Amazing Grace: A Matter of Being Lost

Like most people, I have found myself lost several times in my life.  The scene is almost always the same: you travel on under the assumption that you are going one way until at some point you come to a sign or a marker informing you that you are not only not where you expect yourself to be but, even more so, you are in fact lost, meaning that you do not know where you are of the more peculiar variety.

However, up to and until the point in which you are forced to reckon with the fact that you are lost, you  can go on for miles and miles assuming that you are, in your mind, not lost.  This internal sense that you are not lost is the very reason that any verification that you are, in actuality, lost must be of an external variety, i.e. a sign, post, marker, that eerily unfamiliar Denny's, et al.

It is only as one recognizes the externally verifiable locale of being lost that the internal transition can begin.  By 'internal transition' I mean the often difficult recognition of said lostness which prompts a recalibration of route in order to become un-lost.  This involves, more than anything, a drastic alteration in previous course and trajectory.

To accomplish this task it is said that re-tracing steps is a reliable way to change one's locational status from lost to un-lost, and while this may be true, I have always found it to be the more self-deprecating and longwinded method for relocation.  After all, the shortest way to get between two points is a straight line, or a teleporter, or a magic amour.  In the case of being lost, only the first seems reasonable or even possible (still holding my breath, though).

In the end, the first step of moving from being lost to un-lost is the realization that one is, in fact, lost.  This realization, like many that come about in life, is dependent upon the humbling recognition that you  are not where you think you are; as it turns out, this is the definition of lost.  But this recognition comes at the behest of the externalities that render the individual lost.  As far as I can tell, the bedroom never looks like the kitchen so if I find myself in a bed, I can be sure that I am not in a kitchen.

All of this has been an excessive attempt at creating a metaphor, an analogy of spiritual things.  Every human being is born lost.  We walk on through the wilderness of the world lost, totally lost.  Yet the true tragedy of this disorder is that we live under the illusion that we are not lost.  But this could not be further from the truth: we are lost.  The lost-ness that so blankets our eyes and veils our steps is sin, and it is sin that has caused the great separation reckoned to mankind, removing us from the sure footing of closeness to God to put us in the utter darkness of living life lost.

Yet as any man wandering far from his trail may become found simply by recognizing that he is lost from his surroundings and what they lack, so may the spiritually lost human being also cease to be lost in a blinking moment by recognizing the sign: Jesus saves and hunts for those who are lost.  This recognition involves two interrelated components: faith and repentance.  One must both recognize that she is lost as she determines to turn in a direction towards the un-lost (repentance), just as she must trust that the new direction will be fruitful for her to become and remain un-lost (faith).

While there is, to be sure, much more to say about this, it would suffice to state that it all comes down to Jesus.  He is the signpost of truth and He is the way.  If ever we were to cease to be lost, it is Jesus that sets us on the right path and it is He that directs right steps by the steadfast faithfulness and power of His Word.  Remember, "I once was lost but now am found."  He died so as to provide a way for us to no longer be lost; this is amazing grace.  Amen.

Are You Ready to Explain Jesus?

There is an overwhelming narrative point to be made by the New Testament Church.  They were singularly focused on preaching the Gospel to all who would hear.  They were wholly committed to proclaiming the good news about Christ Jesus, first to Jerusalem then to the world.  This attitude, this mission is to be further carried out by Christians today as well.  Truly, we are not off the hook.

While there are numerous verses that testify to this regard, perhaps none is so direct as is the Great Commission spoken by Jesus Himself: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."  (Matt 28:19-20).

It would be incorrect to think of this as merely a suggestion, like, if the moment suits you then say a bit or two about Christ Jesus.  God forbid!  This is a call, a commandment really.  This is a commandment to give our testimony "with gentleness and respect." (1 Pet 3:15).

Because of the seriousness of this call, we would do well to consider the Gospel; what is it? what does it mean to us?  how should we respond?  Not only would this simple exercise surly be an act of worship and praise but it will also prepare us to give the defense for the grace in which we stand.  This preparation is a good and right thing to do.  But praise be to God that He would use such vessels as us for His lovely grace and boundless majesty!

