[Jesus said:] “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?" (Matthew 16:24-26)
We spend a lot of time trying to acquire things that this dying world has to offer, like success, security, comfort, some validation of our worthiness.
But these trophies will mean nothing and do nothing for us when we've been reduced to powder.
Only the God Who made us and is ultimately revealed for everyone to know and see in the crucified and risen Jesus can give us life: Life today, in an imperfect and fallen world, with Christ beside us. And life tomorrow, beyond the dust, life that never ends, life as God intended for us to have it when He first breathed life into dust to make Adam.
I can easily see the trophies offered by this world. That's what makes them so tempting.
But I ask that the Holy Spirit will help me to remember the trophy that is more lasting and more meaningful than anything a dead world can offer me, the trophy of eternal life with God through faith in Jesus.
God, make my central ambition the same as that of the apostle Paul: "I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead." (Philippians 3:10-11) In Jesus' name I pray. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. These are reflections from my quiet time with God today.]
Showing posts with label Philippians 3:10-11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philippians 3:10-11. Show all posts
Friday, April 26, 2019
Sunday, January 06, 2019
Knowing Christ (Part 1, 'Bearing Fruit for God's Kingdom')
[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]
Matthew 2:1-12
I have a terrible sense of direction. Without a GPS, a roadmap, if I’m driving outside of familiar territory, I quickly get lost. Even with GPS, I sometimes get lost, as happened when, after my interview with Living Water’s call committee five years ago, speaking with Ann on the phone, I traveled twenty-five miles west on I-70 before realizing I was going the wrong way.
Truth is, good sense of direction or not, we all need maps, pathways, to take us where we intend to be. The Magi, the wise men from the East in today’s gospel lesson, didn’t have a roadmap or GPS, but their pathway was marked out for them by both a star set in the sky by God and by God’s Word, which told them there would be a Savior of the world born among God’s people, the Jews.
Over the past four years, we’ve been seeking to respond to God’s call here at Living Water to be a disciple-making congregation, to being and to make disciples of Jesus Christ.
In that time, we’ve laid out a vision: to make disciples, just as Jesus commissions us to do.
We’ve identified our mission: to
We’ve identified our portrait of a disciple. A disciple, we’ve said, daily:
As a result of our commitment to being and making disciples, the only job Christ gave to His Church, we’ve instituted small groups in which we can read and reflect on God’s Word together, grow in faith together, pray together, encourage one another, and be accountable to each other. There will be new small groups this year.
We’re also committed to making disciples through every ministry in this congregation: from the Knitwits to the Haiti mission; from Upward Sports to Chevy Chase tutoring, among our adults and among our children and youth.
Taking Faith Home is also part of our discipleship initiative.
We want every member of Living Water to be a confident and faithful believer in Jesus, disciples who live in hope and can share that hope with others!
So, we have our vision, mission, and portrait of a disciple, all rooted in biblical truth and many hours spent in prayer for God’s guidance.
Today and over the next three Sundays, we unveil the pathway, the roadmap, our congregational GPS, by which disciples are made.
This is what we’re aiming to have happen in the life of every person we touch, both within Living Water and out in a world as much in need of Jesus Christ as the wise men were two-thousand years ago: To create opportunities for people to follow the roadmap to a deep and intimate walk with the God revealed in Jesus Christ. In the video, we have a postcard summarizing the roadmap, the pathway.
Truly, none of us can make disciples of other people. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12:3 tells us, “...no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.”
Knowing this, Martin Luther writes in The Small Catechism [show these words onscreen, please]:
We can be used by God to make disciples in our own homes, at work, at school, at play.
We can help people along the pathway of knowing Christ, growing in Christ, and then, showing Christ to the world. That, in fact, is what we’re here for as Living Water Lutheran Church!
We become disciples when we get to know Christ. The wise men, familiar with the Old Testament prophecies of a saving King, saw a star and believed it to be a sign of that King’s birth. God invited them to know God the Son, Jesus, and to worship Him.
