God’s people.
HOW THE LORD GOD LOOKS AT IT
Oftentimes, various ones look at situations from their own perspective, even the worldly perspectives; also various individuals are evaluated from our own understanding, or ignorance, of the real persons we are evaluating.
It is interesting that in Acts 10, a Gentile, a centurion at the Italian Regiment, called Cornelius, had a vision – he saw an angel of God coming to him and saying, “Cornelius!…Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter.
Not many Jewish Christians, even at that point of time, experienced visions like what Cornelius experienced. He was a Roman Centurion; yet God saw in him a man whose prayers and generosity to the poor came from a sincere God-fearing heart. And God arranged for him to be saved. But it was not a straight-forward process; the Apostle Peter had to be convinced, against his convictions, by the Lord to follow the men from Cornelius and to enter into a house of a Gentile (which many Jews refrained from). And while he was sharing the gospel, the Holy Spirit fell upon Cornelius and those invited to his home. This was a significant event – the obvious demonstration that God desires to save, not only the Jews, but the Gentiles also; the Lord God was reaching the world through Israel. But what is also important is to realise how God evaluates a person, even one who is not from Israel, and what He desires to see in the hearts of men. Various ones may recognise Cornelius generally as a good man, but how many saw him as one zealously looking for the God of Israel and the world, and one who demonstrated this
in sincere outworking and reality. God saw it and God ‘rewarded’ him accordingly.
In Acts 9, we see another individual, Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee, born of the tribe of Benjamin, who studied at the feet of Gamiliel, a well known Jewish scholar and teacher. Saul was known to be zealous for the God of Israel and he upheld the Torah as best as he could, and at that point of time in Acts 9, he was on his way to arrest more individuals who believed in Jesus – he had arrested many and imprisoned them
even before this. On the road to Damascus, Saul also saw a light from heaven and he fell to the ground; he heard a voice saying to him “Saul,
Saul, why do you persecute me?” When he asked who it was who spoke, the reply came, ” I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” It is
interesting to note that after this, Saul acknowledged Jesus as Lord and did not seek to even excuse himself or explain his negative actions
in the past – Saul became Paul the Apostle!
Notice that Saul was looked upon as a zealous religious Jew by many; but God saw him as a persecutor of the church and Christ. It was how God looked at him that counts; it was not how men look at him or even how he considered himself to be, before God and others.
Two men with two visions from God – one was commended; one was corrected and given a second chance.
The story is told of a missionary who served many years in a foreign land coming home. At the harbour, to his surprise, he saw a band playing, apparently welcoming him home after his many years of service and sacrifice. Later on, to his dismay, he found out that the band was welcoming home a war hero. He was saddened, and he realised that there was not even one person welcoming him home from foreign missionary service at the harbour. He murmured quietly before God; then the Holy Spirit communicated this to him, “Beloved, you are still not home yet; and you are on your way home.”
As we travel this pilgrim journey on the way to the celestial city, we need to note that we are still not home (in the new heaven and new earth). The world, including many believers, may not recognise our real spiritual state and true service before God; but God does! And it is pertinent that we continue to maintain the right spiritual perspectives and convictions and persevere to the end of our journey for God. Ultimately, it is how God looks at us and our lives which counts; and God sees all things, and knows all things. He never makes a mistake, for He is the perfect all-loving God, full of mercy and grace. And remember, it is not about us; it is about God and His glory and honour!!
LEST WE FORGET……
Christianity is not the fabrication of a few misguided but well-intentioned individuals who lived some 2000 years ago. It is the divinely revealed religion of the triune God from heaven (Recall the writings of the Gospels in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). Its revelation about God, its descriptions of mankind, its exclusive claims about Jesus Christ, its ways of salvation, its warnings and promises, its demands upon unbelievers as well as disciples, its view of God’s people, and its ethical and moral standards are unique and radically different from all other belief systems.
God’s created adversary, Satan, has opposed the church in each century with every possible diabolical method; and he would continue to do so. All of us today in the church stand upon the shoulders of spiritual giants and holy warriors. Fierce battles have been fought and gory and bloody triumphs won to preserve the faith of God’s elect (Titus 1:1-3).
There is a holy war going on; between God and the devil, truth and lies, good and evil, light and darkness, right and wrong, and shall not end until Christ returns in glory and power at the end of the as He promised (1 Cor. 16:9). The church of Jesus Christ must never forget the hardwon battles that have brought us to this time. We must remember the past and fight for the future.
Two major battles have been fought in the past and are still on-going. The Bible has been queried, and the question, of whether it is the Word of God and is free from corruptions, has been asked again and again? It is sometimes suggested that in practice we are involved in an inescapable subjectivism by the necessity of relying on conjectual reconstructions of the text, and that we can have no confidence that any text wde possess conveys to us the genine meaning of the inspired Word.
