2 Peter 1:1-11

“Supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brother affection with love. . . For whoever lacks these things is blind and shortsighted.”

Hear the ongoing transformation that God intends! Ultimately, transformation (being purged and refined by the power of the Holy Spirit) leads to love, caring for people as much as, if not more than, we care for ourselves.

The greatest obstacles are blindness and shortsightedness. We fail to see in ourselves what we so often and easily see in the other. We compound things when in our blindness we transfer onto others the things that challenge us the most. A man once suggested to me I didn’t have any deep and abiding relationships with others. I have many shortcomings but that is not one of them. The irony here was that there is so much evidence to the contrary but
sadly for this man he couldn’t see it. The sad truth is he didn’t have any deep and abiding relationships and no one other than obligated family would come forward to say otherwise and probably not all of them.

Transformation is usually preceded by some introspection. A newlywed once said marriage had a way of highlighting how selfish one is. Today, for myself, I add try having kids! They are such a joy. Fishing with Dow the other day was such a delight especially as he reeled in his first fish. At that age I cannot imagine anything more rewarding. But that was planned. It is the constant flow of unexpected demands that trample upon my solitude or that desired run that get to me. I am selfish. Lord, leave me not blind to all the ways I am and then make me something else. Let introspection lead to transformation.

1 Peter 1:13-25

“You have been born anew . . . through the living and abiding word of God.” Followers of Jesus are twice born people. We are born once unto death and once unto life. The first life, like grass, withers. Aging confirms that. I am not yet fifty and I think of I have shrunk an inch in recent years. Add the slightest congestion to my day and I’m breathless by the time I get 32 pound Whit from the bottom of the stair to his crib. Whether one’s years on earth are many or few, his years are lived in age that is fading. Life is largely a process of decay and the things in the age of decay cannot be relied upon, at least not eternally.

But God in His Graciousness gives us another crack at life. We are born again through Jesus. And this life abides forever. Unlike a flower or grass, it endures. I am one of those that does not spend much time pondering what eternal life actually looks like. I just trust that given the blessings I’ve experienced in this life, the one to come will be infinitely better. There, in
whatever eternal life is, simple pleasures will be more intensely enjoyed. And what might one of those pleasures look like? A morning without a new creak!

Revelation 22:6-13

Having received the revelation, what was the apostle’s inclination? To fall to his knees and worship the angel who had given the revelation to him. “You must not do that!” the angel said. “Worship God.”

We are so susceptible to the cult of personality. Not only susceptible but we are often enablers of the same. But this presents a huge challenge for a church. Personalities retire. Pastors die. What happens then?

I read an article yesterday forecasting what many of us have seen coming – the challenges if not the potential demise coming to mega-churches. Usually they were built by a boomer with boomers. Boomers are nearing the end
of their tenure (This is when I conveniently claim to be an early Xer. . . And I am. . . Truly! . . You believe me don’t you?). Add to that the fact that these churches were usually built in rapidly growing areas which are now, twenty or thirty years later, stable or perhaps in decline. When market share slips, the churches can’t just pick up their $30,000,000 campus and move to the new up and coming suburb.

Lesson here: “You must not do that!” “Worship God.” The means of growing a church matter. When the church markets itself through its pastor or location it is setting itself up for failure as it is not pointing first to God. Indeed fleeting preferences, rock star preacher, contemporary music, casual dress or convenient location, are emphasized in practice more than undying truth. Don’t get me wrong. I am for removing pretense and it is folly to dismiss where the Holy Spirit is writing hymns upon the hearts of Jesus people in this day and age. But those things aren’t penultimate. They are not even secondary or tertiary. The only marketing slogans available to the church are in this vain – “We worship God” or ‘We decrease that He might increase.” I have not focus grouped those slogans but let’s be honest. I don’t think they will sell. You can market a church or pastor because we love a cult of personality. But not Jesus! You can’t market him. And when we try we are elevating something or someone else. Another lesson, intended or not!

Matthew 17:22-27

Peter is questioned by the tax man, “Does not your teacher pay the tax?” What tax? More than likely the temple tax is in view here as prescribed by Exodus 30:13. It had become an annual religious tax for Jewish males of 20 years and older. To the tax man, Peter answers yes. Apparently Jesus did.

But Jesus addresses Peter upon his return home. Seemingly (and caution is required here) Jesus pays the tax voluntarily so as “not to give offense.” “The sons are free,” Jesus says. What he is offering can’t be taxed by religious or secular authorities. Grace is free to the recipient. Grace is free period. The sons are not required to support religion, the Temple or its sacrifice ministry.

