Tag Romans

Freeing Ourselves from the Man in the Mirror

Todd R Leave a comment

In Deuteronomy Moses reviews the giving of the Ten Commandments and reminds us that he didn’t just come down from the mountain with the Commandments written on tablets as we sometimes imagine, but that the “LORD spoke with you [Israel] face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire”[1]  Terrified of this manifestation of God, the people responded “we will hear and do it.”[2]

God was pleased that the people pledged their obedience, but lamented to Moses in Deuteronomy 5:29, “Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever!”  In this statement, our Holy, all-knowing God makes 2 points: that obeying Him is in Israel’s best interest, and also that they don’t always do it.  Not only did they not always obey Him, but they often didn’t have “such a heart” for it.  They didn’t even intend to obey Him, whether neglectfully or intentionally.  Like ancient Israel, we often hear the Ten Commandments and the rest of God’s Word and instead of saying “we will hear and do it,” we continue along our own path.

James describes a similar scenario in a New Testament context:

“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.  For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.  But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” – James 1:23-25

Photo by Jovis Aloor on Unsplash

James compares hearing God’s law to seeing in a mirror what we really look like: we look like sinners who fall short of perfect obedience and need God’s grace.  God didn’t give us His “perfect law” to condemn us, although because we aren’t perfect His law does condemn us.  He didn’t give the law to make us feel bad, although any of us can struggle with a guilty conscience.  He gave His commands because they’re what’s best for us, and along with them He gave His Son so we could find our way back to Him.  We are blessed when we do what He wants because God gave His commands so “that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever.”  For those with faith in Christ, God’s “perfect law” is a “law of liberty” that frees us to be blessed by acting on God’s will for us.  We have liberty not to sin.

But when we spend too much time looking in the mirror at ourselves, we risk feeling condemned and guilty.  We risk seeing God’s law and our failure to keep it as the end of the story.  Therefore, we must instead focus on our God of grace, who through Christ gives us liberty and freedom from condemnation and guilt.  As Paul wrote in Romans 8:1-2, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”

When we don’t feel we have “such a heart” as to follow God always (which is probably often), let it drive us to dwell on the character of our God, who revealed Himself to Moses as “the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”[3]

Don’t start with the man in the mirror.  Start with Him.

“When the outlook is grim, try the uplook!” – Warren Wiersbe

[1] Deuteronomy 5:4
[2] Deuteronomy 5:27
[3] Deuteronomy 34:6b

Things God Counts

Todd R Leave a comment

Fellow travelers,

Are you ever so fearful or anxious about something that you lose sleep about it? Are there things out of your control that you toss and turn over? Maybe it’s so bad that you even cry. If you’re like this, you’re definitely not alone, and in fact, King David struggled with this kind of anxiety.

In Psalm 56, David laments that his enemies are constantly out to get him, and then in verse 8, David wrote about God:

“You have kept count of my tossings;
            put my tears in your bottle.
            Are they not in your book?”

What David means is that God sees all of our anxiety and every detail about how it affects us.  He counts every time we toss and turn at night.  He counts every tear you cry, and keeps track of them all, because he cares.

This realization causes David to write in verses 10 and 11:

“In God, whose word I praise,
            in the LORD, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I shall not be afraid.
            What can man do to me?”

Prayer or any religious practice won’t always cure anxiety, but as long as we suffer, God knows and cares about it.  We can trust Him to provide for us, sometime between now and eternity.

As Paul wrote about the glory of our salvation:

“If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”[1]

Amen

[1] Romans 8:31b-32

Fighting Our Passions

Todd R Leave a comment

The Christian life is hard.  From a worldly point of view the Christian life is unnatural, and when given a choice, the right one is often the tough one.  As long as we live on this earth, we struggle to please God even when we have already been saved by Jesus through faith.  In 1 Peter 2:11, the apostle wrote about our difficulties:

“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.”

There are several important truths in this one verse, but the first is that we can’t ignore “the passions of the flesh” or pretend they don’t exist.  The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 7:18-19, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”  In the surrounding verses, Paul separates the spiritual, redeemed part of us from the flesh, or the “sin that dwells within me.”[1]  The sinful flesh wants what it wants and isn’t concerned about what God thinks of it.  Our passions do not have our eternal soul’s destiny in mind, only the near-term reward.  Following the “passions of the flesh” is like saying this world is just fine rather than knowing it is fallen and needs redemption, yet even Christians do it anyway.

