The Word became flesh

Something to ponder this Christmas.  This poem is by Sam Storms - you can check out his entire post and more of his thoughts on Christmas by clicking here

"God became human!
the invisible became visible!
the untouchable became touchable!
eternal life experienced temporal death!
the transcendent one descended and drew near!
the unlimited became limited!
the infinite became finite!

How To Cleanse Yourself

Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:21-22: “Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.  So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.”

The application for us is that we need to cleanse ourselves from what is dishonorable by fleeing passions and pursuing Godly attributes.  The motivation for doing this has to be the Gospel (who Christ is and what He’s done for us at Calvary) – but the practical outworking of this happens on a daily basis.  The imperatives to flee and pursue also carry with them the idea of continuing to do this and to make it a daily habit of our lives.

But how do you do it?

Here are a few thoughts that may be helpful:

His unmerited favor does not rest upon our performance

One of the most moving and profound expressions of God’s grace is in Second Samuel chapter 12.  It’s the story of the birth of Solomon.  This is what God says about this newborn.  “And the LORD loved him and sent a message by Nathan the prophet.  So he called his name Jedidiah, because of the LORD.”  The name “Jedidiah” means “beloved of the Lord.”  I know of no other person in the Old Testament of whom God spoke this at their birth.  Even more—God was so concerned that everyone knew of his love for this baby that he spoke to one of his prophets and in some manner changed his name to remind all those who would call him by that name that God had given him his special love.  What makes this story truly remarkable is the context in which God places his love on Solomon.  God loved  this child even though:

Faith or Saving Faith...

Faith?... or SAVING faith?

James 2:14 says, “¹⁴ What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?”  James implies that there is a kind of faith that does not save—a faith that is absent any works that confirm that God has done a saving work in your heart.  Saving faith is a gift from God and it results in a changed heart that leads to a transformed life that includes good works.  The works do not produce the changed heart—they come in response to a heart that God has changed through the gospel.  We must distinguish between faith— and saving faith that produces far more than being afraid at the prospect of hell and making the decision to make Jesus your fire insurance. ^[1]

I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me

The thought struck me this week that we don’t really have words that are able to express who God is.  We, and many Biblical writers (think Ezekiel 1, Daniel 9, Revelation 1), say that God is like this or that – but we don’t have enough words to fully describe Him.  Nor do we have brains that can fully comprehend Him.  And my guess is that on the surface we really don’t like that because it puts God out of reach and beyond us.  But deep down it should be a great comfort to us because if He were within reach and we were able to confine Him with words – then God would be far too small!  God would become less than our language and our minds because both could contain Him.

Where will you be the Christmas Sunday morning?

I remember a few years ago when December 25 fell on a Sunday.  I was aghast when I heard how many of our local churches had decided (ostensibly for the sake of the families in their fellowship) to cancel Sunday worship service.  In those churches that did not cancel, countless parishioners abandoned Sunday morning worship in favor of “family time” around the Christmas tree.

How to know the Love of God

How can I know God’s love?  This is the question behind so much of our spiritual hunger. Here’s one response to the question.  The argument is longer than I would like, but it has been very helpful to many.   

Many people who sit in church on Sunday and many outside the church believe that ultimately, Christianity is about learning to be a better person—losing your profanity, losing my anger, being more patient, loving other people, giving to the poor, being a blessing to those around you etc…  There is nothing wrong with those things—far from it.  Those things should flow from all healthy believers’ lives in increasing measure.  If a person carries this wrong belief system about what it is to follow Christ, he/she may enjoy hearing about God’s love; he/she hasn’t much experienced God’s love and almost certainly doesn’t understand the connection between God love for them and their spiritual growth.  I have observed that this is especially so in churches where the “other” side of God is spoken of little.  That is—his holiness, his power, transcendence, justice, wrath—etc. Ironically, (and this is important) it’s only in those contexts that the love of God can be well appreciated/understood as it should be.  That sounds strange, but let me explain.

