Our Bodies

Posted on by korgrocker

“You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything. You say, “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead.”
1 Corinthians 6:12-14 NLT

The Corinthians seemed to have a warped logic. They thought that because of God’s grace, it didn’t really matter what they did, so, consequently, getting involved in any form of sexual immorality would be permissible. Really? But before we say that such a logic wouldn’t happen today, consider how sometimes our human minds take one thought and twist it to apply to something else. We all do it, I’m sure. We make excuses such as “Just one more glimpse at that magazine won’t matter because it’s only for research”. Or, “I’ll watch this film, but if there is any bad language I’ll switch it off”, but never do. Or even, “I’ll just borrow a pen from the office and return it tomorrow”, but somehow the promise is forgotten. The human mind can get involved in convoluted thought processes that somehow do enough to appease a conscience that otherwise is shouting out, “Don’t do it!”.

How do we pilgrims view our bodies? Extraordinary attempts are made by many people here in the West to maximise physical fitness, with a plethora of gyms and leisure centres available and full of all sorts of equipment designed to hone muscles and improve fitness. A professional athlete often dedicates several hours a day, most days a week, to intense, regimented training to gain the stamina, strength, and speed required to succeed. Near where I live, there is a weekly Park Run where the runners do three circuits of the park, puffing and panting in their lycra-clad attire, some giving concern for the health of their hearts. Joggers abound in most towns and cities, pounding the streets to improve their fitness levels. Other people go through processes to lose weight, attending “fat clubs” such as Slimming World and similar. There is a huge market for weight loss jabs and foods designed to reduce calorie and carb intake. People constantly battle between their bodies’ appetites for all the wrong foods and the need to shed the weight they consequently accumulate, for their own longer-term health. And then we have the people who don’t care about their bodies at all, abusing them with smoking, drinking alcohol and taking drugs. Sometimes it is amazing how much punishment a human body can take before it gives way to illness, and death at an early age. In a town in Scotland’s Central Belt there is a particular drug problem, and to go with it, the tragedy of young men and women who find that their lives are cut short through an overdose. One mother I know lost three sons to drug-related deaths. Such a tragedy.

But back to the Corinthians. In this part of his letter, Paul wrote, ” … But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies” (1 Corinthians 6:13b). Regarding “sexual immorality“, Paul earlier in the chapter singled out “adultery“, “male prostitution” and “homosexuality” as being “sexual sin”, but Paul contrasts using their bodies for such practices was at odds with the fact that they were “made for the Lord”. Of course, we know that one day everyone’s body will die and end up in a situation that degrades it to the point that it becomes nothing more than dust, given enough time. But from how our body was will come our new bodies because God will raise us “from the dead by His power, just as He raised our Lord from the dead”. Jesus’ new body was recognisable with the crucifixion scars still present, but it was a body with astounding capabilities, being able to walk through walls and locked doors, and travel distances very quickly. And our Heavenly bodies will be like that as well. 

Paul went on to write about a specific problem that was prevalent in Corinth, and that was the use of prostitutes. He wrote, “Don’t you realise that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! And don’t you realise that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one”” (1 Corinthians 6:15-16). The Corinthians may have been a bit puzzled by Paul’s scathing tone because how could their bodies be joined to Christ? The answer lies in the truth that one day the Church that Jesus established here on earth will become His Bride. When people, men, women, and children, accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, believing in Him and taking on His righteousness, they became God’s children and part of a great assembly of souls that one day will be the Bride of Christ. Revelation 19:7, “Let us be glad and rejoice, and let us give honour to him. For the time has come for the wedding feast of the Lamb, and his bride has prepared herself”. Think about it for a moment. Why were we chosen by God in the first place? Ephesians 1:4, “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes”. Being joined to a prostitute, Paul was saying to the Corinthians, was hardly an act of holiness. How could anyone guilty of sexual immorality of any kind ever be a part of the holy assembly that one day will be living in God’s presence? The same questions hang in the air today, as churches and denominations grapple with sexual sins on a similar scale to what was experienced in Corinth two thousand years or so ago. God has provided a design for correct and holy sexual relationships between a man and woman, involving marriage and sexual faithfulness. Anything else is abhorrent to Him, and as Paul wrote, “Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don’t you realise that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honour God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:18-20).