When they arrive in Jerusalem, believing that Herod must know of and be rejoicing over the birth of the Messiah (they only learned later how evil and paranoid Herod was): “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
You see, God created a thirst and an appetite within the wise men to know and to worship Jesus.
By our faithful discipleship and unashamed witness for Christ--telling others what He has done for us on the cross and from the empty tomb, talking about how He is giving us life with God, joy in the midst of sorrow, hope that trumps death--we can be used to create an appetite for Christ in others too.
Saint Paul asks the Church about our unbelieving neighbors: “How...can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’" (Romans 10:14-15)
Now, when Paul talks here about preaching, he doesn't have in mind the people who speak to us on Sunday mornings, but every Christian disciple, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to tell others about Christ. Today, disciples are made when Christians take Jesus’ lordship and His great commission seriously and, sharing Christ and His Word with others, become the lights who in a dark world, like the star of Bethlehem, lead others to know Jesus.
If we’re going to follow the discipleship roadmap, it starts with knowing Christ.
And if we’re going to help others to know Him, we must make knowing Him through His Word our daily pursuit.
After all, we can’t give away a Savior we don’t know ourselves! When, after their long journey, the wise men finally came in contact with the Christ, we’re told in today’s gospel lesson: “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.” (Matthew 2:11)
The wise men had been willing to do anything to know Jesus. Can the same be said of us?
Although it’s the first step on the pathway of discipleship, our need to know Christ and be rooted in Him never stops. You may have learned the alphabet when you were small, but you will never outgrow your need of the alphabet every day of your life.
The apostle Paul wrote years after he had come to know Christ as his God and Savior: “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:10-11) Paul wanted his life to go in the right direction. I think that we all do too.
Our call at Living Water Lutheran Church is to drink deeply of God’s Word and all the means of grace He creates to give us that Word--to Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, in daily Bible reading and quiet time and small groups, in worship and Bible study, in prayer and service in Jesus’ name--so that we know Jesus Christ and we can help others know Him too.
More next Sunday. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Matthew 2:1-12
I have a terrible sense of direction. Without a GPS, a roadmap, if I’m driving outside of familiar territory, I quickly get lost. Even with GPS, I sometimes get lost, as happened when, after my interview with Living Water’s call committee five years ago, speaking with Ann on the phone, I traveled twenty-five miles west on I-70 before realizing I was going the wrong way.
Truth is, good sense of direction or not, we all need maps, pathways, to take us where we intend to be. The Magi, the wise men from the East in today’s gospel lesson, didn’t have a roadmap or GPS, but their pathway was marked out for them by both a star set in the sky by God and by God’s Word, which told them there would be a Savior of the world born among God’s people, the Jews.
Over the past four years, we’ve been seeking to respond to God’s call here at Living Water to be a disciple-making congregation, to being and to make disciples of Jesus Christ.
In that time, we’ve laid out a vision: to make disciples, just as Jesus commissions us to do.
We’ve identified our mission: to
- (1) reach up to worship, praise, and know the God revealed in Jesus Christ;
- (2) reach in to grow together, pray together, and learn together and to serve and love each other as Jesus’ people; and
- (3) reach out to share the good news of new and everlasting life through faith in Jesus Christ and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
We’ve identified our portrait of a disciple. A disciple, we’ve said, daily:
- (1) loves Jesus above all;
- (2) lives in the light of God’s Word;
- (3) denies the dark side;
- (4) embraces God’s will, obeying Jesus;
- (5) loves other believers as Christ loves us;
- (6) joins in Christ’s mission of reaching up, reaching in, and reaching out.
As a result of our commitment to being and making disciples, the only job Christ gave to His Church, we’ve instituted small groups in which we can read and reflect on God’s Word together, grow in faith together, pray together, encourage one another, and be accountable to each other. There will be new small groups this year.
We’re also committed to making disciples through every ministry in this congregation: from the Knitwits to the Haiti mission; from Upward Sports to Chevy Chase tutoring, among our adults and among our children and youth.
Taking Faith Home is also part of our discipleship initiative.
