Reigning With Christ

Posted on by korgrocker

“You think you already have everything you need. You think you are already rich. You have begun to reign in God’s kingdom without us! I wish you really were reigning already, for then we would be reigning with you.”
1 Corinthians 4:8 NLT

Paul suggested with a bit of sarcasm that the Corinthians had begun to “reign in God’s Kingdom” without involving Paul and Apollos and, presumably, other leaders sent to bless this wayward congregation. They had developed this line of thinking because they thought they were already receiving the future blessings of Heaven in their earthly lives, not understanding that they had much to learn and consequently receive. God had graciously provided all the spiritual gifts they needed, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:7, “Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed“. So perhaps the Corinthians thought that they didn’t need anything more, but Paul administered a good dose of realism with 1 Corinthians 1:26-27, “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong“. But their worldly behaviour in judging the merits of Paul and Apollos exposed a reality gap between what they thought they had become and what they really were. These were just ordinary people saved by God’s grace, but still needing the basics of God’s teaching so that they would grow up to become the people of the Spirit that God desired. 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, “Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you, I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in Christ. I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready, for you are still controlled by your sinful nature. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your sinful nature? Aren’t you living like people of the world?” The Corinthians seemed to have become so arrogant that they believed that they were “reigning with Christ” already, not realising that their worldly behaviour was getting in the way of God’s purposes.

So what does “reigning with Christ” really mean? In Romans 5:17, we receive some insight that provides an answer: “For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!” Unbelievers live in a kingdom where death reigns. Romans 5:14, “Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come”. Because of Adam, sin always brings death. Death became king. It ruled the lives of every person born from Adam, and it still rules our societies today. Until the point when we pilgrims became believers in Jesus, we too were living in the kingdom of this world, living in a place that was without hope and subject to a curse that would result in our ultimate “death” in a place we call hell. Of course, we are referring to spiritual death, and we know that through Jesus, life will reign supreme and eternal. Through His grace, we are reigning in God’s Kingdom, and it is all about Him, Jesus our Saviour. In other words, receiving God’s justification by placing our faith in Christ not only frees us from the kingdom of death, it allows us to rule in the kingdom of life alongside Jesus, as the very children of God.

Do we reign with Christ today? Romans 8:15-17 (MSG), “This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!” We pilgrims know the future because we have faith in God and His promises. But in the here and now, we receive a foretaste of what is to come, because we are co-heirs with Christ “Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings so that we may also share in his glory” (Romans 8:17 NIV), but we note the added caveat – “sharing in [Christ’s] sufferings”. But what does this suffering look like? Well, for a start, we will be persecuted. It may be in a low-key way here in the West, or it may come to physical harm, as in other parts of the world. We will be ostracised in the office or in any other social gathering, considered as having “weird” beliefs. If we stand firm in our faith, it may reduce job opportunities and even exclusion from certain jobs. And we must also die to our previous sinful lives so that we can live a life of purity and holiness. 

If we wish to “reign with Christ” there is a cost, but ” … the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast” (1 Peter 5:10). Our life on this earth seems to have the potential to go on forever when a person is young, but the reality is that, compared to eternity, it is little more than a puff of wind. So, fellow pilgrims, let us reign together in God’s Kingdom, set free through the blood of Christ.

Dear Father in Heaven. Please help us in our lives today, as we reach out to You for the resources we need to be Your people of faith in a dark, sinful world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Judgments

Posted on by korgrocker

“My conscience is clear, but that doesn’t prove I’m right. It is the Lord himself who will examine me and decide. So don’t make judgments about anyone ahead of time—before the Lord returns. For he will bring our darkest secrets to light and will reveal our private motives. Then God will give to each one whatever praise is due.”
1 Corinthians 4:4-5 NLT

Good news and bad news are coming on the Day of Judgment when the Lord returns. This will not be the time of the Great White Throne judgment, when all those whose names are not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life will find out their ultimate destination, an eternity spent in the company of the devil and his demons in a place called hell. No, this will be the Bema Judgement Seat of Christ, so named after the Greek word “Bema” meaning “judgement seat”, that we find in Romans 14:10, which reads, “So why do you condemn another believer? Why do you look down on another believer? Remember, we will all stand before the judgment seat of God”. Although this verse refers to God being the Judge, we know from John 5:22 that it will be Christ sitting on the Bema. This verse reads, “Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son”. So, the bad news for us believers is not having to fear the thought of spending eternity in hell, but that God “will bring our darkest secrets to light and will reveal our private motives”. That is for us pilgrims, and I don’t know about you, but the exposure of my “darkest secrets” will make for an uncomfortable time. The only mitigating factor is that everyone else’s “darkest secrets” are probably just as bad. But we also have some good news coming. Firstly, our salvation will be intact. This matter was settled by Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf ( 1 John 2:2, “He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins—and not only our sins but the sins of all the world“) and our faith in Him (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“). Secondly, Paul wrote that “God will give to each one whatever praise is due“. Will this be the time when we will hear Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21, “The master was full of praise. ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together! ’”). 

Just as an aside, consider this word “eternity”. The natural view is to look at it from our perspective of time, meaning “eternity” is time without a beginning or an end. But “eternity” does not consist, in my view, of clocks ticking away forever. I prefer a definition of “eternity” as a state existing outside of time, meaning it is not subject to the passage of time as we experience it. Imagine all the things that are subject to the ravages of time lasting for all “eternity”. Our eternal bodies will never wear out, and many things more, but “eternity” is something that we will not be able to get our human-bound minds around in this life, but there is a time coming when we will be able to. 

