Monthly Archives: August 2013

Worship

Imagine a new world.

Imagine a world where no one and nothing, no possession, no person, no experience, no thought or action, no longing or desire, is more important than God.

It is coming.

Imagine a world in which no one grieves or sins against God in the smallest degree, or breaks his heart or puts out the Spirit’s flame; this place has no one who disobeys him and no one who even thinks about rebelling against his will.

It is coming.

Imagine a world of absolute, extensive, and comprehensive beauty, a beauty that is seen and expressed everywhere and in everything that is made with astounding loveliness; that beauty everywhere and in everything, emanates from the very glory of God.

It is coming.

Imagine a world without lies, or liars.

It is coming.

Imagine a world without lust, greed, or pride.

It is coming.

Imagine a world without grief, or sin, or death.

It is coming.

Imagine a world without selfishness.

It is coming.

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Bible Study

Colossians 4:2. Praying for the worth of it.

Praying as privilege and partnership with God.

Colossians 4:2ff. Paul’s conclusion to the Colossian letter is driven by the principle that Christ is dwelling within the physical body of Christian people, and that to pray is to communicate with God, and it is to be involved directly in the work of God in the world. Prayer seems to be an annoyance to many, a drudgery to some, and a waste of time. Many Christians think that God is going to do what God wants to do, and that prayer has nothing to do with it. That is a view of the fatalist not the Christian. God loves our prayers and he is intent on listening to them and answering them according to his purposes. God has an intimate connection with the life of the believer in Christ and there is a leading of the Spirit of God (Romans 8:14; Galatians 5:18), and there is communication from the Christian to God, by means of prayer. Prayer is described in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, as “without ceasing.” It seems to be pretty important.

Colossians 4:2 – “Devote yourselves to prayer”(NIV), or “Continue steadfastly in prayer” (Colossians 4:2 ESV). There is in this direction, the exhortation to be serious about the content and the preparation of prayer. Prayer can be spontaneous and emotional, when called for. There is no prohibition on the panicked prayer offered up in an emergency, but prayer driven by our devotion to God and expressed in continued steadfastness, are here addressed. This is about a more regular and sustainable — a long-term — kind of prayer.

Preparing to pray.

To pray with devotion and steadfastness would require ordering our prayers and organizing them in some way. Concerted effort is not just in the offering of the prayer with physical engagement and emotional energy, there is work to prepare, time to think through what should be prayer about, and commitment to keep at the “work of prayer.” There is not only the continued habit of prayer, but the desire to pray well, with dignity, and thoroughly in our address to our Heavenly Father.

The Greek term translated “be devoted to” in the NIV, means, “continue in, keep close company with, be ready (as in preparing to embark on a boat-trip), to prepare for an event prior to it.” As applied to prayer, it means that there is serious consideration as to the content of the prayer, and the preparation of the one who is praying. This means that there is taking into account (a list perhaps) those things that need prayer, those individuals and events that merit prayer, and those matters of communion with God that are desired and necessary (confession, praise, thanksgiving, and the rest).

Practically, this would indicate a season of confession of sins, removing of offenses before God. It would certainly direct us to forgive others of their transgressions, as we have been forgiven ours. There is also a taking into account the long-term nature of the relationship with God, the encouraging truth that in our requests God always hears but he may delay or deny our petition. But the long-term nature of our relationship with God extends through the rest of our natural life and then continues forever with God in his home in Heaven. We see the eternal aspect to prayer that should keep us at it, not of weeks, or months, but for decades and then for eternity.

The preparation of prayer may be as simple as finding a place and a time in which you can pray. Many young Christian mothers, rise early before the family wakes, to have time alone and quiet with God. Busy people pray in the car, or while walking. If you put ear-buds in your ears while walking, people think you are listening to music, but you may just be praying in the silence afforded by the buds plugged into nothing, except God through Jesus Christ, by the Spirit’s help and his tender encouragement. Wonderful silence.

Be watchful in prayer.