It is true that textual corruptions are no part of the authentic Scripture, and that no text is free from such slips. But faith in the consistency of God warrants an attitude of confidence that the text is sufficiently trustworthy not to lead us astray. If God gave the Scriptures for a practical purpose – to make men and women wise unto salvation through faith in Christ – it is a safe inference that he never permits them to become so corrupted that they can no longer fulfill it. This attitude of faith in the adequacy of the text is confirmed by the unanimous verdict of textual scholars that the biblical text is excellently preserved, and no point of doctrine depends on any of the small number of cases in which the true reading remains doubtful. While the work of recovering the original text is not yet finished, and no doubt never will be finished in every minute particular, we should not hesitate to believe that the text as we have it is substantially correct, and may safely be trusted as conveying to us the word of God with sufficient accuracy for all practical purposes. God’s faithfulness to his own intentions is our guarantee of that. And if that is so, we must not hesitate to uphold, teach, preach, and defend the Word of God in Scripture!
The other battle: we must not forget the strength that comes from drawing on each other’s wisdom and insight within the church for personal direction on major decisions. Part of God’s provision for guidance evidently is putting people of different age groups, social, cultural and racial backgrounds in the same congregation. In their togetherness they then make up the body of Christ in its local manifestation, with the diversity of the body parts in full display. God does not want established congregations to consist of people who are all alike any more than he wants us as individuals to limit our close friendships to people just like ourselves. On the contrary, he wants each congregation to contain a wide variety of the human race, and he means us to find that the help we need in discerning his will comes to us through the minds and souls and voices of this wide cross section of Christian believers.
“If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts but one body” (1Cor. 12:19-20).
“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each one of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach. If it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully” (Romans 12:4-7).
Ideally, the congregation to which we belong will be our primary field of fellowship, where our ideas of God’s will for us are tested and, if sound, confirmed, and where from time to time indications of God’s will for us are directly given. Restrictions of ministry to just the leadership and not open to the role of laity is unwise – it would impede the outworking of churchlife.
“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ,. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (Ephesians 4:11-16).
The deepest cleavages in Christendom are doctrinal,and the deepest doctrinal cleavages are those which result from disagreement about authority. Christian bodies of all sorts are urged to sink their differences and present a united front to the forces of secularism. It is taken for granted that the differences in question are small and trifling – unsightly little cracks on the surface of an otherwise solid wall. But the assumption is false. Some of the cracks are the outward signs of lack of structural integration. The wall is cracked because it is not all built on the same foundation. Nothing is gained just by trying to cement up the cracks that only encourages the collapse of the entire wall. Sham unity is not worth working for, and real unity that fellowship of love in the truth which Christ prayed that his disciples might enjoy (John17:17-23) will come only as these sections of the wall which rest on unsound foundations are dismantled and rebuilt.
Over the years in church history, serious departures from the faith centre on doctrinal cleavages (essential and major when checked against the teachings of Christ and Scripture). When traditions, political systems, and human authority seek to override the authority of God and Scripture, major schisms take place. It is clear that the “essentials” in Christian doctrines cannot be compromised; the non-essentials can be discussed and an understanding can ensue; the bottom line – faithfulness and fidelity to the triune God and the Gospel. Believers cannot afford to ignore compromise in the ‘essentials’ and this has been the focus of the battle of saints and ‘spiritual giants’ of the past, even to the shedding of blood and martyrdom. Let us not forget this today.
CONDITIONS OF DISCIPLESHIP (Luke 14:25-33)
In our local congregation, we will be resuming preaching, teaching, and studying the Gospel of Luke in July. We have stopped at Luke 14:15-24 in the last session, on the Parable of the Great Supper. We will resume, the Lord willing, from Luke 14:25-33.
Before we go to verses 25-33, it may be helpful to recapitulate some of the learnings from the Parable in verses 15-24, as it has been a long break since that passage was covered.
Jesus earlier raised the issue of the approaching blessing for those who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. The image revolves around fellowship with God at the banquet table in the end. In the parable of the Great Supper, He challenges the optimistic assumption of those present that they would be at the banquet in the consummation of God’s kingdom.
The promise of God and His kingdom is not postponed; it comes now with Jesus. Those who were invited and rejected the invitation with excuses of economic priority (bought a field or oxen) or commitment of marriage, and other excuses cannot expect the party or supper to be postponed. In fact, their rejection of the invitation is tantamount to an insult to the one who invites – it implies that other things have become more important than the banquet.
The parable reinforces the note of judgment and exclusion that comes from failing to respond to Jesus’ invitation to share in the blessing. Blessing is not a right but a gift, and it is received by responding to God’s invitation when he offers it. In that context, Jesus was rebuking the Jews for their assumption that they were automatically in the kingdom of God and being in the banquet is a given; but here those among the Gentiles may actually be the ones, initially not invited, ending up at the table of the banquet.
We now proceed to verses 25-33. This has been shared previously but perhaps it is still needful to emphasise the conditions of discipleship shared by the Lord Jesus.
Firstly, discipleship demands a total commitment, even in the face of opposition; Jesus is honestly setting forth the demands of what it means to walk after him. The topic is addressed in terms of the priority that discipleship is. Nothing else comes first, neither fieles, nor oxen, nor mariage, as Luke 14:15-24 showed. Those who cannot meet the demands “cannot be my disciple”.
