Life from God

[Below, you'll find live stream video of yesterday's worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, along with the text od the message for the day. Yesterday was Holy Trinity Sunday.]

Matthew 28:16-20

On this Holy Trinity Sunday, God, Whose revealed name is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, comes to us in His fullness. He does so, as Jesus says elsewhere, so that you “may have life, and have it to the full…” (John 10:10)

God is going to give you life again this morning in our Gospel lesson, which recounts the last words of the crucified and risen Jesus recorded in Matthew’s gospel.

We need to receive life from God–actually we need to receive God’s life from God–because we are sinners prone, like stupid sheep, to wander away from God and the life that He alone can give to us.

Without life from God, the Author of life, we are dead.

To understand how God is going to give life to you again today in our Gospel lesson, it would be helpful to consider the witness of our first lesson–Genesis 1:1-2:4 in the Old Testament–and see how God gave life at the birth of all the physical universes He created. Genesis 1:1-3 says: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

What happens here? God the Father speaks the Word, Who as we know from the Gospel of John, is Jesus, and the Holy Spirit makes it possible for the “formless, dark, deep”--dead and lifeless–to hear or receive God’s Word.

Wherever God’s life-giving Word, Christ Himself, is heard, life happens.

It is this Word, full of life, gospel, good news, that causes nothing to become something, that causes the dead to come alive!

It was of this Word that the apostle Paul wrote in Romans: “...it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” (Romans 1:16)

So, the Father speaks Christ the Word and the Spirit wings that Word into dead darkness in order to bring, as 2 Timothy in the New Testament tells us, “life and immortality to light.” (2 Timothy 1:10)

Now that we know how the Trinity–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–gives life, we’re ready to receive life from Him in Matthew 28:16-20 today.

You know the incident well. The eleven remaining apostles–after betraying Jesus, Judas has died–go to a mountain to which Jesus has commanded them to go. There, they meet the risen Jesus!

This surely is a moment of joy, right? Not entirely. Matthew says, “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” (Matthew 28:17)

Matthew doesn’t tell us what the disciples doubt. They can’t doubt that Jesus is risen: Jesus is standing in front of them. So, what are they doubting?

The root of the word translated as “doubted” here is διστάζω, a compound word the two parts of which are double and stand. When we doubt, it’s because we’re not sure about where we stand.

When you know where you stand with God, you can worship Him.

When you’re unsure, you doubt not only that you can worship but whether God will accept your worship.

As they wobble and kneel in the presence of Jesus, at least some of the eleven likely doubt that Jesus will forgive them.

Peter may wonder, “Can Jesus forgive me for denying Him?”

The others may wonder, “Can Jesus forgive us for abandoning Him when trouble came?”

They all may wonder, “Are my sins so great that I’m beyond the forgiveness of Jesus?”

What about you? Do doubts like these ever assail you?

“I lied to make myself look good,” you may think.

Or, “I lusted for another man’s wife or another woman’s husband.”

Or, “I was dishonest about money.”

Or, “I have been unwilling to forgive so-and-so for how they hurt me.”

Do you doubt that God’s grace in Christ is for you? Do you sometimes think that Christ died and rose for everybody’s sin but your own?

Friends, the God we know through Jesus Christ knows how you feel and not just because as God, He knows everything you think and do. He knows because He already took all your sin and all mine into Himself and was crucified with it. He knows your sin from the inside out. He knows how horrible it is. He knows how, when you look only to yourself in the light of God’s law–His commandments–that you feel you must be eternally condemned. He was experiencing the condemnation of God’s Law on you when He cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)

But forsakenness is not the end that God desires for any of us.

After reminding the eleven on the mountaintop that all authority on heaven and earth has been given to Him because He has conquered sin, death, and the devil through His death for us and His resurrection for us, Jesus speaks life to sinners like you and me. (I’m rendering the words in verse 19 here literally.) “As you are going, keep being my disciples in all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…” Here are the Gospel words that bring you life!

Jesus tells disciples who have messed up, sinned, and betrayed or denied Him, “You are still My disciples. Keep being My disciples. Keep turning back to Me for forgiveness and life.”

Listen, the God Who tells His disciples that, in His power, we are to forgive others seventy times seventy times, is ready and able to forgive and give life to us infinitely more than that!

