A Place of Refuge

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

Luke 13:31-35
At the end of last Sunday’s gospel lesson, which recounted Jesus being tempted by the devil in the wilderness, we were told, “When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time (Luke 4:13).” 

Today’s gospel lesson, Luke 13:31-35, tells about one of the times the devil deemed “opportune” for tempting Jesus away from His mission of saving us. Here, the devil uses at least one human being, a corrupt and murderous king focused on neither God or faith in God, focused instead on fear and evil, to tempt Jesus.

Jesus has been teaching, casting out demons, and healing the sick in Galilee, when Luke tells us, “At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, ‘Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.’” (Luke 13:31)

Students of the New Testament aren’t sure about the motives of this particular group of Pharisees. The Pharisees, as you know, were a sect of Judaism, who believed in a more literal interpretation of the Old Testament, a strict adherence to Old Testament law, and the resurrection of the dead. Although Jesus had run-ins with many of the Pharisees, their views were closer to those Jesus taught than were those of the Sadducees. The Pharisees weren't altogether bad, as they're sometimes stereotyped to be. The apostle Paul, for example, described himself as a Pharisee all his life, though he followed Christ and offended many Pharisees by insisting that human beings cannot make themselves acceptable to God by fulfilling God’s law, but only by entrusting our lives by faith in Jesus (Acts 23:6; Romans 3:21-26). The Pharisees here then, could have wanted to frighten Jesus, maybe even have been working with Herod. Or they may have had genuine concern for Jesus. We don’t know.

But we do know what they tell Jesus: “Herod wants to kill you.” 

Now, this is not the same Herod who was king when Jesus was born. That Herod, Herod the Great, was a thug put on the throne by the Romans who already had conquered the Jews and found it convenient to have local puppets, with some power, to make their rule a bit more acceptable to the conquered people. When Herod the Great died, his “kingdom” was split into smaller areas overseen by Herod’s sons, who were also thugs. (It was a family thing. Can you imagine what Thanksgivings were like with that brood?) 

The Herod in our gospel lesson today ruled over Galilee, the region in which Jesus grew up. Herod kept a palace in Jerusalem, where one of this brothers was the local puppet king, presumably so that he could suck up to the Roman governor, at this time Pilate, and make sure his brothers didn’t get an advantage over him. This is the Herod who beheaded John the Baptist. 

Although he expressed an interest in watching Jesus perform a miracle, he also wouldn’t have hesitated to have Jesus killed if he thought Jesus posed a threat to him. 

The Herods were all murderous goons like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Bashar al-Assad, and Mohammed bin Salman today.

What would we do if we lived in Russia, North Korea, Syria, or Saudi Arabia and learned that the thugs ruling those countries wanted to kill us? Speaking for myself, I would be tempted to save my life by running the other way. 

But, Jesus didn’t come into this world to save Himself; He came into this world to save you and me from sin, death, darkness, and futility by dying on the cross at a day and time of God’s choosing. The preacher in Hebrews says of Jesus, “For the joy set before him [that is, the joy of having us live in God’s eternal kingdom] he endured the cross, scorning its shame...” (Hebrews 12:2) 

The devil was using the Pharisees to tempt Jesus from going to the cross for you and me. “Stay away from Jerusalem,” the devil was telling Jesus through the Pharisees. “Don’t make waves and you won’t get hurt.” But Jesus came to “seek and save” those lost in sin and death (Luke 19:10) and was resolutely headed for Jerusalem and death on a cross for us (Luke 9:51), whether the devil, the Pharisees, or anyone else wanted it to happen or not! Jesus would not be deterred from giving His fulfilling His for you and me! We must not be deterred from following Him!

And so we’re told in verses 32 and 33: “He [Jesus] replied, ‘Go tell that fox, “I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal. In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!”’”

God’s book, the Bible, of course, teaches that God is the one who establishes governments and that Christians are to be respectful of governments and prayerful for leaders. God instituted government because most people will not voluntarily accede to Christ's Lordship over their lives. Without governments, Martin Luther said, Christians would live in this world as lambs among ravenous wolves. 

But the Bible also teaches that we are to stand against anyone, including leaders, when they try to thwart the will of God. 

