CHRIST JESUS IS OUR HOPE
When we look at what is happening in the world today and the present evil age, we may be wondering what is the actual cause of all these difficulties and sufferings, affecting not only nations, but also contemporary Christianity. Some may attribute the cause to be sociological, psychological, political – there is rising secularization all over the world – seen in moral indifference, worldliness, pluralism and hedonism. In the church, we see doctrinal indifference, carelessness and a lack of love.
Eschatology is the study of the last things. It is a very important field of study, for its real theme is the Christian hope, and hope is integral to the New Testament Christian life. Christ Jesus is our hope (1Tim.1:1).
The study of the last things is the study of God’s fulfilment of his purpose of creation by eliminating from it the disorder brought into it by sin and reconstructing everything in its final perfect form. However, presently, this disorder will remain and even be more disorderly, before it is eliminated.
The perspective set forth in the New Testament is what is usually called inaugurated eschatology, that is, the belief that the kingdom of God is here and the powers of the kingdom are at work already. The gospel is the good news that heaven has already begun here on earth for those who are in Christ. The long expected king of Old Testament prophecy has come (see Luke and the other gospels). He came in lowliness as the servant Saviour of humankind. Now he is risen and enthroned, and from his throne he still comes to us by the personal presence of the Holy Spirit. One day he 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 is the New Testament name. We are risen with Christ. We live with Christ. That is our eternal condition. It will always be so in life, in death, in resurrection, through judgment and on beyond; those who are truly Christ’s will be with him and he with them in love, joy and glory. This is the truth about the destiny of the Christian believer; this is our real perspective – if we see this clearly, we will not be moved and discouraged as we look at the great disorder in this world.
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. The whole materialistic world and culture around us encourages us to forget that 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.
Life here and now is preparation for something more glorious that is ahead of us in the future. We need to understand the Christian hope in order to understand the Christian life.
As we hold on to this hope, we need to reckon with the 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. This is the biblical perspective of inaugurated eschatology.
Already the Lord is transforming his own people in his own way. He transforms them from the inside out. He changes heart and character. Our physical body, that external aspect of our personal being which is given for enjoyment and expression will wear out in due course and is left behind. One day, when the Lord comes again, when we are taken from this 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. 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, has been remade into yet greater glory. New heavens, new earth, it will be a new order of things and the word perfection will be the only word that will then describe it. This is the biblical perspective: the future fulfilment and completion of what God has already started.
Humankind without Christ is in a pitiable state, whatever may or may not appear on the surface of life. We are guilty, lost, without hope as death approaches, short on self-mastery, pulled to and fro by conflicting allurements and distractions; there are skeletons of sensuality, callousness, arrogance, and other unlovely things in our cupboard; we regularly find frustration and discontent, partly because our reach exceeds our grasp, partly because we feel thwarted by circumstances, partly because we are so largely unclear what is worth our endeavour anyway.
But Jesus Christ gives peace – with God, with oneself, with circumstances, and with other people – plus his own presence and friendship, plus a call to witness and service as the priority concerns of life in this world, plus a promise of the Holy Spirit, plus an assurance of final glory in the Saviour’s own company, and this brings integration, purpose, contentment, and joy such as one has not known before. And the promise is that as one travels the road of discipleship, so these things will increase.
We face a great deal of pessimistic hopelessness on the part of people who feel they have seen through the false hopes of society and now have no hope at all. We need to speak loudly and clearly about the glory of the Christian hope. Christ Jesus is our hope!!
IN DEFENCE OF REFORMATION AND REFORMED THEOLOGY
Some 507 years back, Reformation took place, and many churches still commemorate this yearly.
The church will always face heresies and wrong doctrines and needs to be prepared to deal with them (2 Peter 2:1). Some wrong teachings may come back in different forms but they are essentially similar to heresies of the past.
Unorthodox teachings were not unusual in the first five hundred years after the time of Christ. When such teachings arose, the church recognised its responsibility to investigate them, determine their validity, and state the truth in a clear manner. To accomplish this objective, church councils were called to discuss important subjects. A brief review of church history in this light may be truly helpful for us believers today to meet this challenge of false teachings.
The various church councils over the years:
-The council of Nicaea (AD 325), which proclaimed that Christ is God (the Nicene creed is recited in many churches).
– The council of Constantinople (381), which claimed that the Holy Spirit is God.
– The council of Ephesus (431), which proclaimed that human beings are totally depraved from birth.
– The council of Chalcedon (451), which proclaimed that Christ is both God and man.
The council of Ephesus was called in response to a prominent false teaching known as Pelagianism, named after its founder, Pelagius, a British monk. He denied that the human race fell into original sin with Adam. Babies, he said, are not born corrupt but innocent. They become bad when they grow up, through the bad examples of others. It is their environment that makes them bad, not original sin.
Pelagius was opposed by Augustine, the bishop of Hippo in North Africa. Augustine was one of the greatest theologians of the early church. He spent much of his life defending the orthodox or true faith against heresies. Fighting these battles helped him codify the doctrines that were taught by Jesus and Paul in the Scriptures.