But Paul was reflecting on the human tendency to judge others. We go through our lives making judgments all the time, purely because we have to. It is part of human existence. For example, if we see a person walking towards us, we subconsciously make a judgment to protect ourselves, just in case the person approaching us wants to do us harm. Most of the time, no action is required, but occasionally we will think it prudent to cross the road just in case. Or in a conversation, a statement made by the other person will require analysis and judgment to extract what it means for us. For example, if my boss at work starts talking about redundancies, I will immediately start to judge what he is saying, whether it will impact me. But on a more negative note, all the time we have our value systems at work, we judge others against them. And that is where the problem can lie, because most of the time our values are based on how a person looks, dresses or behaves, rather than what really exists within their hearts. Our values are established from an early age and reflect what we have been taught in the nurturing years. But our values do not provide us with a system for making judgments that is worth anything. God is the only Person qualified to judge. His “value system” is true, righteous, and just.

So what will happen when we give an account of our lives to Jesus? He will inspect our work. What did we do with the resources God gave us? How faithful were we? Were we yielded to the Spirit, seeking to honour Christ and further His work in the world? Did we neglect our opportunities to serve the Lord? In Matthew 10:41-42, Jesus said, “If you receive a prophet as one who speaks for God, you will be given the same reward as a prophet. And if you receive righteous people because of their righteousness, you will be given a reward like theirs. And if you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers, you will surely be rewarded“. It doesn’t matter how small something we have done for Jesus is, because each act of service will have a reward. The converse is also true, with neglect leading to a loss of reward. 

So, Paul advised the Corinthians to not get ahead of themselves and instead leave judgment to the Lord. Only Jesus is qualified to judge, and this will happen one day. If people, particularly other believers, act in ways that violate our values, we must not judge them, and instead we must pray for them. And if we can do that, it takes the pressure off us. One day, everyone will have to stand before one of two judgment seats and starting that process ourselves ahead of time is pointless.

Dear Heavenly Judge. We know that it is only You who is qualified to judge the human race. Please help us to look at our fellow members of society, believers and unbelievers, through Your eyes. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

A Clear Conscience

Posted on by korgrocker

“As for me, it matters very little how I might be evaluated by you or by any human authority. I don’t even trust my own judgment on this point. My conscience is clear, but that doesn’t prove I’m right. It is the Lord himself who will examine me and decide.”
1 Corinthians 4:3-4 NLT

Did Paul really not care much for the opinions of others? Was he behaving with an inbuilt arrogance that clouded his judgment and the way he conducted himself in his life? Was he going to continue to teach the Corinthians in the way he thought best without any reference to what other people thought of either him or his teachings? If we try and step into Paul’s shoes, what would we think about ourselves? Paul stated quite clearly that those in the Corinthian church who chose to judge him were of little consequence to him. But that is a hard place to be in, because if we took that approach, it would tend to exclude people who otherwise would affirm us, something that all human beings need. It’s not easy to be the unpopular one in the office who is shunned by the other workers. Or the one who walks into a social gathering and finds that the conversations taking place go silent. And all because the opinions of others are against us. To Paul, such a reaction “matters very little” to him because he was focused on one thing and one thing only – the propagation of the Gospel. He then said he had a clear conscience, because to Paul, there was only one evaluation or judgment that mattered, and that was from the Lord Himself. Paul added a caveat that even though his conscience was clear, that didn’t mean that he was right. We know that humans have a tendency to view themselves incorrectly; Jeremiah wrote, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” (Jeremiah 17:9). What was he getting at? It was because human beings can distort what they think about themselves, instead forming a subjective assessment ultimately driven by their sinful natures. 

Paul knew that it was Jesus who would ultimately provide an assessment, and to him, this was the only one that mattered. He had trusted his life to serving God one hundred per cent, a trust that extended into how he delivered the message that God had given him. His trust in God extended into his behaviour, his personal safety, every facet of his life, and he had a total disregard for anything, even his own life, that would get in the way of his mission. The next verse in Jeremiah drove his opinion of himself, “But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve” (Jeremiah 17:10). Paul was never going to be diverted from his mission field because that was all that mattered to him.

Paul said he had a “clear conscience”, but what was that? One definition of a conscience is “an inner feeling that acts as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behaviour”. We know that we have done wrong because we have these nagging thoughts that won’t go away until we have put right the issue that caused them. A conscience is not just the domain of believers because unbelievers can also have a guilty conscience, perhaps caused when a misdemeanour violates one of our many laws, or their own inbuilt sense of human decency. Perhaps a parent is ashamed of an outburst against an unruly child, and then their conscience nags away at them. Perhaps a husband’s unfaithful behaviour towards his wife develops into a guilty conscience which won’t go away, and he tries all sorts of remedies to dull the pain, alcohol, drugs or even regular visits to a therapist. But it is only God who can take away the pain of a guilty conscience because ultimately, a violated conscience is caused by sin, rebellion against Him. In the Old Testament days, the sin which was the root behind a guilty conscience was redeemed by the shedding of blood through an animal sacrifice. But Jesus came to change all of that, because His blood sacrifice was once and for all, for all who put their trust and faith in Him. Hebrews 10:21-22, “And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water“. I love the verses in Psalm 103, “He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. …  He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west” (Psalms 103:3, 12). We believers have a tendency to go back to the memories of sins that we have committed in the past, and we bring them once again before the Cross, asking for forgiveness. But Jesus asks, “What sin is that?” because when we repented of it the first time, the record was deleted. The sin data no longer exists, and no app in the world can ever recover the record from the sin archives. It’s gone for good. 

