The Sufficiency of the Gospel, Galatians 1:1-10

Shiloh Lutheran Church, State College PA

May 29, 2016

Several years ago I met with a man who was hospitalized because of debilitating depression. He had been in the church all his life, but he was plagued by doubts about his salvation. He believed the gospel, and he knew that Jesus had paid the penalty for his sins, but when he was growing up in the church he had been taught that it was absolutely necessary to confess all his sins, and that any sins that hadn’t been confessed were unforgiven. Full, complete confession was a condition for salvation. So he was diligent about examining himself and confessing all his sins to God. He even confessed things that he wasn’t sure about, just in case. But he was plagued by the thought that maybe he had missed something; what if there were some unconfessed sins hidden somewhere? This man was genuinely concerned about his relationship with God, and the thought of being alienated from God by unconfessed sin filled him with horror. It finally reached the point where he was unable to function. He was in bondage.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians is about the gospel as a message of freedom. The Galatians were being influenced by false teachers who were bringing them into bondage, and this letter is Paul’s response to the situation. And it’s a message we need to hear today. The gospel is a message of freedom, but we too often spend our lives in a condition of bondage. Listen to these words by Eugene Peterson: “We live in a world awash in fantasies of freedom. We spend enormous sums of money and immense amounts of psychic energy on those fantasies. We fantasize a free life based variously on power, on sex, on fame, on leisure. Whole industries develop out of these fantasies. careers are shaped by them. But the world we live in is conspicuously and sadly lacking in the experience of freedom. The fantasies are barren: they give birth to nothing in word or deed. For all our elaborate and expensive fantasies, the actual lives that most people live are filled with impotence, boredom, obscurity, and hassle. Living in the land of the free has not made us free; we are a nation of addicts and complainers” (Traveling Light, p. 9).

Notice, first of all, that the gospel is primarily a message about what God has done for us. It’s not a message about what we’re supposed to do; it’s a message about what God has done. Paul has been sent to deliver this message. He’s an “apostle,” which means that he is one who has been sent out. That’s what the word “apostle” means. He’s a messenger, and he wants the Galatians to know where the message originated: “Paul an apostle – sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father.” The message itself, the gospel that Paul delivered to the Galatians, isn’t something he dreamed up. It’s not the product of his studies. It’s something he’s been given by God and sent out to deliver.

And the content of this message is that our Lord Jesus Christ “gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.” Paul’s apostleship originates in God, and the message he’s been sent to deliver is about what God has done for us. The message is that God has done for us what we were powerless to do for ourselves. That’s the good news of the gospel, that all our debts before God have been paid in full.

The problem with this message, for many people, is that it humbles us. It treats us like spiritual beggars, people in need of a “handout.” It’s good news, but it begins with bad news about ourselves, the bad news that there is nothing we can do to free ourselves from bondage to sin and death. That’s part of the appeal of other “gospels.” They tell us: “It’s really not so bad. Deep down, you’re really a good person. You’ve just gotten off track, but if you make a sincere effort to follow this teaching, you’ll be fine.” The gospel is good news – that’s what the word “gospel” means – but it’s humbling to our pride, because it tells us that there is nothing in ourselves that we can contribute. It tells us that we are in bondage to sin and death and that there’s nothing we can do to free ourselves. That’s the bad news, the news that humbles us in our pride and self-sufficiency. But the good news is that although we can’t do anything to free ourselves, God “rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. He’s set us up in the kingdom of the Son he loves so much, the Son who got us out of the pit we were in, got rid of the sins we were doomed to keep repeating” (Colossians 1:13-14, The Message).

Because of this, because the message is from God Himself and is about things He’s done for us (rather than things we can do for Him), any attempt to supplement the gospel amounts to a defection from it. When we seek to improve this message that God has given we end up turning away from it. We may think we’re just being conscientious, guarding the message against the possibility of being misinterpreted. Of course we still believe in salvation through Jesus Christ. But we want to make sure people obey the Law. The Galatians don’t think they’re turning away from the gospel; they’re just protecting it from people who would misuse it.

Here’s a good description of the process: “When men and women get their hands on religion, one of the first things they often do is turn it into an instrument for controlling others, either putting or keeping them ‘in their place.’ The history of such religious manipulation and coercion is long and tedious.... Paul of Tarsus was doing his diligent best to add yet another chapter to this dreary history when he was converted by Jesus to something radically and entirely different – a free life in God. Through Jesus, Paul learned that God was not an impersonal force to be used to make people behave in certain prescribed ways, but a personal Savior who set us free to live a free life. God did not coerce us from without, but set us free from within” (Eugene Peterson, Introduction to Galatians in The Message). The Galatians had experienced this same freedom, but now some teachers were telling them this freedom wasn’t a good idea, that they really needed to supplement the gospel and start following the Old Testament Law.

The basic question is this: what is the foundation of our acceptance before God? Are we accepted on the basis of God’s mercy and grace displayed in Jesus Christ, or on the basis of our performance? Are we accepted by God because Jesus gave Himself for us to set us free, or because we’ve managed, for the present moment, to remember and confess every sin? Are we accepted because of what we do, or because of what God has done?

The problem with this message of freedom is that it will lead to abuse. If people begin thinking this way, they’ll just do whatever they want. If it’s true that “where sin has abounded, grace has abounded all the more,” people will begin thinking “let’s sin more, so that grace will abound more.” That’s what Paul was accused of teaching. But that’s a misunderstanding of the gospel. Christ died to set us free from this present evil age. If we’re living in bondage to sin, we haven’t been set free or we’ve not yet learned to live in the freedom that is ours in Christ. The freedom we receive in the gospel is not only a legal freedom. It includes that: we’re set free from the guilt of our sins. But the freedom of the gospel transforms every area of our lives and enables us to live in increasing freedom from the bondage of sin. And the foundation of our acceptance is not our success in learning to live as followers of Jesus Christ. The foundation of our acceptance is what God has already done for us.

We begin from a starting point of acceptance, and then, having been accepted, we learn to live in ways that please and honor Him. Here it is in Romans 5: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access into this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God” (5:1-2). That’s our position: we’ve obtained access into grace, not through anything in ourselves, but “through our Lord Jesus Christ,” and now we are standing in grace. We’re not in the precarious position of wondering whether we’ve gotten it all right, whether we’ve missed something along the way which will plunge us into destruction. We’re standing in grace, boasting in the hope of sharing God’s glory.

That’s our position. We’re resting in the certainty of what God has done to free us from our bondage to sin and death. But when we lose sight of this, when our performance becomes the thing that makes us acceptable before God, we’re in the process of defecting from the gospel. We’re no longer resting in what God has done for us; we’re trying to find acceptance through what we can do for Him. We’re trying to save ourselves, rather than accepting God’s salvation. That’s what was happening in Galatia; that’s why Paul reacts with such horror: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.” And that’s why he pronounces such a strong condemnation on the false teachers: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed!” This isn’t an issue where there’s room for disagreement. To tinker with the message of the gospel is to defect from the God of grace.

A good test of our spiritual condition is this: are we focused on ourselves – the things we’re doing for God – or are we focused on God and all He’s done for us in Christ? Are you constantly taking your spiritual pulse, wondering whether you’ve done enough, or whether you’ve neglected some area of duty. Are you weighted down with a sense of guilt, thinking maybe you’ve failed to confess all your sins or that maybe your “sinners prayer” didn’t “take?” You’ve gone through all the motions, but you’re not sure whether you’ve done it “right?” Or maybe these questions make you want to justify yourself: “of course I’ve done enough; what more does God want from me?”

Notice again Paul’s focus in these verses. Everything revolves around God. Paul’s apostleship wasn’t his idea. He had other plans for his life, then God intervened and set him apart to deliver a message. Paul had one of the most brilliant minds in the ancient world, but God sent him to deliver a message that wasn’t his own; God humbled him and said, “here’s what I want you to do with your life, and here’s the message I want you to deliver.” It’s all centered in God. But look, also, at verse 10: “Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people I would not be a servant of Christ.” We know, from reading the New Testament, that Paul displeased a lot of people. Eventually, in the early 60's under the emperor Nero, this led to his execution. Paul’s calling, his message, and even his death, were focused on God. Near the end of his life, when he was writing to Timothy, Paul referred to himself as the foremost of sinners: “But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost [of sinners], Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life” (1 Timothy 1:16). Even at the end of his life, with all that he, as an apostle, had learned and accomplished, and with all his growth in holiness and obedience, the foundation of his hope was that Jesus Christ “gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age.”

John Newton, the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” was speaking from experience when he wrote “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” In his early life he was a sailor and a slave trader. He said this about himself: “I never met a man with a more vile mouth than mine. I wasn’t even content with the common oaths everyone knew. I invented new ones everyday – some so vivid that the captain, a blasphemer himself, would bawl me out” (quoted by Frank Boreham, When Scripture Changes Lives, p. 71). He was in such bondage to sin that unbelievers began to find him intolerable. But God showed him mercy, and until the end of his life Newton was overflowing with gratitude to God for His amazing grace. Near the end of his life, he met a friend in the street and said to him, “My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things, that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior!” (P. 78). The Galatians had forgotten what great sinners they were and what great mercy and grace God had shown them. They were beginning to think that maybe they could contribute something to the process after all. And it was leading them into bondage.