We want every member of Living Water to be a confident and faithful believer in Jesus, disciples who live in hope and can share that hope with others!
So, we have our vision, mission, and portrait of a disciple, all rooted in biblical truth and many hours spent in prayer for God’s guidance.
Today and over the next three Sundays, we unveil the pathway, the roadmap, our congregational GPS, by which disciples are made.
This is what we’re aiming to have happen in the life of every person we touch, both within Living Water and out in a world as much in need of Jesus Christ as the wise men were two-thousand years ago: To create opportunities for people to follow the roadmap to a deep and intimate walk with the God revealed in Jesus Christ. In the video, we have a postcard summarizing the roadmap, the pathway.
Truly, none of us can make disciples of other people. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12:3 tells us, “...no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.”
Knowing this, Martin Luther writes in The Small Catechism [show these words onscreen, please]:
I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified [that is, made holy] and preserved me in true faith. In the same way, He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and preserves it in unity with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church, He daily forgives abundantly all my sins and the sins of all believers; and at the last day, He will raise me and all the dead and will grant everlasting life to all who believe in Christ. This is most certainly true!Only God can make disciples of Jesus. But He uses His Church--you and me--to do it.
We can be used by God to make disciples in our own homes, at work, at school, at play.
We can help people along the pathway of knowing Christ, growing in Christ, and then, showing Christ to the world. That, in fact, is what we’re here for as Living Water Lutheran Church!
We become disciples when we get to know Christ. The wise men, familiar with the Old Testament prophecies of a saving King, saw a star and believed it to be a sign of that King’s birth. God invited them to know God the Son, Jesus, and to worship Him.
When they arrive in Jerusalem, believing that Herod must know of and be rejoicing over the birth of the Messiah (they only learned later how evil and paranoid Herod was): “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
You see, God created a thirst and an appetite within the wise men to know and to worship Jesus.
By our faithful discipleship and unashamed witness for Christ--telling others what He has done for us on the cross and from the empty tomb, talking about how He is giving us life with God, joy in the midst of sorrow, hope that trumps death--we can be used to create an appetite for Christ in others too.
Saint Paul asks the Church about our unbelieving neighbors: “How...can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’" (Romans 10:14-15)
Now, when Paul talks here about preaching, he doesn't have in mind the people who speak to us on Sunday mornings, but every Christian disciple, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to tell others about Christ. Today, disciples are made when Christians take Jesus’ lordship and His great commission seriously and, sharing Christ and His Word with others, become the lights who in a dark world, like the star of Bethlehem, lead others to know Jesus.
If we’re going to follow the discipleship roadmap, it starts with knowing Christ.
And if we’re going to help others to know Him, we must make knowing Him through His Word our daily pursuit.
After all, we can’t give away a Savior we don’t know ourselves! When, after their long journey, the wise men finally came in contact with the Christ, we’re told in today’s gospel lesson: “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.” (Matthew 2:11)
The wise men had been willing to do anything to know Jesus. Can the same be said of us?
Although it’s the first step on the pathway of discipleship, our need to know Christ and be rooted in Him never stops. You may have learned the alphabet when you were small, but you will never outgrow your need of the alphabet every day of your life.
The apostle Paul wrote years after he had come to know Christ as his God and Savior: “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:10-11) Paul wanted his life to go in the right direction. I think that we all do too.
Our call at Living Water Lutheran Church is to drink deeply of God’s Word and all the means of grace He creates to give us that Word--to Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, in daily Bible reading and quiet time and small groups, in worship and Bible study, in prayer and service in Jesus’ name--so that we know Jesus Christ and we can help others know Him too.
More next Sunday. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Inheritance from a Father's Heart
Galatians 3:23-4:7
Several days ago, an article in The New York Times reported that Romans, chapter 1, in the New Testament of the Bible, calls for the execution of gays. Of course, this isn’t true.
I got upset. I even thought about writing a blog post or an email to The Times.
But as I reflected, I realized that reporting like this stems less from an anti-Christian bias in the media than from a larger society that is incurious about God, believes all religion is murderous, and thinks that all religions believe essentially the same things.