Free Indeed

Jesus says this profound statement as recorded by John: "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." (John 8:36).

This is a lovely statement for Christ to make.  It is a status given to those who Christ chooses: freedom.   But the relevant question is, what are we freed from? or to?

First of all, we have been freed from sin in Christ.  This is not just freed from the curse of sin but also from the presence of sin, meaning that someone in Christ does not have to sin, they have the freedom to holiness.  This freedom is all and out not available unless a person is in Christ and only through faith is it possible.

Additionally, however, we are freed from hostility in relationships and freed to love as Christ has loved us and gave Himself up as a perfect substitutionary atonement.  God has not only reconciled us to Himself but we have been reconciled to each other too.  We should not ever forget that Christ has done this for us as well.

In the end, God has saved us in Christ, and He has set us free in Christ.  This is the reality.  We need only have faith that it is as God has promised it to be.  In this, then, we will see all the promised blessings be manifested in our lives and in the world.

No Substitute for Service

Christian are called to serve.  But this service is not done begrudgingly but generosity and joy.  Service is sweet and active, but it is also one of those rare opportunities for love.  By its nature, service gets people together for an agreed-upon task and purpose, making it a fertile ground for fellowship.

To be sure, the service we are referring to here is the kind that has no eye on repayment, that is done purely out of a motivation of love.  This kind of service is sweet and robust; it is gracious and godly; and, what's more, it has been commanded as a vital part of the Christian life.

Unfortunately, we have often thought of service as a chore and not as a gift of grace.  We have refused to serve because we have thought it an obligation, or we have spurned the opportunities to serve because we couldn't see the personal benefit.

But service is a gift of grace in itself.  It is a joyous salve for the weary heart.  For anyone who may feel downtrodden or enervated, service may be the very cure for all your languor.  It is through service that that love of God passes through us.  We truly become vessels for the love of God when we serve.

Let us then never lose sight of service in our lives.  Let us make it part of our schedule.  For when we serve others, we will be served ourselves by God Himself as His Spirit flows through us unto others.  This is a beautiful and sweet transmission.  And truly, there is no substitute for service.

The Law is Not Burdensome

For the past few centuries, since the Reformation of the the 16th century, the predominate theological understanding of the Bible as it pertains to the Old and New Testaments has been a distinction between law and grace.  Law begin the duty of the Old Covenant and grace being the joy of the New.

Essentially, this system of theology comes to dominate our interpretive lens and renders law, thought of as the commands of God, to be primarily an Old covenant thing but that it is no longer in effect because 'we are under grace.'  To be sure, this amputates the reality of the New covenant from its history and tragically severs the Scripture, cutting it up into law and grace.  But the text does not support this understanding of the history of redemption.

Consider this:

Israel had been enslaved for some 400 years at the hands of the Egyptians.  God hears the cries of the Israelites, whose forefather Abraham He had promised a land and a nation to, and determines to save the people.  He calls Moses to be the representative.  Some plagues ensue until finally the Egyptians release the Israelites to leave, giving them treasures and riches fro their journey away.  However, as the people approach the Red Sea, Pharaoh decides that this arrangement is unacceptable and sets out with his forces to kill Moses and claim Israel back for Egypt.

God tells Moses to strike the sea.  As Moses does, the sea parts and the Israelites walk through the sea floor on harmed.  Once on the other side, God tells them to turn back to watch as God releases His power over the waters and they come down upon the Egyptians.  God leads the people to valley below the Mount of Sinai, where He gives Moses the Law, the commandments for how the people of God are to live.

The Law does not redeem the people of Israel from the Israelites: God does.  The Law is not meritorious, as in, if a person is obedient they can merit God's grace.  No.  The Israelites understood that God had chosen them (Deut 7:7-11), and it was only by His grace that they had been saved.  The Law was the further expression of that grace.  God chose them and then He gave them His Law to teach them who He was and how they were to live as His chosen people.

