Believing and Following Jesus (Part 1, The Disciple's Life)

[This was shared during midweek Lenten worship with the people of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, on February 21.]

Romans 10:9
1 John 1:9

As you know for the past three years, we’ve been involved with life-to-life discipleship, an emphasis of our North American Lutheran Church (NALC).

Like other NALC congregations, we’ve received coaching from the Navigators.

Currently, we have nearly forty Living Water people involved in life-to-life discipleship groups convened by members of our congregation’s Life and Learning Team.

God is leading us to align our life and culture as a congregation with the great commission, the only mission Jesus gave to His Church. “...Go,” Jesus tells us, “and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

And then Jesus gives us this promise: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

But what is a disciple?

The word that’s been translated into English as disciple is, in the Greek of the New Testament, mathetes. It means learner, pupil, student.

To be a disciple of Jesus is to be involved in learning how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit sent to us by Jesus when we are baptized to be more like Jesus, the One Who has saved us from sin and death and darkness.

Jesus talks about discipleship when He says in Matthew 11:29: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Discipleship is a process, a way of life by which God makes our lives more and more like the life of Jesus Himself (Galatians 4:19).

If being a student sounds boring to you, you need to remember what Jesus means when He calls you to be His student, His disciple.

When Jesus called people to follow Him, He didn’t take them to a classroom. He called them to follow Him, live alongside Him, observe Him, and then, after He’d deputized and empowered them with the Holy Spirit, to do exactly all He did: share the good news, heal the sick, cast out demons, and make disciples.

Jesus’ classroom for discipleship is the world we live in.

The textbook is His Word, the Bible.

The classmates are first, fellow believers who we help and who help us to live out our faith in Christ through small groups in which people reflect on Scripture together, pray together, and own their common need of God for everything, including forgiveness.

Disciples of Jesus will also seek out ways to bond around God’s Word and prayer with people who may not know Jesus but who want to know Him. In this, our model is the Samaritan woman at the well, who told the villagers in Sychar after meeting Jesus, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” (John 4:29)

Bottom line: The conscious life of a disciple begins, irrespective of when we were baptized, when we respond to the invitation to, “Come and see the God we meet in Jesus.”

It’s probable that most of you here tonight can’t remember a moment when you didn’t know about Jesus and believe in Him.

But it’s also possible for Christians to continue as baby disciples all their lives, And that’s tragic.

Jesus doesn’t love us any less when we refuse to grow up as Christians, any more than parents love their problem children who refuse to grow up any less. But if we’re not seeking to be faithful disciples of Jesus, we will miss the joy of intimacy with God, be ill-equipped to face life, be unable to make good decisions, make the most of our time on earth, or be all that God intends for us to be.

The preacher in Hebrews expressed his frustration with a group of first-century Christians in Asia Minor who refused to grow in their faith when he said: “...though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again.” (Hebrews 5:13-6:2)

Jesus expressed a similar frustration with the apostles when, after following Him for several years, they still seemed unable to live out their faith in Him: “You unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?” (Matthew 17:17).

It’s a measure of Jesus’ grace and love that He continued putting up with the apostles and that He puts up with us even when we turn our backs on the call to discipleship, the call to grow in our faith, that could, if we paid heed to it, give us joy!

Here’s the deal: If we’ve been Christians more than a few months, we shouldn’t be content to be mere spectators of the Christian faith; we should be full-fledged participants in the life of discipleship. We should be disciples and be seeking to make disciples and we should be supporting each other in the disciple’s life.

The first trait of a disciple is to believe in the God you and I meet in the crucified and risen Jesus.

The Old Testament tells us that Abraham, the patriarch of Biblical faith, “believed [in God] and God reckoned it to him as righteousness.” (Or as The Message paraphrase of the Bible puts it, “[Abraham] believed! Believed God! God declared him ‘Set-Right-with-God.’” (Genesis 15:6)

When we believe in the God we know in Jesus, we are set right with God, now and for all eternity.

Jesus says something similar in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

The two passages of Scripture we read earlier convey the same message: Discipleship is built on the foundation of believing in Jesus. Believe in Jesus and you are saved from sin, death, and darkness.

But belief is more than what goes on between your ears, more even than the words of confession we speak at worship.

