Jesus Knows Best

Posted on by korgrocker

““But now I am going away to the one who sent me, and not one of you is asking where I am going. Instead, you grieve because of what I’ve told you. But in fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don’t, the Advocate won’t come. If I do go away, then I will send him to you.”
John 16:5-7 NLT

How often is it that a parent tells a child, or even a young adult, that they know what is best for them? The foul-tasting medicine. The rules governing bedtimes. The boring homework. Warnings about the company they are keeping. Sometimes the list seems endless, according to the complaints of some children. However, most knuckle down and do as they are told, but others rebel and eventually go their own way, to a life of under achieving or drugs and crime.

But Jesus was in a much more positive place with His disciples. He had assured them, “No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you” (John 14:8). And earlier, “Dear children, I will be with you only a little longer. And as I told the Jewish leaders, you will search for me, but you can’t come where I am going” (John 13:33). By such references comparing them with children, Jesus was saying that He knew what was best for them. The disciples didn’t know who this “Advocate” was. But Jesus was asking the disciples to trust Him. Eleven of them did, but we all know about the one who didn’t. Jesus knew best, and He explained that if He didn’t leave them then they would be unable to experience something that was better. We can just imagine the Father and the third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, looking on as the events unfurled before them.

We pilgrims are in a place where the Holy Spirit is doing His work. When we were birthed as new Christians, we believed in Jesus, deciding to follow Him all our days and repenting of our sins. We were baptised in water and we received the Holy Spirit. The scene was set two thousand or so years ago, when the Holy Spirit dramatically entered the lives of ordinary men and women, assembled in that upper room. And He hasn’t left this world ever since. Jesus sent Him to His disciples and he sent Him to us as well. Jesus knows best.

Dear Lord Jesus. Like a good parent, You knew what was best for Your followers, and we are so grateful for Your presence in our lives through the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Going Away

Posted on by korgrocker

“But now I am going away to the one who sent me, and not one of you is asking where I am going. Instead, you grieve because of what I’ve told you.”
John 16:5-6 NLT

If someone says that they are going away, the natural, unthinking almost, response is, “Where are you going?” Well, Jesus said to His disciples that He was going away “and not one of you is asking where I am going”. Even if they had known where He was going, surely Peter, the impetuous one, would have made some comment. Throughout His time with His disciples, Jesus dropped many hints about how He would exit this world. We read in John 2:22, “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this, and they believed both the Scriptures and what Jesus had said“. Another example is in the following chapter in John, John 3:14, “And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up“. Then we have John 13:33, “Dear children, I will be with you only a little longer. And as I told the Jewish leaders, you will search for me, but you can’t come where I am going“. 

But in John 13:36 we read that Peter did in fact ask Jesus where He was going, “Simon Peter asked, “Lord, where are you going?” And Jesus replied, “You can’t go with me now, but you will follow me later””. So Jesus must have meant something deeper and more profound when He said “not one of you is asking where I am going”. Jesus went on to say that instead of being concerned with what was going to happen to Him, they were more worried about themselves, “Instead, you grieve because of what I’ve told you”. That is a natural human response, of course, along the lines, “If You leave us what will happen to us?”. 

Jesus was facing into a horrific series of events, made infinitely worse by His knowledge of them beforehand. But He was seeing beyond that to the time when He would return to be with His Father back in Heaven. Mission accomplished. The most important three years that this planet had ever seen, years that contained God’s plan of salvation for all humans beings past, present and future. God didn’t create a race of robots that would live for a while on Planet Earth and then automatically enter His presence. In stead, He created a race of free-thinking people “in His image” who had free choice and could therefore decide where they would spend eternity. God effectively entered into the recycling business. He took men and women, soiled and dirty through wickedness and sin, and turned them into His children, clean and righteous, and all through the ministry and blood of Jesus. But there was and is a catch – the men and women concerned about their sin had to make a choice to accept the remedy, and to decide to follow Jesus. Decide to believe in Him, and allow Him to cleanse them from their sins. But isn’t it strange? People living their sinful lives prefer to stay that way, a bit like pigs preferring to wallow in a mudhole. 

Jesus was leaving this world so that His message could continue through His disciples. But there was one essential factor for which they had to wait – the Holy Spirit. Acts 1:9 (“After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him“) was followed by Acts 2:4 (“And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability“). And that preceded a series of events ever since through the generations of faithful men and women who have shared Jesus’ message of salvation. Jesus went away, but it really has been as though he never left. What a Saviour!