We pilgrims also have bodies that are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. He lives within us, gifted by God when we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. So, the question is, how are we treating our bodies? Is it in a way that honours Him? Hmmm…

Dear Father God. We confess that we need to seek Your will and purpose for our bodies daily to ensure that we are honouring You in all that we do. Please help us, we pray. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Church Discipline

Posted on by korgrocker

“I can hardly believe the report about the sexual immorality going on among you—something that even pagans don’t do. I am told that a man in your church is living in sin with his stepmother. You are so proud of yourselves, but you should be mourning in sorrow and shame. And you should remove this man from your fellowship.”
1 Corinthians 5:1-2 NLT

Jesus gave us some teaching about church discipline. This has only rarely had to be followed, in my experience, but the process is there. There was a real problem in the Corinthian church because they were accepting an immoral and adulterous relationship between a man and his stepmother. Perhaps they had misinterpreted Paul’s teaching about grace. In Romans 5:20-21, he wrote, “The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord“. Paul was effectively saying that as sin increases, God’s grace increases even more. In other words, sin cannot grow past God’s capacity to give good to those who deserve His angry judgment instead. Paul concludes that God’s grace is the greater ruler. It reigns over sin and death. How? He declares righteous all of us sinners who, by faith, receive his grace-gift of Jesus’ death for our sin on the cross. He wrote this letter to the Romans probably while he was staying with the Corinthians, so it is very likely that Paul shared his understanding of God’s grace with the Corinthian church. Did they therefore decide that sinning was fine because God’s grace would cover it? They may have deliberately ignored the verses that Paul wrote over the page in Romans 6:1-4, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life”. So we have sin and God’s grace, and a congregation that seemed to be setting their own rules, based on a misunderstanding, deliberate or otherwise, of Paul’s teaching.

But Paul soon had them back on track, pointing out that rather than pridefully accepting the immoral situation, they should instead have been “mourning in sorrow and shame” and started the process of evicting the man (and presumably his step-mother) from the church. But back to what Jesus taught, something we find in Matthew 18. There are three steps to follow:

  1. Matthew 18:15, “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over”. The first step involves a low-key opportunity to point out that there is a sin that needs to be dealt with, and the sinner and the one who has observed it have a chat and hopefully resolve the problem at that point. Such an approach requires much love and gentleness, with the situation kept strictly private and confidential. Of course, there has to be a good relational and trustworthy bridge with the one who is the sinner, who must also be prepared to be obedient, repentant, and recognise the fact that God is at work in his life. 
  2. Matthew 18:16, “But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses’”. Things are getting a bit more serious now because the sinner involved has failed to respond to the first step. But the second step is still intent on the restoration of the miscreant, with additional witnesses helping to resolve the problem. Again, privacy, love and gentleness are involved because the “brother or sister” will by now be feeling a bit under siege. It may at this point be helpful to involve a church leader, who would be able to assist with a plan of action and would be able to follow up with some Biblical help.
  3. Matthew 18:17, “If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector”. The third step is the nuclear option, and the one that Paul was advising the Corinthian church to follow. There is still a chance of repentance and restoration, and it would be a very stubborn and hardened sinner who would let things go this far. However, note that Jesus didn’t teach that the sinner should be excluded from the church. Instead, he or she would be allowed to sit in the meeting, as if they were a random unbeliever who walked through the doors. If such a thing happens in our churches today, we welcome the visitor and treat them with love and acceptance, and if sin is apparent, then we still love the sinner but hate the sin. 

To be fair, my experience is that after the first step, the poor person involved is more likely to leave the church and find another, or reject the idea of church, and even God, for good. In the case of the situation in Corinth, Paul was so appalled about what was going on that he advised that the man involved be ejected from the church, perhaps an early example of the practice of excommunication. 

So what can we pilgrims learn from this? We need to guard our hearts and lives, striving for a sinless existence. Some Christians have a tendency to think that any private sin can be brushed under the carpet, and they can continue to appear righteous and holy in the pews. But there is a verse in Numbers 32:23 that reads, “But if you fail to keep your word, then you will have sinned against the Lord, and you may be sure that your sin will find you out”. I can think of one high profile Christian leader whose sins found him out when he was caught with a prostitute, and I know from my own experience about a church pastor who turned up one day at church with a new car, paid for, he said, from a businessman’s gift, but sadly he lied about a win through a scratch card purchased from his local newsagent. In 1 John 1:8-9, we read, “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness”. We pilgrims must walk in holiness and truth, and be secure in our knowledge that God loves us and wants our highest good. That’s why Jesus came, to seek and save the lost, those who otherwise, through their sins, were heading for a lost eternity. And we soberly remember that one day that was us, dead in our trespasses and sins. But we are now children of God “ … created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24b). What a wonderful Saviour! And as each believer functions in the way that God desires, any problems within the church will be nonexistent, eliminating the need for “church discipline“.

Father God. In the same way that You discipline Your children, You will discipline Your church. One day, we will all attend the wedding feast as the Bride of Christ, without sin and being holy and righteous in Your presence. Thank You. Amen.

The Temple of God (2)

Posted on by korgrocker

“Don’t you realise that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you? God will destroy anyone who destroys this temple. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”
1 Corinthians 3:16-17 NLT

Paul said some other things about the “temple of God”. He wrote that “anyone who destroys this temple” would themselves be destroyed, and that “God’s temple” is holy. Just to recap, the temple Paul was referring to was the Corinthian church, and it was made up of the Spirit-filled believers there. It was not a physical “temple” made with stone, bricks, and mortar, but the people who met together as believers in Jesus.