In his response to Pelagius, Augustine taught that every man is conceived and born in sin, and can be saved only through the grace of God according to His good pleasure. The council of Ephesus eventually agreed, declaring the teachings of Pelagius to be heresy. Today many churches may not be conscious that they are, in some ways, upholding the teachings of Pelagius. By teaching that human beings could choose good without divine grace, we are in effect teaching what Pelagius advocated. By insisting that human beings born after the fall are in a state of moral and spiritual neutrality so that they do not need to be regenerated (made alive by God) but only to be properly trained and surrounded by good examples would also result in the teaching of Pelagius.
The Christian faith uniquely teaches that Adam and Eve fell from a state of innocence through an abuse of their free will, resulting in “total depravity” of human nature. That is, apart from God’s divine grace, humanity is completely lost and without hope of salvation; the essential badness of the human race is a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith (Eph. 2:8-10).
The Brief Statement of the Reformed Faith of 1902 accurately sums up the general orthodox teaching on the fall and depravity of humanity:
“We believe that our first parents, being tempted, chose evil, and so fell away from God and came under the power of sin, the penalty of which is eternal death, and we confess that, by reason of this disobedience, we and all men are born with a sinful nature, that we have broken God’s law, and that no man can saved but by His grace.” (Rom.3;23; 6:23).
About one hundred years later, Cassian developed what is known as Semi-Pelagianism. This taught that man is able to take the first steps toward conversion with his own powers. According to Semi-Pelagianism, God’s grace is available to all men, but the final decision in each individual case is dependent on the exercise of free will. In 529, the Synod of Orange condemned the teaching of Semi-Pelagianism as heresy. Today, many churches are also advocating Semi-Pelagianism without being so conscious that this teaching had been branded as heretical, just like Pelagianism was also considered a heresy.
To the Reformers, the crucial question was not simply, whether God justifies sinners without works of law. It was the broader question, whether sinners are wholly helpless in their sin, and whether God is to be thought of as saving them by free, unconditional, invincible grace, not only justifying them for Christ’s sake when they come to faith, but also raising them from the death of sin by His quickening Spirit in order to bring them to faith. Here was the crucial issue: whether God is the author, not merely of justification, but also of faith; whether, in the last analysis, Christianity is a religion of utter reliance on God for salvation and all things necessary toi t, or of self-reliance and self-effort.
In 1610, the followers of Jacob Arminius, a Dutch seminary professor drew up five articles of faith based on his teachings. His followers, the Arminians, were actually rehashing the views of Pelagius and Cassian, teachings that had been decreed to be heresies. A national synod was called to meet in Dort for the purpose of examining the views of Arminians in the light of Scripture. The synod unanimously rejected the teachings of Arminius as being contrary to the Word of God. The members were convinced, however, that a mere rejection was not sufficient. So they developed a biblical response in five chapters that we know today as the “five points of Calvinism”. “Calvinism” has been called a synonym for biblical Christianity. Paul was a Calvinist, Augustine was a Calvinist, and Luther was a Calvinist.
For many years, Calvinistic doctrine was the dominant position among Protestants. In fact, the denominations and groups that were represented in the founding of the United States – Episcopalians, Puritans, Pilgrims, Presbyterians, and Baptists – were all Calvinistic or Reformed in their doctrine.
Today, things are substantially different. The doctrine of the Arminians have gained wide acceptance in the modern church. In fact, they are seldom questioned in our day; those who hold the Calvinistic doctrines of the BIble are in the minority – yet the latter were considered as biblical Christians and the former were declared as ‘heretics’. What took place in the history of the church and the various declarations in the councils and synods are now almost completely forgotten. Churches which commemorate Reformation also may not be aware of the many ‘battles’ that had gone by in the fight to preserve the true doctrines of the Apostles and the Church in yesteryears.
Any system of doctrine that attempts in the slightest degree to be faithful to Scriptures will be difficult to understand. The things of God are deep, challenging matters that require concerned mental labour to master. It is true that the essentials of the gospel are within reach of those who are very young but as the author of Hebrews points out, “everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice’ (Heb. 5:13-14a). In other words, there is much to the Scriptures and the Christian faith beyond what immediately meets the eye, and it is not easy to get at it – “constant practice” is necessary to move from the “unskilled” state to that of “mature” and “trained.”
Calvinism is certainly no easy system to master. But in addition to being difficult to understand, Calvinism is often the subject of grave misunderstanding simply because it is so counterintuitive and countercultural. George Whitfield, the evangelist of the Great Awakening, once declared, “We are all Arminians by nature.” Simply put, the tenets of Arminianism taste sweeter to our sinful human natures than those of other doctrinal systems.
For instance, Calvinism believes in both God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility, while Arminians say that because God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility appear contradictory, only one can be right. They chose the one that seems logical from man’s perspective – human free choice.
However, reformed theology or Calvinism advocates that man still has freedom of choice in matters apart from those that concern his salvation; as far as his salvation is concerned, he can only be saved by grace – he is spiritually dead in this matter, not just ‘sick’ and he is not able to save himself even in exerting his will and choice. Only God can make him spiritually alive. Our works contribute nothing to our salvation. The work of redemption was accomplished by Christ alone. However, Calvinism also teaches that Scriptures ‘commands’ us to do good works, not to earn our salvation, but as a result of our salvation. Many Scriptural passages make it clear that God expects good works to mark the lives of His redeemed people. There are other ‘dilemmas’ of Calvinism raised by those who advocate another doctrinal system, but they can all be adequately clarified with closer examination and study; however, this can be too extensive to be addressed here.