The NIV omits the phrase, “in prayer” [lit. in it], and Colossians 4:2 reads like a list of three separate items, as if to say, “Be devoted to prayer; be watchful; be thankful.” But the grammar clearly points to three aspects of prayer. Devotion, watchfulness, and thanksgiving. The NET has Col. 4:2 this way: “Be devoted to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving,” all referring to prayer. This is a solid rendering.

Preemptive praying is watching people, paying attention to how people act, what they say, and noticing what they do. Watchful prayer looks for danger signs, for changes in attitudes, for weaknesses, for character flaws, and it makes those matters of prayer. Now, we don’t always understand what is driving a reaction, an expression of frustration, a poor attitude in another person, and we can and often get these things wrong. But watchfulness pays attention, and if there is an opportunity to ask, you may learn what is going on. But without being presumptuous, you can still pray for a friend who looks distressed, who is short in her replys and course in her language, who is pulling back from a friendship. You don’t know what the issue is until she tells you (even then, it may not be all of it), but you can still identify and pray for a need that is unknown to you but is known completely to your Father in Heaven. Be watchful of others and pray for them.

Be watchful of yourself, of course. The watchfulness is the same word as the guard on the city wall. You see the danger approaching as a distance – it may be a huge dust storm that would devastate a city, or a powerful tornado that would ravage a city’s people, or it could be a marauding army coming to pillage your town. But the watchman (watchwoman) stands guard and is paying attention. Watchful prayer is being aware of what is going on around you, in other people, and in the distance as far as you can see. Be watchful, not presumptuous and pray like mad.

With thanksgiving.

It has been said thousands of time that the best way to train a child to pray is to teach them to thank God for his gifts. A 4 year old can thank God earnestly for her new toy and describe it to the God of Heaven in tender details, explaining to him how much she loves it and how glad she is that God let her have it. Such expressions are very much in line with our thankfulness as mature believers as we pray to the God of Heaven. We make a listing of the things that God has provide. We give him praise for his gifts and we understand that the gift, as does every good and perfect gift, comes from God (see James 1:17).

Thanksgiving is simple and child-like prayer but it is the kind of prayer that should last our whole life long. When should you cease to be thankful? Thanksgiving is on the lips of God’s people in glory (see Revelation 7:12). All of eternity will be offering thanks to God for his salvation and in praise of his glory, forever.

Start with thanksgiving in your first prayer to the Father and keep praying that way forever.

Summary of Colossians 4:2.

Learn to pray by praying. Prayer is not learned by reading a book on prayer. Almost all books on prayer are dismal (O. Hallesby’s, Prayer, is an exception, and there may be a few others, but most are dreadfully dull or completely useless).

Learning to pray by praying means that every believer doesn’t need to learn to pray, they need to be disciplined enough in their day to take time for praying. Prayer is never difficult for the child of God. It is excruciating when we are locked in sin, or frustrated that God didn’t meet some want of our wants. But prayer is never more than a second from our hearts, and he gives us all we need as children of the Living God (Matthew 6:33).

It is right to think of this practical section in Colossians 4 as the outworking of the great mystery of the Christian faith, “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” see Colossians 1:26, 27; 2:2. The presence of Christ indwelling the Christian’s physical body should be inducement enough to pray and to seek fellowship with our God-within.

The Holy Spirit of God, of course, dwells within us as well.

John 14:17, “even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

Romans 8:9, “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.”

Romans 8:11, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”

1 Corinthians 3:16, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”

2 Timothy 1:14, “By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” (ESV)

So prayer is not a matter of sending a trans-Universe message beyond the stars to a God, far, far, away. It is speaking to the God who lives within, close, inner-personal (and interpersonal). Prayer is not hard. It is our life with God.

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The Word of God in the life of the believer.

My sin, your sin and the honor of Christ.

Sin hurts. 

When a Christian fails or falls into sin, all who love them are wounded by what they do. The Savior is insulted by the deed. And most difficult to repair, the world has one more compelling reason to think we are all fools for believing Christ and trusting his promises. Your sin makes Christ appear to be an inglorious liar. 

Guard your heart. Christians are connected to every other redeemed person. We are members of one another. When you fail, we all who know you feel it. We all grieve what you have done. We who love you and who love God are deeply affected by what you do in disobedience to God. So close is our connection to you, that when you fail, we are bruised. 