It is an interesting coincidence that the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed just a few years after this letter from Paul was written. Was that because the traditional, Law-bound Jewish leaders had tried to eliminate those who believed in Jesus, those men and women who believed that he was the Saviour of the world? We remember how a man called Saul burst onto the pages in our Bibles with a reference to him holding the coats of those men stoning Stephen, the first Christian martyr. And then we read just over the page in Acts 9:1-2, “Meanwhile, Saul was uttering threats with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord’s followers. So he went to the high priest. He requested letters addressed to the synagogues in Damascus, asking for their cooperation in the arrest of any followers of the Way he found there. He wanted to bring them—both men and women—back to Jerusalem in chains“. But Paul’s pogrom was short-lived, because we know what happened to him on the Damascus Road. Perhaps what happened to the Temple in Jerusalem stands as a stark warning to those people today who would desire to destroy God’s people. 

In the UK, we have the Humanists who promote a society based on rational thinking and one without God. It is an obvious tactic of the devil because humanists do everything expected of Christians, but have created a clone that has shifted worship away from God to themselves. Are they, with their evangelistic zeal, trying to destroy the “temple of God”? As an aside, in my case, it backfired because I used to work with a member of the British Humanist Association who was always teasing me about my lack of any sort of belief. I was sitting on the fence when it came to any faith at all, but it was his vision of a self-based humanistic religion that so horrified me that it led to my becoming a Christian (with help from others at that time, of course). My work colleague was not happy when I attributed my faith in God to his humanistic efforts to convert me. Here in the UK, there is no overt persecution of the Christians who make up the “temple of God”, but the signs are ominous, with levels of persecution starting to increase through legislation and societal attitudes. Our schools here are promoting ideologies that are against God’s order and commands. And then we have the nations in other parts of the world that have made a belief in Christ a capital offence. Places such as Afghanistan and North Korea. These regimes will not last for long because God has promised to destroy those who destroy His temple. There are also Islamic militant groups that persecute and murder Christians when they find them. God’s people are under threat in many places in this world.

Paul’s final reference to the “temple of God” in this section was about holiness. This is a reminder that the people of God, through their repentance of sin and acceptance of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, are declared righteous and can come into God’s presence as His children. Peter wrote, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). We are a special people, shown God’s favour, and able to live in the light of His presence, as the Holy Spirit lives and works within each one of us. Paul reminded the Corinthians that because of their identity as God’s holy temple, they had responsibilities to live a life worthy of that identity. He was gently saying, no more factionalism, no more jealousy and quarrelling, no more living as worldly people do, with their sinful natures to the fore. 

We pilgrims are a 21st-century manifestation of the “temple of God”. We may meet in different places, in different denominations, with different skin colours and languages, but we all have one thing in common, and that is that we are God’s children, fellow believers in Jesus, who died for our sins. We are people born again in the spirit, and because of that, we are obliged to function as God’s holy people, with Paul’s warnings and instructions ever in our minds. Peter wrote, “As you come to him, the living Stone – rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him – you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:4-5). Priests? An image of a man or woman decked out in strange clothes and wearing a funny hat comes to mind, but that is not what Peter, or Paul, was referring to. We are all part of God’s Kingdom and have a responsibility to offer sacrifices to God, just as the Levitical priests offered up animal sacrifices so many years before. But our offerings are spiritual and holy, and fitting for the One who died for our sins. “God’s temple is holy”, wrote Paul, and that is what we aspire to. After all that Jesus has done for us, what else can we be? Peter wrote, “So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:14-16). That doesn’t mean walking around with our hands clasped in an attitude of prayer, a halo delicately poised just above our heads. Being holy has the meaning of being set apart. So we don’t behave in an unGodly way. We avoid places and practices that are, or could be, sinful and likely to draw us back into the worldly society around us. We live differently, we think differently, always remembering that in Christ we are holy, totally and completely. We have a new identity as God’s children. We are now citizens of God’s Heavenly Kingdom, assigned for a time to Planet Earth to bring God’s Message of the Cross, the Gospel, the Good News about Jesus, to the people around us, all the time praying that we will not be drawn back into the ways of the world. We have help of course, and the Holy Spirit living within us will lead us into all truth.