It is a wonderful place to be, to have a “clear conscience”. Jesus said, “So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free” (John 8:36). Paul may have had to face many difficulties – we can read all about them in 2 Corinthians 11 – but he did so with a “clear conscience”. We pilgrims too, can experience a “clear conscience” because we are followers of Christ, blood-bought, and forgiven. Nothing will get in the way of our acceptance into Heaven, and we read the confirmation in Romans 8:38-39, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord“. So, if we are feeling a bit wobbly about our faith, we must read over and over again Romans 8, and drum into our very souls. When we feel ostracised and shunned by those around us read Romans 8:31, “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” Psalm 118:6, “The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?” In the end I would much rather have God’s endorsement than one from people around me. There is an old Gladys Knight song (Midnight Train to Georgia) where the chorus includes the line, “I’d rather live in his world than live without him in mine”. And that is my place today – “I’d rather live in His world than live without Him in mine”. And I’m sure Paul is humming that tune today, because after his Damascus Road conversion, the rest of his life was spent in God’s world. I know that I am now a citizen of Heaven, temporarily assigned to living out my days in the kingdom of the world, and so is each one of us pilgrims, but one day we will all be in God’s world. Forever and ever. Amen?

Dear Father God, we thank You for Your presence in our lives, because without You and Your Kingdom, we would be lost and without hope. Thankfully, because of Jesus, we are assured of a future with You. We worship You today. Amen.


Servants of Christ

Posted on by korgrocker

“So look at Apollos and me as mere servants of Christ who have been put in charge of explaining God’s mysteries. Now, a person who is put in charge as a manager must be faithful. As for me, it matters very little how I might be evaluated by you or by any human authority. I don’t even trust my own judgment on this point.”
1 Corinthians 4:1-3 NLT

Paul continued to write about the role of Apollos and himself in the next chapter. Consider us as managers (other Bible versions use the word “stewards”), he said, “mere servants of Christ”; Paul and Apollos were two men whose role was to teach the people about “God’s mysteries”. Typically for Paul, he was downplaying his role in the eyes of the Corinthian believers, telling them not to put either him or Apollos on a pedestal. They were just ordinary men with the ability of being able to teach and serve the people. Paul went on to explain that he wasn’t concerned with what the Corinthians thought of him, and then he said that he didn’t “even trust [his] own judgment on this point”. 

In the previous chapter, Paul explained the role of himself and Apollos, and by implication any other teacher who came to their church, as being the Lord’s workers. 1 Corinthians 3:5, “After all, who is Apollos? Who is Paul? We are only God’s servants through whom you believed the Good News. Each of us did the work the Lord gave us“. In 1 Corinthians 2:1-2, Paul made very clear his role in coming to Corinth, “When I first came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn’t use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God’s secret plan. For I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the crucified one“. So what was it about the Corinthians that made Paul respond in the way he did? News had obviously got back to him that worldliness had crept into the church there, and the people were in a state of division, spending their time arguing about the merits or otherwise of the men who were serving them from the pulpit. But Paul said quite simply that he and Apollos were just “servants of Christ”.

So what makes a person a “servant of Christ”? Of course, Jesus was the ultimate example. He said, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). This was a message that Jesus laid down for His disciples, and we read in the previous chapter, “He sat down, called the twelve disciples over to him, and said, “Whoever wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else”” (Mark 9:35). Paul wrote in Philippians 2:5-7, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness”. And as we read all about Jesus’s ministry years, we see the God-man going about Palestine serving all who came to Him. For example, look at Matthew 15:29, “Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them“. No mention by Jesus about taking a lunch break or clocking off at 5pm. He was there for the people, serving the “great crowds”. Jesus also said, “However, those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them” (John 6:37). That’s servanthood.

In his role as a “mere servant of Christ”, Paul also said he was a manager or steward of the work entrusted to him. A steward is a servant who manages his master’s property, and stewards must be found to be faithful people of high integrity, working with excellence and honesty. But all this applies to us pilgrims as well. We are not only “servants of Christ” but we are also stewards, entrusted with sharing the wonderful truth of the Message of the Cross, the Gospel. But we mustn’t forget that we take the attitude of servanthood into the workplace, as Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:7-8, “Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free”. That can be a hard one, particularly if we are stuck in a boring and unfulfilling job.

Servanthood is at the very heart of our faith. Before we look to our own needs, we look to the needs of others. We put aside what we are doing, no matter how inconvenient it is, to meet someone else’s needs, serving them with love, kindness and compassion. And we look to Jesus as our Saviour and example. He said, “ … “‘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). God first and everyone else second, with an emphasis that we treat and serve them as we would like others to treat and serve us. Who is our neighbour? Well, that’s for another day.