When we fail, the whole Church is stabbed by our treason against God. My sin affects you. You feel it with a sorrow deeper and more tender than any other human connection. When you sin, it breaks my heart. 

My sin hurts you. Your sin hurts me. Consider the price those who love you must pay when you disobey and do what you know is sin. Private sins become public. Hidden sins are brought into the light. The things done in secret are shouted from the rooftops. Of course. Jesus promised they would (see Luke 12:3). 

Your life matters. We are members one with another. We are the Body of Christ.

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Philosophy of ministry.

Mimicry.

Don’t look to others.

How much do I give of my life to God? Just as much as he, or almost as much as she? What will our church create in program and mission? Will we become like the “fastest growing church in America,” or something else, something better?

Don’t look to others human institutions to see what a church should do or how it should be run. Don’t look to people to see how much you should value or think of God or how much you should love him.

When it feels like everyone is imitating the popular, the famous, the models and successful, what could be wrong in that?

We are painfully incapable, it would seem in this day of mimicry, to be able to do anything without comparing ourselves to others. We buy a car because he bought one. We watch a TV show because they watch it. We buy a cell phone because our friends have one. We shop here, vacation there, decorate our house, eat gluten-free (for no reason), vote for this political party, all because she does. We are alarmingly addicted to other people, even, and sadly, especially in our life with God.

Our addictive culture can’t keep from looking at others to determine how much, how deeply, how consistently, we should love, worship, serve, or sacrifice for, God. This mimicry deeply impacts how we live our life with God. We adopt Christian lingo, worship in ways that are really pretty silly. Then we praise successful, best-selling writers who are idiots and congratulate ourselves that we become, through an embarrassing act of self-doubt and false faith, like other people who are popular, famous, or influential. Stop it!

Instead, look to God. Don’t measure your godliness by what others do. Don’t congratulate yourself that you are just like others whom you admire. The bar is set far too low. You praise yourself much too easily. Godliness is not mimicking other people, it is being like Christ.

Doing what others do is a form of selfishness. You protect yourself by making easy choices, walking in line, saying what others say, becoming like THEM. It betrays the truth, and it substitutes any authentic life with God for follow-the-leader. It exposes an alarming lack of creativity and insight. Doing what others do is the road to judgment not glory.

Don’t look to others. Look to God. And in that perspective, and apart from what any other human being does or says, make your decisions and live your life for God completely.

Breaking the bruised reed

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Bible Study

Redeeming submission.

Colossians 3:17ff. Submission, Love, Obedience, and Service

Working through the “submission” and “obey” sections in Colossians 3:17ff., it is interesting that every command — wives to submit, husbands to love, children to obey, slaves to serve — all point to Christ as the model of submission, love, obedience, and service. Christ is also a restraint against any abuse of the principles taught. Marriage is to be a mirror of the relationship between Christ and the Father and between Christ and his Church. Christ demonstrates submission to the Father. He shows his great love for the Father in submission to his will (“not my will, but yours be done”), and his redeeming love for the Church. Submission, love, obedience, and service can only be understood by seeing how Christ did them all.

There is no justification for a husband to be cruel or domineering to his wife because of the command that she must submit to him. It is like saying that icecream is a murder weapon — because someone was hit over the head with a block of ice. Icecream and the murder weapon have nothing in common except the temperature of the ice. The principle of submission, as it is presented in Scripture, is at the center of the relationship of Christ for his Father. Submission becomes foundational for the way the Church relates to God. Submission is irreplaceable in the manner in which every Christian relates to God by faith. Submission appears in the way each Christian relates to every other Christian. Submission, when understood in Christ and applied by faith, becomes the way wives relate to their husbands — children to parents, slaves to masters. Our difficult with submission rests in our difficulty being submissive.

Scriptures denunciate any notion that the wife’s submission gives the husband the right to be harsh with her. It specifically forbids any unkindness or unloving act of the husband toward his wife, as Christ loved the Church and loved her redemptively, sacrifically, and completely. Even so, that is how husbands are to love their wives, see Ephesians 5:25. They are commanded in Scripture, in the context of submission, “do not be harsh with (your wives),” see Colossians 3:18. Who could object to that kind of treatment — hubands loving their wives, not being harsh with them, as Christ loved the Church? Where is the seed for mistreatment there? There is none. Just practical instruction on how to be kind and loving in marriage. The seed for mistreatment comes not in submission but in sin.