A person’s loyalty to following Jesus has priority over family or acceptance by them. In a context of opposition and rejection, it means that a person will not even be drawn to Jesus if he or she wishes to have family acceptance. Those who come to Jesus should understand that their family may well reject their choosing Jesus; so those who ‘love’ family will not opt to respond to Jesus.
Discipleship means “bearing a cross,” accepting the suffering and rejection that Jesus faces (see Luke 9:23-24). Without such a total commitment, discipleship is not possible.
Two examples follow, the first of a man who plans to build a watchtower that protects a vineyard or a home. The second has to do with one king assessing going to war against another king who has twice as many troops.
Discipleship takes preparation for going the distance, including realising what one is getting into by responding to Jesus. The second example drives home the point that it is better to settle with God, who is more powerful, than to go to war against him, a theme much like Luke 12:57-59. So opting for discipleship is better than that alternative.
Discipleship requires everything, even a renunciation of possessions. A person’s greatest possession becomes following Jesus. Knowing the call of God as one enters it makes for better responsiveness when times get tough and the world’s rejection comes.
The Parable of the salt (verses 34-35)
Salt was used as a catalyst for burning fuel, as a preservative, and as fertilizer.
The use of salt as a teaching is to imply that to respond profitably while one has the opportunity to be useful or else one risks being cast aside. The warning to the nation of Israel and to all unbelievers today is to respond or to be cast aside. Mark in verses 9:49-50 makes three points: Firstly, the disciple will be “salted with fire,” or tested; Secondly, salt is useful and the warning is not to lose its usefulness; thirdly, people are being “salted” by being at peace with one another – being a peacemaker.
The parable reinforces the note of judgment and exclusion that comes from failing to respond to Jesus’ invitation to share in the blessing – blessing is not a right but a gift, and it is received by responding to God’s invitation when he offers it.
BUILDING LIVES AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD
“…I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH AND THE GATES OF HELL SHALL NOT PREVAIL AGAINST IT” Matt. 16:18
When Jesus spoke of building his church, he was not thinking in terms of bricks and mortars. Rather he was thinking of the complex process whereby the truth about himself is received, the recipients respond to it (or, better, respond to him in terms of it), and the responders are conformed increasinsgly to him as they share in the things that the church does in obedience to Jesus’ word, under his leadership, and in dependence on his power.
As the church consists of individuals who has come to faith and become God’s people (his vine, his flock, his temple, his nation, his kingdom), so Christ’s building of the church as a matter of his so changing people on the inside – in their hearts – that repentance, faith, and obedience became more and more the pattern of their lives and outworking. Increasingly, his people exhibit the humility, purity, love, and zeal for God that we see in Jesus, and fulfill Jesus’ call to worship, work, and witness in his name.
In essence, we are talking about the kingdom of God; and the Gospel which has the objective of establishing the church (believers from Old Testament and New Testament). The building of God’s church would be carried through despite opposition and the cross and the Holy Spirit feature prominently in this quest. God is the builder and nothing can stop him; not even the gates of hell. God would see it through.
GOD IS FAITHFUL TO HIS PROMISES AND PURPOSES
“I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it” (Isaiah 46:11)
The basis of all our asking in prayer, as of all ou trusting in God, is and must be knowing His promises, claiming them, relying on them, and holding fast to them whatever happens, in the confidence that they will always be kept (because of who God is)
2 Peter 1:4 speaks of the ‘precious and very great promises’ that God has given us. Trusting these promises that God has given is an integral building block, a truly foundational activity in a Christian life.
The New Testament views Abraaham as the classic model of saving faith, and Paul declares that trusting God’s promise with praise was the essence of Abraham’s prayer as he waited for the predicted son and heir. That is why his faith was credited to him as ‘righteousness’ (Romans 4:20-22). These words were written for us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. Recall that Abraham believed against all hope: he was very old, Sarah was past the age for delivering babies; the time went by and still there was no heir. But God promised that he would be a father of many nations – how can this be when everything seemed to point that it was impossible. But Abraham was fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised.
The question we need to ask : “Do we?” – Do we truly believe that God had power to do what He promised to His children?
ON CHRISTIAN DISCIPLESHIP AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD
When we meditate on discipleship and the kingdom of God, we need to see life here on earth as travel to, and preparation for, and indeed as a foretaste of a life hereafter in which all without exception will reap what they sowed here in terms of their attitudes and decisions God-ward. Unless we see this clearly, we cannot understand why the call to discipleship by the Lord Jesus is so stringent, demanding a total commitment to Him and a life of pilgrimage here on earth. Failure to submit to this call by the Lord may mean ‘casualty’ on the journey to the celestial city (remember the book “The Pilgrim’s Progress”) and the casualty may mean compromise in our Christian life; it may also be so disastrous that it leads to apostasy and a turning away from the kingdom of God.
Those who are Christ’s will receive infinite enrichment in terms of joy in their God and Saviour; others face infinite loss first of God’s active kindness and then of all the good and pleasant things that this kindness brings now.