I told myself not to bellyache, because when I do that, I’m not doing what Jesus commissioned all believers to do: make disciples.
Our call as Jesus’ disciples isn’t to score debating points or vent our grievances.
Our call is to present the Gospel--the good news--of new life for all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus.
We’re to use our lives to help people to understand that Romans 1 does not call for the murder of gays; that all religions are not the same; and that while some people have perverted Christian faith through the years, it is not the same as Buddhism, Hinduism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism, Islam, the daily horoscope, or other religious systems.
Christian faith is about Jesus and Jesus, true God and true human, is different from anyone else who has ever walked on this earth.
Besides, we all have to remember that there are many who call themselves Christians just as ignorant of what it means to follow Jesus Christ as the most committed atheists. And I recognize that I myself can be ignorant and incurious about my faith in Jesus.
Let’s be clear though: Christian faith isn’t about what you know; it’s about who you know, the God revealed to all the world in the crucified and risen Jesus.
Knowing Jesus Christ is the defining passion of people committed to being His disciples.
Philippians 3:10-11 expresses this: “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”
As we get to know Jesus better and follow Him more closely, the Holy Spirit works faith in us and God changes us. We start to see things as Jesus sees them, see people as Jesus sees people, and share Jesus’ goal of saving our neighbors from sin, death, and hell, just as Jesus is saving us from these things.
Our lives begin to testify to the fact that God doesn’t want us to kill gays or anybody else.
The God we know in Jesus wants us to proclaim the same life-giving message of repentance for sin and faith in Christ that has saved us by grace through faith in Christ.
No flinching on calling sin sin.
No withholding of the good news that Jesus died and rose to make sinners into saints.
No good works required, just surrender to Jesus.
The good works and the changed lives won’t come from our trying to be good people, but from God transforming believers from bad people willing to be changed into Jesus people. Only Christianity proclaims this truth.
It’s a truth of which we need to be constantly reminded. Paul found that as early as 49 AD, first-generation Christians needed the same reminding.
Today is the fourth part of our series on the New Testament book of Galatians, Freedom in Christ.
Remember that shortly after Paul founded the churches in Galatia and the Holy Spirit had won Gentiles--non- Jews--to faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, some people we today call Judaizers came to them and said that Good Friday and Easter Sunday were wonderful, but that if they really wanted to be saved, they had to fulfill all the Old Testament dietary, ritual, sacrificial, and civil laws that Jesus said He already fulfilled when He died on the cross.
But this raises the question, what to do with all of those Old Testament laws? Were they all wrong? Paul tackles these questions in our second lesson, Galatians 3:23-4:7.
Please take a look at the start of the lesson. Paul begins with a history of the human race before the coming of Jesus: “Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.”
Before it was possible to believe in the crucified and risen Jesus, Paul is saying, the whole human race was held in check by God’s law. Even people who had never heard of God’s law, which the Bible says, is written on every human heart [Romans 2:15].
C.S. Lewis explains this well in Mere Christianity where he says that while some cultures may say that you should only have one wife and others says you can have many, the moral code of no culture says that you can have your neighbor’s wife. And while different cultures may have different ideas of what constitutes murder, no culture says that murder is OK. Who taught us that these were the right values? No one needs to be taught God’s law; though we can’t keep it, we know it from birth.
And this law, Paul says, had an important role before Jesus came into this world. He says that before Jesus, the law was our guardian. That word, in the original Greek, is paidagogos, or pedagogue, a word that more literally means leader of a child.
In the first-century Roman world, a pedagogue was a household slave whose job it was to oversee the life and upbringing of wealthy men’s children. The pedagogue was there to keep the heirs safe and out of trouble, to preserve and prepare them for adulthood and their inheritance.
That, Paul says, was like the function of God’s law written on every heart and given to Israel through Moses.
The law paints a picture of what the kingdom of God would be like for all who turned from sin and had faith in Jesus. It would be a kingdom without idolatry, murder, lying, adultery, sexual promiscuity, or false witness, a kingdom of selflessness and love.