Lord Jesus. We read about Your exploits here on Earth and wonder. And through Your shed blood, the devil is a defeated foe. Thank You. Amen.

A Holy Service

Posted on by korgrocker

“I have told you these things so that you won’t abandon your faith. For you will be expelled from the synagogues, and the time is coming when those who kill you will think they are doing a holy service for God. This is because they have never known the Father or me. Yes, I’m telling you these things now, so that when they happen, you will remember my warning. I didn’t tell you earlier because I was going to be with you for a while longer.”
John 16:1-4 NLT

It is strange that there are so many points of view regarding God. None of us really know God in all His fullness and we tend to focus on the bits we know and disregard anything else. We blithely talk about an infinite God without really understanding what we are saying. To illustrate this, I once had a conversation with a fellow worker who was a devout Muslim. Every lunchtime, his office door was closed and out came his prayer mat. Even the company’s managing director wasn’t able to disturb him. One day he said to me, knowing that I was a Christian, that we worshipped the same God. I told him that this wasn’t the case because his “god” was an authoritative being called “Allah” whereas I worshipped a Trinitarian God – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – who wanted a personal relationship with His children, those saved through a belief in Jesus. We pilgrims worship an Omnipresent, Omniscient and Omnipotent God and all we know about Him we find in the Bible and through our personal encounters with the Holy Spirit. But we won’t fully ever know God because making such a claim puts us right back in the Garden. Genesis 3:5, “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil“.

In today’s verses from John 16, we read that there will be some who claim to know God and who will think that they are doing God’s will by killing those whom they perceive as being blasphemers, those who elevate Jesus as the Son of God and follow His ways. Saul, later to be called Paul, was someone who thought this way. We read in Acts 8:3, “But Saul was going everywhere to destroy the church. He went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to throw them into prison“. It took a personal encounter with the living Jesus before Saul could see the error of his ways.

We look back through the last two thousand years and find many occasions where different views of God clashed on the battlefields of towns and villages, in churches and monasteries, in the lives of ordinary men and women. Even today there is sectarian violence between Protestants and Catholics in various places in the UK. People with different views of God thinking that they are doing a “holy service” by trying to eliminate those of another persuasion. And as I write the violence between the Jewish state of Israel and the surrounding Muslim nations constantly simmers in a maelstrom of hate and violence. 

But we pilgrims are of a different persuasion. We know whom we follow. We are in a privileged position, as we read in 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light”. We know what the true “holy service” comprises. And we praise and worship the One who made it all possible -Jesus.

Jesus, we do indeed offer up our sincere thanks for all You did for us at Calvary. Amen.

Faith Abandoned

Posted on by korgrocker

“I have told you these things so that you won’t abandon your faith.”
John 16:1 NLT

We must start by reviewing the “things” that Jesus spoke about. In the previous chapter in John’s Gospel, Jesus taught His disciples about love and obedience, but He also warned them that the world would hate them, the “world” referring to all those people who had rejected Him and who hated Him because they misunderstood or denied who He was, why He had come to Planet Earth, and the message that he had brought. And because they hated Jesus, then they would hate His disciples as well.  There is a saying that being forewarned is being forearmed, and that certainly was Jesus’ expectation for His disciples. His concern for His friends would have been realised but for one significant factor – the Holy Spirit. He wasn’t leaving them on their own, as orphans – John 14:18, “No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you“. In those sobering days, Jesus encouraged His disciples with the assurance that He was not leaving them at all really. John 14:26, “But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you”. And the following verse records something applicable to all disciples everywhere and ever since, “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid” (John 14:27).

So, Jesus’ message to His disciples was there was trouble ahead, but because He had talked through with them what was likely to happen, then, with the Holy Spirit within them, they would not abandon their faith. But we know from Acts 2 that rather than abandon their faith, the disciples, now Apostles, found that their faith was supercharged and was turned into action of such proportions that the world of their time was turned upside down. Such is the power of the Holy Spirit working in the lives of ordinary men and women.