The Law was never burdensome, because the Law was further evidence of God's hand of grace.  The commandments of God were the merciful commands of a gracious God revealing both His very character as well as what His choosing of the Israelites meant for how they were then to live.   This is to say that all of God's grace has encompassed within it God's commandments.  They run parallel.

As Christians, we speak a lot about the grace of God, but we often forget that God's grace has commandments to it.  Christians are to live a certain way with a particular ethic.  We should not forget that we are under covenant.  This means that God has chosen Christians and bestowed grace upon them.  But in that grace are promises, both of blessing and of curse.

If we are not obedient to the covenant commandments, we will receive the promised blessings.  And if we are disobedient to the covenant commandments, we will receive the promised curses.  This is covenant.  It is not meritorious blessings.  Rather, it is the way that God has chosen to relate to mankind.  If we forget that this situation is His idea, we will naturally neglect all of the parts that we would rather not do.

Remember, we are not saved from the Law, we are saved from the curse of the Law.  There is a new law for the New Covenant in Christ.  Christians need to learn what these commandments are and we need to consider that we are the chosen people of God, under His promises and in His covenant.  This means that we need to meet Him on His terms.

Ephesians 1:3-6 and Profound Grace

Today I was brought to tears by a series of verses penned by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.  In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved." (Eph 1:3-6).

How beautiful that God, in His perfect and pleasing will would choose me!  For there is no good thing in me deserving of salvation, but God chose me, not because possessed any worthy quality or because of any good merit that I had done, but because of His grace alone!

This is the very definition of grace.  And, in truth, there is nothing, not one single thing, that is more beautiful, more holy, or more precious.  More than anything, this should compel us to simply pause and worship.  Let us then take a moment today to consider what our Lord has done and that He has chosen us in His Son Christ Jesus before the foundations of the world to be saved by the blood fo the Lamb.

Overcoming Our Delusional Selves

There have been multiple times in my life that I can say that I was lying to myself.  Generally, each of these times was marked by a man (me) who was pretending to be living life the right way and deceiving myself into believing this to be so.  However, without fail each of these times was ended abruptly when God hit me with reality and I came face-to-face with the how my life's understanding of what was true stood in discord with what was actually true.

To understand how this would feel, for those who have not experienced what it feels like when truth slams your falsity in the face, I want to paint a picture that might give some insight and protect us from getting so wrong.  For if we continue to deceive ourselves and remain concealed from the truth, we will inevitably be crushed by truth when we are forced to see it.  Imagine, then, for a second a situation like this:

A young man jumps off of the 124th floor observation deck of the largest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.  For a few moments the laws of physics are suspended and the young man falls in slow motion.  As he passes each floor, he has a brief conversation with each window he descends passed.  Every conversation has the terrified person asking the young man with great fear and care, "Are you okay?" To which the young man shocks the person by replying, "Yeah, I'm great!  This are going well and looking good."

Despite the young man's delusion at his present predicament, the truth will hit him as he splatters onto the ground.  The bystanders that watch him cooly pass by them can try with all their might to persuade him to see the reality of his situation, but he continues to lie to himself and neglects reality and the truth will crush him when the the pavement strikes him.

The point is to point out the danger in delusion.  Aren't we all masters at rationalizing our behavior and claiming to be in the right no matter how dire our trajectory may be.  Instead, we should strive vehemently to continually realign to the perfect Word and will of God.  In this way, we will be protected from falling ignorantly like the man above.  But praise be to God who always brings us back to Him!

Improving Our Devotion

Occasionally, far more often than I'd care to admit, I would rather watch television than read the Word of God.  And from time to time, sadly all-too frequently, I prefer to check my emails instead of spending time in prayer.  And sometimes, perhaps more than some, I feel more like staying home and relaxing than going out and serving.  And sporadically, maybe more regularly than that, prayer is something that I can do later until later never comes.

Truly, humans are far-more apt to neglect God in favor of ourselves.  We are expert excusers that can reason themselves in and out of anything.  So, while my musings of indifference towards God may be slightly caricatured, perhaps we are all guilty of preferring things other than the Lord.  Many times we may be afraid of sounding "too spiritual" or "obsessed with God." When, instead, we should be far more afraid of being indifferent or lukewarm in our devotion.