Dear Heavenly Father. We understand that we are set apart from the world around us, but we also understand that we have to live in it for Your works of service. Please help us get the balance right so that we never let You down. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Mind of Christ

Posted on by korgrocker

“Those who are spiritual can evaluate all things, but they themselves cannot be evaluated by others. For, “Who can know the Lord’s thoughts? Who knows enough to teach him?” But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.”
1 Corinthians 2:15-16 NLT

The “mind of Christ”? We need to let that thought sink in for a moment. Paul didn’t say that it was he, and him alone, that had the “mind of Christ”. There was a “we” involved, as he wrote to the Corinthian believers. He had just written that spiritual people, believers like him, could “evaluate all things”, and in addition, people who were unbelievers would be unable to evaluate the believers. In other words, the believers had access to the spiritual truths we read about in preceding verses, access denied to unbelievers who had no time for the spiritual world in God’s Kingdom anyway. In the second verse of our text today, Paul quoted from the Greek version of Isaiah 40, from a section entitled “The Lord Has No Equal” in my Bible. Isaiah 40:13 asks the questions, “Who is able to advise the Spirit of the Lord? Who knows enough to give him advice or teach him?” But Paul wrote to the Corinthians that they would know the answers to difficult questions such as these, because they have the “mind of Christ”. 

The passage of Scripture in Isaiah 40 provides a glimpse of how wonderful it is to be able to have access to the “mind of Christ”. We, of course, know that in those pre-incarnation days, while Isaiah was writing, Jesus was still in Heaven with God. And as Isaiah mused in his writings, thinking Holy Spirit-inspired thoughts, he set down a series of questions that are relevant for both believers and unbelievers. Some he answered, but the remainder are left hanging in the air, unable to be answered by mere human beings. Questions such as, “Has the Lord ever needed anyone’s advice? Does he need instruction about what is good? Did someone teach him what is right or show him the path of justice?” (verse 14), or “To whom can you compare God? What image can you find to resemble him?” (verse 18). Then there is “Haven’t you heard? Don’t you understand? Are you deaf to the words of God— the words he gave before the world began? Are you so ignorant?” (verse 21). But the wonderful thing is that believers like us pilgrims filled with the Holy Spirit, know the answers to these questions, because we have “the mind of Christ”.

If we take the first question that I have quoted from Isaiah 40, “Has the Lord ever needed anyone’s advice?”, we know the answer because God is omniscient, meaning that He is all-knowing. So we pilgrims know we only have to go to God for answers to life’s difficult questions, such as what is the purpose of life? We watch the worldly people around us struggling to find an answer to questions such as this, as they thrash around, out of their depth. In answer to other societal challenges and problems, centred on their definition of morality, the politicians try and introduce laws to legislate an answer, helping people to live in the way they think is appropriate. Another topical question is about how gender can be defined, and in response, the secular leaders and other influential people in our society try and introduce a laughably false ideology which proposes that there may be up to a hundred different genders. Really? If only such people had the “mind of Christ” as we do, then they would know the answer. And then we have the question, “To whom can you compare God?”. Our medics will come up with their findings in medicine, our scientists in physics and chemistry. The geologists will refer to their understanding of the world’s origins through rocks and geological strata. The archaeologists will display their fossils and other ancient findings along with their definitions of age, and follow up with conclusions of how they got to where they were found. But none of them can answer Isaiah’s question, because they do not have the “mind of Christ”. 

Jesus said to His disciples that when He had left this world, He would send them an Advocate, a Comforter, Someone who would bring to the disciples’ minds what they had been told. “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” (John 14:26). Earlier in this Corinthian journey we read 1 Corinthians 2:10, “But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets“. We must allow this revelation to sink deep within our spirits. Did Paul really mean that through the Holy Spirit we would have access to “God’s deep secrets”? That’s what he said, and he finished this passage with another revelation, that we have the “mind of Christ”. 

Jesus said, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future” (John 16:13). We Spirit-filled believers are in a powerful position because we can see the world from God’s perspective. We have access to absolute truth in a world that can only expose relative truths, and even then, only in the light of human understanding. As an example, some centuries ago, the general belief was that the world in which we live was flat. If you sailed too near the edge, then you would fall off into some void, never to be seen again. That was regarded as “truth” to the scientists and ordinary people of the day. But today, the old “truth” has been replaced by a new “truth”, that the world is in fact a sphere. When we consider the spiritual realm, though, truth takes on a different meaning. We pilgrims believe that one day, because of our faith, we will be received into our new home in Heaven. To us, that is the truth, revealed in God’s Word. Take, for example, John 3:16, “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”. Jesus said it, and because He spoke no lies, it must be truth, absolute truth. We can’t prove it to the unbelieving sceptics around us, but one day everyone will find out that this is indeed the truth. In His High Priestly prayer, Jesus said, “Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth” (John 17:17). We know of course about what 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“.

But we pilgrims are not followers of satan; instead, we are followers of Jesus, and we have the “mind of Christ”. We have been redeemed from the lies of this age and now can look forward to a time when only truth will prevail. I don’t know about you, dear friends, but sometimes when I see the state of the world around me, I can’t wait!

