Glory and Grace

“Father, glorify Your name,” some heard Him say.

A cry from His heart, the Father’s greatness proclaimed.

Sound like thunder; an angel speaking;

Lack of understanding; lack of believing.

A week before His sacrifice, the Savior’s purpose drew near;

His mind in anguish, in His heart, the people He held dear.

For these He gave up His claim of royalty and fame;

For these He took the name Savior for their sin He came.

Not His hour when as man He would want to dash away,

But in the Father’s hour, as the Son, His love to proclaim.

Soul troubled, Father’s glory, Jesus gave His everything

So each person who believed, His love each would receive.

Love more than mere sentiment, more than coins, He gave;

Love most expensive that required a heaven-sent only God could pay.

A love undeserved no mere mortal could ever repay;

Love from God stamped on each believer, “Balance zero, debt is paid.”

Reluctantly we question whether to “give up” our plans

To accept this deep love, this grace, with Him take a stand.

For this purpose, He said, He came to that hour;

For this purpose, we each must choose Him or to cower.

Life in our own strength with our own design and purposes

Can lead us through darkness, sin-stain, roads never certain.

With fear, trepidation, anxiety, and pain

We walk life alone instead of calling His name.

Our pride, our sin, our pushing and shoving Him away

Causes us to falter, to fall, to question the way.

Yet, life full and certain, darkness chased away

Comes with humility, repentance, accepting His pain.

His pain chosen freely because of the Father’s love;

His love given freely, He came down from above.

A love so extreme, for each person so certain

Because He’s Creator, Savior, the breaker of sin’s curse.

How can we fathom a love so great and free

When we never knew, never gave, could not conceive?

It’s more than a statement, more than a lavish, extreme gift.

It came through a Life’s blood, puncture, and anguish.

What greater love can we deem of such great a depth,

Than what Jesus said, a life for a life, a breath for breath?

Still our life for another’s isn’t enough to redeem;

Only Jesus’ life offered can a person make clean.

Cleaned from the stain of a person’s wrong choices.

Washed from the darkness of guilt that haunts us.

Better breathing anew with light for the dark way;

Jesus’ death gives new life, guidance, protection each day.

A death of one sin-free, no need to endure pain,

Yet, He chose because of love to provide a way

For people travel-weary, guilt-laden, sin-stained,

To live with God, be released, proclaim His great name.

This kind of love, once-given, no remittance required

Comes from depth of heart only God can provide.

We receive what’s undeserved, unable to remit;

We give what we have, a grateful heart, love, and obedience.

This depth of love is grace, undeserved and free

For the sin-stained person who turns, repents, and believes.

Jesus, the Son of God, come down because of love

Saves from sin, redeems from death, renews us within.

Grace so much greater than all our sin,

Once given, never rescinded, gives new heart within.

Love only God could provide in such unfathomable depth.

Jesus, His purpose, to that hour, God He glorified to His last breath.

Though unable to offer love at the depth of His grace,

We show our love, His love, with our obedience.

Whether lifted up or cast down by troubles and trials,

As Jesus’ followers, our voices lifted, God glorified.

Oft considered foolish and weak by people refusing to believe,

God’s people, Jesus’ followers, allow His wisdom to be seen.

What’s folly to one man, for others is wise.

What’s weakness in stance is God’s greatness in other’s eyes.

God’s grace given, His love perfect and free

Came through the Son’s death upon crossed-tree.

A love shown with His life at greatest of price,

Requires nothing of us but faith, confession; our heart and life.

He will swallow up death for all time,

And the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces,

And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth;

For the Lord has spoken.

And it will be said in that day,

‘Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us.

This is the LORD for whom we have waited;

Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.’  Isaiah 25:8-9 [NASB])

 

(For more, read John 12:27-50, John 15:13, & 1 Corinthians 1:18-31)

Living Enriched Lives

In 1 Corinthians 1:4-8, Paul began his encouragement and entreaty to the Corinthian Christians. He began his letter reminding them of the most important thing – God’s grace is all-sufficient. In these five verses, Paul taught very succinctly the four most important things about God’s grace. Most importantly, he said, God’s grace enriches believers’ lives. We today can and need to learn and hold on to this teaching.

First, remember God’s grace is His loving-kindness and mercy given to a person without him or her deserving it. His grace is more than this though. One Corinthians 1:4-8 is where Paul unpacked it for the Corinthian believers. 