Abraham lived the faith in God he confessed with his lips by what he did with his life. When God called him from the cushy lifestyle he enjoyed among his own people, God told Abraham (then called Abram): “Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.” (Genesis 12:1-2)

Abraham’s belief in God, his faith in God expressed itself in what he did next: He packed up his wife and servants and livestock and belongings and headed for God only knew where.

Believers are disciples and disciples are followers.

Disciples let God decide directions and destinations. They follow the God we meet in Christ.

When Jesus calls us to believe in Him, He says: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).

The disciple’s life is built on believing expressed in a life of following Jesus.

Are we following?

More next week.

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

Perfect Though Imperfect?

Matthew 5:38-48
Jesus concludes His words for us in today’s Gospel lesson with these words: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Should my message for this morning then, be, “Just like God, go and be perfect. Amen”? Is that what Jesus is telling us?

As good Lutherans and students of God’s Word, the answers to those questions should be obvious! We know that we’re not perfect and while it’s true that God’s Holy Spirit is at work daily to perfect those who repent for sin and trust in the crucified and risen Jesus as their God, even the most mature disciples of Jesus must confess with the apostle Paul that for now “...we see only a reflection as in a mirror...” [1 Corinthians 13:12] That’s why, when we gather in God’s presence each week, we confess our sins, acknowledging that “we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.”

So, what do we make of Jesus’ words?

First of all, when Jesus says, in verse 48 of our gospel lesson that we are to be perfect as God the Father is perfect, the word translated as perfect is, in the Greek in which Matthew wrote his gospel, τέλειοι. This is an adjective that can mean perfect, but which also can mean full-grown, complete, consummated.

Jesus uses a related verb, Τετέλεσται, “It is finished,” when He draws His last breath from the cross in John 19:30.

And Paul uses this same related verb when, in speaking of his ministry about to be ended by his own death, he says in 2 Timothy 4:7: “I have finished the race.”

Jesus may then be saying, "Reflect the wholeness of God in how you live." God's grace has accomplished or finished its saving work by making you and me part of God's kingdom through Jesus  and our faith in Jesus.

Many scholars believe that when Jesus tells us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, He’s echoing words that appear repeatedly in the Old Testament: “...be holy, because I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44-45).

To be holy is to be set apart, different from the rest of the world, weird even. The holy, those saved by God's grace, are to reflect the goodness of God in the way that we live.

Why is that?

Remember that earlier in the Sermon on the Mount from which today’s Gospel lesson is taken, Jesus tells us to be salt and light for the world.

This is what you and I as believers in Jesus Christ, people set free from sin and death by His cross and resurrection, are called to do each day: To let others see what God is like, to shine the light of the nations, Jesus, in all of our relationships.

Sounds great, does it? But there's a huge problem.

The fact is that if you set out to “be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect” in your own power at noon today, you’ll fail before the clock hits 12:01.

Instead, if you and I are going to be God’s salt and light in the world, we must rely on the power and life that God unleashes in the lives of those who daily turn from sin and daily surrender to Christ.

Perfection, completeness, in Christ, is a byproduct of surrendered faith in Christ, not the result of our efforts.

Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians 3. The way it’s rendered in The Message paraphrase of the Bible is particularly helpful: “Nothing between us and God [through faith in Christ], our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.” [2 Corinthians 3:18]

To be perfect in the eyes of God then, is to be surrendered to Jesus and so allow God’s perfection to be seen in us and experienced through us by others.

We become prisms through which Jesus, the light of the world, is poured onto the world.

In our gospel lesson today, through the use of exaggerated imagery, Jesus draws a picture of what those who are perfect as our Father is perfect look like. This is a picture of who we should aspire to be. This is who, through our faith relationship with Christ, the Holy Spirit is making us. So, let’s take a look at Jesus’ words for us this morning and learn better where Jesus is taking us.

Verse 38: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person.”

The Old Testament law and other ancient ethical systems said that when someone does wrong to us, the gravity of our response shouldn’t exceed what the other person has done to us. So, if someone insults us, our response shouldn’t be to shoot them. But Jesus goes even further: Don’t seek revenge at all, ever, under any circumstance. In these words, we begin to see just how weird holiness is, just how weird the perfection of God looks in a disciple.