And yet, Jesus pays himself so as not to offend. Paul echoes such sentiments in Corinthians more than once. Negatively he says why not rather be cheated or offended (1 Cor. 6:7). Positively stated he says he becomes all things that some might be saved (1 Cor. 9:22). In the area of non-essentials one should exercise his freedom to advance the cause and not unnecessarily offend.

Tricky thing here? How do you exhort one to exercise freedom in such a manner without making the exercise of freedom a new law? This is where the church must resist the temptation to codify “not to give offense” or freedom in any way. The believer being sanctified must be left to discern that on his own. The church must faithfully teach the principle without defining its outcome. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. As has been suggested recently, grace is only experienced where scorekeeping is abandoned.

Matthew 17:1-13

The story of the transfiguration, like several others, is profound in its simplicity. Moses, standard bearer of the Law, and Elijah, standard bearer of the Prophets, bear witness to the supremacy of Jesus. Thus far in His life and ministry Jesus is perceived as one among many greats. Indeed the greatest stand with Him. But in the moment His Father and our Maker affirms Him, the other greats disappear. He takes center stage. All lights are trained upon Him that our eyes may follow. Secondarily, the story is rightly read as a call to not rest upon the mountain top too long and an exhortation to re-engage the world. However, it is first about the supremacy of Jesus. Any expression of Christianity that does not make Him central is an expression of something else.

At 18 months, Dow would hold up a cracker and say “take, eat.” It was enough to make your heart melt. At 18 months, Whit, not to be outdone, now regularly sings these words, “Be Thou My Vision.” It is one of the hymns with which I serenade (matter of opinion I know) the boys to sleep at night, exclusively for several weeks following Graham’s birth. Obviously it has done its work in more ways than one. For better or worse, we are discipling all the time.

It reminds me of the power of liturgy and our somewhat routinized way of doing worship in the Anglican world. Years ago I went to see an elderly parishioner in a nursing home. She had been there for many years and had not recognized anyone or communicated in a couple. She had been raised, as many Episcopalians were, on the Rite 1 Morning Prayer. I said the service for
her but not with her for obvious reason. However, when I came the General Thanksgiving she joined in saying it word for word. She had core convictions she could articulate even through the fog of age and dementia.

On another occasion, I was standing at the bedside of a young man dying of cancer. His long battle was coming to an end. Sensing that, I asked his young wife and three young children to come into the hospital room and gather around him that we might pray. He had not said anything in couple of days. The doctors thought the cancer had metastasized in his brain. As we stood quietly I said, “The Lord be with you. As trained the family responded “And also with you.” I continued, “Let us pray.” Instantly this dying man  said “yes., let’s. Our Father, who art in heaven . . . ” Of course, the entire family joined in. Within minutes he was gone. His last act was to lead his family in prayer. Liturgy penetrated the innermost parts of his mind yielding a response of faith.

Never underestimate the value of tools God has given us to disciple. Liturgy can’t produce a Christian any more than sitting in a library will make us a book. But for the believer it can etch deep truths in the remotest recesses that can be summoned and transcend even the ravages of death.

Below is the second installment in a three part series entitled “Life in Three Movements: Bound, Released, Transformed.”

RELEASED

The law does not have the power to achieve IN US what it demands of us. We get it. We just can’t do it.

Alone we can’t achieve what civil rights legislation OR ANY LEGISLATION promotes. Nor can we observe the commandments of God. Remember, fail in one part and we have failed in it all. More than a means of escaping our situation, the law highlights our situation, “through the law we become conscious of sin.” It shines a spotlight on how far we check up short or miss the mark.

Depressing? It should be. And it is made worse by our context. Americans are deeply troubled by any notion that we are enslaved when we so boldly and routinely proclaim we are the land of the free and home of the brave. This situation is seemingly hopeless. And it is . . . apart from release
or Movement 2.

Our reality, the truth of our situation, would be hopelessly depressing if it were not for a far more powerful truth: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransomfor many.”

A People Released!

Let’s unpack that. “For even the Son of Man” means the extraordinary being who is the Son of Man, indeed the Son of God, who is worthy of praise and entitled to our service, even he, serves and gives his life. God tops the parting of the Red Sea, the last great image of massive release, in that he himself achieves the release by himself and at great cost to himself, unthinkable of any Sovereign much less the Creator of the World.

“Did not come to be served, but to serve” He abandons service due him but instead serves us. We forget at times that Christianity is first and foremost about and always begins with what God is doing for us and not what we are doing for him (particularly religious observance). He has chosen to roll up his sleeves and enter our filthy and broken existence to release us from the hopelessly depressing situation in which we find ourselves.