Once we trust in Jesus, we no longer need a pedagogue. We’re grown-ups who have claimed our inheritance in Jesus. By faith in Christ, we live in the kingdom of God.
No more anticipation; just participation!
When our children were growing up, we often prayed with them. Today, they pray for themselves, not because mom and dad expect it of them, but because as grown-ups, they believe in Jesus for themselves. We taught them about Jesus and, in a sense, we made them pray, worship, go to Catechism. We were God’s pedagogues. We were the Law. But then our children reached a point when they asked themselves, “Do I want life with Jesus?” By faith, they grasped the inheritance of life with Jesus that we pointed them to when we made them pray, worship, and go to Catechism.
So, Paul is saying, following Jesus isn’t about adding another item to your to-do list. It’s about taking your rightful inheritance through faith in Christ.
So, Paul says in Galatians 3:26-29: “...in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
Paul goes on to write: “What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir is subject to guardians and trustees [the pedagogues] until the time set by his father. So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons [Paul deliberately uses this term because in the ancient world, only sons of the rich inherited the estate of the father. Through faith in Jesus, everyone who believes in Jesus--Jew, Gentile, slave, free, male, female--hold the position of sons, inheritors of life with God. Paul then says:], God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.”
These are important words. They show that after Jesus, everything has changed!
In only a handful of verses in the Old Testament, God is called Father.
In popular Jewish culture, God was never called Father; it was deemed far too intimate a term for the Creator of the universe and the Giver of the Law.
But when Jesus taught His disciples, including you and me, how to pray, He taught us to refer to God as our Father.
Paul says that when we are able to approach God in this way, seeing Him as our Dad (a rough translation of the Aramaic word for father, abba, that Jesus uses in the Lord’s Prayer), the Holy Spirit bears witness that we no longer live under the constraints of God’s Law, His guardian, but are heirs set free from sin, death, and darkness.
When I was growing up, my father, though he only stood about 5'-8" tall, seemed like a giant to me. I was also a little frightened of him. When mom told me to do something, I might slack off. But when dad gave me an order, I hopped to. And though today, I think I might be able to take him, when he wants me to do something, I still hop to. But my motivation is different now. Back then, as a child, I obeyed my father because he was the law. Today though, as a grown-up, I obey his wishes because I'm grateful for all that he has done for me, for loving me.
A similar transformation in our relationship with our heavenly Father happens after we come to believe in Jesus Christ. Now, when we obey God’s Law, it isn’t to keep the guardian off our backs; it’s to express love and thanksgiving to the Father Who, through Jesus, has made us free to live as God’s grown and grateful children.
Nothing has changed in God’s Law. But it operates differently in our lives, as a guide to those who want to show love to God for Jesus.
Years ago, one of my sisters and I were talking on the phone. She was upset. A relative had told her that because she wasn’t tithing, giving the first 10% of her income to the work of Christ's Church in the world, she was going to hell. “What do you say?” she wondered.
"Think of John 3:16," I told her. "Jesus doesn’t say that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him and tithe will be saved." It says that God so loved the world that all who believe in Him will be saved.
To be sure, God’s Law will call the person saved by God’s grace in Christ to tithe. And also to love God and love neighbor, to be kind to those hated by others, to keep sexual intimacy within the bounds of marriage between a man and woman, to make disciples, to refrain from covetousness and stealing, and to keep God’s other commands.
Gratitude for grace will incite us to desire the things God desires.
But we aren’t called to be God’s enforcers in the world.
And we certainly can’t perform our way into His forgiving grace.
All we can do is repent and trust in Jesus, which really just means to surrender to grace, to trust Jesus with our past, present, and future. That’s where freedom happens.
So, believers in Jesus, live in that freedom!
[This was shared with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, during worship earlier today.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Several days ago, an article in The New York Times reported that Romans, chapter 1, in the New Testament of the Bible, calls for the execution of gays. Of course, this isn’t true.