Today, we disciples of Jesus also know the consequences of believing in Jesus. And we too have the Holy Spirit within us. But is our faith supercharged? One verse that challenges me is Acts 4:31, “After this prayer, the meeting place shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Then they preached the word of God with boldness”. When was the last time that we had a prayer meeting so powerful that the building used to hold it was shaken? Or if we use Zoom for such events do our screens start wobbling with the power of the Holy Spirit? But sadly today, the prayer meetings tend to be the least well attended of all the church meetings, and limited to a shopping list of requests, any sign of power being absent. Much as Paul wrote to Timothy, ” ... having a form of godliness but lacking power” (2 Timothy 3:5). Acts 4:31 also tells us that those present were all filled with the Holy Spirit. But had they not already been filled just two chapters earlier? The problem is that we need to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit. Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:18, “Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit”. The phrase “be filled” is the Greek continuous present tense and would be better translated, “be being filled”. We need to be constantly refilled with the Holy Spirit in our lives and all we have to do is ask. Matthew 7:11b, “ … how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.”

Heavenly Father. We thank You for the many good gifts You have provided for us. Today we pray for a fresh infilling of Your Spirit, to enable us to face the day ahead with power and the assurance that You are there with us. Amen.

You Must Testify

Posted on by korgrocker

“But I will send you the Advocate —the Spirit of truth. He will come to you from the Father and will testify all about me. And you must also testify about me because you have been with me from the beginning of my ministry.”
John 15:26-27 NLT

The word “testify” appears twice in these verses, once associated with the Holy Spirit and the other time with Jesus and His disciples. Everything they needed to know about Jesus after He had gone would be revealed to them by the Holy Spirit, who would “come” to them “from the Father”. But just a few short years before, something happened on the shores of the Galilean Sea that would have far reaching consequences, not just for those concerned, but for the world ever since. Those early disciples are long dead but their legacy lives on in successive generations of believers. Mark 1:16-17, “One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living. Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!””. Just a little further along the shore Jesus found James and John and we read, “He called them at once, and they also followed him, leaving their father, Zebedee, in the boat with the hired men” (Mark 1:20). Did those four men have any clue about would happen over the next three years or so‭‭? Their world was turned upside down but they never turned away from Jesus. But here was their Master saying to them and the others, “you must also testify about me because you have been with me from the beginning of my ministry.” 

And testify about Jesus they did. On the same day that the Spirit fell on those gathered in that Upper Room, on the first Day of Pentecost, Peter testified about Jesus, “People of Israel, listen! God publicly endorsed Jesus the Nazarene by doing powerful miracles, wonders, and signs through him, as you well know” (Acts 2:22). And Peter’s last recorded words were, “Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. All glory to him, both now and forever! Amen” (2 Peter 3:18). The last verse in the Bible was spoken by the Apostle John, “May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s holy people” (Revelation 22:21). Those early disciples, who had “been with [Jesus] from the beginning of [His] ministry” never stopped testifying about Jesus, fulfilling Jesus’ wishes in these last hours of His life.

We pilgrims, by extension, must also testify about Jesus. The Holy Spirit dwells within all truly born again believers and they too benefit from His testimony about Jesus. At every opportunity we must share how Jesus gave His life to save everyone, and in the process we testify how that made a difference to us. In John 1:4-7, we read, “The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it. God sent a man, John the Baptist, to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony”. John the Baptist was the first testifier about Jesus. He realised who the Light was and he testified about Jesus “so that everyone might believe”. 

Paul wrote, “We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. … But we continue to preach because we have the same kind of faith the psalmist had when he said, “I believed in God, so I spoke”” (2 Corinthians 4:7, 13). We faith-filled pilgrims may feel totally inadequate for the task of testifying but regardless we must speak the words of Jesus at every opportunity. Why? Because Jesus asked us to.

Lord Jesus. Because of Your grace and love what else can we do other than speak out our testimony of faith. Please lead us to the people You want to hear it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

No Excuse

Posted on by korgrocker

“If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. … They would not be guilty if I had not come and spoken to them. But now they have no excuse for their sin. Anyone who hates me also hates my Father. If I hadn’t done such miraculous signs among them that no one else could do, they would not be guilty. But as it is, they have seen everything I did, yet they still hate me and my Father. This fulfils what is written in their Scriptures: ‘They hated me without cause.’”
John 15:18, 22-25 NLT