But perhaps it is helpful to highlight the following:
Calvinism (reformed theology) holds that “God’s choice of certain individuals unto salvation before the foundation of the world rested solely in His own sovereign will. His choice of particular sinners was not based on any foreseen response or obedience on their part. On the contrary, God gives faith and repentance to each individual whom He selected. These acts are the result, not the cause, of God’s choice…God’s choice of the sinner, not the sinner’s choice of Christ, is the ultimate cause of salvation.”
But Arminianism teaches that “God’s choice of certain individuals for salvation before the foundation of the world was based upon His foreseeing that they would respond to His call. He selected only those whom He knew would of themselves freely believe the gospel. Election, therefore, was determined by conditioned on what man would do. The faith which God foresaw and upon which He based His choice was not given to the sinner by God…but resulted solely from man’s will…The sinner’s choice of Christ is the ultimate cause of salvation.”
Thus, the Arminian believes that God’s choice is based on man’s action. The Calvinist, on the other hand, believes that God’s choice is based on His divine will. We need to ask the question: What kind of a God we want to believe in – a God who is in control of everything or one who is at the mercy of man and his decision?
Personally, I find reformed theology results in my truly worshipping God with awe; it gives me a great sense of gratefulness and humble adoration when I realise that God chose me not because I chose Him or because I am worthy to be chosen, but rather that He chose me and other believers before the foundation of the world not because we are worthy – Christ died for us even when we were enemies of the cross. Not only is there no room to boast – there is the deep realisation that I no longer belong to myself but that I should live for Him who died for me and rose again. I have no right to complain or murmur; like the saints of old who possess many weaknesses and spiritual failures (including Abraham, king David, and others), we can only be ever so thankful that God accepts us and receives us into His family!
EXPECT OPPOSITION, PERSECUTION IN THE LAST DAYS
As we survey the display of the rise of immorality, conflicts, hate, and anti-movements against God and Christianity, we may wonder what is really happening, if we are not familiar with what has been disclosed by the Spirit in the Scriptures.
Christianity is up against something sterner than the mere fickleness of taste. We see this in the Ministry of Christ Himself. At first it is welcome to all who have no special reason for opposing it: at that stage, he who is not against it if for it. What men notice is its difference from those aspects of the world which they already dislike. But later on, as the real meaning of the Christian claim becomes apparent, its demand for total surrender, the sheer chasm between Nature and Supernature, men are increasingly ‘offended’. Dislike, terror, and finally hatred succeed: none who will not give it what it asks can endure it: all who are not with it are against it. Then the real opposition would begin; we see how the people who first regarded Jesus positively ended up with those who hated Him and they cooperated with the Roman authorities to send Him to the cross. Jesus Himself warned His disciples to expect opposition and persecution..
“But mark this: there will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving,slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God – having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.” (2 Timothy 3:1-5 TNIV)
In contrast, the faith once given to the saints is good, beautiful and true; God Himself is the source of all goodness, beauty, and truth, and correlatively, because human beings, having been made in God’s image, naturally want to share in those divine attributes. All of us, whether Christian or non-Christian, find in ourselves the urge to be happy, attractive, and right – the very existence of this urge reveals how God meets us before we meet Him. He is our Beginning and our End.
But the severe negative characteristics of unbelievers in the last days in 2 Tim. are opposite to the urge recorded above. There is the enemy, Satan, the devil, who has been defeated by Christ, but has not given up the fight and the desire to destroy all that belongs to God, and God’s people. Hence, in the last days, before the second advent of the Lord Jesus, we are to expect ‘things will get worse” progressively and many will be deceived by the enemy, and even so-called believers will compromise.
But victory has already been won; the battles will continue until the final battle when all that is evil and belongs to the devil would be eliminated and destroyed.
“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives inHim, rooted and built up in HIm, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” (Col. 2:6-7)
OUR GOD IS A SPEAKING GOD – ARE WE LISTENING?
The Bible makes it clear that God chose to speak to HIs human creatures in their own language – it is through His mercy and grace that He reveals Himself and His purposes to us in the written Word, and through His Son. In the past, God did speak through His prophets, but today, God is still speaking. If God speaks, are we listening; since He speaks, we must listen?
In Deuteronomy 30:20: “..love the Lord your God, listen to his voice.” In Psalm 95:7, we read, “Today, Oh that ye would hear his voice!” The Lord God kept referring to Israel’s ‘stubbornness’ of heart – it was precisely because they ‘refuse to listen to my words’. Although Israel was called to be a distinct people of God; God has spoken to her and called her. Yet she neither listened nor responded. The result was judgment.
So God told them that when He called, they did not listen; so when they called, He would not listen. So then God sent His Son, saying, “They will listen to my Son,’ but they killed Him instead.
Today God still speaks, although there is some disagreement in the church as to how He does so. Personally, I do not believe that He speaks to us directly and audibly, as He did for example to Abraaham, to the boy Samuel or to Saul of Tarsus. Does He address us ‘face to face’ like He did with Moses? The relationship which God had with Moses is specifically said to have been unique, and we should not claim that God addresses us ‘face to face’. But we are told that the Christ’s sheep know the Good Shepherd’s voice and follow Him, for this is essential for our discipleship, but we are not promised that His voice will be audible.