Heavenly Father, we worship You with grateful hearts, grateful for all You have done for us. Please help us as we look for opportunities to serve others, day by day. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Temple of God (1)

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

In these two verses in 1 Corinthians, Paul describes a “temple” that consists of all the people in the Corinthian church and he used an analogy of a physical building to describe a spiritual equivalent Already Paul has described the believers in Corinth as a field and building (1 Corinthians 3:9, “For we are both God’s workers. And you are God’s field. You are God’s building”) and now he is telling them that they are God’s temple, all corporate analogies for an ideal Christian church. Such a body of believers started with the “seed” of the Gospel, was then built up by the “washing of the word”, and was now functioning as a Holy-Spirit-indwelling group capable of doing much for God. Or they should have been. We know that the Corinthian church started life in the home of Titius Justus, a Gentile believer who lived next to the synagogue in Corinth (Acts 18), and the believers there then probably met in different home groups as the church grew in numbers. We remember the origins of the early church in Jerusalem from Acts 2:42, 46, “All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer. …  They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity”.  So probably the Corinthian believers did the same, hiring a hall when needed, much as new churches and fellowships do today. But Paul wasn’t bothered by buildings and was only concerned with the “building” that mattered – a group of Spirit-filled believers in whom the Holy Spirit could thrive.

Further on in his first Corinthian letter, Paul reminded the believers there that their bodies individually were “temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19), but we’ll get to that later. In the meantime, Paul could see the potential of the Holy Spirit working through a group of Spirit-filled believers in what could be achieved for God. But Paul mildly rebuked the believers in Corinth because he had a concern. What was this? Well, first of all, there was sin present. He wrote, “for you are still controlled by your sinful nature. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your sinful nature? Aren’t you living like people of the world?” (1 Corinthians 3:3). One place the Holy Spirit cannot live is in an atmosphere of sin, and worldly people will not experience the indwelling of God’s Spirit. Another problem with these nascent believers was a lack of harmony between them. 1 Corinthians 1:10, “I appeal to you, dear brothers and sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, to live in harmony with each other. Let there be no divisions in the church. Rather, be of one mind, united in thought and purpose”. A lack of unity caused by factionalism will severely limit or even destroy the Holy Spirit’s power.

But Paul was on their case and knew what was holding them back. Of course, we believers today, pilgrims heading for glory, will never behave in such ways, but are our churches and fellowships filled with the power of the Holy Spirit with signs and miracles commonplace? In Acts 4, we read about a prayer meeting so powerful that the building shook. The prayer ended, “Stretch out your hand with healing power; may miraculous signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus” (Acts 4:30). The next verse then described what followed. “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”. Where is this power in our churches today? When was the last time we had a prayer meeting so powerful that the building shook? But we can’t look around at the other believers who worship with us. We have to look at ourselves and our desires for our group of believers. As an aside, we note that it wasn’t just a few believers who turned up for the prayer meeting; it was all the believers. Built together, we make up a corporate setting for the Holy Spirit to move, and if He doesn’t, what are we doing, or not doing, that is stopping him? 

The gift of the Holy Spirit was present in the Corinthian church regardless of their problems. We read in 1 Corinthians 1:7, “Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ”. Where did these gifts originate? With God Himself, He is not a stingy God who capriciously bestows gifts on a whim. We only have to ask Him for the gifts we need. Jesus said, “So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Luke 11:13). But there is a cost. If we want to be really Spirit-filled people of God, are we prepared for what follows? A power-filled people who attend prayer meetings and expect God to move? Like at the start of the Hebridean revival, where two old ladies, Peggie (who was blind) and Christine Smith, aged 84 and 82, decided to pray. They were greatly burdened because they’d been told no young person attended public worship at their church. They decided to pray twice a week. On Tuesdays and Fridays, they got on their knees at ten in the evening, and remained there until three or four in the morning; two old women in a very humble cottage. And that’s how revival in the Hebrides broke out, leaving a legacy that we can find today, half a century or more later. 

Does the Holy Spirit live within us, pilgrims? I’m sure He does, and He is always able and willing to touch those around us as we preach the Word of God with the same boldness as the Acts 4 Christians. I heard a preacher recently in his evangelist message say that he was a “space invader”. The use of this phrase probably gave away his age, but it is a telling description of someone, full of the Holy Spirit’s power, invading the space of people they meet. People around us are wandering around without hope and full of fear for the future. They need to hear Good News, but who is there to tell them except us? Of course, God could reveal Himself directly to anyone He chooses, but the reality is that He has chosen us pilgrims to do His work for him. So, full of the Holy Spirit’s power, that is what we must do. We may feel totally inadequate for the task, but with the Holy Spirit guiding us into all truth, how can we fail? We may get knockbacks. We may find a lack of fertile ground prepared for the seed we have ready and waiting to plant, but with perseverance, we will succeed because the One who is within us is greater than the one who is in the world.

Dear God. Please lead and guide us to the people You have prepared in advance and who are ready and waiting to hear Your Good News. Please empower us with all the right words to say, and help us speak Your message with boldness, so that the people will know that we have met Jesus. In His precious name. Amen.