That’s not a license to sin, of course, it’s freedom to live assured that our Father in heaven forgives us our trespasses and views us as His very own disciples, children, friends.

And it means that we can turn to Him for forgiveness each day because “He remembers that we are dust,” dead dust into whom He breathes the Holy Spirit, the only One Who can give us life! (Psalm 103:14)

We can live in the freedom of being God’s own children because we have been baptized and called to faith in the name–notice it’s name, not names–the name by which God saved us at the waters of Holy Baptism: the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

This is the name by which God has reveals Himself to us.

And it’s this His name He has placed on us to claim us as His own.

By this name, we sinners are saved and made saints.

And this name assures us that prodigals though we are, we can turn to Him and live.

Not only that, we can baptize others and know that they too have been made God’s children. As Peter reminds us, “baptism…saves you.” (1 Peter 3:21) 

Then Jesus says, finishing the sentence started in verse 19 (I’m rendering His words in verse 20 literally from the Greek again): “...teaching them [the nations] to keep guard over all the things that I have given you to keep guard over. And behold, I am with you all the days until the completion of the age.” (Matthew 28:20, literal translation)

To keep guard of the things that Christ has given to us is to hold the sacred trusts of the Law that condemns human sin and the Gospel that sets us free as God’s message for all nations.

It means to repent when God’s Word calls us to repentance and it means to believe when God’s Word of absolution–in the name of Jesus, all your sins are forgiven–is declared. It means telling the world what Jesus tells us in Mark 16:16: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”

Sisters and brothers in Christ, because the triune God has spoken the Gospel Word to you, giving you both the gift of repentance and the gift of faith in Jesus, sin no longer has the power to condemn you. You are forgiven.

This promise isn’t just for eleven apostles on a mountaintop in Galilee two-thousand years ago. It’s for you too. Again this morning, dear saints in Christ, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you are forgiven and you belong to God forever. Amen

The Encounter That Can Change Everything

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, this past Sunday.]

Matthew 4:12-25
Some of you have heard me talk about Ayman. He was the Syrian-Muslim owner of a deli we frequented in days gone by. 

One day, Ayman told me that his brother-in-law, who was from a Christian background, had died suddenly and at a young age. Ayman told me when the visitation would be. I arranged to be at the funeral home just before the calling hours, allowing me to spend a little time with the family before I went to an evening meeting. I actually met members of both families, Christian and Muslim. After giving my condolences, Ayman offered to walk with me to the door.

We’d walked into another room when he asked if we could talk. “Mark,” he asked, “what do you think happens to someone who dies?” 

I explained as respectfully as I could (because God's Word tells us to be respectful to those from other backgrounds when we share the substance of our hope as Christians) that, as a follower of Jesus, I believe that all who turn from sin, or repent, and trust in Jesus, have life with God that never ends. 

I said that Jesus makes us part of His eternal kingdom as His Holy Spirit enables us to believe in Him. 

I told Him that I believe Jesus is God in the flesh, how Jesus came into our world to die for us and bring eternal life to all who follow Him, and how everyone who follows Jesus is in His hands even after we die. 

I tried to point Ayman to Jesus. 

As I was leaving, Ayman told me, with warmth, “Mark, I really liked hearing what you said back there.”

What happened to elicit such a reaction in a mostly non-practicing Muslim? This is what happened: Jesus happened. 

I had no idea that Ayman was going to ask that question of me. 

I hadn’t rehearsed anything. 

All I did was pray, as I always do in such circumstances, “Jesus, give me the right words and the right silences.” That’s it. 

Jesus once taught His followers how to prepare for persecution: “...when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” (Matthew 10:19-20) I think that this directive from Jesus also has application to our everyday interactions with others. We need to trust that the Holy Spirit will give us the words we need to speak when others who may not know Jesus ask us about Him. Jesus will give us the Holy Spirit do His life-giving, faith-raising work through us. Through us, people can encounter Jesus.

We see what happens when people encounter Jesus in today’s gospel lesson, Matthew 4:12-25. It shows us ways in which the Word of Jesus, God the Son, can come to us and transform our lives. In our encounter with Jesus today, we hear Him bring the Law, the Gospel, and God’s call to obedience.

Early in our lesson, we’re told that Jesus says: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 4:17)

We moderns cringe at the word repent. “Don’t guilt me,” we say. 