What about indirect utterances of God through prophets? We should reject any claim that there are prophets comparable to the biblical prophets. For they were the ‘mouth’ of God, special organs of revelation, whose teaching belongs to the foundation on which the church is built. However, there may be a prophetic gift of a secondary kind, as when God gives some people special insight into His Word and His will. But we should not ascribe infallibility to such communications. We should instead evaluate both the character and the message of those who claim to speak from God.
The main and principal way in which God speaks to us today is through Scripture, as the church in every generation has recognized. One of the special ministries of the Holy Spirit is to make God’s written Word ‘living and active’ and ‘sharper than any two-edged sword. So we must not separate the Word from the Spirit or the Spirit from the Word, for the simple reason that the Word of God is ‘the sword of the Spirit’ (as shared in ‘spiritual warfare’ previously). The chief weapon the Spirit uses to accomplish His purpose for His people’ lives is the written Word of God. Scripture can either be read or listened to and what it says is what God says through it.
And God calls us to listen to what through Scripture ‘the Spirit says to the churches (Rev. 2:7). The non-communication between God and the churches is not because God is either dead or silent; it is because we are not listening – we have stopped listening to God! We come close to God but our ‘hearts’ are far away; we hear and hear and we do not listen – the words ‘fell’ on our ears and then are taken away or forgotten.
Jesus spoke on the parable of the Sower and His disciples asked Him to explain the meaning of the parable: “This is the meaning of the parable: the seed is the word of God. Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear,but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.
Notice the different ways the listening to the Word of God can result in unfruitfulness and ‘disaster’. The first is when the devil took away the word from the heart (as in spiritual warfare) – the hearing was there but the word did not go on from the mind to the heart, and when it did, it was quickly taken away and it dissipated. The second was because there was no root; although the initial hearing was accompanied with joy, it did not last, because when testing came along, there was no deep root to keep the ‘plant intact’ and it fell away.
The third was because the plant was choked by weeds and thorns depicting the worries, riches and pleasures of this world. Notice that both in the second and third, the devil may be deeply involved, preventing the foundation to be ‘built’ and choking the plant with thorns using the influence and attractions of the world. Only the fourth seed (those with a noble and good heart) ‘flourishes’ but only because the word heard is retained and there is perseverance and endurance until the crop emerges.
There is no root, no retaining of what was heard, no perseverance and there is no fruit because the line of communication between the believers and God was broken. Instead, we listen to the enemy who persuaded us to leave what was heard; we do not take time to take root downwards so that we can bear fruit upwards (we have stopped spending time with in God in prayer and bible reading and when we do, it is more a routine than a reality; we come for worship service for the wrong reason, not so much to commune with God and to listen with the intent to obey..and so on).
But for some who did a little better, with the passing of time, the worries of this life, the riches and pleasures the devil dangles in front of our eyes become more prominent and attractive, and slowly but surely, we are drawn in, and the plant is invariably ‘choked by the thorns’.
What is obvious is that our listening to God with our hearts and minds will determine the outcome of our spiritual lives, and for some, even our eternal destiny.
God is speaking – are we listening??
THE ESSENCE AND CENTRALITY OF CHRISTIANITY IS CHRIST
Many think that the essence of Christianity is either believing the creed or living an upright life or going to church, all of which are of course important, but we miss the centrality of Christ. If we miss this, we, as individual Christian, and as a church, lose sight of the fact that Christianity is Christ – knowing Him, gaining Him, and trusting Him.
The apostle Paul was one, who, in his epistles, continually focused on this fact. He wrote: “For to me, to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). To the Corinthian church, he said, “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1Cor. 2:2).
“For in Christ the fulness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fulness. He is the head over every power and authority” (Col. 2:9-10). “My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:2-3).
In Philippians 3, Paul draws up a kind of profit-and-loss account. On one side of the ledger, he puts everything that he can think of that can be considered profitable – his ancestry, his parentage, his education, his Hebrew culture and background, his religious zeal and legalistic righteousness etc. In the other column he writes just one word only – Christ. Then Paul makes a careful calculation and concludes: “I count everything sheer loss, far outweighed by the gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (3:8).
To Paul, knowing Christ, having a personal relationship with HIm; it is worth losing all things he previously considered valuable and now looks upon as rubbish; the focus is now gaining Christ (a treasure that is far more valuable than anything else the world can offer).
Being a Pharisee before his conversion, Paul now knows that to establish his own righteousness by obeying the law is impossible. In Christ, who died on the cross as a substitute for him and his sins, and following this great exchange – the imputation of His righteousness to him and laying of all his sins on Him, he has received righteousness as a gift from Christ who died for us, if we trust in HIm (Gal. 2:20).
So for salvation we are those who, like Paul, glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in ourselves. Indeed, Christianity is Christ, knowing Him, gaining Him, and trusting HIm. And in this interim period on earth, we can truly declare that our hope is in Christ.
If this is true, as Christians, we cannot settle into boredom with Jesus or become apathetic with Jesus (like the church in Laodicea which was neither ‘hot’ or ‘cold’)
As a church, we may be satisfied with church, but become bored with Christ. We may enjoy going to church, listening to the sermon, singing our favourite songs, participating in small groups, being involved in many activities. Someone rightly said that growing apathetic toward Christ and not apathetic about ministry or church; interested in other spiritual things than in Jesus Himself is a dangerous thing! Not only do we become bored, we lose all hope and become spiritually depressed, lonely, fearful, and without any confidence in our faith.
