Growing in Christ (Part 2, Bearing Fruit for God's Kingdom)

[This was to have been shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio during worship this morning. But we were snowed out.]

2 Corinthians 3:12-18
Last Sunday morning, we showed you what we think of as a “video postcard”: a graphic illustration of the pathway of discipleship, the pathway of a deep, joyous, and eternal relationship with the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Let’s take a look at it again.



The pathway of discipleship we seek to follow and to make possible for people both within the congregation and beyond these walls begins with knowing Christ. 

To know Jesus Christ is to know Him as “the way and the truth and the life.” When we know Christ for Who He is, we know that He took our sins on Himself at the cross and made it possible for us to know God, to have life with God, now and in eternity. 

Christ sets us free from the world’s punishing demand that we prove ourselves worthy. By His death and resurrection, Christ covers sinners who repent and trust in Him with His grace. And so, we have nothing left to prove. Hebrews 10:14 tells us that “by one sacrifice [Christ] has made perfect forever those who are being made holy [that is, eternally set aside as God’s people by grace through faith in Jesus].” 

To know Jesus is to know Him as Savior, Lord, and God. “Truly this man was the Son of God [meaning, in the parlance of first-century Judea, God the Son, God Himself],” the Roman soldier announced when He saw the manner in which Jesus died for others. (Mark 15:39)

“My Lord and my God!” Thomas called Jesus when he finally knew that Jesus was more than just a great teacher (John 20:28). 

To know Jesus is to know God’s love for us and the salvation from sin, death, hell, and futility that He gives to those who trust in Him. This is God’s gift for sinners who trust in Christ: “For it is by grace you have been saved,” Ephesians 2:8-9 reminds us, “through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”

When we know Christ, His Word has been planted in our lives and, as Jesus says, we ourselves become like seeds must be planted and die in the earth in order to come to life and to grow and thrive as children of God. 

Growing in Christ, the second leg of the pathway to discipleship, isn’t easy. It entails dying to our old sinful selves so that we can become the people God designs us to be. “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus tells us,  “unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:24) 

God wants all people to know Christ and grow in Christ so that they can show Christ. 

But growing in Christ--what the theologians call sanctification--isn’t something we do. 

It happens in the same way that we come to know Christ and life with Him in the first place: By the power of His Word to transform us, to enter into our lives, calling us to turn from sin (to repent) and to trust Christ not only with our sins, but also with our lives, our past, our present, our future, our all.

Paul talks about how growing in Christ happens in 2 Corinthians 3:12-18. Let’s take a look at it now. It begins: “Since we have such a hope [that is, the hope of having a portion of the glory of God in eternity with Him], we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts.”

The New Testament tells us that, as disciples of Jesus, we can bold in living, bold in sharing Christ with others, bold in praying. “...the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline,” 2 Timothy 1:7 reminds us. 

In 2 Corinthians, the apostle Paul is telling us that because God has planted--not a wish, but a certainty guaranteed by Christ’s death and resurrection, but the hope of glory with Him, we can be bold in living as confident, joyful Christian disciples. 

Unlike the Hebrews of Old Testament times and even, Paul says, his first-century Jewish contemporaries, we can turn to God in Jesus’ name with unveiled faces, without pretense, without feigned holiness, just as we are without one plea. 

A child needs never be ashamed to come to his or her father or mother, no matter how inadequate they feel or how sinful they may feel, knowing that while their father or their mother may discipline them for their wrongs, they will never stop loving them. Their parents' love will always be available to them. 

At the funeral of famed evangelist Billy Graham, his daughter spoke of how as a young woman, she defiantly married a man that her parents had warned her against. When the marriage went bust, she was afraid that her father would condemn or even disown her. But when she went to her parents’ North Carolina home following the divorce, her father embraced her with love and support. If a forgiven sinner like Billy Graham, or the mother or father of any child, can love and accept their children, think how much more the perfect God we know in Jesus Christ is willing to do the same thing and so much more for us when we turn to Him!

There need be no veil, no wall, between God and us. At the moment Jesus died on the cross, we’re told, the curtain concealing the holy of holies, the place where God dwelt on earth in the temple, was torn in two. When we turn to God through the crucified Jesus, there is no distance between God and us at all. We can approach our Father with boldness and confidence, knowing how much He loves us and always wants what’s best for us. 