When we’re focused on ourselves, we end up in bondage. This is true whether we’re absorbed with the things we want or the things we think we have to do to become acceptable in God’s sight. That’s why Paul is writing this letter to the Galatians. They had been set free by the gospel of grace, and now they’re coming again under the bondage of the Law. Self-absorption leads to bondage, but when we become absorbed with God and with the great things He’s done for us, we experience freedom. That’s why Paul, like John Newton, didn’t gloat at the end of his life about all the great things he’d accomplished. He was too absorbed with the great things God had done in showing him mercy and grace. He was aware that he didn’t deserve such mercy, and he never quite got over the wonder of it. Here’s what John Newton had written on his gravestone: “John Newton, Clerk, Once an Infidel and Libertine, A Servant of Slaves in Africa, was by the Mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Preserved, Restored, Pardoned, And Appointed to Preach the Faith he had so long labored to destroy” (p. 78). First he describes what he became on his own, then he says what Jesus did for him.

The Galatians were in the process of forgetting all this, so Paul begins by reminding them that the gospel is a message of deliverance, it’s the message that Jesus Christ “gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.” Writing to believers facing a similar temptation, the author of Hebrews writes, “how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” (2:2). We’re not in a position to add to this gospel; it’s been given to us. Our duty is to receive it gratefully and to hold to it firmly until the end of our lives.

Paul's Charge to Timothy, 2 Timothy 4:1-8

Several years ago, some friends of mine were at a training seminar for pastors. The leader was speaking on the importance of theological reflection, encouraging pastors to take theology seriously. During one of the discussions, a pastor stood up and said, “I’m not interested in all that stuff; I just want to love people.” In his view, pastoring has nothing to do with theology. Pastoring is about loving people. I’ve heard this man preach several times, and I’ve been in meetings with him, and the thing that is overwhelmingly clear is that his ministry is centered on people. As a preacher he wants to give people things that will help them live their lives; in leading worship, he seeks to give people music that makes them feel good. He’s a nice guy. But I’ve never sensed much of God about him, either in his preaching, his worship leadership, or private conversation. His ministry is human-centered, intentionally so. Whatever else we might say about this, it’s just the opposite of how Paul carried out his ministry and what he has in mind for Timothy. Think, for example, of his letters to the Romans and the Ephesians. Although Timothy is called to minister to people, Paul doesn’t want his ministry to be people-centered; in these verses Paul is calling Timothy to a God-centered life and ministry.

The first thing I want to point out is that Paul’s perspective is dominated by an intense awareness of God. Notice how he places this charge in the context of eternity: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom.” Here it is in The Message: “I can’t impress this on you too strongly. God is looking over your shoulder. Christ himself is the Judge, with the final say on everyone, living and dead. He is about to break into the open with his rule, so proclaim the Message with intensity....” The primary focus here is not Paul’s vision for the church or the future of Timothy’s career. Paul urges Timothy to carry out his ministry with an awareness of God’s call and constant presence, knowing that he will one day give an account of his stewardship.

This is intensified by the fact that Paul himself is facing the end of his life. Immediately after this passage, Paul says: “For I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come.” He’s doing something more here than passing on information. He is handing the baton to Timothy; he’s saying, “I’ve finished what God has called me to do; it’s now time for you to carry on with the work.” This idea comes across well in The Message: “You take over. I’m about to die, my life an offering on God’s altar.” Paul, knowing that he is going to die soon, is able to say, “keep going; it’s worth it to get to the end and know that you’ve completed the work God called you to do. Don’t give up.”

Our culture idealizes youth, and our society is littered with the spectacle of middle-aged adults who wish they were still adolescents. But many of the greatest examples I’ve known of godly living have been people who’ve followed Jesus for a lifetime, who have sought him and experienced His grace through the whole spectrum of life experiences and are able to look back and testify, from experience, to God’s faithfulness. I spent two weeks with a 92-year old missionary in North India in 1978, and he so deeply impacted my life that I still think about him often. Being around him made me want to seek God. There is great value in walking with God for a lifetime. The ministry of the gospel takes place in the context of eternity, in the presence of God and of Jesus Christ. God is our focus in the Church; God is our starting point; He is what we are about when we gather together for worship. Paul is reminding Timothy that this is where his attention needs to be: “I charge you in the presence of God.”

The second thing is that the problems Timothy is confronting result from the Church losing its focus on God. Paul emphasizes this at the beginning of his first letter to Timothy: “As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the divine training that is in faith” (1 Timothy 1:3-4). Some of the people have become distracted from the truth and are beginning to dabble in things that don’t promote the life of faith, things that occupy their attention and appeal to their sense of curiosity but don’t feed their souls by leading them into God’s presence. We see this concern continuing in 2 Timothy. Paul warns Timothy that a time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, or sound teaching. “They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from the truth.” Notice what the focus is here; it’s not on God, it’s on themselves. They don’t care about the truth; they don’t care about sound teaching; they want to be entertained, and if Timothy caters to them he will be guilty of unfaithfulness to his calling.

This is a great danger in our consumer-driven society, where people are increasingly programmed to see everything, including the church, in terms of buying and selling. People in America are used to getting what they want, and if we don’t give it to them they’ll go somewhere else to find it. And all too often they see ministers of the gospel as sellers of religious products, especially the religious product of a good feeling on Sunday morning, something to get them through the week that’s ahead. Many churches see this as an opportunity to draw people in, as in this advertisement from a church web site: “We’re a group of ordinary people who have discovered the benefits of an active Christian life-style....Our informal, upbeat meetings will give you the lift you need to face the coming week.... [Our pastor’s] practical, positive messages deal with the pressures and problems we all encounter. [He] shares biblical solutions that make life more fulfilling.” Here’s the question: is God at the center? What is the main concern of this church? Paul left Timothy behind in Ephesus because the church there was losing its focus on God; in trying to cater to people’s interests and desires, the church had gotten off track. And churches in America are in precisely the same position; their greatest need (even if it is not their greatest desire) is for ministers of the gospel who are willing, at all costs, to keep God in the center, to preach sound doctrine in His name and in His presence.

The third thing is this: Paul is reminding Timothy that his ministry is a stewardship. His calling is to preach God’s Word. The message he’s been entrusted with doesn’t belong to him; it’s not under his control. Paul is reminding Timothy that, as a minister of the gospel, he is not free to stand up and talk about whatever suits him at the moment or whatever he thinks people want to hear or will listen to. He’s bound by a sacred trust to preach the Word. One of the great things about expository preaching is that it forces a minister to talk about things that he wouldn’t choose to speak on, left to himself. But if it is there in the passage and he’s bound himself to preach the Word, he’s called to lay aside his own interests and desires and preach what has been handed to him.

Paul’s basic charge is “preach the Word,” and he expands on this in the following phrases: “be urgent in season and out of season, rebuke, warn and encourage, be unfailing in patience and in teaching.” Timothy isn’t being given a list of separate duties; he’s being told how to go about preaching the Word. He’s to preach it with conviction and urgency, whether or not it comes at a convenient time. The 4th century Church Father, John Chrysostom, said this in a sermon on 2 Timothy: “Therefore, let food, and bathing, and banqueting, and the other necessities of life have a definite time. But let instruction about the love of truth from above have no set hour – let all the time belong to it.” God doesn’t bow to our convenience. He often breaks through into our lives at the most inconvenient times, as Paul himself experienced on the way to Damascus, while he was zealously pursuing his career as a Pharisee.

Paul goes on: “rebuke, warn and encourage.” He is to rebuke those who have fallen into sin, like the prophets did over and over during the period of the Kings, when Israel fell into idolatry. He is to warn those who are in danger of turning away, as we see, for example, in the repeated warnings in the letter to the Hebrews. And he is to encourage those who are gripped with a sense of their own weakness and frailty, who wonder how they will ever make it to the end of the journey. Notice the proportions: two negative terms and one positive. Preaching the Word involves telling people things they don’t want to hear. Promises like the one I mentioned earlier, “Our pastor’s practical, positive messages deal with the pressures and problems we all encounter. [He] shares biblical solutions that make life more fulfilling,” are a commitment to unfaithfulness. A minister of the gospel does not have the freedom to preach only “practical, positive messages.” He’s bound by the Word of God to preach what he finds there and to apply it to people who are responding to God in different ways. To those who are persisting in disobedience, the message is not a positive one; it’s a message of rebuke, a call to repentance. Those who are facing temptation need to be warned of the danger of following through. But then, there also needs to be a message of comfort. God’s conviction of sin always leads to an invitation to grace.