• The Hebrew midwives refused to obey the Egyptian Pharaoh’s orders that they kill the Hebrew baby boys the moment they were born By refusing to do so, Moses was allowed to be born and God would later use Moses to lead His people to the promised land. (Exodus 1:15-19)
• Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to obey the Persian king’s orders that they worship idols and worshiped God alone (Daniel 6:10-28; Daniel 3). 

If governments or leaders ask us to be part of something we know is against God’s will, it’s our obligation as disciples of Jesus to follow Christ and not the government. 

Paul writes in Romans, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)

Jesus refers to Herod as “that fox.” In Jesus’ time, foxes were seen as dangerous and evil, but not very bright. This is how Jesus sees Herod. 

“You tell that fox that I will keep doing my mission no matter if He thinks He can kill me off,” Jesus is saying. 

The phrase “today and tomorrow and on a third day” which Jesus uses here was a common Aramaic expression. It meant that Jesus was going to do what He came to the world to accomplish. But it’s also not hard to see in the words “the third day,” Jesus’ promise that when He was raised from the dead on Easter Sunday, it would be confirmation of the victory for us that He won on Good Friday!

Now, Jesus shifts gears. He thinks of Jerusalem. Verse 34: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

Jesus’ repetition of, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem” was a common way to express sorrow. 

When my great-grandmother lay dying, she looked above her and called the name of a then-deceased brother who had loved Jesus. She then turned her head downward and said the name of a relative who had refused to follow Jesus. “John, John,” she said with sorrow in her voice as she shook her head. 

In our lesson, Jesus is lamenting the fact that because of Jerusalem’s hardness of heart, it had repeatedly refused the protection of God from sin, death, and the devil. Jesus would have gladly protected Jerusalem from the foxes--the devil and his earthly co-conspirators, the Herods--and acted as a mother hen protecting her brood. But Jerusalem and God's people generally, had repeatedly chosen to go their own way (Isaiah 53:6; Acts 1:25).

Listen: Jesus wants to shelter you, your family, our congregation, our nation, and our world from the evil one.

I am convinced that if more Christians would run to take shelter in Jesus, if we would intentionally pray that our families, churches, and nations would come under Jesus’ lordship, and if we were bold and unapologetic in our witness for Christ, we would experience what the Bible calls “the peace of God, which transcends all understandings…” (Philippians 4:7).

That doesn’t mean that all our troubles will disappear. That will have to wait until we, like our Savior Jesus, have been raised from death to live in eternity with Him. But, in the power of Jesus, we can handle all that this world, its Herods, and the devil himself might throw at us. Under Jesus’ protective wings, we are “more than conquerors” and we belong to Him now and forever!

Verse 35: “[Jesus says] ‘Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’” 

Here Jesus looks ahead to future events which, as God in the flesh, He sees with clarity. 

• First, He points to 70 AD, some four decades later, when His people will be decisively put down, the Temple destroyed, many people massacred. This would happen because Jesus’ fellow Jews refused to take shelter under His arms and instead took hope in armed rebellion against the Romans, in their own thinking. When we put our hope in anyone or anything other than the God revealed in Jesus Christ, we sow our own eternal destruction. 
• Second, Jesus points to Palm Sunday when He will be welcomed into Jerusalem with the words of Psalm 118:26. Jesus is telling the Pharisees that, unless they want to hang out with Him, He’s going to keep at His mission on earth and they won’t see Him until Palm Sunday when He comes to complete it.

For those of us who are baptized and who confess Jesus as God and Savior, it can be tempting to cave into the temptations to go along and get along: 

• to not speak the name of Jesus to others who don’t know Him and need Him as much as we do, 
• to not give of ourselves without thought of reward or recognition, 
• to not love God to love neighbor as we love ourselves, 
• to not love fellow believers sacrificially, 
• to give into the fear incited in us by the devil and this world’s foxes. 

But we follow a risen Savior Who has conquered everything that causes us fear. 

He was not bowed by Herod or the devil or death. 

And He’s still in business, still alive, still loving us. 

So, we need not fear:

• to speak His name to those who need Him
• to give of ourselves without thought of reward
• to love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves
• to love fellow believers sacrificially
• to take courage in Christ's name by the power of the Holy Spirit in all circumstances.

“As for God,” Psalm 18:30 tells us, “his way is perfect: The LORD's word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him.” 

You can trust in that!

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

Is It Essential for Christians to Accept Jesus' Virgin Birth?

Was Mary, the mother of Jesus, a virgin when the One Christians believe is God-in-human-flesh was conceived in her womb?