Death, or the return of Jesus Christ, whichever comes first, will effect a transition from the world of life-choices to the world where our Maker
gives us what, fundamentally, we have chosen concerning Him – either to be eternally with HIm or eternally without Him. And since our experience of the destiny we chose will be unending, and will in fact grow directly out of our life now, the whole of this present life should be lived in light of the future – which means, for Christians, living in the power of the magnificent hope of glory with Christ that the heavenly Father has given them.
So Christ, who diagnoses living in the present with never a thought about death and the life to come as supreme foolishness (cf. Luke 12:5-21), directs us to lay up treasure, not on earth, but in heaven (Matt. 619-21; Luke 12:32-34) – in other words, to live, facing up to the issues of eternity and not be bogged down, and caught up with the things of this world, which would pass away.
Unbelievers believe this life on earth is all that matters because it is all there is. The wisdom, received from the Christian past, that only when one is ready to die is one ready to live, is forgotten; with the world, we treat continuance of life, as such, as the supreme value. Death finds us unprepared, and in daily life, it is observable how little strength we have for the practice of detachment or renunciation in any form at all.
Authentic spirituality, however, requires of us that we re-learn the discipline of sitting loose to everything here in order to lay hold of glory hereafter. And authentic spirituality involves genuine discipleship in following our Master and having the same attitude and perspective of our dear Lord Jesus. This is the character of those in the kingdom of God.
THE NEW CREATION
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:17-19)
Previously, we have highlighted the role of the Holy Spirit in effecting regeneration, and the completed mission and task of the Lord Jesus in securing redemption – and the Father initiating and making this possible even before the creation of the world (recall the long sharings on the Trinity in helping us appreciate our God, the Triune God, all three Persons involved, in love, mercy, and grace in securing the inauguration of a new humanity in Him)
What the Christian has put off is solidarity with Adam, and what he puts on is Christ, or solidarity with Christ, as the source and principle of his new life (cf. Rom. 13:4; Gal. 3:27). Each image entails the thought of a totally fresh beginning ( a new creation); one has ceased to be what one was, and has commenced to be what previously one was not.
Paul then charts the course of this newness in terms of being restored as God’s image (Col. 3:10), serving righteousness and God as bondslaves of both (Rom. 6:16-23), and bringing forth the fruit of the Spirit (Gala. 5:22-25); John speaks of walking in the light (1 John 1:7); and indeed the whole body of the New Testament writers labour the thought that Christians are called to live in a radically different way from those around them, and from the way they themselves lived before. The proclamation of newness as both a divine gift and a Christian obligation is loud and clear.
Intellectually the change is an opening and enlightening of the blinded mind to discern what previously we could not discern (2 Cor. 4:3-6; Eph. 1:17-18; cf Luke 24:25, 31, 45) – namely, the spiritual realities of Christ and his salvation.
Motivationally, within the heart, the change is an implanting in us of the inclinations of Christ’s perfect humanity through our ingrafting into him; this produces in us a mind-set and lifestyle that is not explicable in terms of what we were before. The Spirit-born person, as Jesus indicated, cannot but be a mystery to those who are not born again themselves; they can form no idea of what makes him tick (cf. John 3:8).
Does the above describe us? Are we a new creation in Christ? Or are we old natural fleshly beings seemingly clothed with a whitewashed covering that seems to indicate that we are born again (still clinging and immersed in Adam)? Do our mind-set and lifestyle indicate that we belong to Jesus, that we are in Him and He in us? These are vital and sober questions to ponder upon and the answers may indicate eternal life in HIm or eternal death and darkness!!
A NEGLECTED PRIORITY IN THE MODERN CHURCH
Holiness, Sanctification, is a neglected priority of the current church. We will recall the Lord Jesus praying in John 17 that the Father would sanctify his disciples by the truth. The Lord Jesus’ concern for his disciples focused on this priority for their lives; He knew and knows that apart from holiness, his disciples would go astray in their walk with God and in their mission, given that there was and is a formidable enemy who would manipulate the indwelling sin of believers and the negative influence of the world to cause the disciples to turn aside from the “narrow way”.
What has basically gone wrong in today’s church and in the lives of God’s people. Our “holiness” and “sanctification” is excessively human-centred. It focuses on my personal satisfaction” rather than “the glory of God.” The emphasis is all on self-fulfilment, happiness, being shielded from trouble, and being enabled to succeed. Success in relationships, success in one’s sex life, success in everyday activities, has become the name of the game. Book after book has been written to guide us to succeed in these areas.
Second, our activity – and there is a great deal of Christian activity these days – lapses again and again into activism, so that activism almost becomes our religion. The whole of our Christianity seems to be a matter of running around and doing things for God – being busy, busy, busy for God. Some of us are spiritually barren because we are too busy even to pray. Holiness is a fading glory in the modern church. We are too busy to pray and if we are too busy to pray, we really are too busy. Martin Luther once said that he had so many things to do on a particular day that he had to spend more time in prayer that particular morning.