The first Advent had far-reaching consequences for the Jewish nation and for the world, and are still reverberating around the world to this day. Jesus came to Planet Earth with His teaching, His miracles, and His claim to be God’s Son. But there was a problem. In John 1:10-11 we read, “He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognise him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him“. And worse than rejection, Jesus was hated, and by association, every believer in Jesus has been hated as well. Isaiah could see in the Spirit what was going to happen. He wrote in Isaiah 53:3, “He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care“. But Jesus never looked back, mourning the “what could have been”. He looked ahead to the awful day when those who had heard his teaching and had seen His miracles would be standing before Him, stuttering out some feeble excuse. Stand in the shoes for a moment of someone who was in the crowd shouting out, “Crucify Him!” What will they say before the Man on the Great White Throne? Or how about being someone who Jesus spoke to personally but they still rejected Him? Imagine their horror when Jesus said to them, “I remember you …”. Jesus will say to them that they have no excuse for their sin.

Before we pilgrims feel that we are off the hook because we weren’t around two thousand years ago, what Jesus did and said was timeless. The vivid nature of the Gospel accounts, backed up by the rest of the New Testament, eliminates any excuses we might try to offer in mitigation for our sins. But we wouldn’t want to live in our sins, would we? Our new birth into God’s Kingdom provided a remedy for our sins and put us into a place of right standing before Jesus. And the verdict from the Throne will be, “Not guilty!” 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ”. 

Superficially, we could perhaps think Jesus was puzzled and perplexed by the response from His fellow Jews. In spite of everything He had done, He said that the people, “still hate me and my Father”. But He knew this would happen and he quoted a prophesy from Psalm 39, “They hated me without cause”. And so it is today. Recently the church I attend put out some evangelistic leaflets in the neighbourhood around where we meet. One hate-filled response was received via social media asking us not to put any such literature again through his door. People still hate Jesus today. There is no reason why, we think, until we are reminded that Jesus confronted the sins of mankind, but with a solution that would provide right-standing before God. However, and inexplicably, people generally prefer to live in their sins rather than be set free from their consequences. 

We pilgrims carry on spreading the Good News about God and His saving grace. God’s love is there for all to experience. 2 Corinthians 6:1-2, “As God’s partners, we beg you not to accept this marvellous gift of God’s kindness and then ignore it. For God says, “At just the right time, I heard you. On the day of salvation, I helped you.” Indeed, the “right time” is now. Today is the day of salvation”.  It is indeed!

Father God, there is no excuse that will mitigate our sin-laden guilt before You. But, thanks to Jesus, we have a remedy for all our sins. Thank You. Amen.

Persecuted for Jesus

Posted on by korgrocker

“Do you remember what I told you? ‘A slave is not greater than the master.’ Since they persecuted me, naturally they will persecute you. And if they had listened to me, they would listen to you. They will do all this to you because of me, for they have rejected the one who sent me.”
John 15:20-21 NLT

How was it that when God sent His Son, Jesus, to His own people, the Jews, that they refused to recognise Him? They had all the Old Testament prophecies. They had the expectation that the arrival of their Messiah was imminent. And yet they rejected Him, and, worse, they persecuted Him. Everywhere Jesus went, there seemed to be a group of Pharisees and religious lawyers and leaders hanging onto His every word, looking for opportunities to kill Him. In John 10:31-32, we read, “Once again the people picked up stones to kill him. Jesus said, “At my Father’s direction I have done many good works. For which one are you going to stone me?””. Jesus’ claim “… Then you will know and understand that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father”” (John 10:38b) was a stumbling block for the Jews. In that culture, anyone who blasphemed God had to be stoned to death, as the Jews knew from Leviticus 10:16, “Anyone who blasphemes the Name of the Lord must be stoned to death by the whole community of Israel. Any native-born Israelite or foreigner among you who blasphemes the Name of the Lord must be put to death“. When Jesus claimed to be God, people started to pick up stones, because He didn’t fit the stereotype of what they thought their Messiah would be like, and therefore this “Man” was blaspheming.

Jesus’ message to His people was so counter to their culture that they couldn’t accept it, especially as they didn’t recognise the Man who was delivering it as being God’s Son. But then they had the problem of all the miracles that Jesus performed. The introduction from Nicodemus, when he came to see Jesus late one evening, was recorded in John 3:2, “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you”“. Here was a Jewish leader who knew Jesus had something special, but he was trying to reconcile in his mind his expectations from a culture steeped in the Jewish Law against what was unfolding day by day before his eyes. We’re grateful for Nicodemus, because in response to his seeking after the truth, we received Jesus’ mission-defining verse, John 3:16.