Jesus goes on: “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” In the first century world in which Jesus first spoke these words, a backhanded slap across the right cheek of another person was less an act of violence than a way of saying, “You’re a nobody. You're a loser. You're beneath contempt.” Jesus says that if someone does anything that labels us as a nobody or a loser, we prove our assailants wrong by refusing to react to their dehumanizing words or actions.

Verse 40: “And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” In ancient Judea, most people only had two garments, a shirt and a tunic. Jesus says to be willing to give both of them up. And in Roman-occupied Judea, a Roman could force a bystander to carry, say a cross, for a mile. It was a hated practice. But Jesus says that His followers should offer to go the extra mile.

Verse 43: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” The only enemies you and I have as disciples of Jesus are those who hate us, since we’re to hate no one. Jesus says that when we love those who hate us and pray for them, we are God’s children. Jesus goes on to say that it’s no great accomplishment for us to love those who love us; even unbelievers and notorious sinners do that.

After reading these words of Jesus, I can think of lots of things for which I need to repent.

I sometimes fantasize about getting at people who have hurt me...or who I think have hurt me.

Sometimes, I say cutting things to get back at people who have said or done unkind things toward me.

And I’m less than keen on loving people who have mistreated me; I want to strike out at them in some way, rather than absorbing their indignities so that they can see the dignity, love, confidence, and hope that resides within me through Jesus Christ.

I can be wary of being generous for fear of having less for myself.

Deep down, I don’t want to offer help to those who treat me like a nobody.

I find it hard to love people who are hateful toward me.

If you can identify with any of these feelings, be glad.

It means that God’s Law is doing its work. It’s convicting you and driving you to Jesus, Who can bring us God’s forgiveness and fill us again with the power of the Holy Spirit to live lives that reflect God’s perfect holiness and love.

But in these words of Jesus today, you will also find the Gospel: the good news of new and everlasting life for all who repent and believe in Jesus.

You see, in the whole history of the world, only Jesus has lived a life of perfection like this. He lived that kind of life for us so that, in its sacrifice on the cross, He could save us from our imperfection, unholiness, and death!

Jesus isn’t telling us to travel a pathway that He hasn’t already blazed for us. Instead, He says, “Take up your cross and follow Me.” [Matthew 16:24] In essence, Jesus says, Own your need and trustingly follow the path I've blazed for you!

When Jesus was confronted by people who mocked Him, spat on Him, whipped Him, slapped Him, and crucified Him, He didn’t return evil for evil.

In the garden of Gethsemane, after one of His companions had pulled out a sword and struck a servant of the high priest, lopping off the servant’s ear, Jesus told the disciple: “Put your sword back in its place...for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” [Matthew 26:52]

In His life, Jesus did fight. He fought for the salvation of others; that’s what He did on the cross. But He never fought for Himself.

When you know that nothing can separate you from the love of God given in Christ, you’re freed to live for God and neighbors, you're freed to fight for the good of others, because you know that you’re taken care of for all eternity. [Romans 8:38-39] You can be a voice for the voiceless, strength for the weak. You can stand up for the despised, the ignored, the nobodies of the world.

We belong to the Savior Who always gave of Himself and always loved others. From the cross, He prayed improbably, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” [Luke 23:34]

Jesus isn’t just God in the flesh, you know. Jesus is also the human being like which every one of us should aspire to be. He is, in Paul’s phrasing, “the last Adam,” [1 Corinthians 15:45], the first man in God’s new, eternal creation of which you and I are a part when we are baptized and follow Christ.

We can’t resolve to be perfect like God.

But we can let the perfection of God enter our lives each day through Christ.

As we live with Christ more each day, our resistance to the law in Jesus’ words to us today gives way to surrender the gospel, the promise, in Jesus’ words and something amazing happens.

In Jesus’ famous judgment scene, Matthew 25:31-46, the “sheep,” Jesus’ disciples, ask the King: "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?" [Matthew 25:37-39]

This is a perfect picture of what happens to disciples as they spend their lives in fellowship with Christ and His Church. Disciples are saved by grace, then God uses disciples as instruments of that grace to bring His salvation to others. As they live with God in daily quiet time, in corporate worship, in small groups that study God's Word together, in mission for Christ, they are transformed.

They have so surrendered to Jesus that Jesus reigns over their lives. They can’t even perceive their own faithfulness because their minds are no longer on themselves, but only on the God they love completely and the neighbor they love as they love themselves.

