Since getting a dog, I’ve spent more time throughout the day outside waiting for the dog to do his business. Out there waiting on my deck, I especially like watching the night sky. Over the last five years, I’ve seen shooting stars, including one particularly bright, slow-moving meteor that crawled across the early morning sky. Twice I’ve seen the Starlink Train.
Some people are bird-watchers, some are people-watchers. In a college class, we were given an assignment to people watch. Many students in the class would go to the mall, sit at busy intersection and observe people. It is a wonderfully fascinating habit.
In the previous post, we learned that God told Ezekiel about the watchman. But who is the watchman, and what do they do? In Ezekiel 33, verses 7-9, God continues, “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them a warning from me. When I say to the wicked man, ‘O wicked man, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak out to dissuade him from his ways, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the wicked man to turn from his ways and he does not do so, he will die for his sin, but you will have saved yourself.”
As the watchman prophet, Ezekiel’s job was to tell the people living with him Babylon to return to the Lord.
We Christians are also watchmen.
Jesus said that we, his disciples, are to be his witnesses, making disciples of all, teaching them to follow Jesus. That is our job as Jesus’ watchmen. We’ll talk about that further in the next post.
For now, think about who ho has God placed you in proximity to?
Think of your neighbors.
Think of your family.
Think of your co-workers.
Think of your friends.
You are Jesus’ watchman for them.
Take a moment, write their names. What does it mean to be Jesus’ watchman for them? In the previous post, we talked about three words that watchmen use: prayer, care and share.
Start with that first word. Pray for the people on your list. Pray that God’s Spirit will work in their lives, and give you the opportunity to share his love with them.
Place the list in a place where you will be reminded to pray for those people daily.
On a beautiful cold and crisp December evening couple weeks ago, a group of about 15 people from Faith Church and First Baptist Church (who rents from Faith Church) walked around a local neighborhood, ringing doorbells and singing Christmas Carols by candlelight to people. We wanted to share the joy of Christmas, as well as briefly communicate the story of Jesus. We would sing one or two brief carols, then finish with “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” and move on to the next house. Most of the people who came to the door expressed happy surprise. One person, however, surprised us! He quietly exited his house from the rear, then suddenly showed up suspiciously asking what was going on. Once we assured him that we were from the church a couple blocks away, and we were going house to house singing carols, he warmed up and thanked us. We had only one truly negative response. A person came to their door with a look of frustration, clearly communicating that they were not thrilled about us, that we were barging in to their evening, forcing them to stand at their door and pretend to be welcoming. They didn’t pretend very well, or maybe didn’t try to pretend at all, as midway through the first song, they turned around, went back inside and shut the door.
This got me thinking about the oddness of what we were doing. In decades past, Christmas caroling house to house was somewhat common. But no more. Instead, our little group walked uninvited to people’s homes, and just started singing. We didn’t ask if they were interested in being serenaded. True, the majority expressed appreciation, but I wonder what the unhappy man thought in the days to come. Did he hold a grudge? Was his impression of Jesus boosted or decreased? Clearly we were hoping for a positive impression.
As we think about talking to people about Jesus, how do we go about it in a world where fewer and fewer people care about religion or faith? It can be very intimidating. We can fear that we are being unfaithful or ineffective disciples of Jesus, that we will push people away. We tend to clam up. We tend to be silent. As we will see this week in our continuing study of Ezekiel, there is a time to be silent and a time to speak.
As we learned in the previous post, Ezekiel has been a silent prophet, only speaking when God gave him a prophetic word. By chapter 33, at least seven years have passed since God imposed silence on Ezekiel. Seven years!
That’s a lot of silence.
In chapter 33, verses 1-20, which we are studying this week, we read Ezekiel’s final prophetic word before God opens Ezekiel’s mouth, allowing him to speak freely. No longer will Ezekiel be the Silent Prophet, which is why this past Sunday at Faith Church we had a silent sermon. I started the sermon with a video titled “Noise” by Rob Bell, who does a great job introducing the importance of silence. (You can purchase the video inexpensively here.) Bell suggests that noise is all around us. Sound, images, and other kinds of noise. Meanwhile, God calls us to listen for his voice. Are we living such noisy lives that we cannot hear God?
In the middle of his forced silence, Ezekiel heard from God. What he heard is an important message that we need to hear as well.