We are preoccupied with controversy, scholarship, and liberty in ethical matters, and we are disillusioned. If we look at the church today, the
‘damage’ done to the church by those who are supposedly in leadership roles ending up in immoral and unethical behaviour is on the rise; divorce among Christians is also growing in numbers; and those chosen to take on leadership roles may be well known in the secular areas;
and the choices are made based on their standing and status in society rather than on their sanctified lives and holiness.
Sanctification and holiness is a life then, of obedience, of resisting sin, of imitating Jesus, and of fellowship with God as one seeks to please God in everything one does (remember that the call to discipleship is a call to total commitment to the Triune God). Are we living that sort of life? This is in fact what real Christian life and discipleship is all about: obeying, resisting sin, imitating Christ, and pleasing God.
Sanctification is both a gift that is one side: (God working in us to renew and transform us) and a task (the task of obedience, righteousness and pleasing God). We must never so stress either of the two sides that we lose sight of the other.
Think only of the task, and you will become a self-reliant legalist seeking to achieve righteousness in your own strength. You will not make headway at all. Think only of the work of God in your life, and the chances are that Satan will trick you into not making the necessary effort (in dependence on the Spirit) and in maintaining the discipline of righteousness so that, in fact, even as you rejoice in the work of God in your life, you will be dishonouring it by your slackness and laziness. Hold both sides of the matter together in your mind, if you desire your living before God to be right and honoring Him. You might have heard the saying, “Let go and let God…” as if there is no need for diligence and effort on your part to nurture holiness on your part; we then foolishly think that we can just drift into holiness…there is the lie of the enemy!
The very heart of our Christian living should be a passion in all things to obey God, imitate our Saviour, resist sin, and please our gracious Father. Nothing can alter that priority.
THREE PARABLES IN LUKE 15:1-32
The three parables: A lost sheep; a lost coin; a lost Son.
Among the 27 or so parables of the Lord Jesus, the above three deal with ‘salvation’. The three parables grew out of an attack the self-righteous religious teachers of the day made on Jesus’ ministry. Jesus was ministering to the outcasts in society: the tax collectors, whom everyone hated, and “sinners” which meant those who did not know the law or observe the legal niceties of Pharisaic religion. Jesus mingled freely with such people; he did not despise them, in fact he loved them. It was natural that these people sought him out in return. This was noticed and resented by the teachers of the law: ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them” (vs 2). The three parables are intended to show that it was not only right that Jesus stooped to save sinners; but it was also a revelation of the loving character of God the Father that Jesus did so.
In each of the three parables, ‘something’ was lost. The lost object remained valuable in the mind of the owner in spite of its lost condition. The owner was determined to recover it again. In the fall, we are lost. But even in our lost state we retain something of the image of God, and God loves us and is determined to find and reclaim us for the sake of that image and for His own glory. In the separation between God and man which sin has caused, God has lost something which He formerly possessed and highly valued. To God, the sinner is as something lost is to him to whom belonged, and these parables let us see how ‘anxious’ He is and what efforts He will make to regain it for His own (Isa.53:6). God has sought us out even in our lost condition. This is what the Pharisees and teachers of the law failed to see.
This is our hope – not that we are at work, but that God is at work. He is seen grieving, seeking, finding, and rejoicing- this has been true of God’s thoughts and actions toward anyone who has ever been found by Jesus. Note: “I tell you that in the same way there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent…In the same way I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents”(vv. 7,10).
In the parable of the lost Son, we see the revelation that by the miracle of regeneration the sinner comes to his senses, repents of sin,and begins to seek God; or to put it another way, when we say that a sinner comes to his senses, we mean that God has first sought him out and brought about a spiritual resurrection. The prodigal son awakened to his true condition; he confessed his true sin; and he took the step of actually returning to his father, asking for no special treatment but just forgiveness and acceptance to be treated as one of the father’s servants. The father was however so glad to see him coming home and he showered his son with love and declared a celebration. declaring that this son of his was dead and now is alive and fount (vv. 23-24).
But there was one who was not celebrating – the older son. What was wrong with the older son? Some of us may even sympathise with him; after all, he was hardworking, ‘obedient’ and a ‘faithful’ son as contrasted with the prodigal son. He could not accept the favour of the father to his brother who deserved to be condemned rather than be ‘celebrated’ at his return; and he was of the opinion that he was the one deserving of the favour of the father. First, he apparently loed property more than people – he would have been quite happy if the money had come back and his brother had been lost. As it was, he was angry that the property was lost and his brother recovered. Second, he had an inflated estimate of his own importance and a scorn of others, particularly his opinion of the younger brother that he would not even acknowledge his relationship to him, calling him only “this son of yours”(v.30).
The Pharisees are the “older son”. They are those who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else (Luke 18:9). This also brings the parable back to us, if we consider ourselves better than others or imagine that we are children of the Father because of our character or supposed good works and not purely because of God’s good favour (grace).
Will we fault God for acting according to HIs own gracious nature? If so, He will not accept our accusation. He will acknowledge no wrong on His part. It is right that heaven should rejoice over the repentant sinner, and if we would be like the Father in heaven, we should rejoice also. For the prodigal is our brother, whether or not we acknowledge it. We are never so like God as when we rejoice at the salvation of sinners. We are never so like the devil as when we despise those who are thus converted and think ourselves superior to them.
