FAITH, LOVE, AND HOPE, AS WE AWAIT THE DAY OF THE LORD

FAITH, LOVE, AND HOPE, AS WE AWAIT THE DAY OF THE LORD

The church in Thessalonica was a relatively young church, but she excelled in its testimony in the midst of persecution such that all those in the region heard about its true faith and perseverance in the midst of much opposition, how they turned away from idols and served the living Lord.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Paul wrote to them about the day of the Lord, the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. There seemed to be some ‘confusion’ regarding the Parousia; there were some who claimed that the second coming had already taken place; and there was concern as to what happened to those who already have passed away.

In the above passage, Paul started off by telling the Thessalonian Christians that the second coming of the Lord Jesus would come unexpectedly like a “thief in the night’. In 2 Thessalonians, Paul would address the coming of antichrist and what followed before the second coming, but at this point in 1 Thessalonians 5, the focus is on the relationship between belief and behaviour.

He began by telling the believers that they are not in darkness but in the light as they are sons of light and sons of the day. Therefore, they are not to behave like others who are spiritually asleep but ought to be alert and self-controlled as they await the parousia.

Paul then went on to tell them to put on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet as those who are in the light, as contrasted with those who are asleep and drunk, having no idea of the imminence of the ‘burglar’.
Two practical attitudes are called for: Those waiting for Jesus must mean living disciplined lives. It means actively expecting his return, not getting sidetracked into endless discussions about the identity of the man of lawlessness (antichrist) and whether he has appeared, but wanting to be found faithful to our Lord and King, so that we get on with the business of a faith that works, a love that labours, and a hope that perseveres. Then at his coming, we shall not be ashamed, not caught out. This is how we demonstrate that we have a real hope in his coming and that we live these days in the light of that day.

It is totally uncharacteristic of people who acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus, for him to caoms as their King from heaven and find them completely unready. How can they claim to be his citizens? How can they claim to believe his Word? It is a matter of complete contradiction. That is why we are to take seriously the exhortations to be alert and self-controlled. And that is why we need to show we believe in the second coming by working out the practical implications of verse 8 of 1 Thessalonians 5 – putting on faith and love as a breastplate and the hope of salvation as a helmet. It would be no good going around proclaiming that our KIng is coming if our lives deny this assertion. It is no good having endless advent testimony meetings if we are not living holy lives. Being sober and self-controlled actually means faith, love, and hope – faith that works, love that labours, and hope that perseveres.
If believers are going to be ready for the day of the Lord and properly equipped when the KIng comes, then the breastplate and helmet that we wear as ‘soldiers of the Lord’ have got to be put on first. They have been put on when we became Christans, and we have got to keep ourselves fully armed ‘more and more’. We are already wearing that breastplate; we do trust him, we do love him. We already have the helmet of the hope of our salvation. We are waiting for Jesus who will rescue us from the coming wrath. This is how we keep ourselves ready. And although salvation is already being experienced in a measure, obviously the focus is strongly eschatological. We will experience salvation in its fullness on that day when he comes to bring in the fullness of his kingdom.
That is why we have to be watchful and self-controlled, and it is why he has given us the armour of faith and love and hope. We now know what lies at the end of the road. We know that the road divides into wrath and salvation, but it is not that Christians now are working hard in order to secure their salvation, as though their sanctification were the ground of their justification.
A mark of God having chosen you, the fact that you can have assurance that you will receive salvation, that you are appointed to that at the last day, is that now you are exhibiting faith, love and hope. Do so, ‘more and more’. We live together with him now in the knowledge that we shall be together with him for ever. Therefore encourage one another with these words (1 Thess. 4:17-18)

FAITH, LOVE, AND HOPE (B)

The faith that works is based on God’s intervention in Christ Jesus who comes on a great rescue mission and who procures our salvation through his death and resurrection. So Christian faith must have objective content; it has an objective correlative – there is a reality in time and space, in which it trusts and on which it stands.
Many people think that faith is just a process of trying to come to some sort of internal peace through a personal belief system, which can be any system and any belief. It is the sort of idea that said that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive – it is the idea that the journey is all important i.e. it is the experience of travelling that is the real significance. But apostle Paul is saying in 1 Thess. 1:3 : It is the destination that gives the journey any sort of significance at all. Faith must have an objective reality, or else it is merely wishful thinking.

The Love that labours is the relationship between God and his people, restored through Jesus Christ the Rescuer. It is expressed in the Church in the quality of relationships between those who have been rescued.