Here’s what God says in Ezekiel 33:1-6, “The word of the LORD came to me: ‘Son of man, speak to your countrymen and say to them: “When I bring the sword against a land, and a people of the land choose one of their men and make him their watchman, and he sees the sword coming against the land and blows the trumpet to warn the people, then if anyone hears the trumpet but does not take warning and the sword comes and takes his life, his blood will be on his own head. Since he heard the sound of the trumpet but did not take warning, his blood will be on his own head. If he had taken warning, he would have saved himself. But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them, that man will be taken away because of his sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for his blood.”
This week we learn what it means to be watchmen.
A watchman, God says, is one who sounds the warning that trouble is one the way.
A watchman must be alert, focused and willing to tell the truth.
How are you at telling the truth when the truth is difficult?
In verse 6, God says he will hold the watchman accountable for not telling the truth. I don’t like the sound of that because there are plenty of times when I find it quite difficult to tell the truth.
But there are plenty of people that need to hear the truth. During our sermon discussion group this past Sunday, we talked about this further, and one person asked, “Is it okay if we just pray for people?” It’s a good question. There’s no doubt that prayer is important. We should absolutely pray for people. Furthermore, there is the famous phrase, “Share the Gospel at all times, and when necessary use words.” That statement is very similar to the idea that actions speak louder than words. We evangelical Christians, however, have long emphasized communicating the content, the information of the story of Jesus, as if gospel actions and deeds are of secondary importance.
What did Jesus do? He practice all three habits, that years ago the now defunct Lighthouse Movement described as Prayer, Care and Share. We should pray for people, care for them, and share the story of Jesus with them. A Watchmen prays, cares and shares. We are all watchmen. We all should practice all three habits of Jesus as we seek to communicate his good news to all people.
Have you ever been with your kids or grandkids and played the Silent Game? It’s a contest to see who can be quiet the longest. No talking, no laughing, no noise of any kind.
We parents and grandparents bring up the idea of the Silent Game usually because the kids are being noisy, and we want some peace and quiet. Car rides are a great time for the Silent Game. I thought of it the other day when my daughter had friends over for her 16th birthday party, and dinner was getting a bit raucous. I kept silent about the Silent Game that night, because it would probably have led to a lot of teenage eye-rolling.
The reality is that the Silent Game usually doesn’t last long, as kids burst into giggles at the slightest sound. Frankly, even adults are not often totally silent are we? I recently heard the story of a sportscaster who doesn’t like to fly in airplanes, so he drove himself 17 hours from one city to another to get to his next assignment. His fellow sportscasters were dumbfounded (Ha!) when they learned that he was silent the entire trip. No radio, no music, no podcasts, no phone calls. Silence is a lost art, a needed practice we would do well to recover, especially from a Christian perspective.
For that reason, at Faith Church yesterday we had another Silent Sunday. It’s been several years since our last Silent Sunday (and you can read about what they are like here and here). Because we’re out of practice, I thought it would be wise to have silence only during the sermon. So actually, it was a Silent Sermon.
For the sermon, we returned to our study of the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel. Remember Ezekiel? He saw wild visions of God’s flaming lightning throne chariot, performed prophetic skits, used the Prophetic Stare, and once even traveled to Jerusalem in a vision. Near the end of Israel’s monarchy, right around the year 595 BCE, Ezekiel was one of 10,000 Jerusalemites who were exiled to Babylon, and his entire prophetic ministry took place there. The messages God gave him called the Jews, and a few times foreigners as well, to repent of their rebellious ways and return to following God’s way. Do you remember his most-repeated phrase? “Then you will know that I am the Lord.” God, through Ezekiel, says that because the people rebelled, he will allow calamity to crash upon them in the form of the Babylonian military, and then they would know that he is God. Of course God didn’t want that destruction to happen. He wanted his people to return to him, to know him, to be in relationship with him. So we see God’s heart for his people in this prophetic compilation.
This week on the blog we jump back into our study where we left off, Ezekiel chapter 33. Chapter 33 begins, “The word of the Lord came to me: ‘Son of man, speak to your countrymen…” and the remainder of the book of Ezekiel will focus on Israel (with the possible exception of chapters 38 and 39 about the mysterious Gog and Magog). So there is Ezekiel, living in exile in Babylon, 900 miles away from the land of Israel. With him are 10,000 other Jews from Jerusalem, and it is those 10,000 whom he lives among and prophesies to. What will God say to these Jews? We’ll find out this week.