Folks, don’t worry that you don’t measure up to God’s perfect law. You don’t. And neither do I.

Christ has measured up for you!

Surrender to the Jesus Who has kept God’s law perfectly and is more than willing to cover you in His grace.

Watch out when you do though: You might find as you surrender to Him, Jesus will call you to do things and give of yourself in ways the world thinks crazy. You might end up going on a mission trip to Haiti or India or Cherokee country. You might devote some of your hard-earned money or use some of your leisure time to serve neighbors in places like Chevy Chase or the Saint Vincent's ministry to the homeless. You might commit yourself to the members of your small group, living together in mutual faith and accountability as you grow together as disciples.

Jesus’ love will so fill you though that you’ll hardly give crazy sacrifices like these a second thought.

When you follow the Lord Who has given His life for you, giving your life in return to Him doesn’t seem outrageous.

In gratitude for grace, you’ll willingly live and die for the Savior Who has already lived, and died, and risen for you.

It’s then that our Lord will look at your life and improbably, miraculously, and truthfully call it what it could never be if you were your own lord: perfect! Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was prepared for worship that happened yesterday.]

The Power of the Cross: A Word to Al Qaeda and ISIS

We're now seeing reports of online training videos from Al Qaeda's Arabian Peninisula terrorist group, one of which is called, "Courses for Destroying the Cross."

There are all sorts of thoughts this provokes in me. But two in particular stand out.

The first is this. Islamist terrorist groups operate under the misconception that the pluralistic West, including the United States, is entirely Christian. And like many non-Christians in this country, they also are under the misconception that some boisterous, political Christians speak on behalf of all Christians. Just as I do not assume that Isis or Al Qadea speak for all Muslims, people shouldn't assume that terrorists speak for all Muslims. It's dangerous and inappropriate to dump all Westerners or Christians in the same category. Shorthand stereotypes like this are almost always false.

The second thought is this. Whether it's to Islamist terrorists or most people in the post-modern West, the cross is always an object of derision.

The cross is seen by most as a place of defeat and many self-identified Christians shroud it in sentimentality or ignore it altogether.

Christians believe (and by faith, have experienced) that the cross on which Jesus Christ died is also the place where He achieved victory over sin, death, and darkness for all who turn from sin and trust in Christ. That's why we call the commemoration of Jesus' death on the cross "Good" Friday.

Jesus, revealed to be both God and human, led a perfect, sinless life, then offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. By that sacrifice, He won life for those who believe. Romans 6:23, in the New Testament, says: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Jesus says that we become heirs of His victory when we pick up our crosses--in other words, admit our own need of forgiveness and new life, submitting to the crucifixion of our old sinful selves--and follow Him--that is, trust our whole lives to Him and seek to live in faithful dependence on Him.

The good news or gospel is that, by faith, we can apprehend a share in Christ's destruction of our sin, by belief in Him. Jesus' resurrection affirmed Christ's victory on the cross. Death couldn't contain Him...and it can't contain those who trust in Him. This, in turn, frees us to love God, love our neighbor, seek justice, and boldly share Christ with others.

For many, the cross of Christ and the gospel of freedom from sin, death, and darkness that was unleashed from the cross seems foolish and implausible. But with the apostle Paul, Christians can say: "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile." (Romans 1:16)

This past Sunday, in many Christians congregations around the world, 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, was the appointed second lesson. We read and heard these verses at Living Water Lutheran Church as well. Paul addresses those who think that the power of the cross can be destroyed in the ways buildings can be or that it can be killed the way mortal human beings can be. This is what he writes:

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.'

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: 'Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.'”

So, a word to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a word also to ISIS: You will never destroy the cross or its power to change lives for good.

You will never conquer its life-giving power.

You will never erase the witness for Christ.

You will never stop the Church's Christ-mandated mission of making disciples.

The Word of God will have the last word.

And all who trust in the Lord Who gave Himself on the cross will keep on loving God and loving you, and living beyond the bounds of death, irrespective of your nihilism, your violence, your hatred, and your bombs.

From the cross, Christ said, "It is finished," or more literally, "It is completion." On the cross, Jesus has already defeated the sin, death, and darkness in which you truck. And you can do nothing to undo His victory or the victory He gives to all who believe in Him.