Photo by Антон Дмитриев on Unsplash

3 other parts of the verse are important, and I’ll take them in reverse order.  Peter wrote that these passions “wage war against your soul.”  This means that defeating them won’t be easy; and that the enemy must be taken seriously.  We are soldiers in this war against the flesh and defeat is harmful to our souls.  Once we are redeemed, sin can’t take away our salvation, but it can make our lives miserable, hobble our witness, and even affect our rewards in heaven.[2]  We are all susceptible to different sins, and none of us are immune from any of them.  We must “wage war” against what is at war against our souls.  This is no picnic.

However, Peter encourages us in the other 2 parts of the verse.

First, Peter reminds us that we are “sojourners and exiles.”  We live here, but don’t belong here.  Our time in this world is temporary, and we are just passing through.  People say about our worldly goods that “you can’t take it with you” but what we also won’t take with us are the harmful “passions of the flesh.”  While they are natural to our earthly bodies, they will not be natural to our glorified bodies.  If we grow weary of fighting this war, it helps us to know that the war is temporary.  God will see us through it in His time and help us each step along the way.[3]  We don’t need to give in.

Also, Peter says at the beginning of the verse that we are “Beloved.”  God loves us, and He doesn’t stop loving us because we regularly fail against “the passions of the flesh.”  We remain His “Beloved” even when we sin, because He has chosen to love us, knowing everything about us, past, present and future.  Even after repeated sin, He will not turn away from us.  As Jesus said in John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”  He will always call us back and in the end, He will raise us up.

So, in our battles with “the flesh,” we must remember who we are.  We are beloved by God, we are not of this world, and we are soldiers in a serious battle.  Here, we will fight hard and experience repeated failure, but in eternity we will not fail at all.  We will perfectly reflect the character of Christ.

But in the meantime:

“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.”

[1] Romans 8:20
[2] 1 Corinthians 3:15, also the “Parable of the talents” in Matthew 25:14-30.
[3] 1 Corinthians 10:13

Do We Have It Upside Down?

Todd R 1 Comment

Fellow travelers,

With other people, we can often decide what they know and don’t know about us.  We can guard our reputation by doing things out of the view of others or behind their backs.  We believe we can avoid any negative consequences of our actions and choices if others don’t know about them, especially people in authority.  Sometimes we may even think this applies to God.  Isaiah recognized this when he said the words of Isaiah 29:15 –

“Ah, you who hide deep from the LORD your counsel,
            whose deeds are in the dark,
            and who say, “Who sees us? Who knows us?””

The verse is directed at people who assume God has limited knowledge of us.  People who think they can avoid being seen and avoid consequences.  But things that apply to other people do not apply to God.  He knows all of our “counsel” – our thoughts – and all of our “deeds” – our actions – even if we think we’re doing them in secret.  He, as our maker, knows us better than we know ourselves.  He knows all, and Isaiah points out the foolishness of thinking He doesn’t in the next verse:

Photo by David Tomaseti on Unsplash

“You turn things upside down!
Shall the potter be regarded as the clay,
that the thing made should say of its maker,
            “He did not make me”;
or the thing formed say of him who formed it,
            “He has no understanding”?”

It’s upside down and backwards to apply what we know about people (“the clay”) to our “maker” and “him who formed it.”  He sees and understands things we don’t see or understand, not the other way around.  Pretending we can keep secrets from Him only deepens our sense of separation.  It darkens our “counsel” and ultimately our “deeds” as well.  God can’t get us back on the right path if we build up walls against Him.  In the case of Isaiah’s audience, since they were not willing to trust God, they end up allying with Egypt[1], something God had told them never to do.  In the spiritual metaphor, Egypt represents our slavery to sin, since Israel were once the slaves of Egypt, and they/we should never want to go back.  But we so often do, and often because we think He doesn’t know about it or care.

Like Paul in Romans 7:15 (“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”), we are people who don’t even understand ourselves.  But God knows how we’re broken, why we’re broken, and what can be done to fix us, because He is our “maker.”  So, what should we do?