Paul reminds us that everything is about Jesus. It is entirely possible for a church to have a healthy budget, dynamic worship, relevant preaching, an apparently thriving ministry (like the church in Ephesus in Revelations 2), and still be in danger of falling in its primary mission and being rebuked by God. Paul, in writing to the Colossian believers, reminded them of the preeminence of Christ and if Christ is not at the centre of our church and our Christianity, we have ‘lost everything’ that is so essential in our being ‘children of God’ and being God’s people. We lose sight of what God declares, “You shall be my people and I shall be your God”. As a church, we just degenerate into an organisation; we need to ‘invent’ new activities to deal with our boredom, our insecurity, our lack of reality in our Christianity. As individual Christians, we just go through life having the name that we are believers, but there is no essential difference between us and the people of the world.
THANKSGIVINGS AND GRATITUDE LEAD TO PRAISE AND WORSHIP
More than anything else that leads to praise and worship of God is the great gratitude that must come about in receiving God’s great mercy, grace, and love.
We need to ask, “Is there genuine enduring gratitude in our hearts as believers for all God’s giving – gratitude for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of the life, but above all, for the inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace and for the hope of glory?
Love (agape) has a purpose of making the loved one great. We learn this from the revelation of God’s love in Christ, the love that saves. As love to sinners who deserve hell, it is His mercy; as a purpose of raising us from spiritual poverty to the dignity of being forgiven and restored, as being accepted and adopted into God’s family, it was and is very costly – not to us, but to God Himself.
The measure of love is its giving. The measure of God’s love is the cross of Christ, where the Father gave the Son to die so that the spiritually dead might have life.
If there is constant thanksgivings and gratitude toward God in our hearts and lives as believers, can there be room for murmurings, complaints and unhappiness toward the great Almighty? If there is consistent complaints and bitterness in our lives, think again – in all probability, we have not appreciated God’s love, mercy and grace towards us who are wretched and undeserving. Repent, before we lose the intimate relationship that is possible in our walk with the Triune God.
WE MUST KEEP ON GOING, AND FINISH THE RACE
Some time back, I shared reflections on Hebrews, printed in a book which has the title “No turning back” (also on the website “livinginthelastdays.com”). Recently, on meditating again on ‘Hebrews’, I began to realise more fully that there is a need to look at this book, not on ‘no turning back’, but on ‘keeping on going, and finishing the race’.
Why this fresh realisation? Firstly, as I meditate on Scriptures and also consider the happenings in our contemporary world, coupled with the study on ‘Revelation’, there is the increasing awareness that circumstances are developing such that it would make it very difficult for Christians to keep on going until the race is done.
My wife and I are in our mid-seventies; we know that we may be nearer than we think regarding completing our pilgrimage here on earth. As I think back, many of my colleagues and Christian leaders who have influenced me positively in my Christian life are no longer walking with the Lord today; some because of major disappointments in life like illnesses; some because of deep ‘hurt’ from fellow believers and church; some because they felt God had ‘abandoned’ them; and so on.
This may also explain why I shared in some details on “spiritual warfare”, “Christ Jesus is our hope”, “The essence and centrality of Christianity is Christ”, “The need for deep gratitude and thanksgivings toward God” – all these have a bearing on what I am sharing today. I am asking for your patience in considering what I am sharing, for I am fully aware that the time for departure for me may be sooner than anticipated; and I may not have the opportunity to put this in writing for all the dear brethren.
Someone rightly said, “The Christian life is like riding a bicycle; if you do not keep on paddling you will eventually fall off.” How true! If we do not keep on going, we will be side-tracked and will not be at the finishing line. This is one of the sadnesses in Christian ministry – those in whom we invest ourselves in are no longer walking beside us and Christ.
Hebrews is all about persevering in sanctification – without holiness, writes the author, ‘no one will see the Lord.’ Strong language was used in this book; the Christians were facing hardship and opposition and they therefore needed to pay careful attention to the gospel, to digest what they had heard, so that they would not drift away.
This applies to us today, more so for believers in situations where they face intense persecution, and perhaps for us in the near future in these last days (as revealed in the book of Revelation). Drifting is the easiest thing in the world; it is swimming against the tide that requires effort, and the Christian life is against the tide all the way. Spiritual weariness, being ‘sluggish’, is one of our great enemies (manipulated by the devil in spiritual warfare).
The battle to be holy is fierce, the conflict is long, the opposition is strong, and the obstacles are many (hence we need to put on the ‘whole armour’ of God and pray without ceasing). Even those who have won great victories in the past can become weary. Spiritual lethargy can set in, and we begin to drift, and we may not even be aware how far we have drifted away from the focus and route given to us by the Lord. Sometimes pilgrimage on earth can seem a lot harder than bondag4. The Exodus generation in the OT had experienced the power of God and tasted His blessing. But there were cucumbers and melons in Egypt; in the wilderness there were only manna and quails.