Christians have always confessed that Jesus was born of a virgin.

This has nothing to do with notions of sex being unclean or beneath human dignity. It's neither of those things. After all, God created sex. Sex is part of the creation which God declared to be "very good" before humanity's descent into sin (Genesis 1:31).

The conception of Jesus in a virgin's womb is an act of new creation that anticipates the new creation of which Jesus makes all who repent for sin and entrust their lives to Him become a part: "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17)

The world has always objected that Jesus' virgin birth is impossible. My grandfather used to tell me when we weren't around the rest of the family that the Biblical teaching about Jesus' birth was a cover-up. "You know," he would say, "Joseph just got lonely out there in the desert. Things happened."

Cynics like my grandfather overlook that the creator of the universe specializes in the impossible.

Today, some of the virgin-birth skeptics reside in Christ's Church.

For example, the web site of my own denomination has a section called, "Dig Deeper," which has, since about 2009, been shorn of content. An "explanation" states:

The pages in this section have been removed while they undergo a comprehensive review to improve their usefulness as a resource for study and discussion with others.

But it's difficult not to suspect that this long period of review was precipitated by the outrage that some Lutherans felt when the official denominational web site equivocated on a basic teaching of Christian faith. Someone has restored the pages and in the section on the virgin birth, here's some of what we read:

When we confess in the Apostles’ Creed that Jesus was "conceived by the power of the Holy Spirt and born of the virgin Mary ...," and in the Nicene Creed that Jesus is "the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father ..." we are not making a gynecological assertion. We are saying that God entered into Christ and, in him, is fully revealed to humankind. This is God’s graceful act of reconciliation with creation and humankind’s redemption.

What ELCA Lutherans believe in common is that Jesus was

• born "by the power of the Holy Spirit"
• declared God’s "beloved son"
• sent to the world to redeem God’s creation

and that born of a woman, he

• died at the hands of death’s powers

• overcame and defeated death

• reigns as Lord over all — together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever

By omitting any firm assertion of what has been deemed a central teaching about Jesus for two-thousand years, the web site apparently sought to make the scandalous message about Jesus being born of a virgin more acceptable to cynics whose numbers have increased since the days when my grandfather whispered his "truth" to me knowingly.

Whoever wrote this piece is not alone in my denominational family. And they're not being challenged by bishops charged with ensuring that the Gospel is proclaimed in purity either. For example, in 2006, one ELCA pastor wrote in the pages of The Lutheran, our denomination's official publication:

One way to understand virginity is to think of it as a spiritual possibility, rather than as a physical condition: there is a place in each of us that the pride, power and wealth of the empire cannot touch. It’s that place, call it soul as Mary did, or spirit or heart, that remains “virgin”—untouchable and pure. And it’s from this place that God speaks to us and calls us to new possibilities.

It’s this “virginity” that enables Mary to say, “Here I am” and so face off against all the powers that said she was nobody, the lowest of the low—a young, peasant woman, expendable and of no account. It’s from this “virginity’ that she dares sing the words of the hymn of praise we know and love as the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55)

How's that for sleight of hand?

According to this view, Jesus was conceived in a "virgin" place in Mary like the virgin places that reside in each of us. This isn't Biblical thinking. It's Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson-style thinking. It ignores the reality that we are born in sin, utterly turned in on ourselves and selfish.

Mary's declaration of "let it be unto me" to the angel Gabriel's announcement that she would give birth to Jesus is not the statement of a good person with an innocent side to her nature. It was the declaration of faith of a person who, like Abraham before her and like centuries of believers in Jesus since, was a sinner empowered to believe the promise of God. That simple belief, not any virtue she may have possessed, not some virgin place in her soul, is what God counted as righteous. It's how we are counted right with God to this day.

If there is any virgin element to our souls, we wouldn't need a sinless Savior to bear our sins on the cross to make those who repent and believe in Christ one with God. Human beings conceived in the usual way are born in sin (Psalm 51:5). A Jesus born of human parents by the usual means, of parents who bear original sin, could not be the pure and sinless Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.

For the sake of His mission of dying and rising for sinful humanity, a Jesus born into the human race had to be born of a virgin.

Beyond that, does anyone really believe that when Matthew and Luke wrote their narratives of Jesus' birth they thought that as they wrote the word virgin, they had in mind a place in Mary that was "untouchable and pure." It would have violated their understanding of human nature.