Dear Heavenly Father. One day, we will realise the fullness of life with You in a place we call Heaven. There will be no wars there between truth and lies, because You are truth, and there will be no sin in Heaven. And so we continue our journeys to glory, step by step, sometimes wearily, but always in the light of Your truth, revealed by the “mind of Christ”. Thank You. Amen.

Free From All Blame

Posted on by korgrocker

“Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will keep you strong to the end so that you will be free from all blame on the day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns. God will do this, for he is faithful to do what he says, and he has invited you into partnership with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
1 Corinthians 1:7-9 NLT

Something significant is embedded in these three verses. Have you noticed that the Corinthian believers have not done anything to contribute to their salvation as they “eagerly wait for the return of the Lord”?God has supplied “every spiritual gift” for them. Paul wrote that God will keep them “strong to the end“, “free from all blame”, and that He is faithful with an invitation “into partnership with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord”. And that is the same for us believers today. Our amazing God gives and gives, and never stops giving, all through His grace, love and mercy. 

As we read on in this epistle, we find that there was much that the Corinthian believers could have been blamed for, but we won’t get ahead of the text. The well read verses in Ephesians 2 set out why – “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it“. I meet so many people who think they will stand before God blameless because of their self-assessment that they are “good people”. Such a person comes to my mind. I met a young woman some years ago who was in a lesbian relationship. I was sharing my testimony with several people at the time but this young woman was vociferously confident that if there was a God then she would be acceptable to Him because she behaved well in her society and had done nothing to be ashamed of. Some other people I have met cannot even be bothered to think about the enormity of going to Hell, having a misguided, devil-inspired, view that Hell won’t we all that bad a place. In fact, one man I met thought it would be a place of partying. But I keep chipping away at these sinful bastions of humanity, in case there will be an opportunity to introduce someone to Jesus. 

But I’m sure we pilgrims are all “good people” as well. After all, we have been called out of the darkness of sin into the light of God’s grace. But that is the issue. Like everyone else, we lived a life of sin, our “goodness” falling far short of God’s standard. There was a day when someone introduced us to Jesus. Or it might even have been a day when we had our own Damascus Road experience. It might have been a time such as experienced by John Wesley, who was a clergyman in the Church of England but a self-confessed spiritual pauper. In a church meeting in 1738 someone was reading the introduction to the Book of Romans by Martin Luther, and in that moment, Wesley described feeling his heart “strangely warmed”. He felt a deep sense of God’s love and assurance that his sins were forgiven through faith in Christ alone. But regardless of other people’s experiences of God, our testimonies of how we discovered God’s grace are deeply personal and can impart an important message to those who are yet to be saved.

There was that day when we came to the cross of Jesus, confessing and repenting of our sins, and feeling that peace within us, knowing that we were now blameless before God. We too experienced hearts that were “strangely warmed”, assured of our salvation and eternal life with God Himself in Heaven one day. But to be blameless, we also had to be given Jesus’ righteousness through God’s grace. Just stop and think for a moment. No matter how dark our lives had been, we could be “free from all blame” through Jesus. What a wonderful Saviour! Just a note of caution however, and a sobering thought. If we now stand before God, righteous in His sight, what does that mean for the way we live our lives? It’s somehow easier to repent of our sins, than live a life of righteousness, God’s way? Hmmm…

David wrote, “For I have kept the ways of the Lord; I have not turned from my God to follow evil. I have followed all his regulations; I have never abandoned his decrees. I am blameless before God; I have kept myself from sin” (Psalm 18:21-23). In the New Testament we read, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight … ” (Ephesians 1:4). We pilgrims were destined to be God’s children, without any baggage of blame and sin. We pilgrims are indeed blameless in God’s sight, but it would be grossly dishonouring to Him if we proceeded to live a sinful life, ignoring our responsibilities as His children. Peter wrote 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“. Peter went on to describe our status and responsibilities in God’s Kingdom – “Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honourable behaviour, and they will give honour to God when he judges the world” (1 Peter 2:11-12). As “God’s very own possession” we have the responsibility to live our lives God’s way. Some would say that we are not under such a heavy burden, because we have been set free by the Holy Spirit. Although there is some truth in that, having been set free from the Law, but in my heart can I really not live a life honouring to God? There is a critical balance between legalism and freedom, and one we work out with our amazing and gracious God, day by day.

Father God. We love You, our wonderful Heavenly Father. Our worship is Yours by right, and we are deeply thankful for being Your children. Please help us to live lives honouring to You. In Jesus’ name. Amen.