All this is to be done with patience and careful instruction. Careful instruction is rooted in a knowledge of, an immersion in, God’s Word. Paul reminded Timothy of this in the passage immediately preceding this one: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the Sacred Writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” Timothy has been instructed in the Scriptures, and Paul urges him to continue immersing himself in Scripture, equipping himself for the preaching of the Word.

But these things are not a prescription for instant success. Contrary to our American desire for instant results, the ministry of the gospel is a slow work that requires patience. We may get off to a good start with “40 Days of Purpose” or something of that sort, but that start needs to be followed by a lifetime of cultivating God’s presence, following Jesus in the way of the cross. However much we might wish otherwise, there are no shortcuts in the life of faith. One of the best illustrations I’ve heard of this is from Eugene Peterson: "About a month ago we were just home from vacation and refreshed, ready to go again. The telephone rang. It was about 10:00 at night and on the other end of the line was a woman to whom I have been pastor for 26 years. When I entered this parish, she was 12 years old. Now she is 38. I confirmed her, married her, went through her divorce with her, went through a couple of deaths, depression, attempted suicide, ordained her into the leadership of the church, stood by as she left the church one year, opened the door as she came back the next year, prayed with her, listened to her. This night listening to her on the telephone I thought, ‘I have been her pastor for 26 years and she is not any better.’ After I hung up my wife said, ‘Who was that?’ I said, ‘That was Regina. We are not very good at this, are we?’ And Jan said, ‘Remember the kingfisher?’ And I remembered the kingfisher. We had been sitting at the shoreline of a lake in Montana and watching the kingfisher fish. The kingfisher is the ‘king’ fisher, the best fisher, the bird that knows how to fish. This kingfisher was sitting on a dead limb out over the lake, preparing to fish. It is fun to watch a kingfisher fish. This kingfisher plummeted to the water and missed his fish 27 times. The kingfisher missed and missed and missed ‑ and then, on the 28th try, he got one, a little three inch fish. Jan said, ‘Remember the kingfisher?’ I said, ‘I remember ‑ and it has only been 26 years.’ That is the context for spiritual formation. If you are in a hurry, you probably should not do it, because it is messy and lengthy and marked by much failure ‑ burrowing into the soil of your place, your people, your congregation, your own life, sticking with it creatively, waiting for creation and covenant to form.” “Preach the Word... with great patience.”

So Paul gives his charge to Timothy, then warns him that a time is coming when people won’t tolerate sound doctrine, when they will gather to themselves teachers who will tell them what they want to hear, and he says, “but you....” “All these things are going to happen, but don’t go along with it; don’t be swayed by it; don’t cater to what these people want.” “But you – keep your eye on what you’re doing; accept the hard times along with the good; keep the Message alive; do a thorough job as God’s servant” (The Message). Don’t panic; keep your head. Don’t scramble to fix every problem that comes along. Keep preaching the Word, even when people are pressuring you to do something that seems more effective. Endure hardship; don’t expect everything to work the way you want it to; don’t expect to have an easier road than Jesus did. Follow Him in the way of the cross. Do the work of an evangelist; preach the Gospel. Discharge all the duties of your ministry; the stress is on faithfulness in fulfilling his calling. The work of the ministry is not measurable; it can’t be judged by the world’s terms. It’s measured by faithfulness in following Jesus in the way of the cross.

Time is passing quickly. Some days and weeks seem to last forever, but our lives pass by sooner than we can believe. “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom” live in the light of eternity, knowing that you are all stewards of God’s grace. May God enable us all to say on that day, with Paul, “I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. From now on there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.”

The Fruit of Spiritual Blindness, Luke 4:21-30

Shiloh Lutheran Church            
January 31, 2016

Years ago I was supposed to run a slide show for the organization I was working with, but about a day before the meeting I was given another job and had to train another guy to do it. I was going through the slides with him and said, “the music is in 4/4 time, so just change the slide every two measures.” He looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language, so I played the song for him—the song had a very strong beat—and counted out the rhythm; I then said “just change the slide every eight beats.” He told me that made absolutely no sense, that he had no idea what I was talking about. In the end, we went through the song together and identified where to change the slides based on the song’s words because musical rhythm was incomprehensible to him.

I’ve often heard people testify that after turning to Christ their whole outlook has changed, that they’re able to see things that they couldn’t see before. They’ve heard the gospel preached numerous times but it has never made sense. They’ve tried reading the Bible but it’s been a closed book; they haven’t been able to get into it; it’s meant nothing to them. But then something happened and a whole new world opened up. John Newton refers to this in his hymn, Amazing Grace: “I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.” He was blind, but now he’s been enabled to see things he could never see before.

In this gospel reading we encounter people who are blind, who are utterly unable to see who Jesus is. With that in mind, listen to these words from 2 Corinthians 4: “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (vv. 3-4). We need to know that spiritual blindness is connected with certain behaviors, with certain patterns in our lives. It’s not something that just happens to a person, like catching a virus. Our gospel reading gives us a graphic demonstration of how it works out in one particular case. 

Jesus is in His hometown of Nazareth. He visits the synagogue, reads from Isaiah, then announces, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The people are impressed and startled. They’re “amazed at His gracious words.” Clearly they are confronted here with something they aren’t prepared to accept. They’ve heard reports about what Jesus has been doing, and hearing Him in person startles them: “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” The parallel account in Mark’s gospel goes into more detail in describing their reaction: “‘Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at him.” (Mark 6:3). They’re amazed, both by the reports they’ve heard and by the gracious words He is speaking, but they take offense at Him. Why? It all sounds so promising and positive. Why do they take offense, since He is doing and speaking such great things?

The first thing is that they are blinded by their familiarity with Jesus. They think they know Him; they think they know all they need to know about Him. He’s the carpenter, after all; they know His brothers and sisters. They’re in the presence of the Word made flesh, but they’re blinded by the fact that they know His family and knew Him as a child. They know His occupation: He’s a carpenter, for goodness sake; it’s not like He’s been trained in the rabbinical schools. How can He be doing and saying these great things? Who does He think He is?

Familiarity can blind us to mystery. We get to know something, or someone, and we think we know all there is to know. We reduce reality to our experience: “I’m not that impressed; obviously there’s not much here.” A friend of mine told me about talking to some neighbors of a well-known missionary who had spent his entire career in North Africa, a very difficult mission field. He had written a number of books and was someone we both looked up to. So my friend asked what he was like and they responded, “oh, he’s not very impressive.” He didn’t have a lot of natural charisma, so they wrote him off. “Obviously he doesn’t have anything to offer us.” What he had to offer wasn’t evident on the surface, but he had a lifetime of walking with God in very difficult circumstances; he had remained faithful over the long term despite many temptations to throw in the towel. But they missed it because they couldn’t see anything impressive at first glance.

There is more to people than what we see on the surface, more than what we perceive in our superficial dealings with one another. The people of Nazareth were blinded by the assumption that they knew all they needed to know about Jesus, and the same thing is often true in our own experience of one another. Opening our minds and our hearts to the reality of mystery around us can be the first step in allowing God to heal us of our blindness. Simply opening our minds to the thought that there might be something more than what we are aware of can be a step in the direction of allowing God to open our eyes. 

The second thing is that the people were blinded by a sense of entitlement: “Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum” (v. 23). This, together with His words in vv. 24-27, is what leads them to react with violence. Jesus is saying that Gentiles have received God’s blessing in the past at times when Israel has rejected it. He’s saying that being part of a certain group doesn’t entitle them to anything from God.

God’s promises are intended for the whole world, and this is certainly illustrated in these two stories. We could legitimately see them as a foretaste of the book of Acts, in which the gospel goes out into all the world. But this does not mean that there are no outsiders, that everyone is now accepted, that all we need to do now is open the doors and extend our boundaries. The call of the Church is to preach the gospel to every creature and welcome all who respond with faith. And the reason we need to preach the gospel is because we are all outsiders by nature. The gospel begins with bad news, not with a general statement that God now accepts us as we are and doesn’t care much how we order our lives. The gospel is good news because we all, by nature, are in desperate need.  

Paul reminds the Ephesians, “remember that you were... without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (2:12). They weren’t people in need of acceptance, they were people in need of redemption. They were people in need of rescue. They were outsiders to the kingdom of God. That’s the truth about us, apart from the promises of the gospel. The gospel comes to us as good news, because we, in our natural state, are “without hope and without God in the world.” And the consistent message of Scripture is that those who reject God’s promises remain outsiders because they refuse to bow before God’s lordship. Jesus, after all, talks about separating the sheep from the goats, and the goats are those who will remain, throughout all eternity, outsiders.

God’s call to Abraham was intended to bring salvation to the world. God said to him, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). But the people of Nazareth have narrowed everything down. They think God’s promises belong to them alone and that if Jesus is doing great things He should be doing them in their town for their benefit. It angers them to hear that others, Gentiles even, might receive something that belongs to them. Here’s the problem: God is gracious and merciful, but we are entitled to nothing from Him. When we think we deserve something from God, we become blind to His grace and mercy. We become blind to our own sin and unworthiness, and we begin to think that God is obligated to bless us. And the further we go down this path, the more we become hardened. 