Now, the command to repent is Law, God’s Law. But to repent isn’t necessarily to cover ourselves in ashes or engage in a lot of self-referential blubbering. 

The word in the original Greek in which Matthew and all the New Testament writers composed their books is metanoeite. It means change your mind, as in, “I was walking along a path that pleased me, but when God got through to me, showing me how I was destroying myself, I changed my mind and went the other way.” 

A few months ago, a man I’ve known for some time wrote to me about a conversation he’d had with a friend. He’d said some rough words to this friend. He told me, “I think that I was right. But what do you think?” 

Honestly, I don’t always answer such questions immediately. 

I want to be careful about giving “life advice” when I know that I fail and fall in this business of living, let alone living righteously, as anyone else. 

I also wait in order to pray over my responses to questions I get. 

But I finally did write that man what I think he already suspected, that his rough words maybe were too rough and that even when we speak hard truths, we must do so with the love of Jesus for the other person. After getting my email, the man changed his mind. He repented and apologized to his friend. 

My response to him had nothing to do with me. God gave me His Word and His wisdom and the Holy Spirit changed the man's mind. That was all the work of the Word of Jesus speaking through me.

Jesus also says in verse 17, “the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 

That, friends, is good news, the gospel from God! 

This gospel tells us that though we may live in a world of darkness, sin, and death and though we may be sinners, violators of God’s Law who can hardly stand to look at ourselves in the mirror in the morning from guilt and shame, let alone look into the eyes of Jesus, Jesus, the King of kings, has come with God’s grace--His charity--to bring us into His light, under His reign. 

He does this not because we deserve His love, but simply because He chooses to love us. 

We may find it hard to love the unlovable; but God does love the unlovable, even you and me. And that's something to be celebrated, relished, and enjoyed, something that fills us with thankfulness and praise to God!

When Jesus and His kingdom come to us and His Word of love gives us the faith in Him that makes us His, we are compelled to believe and empowered to believe that absolutely nothing, not even death, can separate us from God or His loving, eternal intentions for us. 

As one Lutheran layperson wrote this past week on Twitter, “‘ALL YOUR SIN IS FORGIVEN FOR CHRIST’S SAKE.’  If you believe this, God has given you the gift of faith. There is nothing that you need do. It is already done to you. Now, go live.” 

“I am not ashamed of the gospel,” Paul writes in the New Testament, “because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes...” (Romans 1:16) 

It was the power of the gospel, the good news of Jesus, that warmed Ayman’s heart that day in the funeral home.

Later in our lesson, Jesus approaches two sets of brothers who are fishermen: Simon Peter and Andrew, John and James. Jesus tells them to follow Him and they do so, “at once,” “immediately.” 

After God’s Word in Jesus convicts us of our sin in the Law that says, “Repent”...after that same Word convinces us of God’s love and good intentions for us in the Gospel, we’re open to doing what might have otherwise been unthinkable to us. 

We’re ready to follow Jesus. 

We’re ready to go where He takes us. 

This doesn’t mean that if you’re a Christian, you should become a pastor or a missionary. 

It means following Him wherever we may be--at work, at school, at home, in doctors’ offices, grocery stores, restaurants, gyms, community gatherings, sporting events, social media. 

God taking on human flesh, dying for us, and rising for us tells us that the kingdom of heaven isn’t a place in the sky; it’s wherever Jesus’ gospel Word of Law or Gospel comes to us, transforming us from God’s enemies to God’s friends, forever. 

As we live daily in repentance and faith, we carry Jesus’ Word with us, creating the possibility that still more people will encounter Jesus as they did in today’s gospel lesson.

This is how darkness and death are defeated in this world. 

This is how the kingdom of heaven shows itself even in the imperfection and sadness of this world. 

Not with political agendas or social programs, though each has their places. 

Darkness and death are defeated only as the Word of Jesus pierces our sin, selfishness, and despair through the Law, the Gospel, and His call to obediently follow. 

When we hear and respond to Jesus’ Word to repent, believe, and follow Him, we are changed forever. 