Wall of Flames

Posted on by korgrocker

“For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ. Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value. If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.”
1 Corinthians 3:11-15 NLT

Paul wrote that there is a judgment day coming. But the description seemed to indicate that it will be a different occasion from the one in Revelation 20:11-12, “And I saw a great white throne and the one sitting on it. The earth and sky fled from his presence, but they found no place to hide. I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God’s throne. And the books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books”. The judgment Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 3:13 and 1 Corinthians 1:8 seemed to be for believers. Another Scripture to support this can be found in Romans 14:10-12, “So why do you condemn another believer? Why do you look down on another believer? Remember, we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For the Scriptures say, “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bend to me, and every tongue will declare allegiance to God.’” Yes, each of us will give a personal account to God”. Paul also made reference to this judgment day in his second epistle, 2 Corinthians 5:10 – “For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body”. So the conclusion that the theologians have drawn is quite clear – every person will one day have to stand before God to give an account of their lives. The unbelievers will be called to account in the Great White Throne judgment of Revelation 20, and the believers will be called to give an account of their lives to Christ. In the case of the believers’ judgement, the “builders”, those responsible for teaching and building up the people of God, will experience a judgement more severe than the believers they were teaching – James 3:1, “Dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church, for we who teach will be judged more strictly”. Believers will be called to give an account before Christ, and this is referred to as the “bema” seat judgment, “bema” coming from the Greek version of Romans 14:12.

So what do we pilgrims think of all this? Of course, we will be very relieved that we will not be called to stand before the Great White Throne to explain, as unbelievers will, about why they never believed in Jesus. Much will be said in mitigation, and we can be assured that the judgment and punishment will be fair, but there is only one verdict for those whose names are not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life – “guilty”. And the punishment will be severe and eternal. There are only two places where mankind can end up after death, and that is either in Heaven or hell. There is nowhere else. People who have rejected Heaven as their final home will by default have to spend eternity in the other place, along with the devil and his demons. In Philippians 2:9-11, we read that regardless of what they believe in this life, everyone who has ever lived, believer and unbeliever, will have to acknowledge the Lordship of Christ, “Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honour and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father“.

Believers, however, will still be required to give an account of their lives before Christ. What will this look like? First of all, it will not be a place where sin will be discussed, because Jesus came and died for the forgiveness of sins. 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“. About Jesus, John wrote in 1 John 2:2, “He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins—and not only our sins but the sins of all the world”. So all our sins are forgiven, and we will not have to give an account for any of them. What a relief! What a Saviour! All glory to the One who gave Himself for us! The confirming verse comes from the lips of Jesus Himself, “I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life” (John 5:24). No condemnation, as it says in Romans 8:1.

In Luke 19, Jesus told a parable about ten servants. They were each given a sum of money and were told to invest it. Other translations refer to “talents”, but either interpretation gives the picture of the King, God Himself, requesting His servants to use wisely the money, the gifts that He has given them. The picture also emerges that although different people had different amounts of gifts, they were nevertheless asked to account for how they used them, and importantly, the King did not ask for unrealistic returns. None of them were held to account for something that they did not have. But here’s the thing. The servant who had a gift, one talent, never used it, and suffered the consequences of having what he was given taken away from him. Note as well that the servants who did well with their gifts were given rewards. And that is the purpose of the believers’ judgment. It’s all about Jesus giving out rewards for faithful works of service. And will we hear Him say, “Well done …”? I hope so.

Near the end of his life, Paul wrote to Timothy and included the words, “And now the prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of his return. And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing” (1 Timothy 4:8). One day, faithful servants of Jesus will be given a crown. There’s another crown in James 1:12, “God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him“. And I’m sure there will be more, each one appropriate to the believer standing before Him and in accordance with what they have done for Jesus in this life here on earth.

Back in 1 Corinthians 3, we see a picture of those teachers (this might include us pilgrims, of course) being held to account for the quality of their teaching. Was it of poor quality, and unable to survive proper examination, the result being that it would disappear in fire? Or was it of a top-quality Gold standard, worthy of a reward from Jesus? Only time will tell, but in the meantime, we do our best for Jesus, not slacking from the works of service He has requested us to do. 

Dear Heavenly Father. We are so grateful for Jesus. Because of our faith in His atoning sacrifice, we are assured a future in Your presence. And it was all part of Your plan for our salvation. What can we do, other than bow before You in the deepest worship? Thank You. Amen.

Jesus Christ the Foundation (2)

Posted on by korgrocker

“For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ. Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value. If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.”
1 Corinthians 3:11-15 NLT

Paul wasn’t a builder by profession, although his job as a tent maker was close. In his life, he had probably seen buildings erected, and he knew the importance of foundations that would stand the test of time. And he also knew that, then, as now, society had a building industry that sometimes used cheaper and inferior materials, cutting corners and generating more profit for the builders. In the analogy that Paul was using, he was the one who laid the foundations for the Corinthian church. He came to Corinth in about 51AD and started to tell the Jews there about Jesus when he attended their synagogue. “Each Sabbath found Paul at the synagogue, trying to convince the Jews and Greeks alike” (Acts 18:4). But in the end, he gave up because of their hard hearts and left to start the church in a home next door to the synagogue. “Then he left and went to the home of Titius Justus, a Gentile who worshiped God and lived next door to the synagogue” (Acts 18:7). It was here that Paul laid the foundation for the Corinthian church, “So Paul stayed there for the next year and a half, teaching the word of God” (Acts 18:11). What did he teach? 1 Corinthians 2:2, “For I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified“. This is important in terms of foundation laying, because building on anything other than “Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified” would have been like building on the sand we considered yesterday in the parable of the wise and foolish builders. 