The third thing is that their familiarity and sense of entitlement lead them to react violently to Jesus’ words. They become angry and seek to destroy Him. “They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” For some reason, several commentators insist that this is not a miracle, that Jesus simply manages to escape in the confusion of the moment. I’m not sure why this is so important to them, but it seems like an unlikely explanation. It’s not like the crowd doesn’t know what He looks like. He grew up in their town and He’s been speaking to them publicly. They don’t succeed in killing Him, because His time has not yet come. Their attempt to kill Him is unsuccessful, because God, in His sovereign purposes, intervenes; Jesus is going to die, but not yet and not in their town.

This is not primarily a story about accepting one another; it’s a story about God’s sovereignty. The emphasis is on God and what He is doing. Unfortunately, the doctrine of God’s sovereignty is often surrounded by confusion and controversy. It’s the sort of thing people tend to argue about but get no further than that. What does God’s sovereignty mean, primarily? It means that He is the Sovereign, that He is the King. It means that He is in charge and we are not. When we think we’re entitled to something from God we’re forgetting who we are. We’re seeking to “be like God.” God’s sovereignty also means that He is free to act according to His own wisdom and purposes without consulting us. The two Old Testament examples Jesus uses are about God acting in ways that don’t fit their expectations of Him, and they respond with rage. Why are they so angry? Because they want to be like God. They want to have control over Him. They want Him to act according to their expectations. Everything within them cries out against what Jesus is saying and they attack Him, seeking to kill Him. They reject Him completely and finally. We don’t know that He ever visited Nazareth again. They close the door on Him and on His words.

Let’s remind ourselves of what Jesus read which led to all this, the prophecy which Jesus said “is fulfilled in your hearing.” He read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” He’s come with a message of hope for the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed. The gospel is addressed to people in need who recognize their neediness, who come to Him with empty hands. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” Those who think they’re entitled to claim anything from God are blind. They’re thinking they can demand something that God only gives as a sheer gift. As long as they hold onto their sense of entitlement, they will be blind to the reality of who they are and who God is. The gospel is only for those who are willing to let go of their sense of entitlement and come to Jesus with empty hands. “Nothing in my hands I bring; simply to the cross I cling.”

So what about us? Have we allowed our familiarity with Scripture, hearing these things over and over, to blind us? Do we encounter the Bible as a word from God or as just one more thing to get out of the way, so that we can move on to what we really want to do? If familiarity is blinding you to the wonder of the gospel, cry out to God for healing and mercy. Ask Him to heal your blindness and enable you to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Do you feel entitled? I spoke with a man some years ago who was angry at God. He had been raised in the church and had done the things he thought he was supposed to do; he’d attended church and read his Bible. But his life hadn’t gone the way he wanted it to. He said, “I did what I was supposed to do, but God hasn’t held up His end of the bargain.” He was embittered against God, because he felt entitled to a different life than the one God had given him. His spiritual life had shriveled to nothing; he had been blinded by a sense of entitlement. If you struggle with this sort of thing, look again at Jesus on the cross, paying the price for our sins. We are, by nature, children of wrath, Paul tells the Ephesians. The only reason we have for hope is that Jesus paid in full the debt for our sins. We’re entitled to nothing. What we deserve, what we’re entitled to, is eternal separation from God. Our only hope is in the sheer mercy and grace of God.  

God is God, and we are not. He is sovereign; He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Our most fundamental temptation is the one the serpent used on Eve: “you will be like God.” It comes to us over and over again in a variety of ways. If you’ve lost sight of God’s sovereignty, if you have begun thinking that God should do things the way you want, take some time this afternoon and meditate on the last three chapters of Job. Job, remember, suffers horribly at the beginning of the book. He responds well, but as time goes on he begins to doubt God’s goodness; he begins to think that God is treating him unfairly. So in chapters 40 and 41, God asks Job a series of questions which remind him of who he is. Read and meditate on those questions in God’s presence. After God questions him, Job respond: “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (42:3). Humble yourselves before God and ask Him to open your eyes anew to the wonder of His gospel. We need, over and over again, to remind ourselves of who we are and who God is. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” May He open our eyes and enable us to receive the good news of the gospel with empty hands. “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

All Things in Jesus' Name, Colossians 3:15-17

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
December 27, 2015
 
 This past week, Abbie told me about a discussion on Facebook. People were posting about “keeping Christ in Christmas,” and someone responded that it’s far more important to keep Christ in Christians, that Christians live in ways that are consistent with the life of Christ. The primary concern of the Church is not with the emphases of secular advertisers and marketers. The primary concern of the Church is that Christians are modeling the life of Christ, are bearing witness to Christ the Redeemer, whose birth we are celebrating in this Christmas season. And this passage is a great one for considering the centrality of Christ in the life of the Church.

The first thing to consider in looking at this passage, is the context. One of the greatest dangers, when we’re reading Scripture, is taking things out of context. Much false teaching begins in this way: people read something in the Bible and decide what it means without considering how it fits into the author’s flow of thought, and without considering the passage in the light of other Scripture. We need to remember that the people who first received this letter didn’t read it in small portions, as we’re doing. They read it straight through, like we do when we receive a letter from someone. So, each time we return and read a section, either in corporate worship or in our personal devotions, it’s important to take note of what the author said in the previous verses.

Paul begins this chapter by reminding the Colossians of their citizenship in heaven. Because they belong to Jesus Christ, they are no longer citizens of this world. They’ve been crucified with Christ, they’ve died to this world, and they’ve become citizens of heaven. They continue to live in this world, but their relationship with the world can never be what it once was. This is not just theological material for them to discuss over coffee. God’s intention is that we live lives consistent with our citizenship, so in verses 5-14, Paul explains how this should affect their conduct.  

The point, in these verses, is not just that individual Christians are to model the life of the kingdom. That’s part of it, but he’s saying more than that. All the pronouns throughout this passage are in the plural. Paul is addressing the Church. The Church, as a body of people called together in Jesus’ name, is to model the life of God’s kingdom, especially in the way we act toward one another: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (vv. 12-14).

This is what the Church is to look like, according to God’s Word. But, of course, the Church often doesn’t look like this. The author of the hymn, “The Church’s One Foundation,” recognized this: “Though with a scornful wonder, men see her sore oppressed. By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” The Church is often plagued with disunity, backbiting, gossip, an unforgiving spirit. In many conservative churches that describe themselves as “Bible-believing, people live double lives, because they’re afraid to admit the truth. They pretend that all is well, and that the Lord is doing wonderful things among them, when in reality their lives are so filled with inconsistency that they wonder whether the whole thing is really true at all. There’s no visible evidence in their lives, or in the life of the church, of the reality of God’s grace.

The Church is a body of people brought together by God because of our common bond in Jesus Christ. But this common bond that we have in Christ doesn’t automatically lead us to act in loving ways toward one another. These verses we’re looking at today, verses 15-17, emphasize that the Church can only model the life of God’s kingdom when individual members are putting Christ at the center of their lives. Our individual spiritual lives and the spiritual health of the Church are closely tied together and have a profound effect on each other. 

The first thing to notice here, in verse 15, is that when the peace of Christ is ruling in our hearts, we are enabled to live at peace with each other. What does it mean to “let the peace of Christ rule” in our hearts? Paul says, in Romans 5:1: “therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Before we were justified we were not at peace with God. We treated Him as our enemy, and we consistently refused to acknowledge His Lordship over our lives. Sin put a barrier between ourselves and God, and this also ended up separating us from one another, and even from ourselves. Sin isolates us.

C.S. Lewis has an interesting illustration of this in his book, The Great Divorce, which is about a busload of people who travel from Hell to Heaven (and then back again). He describes Hell as a sprawling, dingy town, where people are constantly squabbling. Here’s a conversation he has with one of the people on the bus: “‘It seems the deuce of a town,’ I volunteered, ‘and that’s what I can’t understand. The parts of it that I saw were so empty. Was there once a much larger population?’ ‘Not at all,’ said my neighbour. ‘The trouble is that they’re so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he’s quarreled so badly that he decides to move....’ ‘And what about the earlier arrivals? I mean – there must be people who came from earth to your town even longer ago.’ ‘That’s right. There are. They’ve been moving on and on. Getting further apart. They’re so far off by now that they could never think of coming to the bus stop at all. Astronomical distances. There’s a bit of rising ground near where I live and a chap has a telescope. You can see the lights of the inhabited houses, where those olds ones live, millions of miles away. Millions of miles from us and from one another. Every now and then they move further still. That’s one of the disappointments. I thought you’d meet interesting historical characters. But you don’t: they’re too far away’” (pp. 18-20). Sin isolates us, it drives us apart from one another. 