The Hope that perseveres is the expectation of the completion of that great work, when the Rescuer returns, as Lord and King to wind up human history, to bring in his everlasting kingdom, and to rescue us from the wrath that will be revealed (1 Thess.1:10).

Paul is not just pointing to the objective content alone as the evidence of spiritual reality. The content is absolutely vital and without it Christianity would not be Christianity, but simply to embrace that content intellectually, or even hold on to it tenaciously as a doctrinal position. What Paul remembers with thankfulness is the active proof, externally, of the inward reality. The work of faith, the labour of love, and the endurance of hope are the proofs of the reality!!

We must not get accustomed to the polarisation of dogma and experience, which is often expressed in an antipathy between head and heart, truth and love, even Word and Spirit. Both are needed if we are to have biblical assurance. God’s self-revelation in Scripture is not just propositional. It is that God’s revelation is non-negotiable – it is not just propositional, it is also relational. My faith is not just belief in a creed, it is trust in a person whose nature and activity the creed explains and describes. And that sort of faith – trust in a person – will always express itself in activity; every relationship does.
Similarly, love is experienced in relationship of a deeply personal kind with that person – the living God – and then with our neighbour. And that sort of love must always express itself. True love always does. It is not just a word, it must be expressed in activity, and in this context, the reality of our love for God and for our fellow human beings can be seen in the way we live.
Even our hope is personal – it is hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Our hope: Jesus is the end and goal of everything. This sort of hope perseveres and holds up under all sorts of trials and tests. So we must hold these modes of reality together in all our teaching and in all our assessment of Christian experience and living. Christian reality is a relationship with our God and Father, in and through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We cannot learn theology as we might learn arithmetic. It is about a relationship with God. The objective realities prove themselves to be genuine in the revolution of lifestyle that they produce, as nothing else can.
The mark of the true gospel is that it produces faith that works, love that labours, and hope that endures, and the mark of all spiritual reality is that it moves towards these goals. And this is what the Holy Spirit actually produces. If believers go on gladly receiving the word in spite of severe suffering that it will inevitably bring – that is the indisputable evidence of the Holy Spirit at work. This is the gospel lifestyle Paul identifies as real Christianity, a lifestyle that he noted in the young Christian church in Thessalonica. They go on welcoming the message and relaying it with joy which God gives them, in the midst of the severe suffering which the ministry inevitably causes. Th eHoly Spirit is at work in power when he brings joy to those believers to go on embracing, believing and living God’s word whatever the personal cost may be. This is the model of New Testament Christianity! How do we measure up to that in our church and lives today?
The thessalonian church is a model, a flagship church, because they have not only got the truth right, but their faith in that truth is demonstrated in their lifestyle.

BRINGING OUR FAITH TO ‘WORK’

We begin a study of ‘Bringing our faith to work’ with a break on the study of the gospel of Luke. This study has also been termed ‘The theology of work’, focusing on various aspects of how as believers we face crisis at work, our role as ‘ambassadors’ for Christ and so on.

As this may be a relevant topic to believers, may I take the liberty to share some personal observations as I went through the study notes prepared for our discussion at the group level.
The first question to my mind is whether we are studying the topic of ‘Work’ from a Systematic Theology point of view or from a Biblical Theological point of view?
From my understanding, Systematic theology examines what the Bible teaches about certain theological topics. It correlates what the whole Bible teaches, organizing it by topics or themes.
Biblical theology studies how the whole BIble progresses, integrates,and climaxes in Christ. It considers how God’s Word connects together and climaxes in Christ.
Practical theology then deals with the applications of the ‘truths’ we receive from the study, to everyday life, in dependence on God.

One may wonder why it is so necessary to make the distinction; to my mind, the applications must come forth from the right exegesis (the meaning the authors convey and its implications). Exegesis precedes application. We cannot apply a text well if we do not know what the author meant when he wrote it. First meaning, then significance. Knowing the meaning then means knowing how to apply. The meaning of Scripture is its application. In general, however, it may be helpful to think of exegesis and application as separate steps of the interpretive process; but sometimes they overlap, but it is still very important to recognise that Exegesis and Theology Control Application.

May I now go through how biblical theology and systematic theology come into play as we study “work”.