By what means? Just what kind of service does he provide? “To give his life as a ransom for many!” As I ponder contemporary images that illustrate this truth, I am immediately drawn to the movie Gran Torino. In it Clint Eastwood plays a Korean War veteran who did horrific things to the enemy in defense of liberty and freedom of another people. His life is now drawing to a close, and he finds himself living in his Detroit neighborhood among Koreans who were once his mortal enemies. He comes to identify them not as the oppressors but the oppressed. Gangs hold them hostage making life a living hell. This time he chooses not to kill but to instead die to set people free. Everyone thinks and conventional wisdom says Eastwood will take on the gang members removing them one by one at the end of a barrel. But he chooses instead to draw the enemy’s fire under the pretense of being armed. Fully aware of the outcome, Eastwood sacrifices himself. He dies .The gang members are legally imprisoned (the strong men are bound up). His Korean neighbors are liberated from what held them hostage.  Life begins again.

This account is utterly and completely Gospel. Sin is our jailer, Death our prison. Jesus takes on the enemy allowing it to destroy him that we might be set free. He satisfies the law and the consequences of breaking it. He suffers our fate only to overcome it in being raised from the dead. Vicariously he suffers for us by paying the price and consequently we vicariously benefit from the satchel of cash in the broken body of Jesus.

The ransom is mentioned numerous times in the New Testament. Ransom is the “instead of price.” Instead of who? Instead of us! “For the wages of sin is death.” “But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” He died so we don’t have to. “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” Gone. Gone. Gone.

Have you ever pondered the practical implications of being released from death? We often focus on what is to come, that this more glorious future awaits us. And it does. But the truth of “eternal life” impacts life now.

So much pain is heaped upon the world in the interest of avoiding death. With that on the horizon, we spend much of life trying to figure out what will survive it. We amass possessions while others starve. We build decaying monuments that bear our name while souls are lost eternally. We create empires trampling upon nations and people in the process.

As a pastor I’ve experienced this on a smaller scale and at a personal level. Driven men, desiring to create something that cannot go unnoticed and will survive the test of time, labor night and day without end. After all, they have only this life in which to do it. Consequently their wives and children hardly know them. And the sins of the fathers are visited upon the future generations.

Eternal life sets our legacy in perspective. Eternal life means our contribution to the temporal, the fruit of a productive 50 or 60 years, will be small regardless. But positively it means we will be both loved and remembered beyond the number of our days. WE ALREADY HAVE A LEGACY. Our names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. Instead of pouring in to decaying monuments, we can spend our lives alternatively, pouring into men, our spouses, our sons and daughters, indeed all those God sets in our path.

Once in 1988 I found myself on the Pan American highway, between the major city of Cochabamba and the then tiniest of villages called Aramasi, along with others in a precarious situation. We came to a rather sudden stop at a makeshift checkpoint. It was not manned by local police as often was the case but rather by regular army which rightly or wrongly were thought of as thugs in camo. A couple of them boarded the hired bus, machine guns in hand. That had never happened before. They were intense and spoke tersely. I don’t want to overstate the case but missionaries had been “taken out” before. They were considered seditious. My life flashed before me. At 26 I was too young to die. As quickly as the fear welled up so did an unexpected calm. Your legacy is established John. Your future is secure. I didn’t know it immediately but I had been liberated from death.

But we are not only liberated from our prison (death). We are also liberated from our jailer (sin). There can be more fruit in our lives. Sin need not define our future.

First, we must abandon our striving to be perfect and yield to the one who can perfect us. So many of us spend our lives reading the bible for the ultimate list of rules. Compliance with them assures us of favor with God. But here is where our paradigm is often amiss. As previously argued (definitively in my humble opinion), we cannot comply with the law. The law has no power to achieve in us what it demands of us. Nor is the power within us personally. We can only modify our behavior for so long. Regardless we strive in vain for what we have before us. We have already found favor with God. Not out of compulsion but rather out of love, mercy and grace, he came to see us. He remembers us.

Our job is now to yield to the perfecter. We yield to the Holy Spirit who is transforming us into the likeness of the Son (2 Cor. 3). Then we live into the law not by striving to be more like Jesus, but by being more like Jesus having been made that way by a power much greater than ourselves.

We were bound. Now we are released. Ahead we are transformed. On to Movement 3.

Below is the first installment in a three part series entitled “Life in Three Movements: Bound, Released, Transformed.”

Bound

Have you ever tried to lose weight or stop smoking? Have you ever tried to keep a New Year’s resolution, a resolve to do something good (as opposed to giving something up) like calling your parents regularly or serving the poor or handicapped? Women, have you ever tried to stop coveting your best friend’s husband? Men, have you ever tried to stop lusting, period?