In Christ those barriers are broken down. We have peace with God; we’re no longer in a state of war with Him. This is the “peace of Christ.” This truth has both an objective and a subjective dimension. Because we’ve been justified freely by faith, because God has declared us “not guilty,” we are at peace with God. That’s an objective reality; it doesn’t depend on how we feel at the moment. But when we clearly grasp this reality it leads naturally to a sense of peace in our hearts. We’re at rest. We’re able, as Paul goes on to say in Romans 5, to “rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” We’re not anxiously trying to make ourselves acceptable in God’s sight. So, the “peace of Christ” is both an objective reality and the subjective feeling that results from it. 

The word translated “rule” is an interesting one. Originally it described the work of an umpire in the games, then it later came to mean “to order,” or “to control.” The New Century Version translates this verse: “Let the peace that Christ gives control your thinking.” The peace that Christ gives is based on the objective reality that God has declared us “not guilty,” purely by grace and not because of any good in ourselves. Paul’s point here is that this is to control the way we act toward one another. Notice how he finishes out the verse: “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.” Peterson, in The Message, brings this out well: “Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other.” We’re to act, with one another, as people who’ve been pardoned by grace, who are at peace with God, and who are living in the certainty of a glorious future which is the exact opposite of what we deserve. When we’re tempted to erect barriers between ourselves, we need to remember the truth. We’re citizens of God’s kingdom, and all the old barriers have been broken down in Christ. The peace of Christ is to control the way we interact with each other. Because God has been gracious to us, we show grace to one another.

The second thing here, in verse 16, is that when the word of Christ is dwelling in us richly, we’re enabled to minister to one another. The Biblical view of life in the church is that we are all called to minister to one another; the function of pastors and teachers is to equip God’s people for this work of ministry. But, in ourselves, we have nothing to give. One of my professors at Messiah College shared that when his wife died of a brain tumor, his pastor called that day and asked if he could come over. George said no, he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. But his pastor said he didn’t want to talk; he just wanted to come over and sit with him. And that’s what he did. He just came over and sat. He didn’t try to give any answers (George knew all of them anyway). He didn’t try to give any advice at that time. George was in the initial shock of grief, and he really didn’t need any advice right then. But he needed the support and presence of another person, and that’s what his pastor gave.

How can we learn to minister to one another? How do we know when to speak and when not to speak? And when it’s time to speak, how do we know what to say to one another? In our culture, which is so obsessed with technique, we tend to think the problem is a lack of expertise. So the natural solution is to make up for this lack by taking a few courses. Then we’ll know more about the Bible and we’ll have a clearer idea of how to minister to others. And this can be helpful. But it’s not the primary thing. The primary thing is to be filled with the word of Christ, to “let the word of Christ” dwell in us richly. It’s not that we fill our heads with God’s word so that we’ll have something to talk about when it’s time to minister. It’s that we need to have our hearts full of God’s transforming Word, so that we’ll be people who are fit to minister to one another. 

We “teach and admonish one another” as people whose hearts are full of God’s Word, who are being transformed by the power of the Word. When I was in graduate school, in the Religion Department at Temple University, I often found comfort and encouragement from these words in Psalm 119: “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts” (Psalm 119:97-100). God’s Word is powerful. The environment I was in at the time was hostile to faith, but I found God’s Word sustaining me and nourishing me and enabling me to stand firm. Paul is calling us, in verse 16, to be people who meditate on God’s Word. As we lovingly meditate on the Word, we’ll find ourselves ministering to one another naturally.

Singing is the other thing that results from having hearts filled with the word of Christ. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly... as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” We don’t know the precise distinction between these three terms. It seems likely that “psalms” refers to the Old Testament book of Psalms. Right from the beginning, the early church followed the Jewish practice of praying and singing the Psalms. “Hymns” may refer to written compositions; Philippians 2:6-11 seems to be an example of a very early hymn. And “spiritual songs” could refer to more spontaneous outbursts of praise with music. In any case, God’s people, from the beginning, have been singing people, and they have drawn from a wide variety of styles in their worship. We may not be certain of the precise definitions here, but it is surely significant that Paul finds it necessary to use three terms to describe the singing of the church. We don’t need to argue about which are more appropriate or which are superior for worship. Looking around at creation, we can see clearly that God loves variety. So why shouldn’t our worship reflect something of this? “Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” It takes all three to fully express our praise and thanksgiving to God. We impoverish the church when we divide up into factions, who only focus on one style of worship and exclude all others. 

The third thing to notice, in verse 17, is that when we’re living in the light of Christ’s lordship, we’re aware that everything we do and say reflects our relationship with Him: “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” It’s easy to lose sight of this in our society, which has such a strong emphasis on personal autonomy, but in everything we do we are acting as members of Christ’s body. We have no idea how far-reaching our actions are. It’s not possible to act on our own without influencing and affecting others. The year I graduated from Messiah College I spent a year working nights as a janitor in one of the buildings there. For a while, there was a work-study student who worked with me for a few hours each night. He was a very serious Christian, and yet it seemed like he lived constantly under a cloud. He seemed weighted down and burdened. And the first time we had a serious conversation he told me that when he was only 18 months old his father had committed suicide. Nearly 20 years had passed, and he couldn’t even remember his father, but that man’s suicide had cast a shadow over his son’s life.  

Our actions have consequences far beyond anything we can imagine. And this is true also in the spiritual realm. In everything we do, we are acting as members of the Church, and our actions are either strengthening or weakening the spiritual condition of the body. We need to meditate on this and allow this realization to influence our daily choices. William Barclay has some wise counsel on this point: “One of the best tests of any action is: ‘Can we do it, calling upon the name of Jesus? Can we do it, asking for his help?’ One of the best tests of any word is: ‘Can we speak it and in the same breath name the name of Jesus? Can we speak it, remembering that he will hear?’” (William Barclay, The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, p. 160).

The Church can only model the life of God’s kingdom when individual members are putting Christ at the center of their lives. And individual members can only learn to live with Christ at the center of their lives by entering into the life of the Church. Our individual spiritual lives and the spiritual life of the Church are closely tied together, and they affect each other far more than we realize. We want the peace of Christ and the Word of Christ to fill our corporate life in the Church, and we also want these things to fill our hearts as we live out our lives in the world. And we want to invite Christ’s presence into every area of our lives. 

But that’s not where we are, much of the time. And it doesn’t always help to know how far we are from where we should be. Often this just discourages us. So how can we get from where we are to where God calls us to be? First, notice Paul’s emphasis on thanksgiving in these verses. He refers to thanksgiving and gratitude three times in this passage, once in each verse. What would happen to the endless fights over worship style, or how things should be done in the church, if we were intentional in singing “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in [our] hearts to God?” How would it affect our daily lives in the world if we were diligent in giving thanks throughout the day? Verse 15 is translated, in the New American Bible: “Dedicate yourselves to thankfulness.” Or, here’s The Message: “And cultivate thankfulness.” A spirit of thankfulness won’t just happen. We need to cultivate it. We need to take ourselves in hand, remind ourselves of the truth about ourselves and about God. And we need to say, as the Psalmist says: “I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness, and will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High” (Psalm 7:17). We won’t always feel like it. But as we intentionally give thanks over a lifetime, we’ll find ourselves cultivating a spirit of gratitude.

The second thing we can do is be attentive to the condition of our hearts. When we act in an unkind way toward someone, it will affect us. Pay attention to the condition of your heart when you’re at odds with someone, when you’re disturbed that things aren’t going your way, when you feel outraged because your rights are being violated. When we’re in that condition, the peace of Christ is not ruling in our hearts, and we need to turn to the Lord in repentance. Maybe the other person is wrong, but that’s not the point. The point is this: is the condition of your heart right at that moment pleasing to Jesus, who laid aside His rights to redeem us? Lay aside for a moment the question of who is in the right, and attend to the condition of your heart before God. Then you’ll be in a better condition to confront any wrong the other person may have done.

The third thing is that we need to give time to God’s Word. We need to give enough attention to God’s Word to allow it to permeate our lives. A friend of ours spent some time at L’Abri in Switzerland when Francis Schaeffer was still living. She told once of being in a Friday night discussion when someone asked Dr. Schaeffer if he watched movies. He responded “yes, I do, but I wouldn’t if I didn’t read four chapters a day in the Bible.” What was his point? Was he being legalistic? No, he was conscious of how much we’re affected by the things that occupy our minds, and he wanted God’s Word to be the primary influence over his thinking. We need to be intentional in cultivating God’s Word. 

And the last thing is that we need to remind ourselves daily that we are not part of this world. We live in this world as citizens of God’s kingdom; we interact with people in this world as ambassadors of the kingdom of heaven. We need to be creative in reminding ourselves of this. And over a lifetime, as we repeatedly draw ourselves back to this fact, we’ll find that more and more this awareness will fill our conscious minds. 