And we might, by His presence in and with us, become the instruments by which Jesus forever changes the lives of others too. Amen

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

Eyes Opened to New Life

"...if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age [the devil] has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." (2 Corinthians 4:3-4)

When I was an atheist and thought that Jesus was a nice guy that Christians misconstrued, I was unable to hear or to see Who Jesus really was, is, and claims to be. My eyes were blinded to the gospel by the devil whose resentment of humanity's place in God's eyes--the only of God's creatures made in the image of God--has placed a veil over human thinking until it's finally pierced by the gospel truth that we are sinners in need of saving and that we are only saved by God's grace through faith in Christ.

But God doesn't give up on enlightening we sinners to the truth of His gospel--the good news--for the human race that can save  us from sin, death, and ourselves. This is why the apostle Paul told the first-century Christians in Rome, " For 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)

The eyes of unbelieving people can be opened to see and believe in the gospel, to believe in Jesus, so that we're no longer blind and no longer dead in our sin. This is what God is doing to and in me through Jesus.

My call is to keep sharing Christ's Gospel. The Holy Spirit can used my simple sharing of it to open the eyes of the blind and bring them life with God.

Gracious God, help me to faithfully proclaim Christ and His Gospel so that through this Word, the Holy Spirit can open people's eyes and give them life with You that never ends. Amen 

Sharing What's Most Important to Us

Romans 9:1-13
John Harper was a sort of child prodigy. A Scotsman born in 1872, he came to faith in Jesus Christ at the age of thirteen and within four years, he’d begun getting notice as a convincing preacher with a passion for helping people to know and follow Christ.

In 1896, he started a church in London. Beginning with a core of 25 people, thirteen years later, when he left to become pastor of a church in Chicago, the London church had 500 members.

In 1912, Harper and his six year old daughter took a trip on the maiden voyage of the HMS Titanic. When the Titanic hit an iceberg and began to sink, John Harper made sure that his little girl got safely onto a lifeboat and then began running up and down all the decks of the ship. He looked for women, children to get onto lifeboats. He also looks for those uncertain about where they would spend eternity, hoping to incite them to throw themselves into the arms of risen, life-giving Jesus.

“Survivors report that he began...” telling anyone who would listen that eternal life belongs to all who will turn away from their sin and trust Jesus Christ with their lives. “He continued [telling others about Christ] even after he had jumped into the water and was clinging to a piece of wreckage (he’d already given his lifejacket to another man.)”

Four years later, Harper’s final moments were recounted by a Titanic survivor at a large public gathering in Hamilton, Ontario: “When I was drifting alone on a spar that awful night,” said the man, “the tide brought Mr. Harper..., also on a piece of wreck, near me. ‘Man,’ he said, ‘are you saved [from sin and death by Christ]?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I am not.’ He replied, ‘Believe [in] the Lord Jesus Christ and [you will] be saved.’

“The waves bore him away, but…brought him back a little later, and he [asked if I had allowed Christ to save me yet]...’No,’ I said, ‘I cannot honestly say...[that I have…].’ He said again, ‘Believe [in…] Jesus Christ…’ and shortly after he went down; and there, alone in the night, and with two miles of water under me, I believed...”

That man was one of only six people plucked out of the water by the packed lifeboats. Harper, on the other hand, at age 40, was one of 1522 people who were left to die that horrible night. But, as we see, at least one of the survivors owed his eternal life to John Harper’s faithful witness.

For Harper, dying was not the most frightening prospect he faced as the Titanic sank; the most frightening prospect was for the thousands who surrounded him to enter eternity without believing in Jesus Christ as the advocate Who covered their sins and charitably gave them a place in God’s kingdom.

Do you and I have that same passion, that same zeal, for those who are living this life apart from the empowering presence of Jesus?

Do we ever give a thought to the thousands of people immediately around us who, day in and day out, try to live life without the lifeboat of Jesus Christ to see them through good and bad times?

Do we really care about all those who haven’t sensed that they can call out to Jesus to save them from their sins, from death, from everlasting separation from God?

Sometimes, I’m afraid, I’m so bent on just getting through my day and I so desire to “get along” with others, that I allow my passion and my love for my neighbors to be forgotten. I don’t tell them about Jesus.

Shame on me for that!

Shame on me for lacking the passion of a John Harper!

This was the passion with which the writer of today’s second Bible lesson dictated the letter to the first-century church at Rome from which it’s taken.