Every human being is valuable in God’s sight because he or she is created in the image of God. Although the fall has caused the image to be ‘damaged’ and ‘marred’, the image can be restored by God’s grace and by human’s repentance, faith and regeneration by the Spirit. God is still looking for many such ones to ‘return’ to Him; if God does not give up on such ones, we too must continue to pray and to desire for their ‘returning to the fold’.
THE MEANING AND NATURE OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY
In recent years, we have come across news of Christian leaders and personalities ‘caught up’ with immoral behaviour; involved in unethical practices, even in those malpractices not seen among unbelievers in general. In my consultation room, I have interacted with youth leaders in a certain congregation, and I was shocked to find them ‘living in sin’ sexually and excusing themselves by claiming that king David in the OT was himself an adulterer and a murderer, and he was even noted to be a man after God’s heart. Further, they claimed that their pastor told them that their sins, past, present, and future have all been forgiven and they need not live in guilt.
I did spend much time to show them, from the Scriptures, their wrong understanding and practice, and we would not be going through the details of this at this juncture. Suffice to say, there are many so-called believers and Christian leaders who seek to ‘justify’ their immorality along the same line and continue to go on as if nothing negative has happened in their Christian lives and ministry. In that light, it may be helpful to consider afresh the meaning and nature of Christian Morality.
Our ethics and morality are to be drawn from our doctrines, and dogmatics, and our view of both our ethics and dogmatics will be deficient if we fail to see this. Christian morality is not to be equated with secular morality. Christian duty is determined by Christian doctrine; orthopraxy, as we may call it, followed from, and is controlled and shaped by orthodoxy. What true Christian morality must include is a declaration of God’s will for human behaviour; it is precisely the doctrine of God’s commands to mankind, set within the frame of the doctrines of his works for humankind and his ways with humankind.
The Triune God, the Creator, the God of the Bible, wants his human creatures to serve, please, and glorify him by specific types and courses of action that he likes to see, and he directs us accordingly; with sanctions to encourage us to do right and to discourage us from doing wrong. Christian morality, according to Scripture, is in fact a blueprint for living under the authority of the awesomely and intrusively personal Lord, by whose grace we have been saved to serve, and to whom we must one day give account.
So Christian morality is a morality of divine command, based on the reality of a divine gift, and both the gift and the command are elements in the doctrine of God; ethics therefore must never be thought of as independent of dogmatics. The meaning and nature of Christian morality cannot be looked upon as independent of God, His desires,and His commands.
Christian morality is therefore an expression, function, and index of Christian spirituality; it is the believer’s whole life of communion with God by grace. The practice of Christian morality, which is the outward aspect of living the Christian life, must never be separated in thought, let alone in reality, from the inward aspect of that life – that is the exercise of conscience, the prayers for help, the joy of obedience, the grateful love of God, the active hoping for heaven, the cherishing of a sense of Christ’s presence with us, and the constant battling against temptation, depression, apathy, and hardness of heart.
Our thoughts about doing God’s will cannot be detached from our thoughts about the inner spiritual life; if we define the Christian life entirely in terms of external obedience and forget that there is more to it than mechanically correct performance, then we can hardly avoid ending up in some version of legalistic Pharisaism, in which all the emphasis is on what we do rather than what we are, and into which the reality of Christian freedom does not enter.
In the deepest sense Christian morality – the morality of faith, hope, and love, pursued with discretion, self-control, fair-mindedness, and courage – is not Christian at all save it is made to rest on the truth that Christ’s servants live only by being daily forgiven for their daily failures. We must not forget to observe the connection between our morality and our spirituality. Hence the need for repentance as a way of life, the appreciation and gratefulness for God’s grace, love, and enabling (through His Holy Spirit) on a daily basis. There should be no room for rationalisation, faint excuses, unteachability; instead there should be contriteness, a cry for mercy, a prayer for cleansing and restoration whenever there is a lapse in our morality before God, like king David in Psalm 51. The Apostle John wrote that “man loves darkness rather than light”; we must not remain in the “darkness” but must come back quickly to the “light” and restore fellowship and communion with God.
The Apostle Paul wrote: “For of this you can be sure: no immoral, impure or greedy person – such a person is an idolater – has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do ont be partners with them” (Ephesians 5:5-7). Anything or anyone can be an idol in our lives; our wrongful desires, our lusts, our pride, and so on, may be manifestations of the fact that we are our own gods. Note the seriousness and soberness of what was written by Paul – the consequence can be the forfeiture of our inheritance in the kingdom of God.
AVOIDING PITFALLS IN THE OUTWORKING OF CHURCHLIFE
There is no doubt that God inaugurates the church and He loves the church. The Triune God’s cosmic plan is to bring back the elect to His fold and to establish the new humanity in Christ to replace the fallen one in Adam; in this regard, God has the church at the centre of His salvation plan and He declares that He would build His church and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.