Remember, true believers do not shrink back and go back to ‘Egypt’; they believe and persevere. They press on into the future and arrive at the fullness of salvation – just like the great heroes of the faith in the past (see some of them in Hebrews 11). They looked forward to possessing what they had not yet fully experienced. Real faith always has this characteristic.
The author of Hebrews compares the Christian life to a race, like a long distance race like the marathon. We face various hindrances and obstacles in this race; we are to ‘lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely’ (Hebrews 10:35-36, 39). Excess luggage is never a good thing in a long distance race. The point is that many things that are appropriate and legitimate can become hindrances if you are planning to run a race – we need to put them aside (remember the parable of the sower).
Holiness is unreserved devotion to the Lord; it means belonging entirely to Him. This inevitably produces a certain detachment from the world; it no longer clings to us with its worldly ‘superglue’, as one writer puts it. If we hold resolutely to Christ our Lord our grip on His gifts in creation will have only secondary strength (recall the song “Turn your eyes upon Jesus”). Our spiritual gifts, no matter how great, do not in themselves guarantee perseverance. In godly detachment, there is freedom to run the race; we also need to deal with the ‘sin which clings so closely’.
We must know our ‘sinful self.’ We also need to know the ways in which Satan trips us up (refer sharings on ‘The Christian and spiritual warfare’). Know what our sinful weaknesses are – identify the ‘chinks’ in our armour – know our particular temptations. Only then can we apply the appropriate and specific antidote provided in Christ to enable us to overcome indwelling sin, to persevere and to grow.
Be conscious of what we are by nature, but also who and what we have become in Christ. For we must never lose sight of what we are in Christ when we are reflecting on what we are in ourselves. The Christian is one and the same time righteous in Christ and yet a sinner in himself or herself. It is true that we are no longer what we once were; but neither are we what one day we shall be. As the mirror of God’s word is put into our hands, we will frequently discover what we are really like in the eyes of God.
Sin may have lost its dominion over us, but it retains its power in us. The price of victory is constant vigilance (like the soldier in spiritual warfare). Yes, there is grace to cover all our sins, but that grace leads us to mortify (put to death) sin, not to tolerate it.
Those who experience the grace of God in justification want to experience His grace in sanctification also. That involves strenuous activity on our part; many NT imperatives make this very clear (we do not drift into holiness). Scripture makes it clear that without holiness we will never see the Lord. Never! We are to bring to bear on indwelling sin all the force of the word of God; we are to let affectionate love for the Lord expel affection for sin.
Jesus is the object of the faith of the Old Testament saints – they looked to His coming. We, in the New Testament era, look back to Jesus and His completed mission on the cross as our object of faith.
Jesus is the One who perfectly exercised and exemplified persevering faith. He is both Pioneer and Perfecter (the recurring theme in Hebrews) of our faith. He encourages us but He also sustains us. He HImself persevered to the end. He is well able to help us to persevere to the end (He runs alongside us and He is also waiting for us at the finishing line). But we must keep our eyes fixed on Him! Otherwise, we will grow weary and lose heart. Our endurance depends on His endurance – He endured all that we have to endure and more. Never lose sight of Him. He is well able to keep you and me going.
BE RIGHT AND PERSIST
Christian maturity (i.e. holiness-full-grown), is what God desires for each of His children; it is the product and promised end of endurance (recall ‘We must keep on going’). Endurance is both passive (patience) and active (perseverance).
Patience is the passive mode of endurance whereby pain, grief, suffering and disappointment are handled without inner collapse, and it is one facet of the fruit of the spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). Patience does not come to us as a natural endowment; it is a supernatural gift, a grace of character that God imparts to those whom He is transforming into the likeness of Christ.
Each aspect of the fruit of the Holy Spirit is a matter of divine command as well as a divine gift (hence consistent and persistent obedience to God is needful). Each is a habit of reaction that is seen in situations where humanly speaking, a different reaction would have been expected ( for instance, anger and reaction instead of quietly resting in God). Thus, love shines brightest when exercised for Jesus’ sake toward the unlovely and seemingly unlovable; joy when sure of God’s sovereign providence, we stay calm instead of panicking or getting frazzled and flustered.
Similarly, patient endurance is most apparent when we stand steady under pain and pressure instead of cutting and running or crumbling and collapsing. But hanging tough in this way is a habit that takes some learning, especially in these last days, when we encounter persecution from various ones, disappointment and betrayal from loved ones and even fellow believers. To endure in this Chritian way and to continue to keep on going to finish the Christian race is no casual agenda; in fact, many just ‘give in’ and ‘give up’, no longer following the Lord Jesus, and turning away from the church and the faith in sorrow and bitterness.
The fact is that many of us have hardly begun to tackle it yet, particularly for those who think that their Christian life has just been a ‘breeze’ so far, and wonder why fellow Christians are complaining of suffering, sadness as they encounter various trials and ‘tribulation’.
Integral to our holiness and maturity and our Christlikeness, however, is this habit of enduring, forming this habit, and making sure we never lose it – it is a necessary discipline for those who are in Christ.
Take the example of loving fellow Christians and fellowship in the church. When we are in Christ, it is natural for us to focus on what we have in common, and especially on the fact that Christ indwells each of us. If this is so, should we not love our fellow believers and brethren?