Early in that letter, the apostle Paul tells the Romans, in a passage I also mentioned last week: “For 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. [A gentile being every other human being who isn’t a Jew].” (Romans 1:16)

The gospel, the good news of new life for all who repent and believe in the crucified and risen Jesus, this gospel, Paul is saying, is God’s one and only way of changing a person’s eternal destiny from the death and condemnation for which we are ticketed from birth, to eternal life with God.

Today’s second lesson, from a later chapter in Romans, finds Paul contemplating his fellow Jews who had rejected Jesus. Contemplating is too tame a word to describe what Paul is doing. Paul really wasn't a tame man. Agonizing is a better way to describe his ruminating about his fellow Jews.

It hurt Paul to think of anyone not knowing Jesus and facing the titanic questions of how to live in this world and what will happen to them when they die without Christ at their sides. He dreaded the thought of any one, especially his Jewish kindred, entering a Christ-less eternity!

Paul writes, “I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit— I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs [The patriarchs being Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob], and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah [Jesus, Himself, also by God’s choice, born into this world as a descendant of Abraham], who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.” (Romans 9:1-5)

In this passionate passage, Paul was pleading with the non-Jews among the Christian believers in Rome to never forget his fellow Jews. It was the Jews, he said, who first bore testimony about the gracious God Who came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. They shouldn’t be written off or ignored, Paul argues. They too, need Jesus.

As John Harper knew on that fateful night in April, 1912, you and I who follow Jesus Christ are called to live with passion for Christ, anxious to find opportunities to present and live the good news about Jesus, so that none of our neighbors will die condemned for their sin.

We believe that “God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son does not have life.” (1 John 5:11-12)

And we believe of Jesus what the apostles taught when standing before hostile authorities: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

But of course, sharing this good news--this gospel--must be done with the right motives and the right sensitivity.

When I was in my teens, a neighbor called me on a Saturday afternoon. It surprised me because the guy rarely had much to do with me. He asked if I was doing anything in the next few hours. Caught by surprise, I said, “No.” He invited me to go with him to see a movie. The title made it sound like a comedy, but turned out to be an evangelistic drama.

I might have gone willingly with the guy had his invitation been forthright and honest, even without his deception.

But, as it was, I felt like he’d ambushed me.

As I sat there in the Ohio Theater in Columbus that day, I was seething with resentment. My neighbor’s sneaky invitation turned me against him and only buttressed my resistance to Jesus.

My resentment was heightened after my neighbor tried to high-pressure me once the film was completed and someone had come out onto the stage to issue an evangelistic invitation, into surrendering to Christ as we sat in the theater following the film.

When our motive is genuine concern for others though, I have found that people don’t object to our putting in a good word for Christ.

I’ve told some of you about what happened one day with one of my favorite seminary professors, Trygve Skarsten.

Tryg was the son of Norwegian immigrants and he grew up in New York City, where as a teen, he was a member of a gang. In his late teens though, no doubt as the result of the patient praying and quiet witness of his parents, Tryg gave his life to Christ and went off to college and then seminary.

After serving as a pastor for a few years, he went back to New York to get a doctorate in New Testament studies at Columbia University. Every day while enrolled there, Tryg took a bus to Columbia’s campus.

During these commutes, he struck up a friendship with a rabbi, also a daily rider on the bus. They enjoyed one another’s company. Tryg was coming close to completing his degree requirements when he asked God to give him the courage to tell his rabbi friend about how important Jesus was in his life and to invite the rabbi to follow Jesus too.

On the bus shortly after he'd started praying, Tryg told his friend that he would feel guilty if at some point in their few remaining daily conversations, he didn’t tell him about his own relationship with Jesus, and ask his friend to follow Christ, too.

The rabbi smiled at Tryg and replied honestly, “My friend, I can't take you up on your offer. But I am deeply touched; only someone with great love in his heart would share what is most precious to him with his friend.”

Is Jesus the most important Person in our lives?

Is He the most precious thing we have, the best thing we can share with our friends?

If Jesus is any of these things to us, let’s ask Him to stir up our zeal for the eternal well-being of our neighbors--all of our neighbors--so that we too, can share with them what is most important to us, what is most precious in all times and in all places: Jesus, the Savior, the Messiah, God-in-the-flesh, our King. Amen!

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This is the text for the worship message yesterday morning. A slightly different version of this was shared with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, in 2008.]