Biblical theology and Systematic theology in relation to ‘Work”

Scripture begins with the declaration that God, as Creator and triune Lord, is the sovereign ruler and King of the universe. The entire universe is God’s kingdom since he is presently Lord and King. From Genesis God is identified and introduced as the Lord who created the universe by his word, while he himself is uncreated, self-existent, self-suficient, and in need of nothing outside himself. Some may say that when God created, he was working and so work was his idea. But we need to acknowledge that God created something out of nothing, by his Word, and therefore his ‘creation’ is significantly different from our concept of work as applied to humans. Man cannot create something out of nothing; his apparent creation is using what God has already created.
In addition, God’s kingly work in creation is never presented as an end in itself, rather, it is the beginning of God’s eternal plan in time, which he now directs and governs toward a specific telos (goal). When God rested on the seventh day, he rested from his creation of the universe, it does not mean he stops working entirely – that would imply that he no longer works out his salvation plan for fallen mankind with the foreknowledge of the Fall. God resting on the seventh day is associated with the Sabbath; this points to the eternal REST which would come about in the consummation of God’s plan of salvation, although it does indicate the wisdom of the need for rest for man, but principally, the sabbath is a day to be devoted to remembering and worshipping the Lord God almighty, and not to be sidetracked by the task of work and activity.
Consider for yourself where biblical theology comes in and where systematic theology comes in thus far, in the above sharings on ‘work’.

When it comes to man being created in the image of God, man is thought to be God’s representative, given the mandate to rule or dominate the world, and by implication to work on behalf of God. The impression given is that man as God’s representative is to work for God, with a task given to him. But being created in the image of God also connotes that man can think, can interact with God, can love, can exercise his will, all these in a relationship – and all these also indicating that the Triune God does not need to make man to meet his ?’loneliness’ – the three Persons in trinity are in perfect harmony, joy and love; but God created men to love him and to be his God and men are to be his people collectively. As such man as God’ representative is to tend to the creation, and work is not a task, but an expression of the love relatlonship between God and man; work therefore is not to be seen as work from man’s perspective today. Thus the saying that man’s chief goal is to enjoy God and to worship him, not to specifically work for him, and this goal would be fully realised in the new heaven and new earth when redeemed man will share God’s glory and rule together with him (and this is not to be perceived as work as we know it today).

In the Old Testament, the promises, hopes, and expectations of the great antitype of Adam, the Messiah, are proclaimed and announced by the prophets. Through the prophets, God announces hope for the nation of Israel and for this poor, lost world (after the Fall). The prophets anticipate the coming of the Lord and Messiah, specifically associated with the Davidic king who will usher in God’s kingdom, making all things right and reversing the effects of the Fall, and to rule in a glorious and eternal kingdom. But what is crucial to note is that the coming of God’s kingdom will occur through the inauguration of the new covenant (and the new age) by the work of the Messiah, thus bringing to fulfillment all the previous covenants and prophecies (recall our study on the Gospel of Luke).
The kingdom does not primarily refer to a certain geographical location; it tells us more about God (the fact that he reigns) than about anything else. Even though, in Jesus, the kingdom is here, it is still not yet since it awaits the consummation in Christ’s return.
The ‘already and not yet’ tension’ is presented in a number of ways:
God has brought his saving reign and rule to this fallen world in Jesus Christ, as evidenced by the coming of the Holy Spirit and the miraculous signs accompanying the arrival of the Messiah. Even though the kingdom is now hers. Jesus still teaches us to pray, “Your kingdom come” and he speaks to his disciples of a future day when he will come “in his kingdom”, referring to his future fulfillment of the kingdom promise. The same is true of the coming of the Spirit. Because Jesus has come and has won victory in the cross, resurrection, and ascension, he has poured out the promised Spirit. However, the gift of the Spirit is the deposit and guarantee of our promised inheritance awaiting us in the future. The New Testament insists that what the Spirit gives is only a foretaste of far greater blessings to come; we have only the firstfruits – we look forward to the final consummation of the kIngdom of God, when we shall enjoy these blessings to the full.
On the flipside, at the cross, Jesus had defeated death and overcome the guilt of sin, and the power of sin; however the presence of sin is still in this fallen world. Indwelling sin, the negative spirit of the world, and the devil are still the enemies facing believers and although redemption has taken place for believers ‘already’, but it is still ‘not yet’. Christians are still living in a fallen world, and are righteous sinners (implying no moral perfection as yet).
If we follow what has been shared from Genesis to the Cross and thereafter in the ‘already and not yet’, we realise that Christians, living in the fallen world, should expect opposition, persecutions, and various crises in whatever context we are in, whether it be work, family, social interactions, and so on, and this also even when we behave in a manner that is pleasing to God. From the perspective of Biblical theology, we can look at faith and work in a realistic manner – Christians are to live as God’s people in a fallen world context, with unbelievers as colleagues, dominated by worldly values, and an environment rife with self-centreness, a seeking after pleasures and gratification without much respect for moral values; and in such a context, believers are to witness for Christ and share the gospel in words and deeds.
Systematic theology is valuable for its logical, systematic organisation. However, although it can enrich how we exegete a particular text, but it can also distort how we exegete the particular text. Exegesis is primarily inductive, and systematic theology is primarily deductive. Exegesis focuses on the details, and systematic theology focuses on the big picture, that is, exegesis focuses on the trees, and systematic theology focuses on the forests.
Systematic theology may cause us to be preoccupied with a system rather than the BIble, and that is just a step away from giving more weight to the system and letting it substitute for the Bible. Systematic theology tends to be a little further removed from the biblical text than does biblical theology. However, systematic theology can directly address contemporary issues in a way that exegesis and biblical theology cannot, but it can more easily overlook the text because it is further removed from it.
For instance, systematic theology on the topic faith and work may state that although work is God’s idea, work is now broken, but work has been redeemed. But biblical theology, instead of stating work is God’s idea, may present work as an activity by man in serving God in a love relationship, like in the garden of Eden, and it is not specifically that work is broken but that ‘man is broken’ by the Fall and work is just one aspect of that brokenness, as it can be noted that family relationship is also broken when Cain killed Abel out of jealousy and before the flood in Noah’s time, God regretted that he created man as he saw that everything in man’s heart was evil. Everything was broken to a point when God sought to destroy the world by flood. Redemption, according to biblical theology, takes place with Jesus at the cross, but it is ‘already and not yet’. In saying that work is redeemed may imply that we can and ought to overcome all the problems faced at work as Christians when in reality, problems, crises and the like are to be expected in work. However, with the ministry and enabling of the Spirit following justification, we are in a better and more hopeful situation to be ‘victorious’ in many situations by God’s grace.
I forward this sharing with the awareness that this is my understanding as far as bringing our faith to work is concerned; I stand with the openness to be corrected and to appreciate more clearly the applications from this study.