God’s grace enriches a believer’s life in his or her speech and knowledge. He fully enriches every believer in all ways so the believer’s words, speech, declarations, thoughts, meditations, reasoning, intelligence, understanding of God and the Christian faith are deeper, more perfect, and enlarged. The understanding by the believer of God and the Christian faith is so enriched and illuminated he or she explains his or her faith with power.

God’s grace acts in a believer’s life so it is visible. His grace enriching the believer’s knowledge and understanding of Him and the Christian faith spoken and testified with power and conviction leads to the believer’s life confirming his or her testimony of his or her faith in Jesus Christ. Faith in God came from His gift and gave His undeserved grace to the believer. That grace then makes itself evident in the gift of knowledge, understanding, and speech of the believer when he or she that testifies of God and the Christian faith

In addition to these, Paul stated God’s grace gives and shows in the believer’s expectant, eager, and watchful hope for the return of Jesus Christ. God’s grace, which provides salvation and adoption, gives hope for the future expected return of Jesus the Christ, a time when all things on earth return to perfection. His grace affects the mind of the believer, affects the believer’s thinking and hope for present and future times. Living with this evident hope testifies to God’s grace.

Finally, Paul said, God’s grace confirms the believer to the end so he or she is blameless and innocent before God. God’s grace given through the blood of Jesus Christ establishes and makes sure the believer is blameless of sin on the day of judgment and for eternity. His grace seals the believer for eternity.

This statement by Paul seems so small when considered in the totality of his writings, yet it is profound though concise. God’s grace enriches a believer’s life in speech, knowledge and insight so he or she lacks no gift from God. The conviction of this faith and the depth of knowledge and illumination manifests itself in the believer’s life and words to confirm his or her testimony of believing in Jesus Christ. God’s grace gives and shows in the believer’s expectant, eager, and watchful hope for the return of Jesus Christ. Finally, it confirms the believer to the end so he or she is blameless before God.

Have you experienced God’s grace?

Is your life a living testimony to God’s grace?

Like the Corinthian Christians who were divided into factions, we need to remember we must choose to live the life God’s grace put into us so our words and actions show His grace to the world as a testimony so others will want to come to know Jesus Christ, too.

Knowledge, a Noisy Gong

1 Corinthians 8

Vs. 6-7: “Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. However not all men have this knowledge…”

Paul is confronting the Corinthian Christians about their disunity again. This time it seems the disunity arose because the Corinthians consider themselves more knowledgeable and wiser than they do other people. Paul has dealt with them about this issue before. The example Paul speaks to them about is the act of eating food offered to idols. Is it head knowledge that should lead when we interact with people or heart knowledge?

Knowledge, solely as knowledge for knowledge sake is worth nothing. Knowledge without the acknowledgement that all knowledge comes from God makes one boastful and proud, arrogant. This knowledge does nothing for others except possibly put others down, beneath one’s feet in the knowledge holders mind, actions, and attitude. Knowledge acknowledged as being from God carries with it the love by which God imparts/shares the knowledge. This is true knowledge, that which shares not only the head knowledge/information, but shares the love from which it was derived, for the purpose of sustaining and improving life and for showing God’s love and care of humanity. Knowledge without this love is, as Paul later says, “a noisy gong and a clanging symbol” (1 Corinthians 13:1).

This passage appears to be about food offered to idols, and for the moment in which Paul is speaking to the Corinthians, this was an issue. The underlying lesson though is the acquisition of knowledge, the holding of knowledge, and the implementing of knowledge upon our fellow human so that they know they are not as knowledgeable or so that they are caused to falter in what they believe. The attitude in which this is done is not love or care for our fellow humans. God’s knowledge, as we saw in chapters 1-3 of 1 Corinthians is wiser than that of humans. His strength is stronger that humans. His power is stronger than humans are. He exercises all of these in means of love toward us because He created us to be in a love relationship with Him. Since true knowledge comes from God, to withhold the love, which was also a part of true knowledge, when applying knowledge corrupts the knowledge and drops the value of it to the levels of humanity. It makes it not as pure and useful as God intentioned. The attitude of the human who uses knowledge without love affects/corrupts its use so that it becomes a prideful thing that reduces the value of the other human(s) to which it was aimed.

Paul uses the situation of a follower of Christ eating meat that was offered to idols. For Christians, we know there are no other gods; therefore, the meat is uncorrupted. However, for a person who is either not a Christian or is a new or weak Christian, eating meat they considered sacred puts a wedge or stumbling block between you and them, and you as the Christian, lose credibility so that they will listen hesitantly and with ambivalence anything you may say about the true God. Your knowledge, though the head knowledge is correct, has lost its heart value and has become only as great as the person revealing the knowledge. The love that the knowledge was originally imbued with was not shared because the person eating the sacred meat did not care to concern themselves with the god-believing person’s culture and ideas of faith.