Called, even when I don't feel qualified (Quiet Time Reflections)

I'm a few days behind on my daily schedule for quiet time with God. So, it was especially good, in the midst of what's been a busy period, to have that time with Him this morning. You'll find an explanation of my quiet time with God includes here.

Suffice it to say that with quiet time, I stop to confess my sins and pray; look at a chapter of Scripture; listen for what God is telling me in the passage (God generally seems to draw my attention to one or two verses), some new truth, some old truth underscored, some new insight about God or my faith; and respond to what God has told me. Again, the explanation linked above will tell you a bit more.

This morning, I read Galatians 1. Here's where God led me:

Look: “I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 1:12)

In this passage, which comes early in his letter to the Galatian Christians, Paul is establishing his status as an apostle of Christ’s Church. Apostles were part of a unique and time-bound group disciples. An apostle is, considering the Greek New Testament from which the word comes to us, literally, a called out one, a disciple from among the disciples as leaders within the Church and evangelists to the world. To be an apostle, a disciple had to have experienced personal contact with Jesus (Acts 1:21-22) and to have personally seen the resurrected Jesus. Paul, earlier called Saul, came to fit this bill belatedly on the road to Damascus, where as a zealous Pharisee looking for the excommunication or death of believers in Jesus, He was encountered and called by the risen and ascended Jesus to apostleship (1 Corinthians 15:8; Acts 9:1-19).

Because of the apostles’ personal knowledge of Jesus and their call to apostleship by Jesus, buttressed by the understanding of Him they gained through their knowledge of God’s Old Testament Word, the teaching of the apostles about the life, office, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus has always been considered normative by the Church. The Holy Spirit has used the apostles to assure us of the truth of God’s Word in Christ and the truthful witness of both the Old Testament and New Testament.

So, in this verse, Paul is making an important assertion to the first century church at Galatia: Their drift toward “another gospel,” one that doesn’t conform to the revealed truth about God personally witnessed by the apostles, including Paul, and affirmed by the Old Testament (and today by the New Testament that measures up to the apostles’ teaching) puts the Galatian Christians’ salvation at risk.

To take hope in any false gospel is to follow a false god, even if those who have wandered from Jesus carelessly refer to their false deity as Jesus.

Paul is trying to get their attention: I didn’t make up the gospel you once confessed believing; it’s from Jesus, God enfleshed, Himself.

Listen: The era of the apostles is ended, of course. But the Church (and that includes me) is still called to teach the truth about Jesus.

We’re to share the gospel, the good news, that out of love for our fallen, sinful human race, God entered our world as a perfect human being, true God and true man, then, although sinless, made Himself the perfect sacrifice for our sin (Acts 1:8).

To confirm Jesus’ power over sin and death and to show that His promise of new and everlasting life for those who repent and believe in Him can be counted on, Jesus was raised by God the Father.

Jesus then spent forty days on the earth giving further instruction to the disciples, His Church.

Then, ascending to heaven, He went to the throne room of the Father, sitting at His right hand in order to intercede for those who believe in Him and offer prayers in His name and to be at the ready for the moment when the Father will say that it’s time for Jesus to return to the earth in order to consummate history.

We know all of these things, not just because we’ve heard them from preachers, theologians, Sunday School teachers, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, or friends. We know them because because of the revelation from Jesus Christ we receive when we hear and read God’s definitive Word, certified by the apostles like Paul, that we encounter in the Bible.

AND, we can point others to knowing these truths, receive salvation, and be disciples when we, like the apostle Paul, live like disciples of Jesus with a message and a way of life others need. This is urgent business because, it’s as true today as it was the day this statement was first made by the apostle Peter when speaking of Jesus: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

Respond: Help me and all the disciples of Your church who seek to build our lives on the true gospel of Jesus to be bold in sharing Christ, Your Word, and making disciples (Acts 4:29).

Help me to say, believe, and live out of the truth that Paul talks about in Romans: “...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).

Today, Lord, help me not to hide the light of life with You that I’m privileged to have with Jesus. Help me to shine it everywhere I go and give Your light away to everyone I can. (Luke 11:33)

Forgive me for too often slinking by in the world. Today, help me to share Your message or to position myself relationally to earn the right to share Your gospel with others. In Jesus’ name.

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