May God enable us to live in such a way that when we come to the end we will be able to say, like Simeon in our gospel reading, “Lord now you let your servant go in peace; your word has been fulfilled: my own eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people: a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.” The Liturgy of the Hours ends Night Prayer every night with this canticle, which is a great way of preparing ourselves for the day when we, like Simeon, will lay aside our lives in this world.

The Lord Our Righteousness, Jeremiah 33:14-16

Shiloh Lutheran Church, State College
First Sunday in Advent, 2015
                                                                              
This passage in Jeremiah grows out of one of the darkest times in Israel’s history. The nation has been in an extended period of spiritual decline. They’ve been guilty of the worst sorts of idolatry, even to the point of practicing ritual prostitution and human sacrifice. There was a brief time of reform under King Josiah, which Jeremiah experienced early in his ministry, but now things have gone back to where they were. The Babylonians are outside the gate, and the city is under siege. Soon the nation will be taken captive and deported to Babylon, 700 miles away.  

Jeremiah himself has been thrown into prison for prophesying that Jerusalem is going to be overcome by the Babylonian army. Here’s how chapter 33 begins: “While Jeremiah was still locked up in jail, a second Message from God was given to him” (The Message). This is a dark time in the nation. An army they have no hope of defeating is attacking the city, those in leadership have been persistently turning their backs on God, even to the point of locking up those who preach the truth. In the past, God has miraculously delivered them from powerful enemies, but He’s not going to do that now.

Things are bad, and they’re only going to get worse: “For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says about the houses in this city and the royal palaces of Judah that have been torn down to be used against the siege ramps and the sword in the fight with the Babylonians: They will be filled with the dead bodies of the men I will slay in my anger and wrath. I will hide my face from this city because of all its wickedness” (vv. 4-5). But then, even at this bleak moment in the nation’s history, there’s a message of hope. It begins early in the chapter: “But now take another look. I’m going to give this city a thorough renovation, working a true healing inside and out” (The Message). The nation is under judgment, and things are going to get considerably worse than they are, but that’s not the end of the story.

Verses 14-16 look forward to the fulfillment of God’s promise to send a Messiah. The whole passage is oriented to the future: “The days are coming” (v. 14), “In those days” (v. 15), “In those days” (v. 16). Right at the point where everything looks hopeless, God gives them a message of hope. Listen to these words from Hebrews 11: “What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see” (Hebrews 11:1, NLT). The life of faith is a life of looking forward to what God is going to do in the future. It’s a life of joyful anticipation and expectation based on the certainty that God will fulfill His promises, not because everything around us seems hopeful, but because God is trustworthy.  

Advent is a time that is especially set aside to cultivate a renewed sense of anticipation. Our senses become dulled over time. The sheer routineness of life tends to kill our sense of anticipation and hope. The pressures and stresses of life in this world crowd out our thoughts of God and His promises. We become dull and depressed spiritually. Everything seems gray, and it’s hard to envision things getting any better. Or, maybe our lives are going well, and we’re distracted by good things. There is so much to do, we don’t have time to cultivate a relationship with God. Advent is a time to stop and remind ourselves of the truth. Benedict Groeschel, in a series of meditations on Advent, said this: “Advent calls us as Christians to ponder again the mystery of our salvation, our hope that there is an answer to the riddle of earthly life with its passing joys, disappointments, sorrows, and frustrations, and its apparently dark end in the oblivion of death…. Advent calls every one of us to stop in the struggle of life and to look up, to recall the answer to the questions of life. We are on a journey to our Father’s house. The door has been opened to us by the Son of God, and the way marked out” (Behold, He Comes, p. 11). During the worst moment in Israel’s history, God gave them a message of hope for the future. The life of faith is a life of joyful anticipation and expectation, because God is trustworthy. This season, with its emphasis on looking forward to the fulfillment of our hope, can help us cultivate a stronger sense of hope in our Christian lives. 

These verses look forward, but their anticipation for the future is rooted in God’s promises given in the past: “The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfil the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.” God had made these promises hundreds of years before. The nation was living in an in-between time. God had promised and done great things in the distant past, but as the years and centuries rolled by, they’d lost sight of Him. Their memory of the past had become dim, and because of that they’d also lost their sense of hope for the future. Their sense of the past and their hope for the future were tied together.

It’s the same for us. We’re on a journey to our Father’s house, but our understanding of this is rooted in the past, in the promises of God and in the things He’s done in answer to the prayers of His people throughout the centuries. We, like the people of Israel, are living in an in-between time. The promise of “a righteous Branch... from David’s line” began to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ 2000 years ago, but we’re looking forward to the day when He will begin His visible reign in the New Heavens and New Earth. The focus of our lives as Christians is oriented to the future. But, in order to have a strong sense of our future hope, we need to cultivate a strong awareness of what God has done in the past. Our sense of the past and our hope for the future are tied together.

In the short-term, we’re preparing ourselves to worship the Incarnate Lord, the Word who became flesh 2000 years ago. We’ve heard the story over and over again, but we don’t really grasp the magnitude of what it means. Advent is an opportunity to meditate on God’s Word, on the things God has done and promised in the past, to cry out to Him to awaken us through His Spirit. Set aside time, during this Advent season, to pray over the story of Jesus’ birth, and come to worship expecting Him to make Himself known to you. Read through one of the gospels; pray through, and meditate on, some Advent and Christmas hymns. We’re preparing ourselves to worship Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. 

But Advent is also a time of preparation for that day in the future when we will see Him face to face. Are you living in anticipation of that day? Are you walking with Him, or has your faith been overwhelmed by the pressures and pursuits of this world? If you’re called to face Him tomorrow, will you be ashamed of how you’ve spent your life? Or will you be filled with joy? Listen to these words from Peter’s second letter: “Since everything around us is going to melt away, what holy, godly lives you should be living! You should look forward to that day and hurry it along–the day when God will set the heavens on fire and the elements will melt away in the flames. But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world where everyone is right with God” (2 Peter 3:11-13, NLT). Or these words from John’s first letter: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure” (1 John 3:2-3). We need a renewed sense of perspective about the things of this world. This whole life is a time of preparation for the day when we will see Him face to face, and celebrating Advent can help us cultivate the habit of preparing ourselves for His coming. God graciously calls us, during this season, to stop and take ourselves in hand, to refocus our priorities.

But in ourselves we won’t ever be ready to face Him. The people of Israel, during the time of Jeremiah, were reaping the consequences of their disobedience. When they had entered the land under Joshua’s leadership, God had given them a series of both promises and warnings. If they obeyed, they would experience God’s blessing, and if they persistently disobeyed, they would experience His curse. The prophets had warned, over and over, that they were headed toward destruction, and they had continued in their rebellion. They had persistently rejected God’s lordship and had gone their own way. They were reaping the consequences of their own choices. 

But, even so, God gives them this gracious promise: “In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord Our Righteousness.’” We’re not prepared to face Him, because we’re guilty of sin and rebellion, of going our own way and not loving Him with all our heart and soul and strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves. We’ve persisted in making choices that are contrary to His will. But the city we’re looking forward to, the New Jerusalem, isn’t based on our righteousness. That city is named “The Lord Our Righteousness.” It’s a city that we enter because of the grace and mercy of our God in sending His Son to be our righteousness when we were hopelessly lost. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The city we’re looking forward to is called “The Lord Our Righteousness,” because Jesus, our Savior, has opened the door for us and has taken away all our guilt. He is our righteousness. 

As we begin this Advent season, let’s set aside time to “ponder again the mystery of our salvation, our hope that there is an answer to the riddle of earthly life with its passing joys, disappointments, sorrows, and frustrations, and its apparently dark end in the oblivion of death.” Let’s “stop in the struggle of life and... look up, [and] recall the answers to the questions of life. We are on a journey to our Father’s house. The door has been opened to us by the Son of God, and the way marked out.” Very soon we’ll be at the end of our journey and will see Him face to face. This season is a gift, an opportunity to refocus our priorities and and renew our relationship with God, to be attentive to Him and to be reminded of our future hope. Set aside time to spend in His presence, and cultivate an expectant attitude in worship. We have to do with the Living God, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. Be attentive to what He is doing and what He has done. We never know when He is going to come to us in an extraordinary way. When that happens, may He find us waiting expectantly.                      

PRAYER: We thank you, O Lord, that you have so put eternity in our hearts that no earthly thing can ever satisfy us completely. We thank you that, in your sovereign wisdom, every present joy is mixed with sadness and unrest, to remind us that we are not yet home. And above all, we thank you for the sure hope and promise of an endless life which you have given us in the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord (adapted from A Diary of Private Prayer, by John Baillie, p. 91). Stir and awaken our dull hearts and minds this Advent season. Give us the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation, so that we may know you better; enlighten our hearts, so that we might know the hope to which you have called us, the riches of your glorious inheritance, and your incomparably great power for us who believe. Purify our hearts and minds and lives, and enable us to live in anticipation of that great day when we will no longer see things dimly, as in a mirror, but will see you face to face. For we pray in the name of Jesus, your Son, our Incarnate Lord, who appeared in the flesh and is now seated at your right hand, and who has promised to come again to take us home. Amen.