I want to remind you of one unique aspect of Ezekiel’s ministry that you might have forgotten, and, frankly, one that we didn’t talk about all that much in the previous 32 chapters. Ezekiel was a mostly silent prophet. Review chapter 3 verses 24-27, which I wrote about here. Those verses conclude Ezekiel’s second encounter with God’s breathtaking throne chariot, during which time God commissions Ezekiel to be his prophet. In Ezekiel 3:24-27 God says Ezekiel will now start his ministry by returning to his house in his village in Babylon, where God will shut his mouth, and he will not be able to speak…with one exception. When God gives Ezekiel a prophecy, then Ezekiel will be able to speak the words of that prophecy only. Think about that. Chapter 33 takes places at least 7 years after God shut Ezekiel’s mouth. That means for nearly all of 7+ years, Ezekiel has been silent, except for the few prophecies we read about in chapters 4 through 32. That’s partly why he acted out so many skits and used the Prophetic Stare.
Ezekiel’s silence is nearly done. This week as we study Ezekiel 33:1-20, it will be the last section in which we can call Ezekiel the Silent Prophet. Tomorrow I will invite you to read the blog post, and then silently consider Ezekiel’s last moments as the Silent Prophet. In the silence, I pray that God will speak! Read Ezekiel 33:1-20, and then tomorrow we’ll learn more!
Editor’s Note: Once again I welcome David Hundert as guest blogger this week! Thanks David, for filling in for me. In this four-part series, David concludes our Advent 2021 series, Ready for the Return, in which we studied 2 Thessalonians.
How to seek God is even more evident, more important, and even more critical as we think about Jesus’ second coming. You can open any newspaper, any news website, and see the world around us hurting. People need the love, support, and all the help we can give. They need our prayers but even more so, they need our example of how to love one another and to love and accept them.
I thank and praise God, that my wife and I have found a loving body of believers at Faith Church. I thank God for the Leadership team and all the serve teams. In my time serving on various teams, there always seems to be something that comes up that the serve team has to ask, “Is that opportunity for us or for another serve team?” I attribute that to the fact that everything we do affects one another, and it is the desire of the serve teams and Leadership team to serve in a God honoring way. As someone who has done his fair share of church hopping, that is rarer than you would think in a church. It shouldn’t be, but it is.
I would encourage you to continue to seek God in the new year. I would encourage you to continue to love one another and serve one another as God has gifted each of you. If there is an area that you’ve thought about helping in and haven’t taken that step forward yet, I would encourage you to pray and ask the Lord, who gives liberally to those who would ask, that he gift you the ability to help and then step out in faith. I would encourage you to continue to love one another as Christ has loved you.
His second coming is closer now than ever, and no one knows the time or date. When asked about the reason for your faith, remind those that don’t know him, that no one is guaranteed tomorrow. Invite them in to share in our shalom and let’s see His kingdom grow on earth as it is in heaven. As we move into the new year, I want to encourage you to think of someone that doesn’t know the Lord and commit with me, that we will pray them into the kingdom this next year.
Editor’s Note: Once again I welcome David Hundert as guest blogger this week! Thanks David, for filling in for me. In this four-part series, David concludes our Advent 2021 series, Ready for the Return, in which we studied 2 Thessalonians.
What do you think is the best way to tell people about Jesus? You might be surprised at a method that Paul advises.
Paul concludes 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15, instructing the Christians what to do if the disruptive/idle individuals in their church don’t heed Paul’s instructions; those idle people are to be shunned, not as punishment but, again, with the goal of redemption. Shunning them? Isn’t that the opposite of what it means to tell people about Jesus? A careful reading of this passage reveals that Paul is clearly concerned for the disruptive/idle individuals; he wants them to become active participants in the community of faith.
Paul encourages those that do the “shunning” to not regard those who aren’t acting as they should as the enemy. That is critical! We in the body of Christ should never be judgmental, biased, or bigoted. These were fellow believers that the Christians were to walk away from. Even if you don’t know where the person stands with the Lord, don’t regard them as the enemy. They, too, are image bearers, created in the image of God and they need to know Him. Treating them as the enemy would shut down any opportunity to witness to them.