First, we need to recognize that God does see and He does care.  Every thought we have and every deed we do matters to Him, because He wants us to be holy, for His glory and for our good.  He knows better than us and He expects us to act like we believe that.

Second, regular prayer of confession for purpose of self-examination and re-alignment with God is necessary, otherwise we will continue down the wrong path.  I find many of the Psalms to useful guides when it comes to these prayers, but the prayers can come from anywhere as long as they’re sincere.

Third, we must constantly seek to know Him and what He wants, and doing so means spending time with Him in His Word, the Bible.  Hebrews 4:12-13 says:

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”

His word can reach all of our “thoughts and intentions.”  It can remind us that nothing is hidden from Him, but it can also teach us what “thoughts and intentions” we ought to have.

Lastly, we must walk according to the Spirit, acting on the right “thoughts and intentions” and live with a clear conscience before God and man.  However, if we keep Him out because we are ashamed of our inner desires and rebelliousness, or because we think we can hide it, we are refusing the only solution He has provided for our deepest problems.

Can we do any of these things perfectly?  No, but we can and must try.  Pretending God is like other people who don’t know or care isn’t an option.  He died so we might know Him, and to know Him is to become like Him.

Amen.

[1] Isaiah 30:1-2

A Ministry Lesson From Jonah

Todd R 2 Comments

In the Old Testament, God’s people – the Jews – were supposed to be a blessing to other nations[1], pointing them to God.  Ultimately this blessing came through Jesus Christ, but in the meantime God’s people didn’t always live up to His expectations.  One disappointing example was Jonah.  God said to him in Jonah 1:2 –

“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.”

But Nineveh was in Assyria, one of Israel’s enemies.  God said in the call to Jonah that they were “evil.”  50 or so years later Assyria would conquer Israel.  Jonah hated his enemy Assyria and didn’t want to prophesy to them even though God told him to, so what did he do instead?  He ran away.

In his commentary on Jonah, Warren Wiersbe wrote: “When you turn your back on God, the only direction you can go is down.”[2]  What did he mean?

Notice that in verse 3, Jonah goes “down to Joppa,” and “down into” a ship he found to take him to Tarshish, far away from both Israel and Nineveh.  Later in verse 5, Jonah “had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep.”  From the minute Jonah decided to run from God, he found himself in a descending spiral and ended up in despair, asking the sailors to throw him (down?) into the sea to calm a storm.  The Bible doesn’t use the word “down”, but you could say that after Jonah was tossed in the sea that he went down into the belly of the great fish when he was swallowed up.

It is only when Jonah prays a prayer of thanksgiving to God for saving his life and he says “you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God” that things start to look up for him.  He is then “vomited…out upon the dry land”[3] and given a second chance.

Like the ancient Jews, the modern church is also called to be a blessing to the nations, for example in Matthew 28:19-20, the verses known as the “Great Commission”:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

This commission is to bless “all nations,” and note Jesus said to “make disciples,” not to “make converts” which means that the Great Commission goes beyond evangelism.  While we are all called to evangelize, and some are particularly blessed in it, the commission includes each Christian’s ministry to the church as well as we help each other live as Christ did, blessing those around us.  As Paul wrote in Romans 12:4-8, we all have a role in making disciples:

“For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.  Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.”

This isn’t a full list of what are called “spiritual gifts,” but prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, generosity, leadership and mercy cover a lot of different activities and ministries.

While Jonah had his call to preach to Nineveh, and all Christians have the call to “make disciples of all nations,” but like Jonah do we also have certain people or types of people – maybe those we consider evil – we’d rather not minister to?  Are there tasks that we run away from, even if we feel God is calling us to do them, because of who else is involved?  Are there times where we, like Jonah, are what Wiersbe called a “narrow-minded patriot,”[4] more concerned about being on the right side from our worldly or political perspective than about being on God’s side?

If so, the lesson from Jonah is: don’t neglect what God has called you to do, because when you do, “the only direction you can go is down.”

Maybe even into the belly of a big fish.

Who is God asking us to minister to today?

[1] Genesis 12:3
[2] Wiersbe, Warren.  Be Amazed (Minor Prophets Hosea – Malachi) (1996).  P. 99.
[3] Jonah 2:10
[4] Wiersbe, Warren.  Be Amazed (Minor Prophets Hosea – Malachi) (1996).  P. 113.