So, Jesus was persecuted by His own people. But He carried on with His mission, preaching to crowds of people as the arrival of the Cross got ever closer. But Jesus warned His disciples that they too would be persecuted, and it would be a natural thing for unbelieving people to do. Sin and wickedness is deeply rooted within human beings and was then as well. Any message that confronted man’s natural state would end up with a push back, so violent that it would sometimes lead to death. In the early days of the church it wasn’t long before the persecution of the disciples, now Apostles, started. Acts 4:3, “They arrested [Peter and John]and, since it was already evening, put them in jail until morning.” And then in Acts 5:26a, 40b, we read, “The captain went with his Temple guards and arrested the apostles, … They called in the apostles and had them flogged. Then they ordered them never again to speak in the name of Jesus, and they let them go”. The disciples were indeed persecuted, as Jesus had warned them. And in these early days of the church, this was just a start.

Fast forward to today, and we can see what is happening in the world. Persecuted Christians abound. They have committed no crime other than to believe in the Lord Jesus for their future. A visit to the website “Open Doors” will introduce the scale of the problem. But, we pilgrims have to accept that persecution is part of our mission as we share our faith with others. We must expect people to ridicule us, to ostracise us and even attack us as we go about our business of being salt and light in our communities. But we remember that there is a great reward awaiting us one day. We are in the process of storing up treasure in Heaven, and all those who attack us will one day be held to account. The scales of justice will one day have to be balanced. 

After being flogged we read, “The apostles left the high council rejoicing that God had counted them worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus” (Acts 5:41). We do not expect physical “floggings” but many in the secular societies in which we live will look for opportunities to harass us, pushing back as we share God’s words of love and grace. Some have questioned our effectiveness and missional believers if we don’t suffer any persecution, no matter how little it is. In fact, would the world around us recognise us as men and women who have been with Jesus? Hmmm…..

Father God. We have treasure inside of us that we must expose for the benefit of those round us. The Gospel is indeed Good News, as is the message about Your Son Jesus. Amen.

Hated Disciples

Posted on by korgrocker

“If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.”
John 15:18-19 NLT

Isn’t it strange, that the disciples, who did so much in those early days and years as they went around preaching the Gospel and healing the sick, would end up being hated. Men who anxiously and diligently tried to connect people with a loving God who wanted all men to join Him. Paul wrote this to Timothy, “ …  God our Saviour, who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth. He gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone. … ” (1 Timothy 2:3-6 extracted), and John 3:16-17 deserves a mention, “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him“. Our God, who has given more for mankind than we can ever get our minds around, ends up being hated, and His followers as well. Men and women, who ever since, have tried to share the wonderful news about Jesus with so many but instead have been rejected, hated, and even killed. What would an alien think, looking on from outer space, at a situation where human beings hated the very One who created them, and in the process hated those who tried to reconcile them to their loving Heavenly Creator God. They would look, I’m sure, for another cause of such irrational behaviour.

Our helpful alien would perhaps find another life source that was causing the problem. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:4, “Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God”. Blinded minds. Minds filled with devil-inspired strange thoughts and ideologies. Minds filled with lies and wickedness. Minds reprogrammed to hate God and anyone who wants to acknowledge Him and follow Him. Minds that are even repudiating the very consequences of their God-denial, boastfully rejecting even the very concept of judgement for their sins and wickedness, a judgement that has to take place in our moral universe. And in it all the believers in God, lovingly fronting up His gracious presence, are hated, despised and even killed. History is punctuated by many Christian martyrs, murdered for the “crime” of believing in God and trying to help others to believe in Him too. 

We pilgrims must indeed face into the sober fact that we are hated by those around us, to varying degrees, and depending on where we live. We dare to be different, following a different path, refusing to bow our knees to different faiths, beliefs and ideologies. We tramp on in our life journey, taking every opportunity to live in God’s Kingdom, following His ways, and turning our backs on a world that doesn’t know Him. We are beacons of hope in a hopeless world. We season our communities by our presence and our willingness to show others a better way. Our faith will hopefully not lead to a premature death, but it will impact our standing in a worldly pecking order in our jobs and communities. We stand up against the issues of the day such as abortion, gender, conversion therapy, and similar legislation that opposes and encroaches on the sanctity of God’s order. And in the process we are arrested, hassled and hated. Not for us pilgrims the compromise adopted by some denominations to accept secular values instead of maintaining the purity of the faith.