One commentator states, “Nonetheless, at the end of the day Paul’s greater concern, as usual, is for the community as a whole and their role as offering evidence of God’s rule on earth through their conduct in general and relationships as a community in particular.”
I love this. When the family of God works together as they should, they provide evidence to the world around us of God’s rule on earth. People can look at us and see a difference. They see something that is desirable. It begins to break down the walls that they build around that God-shaped hole in their lives, and they begin to realize that their lives are empty and missing something.
In case you need a reminder, we have that answer! We just need to demonstrate it for them. Evangelism is more than passing out tracts and openly proclaiming the gospel on a street corner.
While those are both commendable activities, evangelism is about living our lives in such a way that the world around us wants what we have!
It’s about opening the church doors and opening our arms to those that visit us and welcoming them into the shalom that we share with one another.
Editor’s Note: Once again I welcome David Hundert as guest blogger this week! Thanks David, for filling in for me. In this four-part series, David concludes our Advent 2021 series, Ready for the Return, in which we studied 2 Thessalonians.
As we continue studying 2 Thessalonians 3, Paul makes what may be a surprising statement: “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers and sisters, to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching you received from us.” Take note that he is talking about “believers” because it isn’t those that don’t know the Lord that are doing these things, it is believers!
It is important to recognize that we Christians can’t and shouldn’t expect those that don’t know the Lord, to live as Christians are called to live. But in 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15, Paul is calling out people that have professed a faith in the Lord, and he is calling them out because they are disruptive, idle, busybodies! Do you know anyone like that? How do Christians keep away from other Christians who are behaving badly?
But notice a potential contradiction. In verse 6 Paul says, “Keep away from those people.” The throughout the rest of the passage he urges the Christians to help their fellow Christians to correct their mistakes and turn back to the Lord. What is Paul saying? Stay away or help them?
This is the same concern that the global church has had for years about various types of sin. The Lord Himself, tells us in Matthew 18:15-17,
“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
The end goal for Jesus and for Paul is reconciliation. So going back to those that are idle, disruptive, and busybodies, you can easily tell them that you can’t be around them while they are acting in that manner and walk away. When they come to their senses, you can return. Again, the idea is reconciliation.
We don’t know why, the people in Thessalonica were behaving this way. Was it contempt for work itself, because they were people of God’s kingdom and therefore they were above needing to work? Was it pressing the gospel of the kingdom a bit too far, expecting/demanding the rich to care for the poor? Was it related to their understanding of end times? Was it an attempt on Paul’s part to break up dependencies created by supporter-user relationships? Or was it just plain laziness? We simply don’t know. All we know for sure is what Paul actually says, “We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive”, meaning unwilling to work and therefore disrupting the shalom, the peace, of the believing community.
We know very little about the specifics as to what caused Paul to address these issues. The only hint we get as to why Paul chose to work with his own hands while among them comes in a secondary way in verse 8, “so that we would not be a burden to any of you.” Paul is making his point, for the sake of the well-being of the community as a whole.
Paul’s response to the issue comes in three parts. He begins by addressing the whole community in verses 6-10, who are being urged to “shun” those who are unwilling to work. In so doing, the larger part of the passage, verses 7-9, has to do with Paul and his companions’ example regarding work. I was taught as a young man in the Marine Corps, that a leader never asks his people to do something that they themselves wouldn’t do. In other words, lead by example. That is what Paul is telling them. He gave them an example to follow. That is one practical step to helping restore people, give them an example to follow.
Check back in to the next post, as Paul will teach more about how help to restore people.
Editor’s Note: Once again I welcome David Hundert as guest blogger this week! Thanks David, for filling in for me. In this four-part series, David concludes our Advent 2021 series, Ready for the Return, in which we studied 2 Thessalonians.
Consider this irony: In 2019, if you stayed home and did nothing, you were considered lazy, irresponsible. In 2020, If you stayed home and did nothing, you were considered a responsible individual? Even my laptop goes idle every now and then. After 10 minutes, an image of the Lord appears when my laptop goes idle. It’s my screen savior.
As we continue studying 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, Paul warns us to keep away from believers who are idle. What does he mean? We’re taught that when reading Scripture, we need to read it with one foot in the original text, with the original author, and the original intent that the passage was written for. The other foot needs to be right here, right now, asking “how is this relevant to me today?” As we study 2 Thessalonians 3, let’s try that out.