But over the years, there have been many churches, fellowships, groups, sects, and ideologies that all claim to have been founded on Jesus, but many have introduced a subtle change or interpretation that ignores the central facets of the Foundation and have built on something else. It started in the early church days with, for example, movements like Gnosticism. This centred on the idea of gnosis, or secret knowledge, that could liberate individuals from the material world and connect them with a higher spiritual realm. Key to Gnostic thought was the belief that the material world was inherently flawed or evil, created by a lesser deity, while a higher, transcendent God existed beyond it. This movement clashed with Jewish and Christian believers, who considered it for what it was – heresy. Then we have Marcionism, which believed that the God of the Old Testament was different from the God of the New Testament, and its followers rejected the Old Testament. And then we have the Montanists, which was a movement emphasising prophecy and the direct experience of the Holy Spirit, believing their revelations superseded existing Christian teachings. Many others flourished in those early days, and they all were marked out by their false foundations. 

In modern days, some sects that call themselves Christian have attracted followings and have established their own denominations and churches. For example, we have the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who believe that Jesus was not God, and the Mormons, who claim to be Christian but aren’t. Both of these have one thing in common, in that they claimed to have divine knowledge imparted to them by their own founders.  And there are other sects that have emerged over the years. Such groups and sects have confused and misguided people into believing something untrue. 

In yesterday’s blog, we considered Jesus, the only true Foundation. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). A bold and unequivocal statement that has been the true foundation of the Christian church ever since, and is something central to our faith. After Paul had established the Corinthian church, other men of God built up the believers there, men such as Apollos. What building materials did they use – “gold, silver, jewels?” or  “wood, hay, or straw”? The precious metals and gems were an analogy of the truth about Jesus and what He taught. In those days, there was no availability of the New Testament as we know it today, so the quality building materials used would have been through Godly men and women who knew the Truth. Paul gave a clue as to how when he wrote, “And my message and my preaching were very plain. Rather than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied only on the power of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:4). The quality builders like Paul and Apollos had one thing in common, and that was the revelation of Jesus through the Holy Spirit within them. We know this from John 16:13, “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“. Truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Truth in building the foundations and truth in building the Church. 

What would the “wood, hay or straw” have been? Teaching that distorts the message of Christ or waters down the truth. Such a definition fits very well with the JW and Mormon sects we have with us today. As another example, I was once in a church that decided to preach a series of sermons based on a popular Christian book. I can’t remember which one, but the issue for me was that the preachers were being a bit lazy in taking ready-made sermon material from a book rather than seeking the Holy Spirit for “gold, silver and jewels” to include in their messages. Another danger is with AI-based applications, such as using ChatGPT, which will provide a sermon outline very easily and plausibly. Did I use this when writing this blog or any other? No, I prefer to set down thoughts inspired by the Holy Spirit and God’s Word, the Bible. But back to our Corinthian builders. Did they end up building wood, hay or straw in the lives of their audience? As a warning, Paul went on to write what will happen on Judgement Day. On this terrible day, fire will destroy what is of no value, but more on this tomorrow.

In the meantime, are we pilgrims in a place where we are being built up by the washing of the Word? Ephesians 5:25-27, “For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault“. We need to be in a place where we can read, believe and apply God’s Word in our lives. Through personal study of the Bible and through listening attentively to the preaching of a Godly “builder” from the pulpit. There is no other way to be built up in our faith. We are built on the foundation of Jesus Christ, and our lives since have been built by following His truth, and none other.

Dear Lord Jesus, only You have the truth that leads to eternal life. Only You are the One who is the correct foundation for Your brothers and sisters in the faith. And we pray for our leaders, that You will lead and guide them in Your ways and in Your truth. In Your precious name. Amen.

Planting and Watering

Posted on by korgrocker

“For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not mere human beings? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe – as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.”
1 Corinthians 3:4-6 NIVUK

Paul planted the seed of the Gospel, the Message about Christ, in the hearts of the Corinthians believers. But not just in Corinth. Paul journeyed around the Middle East planting seeds in places like Ephesus, Galatia, Malta, Pamphylia, Antioch, and others, and in the process, Christianity spread eventually around the whole world, propagated by missionaries and ordinary people telling others about Jesus, many sent out by churches established by Paul. The heart of the Gospel is in the first two letters – “Go” – just as Jesus commanded in His last words on this earth in Acts 1:8, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”. We pilgrims, too, tell people about Jesus, people in our generation who are heading for a lost eternity. The Gospel is unstoppable, just as God’s love and grace are unstoppable. And of course, we remember that although the “seed” that we plant in people’s hearts is precious, it is not in short supply. The Gospel will never be rationed, but one day it will produce its final harvest when Jesus returns.