Indulge me a bit and take a few moments to read and consider the two passages in the Gospel that overtly assert Jesus' virgin birth.

Matthew 1:18-25

¹⁸Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. ²⁰But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” ²²All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ²³“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” ²⁴When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, ²⁵but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.  

Some skeptics look at this passage and point to verse 23 as proof that Mary was not necessarily a virgin, one who had not engaged in sexual intercourse. The skeptics are right in pointing out that, in citing passages from Isaiah, Matthew doesn't quote from the original Hebrew Scripture, but from a Greek translation dating back to the second-century BC, the Septuagint. The Old Testament passages Matthew cites, Isaiah 7:14 and 9:6, in the original Hebrew don't use the term usually used for virgin, but a more generic term that means young woman (which can also mean virgin).

If that's all that this passage told us about Mary's virginity, skeptics would have a good case. But, notice several other things:

1. Verse 18 says that Mary "was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit." This isn't definitive, of course, but it certainly strongly implies that the child is not necessarily conceived by the normal means.

2. Verse 19 tells us that Joseph knew that he Mary's fiance, at least was not the father of the child. Mary, from what both Matthew and Luke tell us, seems to assert that she has not had sexual relations. Anyone who has read the Bible from cover to cover knows that its authors are not inclined to sugarcoat the moral shortcomings of believers: Abraham and Sarah had such failures of belief that they resorted to having Abraham make love to Sarah's slave in order to conceive a child they thought God was tardy in sending; David murdered and committed adultery; Solomon faithlessly worshiped foreign deities; Moses whined to God about his responsibilities; Saul/Paul persecuted the Church. If Mary's pregnancy was the result of fornication, that is, sexual intimacy outside of marriage, the Bible would tell us. After all, the Bible is not a book of Christian heroes; it's a witness of God's actions to save sinful humanity from sin, death, and the devil.

3. Verse 25 seems to underscore Mary's sexual purity, saying that Joseph had "no marital relations" with Mary until after Jesus was born.

4. Finally, Matthew's use of the Septuagint's rendering of the Isaiah passages indicate that, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it was his understanding that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived in her womb.

Luke 1:26-38

²⁶In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, ²⁷to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” ²⁹But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³²He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” ³⁴Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” ³⁵The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. ³⁶And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. ³⁷For nothing will be impossible with God.” ³⁸Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. 

The "sixth month" of verse 26 refers, of course, to Mary's kinswoman Elizabeth, who, thought to be barren, was now pregnant with John the Baptist. So, what does this passage say to those who are skeptic about Jesus' virgin birth?

1. In the original Greek in which Luke (and all the New Testament writers) wrote, verse 34 has a better translation than that of the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) above. Let me give you the literal Greek first:

1:34   είπε [said] δε [And] Μαριάμ [Mary] προς [to]  τον [the]  άγγελον [angel], πως [How] έσται τούτο [will this be], επεί [since] άνδρα [a husband] ου γινώσκω ¹I know not [or, not I know].

A more literal translation of the passage then, might read:

But [or and] Mary said to the angel, "How will this be since do not know a husband?"

From Old Testament times to know another person was to know them intimately, sexually. Mary was mystified as to how she could possibly be pregnant since had not known anyone sexually. She understands that babies aren't usually born of virgins. Here, Mary asserts her virginity without using the term translated variously as maiden and virgin, the Greek term parthenos. 

2. In verse 35, the angel says that Mary will conceive when the Holy Spirit "overshadows" her. Episkiazo, the term translated as overshadow can also mean cover. When, earlier in Luke 1, the angel visits Zechariah to say that his wife Elizabeth will bear a son, there is no indication that the conception will happen in any other than the ordinary way: Zechariah will have sexual relations with his wife and God will cause the conception of John by that usual means. The child to be born of Mary though, will not, apparently, possess the genes of either Mary or Joseph. The Spirit will overshadow Mary and be conceived in her womb.

3.  In verse 38, Mary accepts the word of the angel on faith in God. She does this in spite of the scandal likely to attend her pregnancy. The angel offers the pregnancy of Elizabeth as proof that God can accomplish the impossible, even conceiving the Savior of the world in the womb of a virgin.

Is the teaching about Jesus birth of a virgin an essential element of Christian belief? 