Have you failed miserably at one or more of these? Have you actually enjoyed some success at one or more for a season only to fail as energy and focus waned? Take heart, you’re not alone.

The Apostle Paul is the most prolific writer in the New Testament. And you know what? The paragraph above reflects his experience of life. I do the things I don’t want to do(overeat bad foods, ignore poor or worse have contempt for them, cheat, desire) and I don’t do the things I want to do (eat well, clothe the naked, maintain fidelity, honor my parents). I can’t avoid the evil. I can’t even achieve the good. No wonder Paul concluded, “What a wretched man I am!” (Romans 7). Like us, left to his own devices and desires Paul would ask, as more than one of my dear friends has asked, why isn’t there more fruit in my life?

In part because we fail to understand the predicament we are in, the gravity of the situation that grips us. We deceive ourselves into believing that we need only to tack or alter course a bit when actually we need to come about, make a 180 degree turn. We kid ourselves into believing we are hindered (getting some pushback) when we are actually shackled and in iron. The challenge is one of bondage. Nothing less captures it.

And it is not a bondage we can fix. We cannot simply free ourselves though we will exhaust all efforts to do so. We cannot simply slip the surly bonds of our chains. The power is not within us to do it. Fundamental to understanding our situation is appreciating that we attack our bondage like every other challenge in life, as if we can fix it. Out of groceries? We go to the store. Toilet clogged. We grab a plunger.

Central to experiencing more fruit in our lives is acknowledging how shackled we are and how little we ourselves by our own power can do about it. At least then we understand rightly the challenge we face and rule out the most likely person, in our very humble opinions, to address it. You! Me!

As God had to do something as radical as part the Red Sea to free the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, HE must do something even more radical to deliver us (that’s me and you equally) from our bondage to sin, our inability to do consistently the things we ought to do and the propensity to those things which we ought not to do. And He does. Movement 2.

Meanwhile, let us return to Movement 1. We must accept the confines of our enslavement, the utterly inescapable bondage we are in. “There is no one righteous, not even one.” (Romans 3:10) And “No one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.” (Romans 3:20) As much as we would like to avoid admitting it, our state of being apart from God is unrighteousness, bound by sin. This is not a statement dividing redeemed from unredeemed but speaks to the common and defiled ground upon which we all stand, redeemed and unredeemed, Jew and Gentile.  Worse we cannot alter our situation. The law, obedience to the standards set by the maker, is not possible through human striving. The law does not have the power to achieve what it demands of us. We get it. We just can’t do it.

A great illustration of this for me is the civil rights legislation and era that marked my youth. I was raised in a city, though not in a home, that perpetuated the myth that whites were superior to blacks. The Civil Rights era rightly claimed something else, the utter equality of men before God and country. However, the legislation only provided remedies when someone failed to recognize that utter equality. The law had (and has) no power
to cause a white person to appreciate the equality of men much less to love a black person. That only comes with a transformed heart. Sanctification, being changed by a force beyond us into the likeness of His Son, is the only thing that causes us to appreciate that God is no respecter of men, that He shows no favoritism (Acts 10:34). Only then can one appreciate the utter equality, that I am no more and no less than the man beside me.

Alone we can’t achieve what civil rights legislation promotes. Nor can we observe the commandments of God. Remember, fail in one part and we have failed in it all. More than a means of escaping our situation, the law highlights our situation, “through the law we become conscious of sin.” It shines a spotlight on how far we check up short or miss the mark.

Depressing? It should be. And it is made worse by our context. Americans are deeply troubled by any notion that we are enslaved when we so boldly and routinely proclaim we are the land of the free and home of the brave. This situation is seemingly hopeless. And it is . . . apart from release or Movement 2.

Nondiscipleship is the elephant in the church. It is not the much discussed moral failures, financial abuses, or the amazing general similarity between Christians and non-Christians. These are only effects of the underlying problem. The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to be constantly learning how to live their lives in The Kingdom Among Us. And it is an accepted reality. The division of Christians into those from whom it is a matter of whole-life devotion to God and those who maintain a consumer, or client, relationship to the church has now been an accepted reality for over fifteen hundred years.

And at present–in the distant outworkings of the Protestant Reformation, with its truly great and good message of salvation by faith alone–that long-accepted division has worked its way into the very heart of the gospel message. It is now understood to be a part of the “good news” that one does not have to be a life student of Jesus in order to be a Christian and receive forgiveness of sins. This gives a precise meaning to the phrase “cheap grace,” though it would be better described as “costly faithlessness.”

Grace, Rest & the End of Scorekeeping