I got upset. I even thought about writing a blog post or an email to The Times.
But as I reflected, I realized that reporting like this stems less from an anti-Christian bias in the media than from a larger society that is incurious about God, believes all religion is murderous, and thinks that all religions believe essentially the same things.
I told myself not to bellyache, because when I do that, I’m not doing what Jesus commissioned all believers to do: make disciples.
Our call as Jesus’ disciples isn’t to score debating points or vent our grievances.
Our call is to present the Gospel--the good news--of new life for all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus.
We’re to use our lives to help people to understand that Romans 1 does not call for the murder of gays; that all religions are not the same; and that while some people have perverted Christian faith through the years, it is not the same as Buddhism, Hinduism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism, Islam, the daily horoscope, or other religious systems.
Christian faith is about Jesus and Jesus, true God and true human, is different from anyone else who has ever walked on this earth.
Besides, we all have to remember that there are many who call themselves Christians just as ignorant of what it means to follow Jesus Christ as the most committed atheists. And I recognize that I myself can be ignorant and incurious about my faith in Jesus.
Let’s be clear though: Christian faith isn’t about what you know; it’s about who you know, the God revealed to all the world in the crucified and risen Jesus.
Knowing Jesus Christ is the defining passion of people committed to being His disciples.
Philippians 3:10-11 expresses this: “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”
As we get to know Jesus better and follow Him more closely, the Holy Spirit works faith in us and God changes us. We start to see things as Jesus sees them, see people as Jesus sees people, and share Jesus’ goal of saving our neighbors from sin, death, and hell, just as Jesus is saving us from these things.
Our lives begin to testify to the fact that God doesn’t want us to kill gays or anybody else.
The God we know in Jesus wants us to proclaim the same life-giving message of repentance for sin and faith in Christ that has saved us by grace through faith in Christ.
No flinching on calling sin sin.
No withholding of the good news that Jesus died and rose to make sinners into saints.
No good works required, just surrender to Jesus.
The good works and the changed lives won’t come from our trying to be good people, but from God transforming believers from bad people willing to be changed into Jesus people. Only Christianity proclaims this truth.
It’s a truth of which we need to be constantly reminded. Paul found that as early as 49 AD, first-generation Christians needed the same reminding.
Today is the fourth part of our series on the New Testament book of Galatians, Freedom in Christ.
Remember that shortly after Paul founded the churches in Galatia and the Holy Spirit had won Gentiles--non- Jews--to faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, some people we today call Judaizers came to them and said that Good Friday and Easter Sunday were wonderful, but that if they really wanted to be saved, they had to fulfill all the Old Testament dietary, ritual, sacrificial, and civil laws that Jesus said He already fulfilled when He died on the cross.
But this raises the question, what to do with all of those Old Testament laws? Were they all wrong? Paul tackles these questions in our second lesson, Galatians 3:23-4:7.
Please take a look at the start of the lesson. Paul begins with a history of the human race before the coming of Jesus: “Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.”
Before it was possible to believe in the crucified and risen Jesus, Paul is saying, the whole human race was held in check by God’s law. Even people who had never heard of God’s law, which the Bible says, is written on every human heart [Romans 2:15].
C.S. Lewis explains this well in Mere Christianity where he says that while some cultures may say that you should only have one wife and others says you can have many, the moral code of no culture says that you can have your neighbor’s wife. And while different cultures may have different ideas of what constitutes murder, no culture says that murder is OK. Who taught us that these were the right values? No one needs to be taught God’s law; though we can’t keep it, we know it from birth.
And this law, Paul says, had an important role before Jesus came into this world. He says that before Jesus, the law was our guardian. That word, in the original Greek, is paidagogos, or pedagogue, a word that more literally means leader of a child.
In the first-century Roman world, a pedagogue was a household slave whose job it was to oversee the life and upbringing of wealthy men’s children. The pedagogue was there to keep the heirs safe and out of trouble, to preserve and prepare them for adulthood and their inheritance.
That, Paul says, was like the function of God’s law written on every heart and given to Israel through Moses.