However, we may say, ‘Not all Christians are equally easy to love!’ Perhaps, it is more accurate to say that not all Christians are equally easy to like. But the sanctification of our relationship is not a matter of liking; it is a matter of loving. We may like other Christians because of what they are in themselves (and perhaps they are like us). However, we come to love our fellow believers not because of what they are in themselves but because of what Christ is in them and to them and because of what they have become and will become in Christ (and how easily we forget that we are also in the same situation and ‘boat’). If the Lord Jesus is prepared to live in them (and in us as well) with love, should we not be prepared to live with them in love too? Ponder over this: many problems in Christian relationships and in the church are because we do not see this truth clearly and we look at our brethren with critical and judgmental ‘eyes’ and forget how we look like in the eyes of God!
If we resolve this practically and experientially, we would be able to keep on going despite the many ‘hurts’ and disappointments in relationships and in the church, and together with those we find difficulty with, we can together keep on running and finish the race in Christ.
REAL STRENGTH COMES FROM REAL DEPENDENCE ON GOD
Many of us, including children from Sunday School, are familiar with the individual named Samson. We know him as one whose birth was accompanied by an angel’s declaration to his parents that he was to be a Nazirite; he was to keep himself for God as a Nazirite, and the keeping of his long hair and his abstinence from wine and unclean food were part of the instructions for his life, for he would be a deliverer for God’s people. Samson was born in the time of the Judges; it was a time of spiritual declension, with people doing what ‘they think were right in their own eyes’.
Samson was known to many (including the enemies) as one with great strength and he commanded fear in the army of the oppressors.
In Judges16, Samson was in a deplorable state; his strength was gone when he was betrayed by Delilah; he was blinded, and the Philistines were making ‘sport of him’ and ridiculing him. In that context, Samson prayed, ” O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this time, O God” (Judges 16:28).
And we know that God did answer his prayer and in his death, he killed more of the nation’s enemy than in his lifetime.
There is an important lesson here for all of us believers:
God in His mercy may have to deal with us eventually as He dealt with Samson. The strength God had given Samson seemed gone forever; his usefulness seemed gone as well. In the goodness of God, Samson recovered enough strength for the final act of his life.
God may have to weaken us and bring us down at the points where we thought we were strong in order that we may become truly strong in real dependence on Him. He has done it before for many of His servants and He may have to do it again with us. And the passive mode of endurance (Patience) and the active mode of endurance (Perseverance) are ‘operational’ during times of distress and weakness, when we feel we are no longer useful to God and His plan, and we feel so weak and ‘useless’. When, during such times, God intervenes in our lives, there will be mercy in it; it will be God working to make some sense out of the broken lives that have reached the point when it seems nothing good can come out from them anymore.
Our real strength and enabling come from true dependence on God and His provisions; they come when we realise that the glory belongs to Him and that apart from Him, we can do nothing that is valuable eternally.
The story of Samson also illustrates the kindness and goodness of God – He uses flawed people and He does it despite the flaws in our lives, if we repent and turn to Him in humility and sincerity. No matter how conscious we are of our shortcomings, limitations, and sins, we may look to God to make use of us again – and in HIs great mercy, He will.
We must get our lives right again and in a shape that will glorify Him; that is not easy. Hence the sharing of “We must keep going to finish the race” and ‘We must endure, be right and persist” on the path to the finishing line.
That means fighting sins, disciplining our thoughts, changing our attitudes, and critiquing our desires in a way that Samson did not try to do in his early life. Then we would find that our God is a God of great patience and great grace!!
WHY WE ARE TO GLORY IN THE CROSS OF CHRIST?
Often, as believers, we come across this term, “We are to glory in the Cross of Christ”. But what does it truly mean? Our understanding of this would help us to understand 1) Our acceptance with God (which includes Justification by faith); 2) Our daily discipleship; 3) Our mission and message; as individual believers and as a church.
In fact, the four Gospels, rightly understood and applied, centre on this term. The whole plan of God’s salvation focuses on this; and when we say or sing that ‘Our hope is in Jesus’, it actually means this in its entirety.
“God forbid that I should boast of anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world is crucified to me and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14).
‘To boast in’ can be translated ‘to glory in’, ‘to pride in’, ‘to live for’.
The cross of Christ was the centre of Paul’s faith, of his life, and of his ministry; it should also be the centre of ours. Why so? Because the Christian faith is the faith of Christ crucified; in this faith we were baptised; and in this faith, we are called to live, to serve, and to die.
Of course, we must never separate the crucifixion from the incarnation and the resurrection of Jesus. His death would have had no efficacy if it had not been preceded by his unique birth and followed by his unique resurrection (see this in the four Gospels). Only the God-man could die for our sins, and only the resurrection could validate His death – hence although none is effective without the others, it is the death which is central – for the birth looks forward to it and prepares for it, while the resurrection looks back to it and validates it.
1) OUR ACCEPTANCE WITH GOD
First, we glory in the cross for our acceptance with God. Indeed, there is no other way of acceptance with Him. A well known NT scholar once asked, “How can I, a lost and guilty sinner, stand before a just and holy God?” This is perhaps one of the most important questions which confront human beings. We can never enter the holy presence of God either in this life or in the next, in the rags of our own ‘righteousness’ and ‘morality’; in fact we are unfit even to approach Him.