Imagine with me, if you happened to discover the cure for Covid, or the cure for dementia, or cancer. What would you do with that? What would you do with kind of information? What does it take to get to that point where you can say that the cure works? You have double blind trials, and testing on the medications to make sure that the cure isn’t worse than the disease. You make sure that the public would be able to gain easy access to it. What if this cure, was as simple as taking a single pill, once! Or, for those that have issues swallowing pills, they make a liquid form that comes in your favorite flavors. One dose, and that’s it! No more cancer, no more dementia, no Covid.
Now, you run into a neighbor that you’ve waved to from time to time. You see him across the fence in your backyard or working on his car in the driveway, He’s barbecuing or you are, and you just found out that he has prostate cancer. Do you continue to wave at him? Are you afraid to tell him about the cure, because you think that he might look at you weird? Do you avoid the topic, because you don’t want him to think your one of those “cure all, nutjobs” or a snake oil salesmen? Or do you tell him that he needs this cure because it can extend his life?
What does all this have to do with Advent and 2 Thessalonians 3? We’re about to find out!
In verses 1-5 Paul begins by asking for prayer that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored. Experts put the date of this letter somewhere around the year 50. This makes this letter pretty close to 2 thousand years old and less than 20 years after the resurrection of Jesus. There would still be a lot of people that had witnessed Jesus’ walking around after His crucifixion, if not having witnessed the event itself. So what is this “message of the Lord” that Paul is talking about? Read about it in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, the message of the good news of Jesus, which we call the Gospel. Is the message from his day, any different than the message for today? No!
Paul was asking for prayer, that this message, this gospel, be spread quicker back then, so I would ask, how much more important is it, that it continue to be spread quickly today? In the King James version, we read that “the time draws nigh…” We are closer to the 2nd advent or the 2nd coming now, than Paul was back then. Even then, Paul states that there were evil people without faith and they still persist today. Should that deter us? No!
Without that 1st Advent, there would be no 2nd Advent. The return of Jesus Christ is closer now then ever and it gets closer by the minute. Who do you know that needs to hear the message? Who do you know that doesn’t have faith? Who will you be praying for in the coming year, that they accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior? Who needs this permanent cure from the effects of sin, that only Jesus can deliver? What keeps us from sharing that?
In the previous post we learned that suffering is the way to glory. I have to admit that I don’t like the sound of that. I would rather glory come by way of ease, comfort and fun.
This is precisely why Paul says what he says next in our ongoing study of 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17. But before we read what he says, think about the context with me. If the way to glory is through suffering, and we know that the Thessalonian Christians were already suffering, as we read in chapter 1, verse 4, it would be possible that the Thessalonians were thinking, “I didn’t sign up for this difficult life. I just wanted the golden ticket to get into heaven.” Paul knows that their faith could easily start failing if the persecution continued. So look at what he says in verse 15.
“Stand firm and hold fast to the traditions or teachings which I taught you when I was with you and in my letter to you.”
What teachings did Paul give them? We can read his first letter to the Thessalonians and find out some of his teachings. But know this: Paul did not make up his teaching out of thin air. He taught what was first taught to him, that Jesus is the Messiah, and that his followers are people who believe in Jesus and give their lives to follow him. We’re now getting back to what we read in verse 13, that we Christians are people who receive the good news, “through belief in the truth.” Paul’s teaching was the same as the apostles’ teaching, which was the same as Jesus’ teaching: a relationship with Jesus starts with believing in him. But a relationship with Jesus is far more than just belief.
To stand firm and hold to those teachings meant, for the Thessalonian Christians, that they would seek to apply the teaching of Jesus to their lives as they lived in Thessalonica. Don’t write that off as overly basic, because it is so, so important. Standing firm and holding to the teachings of Jesus, therefore, is not just believing the right things in our minds, it is also showing that we believe those teachings by the choices of our lives.
Jesus’ was not interested in just believers. Believers are people who think of their faith in terms of a theology quiz. God is real? Check. Jesus is God? Check? Jesus rose again from the dead? Check. But is that all Jesus desires of us? To get a high score on a theology quiz?