We turn to Jesus when we heed the Spirit’s call to worship with God’s people, when we confess our sins in Jesus’ name, when we hear, read, and reflect on His Word, when we receive the sacraments. These are means by which God helps us to grow in Christ.

Paul underscores this in the balance of our lesson. Verse 16: “But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

Remember the Samaritan woman Jesus met at the well outside the village of Sychar? Her sins were notorious. She’d been with lots of men and was living with another. But when, the Word made flesh opened her to see the truth, she knew that she was in the presence of a Man who, improperly, according to the standards of the time, talked with a woman--a sinful woman--in public. This man, she told others, “told me everything I ever did,” and knew all about her, yet offered her everlasting life with God anyway.

When we meet Christ the Word, whether in the Bible, in worship, in prayer in His name, or in the sacraments, He changes us just like He began to change the woman at Sychar that day. 

You may remember the REVEAL study we did some months ago. It showed us steps in the pathway of Christian discipleship like our knowing Christ, growing in Christ, and showing Christ and it underscored this truth: Every step of Christian growth happens because of the Christian’s daily interaction with God’s Word. 

The more I stand under the authority of the God I meet in Scripture, the more I grow as a disciple. The more I turn away from encountering the God of Scripture, the less of a disciple I become, the less I reflect Christ's presence in me.

In our passage from 2 Corinthians, Paul says that we are “transformed,” using the same word Mark uses of Jesus’ being “transfigured” on the mountain before Peter, James, and John. 

Imagine what Paul is saying! As we dare to spend time with the God we know in Jesus and the love letter He has given to us in the Bible, God undertakes the most unlikely makeover in history. 

Paul says that when we come into the presence of God’s Word, “with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another…” 

We grow in Christ when we dare, boldly, to spend time in His presence each day. 

And the result of this growth? More and more each day, in ways we ourselves do not understand or even perceive, we reflect the presence of Christ in our lives. 

We look more and more like Jesus, without our even knowing it, because God is doing His work in our lives. His glory comes to live in us!

Don’t be skeptical, underestimating what God’s Word can accomplish in your life. “...the word of God is alive and active,” the Bible tells us [Hebrews 4:12]. And God says that “[My word] will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” [Isaiah 55:11] 

I sometimes wonder why God puts up with me, why He doesn’t condemn me for my sins, my sinful thoughts, the fitful, imperfect way I follow Him. But when I spend time in God’s Word, like you and I are right this moment, I am assured that, if God can be patient with me as He works to transform me after the image of Jesus, I can be patient with me and with my life in Him too. I can be patient as the master sculptor does His work on me, happy to pray, with the prophet Isaiah that, “We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” [Isaiah 55:11]

And don’t think that I’m laying some new law on you, some grim obligation. I’m simply inviting you to spend time with Jesus each day. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,” Jesus tells us [Matthew 11:28]. God wants us to rest easy in His grace. 

You and I can’t make ourselves holy; that’s totally the work of God and the tool He uses to accomplish it is His Word. 

Let God’s Word work on you, in you, and for you. 

• Don’t turn from God, but turn to Him each day. 
• Have a quiet time with God in His Word.
• If you can do it, become part of a small group that reads the Word and prays together. 
• Be in worship each Sunday, take Holy Communion every time it’s offered. 

None of these are things that we do, but are things God offers to us. 

So, don’t try to play the Christian or make yourself Christian; that never works! 

Let Christ, the Word of God, work in you and, whether you perceive it or not, you will be growing in Christ. More next Sunday. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

How to Wait for Jesus

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today. This the First Sunday of Advent, which begins the new Church Year.]

Mark 13:24-37
Advent is a season for waiting. As we get ready for Christmas during Advent, we remind ourselves that as surely as God once came into the world as the baby Jesus, that same Jesus will one day, on what the Bible calls the Day of the Lord, return to this world.

Advent, of course, nothing but a human invention, a tradition that Christians are free to keep or ignore. There’s nothing sacred about Advent in itself.

But as a reminder to you and me to wait (and how to wait) for Jesus’ return, Advent is useful.