The law paints a picture of what the kingdom of God would be like for all who turned from sin and had faith in Jesus. It would be a kingdom without idolatry, murder, lying, adultery, sexual promiscuity, or false witness, a kingdom of selflessness and love.
Once we trust in Jesus, we no longer need a pedagogue. We’re grown-ups who have claimed our inheritance in Jesus. By faith in Christ, we live in the kingdom of God.
No more anticipation; just participation!
When our children were growing up, we often prayed with them. Today, they pray for themselves, not because mom and dad expect it of them, but because as grown-ups, they believe in Jesus for themselves. We taught them about Jesus and, in a sense, we made them pray, worship, go to Catechism. We were God’s pedagogues. We were the Law. But then our children reached a point when they asked themselves, “Do I want life with Jesus?” By faith, they grasped the inheritance of life with Jesus that we pointed them to when we made them pray, worship, and go to Catechism.
So, Paul is saying, following Jesus isn’t about adding another item to your to-do list. It’s about taking your rightful inheritance through faith in Christ.
So, Paul says in Galatians 3:26-29: “...in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
Paul goes on to write: “What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir is subject to guardians and trustees [the pedagogues] until the time set by his father. So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons [Paul deliberately uses this term because in the ancient world, only sons of the rich inherited the estate of the father. Through faith in Jesus, everyone who believes in Jesus--Jew, Gentile, slave, free, male, female--hold the position of sons, inheritors of life with God. Paul then says:], God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.”
These are important words. They show that after Jesus, everything has changed!
In only a handful of verses in the Old Testament, God is called Father.
In popular Jewish culture, God was never called Father; it was deemed far too intimate a term for the Creator of the universe and the Giver of the Law.
But when Jesus taught His disciples, including you and me, how to pray, He taught us to refer to God as our Father.
Paul says that when we are able to approach God in this way, seeing Him as our Dad (a rough translation of the Aramaic word for father, abba, that Jesus uses in the Lord’s Prayer), the Holy Spirit bears witness that we no longer live under the constraints of God’s Law, His guardian, but are heirs set free from sin, death, and darkness.
When I was growing up, my father, though he only stood about 5'-8" tall, seemed like a giant to me. I was also a little frightened of him. When mom told me to do something, I might slack off. But when dad gave me an order, I hopped to. And though today, I think I might be able to take him, when he wants me to do something, I still hop to. But my motivation is different now. Back then, as a child, I obeyed my father because he was the law. Today though, as a grown-up, I obey his wishes because I'm grateful for all that he has done for me, for loving me.
A similar transformation in our relationship with our heavenly Father happens after we come to believe in Jesus Christ. Now, when we obey God’s Law, it isn’t to keep the guardian off our backs; it’s to express love and thanksgiving to the Father Who, through Jesus, has made us free to live as God’s grown and grateful children.
Nothing has changed in God’s Law. But it operates differently in our lives, as a guide to those who want to show love to God for Jesus.
Years ago, one of my sisters and I were talking on the phone. She was upset. A relative had told her that because she wasn’t tithing, giving the first 10% of her income to the work of Christ's Church in the world, she was going to hell. “What do you say?” she wondered.
"Think of John 3:16," I told her. "Jesus doesn’t say that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him and tithe will be saved." It says that God so loved the world that all who believe in Him will be saved.
To be sure, God’s Law will call the person saved by God’s grace in Christ to tithe. And also to love God and love neighbor, to be kind to those hated by others, to keep sexual intimacy within the bounds of marriage between a man and woman, to make disciples, to refrain from covetousness and stealing, and to keep God’s other commands.
Gratitude for grace will incite us to desire the things God desires.
But we aren’t called to be God’s enforcers in the world.
And we certainly can’t perform our way into His forgiving grace.
All we can do is repent and trust in Jesus, which really just means to surrender to grace, to trust Jesus with our past, present, and future. That’s where freedom happens.
So, believers in Jesus, live in that freedom!
[This was shared with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, during worship earlier today.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
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