 

Sins and Wickedness

Posted on by korgrocker

“O God, you take no pleasure in wickedness; you cannot tolerate the sins of the wicked. Therefore, the proud may not stand in your presence, for you hate all who do evil. You will destroy those who tell lies. The Lord detests murderers and deceivers.”
Psalm 5:4-6 NLT

David started this Psalm groaning and crying for help. But after praying he waited on God expectantly, waiting for an answer to his woes. In the meantime, he reminded God of some things, perhaps to help Him along to reaching a decision over what was making him groan. In the three verses today, David mentioned things that God cannot accept – sins, wickedness, pride, evil, murderers and deceivers. None of these character traits found in human beings will ever be found in Heaven, in God’s presence. In fact, they will be judged and punished long before the people concerned got anywhere near God’s domain. God knows that He is holy and pure, and there is no way anything will be allowed to violate who He is. He knows all about these things so why was David reminding Him about them? Probably because listings them will act as a warning both to himself and to others. All types of sin, regardless of what they are and where they have come from, will one day be dealt with.

David lists some reactions of God to his list of sins. God takes “no pleasure in wickedness”, He “cannot tolerate the sins of the wicked”, the proud will not “stand in [His] presence”, He hates “all who do evil”, liars will be destroyed, and God “detests murderers and deceivers”. But in today’s more theologically liberal wings of the Christian church, such Godly sentiments would be rejected. Such doctrinal adherents say that God is love, and therefore would not have such negative emotions. Can a God of love actually hate someone, even if they are evil, they say? But such people forget that God has many attributes to add to His perfect love – righteousness, justice and holiness to name just three.  David had a wonderful relationship with God and he knew God loved him, but he also knew that God’s love could not be overruled by evil.

We pilgrims are, and will be eternally, grateful for Jesus and His demonstration of God’s love and grace to a wicked and evil world. Jesus proclaimed to the world that all those who believed in Him would inherit eternal life. But His message was underpinned by David’s experience of God, in that a person’s belief in Jesus had behind it the whole message of repentance and forgiveness, grace and salvation. There is no way a believer can accept what God has rejected, so we pilgrims follow too the way of holiness and purity, in preparation for our lives in Heaven.

Dear Father God. Thank You for Jesus, Your Son, and His sacrificial death at Calvary, opening a door for mankind to walk through into Your presence, holy and forgiven. Amen.

Holy Sacrifice

Posted on by korgrocker

“Now I am coming to you. I told them many things while I was with them in this world so they would be filled with my joy. I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. They do not belong to this world any more than I do. Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth. Just as you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world. And I give myself as a holy sacrifice for them so they can be made holy by your truth.”
John 17:13-19 NLT

That was the thing about Jesus’ death – He made Himself a holy sacrifice. He allowed His death to take place, even though He had every option at His Father’s disposal to stop it. And His sacrifice involved the death of a sinless Person so it was the ultimate miscarriage of justice. So why did Jesus go through with one of the most painful deaths mankind has ever so cruelly invented?

Right at the beginning of His ministry Jesus told Nicodemus how His life would end. John 3:14-15, “And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life“. Throughout Jesus’ three years or so in His ministry to His people, the spectre of the Cross was hanging over Him. To a human person with that knowledge, that would immediately initiate a mode of life focussed on self-preservation, and if Jesus adopted the attitude, then that would have fatally skewed the impact of His ministry years. And we of course remember the Old Testament prophetic ministries that didn’t end well – we can read about some of them in Hebrews 11. These were prophets and men of God who cared little for their lives, in the light of their focus and dedication to speaking out God’s message. But how was Jesus’ death a “holy sacrifice”?  

Jesus’ ministry was to His own people, the Jews. They were a people who were well used to blood sacrifices as part of their religion. To them, blood had a special significance. In Leviticus 5:5-6, 9 we read, “When you become aware of your guilt in any of these ways, you must confess your sin. Then you must bring to the Lord as the penalty for your sin a female from the flock, either a sheep or a goat. This is a sin offering with which the priest will purify you from your sin, making you right with the Lord … Then he will sprinkle some of the blood of the sin offering against the sides of the altar, and the rest of the blood will be drained out at the base of the altar. This is an offering for sin“. But we can find out Jesus’ mission in Hebrews 10:8-10, “First, Christ said, “You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings or burnt offerings or other offerings for sin, nor were you pleased with them” (though they are required by the law of Moses). Then he said, “Look, I have come to do your will.” He cancels the first covenant in order to put the second into effect. For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time“. Accepting the sacrifice of Jesus would be of seismic proportions to the Jews. To do away with the old covenant of blood sacrifices with a once and for all sacrifice by the sinless God-Man Jesus was too big a leap for most of them, even though there had been so many Old Testament prophecies about the coming Messiah. 