To make light of sin is inevitably to make light of salvation and so of the cross. To deny the just judgment of God is a characteristic of false prophets, ‘who say “peace, peace” when there is no peace’. They are like bad builders whose remedy for a flimsy wall about to collapse is to apply a coat of whitewash. Sin is the desire for the independence of man from God; in the last resort, it is the denial of the Lord God, and the proclamation of self-sovereignty.
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, or it is written: Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” (Gal. 3:13) This startling statement declares that the only way by which we can be redeemed from the curse of the law (i.e. from the judgment which God’s law pronounces on those who disobey it) is that Christ bore it in our place; that He became a curse instead of us; that He endured in HIs own innocent person the condemnation we had deserved.
In spite of our human depravity and what we are, God loves us. He proved HIs own unique love for us in that, while we were sinful, ungodly, helpless and even enemies of God, Christ died for us (Rom.5:6-10). The salvation won by the cross is richly illustrated by justification.
Five aspects of justification:
First, we are justified by His grace (Rom. 3:24) – His grace is His free and spontaneous love, undeserved, undesired and unsolicited.
Secondly, the ground of our justification – we have been ‘justified by His blood (Rom. 5:9), on account of His sacrificial death.
Thirdly, the sphere – we are ‘justified inChrist’ (Gal. 2:17) – this means we are justified only when we are united to Christ, and when we are united to Christ we are part of His new community and committed to living a new life.
Fourthly, we are ‘justified by faith’. We are indeed justified by God’s grace and by Christ’s blood, but only through faith. Faith has no function but to receive what grace freely offers. Faith is nothing but the hand which takes the gift, the eye which beholds the giver, and the mouth which drinks the water of life.
Fifthly, its fruit. We are saved unto good works (Eph. 2:8-10). Justification is not by works but unto good works; salvation is through faith, but faith works through love (Gal.5:6).
We need to understand the fundamental differences between justification and sanctification; otherwise we may be confused in our outworking of our Christian life:
First, justification is God’s judicial verdict, declaring a sinner righteous; sanctification is His moral activity, making a sinner righteous.
Secondly, God justifies sinners through the death of His Son, but sanctifies them through the regeneration and indwelling of His Holy Spirit.
Thirdly, justification is instantaneous. It takes place immediately God pronounces the sinner righteous. Sanctification, however, is gradual. It begins the moment we are justified, but then it grows as the Holy Spirit transforms us into the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18).
Fourthly, justification is complete. It has no degrees. We shall not be more justified on the day of our death than we were on the day of our conversion. Sanctification, however, is incomplete; it continues throughout our life on earth and will be complete when Christ appears. Only then ‘we shall b e like Him, for we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2).
Fiftly, justification is by faith only without works. It is entirely the work of Christ. But sanctification is by faith and works. In addition to trusting God, we are told to watch and pray, to sanctify and purify ourselves.
2)OUR DAILY DISCIPLESHIP
It is clear that we glory in the cross not only for our acceptance with God, but also for our daily discipleship – for the cross is the way of holiness as well as the way of forgiveness. In Galatians 6:14, although Paul mentions only one cross, he refers to three crucifixions on it. First – the crucifixion of Jesus; secondly – ‘the world has been crucified to me’; thirdly, ‘I have been crucified to the world. Hence, Jesus Christ, the godless world, and we ourselves have all been crucified on the same cross.
Cross-bearing and crucifixion were Jesus’ dramatic images of self-denial (Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him). These come into direct collision with the human potential movement with its teaching on self-esteem, self-actualization and every form of self-centredness. To be sure, Jesus did teach that his followers would find themselves and fulfil themselves. But Jesus added that the only road to self-discovery is self-denial, the only way to find ourselves is to lose ourselves, and the only way to live is to die to our own self-centredness. This teaching is especially important today, because the church has a constant tendency to trivialize Christian discipleship. People think of it as if it means nothing more than becoming a bit religious, and adding a thin layer of piety to an otherwise secular life. Then if we scratch the surface, we find underneath it the same old pagan – nothing fundamental has changed.
But this ought not to be so! Becoming and being a Christian involves a change so radical that no imagery can do it justice but death and resurrection with Christ, namely dying to the old self of self-indulgence and self-will, and rising to a new life of self-control and self-giving, in which the world has been crucified to us and we have been crucified to the world.
3)OUR MISSION AND MESSAGE
The Christian church is called to mission, but there can be no mission without a message. Our message focuses on the cross, on the wonderful truth of a God who loves us, and who gave Himself for us in Christ on the cross.
But the preaching of the cross is a stumbling-block to human pride. It undermines our self-righteousness. It insists we cannot achieve our salvation by anything that we do – indeed, we cannot even contribute to it. Salvation is totally a non-contributory gift – we find the cross humiliating as it strips us naked
and declares us bankrupt before God.
When we preach our gospel message, we cannot flatter people and tell them what they want to hear, that they are fine people and can win salvation by their own effort. We need to tell them the truth which they do not want to hear, about sin, guilt, judgment and the cross – either we become unpopular or we remain faithful to our message.
We human beings are born boasters; we need to glory in something in order to inflate our ego. So we boast of our education, our possessions, our success, our reputation, even our piety.
But there is only one alternative before us. Either we glory in ourselves and in our own achievements, or we glory in Christ and in His achievement on the cross. For true believers, there is no possibility of compromise. We glory only in the cross!!