Hence Christians need to recognise the dangers of individualism, which seems to engender a dangerously superficial form of Christianity which has no sense of historical “belonging” or “rootedness”. A spiritual lone ranger who has proudly or impatiently turned his back on the church and his heritage is a sure recipe for weirdness without end; rediscovering the corporate and historic nature of the Christian faith reduces the danger of entire communities of faith being misled by charismatic individuals and affirms the importance of the Christian past as a stabilising influence in turbulent times. The enemy knows that if he ‘destroys’ the church or ‘incapacitates’ her, then the church becomes impotent and the kingdom of God is ‘infiltrated’ and ‘damaged’ significantly.
Christians need to know that God’s intention and cosmic plan focuses on the church as the body of Christ and its outworking is centred on the church. It is sad to see individual Christians in parachurch organisations abandoning the church and seeking to establish their own following and ignoring the historic heritage of the church (because they are convinced that the church is no longer relevant and they can do as well as
individual believers).
What is wise, good, and true from the past can be discerned and gladly and joyfully reappropriated in today’s church. Rediscovering the corporate and historic dimensions of our faith makes the great treasures and resources of the Christian past accessible and available to the present, thus enriching the life and witness of the church today.
A concern for tradition is not equivalent to “traditionalism” – that is to a nostalgic and backward looking approach to the Christian faith that “can quench the Holy Spirit and cause paralysis and impotence in the church” by demanding that we blindly and uncritically repeat exactly what was done and said in the past.
A concern for tradition does not violate the Christian’s emphasis on the sole and supreme authority of Scripture. Tradition serves in a ministerial mode and does not rule magisterially. It is there to help, and to guide, not to command. “Scripture must have the last word on all human attempts to state its meaning, and tradition, viewed as a series of such human attempts, has a ministerial rather than a magisterial role. In the end, all interpretations of Scripture must be judged in the light of Scripture itself, recognising that the church has misunderstood the Bible on occasion in the past. We are all beneficiaries of good, wise and sound tradition, and victims of poor, unwise and unsound traditions. Hence the apostle Paul counselled….”test everything; hold fast what is good: (1 Thess. 5:21 ESV).
Tradition is something that must be judged. It can too easily shape our reading of Scripture (take note of this in Bible study), highlighting some ideas and obscuring others. All traditions function as blinders, focusing our vision on some things at which we have been taught to look constantly and that we therefore see clearly, but keeping us from seeing other things that other traditions grasp better. Christians of different traditions should talk to each other so that we can help each other eliminate our blind spots and ensure that the totality of Scripture is illuminated and applied to life and thought.
We need to encourage a process of respectful yet critical dialogue with the past, determined as a matter of principle to learn from the wisdom of the past, while being liberated from mechanical and wooden repetition of its judgements. Our vision of theology is corporate rather than individualistic, yet creates space for individuals to make a difference in how the community perceives and articulates its foundational beliefs and judgments. We need to ask ourselves seriously whether processed, prefabricated, and predigested approaches to theology (the theological equivalent of fast food outlets) will challenge those who are truly spiritually hungry and can really sustain the believers as they confront the future.
Our vision of sound theology should be rigorously grounded in Scripture on the one hand, while taking into account the long history of faithful Christian engagement with the BIble on the other. It seems paradoxical to look backward before moving forward. But it is an important corrective to our natural tendency to rush ahead, act impulsively, and make snap judgments.
In this respect, we need to distinguish the “essentials” from the “non-essentials’ in our beliefs and doctrines. Compromise in the ‘essentials’ invariably leads to spiritual disasters for the church; ‘un-openness’ to reexamine non-essentials may restrict the church from the freedom of being led by God’s Spirit to true freedom in the life and ministry of God’s church.
*individual Christians – no doubt the enemy is also manipulating the situation and casting doubt on God’s promises).
SUBJECTIVISM AFFECTS ALL OF US IN OUR THEOLOGY
In our theology and understanding of our Christian faith, all of us are inclined to subjectivism; the fact is ‘God’s thoughts are not our thoughts’, and the God-centered approach to the problems of life and thought which the Bible makes is unnatural to our minds which are sinful and self-centered, before and after knowing God’s salvation.
It is natural for sinners to think of themselves as wise, not by divine teaching, but by reason of our own judgment and our constant ‘justification’ of our fanciful wisdom; we then try to adjust what the Bible teaches to what we have already received from other sources. In the previous sharing, I referred to “processed, predigested, prefabricated approaches to theology”. Much of these have to do with the subjective judgment of our own fanciful wisdom with regard to what the Bible teaches – and the result is the restatements of the faith in modern terms, resulting often in revisions of the faith to make it square and palatable with popular intellectual fashion. Another ‘tragedy’ is that those in such situations are adversely not open to discuss and to put right what is wrong in their understanding (and in some cases, what is ‘wrong’ can be so serious that it results in irreparable damage to God’s people and God’s kingdom). The fact that Bible verses are referred to in the so-called sermons and teachings do not mean that what God is speaking is being communicated; in fact, many such verses are quoted out of context to buttress their favourite ‘topics’ and ‘doctrines’ (which are subtle distortions of the truth).