The writer of the Hebrews epistle put his finger on the truth and purpose of Jesus’ sacrifice when he wrote, “For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time”. The blood of Jesus was and is sufficient to fulfil the demands of a sacrifice to appease God’s judgement for sin. And it is for that reason that when people come to stand before God it will not be their good works that will save them. There is only one remedy for sin and that is through Jesus’ “holy sacrifice”. There are heart-wrenching stories of good people who have gone to extraordinary lengths to help their friends and relatives, even putting their own lives in danger in the process. There are also many stories of people who sit at the bedside of a dying relative comforting themselves in their grief with the thought that they will see them again one day, thinking that their grandmother will soon be comforted in Heaven by their husband/mother/father who died before them. Such feelings also emerge in the crematorium as the coffin disappears behind the curtain, fuelled by thoughts that there must be something good the other side of the Great Divide. And I’m sure that God’s mercy will be present in the case of all human beings who die and leave this life. But His love has to be tempered by His holiness and righteousness. Nothing sinful can ever enter into heaven to be in the presence of God. If God allows everyone into Heaven, regardless of whether or not the person believed in Him, regardless of whether or not they have confessed their sins, then what was the point of Jesus’ “holy sacrifice”? Hmmm….  

Dear Father God. You are holy and righteous, and perfect in all Your ways. We worship You today. Amen.

Holiness and Truth

Posted on by korgrocker

“Now I am coming to you. I told them many things while I was with them in this world so they would be filled with my joy. I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. They do not belong to this world any more than I do. Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth. Just as you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world. And I give myself as a holy sacrifice for them so they can be made holy by your truth.”
John 17:13-19 NLT

Jesus prayed, “Make them holy by Your truth”, and He mentioned this again at the end of verse 19. What did He mean by this? How can truth make us holy? To answer that we have to consider the two words involved. God’s holiness is His absolute and complete perfection. In God there is not even a hint of unrighteousness. Everything about God is perfect. Perfect love. Perfect grace. Perfect everything. And this applies to truth as well. His truth is the only and perfect truth. God’s truth is absolute. So, in God, the one doesn’t make the other. He is perfect holiness and perfect truth. So, from that bedrock, that foundation, we then turn to what the Bible says.

Peter wrote to believers in 1 Peter 1:15-16, “But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy””. Over the page we read, “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” (1 Peter 2:9). So, believers must aspire to be holy just as God is. But becoming holy is a lifetime’s work. Sin is always knocking at the doors of our hearts and we must stay close to Jesus and His cross for our redemption and forgiveness. The process of becoming holy we call sanctification and it is a major part of our pilgrimage to Heaven.

But how can truth make us holy? Jesus helped in His prayer when he said, “teach them Your Word, which is truth”. The Bible, God’s Word, is a gold mine of truths, all of which will make us holy, if we apply them to our lives. For example, we read the Ten Commandments and find truths for holiness. We read the Beatitudes and find more. But something we soon find is that holiness cannot be achieved through our own efforts. The Pharisees tried it, and, full of pride, thought that they had achieved it. Matthew 23, though, records what Jesus thought about the Pharisees, and His closing words include, “Snakes! Sons of vipers! How will you escape the judgment of hell?” (Matthew 23:33). 

We pilgrims are a sanctified people, a people who are set apart from the worldliness around us. In bygone days, some excluded themselves from society, dedicating their lives to being monks or nuns, people who dedicated their lives to prayer. They declared their sanctified status by dressing and living in a certain way, and the custom even continues today, with the ministers of certain denominations wearing what are called “dog collars”. But true sanctification is what is happening in a person’s heart. The outward signs of holiness must start inside. Jesus said in Matthew 23:25-26, “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and self-indulgence! You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too“. 

Step by step we pilgrims march on, and in the process we pursue a life of holiness. We allow the Holy Spirit to reveal within us the parts that are making us unholy, and we slowly do what He suggests, always bearing in mind Hebrews 12:14, “Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord“. “Working” at becoming holy is not an easy process but thankfully God is patient.

Dear God. Only you are holy. Only You have the Words to help us and the grace to make it happen. We worship You today. Amen.

Entirely Clean

Posted on by korgrocker

“Simon Peter exclaimed, “Then wash my hands and head as well, Lord, not just my feet!” Jesus replied, “A person who has bathed all over does not need to wash, except for the feet, to be entirely clean. And you disciples are clean, but not all of you.” For Jesus knew who would betray him. That is what he meant when he said, “Not all of you are clean.””
John 13:9-11 NLT

Sandals were common footwear in those days, and inevitably a person’s feet became dirty and grimy after walking anywhere. In that dry and hot climate, roads and paths would have been very dusty, and of course the proliferation of livestock would have introduced more unpleasant factors. So Jesus spoke the obvious when He said that a person who had just bathed would have been clean, except for his feet. But Jesus introduced a spiritual hint into the conversation when He said that not all the disciples were “clean”. 