Jesus told a well-known parable about seed, and Bible translators call it the Parable of the Sower, but perhaps it should really be called the Parable of the Soils. This was a parable where Jesus helpfully explained what it meant to His disciples. The gist of the story is that the Farmer broadcast his seeds at random, leading to different results according to the ground where the seeds fell. The seed fell on the footpath, rocky soil, amongst weeds, and finally good soil. The seed that fell on the footpath failed to germinate, indicating that those who heard the message failed to understand what it meant, and the seed soon disappeared, snatched away by the devil. The seed that found itself amongst poor quality soil soon sprang up, but the soil was unable to sustain it because the roots could not grow. The problems of being a believer soon ensured that no fruit resulted because, although the person accepted and even believed the Message, their roots in the faith were insufficient to see them through. They started the journey on the narrow way, but soon decided that this wasn’t for them. The seed that found itself amongst the weeds and thorns found that although they were growing roots, the worldliness around them became a greater lure, and they too abandoned the narrow way that leads to Glory, and instead returned to their old ways. The Covid lockdown exposed many believers who found other things to do on a Sunday, and they ended up abandoning their faith, the golf course proving to be a better lure for a Sunday than a pew in their local church. The final type of soil was called good soil, and Jesus said, “The seed that fell on good soil represents those who truly hear and understand God’s word and produce a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted!” (Matthew 19:23).  

So Paul planted the seed of the Gospel in the hearts of the Corinthian believers, but before it could produce any fruit, it had to grow. How does that happen? In a natural environment, a seed grows using nutrients coming from the soil and the environment around it, always assisted by water, and it grows to produce fruit, such as wheat or barley. The analogy continues into the spiritual world, because the seed must grow to produce fruit in the lives of believers. Although it is possible for a believer to find their own source of sustenance, reading the Word and praying, it is always helpful to receive the nutrition of the preaching of the Word and the fellowship with other Christians. And that is what Apollos did. We know that he was an eloquent preacher from Acts 18:24-25a, “Meanwhile, a Jew named Apollos, an eloquent speaker who knew the Scriptures well, had arrived in Ephesus from Alexandria in Egypt. He had been taught the way of the Lord, and he taught others about Jesus with an enthusiastic spirit and with accuracy. … “. In other words, Apollos was good at spiritual husbandry, and “watered” the church in Corinth with his preaching of the Word “to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word”, (Ephesians 5:26). 

But we note that neither Paul nor Apollos were able to produce growth in the Corinthian Christians. Only God could do that. Galatians 5:22-23, “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!”. Of course, if the seed remained a seed, then there would be no fruit. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives” ( John 12:24). I once knew a man who accepted the Gospel and prayed the sinner’s prayer. But he thought that now he was a Christian, he needed to do no more, and he continued his life as it always had been. That is not God’s way, because He wants us to become more like Jesus. 

So we pilgrims are like seeds planted in good soil. The growth process may be slow. We may get discouraged and despondent sometimes, because the going can be tough. But nevertheless, we allow the Holy Spirit to grow us, step by step. We remember what Jesus said, “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” (John 16:33). James wrote, “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing” (James 1:2-4). And like Paul, each of us says, “I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us”  (Philippians 3:12-14). Three Scriptures that remind us that life for a believer will be hard sometimes, but we look ahead, allowing God to “water” us day by day, with deep thanks that we were a “seed” once but now growing up and producing the fruit of our salvation.

Dear Father God. You and You alone are the One we worship, and we thank You for caring so much about us as we walk on towards the goal of receiving the Heavenly prize to which we have been called. Amen.

Sinful Nature

Posted on by korgrocker

“Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in Christ. I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready, for you are still controlled by your sinful nature. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your sinful nature? Aren’t you living like people of the world?”
1 Corinthians 3:1-3 NLT

We all still have our “sinful nature”, unfortunately. Here is a definition of what this is: “the sinful nature is that aspect in humanity that makes us rebellious against God. When we speak of the sinful nature, we refer to the fact that we have a natural inclination to sin; given the choice to do God’s will or our own, we will naturally choose to do our own thing“. Paul was quite correct when he wrote, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard” (Romans 3:23). Parents know that a child will be drawn intuitively to sin, in that their behaviour, even when very young, will choose the wrong, sinful response rather than the right, sinless way. David knew that when he wrote Psalm 51, “For I was born a sinner— yes, from the moment my mother conceived me” (verse 5). Paul singled out problems experienced by the Corinthian church’s “sinful nature” – jealousy and quarrelling – and he concluded by suggesting they were “living like people of the world”.

Paul wrote about his personal frustration with his tendency to sin, “ …  The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate” (Romans 7:14b-15). He continues, “And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it” (Romans 7:18-20). And he concludes in verse 24, “Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?” And that is Paul, the great Apostle, saying what was on his heart. We pilgrims I’m sure, deep down will tick the same box that Paul did – in the natural, he, us, and the rest of mankind, all have “sinful natures”. 

So where did this “sinful nature” come from? We know from Genesis 1:27 that human beings were made in God’s image. Now, because God is a sinless, perfect Being, sin never originated with Him. How could it? But we can read what happened in Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve committed the very first sin, an act of rebellion and disobedience to God. And that has been the root of sin ever since. And in some strange way, the “sinful nature” has been passed on, generation to generation, a seemingly endless and depressing cycle that is impossible to break. Adam and Eve, we are told, brought forth a son called Cain, and he became the very first murderer. So human beings, with only one exception, are sinners, and will continue to be so until the End of the Age. The one exception is Jesus. He came to break this merry-go-round of sin and death, being born to a virgin, thus bypassing Adam’s curse. The sinless God-Man Jesus was able to become sin for all mankind, so that their “sinful natures” could be redeemed forever. 