It reminds us that when Jesus returns, He will put everything finally and fully right, and usher all who have trusted Him into life in His new creation.

It’s when that happens that we will fully appreciate the meaning of God’s promise given through the prophet Isaiah centuries before Jesus’ birth: “They who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31, English Standard Version).

Until that day, we “live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

We trust that the God Who once took on human flesh (John 1:14), then died, rose, and ascended to heaven, will return.

All who confess Jesus as their God and Lord are waiting for that day of the Lord.

But, as Jesus makes clear in today’s gospel lesson, for the disciple of Jesus Christ, waiting is not a passive thing. Take a look at the lesson, please, Mark 13:24-37. Jesus has been talking about two events at the same time. One is the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. The other is the Day of His return. He’s shifted mostly to talking about His return and the deterioration of life in this world that will precede it when He says in verse 26: “At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.”

Both the living and the dead will then be brought together to meet their King and receive His welcome into His kingdom.

Because of this promise from the crucified and risen Jesus, we confess: “...if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (Romans 6:8).

Next in our gospel lesson, Jesus talks to us specifically about waiting. Verse 28: “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near.”

The fig is one of the few trees in the Middle East, where Jesus lived in the first century, that loses its leaves in the fall. When its leaves begin to reappear in late spring, people know that warm weather is on its way. It’s a sign of things to come.

Verse 29: “Even so [Jesus goes on], when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”

The these things that Jesus speaks of here are all the calamities that will happen in the world before His return, things like wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, and famines. In other words, life will continue to go pretty much as it has in this world from the moment that Adam and Eve fell into sin.

And Jesus tells us that these things--all the sin and sadness that permeates our fallen universe--will not be the last words over the lives of those who trust in Christ. 

His Word--the Word of and about the Word made flesh, Jesus--will never pass away, will give all who have persevered in trusting in Him, a new and everlasting beginning.

So, we must not allow ourselves to be discouraged by these things--whether they’re injustice or corruption, disasters or holocausts, personal tragedies or illness, gun violence or racism, sexual harassment or selfishness.

Jesus has conquered them all and even in the midst of the things of this world, we can know God’s peace.

We can hope.

Life in this world is short; eternity lasts forever.

If we focus our hope on this world, we will, at most, gain only what will fall from our grasp when we draw our last earthly breaths. “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world,” Jesus once asked, “yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36) But when we trust in Christ above all, our grasp is on eternity with God, which can never be taken from anyone who believes!

As we trust in Christ, persevering in living life for Him and to His glory, the hope of eternity will splash into our daily lives here, empowering us to keep on following Jesus and living useful lives when the world loses its way.

We will live more fearlessly, with greater willingness to fail, free to love and care for others, knowing that whatever we may lose in this life, is nothing compared with all that God has in store for us in eternity.

“If only for this life we have hope in Christ,” the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:9, “we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Our faith in Christ empowers us, obliges us even, to always hope, to live in hope! Not to hope in this world or in the things or the people of this world, but hope in Jesus Christ. 

When we hope in Christ and live in that hope, we know the truth to which 2 Timothy 1:7, points us: “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.” We can live our lives at home, with our church family, and in the world at large with God’s “power love, and discipline.” We can live in the power of knowing thta if God has called us to do something, the Holy Spirit will empower us to do it. Period. End of subject.

And in telling us to see the signs of the inevitability of His return when He will bring our hope in Him to its fullness, Jesus is not telling us to waste our time in trying to game out the exact moment of His return.

Nor is He telling us to go along with our lives as though we’d never encountered Jesus, people indistinguishable from the unbelievers, agnostics, or atheists who surround us.

Verse 32: “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with their assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch.”

Listen: This is how a Christian disciple waits for the return of Jesus. They fulfill their calling as disciples first, as members of Christ’s Body, the Church and second, as people who live in the world with families, spouses, friends; as people who are students or workers or retirees. 

Every follower of Jesus Christ, every disciple, has a vocation, no matter what their work or daily activities.

We’re to be and make disciples.

We’re to repent and believe in Jesus, to hear His Word and take it to heart, to love God and love neighbor, to love our fellow disciples with the same passion Christ has for us, to pray, and to make other disciples.