And one more word: Christ died on the cross for you too. "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8) Join the people of the cross in daily turning from sin and daily trusting in Christ. You too can live in the power of God's amazing grace given in Christ. You too can know the victory of the cross!

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

AUDIO: One with Christ, God Enfleshed

Here.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was delivered at the 8:45 worship this morning.]

One with Christ, God Enfleshed

Colossians 1:21-29
Today brings us to the second installment of our series, Christ, the Fullness of God, based on the New Testament of Colossians, from which our second lesson is coming over these four weeks.

To even begin to understand today’s second lesson--and I’m only beginning to understand it myself,  I confess--we must reckon with the understanding of the Church from which Paul wrote.

You know, in today's world, when people get around to selecting a church community for themselves, they're moved by factors like: "The people are nice." Or, "The preacher's sermons are short." Or, "They've got things for the kids." Or, "They never ask for money." We can be superficial, looking for what's in it for us, looking for a church that won't make waves in our lives.

This would have been totally foreign to Paul! He had a different understanding of Church.

Paul got this understanding from Jesus Himself. It happened in the famous incident recounted in Acts 9, in which Paul, then named Saul and heading for Damascus, seeking to arrest Christians, was overwhelmed by a bright light that blinded him for three days and heard a voice that demanded of him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?”

Saul asked who this was who has driven him to knees in abject helplessness. The voice answered: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”

In that moment, one of the many things that Paul learned was this: Whatever impacted the Church impacted the living and risen Christ. The crucified and risen Jesus Christ is one with His Church. His Church is one with Him. And His people are one with each other. If Saul was persecuting the Church, he was also persecuting Christ Himself.

It’s a lesson that Saul, now Paul, learned and taught well.

“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one is a part of it,” Paul would later tell believers in 1 Corinthians 12:27.

And: “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” [1 Corinthians 12:26]

Paul understood that through Christ, disciples of Christ are knit together with Christ and with each other. We are one with our King, Jesus, and with all who profess Jesus as Lord.

The verses that come after last Sunday’s second lesson (1 Corinthians 1:1-14) and before today’s, are among the most beautiful in all of Scripture. They were read near the end of this past Tuesday’s installment of Louie Giglio’s Passion films, Colossians 1:15-20.

There, Paul recites an early Christian poem or hymn. He does so because, as you’ll remember from last Sunday, the Colossian Christians were mixing other religions with their Christian faith. But, Paul wants them to remember that Jesus is God and only the God we meet in Jesus is worthy of following.

Read this hymn aloud with me, if you would:

“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,  and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

The hymn reminds us that through His death on the cross, Jesus, the fullness of God, God on earth, makes peace with all who turn from sin and trust in Him. And He does it not from a distance, but by taking on the limitations of our flesh, taking our place on the cross, the sinless sacrifice for our sin. God won salvation for all who repent and believe in Christ with the sacrifice of His flesh and blood. This is the most eternity-changing truth we will ever encounter.

Yet, Paul has learned that the Colossian Christians are starting to turn from following Jesus, treating Jesus like just another item on a religious menu. They seem to have forgotten Who Christ is or what Christ has done for them. Paul writes to them from prison. Please take a look at our lesson, Colossians 1:21-29.

It begins: “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.”

Years ago, a man came to me in my office. He had made a mess of his life. He drank excessively and used drugs. There were brushes with the law. There were numerous false starts on new careers that only ended with failures. There had been a wife who left him because he couldn’t be relied upon.

It finally dawn on him that maybe he needed God. After our first meeting, I met with him weekly over a period of several months. He started attending worship, then Sunday School. In the meantime, he got a job and started doing well. He met a woman and they became engaged.

Then, as quickly as he showed up at my office, he was gone, off the radar. He didn't answer my phone calls or emails. God had helped him through his rough patch. Things were now going well. God didn’t seem as essential to him any more. He forgot all that Christ had done to redeem him, to make him new, to set his feet on solid ground. He walked away from God.

As our second lesson begins, Paul pleads with the Colossian Christians to not forget all that God had done for them in Christ, not to walk away from Christ!

In His own flesh, Christ had bridged the chasm between God and them, Paul reminds them. To all who repented and believed, Christ had brought new life with God that never ends.