Jesus warned His disciples about what was to come, but we read what he said in John 16:33, “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world”. Whatever we experience in this life will be of no consequence when we stand before Jesus and hear those words, “Well done …” What a God! What a Saviour! 

Thank You Lord, the One who made being children of God possible. Amen.

Masters and Slaves

Posted on by korgrocker

“I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. This is my command: Love each other.”
John 15:15-17 NLT

In Jesus’ day, slaves were commonplace. The richer members of His society usually had one or more slaves doing the menial jobs in a household, even to the extent of bringing up the master’s children. A slave was considered the owner’s personal property, and essentially had no rights. They could even be killed with impunity by their owners. The word “slave” can also be translated “servant” – in the Amplified version of John 15:15 we read, “I do not call you servants any longer, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you [My] friends, because I have revealed to you everything that I have heard from My Father”. ‭‭But slave or servant, we get the picture of Jesus, the Master, and His disciples, who were His servants doing a three year apprenticeship, learning all about God and His Kingdom. And rather than have notes to refer to when they needed a prompting, they had the Holy Spirit within them. “He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you” (John 14:17). In Acts 4:13 we read about how effective the Holy Spirit’s presence was in their lives, “The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures. They also recognised them as men who had been with Jesus“.

Paul started his Roman epistle with “This letter is from Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, chosen by God to be an apostle and sent out to preach his Good News”. Peter started his second epistle with, “This letter is from Simon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ. I am writing to you who share the same precious faith we have. This faith was given to you because of the justice and fairness of Jesus Christ, our God and Saviour”. The first Apostles were totally sold out to their Master, Jesus Christ. They had no agenda of their own, other than to do His will. Whatever it took. Regardless of the consequences.

Jesus, though, at the end of their apprenticeship, regarded His disciples as His friends and no longer as slaves or servants. Because He had told them everything that His Father had asked Him to tell, the disciples had finished the course. And now they were appointed to go and produce “lasting fruit”. By extension, we too are commissioned to “go” and produce lasting fruit. Fruit in our lives and also in the lives of others. Peter and John were recognised by the Jewish leaders “as men who had been with Jesus”. Would we pilgrims receive the same recognition? But whatever, we cannot claim to be Jesus’ disciples unless we too could put our commitment is a position that makes us His servants.

Father God. We confess our commitment to You, this day and every day, with a grateful heart full of love. Amen.


Love and Life

Posted on by korgrocker

“This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.”
John 15:12-14 NLT

‭‭In an earlier chapter in John, Jesus said, “So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other” (John 13:34). Jesus reminds the disciples of the commandment to love one another, a repetition that emphasises the importance of love. But this is not the emotional or sentimental love that our secular societies favour. To a Christian, this is the agape love that has a cost associated with it. A love that loves the unlovely. A love that goes above and beyond even to the point of sacrificing life for another. A love that a selfish and grasping world doesn’t understand.

In Romans 5:6-8, Paul wrote, “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners“.‭‭ Then we read what John wrote in 1 John 3:16, “We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters”. 

In the case of the early Apostles, all except for John, ended up dying a violent death. So they did literally sacrifice their lives for their fellow believers. And many of the Early Church disciples also died for their faith. We can read about Stephen’s martyrdom in Acts 7:59-60, “As they stoned him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” He fell to his knees, shouting, “Lord, don’t charge them with this sin!” And with that, he died.” A Spirit-filled man murdered for His faith in Jesus.

But, practically, what does this mean for us pilgrims? We live in a society that would naturally prioritise its own interests before anyone else’s. There is a selfish motivation to grab the last seat on the bus before anyone else can get there. Or jump the queue at a supermarket. The common and motivation question is “What’s in it for me?”. Me, me, me all the time. But agape love is the opposite of all this.

Jesus said to His disciples, and, by extension, to us as well, that they should love others “in the same way I have loved you“. He taught much about love and when asked about which was the greatest commandment, “Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments”” (Matthew 22:37-40). In everything we do, we must be motivated by the same love that Jesus has for us.

Dear Heavenly Father. You love us with a love so extravagant it takes our breaths away. Thank You. Amen.