As believers in Jesus Christ who have received His love, forgiveness, and salvation, we cannot allow ourselves to run over people with our newfound freedom from the constraints Satan put upon us while we walked with the world. We must recognize continually that Jesus came to us in love and we must meet the people of the world with love. Jesus imparted the knowledge of God’s plan for salvation for humankind by words and by the extreme action, giving up His life to die for us. We cannot ignore nor negate this when we live in the world. That would mean we are not living as Jesus lived here on earth. We must at all times live our freedom in and through the love that comes from the Jesus' sacrificial living and dying for our salvation. You see, if God had only “known” how to save us and had not acted upon it, He would have shown Himself to be without love. We know this is not true of God. One of the strongest characteristics we see in God is His love. It is through this love that so many people throughout history have been drawn to God. Because of His love, which is His character, He created us. Because of His love, He had mercy upon humanity many times over the millenniums. Because of His love, He provided a final way for all of us to come into a perfect, sinless relationship with Him. This Way was through the life, death, and resurrection of His only Son, Jesus Christ. God did not divorce love from plan/knowledge. His plan was made because of His love.

With this example, when we divorce love from knowledge, we are saying that our plan is better that God’s plan. We are saying that we know best. The result is that we alienate ourselves from other people with our arrogance. We alienate others from God with our flawed wisdom. What did Paul say? “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21 NASB). It is only when love is the reason that knowledge has power. It is only when love is the motivator that knowledge is true knowledge and wisdom. Love was the reason God created us. Love was the reason that God made another plan for humankind to be in a relationship with Him. Paul goes on to say in 1 Corinthians 1:27-30,

God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, "LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD. (NASB)

When we interact with others and when we impart our knowledge, we have a question to ask ourselves first; am I speaking to be heard and thought to be knowledgeable? If our motivation is to build ourselves up in the eyes of others, love of humankind is not our goal. We have put love of our ourselves higher than our love for God or others. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul tells us what true love is.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous ; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly ; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth ; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; but now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. (vs. 4-8a, 13 NASB)

If we truly as living as Christians, we should be living with a heart knowledge. It should be evident in the way we interact with people. Our heart and God’s heart should be one and be visible as we speak and act in this world. If love is not in our knowledge as we act and speak, we are sinning against and harming others. We are also hindering their belief in God by providing a “stumbling block” (chapter 8:9). When we sin against another human, we are sinning against Christ, too (vs. chapter 8:12). We each must come to the point where we consider if what we say or do is imparting the love of God along with knowledge. If we are not considering the other person’s being and place in this world, we are not interacting with them in love. We could cause them to stumble in their search for God or in their growth as a Christian. The old saying carries some truth; it is more important to see and hear a person in their situation, since we have two eyes and two ears, than to speak, since we have only one mouth. The question then is am I relating with others just to be seen as more knowledgeable or as one who loves them and wants to impart true knowledge and wisdom, which comes with love from God?



Unless You Become...

Matthew 11:25-30 and Matthew 18:1-6

Matthew 11:

25 At that time Jesus said, "I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.

 26 "Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight.

 27 "All things have been handed over to Me by My Father ; and no one knows the Son except the Father ; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

28 "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

29 "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and You will find rest for your souls..
30 "For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

 Matthew 18:

1 At that time, the disciples came to Jesus and said, "Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"

2 And He called a child to Himself and set him before them,

3 and said, "Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

4 "Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

5 "And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me;
6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

Jesus often speaks of children. He speaks of their innocence. He speaks of their dependence upon others. He speaks of them being great in His kingdom. Why does He speak so often about children? He does it so that He can give a living example of what people should be like who follow Him and what their characteristics are. In two passages, Matthew 11:25-30 and Matthew 18:1-6, Jesus is speaking of children as those who need to be fed, taken care of, and taught, and who are humble because they know they do not know much, especially of religious matters. Jesus holds them up as a standard to which all must become to be able to follow Him. He compares them with religious leaders and civil leaders in Israel and Judah. What can we learn from this? 