The process of assimilating God’s revealed truth to the current religious and philosophical opinions of men is the essence of the speculative method (which includes processed, prefabricated approaches to theology and doctrines) in theology which God rejects and repudiates. Yet it is so easy for us to do it more or less, because sin is present with us all. As usual with sinful habits of minds, we are largely unconscious of our lapses, and become aware of them only as we test ourselves by Scripture and ask God to search our minds and to teach us to criticise our own thinking. But this is easier said than done; many of us in this predicament find it hard to receive feedback and ‘criticism’, and we close our minds to look deeper and further at what God reveals in Scripture. This is perhaps one major contribution to the poor outworking of Christian lives and churches; a one-man leadership in churches (although there may be many other so-called other ‘leaders’ who are loyal whatever the situations) makes it invariably difficult to be teachable and to be open to correction – hence the outcome cannot be wholesome in the eyes of God.
Paul the Apostle wrote: “We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God” (1 Cor. 4:1).
Speculative revisions of the faith by the light of secular thought and equated with the Word of God cannot be tolerated. No synthesis between the gospel and non-Christian systems is permissible. The gospel is complete in itself; to supplement it with extraneous ideas is not to enrich it, but to pervert it (perverted truth and half-truth are no truth in God’s eyes). It is no wonder we read from the writings of Apostle Paul: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let that person be under God’s curse. As we have already said, so now I say again, if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than you accepted, let that person be under God’s curse!” (Gal. 1:8-9)
Notice how serious the consequences are! Do realise that preaching the gospel involves not just evangelism, but also teaching all that Christ has commanded (and that covers preaching, teaching, studying the Bible and the process of discipleship). We cannot afford to distort the gospel by our own fanciful ideas and thoughts (influenced by the world and the devil). God would evaluate our ministry and He is the sovereign judge. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God!
“THE FUTURE OF ‘CHRISTIANITY’
A discerning individual once said, “If Christianity is not real, it is of no value; if Christianity is real, it is of infinite value; there is no such thing as moderately valuable”. This explains the revelation in the Gospels – the claim of Jesus as being the only way, the truth, and the life; the total commitment called for, for those who would be disciples of Christ -we note the term “you cannot be my disciple” – there is no ambiguity in the statement; the eternal destiny of man and woman who are ‘lost’ and not saved by the gospel; etc. The same is true in the conclusion that humanity in ‘Adam’ is lost and condemned eternally and that only Jesus Christ, the saviour, the redeemer, the God-man, the only mediator, can inaugurate a new humanity in Himself which would endure eternally in the new heaven and the new earth, with a renewed cosmos. Only those who are regenerated and united with Him through faith and repentance are forgiven and adopted as children of God with a new inheritance and a glorious eternal future!
If we fail to see these truths in our reception of the sermons, in the bible study, in the teaching of the Gospels, it is not just a matter of not increasing in our knowledge of the BIble; it is a matter of eternal life and death……the parable of the prodigal son which we studied recently is a story told by our Lord Jesus, together with the parables of the lost sheep and lost coin, to tell us about the salvation of God which He brings in His incarnation and in His mission (at the cross) – this salvation is by grace (unmerited favour); it cannot be attained by works (as ‘imagined’ by the pharisees) and it is extended to those who are spiritually sick (sinners, tax-collectors and the like) – the Triune God is constantly seeking to bring sinners home and in the case of the prodigal son, ‘repentance’ is essential when this son came to his senses, and came home without any expectations from the father. The older son (like the Pharisees) think themselves worthy of salvation and reward; but they missed the point of the parable – no one can enter the kingdom of God by their own efforts and works; and there is no place to look down on those who apparently are more ‘sinful’ when compared to our own achievements (very poor in comparison to the righteousness and character of Jesus).
As we listen to sermons, study the Bible, learning from one another, we need to recognise that faith seeks understanding; Christians seek a reasoning faith, not a faithless reasoning. The Christian leader and scholar’s task is to “present the Christian faith clothed in modern terms, not to propagate modern thought clothed in Christian terms”. Our business is to interpret and criticise modern thought by the gospel, not vice versa – confusion here is fatal. Christians are to perform this ministry with humility, kindness, precision, and competence. Partial adherence to this principle will lead to partial freedom in a healed mind – hence the warning that not all should seek to be teachers, for they would be judged by God with greater judgments.
The heart of historic Christian belief is the conviction that a perfect and honest God has spoken perfectly and honestly in his written Word. Our doctrine of Scripture develops from what we think about God’s character or what we think about God’s ability to safeguard his word from falsehood. God speaks in a unified manner through a unitary canon of Scripture; hence one part of Scripture cannot contradict another. Only a clear commitment to obeying the BIble will lead to helpful discipleship and the healing of divisions in the church. Without total commitment this is not truly possible.
The church will always have two constant needs: instruction in the truths by which it must live, and correction of the shortcomings by which it is marred. And both operate at the level of preaching, teaching, studying the Bible, and communicating all that Jesus commanded in the fulfilment of the Great Commission. Hence these ministries are significant; they are indispensable; and they ought to be carried out by those who are approved by God, and known by Him.