Jesus said to Nicodemus that humans must be “born again” into a spiritual life worthy, through Jesus, of standing before God wearing His cloak of righteousness. John 3:5-6, “Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life“. Humans have been offered a way out of their sinfulness by believing in Jesus and accepting His substitutionary death in their place, allowing Him to take onto Himself the punishment for their sins. But that isn’t all, Paul wrote, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The Divine Exchange – Jesus took on our sin and in exchange He gave us His righteousness. That surely must make all us pilgrims everywhere fall on our knees with grateful, and eternal, thanks, because one day we will experience the reality of what the Apostle John wrote, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). We will be like Jesus on day. This is Good News indeed.

We pilgrims have a “sinful nature“, but we are no longer slaves to it. Jesus has set us free, and one day we will join Him in the place where he is building us a new home. The freedom from sin that we can enjoy now on this earth is the best news this planet has ever seen. Instead of becoming depressed by reading worldly news that is almost all bad, we can open the Book and read eternally good news. Long after all the wars, sickness, and death have disappeared, those believers like us will be enjoying a new life for all eternity, set free forever from the “sinful nature”. 

Father God, at that point of rebirth, our spiritual beings were born. Within us, we have two natures, one of sin and one sinless, but we pray that more and more the sinless being within us, the “new man”, will prevail. Please help us to live Your sinless way, every day. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

God’s Thoughts

Posted on by korgrocker

“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. No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.”
1 Corinthians 2:10-12 NLT

What were “these things” that God revealed “by His Spirit“? To answer that we have to rewind a bit in this letter to the Corinthian church, and we find that Paul was referring to “God’s Secret Plan” (1 Corinthians 2:1) and the “ …  mystery of God—his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began” (1 Corinthians 2:7). 

Paul pointed out that a human being, relying on his or her own wisdom and knowledge, would not understand and appreciate what this secret and mysterious plan of God was. Today, we have so-called wise people who have rejected the things of God and replaced Him with strange, idolatrous ideologies that are at variance with His “secret plan”. Such Godless people cry out, “What do we need a God for – we have all the knowledge and wisdom that we need”. The old Sinatra song “I’ll do it my way” comes to mind. But David had come up against such people in his day, and he wrote Psalm 14. “Only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, and their actions are evil; not one of them does good!” (Psalm 14:1). David continues in the next two verses, “The Lord looks down from heaven on the entire human race; he looks to see if anyone is truly wise, if anyone seeks God. But no, all have turned away; all have become corrupt. No one does good, not a single one!” Paul picked up this theme in Romans 1:18-19, “But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them”. In Romans 1:22-23, Paul wrote, “Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools”. What a damning indictment of all those people today who are chasing after strange ideologies that even reject the order God has created, let alone His thoughts, thinking they know better. But as we read in Psalm 2:4, “But the one who rules in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them“. And David finished Psalm 2 with “Submit to God’s royal son, or he will become angry, and you will be destroyed in the midst of all your activities— for his anger flares up in an instant. But what joy for all who take refuge in him!”.

But we can’t leave the terrible thoughts about what will happen to those people who have rejected God and have instead created ideological alternatives to replace Him. Back to Romans 1:24-27, “So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshipped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved”. In the end, God has said to those “wise” people that their foolish behaviour has consequences, in that He will abandon them to their sinful practices. Genesis 6:3a reveals that God’s patience with errant and evil human beings has a limit, “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with humans for ever, for they are mortal; …’“. Instead of saying to God “Your will be done”, they will hear Him say, “No – your will be done” and they will sadly end up facing the consequences of their sin.

Back to the thoughts of God. We can’t just sit down and logically think through ourselves, with the limited faculties that we have, about what God might be thinking. Such an approach is arrogant in the extreme. God has put in place a process within which His thoughts will be revealed to His people, believers like you and me, but to everyone else His thoughts will remain a secret. God has revealed His thoughts through his Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. The Members of the Trinity are in constant and intimate communication with each other, and those people who are filled with the Holy Spirit will find that they have access to God’s thoughts as well, as He graciously reveals to them. Paul wrote, “we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us” through “God’s own Spirit”. We mustn’t forget that God desires to communicate with His children. He wants to bridge the gulf between His spiritual world and our natural world. He did that through Jesus, and, as Jesus said to His disciples, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you for ever – the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17). Jesus ascended into Heaven, mission accomplished, but He left us His Spirit to lead and guide us. Of course, the Holy Spirit will not reveal to us all the thoughts of God at the same time. Such a data download would overwhelm us because God’s knowledge is far beyond, even infinitely beyond, what a human being can accept and understand. So the Holy Spirit gently and kindly reveals to us what God wants us to know with one aim – to help us to become more like His Son, Jesus. 

So do we pilgrims desire to know the thoughts of God? Do we want to know and understand His plans for us? Are we open to hearing the whisperings of the Holy Spirit in our very souls, leading and guiding us in His ways? Of course, we are, and we pray every day for more of His revelation for our lives, plans, with instructions for the day and days ahead. This is the only way to complete our journey to Heaven. Jesus said, “  …  ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”(John 14:6). How do we know the way to the Father? Through Jesus and His Spirit, He reveals to us His secret thoughts, thoughts designed to make us more like Him. 

Heavenly Father. We are indeed a blessed people, given access to Your thoughts. We pray for the ability to receive and understand them clearly day by day. In Jesus’ name. Amen.