Apparently so. When the early Church set out to express the basics of Christian faith in both the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, it held that essential to faith in Jesus is acceptance that He was born of a virgin. The Church has held to this belief for 2000 years because it has believed it to be the revealed truth of God.

But its importance has nothing to do with the virtue of Mary. Jesus Christ could have chosen to enter our world and bring new life to those who repent and believe in Him by any means He chose. But if Jesus were to be born of a woman, it was essential for our salvation that while He must share our humanity, He must not share our common human inheritance of sin, our inborn alienation from God. (Hebrews 2:14-17, 4:15)

For us to receive salvation. Jesus had to be, in Paul's phrase, "the second Adam," the new human being, as sinless as Adam and Eve when God first created them, the only human being Who could take the death sentence we deserve and yet remain worthy of being raised from the dead so that sin, death, and the devil would be conquered for all who "loved [Jesus'] appearing," repented for sin, and believed in the only name given by which we can be saved, the Name of Jesus. (2 Corinthians 15, 2 Timothy 4:8, John 1:12-13, Acts 4:12).

When Jesus Made My Muslim Friend "Feel Good"

Today's installment from the Our Daily Bread devotional speaks of what we do for others when we praise God. That set me to thinking. I wrote the following in linking to the piece over on Facebook:

A Muslim friend once asked me to come to a funeral visitation. His brother-in-law had just died. I was able to show up just before the public calling hours began and before a class I was teaching that night.

I spent some time with my friend and his family. He then guided me to another room in the funeral home so that we could speak privately. He thanked me for being there and then asked me what I believed happened to human beings at the point of death.

Long ago, I learned to be upfront about what Jesus, the Bible, and the Church teach about issues when my non-Christian friends ask. So, I told him that while I couldn't know everything for sure and that while I was certain that God will respect the choices of those who overtly reject Christ during this lifetime, one day we will all stand in the presence of the risen Jesus for "judgment."

But judgment will not depend on our "good works" or on being "nice people." I know myself, at least, and I am aware of all the sinful thoughts I've harbored, all the inhumane deeds I've done. I know my sins and that no cosmic eraser is big enough to alter the simple fact that I'm incapable of being righteous, incapable of being good enough to live--let alone, stand--in the presence of the perfect God of creation. I don't deserve heaven with God.

In a very real sense, Jesus won't even judge us. Jesus said, "God did not send the Son [that's Jesus] into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Those who believe [trust] in Him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the Name of the only Son of God" (John 3:17-18). We will judge ourselves, effectually, and be judged on whether we have dared to trust the goodness of Jesus, whether we have given up on trusting in ourselves or the world more than we trust in God, whether we repudiate our sins and grasp hold of Jesus Christ as our only hope.

Martin Luther put it well. At the judgment, Luther pointed out, Jesus will look on two different throngs of people, both throngs composed of sinners. But one throng will stand naked in their sin. The other throng will stand covered with Jesus. My hope for eternity, I told my friend that night in the funeral home, was not based on my works or my goodness, which are negligible at best, but on Jesus Christ alone.

I went on to explain that my relationship with Christ gave me confidence and hope for the living of each day, it softened my heart to the needs of others for justice and compassion, and it emboldened to me serve in Jesus' Name without regard to the opinions of others. (That is, my relationship with Christ does these things when I don't allow myself to spend too much time contemplating my own navel, worrying about my priorities, or worshiping at the altar of Mark.)

It wasn't clear to me how my friend would react to my answer to his question. In answering him, I tried to abide by the words of Saint Peter who told the oppressed churches of Asia Minor: "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence" (1 Peter 3:15-16). I wanted my friend to know that, like God, I loved him and cared about his family, whether he chose to trust in Jesus or not.

We talked about some other things. Then, it was time for me to go. I hugged my friend. As we approached the door of the funeral home, with tears in his eyes, he said, "Mark, I don't know what it was exactly, but something you said back there made me feel really good."

The truth about Jesus Christ can make us feel miserable, of course. Knowing that a just man who committed no sin died on a cross for my sins is an indictment of every member of the human race. Our sins put Jesus on that cross He didn't deserve. We deserved it instead.

But the compassion of Christ, the fact that He undertook this act of self-sacrifice for us and that all who repudiate their own sin and trust in Him (and commit themselves to the lifetime struggle against their own sin to which all Christian saints/sinners are committed) "makes us feel good." It brings joy and peace and hope!