In the Matthew 11 passage, Jesus has been talking to John the Baptist’s disciples who were sent to ask if He is the one who was prophesied to come. After that, he spoke to the crowd around Him telling them that they would not accept Him and He knows this because they did not accept John’s message of repentance. He goes on further and laments the people of Bethsaida, Capernaum, and Chorizon. He says that if the people of Sodom, Gomorrah, Tyre, and Sidon had seen the miracles He had performed in Chorizon, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, those people would still be alive today because they would have believed in Him and repented. At that time, Jesus prayed to the Father, in the midst of the crowd, and thanked Him for hiding the miracles from those who consider themselves wise and intelligent (expert and learned) and for giving it to infants, those who are not highly educated and learned. Does this explain, then, why it seems that the humble and unlearned, based on society’s standards, are more apt to believe in Jesus than the religious and civic leaders? Is that possibly why we have not believed? 

In Matthew 18, the context in which Jesus speaks of children is when those who believed in Jesus and followed Him began jostling for status in regards to Jesus. Children often want to be given a compliment to be assured that their teacher/parent esteems them highly. Here the disciples not only wanted to know that, but their question asks Jesus to use a human measurement in categorizing His followers, those who will be in the kingdom of heaven. First, we must remember that our criterion for labeling people is not the same as God’s. God considers us all equals because He made all of us. There will not be one greater than another. The rewards He will hand to us are based on the work we have done, not on who we are. Jesus’ reply to the disciples calls them back to the here and now because He knows there is no distinction between persons in the kingdom. They asked a human question, and He will answer the question within a human framework. He takes a child and says to the disciples that, unless they are converted to belief in Him and come as a little child, they cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Status is only a consideration as it affects your belief on earth not in your being in heaven, though it is never status to which God and Jesus look to determine our merit. Whoever then is humble like this little child is greatest in heaven. Only by conversion, because of your realizing you are nothing and God is greater than you and has provided the way to Him, can you be received into heaven as a believer and follower of Jesus. Not only does Jesus show the way to heaven by comparing people to a humble child but also He states that when a person receives a brother or sister in Christ into his home, he is receiving Christ into his home. Additionally, He states that whoever causes one of His children to stumble, would have been better to have drowned in the deepest sea. In saying people need to become like children in this passage, Jesus is stating that people must know that they are not the most learned, they cannot think their way to salvation, they must realize there is One who is greater than they are; this person is Yahweh God. When they realize they cannot win their own salvation, when they quit trying to “beat the system” by their learning, and realize there is nothing they can do to attain their own immortality or be good 100% of the time, then they are on their way to being humble. It is at this point of humility, when one realizes He needs to be fed daily by the bread of God and needs to be taught how to live, that Christ can be recognized, seen, accepted, and glorified in a person’s life. 

In these passages, Jesus is saying that we must become children to accept Him. If we think we can get to Him by following rules and laws or by learning all about Him, but do not accept Him within our hearts as supreme, then we cannot become His followers. We must be like children who know from where their food comes. Children know they are not strong enough so they rely upon their father and mother for protection. They know they do not know everything, so trust their parents to teach and lead them. God wants to be that parent, that Father for us. If we stop and realize that all we are, have, and will be comes from God the Father and Creator, we will recognize our 100% dependence upon Him. At that point, we will recognize the gift He is offering us; the gifts of guidance, protection, provision, and eternal life. We will recognize the love of the Father. We will desire to go to Him and give our lives back to Him. This is why in Matthew 11 Jesus says at the end of the chapter, “Come to Me all who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest.” Once we realize that God loves us and will take care of everything, we can hang up our yoke from the burden we have been pulling and let God carry the burden of food provision, life protection, life guidance, and eternal life.  

What keeps us from becoming like children? Does it seem that this offer by God is unreal? Pray and ask Him to reveal Himself to your mind and heart. Does it seem too simple? Remember it is said in the Bible that the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:25). Does it seem unbelievable to believe in a being Who is unseen? Consider there are many hundreds of thousands that have believed to the point of giving up their lives for this unseen God. Consider, the writer of Hebrews says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen” (Hebrews 11:1). Each of Jesus’ apostles believed and began a world revolution with their words of God’s love and testimony of what they had seen in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. For what do you hope most? Is it not that like would have meaning and purpose and that this is not all there is? Let me tell you again, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, loves you and gave His life up to die for you so that you can be holy enough to be in God’s presence, in His heaven, when you die. This life here on earth is not all there is. This is just the beginning of our eternity. Whether you choose to believe in Jesus or not, there is more life after our bodily death. We get to choose that life. We can choose eternal judgment and estrangement from God or eternal joy and happiness in our Father’s presence in heaven. We must each choose to believe. We must each ask the Father for faith so that we can believe. What do you choose to do, ask for faith or go on in ignorance to judgment? It really is up to you. Unless you become as a child and in humility believe, you will not see God.