Don’t get me wrong. Believing those ideas, and others, is important. Jesus certainly invited people to believe in him, and yet also called us to be disciples. A disciple is a believer, yes, but one that actually lives like Jesus. I’m not saying that Jesus teaches we have to be perfect or he will treat us as failures. What I am saying is that standing firm and holding fast to his teaching starts with accepting ideas in our minds, but it must move on to making life choices that show we believe those ideas. That refers to the other phrase in verse 13, “the sanctifying work of the Spirit”. What is the sanctifying work of the Spirit?
Sanctification is the process of being made holy, of being set apart for God. In other words, sanctification is the process whereby Christians grow in their resemblance of Jesus. If you view yourself as standing firm and holding fast, but the people in your life do not think you resemble Jesus, that should be a reality check, or at least cause for you to do a deep examination of your life. This is why Paul will talk about the transformation that Holy Spirit brings to our lives. “In Christ,” he says, “we are new creatures, the old has gone, the new has come.” There is an obvious change taking place in our lives.
In other places, Jesus and Paul describe our lives as trees producing fruit. When the Holy Spirit is at work changing a person to be more like Jesus (which is the meaning of sanctification), and that person is allowing the Holy Spirit to change them, the good fruit of the Holy Spirit will out of that person’s life.
As Paul writes in verse 16, this transformation of our lives flows out of God’s heart for us. God wants what is best for us. Look at how Paul describes this in verse 16. Jesus and God love us, giving us eternal encouragement and good hope. Paul is saying that God wants us to have encouragement and hope, both now, in the midst of the difficulties of life, as well as eternally.
The result of this encouragement and hope, Paul concludes in verse 17, is that our hearts are encouraged, and we are strengthened to live the life of disciples of Jesus in word and deed. That is a wonderful promise.
Encouraged hearts.
Strengthened lives.
Good deeds and words.
Think about that. Think about the relationality of that. God wants to be in relationship with us so that we are encouraged, so that we are strengthened, and so that we can live the lives he calls us to live, flowing with good deeds and words.
This week in our study of 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17, Paul writes that Christians are people who are saved. In the previous post we examined how we are saved from separation from God. In today’s post we try to understand how we are also saved for something. As Jesus taught it, we are saved to be his disciples who will live out the mission of his Kingdom in the world. Discipleship means that Jesus calls us to give our lives to him, to sacrificially serve him and his kingdom. That’s a very different story than what we Christians so often tell. It seems to me that we tend to focus on the saved from side of the story. We are saved from separation from God. That’s wonderful! But we are also saved for something. We are saved for discipleship, and disciples are learners from Jesus who strive to do what he did, up to and including dying for him.
You might be saying, “Joel, I don’t see any of that call to sacrificial discipleship in 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17.” Not in those words, you don’t. But look at the phrase in verse 14, “he called you…that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Share in the glory? What does Paul mean? At first glance, sharing in glory sounds really, really good. “Glory” is one way we talk about heaven. Is Paul just talking about glory in heaven? It is that for sure. We are saved from separation with God, and we are saved for relationship with him so we can experience his glory in heaven. But we’re saved for more than that. This is where the saved for part of the story gets dicey.
Think about Jesus’ pathway to glory. It is the pathway that first leads to crucifixion. Let’s not forget that. Christianity is cruciform, cross-shaped. Christianity is new life, but that new life is preceded by death. Jesus’ resurrected life requires a crucified life. The good news is not from old life to new life. It is from old life to death of the old life to new life. This is why Paul would go on to write in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.”
This is why Paul will write in Philippians 3:10, “I want to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection of the dead.”
This is why Paul will write in Romans 12:1-2, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Paul didn’t just make this up. He got this all from Jesus. It was Jesus who said, “If you want to be my disciple, take up your cross daily, die to yourself and follow me.” In other words, Paul was trying to live in line with Jesus’ teaching and actions. Paul wanted to do what Jesus did.
As a kid afraid of burning in hell, I didn’t understand that. It is hard for kids to understand that. But you and I aren’t kids. We’re adults. If we want to share in Jesus’ glory, we need to grasp the reality that for Jesus, glory only came through suffering. Glory only came through death.
So often we want a pathway to glory that involves no suffering. That’s just not reality, and it is not the way of the Gospel. No doubt, the Good news is truly good news! We have hope, we have the promise of eternal life and abundant life and glory. But let’s remember what it cost our savior. Let’s remember that it cost him death, and that it was our sin that he died for. Then out of profound gratefulness to him, we in turn say, “Thank you, Jesus! Just as you gave your life for me, I give my life to you.” That is the way to glory.