BRINGING OUR FAITH TO WORK (B)

As I study the guidebook on the above study, the last 3 sessions (5-7) are rather helpful in the call to imitate Christ in our work (as prophet, priest, and king). Our roles in these 3 offices as outlined in the guide book:
* PROPHET – Teaching and living the ways of God, representing God to all -we forth-tell by proclaiming the gospel and teachings with Spirit’s enabling in our workplace and society; all kingdom people in ‘God’s church are spokespersons for the gospel of the kingdom*
* PRIESTS – Steadfast intercession and faithful stewardship
* PRINCES – Ruling by establishing order, upholding justice and promoting peace. Upholding justice includes dealing with sin in our own lives and addressing wrongs and unjust behaviours in the workplace and providing a safe workplace environment for all to flourish. We promote the greatest form of peace through evangelism, through gentle words and wise mediation. From the guidebook.

My meditations
All the above requires believers to go against the tide, against the flow of the fallen world.
Toxic working-places exist; toxic individuals also exist. Toxic individuals tend to have an inordinately negative effect on families, churches, relationships, and ministries.
Some characteristics of toxic people:
* consistently creating chaos in other relationships – being know for what they are against more than what they are for
*being unwilling to simply disagree with you, but wanting to silence you
*attempting to stop you from doing or being what God has called you to do or be
*sapping your strength and assaulting your health
*scapegoating you and others so their own sin would not look so bad

When we respond ‘negatively’ to such individuals, we may end up being tied in knots of false guilt and distraction (from our ministry). We may think that if we can just be a little holier, a little wiser, more loving, a little more patient, then everyone will see Jesus in me and line up to hear what God has to say through us. We may even query whether we have compromise in our lives and are our words lacking grace?

Jesus walked away from others (or let others walk away from him) more than two dozen times in the four gospels.We see this also in our study of Luke gospel. When Jesus shared at the synagogue, the people were very reactive and sought to throw him down the cliff; buyt Jesus miraculously walked away.
At times, Jesus remained verbally silent when others tried to goad him into a conversation or a foolish controversy.
When people asked Jesus to leave, he usually complied.
Not only does Jesus let others walk away; at the great judgment he will send people away. You would not be able to reach or influence everyone you meet.
Sometimes Jesus walked away for personal refreshment, prayer, or the need to reach others. Though Jesus came to die the death of a martyr, he repeatedly walked away from persecution, attacks, and violence throughout his adult ministry. In the same way, it can be prudent for us to walk away from verbal, emotional, or physical abuse.

It may be prudent to observe the example of our Lord Jesus in our workplace, family context, Christian service and ministry. There may be situations when God prompts us to walk away from toxic environment and toxic individuals and concentrate on the main ministry God entrusted to us. This does not mean we have failed to bring our faith to those various situations of life.