Most people process their spiritual life—as I said—as something you DO…OBEY GOD. This leads to frustration because the Bible never teaches that the ultimate response of a person to God is obedience in and of itself.  The Bible says in places like Romans 1:5 and 26:16 that obedience is never isolated, but always comes from faith—it springs from having a trust in Christ.  You know this from life.  If someone you trust a great deal asks you do to a deeply sacrificial thing, you are much more likely to comply than if someone you don’t know well asks the same sacrifice of you.  Likewise, when we have faith in Christ, that compels us to obey him because we trust that he would only ask us to do something because it is in our best interest—it will bring no joy.  As we grow to trust him more and more, that enables us to more easily do what he asks—even when it is the hard things that require us to die to what WE want but instead deny ourselves pick up our cross and obey.  We obey because we have FAITH—or, we trust him. 

But that only shoves the question back one level, “Ok, I know I need to trust Christ before I can obey him regularly, but how do I learn to trust him?”  The answer is—you trust someone who you are utterly convinced loves you like there is no tomorrow--someone who has shown you that they would do anything—make even the most extravagant sacrifice imaginable for you—like God did when he sent Jesus to die on the cross for us.  Underneath any strong faith in God is the powerful assurance of his LOVE for us.  This is what Paul is getting at in Galatians 5:6 “⁶ For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” Again, this only makes sense.  We trust those we know who love us and if Jesus is willing to show his love by suffering on the cross for us, that’s an incomparable expression of trust-engendering love. 

But again, that only pushes back the question.  “Ok, I know I obey God because I trust him because he loves me, but what causes me to love him much more?”  Before we answer, we must highlight crucial foundational truth.  Before we see how we love God, we must first know that we can only love God in response to his love for us. In other words, no one has autonomous love for God.  All our love for him is in response to the love he has shown us. First John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.”  The degree to which we have internalized and appreciate God’s love for us in the gospel is the degree to which by God’s grace, we will obey him from our faith rooted in love. As we internalize God’s love for us that will free us to trust him which in turn will by God’s grace free us to obey in love.

Given that truth, now we can examine the question of how we come to love God much.  The Bible persistently teaches that the most powerful way to know God’s love is—to see our need of the cross of Jesus—his most powerful expression of love for us and, upon experiencing that need, calling to mind the reality of our forgiveness of the deep, dark and wicked sin we have in our hearts.  Let me support that claim.  In Luke chapter seven, Jesus is in the home of Simon the Pharisee.  Simon is self-righteous.  That is, he thinks he has it all together and therefore looks down on everyone else.  They simply aren’t as “holy” and devoted to God as he is.  Also in Simon’s house with Jesus is a prostitute who is pictured wiping Jesus’ muddy feet with her hair and as water, using her tears.  Obviously, this is a profound display of sacrificial love made necessary because Simon had not even washed Jesus’ feet or put oil on his head when he entered his home.  This was a significant omission in this culture—like not hanging up a visitor’s winter coat in our day when they enter our homes.  Simon snubbed Jesus this way and the prostitute—who had obviously been talking to Jesus about her life—was trying to ‘clean up” and meet a need Simon would not meet for Jesus.

Jesus analyzes this situation, telling Simon that the reason he did not even extend the most fundamental courtesy to him was because he sensed little need of forgiveness and therefore had experience little if any.  Jesus says in Luke 7:47,  “He who has been forgiven little, loves little.”  On the other hand, the prostitute—these women were thought to be in a separate class of sinners from every other sinner.  When she met Jesus who extended God’s forgiveness to her, she, who doubtless had felt unforgivable, was so intensely grateful that Jesus would completely forgive her for her

The point is that if I am a “small” sinner—that is—I am a pretty good person who on a regular basis hears that God loves me and (as so many do) that I come to assume on that love—if I am that “small” sinner, then I will have a “small” Savior and if I have a small Savior, then I will have a small (if any) love for God because “he who has been forgiven little, loves little.”   However, if I see myself as a deeply wretched sinner who is utterly convinced and regularly remind myself that I deserve nothing but the wrath of God, then I will have a “BIG” Savior who has forgiven me MUCH and therefore will have a correspondingly BIG love for God because “he who has been forgiven much, loves much.”  If I love much, I will trust much and if I trust much, I will obey much.   These are vital truths about God’s love and how to know it.