The objection to submission, as it is rejected in our day generally and in principle today, must rest in our difficulty submitting to God. That is the great stumbling block that many cannot overcome when the subject of submission comes up. Some people hate the word. But rejecting the word out of hand it to reject the center of Christ’s relationship with his Father, and the chief principle by which the Church relates to God, and how husbands and wives relate to one another, and how children relate to their parents, and slaves to masters (and by extension, workers to their bosses).

By refusing to submit to God, husbands treat their wives unkindly, abusively, harsely. But by refusing to submit to their godly husbands, wives become separated from the love of their husband and his protection. They cannot submit to God, because they will not submit to anyone. The issue is not that their husband is cruel, it is that they must do what another person wants them to do. It is here where our sin cries “foul” and we kick against submission as a great evil, when it is the greatest gift of life.

Submitting to God is the way to peace with him. A godly woman’s submission to her godly husband, is the surest way to happiness and peace. But not in our day. Submission is evil, an invitation to abuse, and Medieval. But it is none of those things. It is freedom and joy and safety, when lived in the way that Scripture presents it. It is the greatest freedom to give up our rights to One who loves us the most and who has nothing but our best interest and our supreme happiness in his heart (husband or Savior in mind here).

There is nothing in the Bible that can permit, tolerate, or endorse any mistreatment of a Christian wife by her Christian husband. Submission of a wife to a husband assumes a husband truly loves her, and he loves her like Christ loves the Church. There is redemption in that relationship, not hatred and abuse, nor is their unkindness and harshness. There is, to the contrary, love and mercy, forgiveness and sacrifice of the husband toward the wife he loves more than his own life. And there is found the submission and love from the wife toward her husband. There is discovered, as a beautiful diamond, respect and deferrence, trust and love.

The snarls and grimmaces are viceral when submission comes up. In current day discussions (especially around marriage vows, “I won’t say ‘submit'”) hatred of submission is categorical. But that rage is simply not justified by the teaching of Paul. He defends and gives protection for women against abusive husband domination. He celebrates submission of all Christians, one to the other. As Christ to the Father, even so we to each other, especially wives to husbands. In each case of obedience, submission, obedience, and love, submission mirrors the relationship of Christ to the Father.

It turns the Scriptures upside down to castigate Paul for teaching submission as an unfair and sub-human condition resulted every time the word “submit” is uttered. As though this wonderful and essential word has become a “dirty” word. If submission is good for all Christians, it is good for wives. If it is good for all Christians, is good for husbands, too. But submission isn’t horrible because some men are jerks or because some women don’t want to submit either to God or their husbands. In the same way it would be a grotesque reading of Scripture to say that Paul encouraged slavery when he was simply and wisely encouraging faithful service from slaves to their masters. Paul called himself a “slave of Jesus Christ” as he identified himself in the greeting of most of his letters. Neither does Paul endorse the horror of slavery when he tells slaves to obey their masters. But there is something in that slave-master relationship that is part of the Christian life and the experience of everyone who is a believer living in submission and obedience to God. We relate to God as Christians as though we were his slaves serving our loving Lord (“Master”). Being a slave of Jesus Christ is an incredible honor for us. His Mastery and Lordship can be trusted and our service to him freely given. Slaves can serve their earthly masters, rendering service “as to the Lord.” It was not Paul’s agenda to end slavery in the Roman world. But neither does Paul celebrate or agree with slavery. He is living in a world in which slavery exists. But he sees in the slave/master relationship something that rings true of the relationship we have with our Lord. Slavery can be horrible, but not if your Master is wonderful. Submission to Christ is wonderful, but neither does he endorse submission to a cruel and abusive husband.

The New Testament is not a civil rights manual. It is not a marriage manual. It is a “Christ is enough in every circumstance” manual.