To be sure, God and the things of God are worth more than anything this world could offer.  No gold or  silver or trinket or gadget or relationship is more valuable than knowing the Lord and being in His presence.  Simply a taste of the goodness of the Holy Lord is of such satiation that we would nare seek any other satisfying source but Him.

But there are at least three distinct enemies to our devotion, which lurk around to distract and to pull us away from the presence of the Lord Almighty.  The first is our own selfishness, our pride.  It is pride that hinders our humility.  Pride prevents us from service because it is constantly self-seeking instead of self-denying.  In this case, the remedy to such a malady as pride is a sincere and constant reverence in fear of the Lord.  For if we recognize our minuteness before His awesomeness, we cannot but help to be humble in response.

The second and oft-overemphasized adversary to our devotion is Satan.  Satan is but a fisher with a tackle box of lures to entice humans to sin.  And when they fall prey to his seductions, he plays the accuser who prosecutes and persecutes those who have sinned.  The power that Satan possesses is neither omnipotent or infinite.  His power is both finite and contingent.  He only has the power to entice us if we give him that power.  Let us then not fall prey to his adulterous and idolatrous seductions by recognizing that he has no power that is not given to him by God and by ourselves.

The third opponent to our devotion is perchance the most dangerous of the three: our own penchant for indifference.  It is our comfortability with lukewarm devotion that is the greatest devastating enemy of all.  In truth, it is our own allowances and excuses that keep us away from the ardent devotion that God asks of us.  This is a challenging hurdle for us to overcome.  However, if we are to become the Christians that God asks of us, we need to take more seriously the call towards wholehearted devotion.  Far be it for us to ever grow weary of seeking the presence of God!  Let us then seek to cast aside every weight of pride, of Satan's enticements, and our indifference so as to draw closer to the Holy Lord in faith!

Fervent Faith

Throughout Scripture, the necessity of faith cannot be overstated.  It is by faith that righteousness is applied (Gen. 15:6).  Faith is the medium for reliance and comfort in the Lord's strength (Psa. 23:1-6; 28:7).  Faith is the manner with which God's grace is appropriated to believers.  On top of this, faith activates life and empowers movement (John 14:12; Matt. 17:20; Eph. 2:8-10; James 2:14-26).  Needless to say, the many significant components of faith beg further examination.

The writer of Hebrews defines faith: "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen (Heb. 11:1)."  The "hope" that is assured is salvation through Christ Jesus and the gift of eternal life.  Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament, conquering sin and death at the Cross.  Therefore, our hope is made sure in the historical fulfillment of the legal requirements of holiness by Christ Jesus.  The "unseen things" that we find conviction in are the heavenly things, chief among them being the knowledge of God, gifted by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit through faith.

Additionally grace and faith are intimately intwined.  Grace is utterly God's doing, defined as the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus.  Grace is the gift from God that is applied through faith (Eph. 2:8-9).  This being true, faith should not be seen as a substitute for grace.  We worship the God of grace through faith.  We do not worship faith; we worship by faith.  Unfortunately, many people neglect grace in their praise of faith.  Remember, just as an IV or a needle is worthless without the medicine it conveys, faith is useless without grace.

Lastly, and this cannot be overestimated, faith does not save.  God saves.  Faith is the conduit for salvation's application.  Faith apart from Jesus Christ is useless, for only Christ Jesus saves.  We should not overlook the profundity of this assertion: faith serves no purpose but to connect us with the Lord. Faith is but a conduit for restored relationship with the Lord, reconciled by the blood of Christ (2 Cor. 5:17-21).

This should not lead us to diminish faith's usefulness.  Far from it!  Grace comes to believers through faith.  Therefore, because faith is the manner for grace's application, we should pursue a fervent faith as the energy of our faith reflects our desire for grace.  Let us then press on in faith as to receive the immeasurable riches of God's grace!