Each of us will have our own “assigned tasks” within that vocation. I can’t be as effective a witness for Christ among your friends, co-workers, neighbors, or classmates as you can be, because I’m not you and I'm not there with your friends, co-workers, neighbors, or classmates like you are. You may not be called to be Christ’s witness at the grocery deli counter in the same way I seem to be. But each of us who bear the name of Christ is called by Christ to wait and watch for Him. 

We faithfully wait and watch for Jesus’ return when we go about what it is God has called us to be and do, with faith in Christ. 

The chorus of one of my favorite songs by the late John Ylvisaker, Jesus Was Sent, says,

Jesus was sent that our eyes may be open,
So we might witness the day of the Lord.
He will make sense of our loving and hoping;
He will break fences and open the door. 

We faithfully wait and watch for Jesus’ return when we let Him break all the fences and doors we hide behind to hoard our lives and to feed the delusion we all have that our lives are our own and don’t actually belong to the God Who made us and died for us and rose for us.

We wait for Jesus rightly when we trust in Jesus and keep on trusting in Jesus all the time.

God help us to do just that. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Saved for a Life Lived On Purpose

I begin most days in quiet time with God. To see how I approach this time, see here. Below is my journal for today's quiet time.

Look: “He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. (2 Timothy 1:9)

If Paul were a televangelist, I suppose you’d expect him to write here that we have been saved and called to live with God for eternity, focusing more on the sweet-by-and-by beyond death.

But that’s not what Paul writes. He says that God in Christ “has saved and called us to a holy life.” It’s an accomplished fact. Right now in this messy world.

The follower of Jesus is saved for and called to a different way of living in this life. Believers in Jesus aren’t waiting for their own resurrections to start living like people who have been called and saved by the God of the universe. They can do it right now.

Listen: That the implications for everyday life in this world is what Paul has in mind here is underscored by what he writes in verse 7: “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.”

God doesn’t give the Holy Spirit to believers just so that they can have goose-bumpy experiences with the wild and uncontrollable Holy Spirit. God’s not a junkie whose aim is to sell us a dose of Holy Spirit-religion, our fix until the next time we need to feel something.

The God we meet in Jesus Christ is uncontrollable by human beings, even wild as perceived on this side of the resurrection. He is the Lion and the Lamb (Revelation 5:5-6). Lewis has it right when several characters in The Chronicles of Narnia say of Aslan, the Christ-figure in his books, “He’s not a tame lion. But he’s good.” But God does not set us free to be Jesus addicts.

To all with faith in Jesus and through our Baptism, He gives us the Holy Spirit, Who bears down on the chaos of our lives (Genesis 1:1) of jumbled motives and self-serving actions to make us new (2 Corinthians 5:17), set free from the tyranny of sin and our selfish motives. As we attend to Christ faithfully, we can no longer be tossed to and fro by the latest craze, impulse, religious fad, or need to feel “relevant” (Ephesians 4:14).

Instead, we hold steady, filled with the strength of God for living.

The Holy Spirit empowers us with the boldness to live out our trust in Jesus by giving us “power, love, and self-discipline.”

He saves us to live holy lives, lives set apart for God’s purposes for our lives, according to the blueprint He set for us when He formed us in the womb.

I find that when I’m seeking to live in tune with the Holy Spirit, in submission to Christ and the will of God, I become more myself, not less. Jesus died and rose to save me for just this: to be myself, not the person my sin-darkened heart and mind sometimes imagine that I should be. I become more straightforward, less ambiguous, less complicated. Not simplistic, simple. Self-disciplined, more dependent on my Creator and therefore more the bold, powerful, loving, and self-disciplined child of God I am meant to be. Liberated to be my true self.

This isn’t passivity. I don’t stop dreaming or having ambitions. But my dreams and ambitions are set on being the me God sets me free to be.

Respond: Lord, You know how I wander from You and want to be my own god and become disappointed by dreams that come from my ego, from Satan, and from the world, rather than following the path of freedom to be all that I am made to be in Christ. Help me to live like a new creation and not an old Adam, mired in sin.Today, help me to live like a disciple of Jesus. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]