The Bible says, "The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). And in another spot it says this gift comes to all with faith (Romans 3:21-26).

Whenever we praise God, as I tried to do in that funeral home room with my friend, we really do it for others. (This is true, even in our private times with the Bible and prayer to God, because these things fortify our faith and fill us again with the infectious love, grace, and truth of the God we know in Jesus.) Our gratitude to God for Jesus Christ, swelling up in words and deeds, as well as in "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs" can bring hope and strength to all people...and it may plant the seed of a new life that will last forever with God. 

Share Jesus! The world needs Him...and Jesus is counting on you to help others "feel good" for all eternity!

"As followers of Jesus Christ, we want the words that flow from our hearts and out of our mouths to be...life-giving..."

That's a quote from today's installment from Our Daily Bread. It's worth reading. The New Testament passage on which it's based is Ephesians 4:25-32:

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. ²⁶Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ²⁷and do not make room for the devil. ²⁸Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. ²⁹Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. ³⁰And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. ³¹Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³²and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

These words from God's Word imply, among other things, that we are both to lovingly tell others the truth about the reality of our sin AND the truth about Jesus, Who brings forgiveness of sin and everlasting life to all who believe in Him. 

Whether we tell it to those who are part of the Christian family or to those not yet experiencing the new life that only Jesus Christ can give, everybody needs to hear and to be reminded of the truth that "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). We also need to hear and be reminded that:

the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets [that is, by the two major strands of Old Testament writings], the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood effective through faith...[God] justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26)

God's call and command that we who follow Jesus "speak the truth in love," also means, in Martin Luther's words in his explanation of the Eighth Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" that:

We are to fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, or lie about our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain his actions in the kindest way.

I don't mean to imply that the sort of truth-telling to which believers are called is in any way possible to do when we rely on our own will power or strength of character. The self-reliant can never, in the guts of everyday life, experience the truth of the promise of Jesus that "with God, all things are possible." 

In the face of derision and the pressures of "political correctness," we all would rather do almost anything than speaks God's truth...and usually will. 

But we can tell the truth and come back to the truth that Jesus calls us to tell and to live when we rely on God. God-reliance will always empower us to to be the people that self-reliance only deludes itself into thinking it can achieve!


When it comes to sharing the truth about sin and forgiveness, about life and death, about heaven and hell though, we Christians are all to be proclaimers of the truth. 

Some will be called to tell it from the pulpit. Others are commissioned by Christ to tell this truth while kicking back with friends in those conversations that, as conversations with good friends always do, drift into the subjects that really matter. 

We Christians who withhold the truth about Jesus, that He is, "the way, and the truth, and the life," from our neighbors--even the "neighbors" in our own homes, the "neighbors" with whom we watch ball games, shop at the mall, share cubicles at work, or have a drink--are not fulfilling our sacred obligation or experiencing the unique joy that comes from telling others about Jesus. 

In that sense then, every Christian is commissioned by Jesus, in a sensitive and caring way, to be a preacher of the good word--the good news--about Christ. Paul puts it simply in Romans:

...how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are hey to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?...not all have obeyed the good news [that is, believed in the gospel that life and forgiveness come to those who repent of sin and entrust their lives to Jesus Christ]; for Isaiah [the Old Testament prophet] says, 'Lord, who has believed our message?' So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of the Lord.

Beyond this special and important truth, we are to tell all truth to others, not in a desire to hurt, but to build up others. When tempted to "tell the truth" about those we dislike or who dislike us, those whose integrity or intelligence we may question, and anyone with whom we may be angry or not in sync, the Ephesians 4 passage tells us that we should consider a great option: Keeping our traps shut. This is true whether we're speaking to them directly or when speaking to others about them.

By all means, when we have conflicts with others and the cause, the relationship, and the stakes are important enough to us, we should lovingly "have it out" with the other person. Otherwise again, we should keep our traps shut.

It's passages from God's Word like Ephesians 4, that make my daily prayers of repentance so long!

They're also the reason behind one of my most frequent prayer requests. In many situations I face, I ask God to cause me to speak the right words and to keep the right silences and to know the difference. And I find that when I trustingly get out of God's way, God answers that prayer.

That's how I know, by the way, that God does impossible things: I've learned that God can use an imperfect sinner like me to bring His life to others. If that's not some sort of miracle, I don't know what is.