God Builds a Nation, Genesis 12:1-3

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Huntingdon Congregation

Sept. 20, 2015

Asher Lev was an immensely gifted painter who grew up in an ultra-conservative Jewish home. His artistic endeavors often brought him into conflict with his family, who really didn’t understand what he was doing or why he was doing it. He had a strong inner compulsion to keep painting, despite the problems it caused in his life, and as a result, he became increasingly alienated from his family. But he was especially concerned about his mother, who often intervened between him and his father, and he portrayed this by painting a crucifix, with his mother on the cross and Asher and his father nailing her there. This was the final straw, and his family ended up disowning him.

Asher Lev is a fictional character from a book by Chaim Potok (My Name is Asher Lev). I wasn’t even aware of the book, but it came up in one of my college classes. A local rabbi spoke in our class and someone asked about it. Up to this point, he had been very open-minded and liberal, but when the name of Chaim Potok came up he became angry and said Potok was a horrible, arrogant person and then went on to assert that no Jewish person would ever paint a crucifix. It was simply unthinkable. But, of course, this was exactly the point Potok was making. No Jewish person would ever paint a crucifix, but if one did, this is how the community would react. The rabbi, despite his liberal, open-minded posturing, found himself acting like one of the characters in Potok’s novel. He was so incensed by the whole idea that he missed the point of the story.

This often happens to us: we get so caught up in our own concerns, or stuck on particular details, that we end up missing what is really going on. And this is also true when we read Scripture. When we’re reading the early chapters of Genesis, if our perspective is limited by a particular theory of how God carried out His work of creation, we’re likely to miss the point. The purpose of the early chapters of Genesis is not to give us a detailed cosmology or satisfy our curiosity about how it all took place. There are lots of unanswered questions in these early chapters, and there is no attempt, on the part of the biblical authors, to clear everything up for us.

The point of Genesis 1-11 is to get us to where we are today, the call of Abraham. In chapters one and two, we learn that God created the world and placed humans there to bear His image. In chapter three we learn of the Fall, that these humans have rebelled against God’s command, and chapters 4-11 show something of the disastrous effects of this choice. And it’s in the context of this world that’s alienated from God and from one another that God calls Abraham. When we meet him here he’s called Abram, but God later renames him Abraham, which means “father of a multitude.”

The first thing to notice is that God calls Abraham to make a major change in his life. God calls him to leave his own country, the place where he grew up, the place where he is comfortable, to leave behind all the people he knows. This involves two things: he’s being called to separation from the alienated, divided world into which he was born. God is telling him to turn his back on everything that has been important to him up to this point in his life. Remember the context here. The world is in a state of rebellion against God, the Creator; Abraham is being called to separate himself from this world that is on the wrong track and to identify himself with God, the One against whom the world is rebelling.

God’s call also leads Abraham into a state of insecurity and uncertainty. He’s being called to leave behind everything that he knows, all his sources of comfort, and to make a journey “into the land that I will show you.” Responding to God’s call on his life meant saying good-bye to his family, his friends, and his country, everything that’s been a part of his life up to this point. Not only saying good-bye to all that, but setting out in an uncertain direction; the author of Hebrews says “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going” (11:8). He didn’t know where he was going, but he set out anyway, because he trusted God who had called him. So this work of God in building a nation begins with His call to a specific man in a specific place who was going about his life with other things in mind. There’s no reason to think that Abraham had life-goals that differed from those around him; the thing that made the difference was that God called him to leave all that behind and he obeyed. We too easily assume that the biblical characters were special people, different from the rest of us, but if you continue reading about Abraham you’ll see that he had very significant weaknesses. He was a man seeking to get through his life like others around him, but God called him to something different than what he had in mind for himself.

The second thing to notice is that God promises to bless Abraham: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” The central idea here is that God is going to bless him, which will result in Abraham himself becoming a blessing to others. What does it mean for God to bless him? Does it mean that God will give him good things? Well yes, it does mean that – it says that he is going to become a great nation and that his name will be great -- but it means much more; in fact, getting things from God is not the main thing at all. It means that God will be his God, that God will identify with him in a special way. What is happening here is the beginning of the undoing of the effects of the Fall. The world is in chaos because of sin; people are alienated from God and from each other, and God comes to Abraham and says “I will be your God.”

The primary, most-important content of God’s blessing is God Himself. God created people in His image, to walk with Him in the garden and to know His companionship, and all that was lost at the Fall. God is calling Abraham to become the person he was created to be, to begin the process of transformation that will lead, in the end, to full restoration. This will be a blessing not only to Abraham himself, but also to those around him: “so that you will be a blessing.”

This leads to the next thing, which is that God’s call points far beyond Abraham himself: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” It’s not that God looked at Abraham and said, “he seems like a really good guy; I think I’ll do something nice for him.” It’s that God is at work fulfilling the promise He hinted at when He was cursing the serpent in the garden and said: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel” (3:15). God is at work restoring the brokenness of His creation, and the call of Abraham is the point in history when the process begins. The whole remainder of the Bible can be seen as the outworking of this promise in the lives of God’s people over many centuries.

Through Abraham, God builds a nation called by His name, and over the centuries He demonstrates His faithfulness to His promise, despite their persistent unfaithfulness. But His purpose in building a nation, like His call to Abraham, is not an end in itself; He’s preparing this nation to be the people through whom He will bring a Redeemer into the world, One who will finally undo the effects of the Fall and restore God’s creation. As we read today in our gospel reading, Jesus said to a group of Jewish leaders who opposed His ministry: “Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). The call of Abraham points forward to the ministry of Jesus. The ministry of Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise that through Abraham all families of the earth would be blessed.

The final outworking of this is described near the end of the book of Revelation in this description of the New Jerusalem: “Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp of sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (22:3-5). This is the point we don’t want to lose sight of when we’re reading Scripture. Whatever else happens along the way, and whatever conclusions we come to about the details of biblical history, what is happening is that God is restoring the creation to Himself, and the final result will be what we see portrayed at the end of the book of Revelation.

What does this mean for us living in the 21st Century? First, we need to know that our faith is deeply rooted in history. There’s a tendency in our culture to despise the past and assume that we are wiser than all the people who have gone before us. C.S. Lewis called this “chronological snobbery,” the assumption that whatever is most-recent must be better. We need to know that God’s work of redemption didn’t start with us. He has been at work over the centuries preparing the way for us to be restored. The idea that things started out badly and have been steadily improving over time is a very weak assumption. It’s not terribly difficult to find people in the past who are much wiser than we are. Our technological advances have increased our access to information but have not made us wiser. T.S. Eliot described this well:

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust. (Choruses from ‘The Rock’).

God has been at work over many centuries to bring healing to us from the results of the Fall. Our hope for the future is rooted in the past, and we owe a great debt to those who have responded to God and have preserved the message for us, often at great cost to themselves.

The other thing is that we need to keep in perspective what God is doing. He’s not terribly concerned about whether we are Lutherans or Presbyterians or Baptists or Roman Catholics; His concern is with preparing a people for Himself to live in His presence throughout all eternity. It’s easy to get so caught up in the concerns of our particular group that we lose sight of God’s ultimate purpose in His work of redemption. He has been at work preparing a people for Himself to live in His presence and has graciously included us. When we gather for worship, we are joining with all those who went before us and are now worshiping before God’s throne in heaven.

The rabbi I mentioned at the beginning got pulled into Asher Lev’s story in spite of himself, but in Jesus we are truly part of this story that we’re reading about. God’s promise to Abraham, “in you all nations of the earth will be blessed,” includes us. We are part of that great body gathered in heaven, which includes Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all the rest. May God enable us to remember this as we read His Word and go about our lives in the coming week.

Doers of the Word, James 1:22-27

Shiloh Lutheran Church

August 30, 2015

(Note: this is an edited version of a sermon that appears earlier in this blog in the James series.)

I used to work with a guy who spent lots of time playing basketball video games. He understood how the game worked and knew how to develop a good strategy. He could get his players to make the right moves to win the game, both for offense and defense. He knew what it took to win a basketball game. But he didn’t play the game himself. He was overweight and out of shape; his connection with basketball was purely imaginary. He didn’t even watch real games.

When I was a young Christian, I talked with a man I had known all my life, who had never shown even the slightest interest in spiritual things. As I was talking with him, he informed me that he believed the gospel. He believed Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior of the world, and he had read several books on the end times. I was so amazed by his response that I didn’t know what to say. I said, “so you believe it’s all true?” And he responded, “yes.” So I asked him whether he was ready to stand in God’s presence, and he said, “no.” But he didn’t seem to be terribly bothered by that fact. He believed in the truth of the gospel, but his belief had no impact at all on his life. This kinds of divisions in our lives are common, and we get used to the lack of connection between our internal and external worlds.