But the Colossian Christians developed what Paul calls elsewhere “itching ears." They were enticed by other religious systems that, unlike Jesus, didn’t tell them to take up their crosses--in other words, to confess their sins and own their need of God--and follow Him.

For anyone who holds onto the futile desire to be gods over their lives, the Gospel can be tough to take. And that includes all of us because all of us have inherited from Adam and Eve a desire to "be like God."

Paul was calling the Colossians to remember the most basic confession of Christian faith: “Jesus is Lord."

Not me.

Not anyone else.

Not my family.

Not my country.

Only Jesus is Lord.

Only Jesus can make sense of my life.

Only Jesus can give me God’s presence today and life with Him beyond death.

Jesus is Lord!

When things are going well, that’s tough to remember. Paul says, “Never forget!”

Then, Paul writes the most curious part of this passage: “Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

There are two things that make these words strange, I think.

First, Paul is rejoicing in suffering. Is he sick? No.

This is the same rejoicing offered up by the very first Christians when facing persecution.

After being dragged before the Sanhedrin, the governing authorities, Acts 5:41 tells us: “The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.”

When I first came to faith in Christ at the age of 23, I thought to myself, "Now what?" I believed; now I wanted to know what I needed to be thinking and doing to live out that faith. I knew that the New Testament book of Acts was the history of the Church from the risen Jesus' ascension until about 60 AD. "Maybe," I thought, "I should read Acts to find out how to be a Christian." I remember reading Acts 5:41 in the study of the house we were renting at the time and starting to weep. "Oh, God," I prayed, "give me a faith like that."

Paul was happy that his suffering wasn’t for something wrong he had done, but for his faith in the crucified and risen Jesus. And he was happy too, because his suffering was a witness that pointed others to Christ.

Listen: If people get mad at you for being faithful to Christ, you’re doing something right!

The second reason this passage seems strange is because Paul says: “...I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions…”

It’s important to remember that Paul is not saying that Christ didn’t do everything necessary to win freedom from sin and death for all who repent and believe in Him. Christians don’t have to suffer more than Christ suffered in order to be saved.

In fact, the Greek word for sufferings used by Paul here, παθήμασιν, isn’t even the same word used of Jesus’ passion and death on the cross in the New Testament.

What Paul is saying is that until the day Jesus returns to the earth to raise the dead and bring His kingdom fully into being, Christ’s afflictions will continue to be experienced by His people, the Church.

We who trust in Christ will complete the Church’s story of suffering at the hands of the world for being disciples of Christ who share Him with the disbelieving world. That’s part of our oneness with Christ and with our fellow disciples.

Just as Christ has reached down into our humanity, experiencing everything we experience in order to fully connect with us, take the punishment we deserve, and buy us out of slavery to sin and death to give us eternal life with God, we also connect with Christ in His sufferings as He lifts us up to Himself in heaven.

We share Christ’s suffering in that, as we bear His name, we’re subject to the same rejection that He endured.

But we also have the hope of glory He secured for all who believe in Him when He rose from the dead. That’s what Paul was experiencing while imprisoned.

The blessing that comes when people like Paul live in enduring faith in Christ is that it inspires and upbuilds the Church. It even wins new disciples.

We all remember the execution of Egyptian Christians perpetrated by ISIS last year. Twenty-one people were killed, all of them confessing, “Lord Jesus Christ” as they died. But you’ll also remember that it was later learned that only twenty of the executed had been Coptic Christians before the moments of their deaths. A twenty-first had not been. But, impressed by the faith of the Christians with whom he would die, rather than renouncing them or Christ, he embraced Christ as his Lord. He too died confessing, “Lord Jesus Christ.” This is what happens when we endure in faith. Eternity gets changed. We become one with Christ and with His people, the Church.

Christ lives in all who trust in Him, implanting within them the hope of everlasting glory. Paul closes today’s lesson with words that could serve as the mission statement of every believer: “He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, may we who belong to Christ and to each other strenuously, lovingly, and with every ounce of energy Christ gives to us, proclaim Christ, admonishing and teaching each other with God’s wisdom so that we may all become mature followers of Christ, fully prepared to live and share the hope Christ gives to us with everyone we know and meet.

Ready for today.

Ready for eternity.

Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during both worship services this morning.]