Do you believe in hell? The Bible talks about it, but biblical scholars disagree if those images are intended to describe a literal or figurative place. Some people say that hell is on earth. Some people say all kind of things are hellish. No matter what you believe about hell, it seems that there is a literal idea of human separation from God.
In the previous post, we learned that Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 2:13 that Christians are chosen to be saved. What does Paul mean when he talks about being saved?
I think it is helpful to point out that we can be saved from and saved for. We are saved from separation from God because of sin. That separation is both now and for eternity. Our sinfulness separates us from God, making it impossible for us to have relationship with God, and that matters for life now and eternally. God wants to be in relationship with us now and forever, because he loves the whole word. So one important way to understand salvation is that God’s work in salvation makes it possible for all humans to be in active relationship with God. In other words, we are saved from separation from God, and we are saved for relationship with him (and for the ongoing work of the mission of his Kingdom).
If all we were was saved from something, we could think to ourselves, “Whew, I am so thankful that God saved me from hell, and that is all.” It is the image of a person who is dangling over the edge of a precipice, about to fall to their death, and a person comes by, reaches down, pulls them up to solid ground and saves them. That person was saved from death. But how would it feel if the one who was saved, immediately after being saved, turned around and started walking away? The person who did the saving runs after them and says, “Wait, wait, are you okay? How did this happen?” And the saved one just keeps walking away, totally ignoring them. No acknowledgment of what just happened. No gratitude.
Once saved, do we treat God like that?
I doubt it. I think most of us at least initially feel gratitude and some semblance of a relationship with God, because he saved us! So that had me thinking of a variation to the scenario above. Think about the same situation where a person is hanging on for dear life, about to fall off a cliff to their death, and a person walks by and saves them. Once pulled to safety, the saved person embraces their savior with a bear hug. The saved person is so thankful, they emotionally gush, “How can I ever thank you?” The savior responds, “It was my pleasure, and all I ask is that you pay it forward and help others in need.” The saved one hugs the savior again, and they go their separate ways. The next day the savior is walking the same trail, and again hears a person calling for help. Astoundingly, the person they saved the previous day is in the same predicament. The savior reaches down and pulls them up, this time astounded, “How did this happen again?” The person is ashamed to admit that they did the same thing that got them in trouble the day before. And then it happens the next day, and the next. The person was saved from something, but they didn’t see themselves as being saved for something. They didn’t learn from the situation. They weren’t changed at all.
Christians, we are saved from separation from God, but is also important that we see ourselves as saved for something.
Paul goes on to say that this salvation is through two things. It is through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, and it is through belief in the truth. Both are vital to our understanding of how we are saved for something. We’re going to talk about those each more in the next post.
For now, let’s consider that we Christians are people who are loved by God, chosen along with all others who are true followers of Jesus. That’s why Paul goes on to say in verse 14 that we are called through the good news. The good news is another way of describing the Gospel. Let’s get really basic again. What is the Gospel? What is the good news?
The Good News is the story that Jesus, who is God, defeated the power of sin, death and the devil, through his birth, life, death and resurrection, so that our sins can be forgiven, when we believe and live as his disciples, giving us both hope of eternal life in heaven and the experience of abundant life now.
I remember first hearing the Good News when I was a child, maybe 4-5 years old. I was at a Sunday night service at the church I grew up in. I heard the pastor preach a hellfire sermon, and it freaked me out. It was the story of how our sin separates us from God. I was the person hanging on the edge of the precipice. That scared me, and I couldn’t sleep that night. So my mom came to my bedside and shared me the good news story of Jesus, that we don’t need to be afraid of hell. Jesus is the savior who reaches out his hand and pulls us to safety. At that moment, I was an enthusiastic convert!
But my understanding of the Gospel was understandably shallow and immature. I think most children will react like I did when they are told that when they die they will go to a place where people will burn forever. Most kids will be eager like I was to believe in Jesus.
What is much more difficult for kids, and for adults, is to grasp what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in the here and now. Believe that Jesus gets you out of hell? Yeah, we’re definitely into that. That is easily understandable good news. Even young kids know that is a deal they want in on. That is the saved from side of the story. What about being saved for something? Check back to the next post, as we’ll talk about that.
Engaging Scripture 