Satan’s goal is to destroy us spiritually, and if he can’t achieve that by preventing us from coming to faith, he’ll try to isolate our faith so that it’s purely inward. The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, is a series of letters from a senior demon to a junior demon. When the man they’re trying to destroy comes to repentance, Screwtape advises his nephew: “The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance” (p. 60). As long as it’s a purely inward thing, not ever converted into action, it’s in the realm of imagination.

That’s the problem James is addressing in these verses. Faith in the gospel is not just a sense of inner conviction. It’s not the sort of thing that can be confined to one dimension of our lives. God calls us not only to hear His Word and believe it with our minds, but to respond to it in obedience. Those who don’t convert their faith into action are self-deceived, James says: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” They persuade themselves that because they like listening to the Word, because they enjoy learning about it, they must be OK spiritually. But Jesus gives a very stern warning about this in the Sermon on the Mount: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). James wants us to know that genuine faith involves more than saying, “Yes, I believe the Bible is true.” Faith in the gospel brings us into fellowship with the living God, who then sets out to transform every area of our lives in preparation for that day when we will see Him face to face and live in His presence forever. Believing the gospel is the beginning of the process of purification and transformation into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

The first thing James calls us to in this passage is attentiveness to God’s Word. There’s some discussion among commentators about the words James uses in verses 23-25. When he describes a person looking in a mirror he uses one word, and then he uses a different word to describe a person looking at the law of liberty. This contrast comes across in the NIV: “like a man who looks at his face in a mirror.... But the man who looks intently into the perfect law....” It’s even stronger in the NEB: “He glances at himself and goes away.... But the man who looks closely into the perfect law....” The first is a careless, superficial glance, and the second is a focused gaze. But other translations make no distinction at all. The NRSV, for example, uses the word “looks” in both places, and some commentators argue that there’s really no significance in the word change, that James used different words for the sake of variety but that they both mean the same thing.

The difficulty with a discussion like this is that all the commentators and translators are more familiar with the original languages than any of us, and our temptation is to simply choose the position we like best, the one that fits with our assumptions. I like the first idea better, that James is drawing a contrast between two different ways of listening. That fits more neatly into my sermon. But as I’ve read the various commentaries, the second position seems to have a slightly stronger case.

But that’s not terribly important anyway. Maybe there isn’t an intentional contrast between these two words, but the point is that James is talking about two different ways of listening. Some hear in a way that doesn’t lead to obedience. Their hearing remains on the surface of their minds. If we want to avoid falling into the same trap, the place to begin is with attentive listening to God’s Word. We need to know the truth before we can obey it. We can also say that obedience is rooted in attentiveness to God’s Word, and that mere hearing is often (though not always) rooted in superficial attention. The words pass through our minds, and we say, “oh yes, I believe that,” and then we go on with our lives. But the words never get any deeper. They don’t lead us to genuine repentance, which is a change of direction, a new way of living. They don’t connect with our lives in the world. It may or may not be that James used two different words to underscore this point, but the difference is there in any case, so translations like the NIV are on the right track in emphasizing two different ways of paying attention to God’s Word.

So whether or not James is contrasting two different words about hearing, if we want to become doers of the Word, rather than mere hearers, we need to listen to God’s Word attentively. Psalm 1 describes people who are doing this: “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.” They take delight in God’s Word and meditate on it day and night. They’re attentive to it. Their listening is not superficial.

The second thing James emphasizes here is the importance of remembering. Those who are mere hearers look and then immediately forget what they’ve seen; “But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget... they will be blessed in their doing.” This is a frequent emphasis in the Old Testament. When Moses was reminding Israel of the law, he said: “So be careful not to forget the covenant that the Lord your God made with you....” (Deuteronomy 4:23). Later in the same book, Moses is confronting Israel with their stubbornness and he says: “You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you; you forgot the God who gave you birth” (Deut. 32:18). The prophets make the same complaint. Here’s one example from Jeremiah: “[The false prophets] plan to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, just as their ancestors forgot my name for Baal” (Jeremiah 23:27). Israel got into trouble again and again because they forgot the truth.

This kind of forgetfulness is a spiritual problem, not a mental one. We can be regular church attenders, we can even be consistent in our personal devotions, and be forgetful hearers at the same time. We go to church on Sunday, and even if we don’t say it this way our attitude is “well, now that’s out of the way and I can get on with the things I want to do.” Then we approach our personal devotions in the same way. Everything is compartmentalized; spiritual exercises may make us feel better, but they don’t connect with our lives. We spend time in Bible reading and prayer, then when we go to something else we leave it all behind. There’s no connection between the spiritual compartment of our lives and the other things we do.

If we want to become doers of the Word, we need to find ways to break down the walls of these compartments. One way we can begin to do this is by allowing God’s Word to confront the way we’re living our daily lives in the world, asking God for wisdom and direction by considering questions like: “what kinds of changes might God be calling me to make in response to this passage?” Or “what does this truth that I’ve just encountered have to say to some of the other compartments in my life?” “How can I put this into practice?” These kinds of questions can help us remember who we are and who we belong to as we leave our spiritual exercises and go out into the world.

This leads to the third thing James emphasizes, which is obedience. James is calling us to respond to God’s Word with concrete, specific acts of obedience. Mere hearers think it’s enough just to hear. Paul is confronting people like this in Romans 2 when he says, “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law will be justified” (Romans 2:13). God calls us, not only to listen attentively and to carefully remember what we’ve heard, but to follow up on this with obedience.

That’s the point of verses 26-27, where James contrasts true religion and false religion. He’s not saying “religion is a bad thing; all you really need is a relationship with Jesus.” He’s not contrasting religion and relationship. He’s contrasting true and false religion. Religion has to do with the outward implications of a relationship with God (see Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James, pp. 210-11). Christian discipleship is not only an inward relationship, it’s a relationship with God that shows itself in outward actions. The word “religion” has to do with these outward actions. One commentator explains it this way: “Religion is... a comprehensive word for the specific ways in which a heart-relationship to God is expressed in our lives” (J.A. Motyer, The Message of James, p. 75).

The question is not whether or not we’re religious. The question is whether our religion is true or false. In describing the difference, James focuses on three areas: bridling the tongue, showing compassion for those who are vulnerable and in need, and avoiding the pollution of the world. False religion is confined to the spiritual compartment; it doesn’t lead to transformation in the way we use the gift of speech, in the way we respond to people who are in need, or in our attitude toward the world. We may be very diligent in our religious duties, but otherwise we look no different than those around us who make no profession of faith at all. James is saying that when this happens we’ve accepted a counterfeit religion. We’ve been self-deceived and our religion is worthless.

He wants us to know that Christian salvation is about more than going to church and having devotions. God calls us, not only to hear His Word and believe it with our minds, but to respond to it with obedience. He calls us to grow in obedience in each area of our lives: in our relationships, in learning to bridle our tongues; in the ways we use our resources, sharing with those who are vulnerable and in need; and in the way we relate to the world, being in this world but not being polluted by it. When we cultivate a life of obedience, James says we are blessed: “But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act – they will be blessed in their doing.”

Notice how he describes God’s Word. He calls it the “law of liberty.” It sets us free to live the kind of life we were created to live. God’s Word isn’t like a straightjacket which keeps us from doing what we want to do. It’s the Word of the God who created us and who knows what is best for us. “True freedom is the opportunity and the ability to give expression to what we truly are. We are truly free when we live the life appropriate to those who are created in the image of God.... The law of God is the law of liberty because it safeguards, expresses and enables the life of true freedom into which Christ has brought us. This is the blessing of which James speaks (25), the blessing of a full life, a true humanity. Obedience is the key factor in our enjoyment of it” (Motyer, p. 71). Being doers of the Word is the best thing for us; it leads to the kind of life God created us for, a fully human life.

This passage is closely related to one earlier in the chapter which says “welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.” This Word that we’re being called to obey is the Word that saves us. James is saying that if we claim to believe this Word but aren’t growing in obedience we’ve deceived ourselves. Our faith is worthless and will not save us. This doesn’t contradict Paul’s teaching on justification by faith. James is saying that genuine faith can’t be confined to our inner lives; it will manifest itself in outward acts of obedience.

How we respond to this “word that has the power to save” our souls is of the greatest importance. We can’t afford to allow more “urgent” things to crowd this out. C.S. Lewis reminds us of the infinite dimension of our lives and the lives of those around us: “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal” (The Business of Heaven, pp. 147-48). Each of us is headed in one direction or the other, and we are influencing the direction of others whether we’re aware of it or not. None of us are mere mortals. In the light of such overwhelming possibilities, how can we allow ourselves to be deceived? Since we live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, since we are all moving, and are influencing one another, in one direction or the other: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” Listen attentively to the Word, then remember what you’ve heard as you go about your duties, and order your life in obedience to His commands. Those who do this are blessed.