Spiritual cleanliness was very much sought after in Jewish life. This had roots in the idea that touching certain animals, for example, would make a person ceremonially “unclean”. Leviticus 5:2, “Or suppose you unknowingly touch something that is ceremonially unclean, such as the carcass of an unclean animal. When you realize what you have done, you must admit your defilement and your guilt. This is true whether it is a wild animal, a domestic animal, or an animal that scurries along the ground”. A skin disease such as leprosy could also be considered to make a person “unclean”. Leviticus 13:3, “The priest will examine the affected area of the skin. If the hair in the affected area has turned white and the problem appears to be more than skin-deep, it is a serious skin disease, and the priest who examines it must pronounce the person ceremonially unclean.” Jesus was scathing about the cleansing rituals undertaken by the Pharisees – Luke 11:38-39, “His host was amazed to see that he sat down to eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony required by Jewish custom. Then the Lord said to him, “You Pharisees are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and wickedness!” Of course God’s original intention was to relate holiness to a person’s spiritual condition through everyday objects and customs. Leviticus 10:10, “You must distinguish between what is sacred and what is common, between what is ceremonially unclean and what is clean.”

Thankfully, we pilgrims are not subject to all the Jewish rules and regulations that refer to ceremonial cleansing. We know that our state of physical cleanliness is not related to our spiritual state. Through Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins by the shedding of His blood at Calvary we are made “clean” spiritually, and attain the holiness that God demands. Ephesians 4:24, “Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.” David wrote in his 24th Psalm, “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, Nor sworn deceitfully” (Psalm 24:3-4). At the moment of salvation, we are made completely clean and righteous before God and only then can we share in His godliness.

Dear Holy God. We too need to be holy to come into Your presence, our hands clean and hearts pure. Thank You for Jesus, who made it all happen. Amen.

Make Every Effort

Posted on by korgrocker

“And so, dear friends, while you are waiting for these things to happen, make every effort to be found living peaceful lives that are pure and blameless in his sight.”
2 Peter 3:14 NLT

Peter starts off this verse with a passive “wait”. As we pilgrims look forward to the new heavens and earth, we wait. I don’t suppose we have any choice, because only God knows the future and will make things happen according to His plans and purposes. But in that we can play our part. The previous verses in 2 Peter 3 implied that we have a role in hurrying along the coming “day of God”. We pray, we share our messages of hope, we praise and worship the coming King. We do all we can and we wait, but Peter came up with another specific requirement. He wrote “make every effort” to do something else – “to be found living …”. We need to get ready for the coming Lord, and in an active way that will impact every remaining moment of our lives. 

Firstly, Peter wrote that we should be found “living peaceful lives”. That has two element to it – living at peace with those around us, but more challenging perhaps, living at peace with ourselves. The first is perhaps one in which we can work at quite easily. We avoid doing anything that will upset anyone else. Paul wrote in Romans 12:18, “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men“. The writer to the Hebrews went a step further, “Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). It will take effort, but it is achievable. There will of course always be those looking for a fight, but as the Proverb says, “A gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make tempers flare” (Proverbs 15:1). With the Holy Spirit within us, we are empowered to live at peace with those around us. So when we face a difficult situation, we pray for the right response. When someone provokes us, we remain silent. When we have the opportunity to stand up for ourselves, perhaps if wrongly accused, we gently and non-confrontationally, state our case. When Jesus was before Pilate, we read in Matthew 27:12, “But when the leading priests and the elders made their accusations against him, Jesus remained silent“. Jesus also said, “And when you are brought to trial in the synagogues and before rulers and authorities, don’t worry about how to defend yourself or what to say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what needs to be said” (Luke 12:11-12). So as far as we are able, we live at peace with those around us.

But, secondly, what about inner peace? There is a worldly route to inner peace and tranquillity, the “gurus” will claim, through meditation, mindfulness, the use of therapists and other strange and, in the end, useless methods. There is only one route to inner peace, peace with ourselves, and that is through Jesus. He is the Prince of Peace. Inner peace is wholeness in mind and spirit, and it includes our consciences. Many people suffer dreadfully from a lack of inner peace because they are full of guilt and their consciences are constantly nagging them, dragging them down. They can become ill with symptoms caused by their mental chaos. So they end up with a psychiatrist who may help for a while, but in the end it is only God who can heal an inflamed and enraged conscience. Confession and restitution can work wonders in restoring an inner peace. In the world around us there is much that can cause us anxiety and destroy that inner peace. Wars, political instability, secular ideologies and so on. But these are all temporary phenomena and boulders put there by the enemy to trip us up and destroy our peace. We pilgrims look beyond the circumstances at the horizon where we see the emerging light of a new dawn. 

Peter wrote that our lives must be “pure and blameless in his sight”. It’s all about holiness and there is a connection with peace. Our lives must be found to be holy in His sight and there is only one way – Jesus. We reach out again to Him today, connecting with the Prince of Peace, the Lord of lords, the King of kings, our wonderful Saviour.

Dear Prince of Peace. We thank You for Your words of eternal life, bringing us a future and a hope. Amen.

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