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Bible Study

Colossians 3:12-17. Virtues that begin with love.

Colossians 3:12-17

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. (ESV)

The chosen ones have their confidence in God not on the basis of their faith (“con fide” with faith) but on the basis of their having been chosen by God. The putting on of qualities is not a “front” or a false representation of who we are and what we aspire to. Putting on these qualities is like those in the military who are preparing themselves for conflict, not as in donning a costume to act the part like one may perform in a play.

The qualities that we are to put on:

Compassionate hearts (bowels of mercy, literally) referring to the center of our emotions and the tender connection we have with others. We feel it in our “gut.”

Kindness. The principle “by which we make ourselves amiable.” This quality makes us easy to live with. This is the inner principle, that describes our inner motivations in what we do, rather than the outward manifestations of our actions (see Calvin, ad loc., Colossians 3:12-13). Kindness comes from deep within us and is not concerned about how it looks or who is impressed with how we react.

Humility. To have a thought about yourselves that is small, not grand. “Small thinking” of one’s self it to consider yourself as one who could serve everyone in your fellowship. Great thinking would be the opposition of humility and it would make us unteachable, and incapable of serving others.

Meekness. The gentle spirit of the redeemed, presents itself with unassuming sweetness. The outward manifestation of the quality of the Christ-like heart. Kindness in appearance and in speech. Calvin, “as, however, it frequently happens, that we come in contact with wicked and ungrateful men, there is need of patience that it may cherish mildness in us” (Calvin, Commentaries, Colossians 3:13, 213).

Patience. The long-way-to-anger. Not the short way. Not the explosive way to anger. The long, slow, thoughtful, reflective, enduring way to anger. To be like Christ in our anger.

Forgiving one another. The verbal for of the word “grace” is used. “Gracing one another” means that the motive and power, the force and essence of forgiveness, is in the grace that we have received from God. If God has been gracious with us, we, therefore, must be gracious with others, especially those who share the experience of the grace of God infusing our life with the life of Christ, as Christians in the Body of Christ.

Love. Christ’s love.

“As, however it is a thing that is hard and difficult, he confirms this doctrine by the example of Christ, and teaches, that the same thing is required for us, that as we, who have so frequently and so grievously offended, have nevertheless been received into favor, we should manifest the same kindness toward our neighbors, by forgiving whatever offences they have committed against us” (Calvin, Commentaries, Colossians 3:13, Colossians, 213).

These qualities come into reality in the day-to-day relationship that we have with one another. We may think we are kind, until it is necessary to endure an insult or a shun, or a lie, or an outburst from someone. Then your kindness may be short and your anger quick. An untested kindness may think Biblical kindness is easy, when it is, in fact, miraculous. Most marriage fights could be stopped immediately if kindness were used by one of the two. If both possessed and used this kindness, the fight would never have started in the first place.

Love before all.

These values (vss 12-13) are chosen. We value others and treat one another with honor. We value everyone because we have been forgiven. Paul saw that he was indebted to all because of the grace he received from God. He wrote, “I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish” (Romans 1:14 ESV). Regardless of their reaction to you, your reaction to them should be filled with love, no matter what the circumstance.

Vs. 14 tells us that this kindness (and all the virtues described are driven not by duty, but by love. The translations generally have, “Above all these things,” but it is more “Before all these things, put on love.” Love is first in line and importance over all these virtues. The love we put on prepares the heart and mind for all the other qualities that flow out of the heart of love. Calvin says that all that is not regulated by love is “faulty” (on Colossians 3:14). He states is a complicated way that if we don’t love first, all that follows will be a failure. Here are Calvin’s words, “nothing in our life that is not well regulated [by love] if it is not directed toward it, but everything that we attempt [apart from love] is mere waste.”

Every relationship is to bring honor and glory to God and, especially in the Body of Christ, they are to express the character of Christ that is being formed in everyone who is touched by the Infinite grace of God. When infinite grace pours through your life, you have infinite grace to give to others, infinite forgiveness, infinite forebearance, kindness, gentleness, and the rest. The love that God has poured into your heart (Romans 5:5) now pours love out of your heart to others, especially those who share the experience of the love and grace of God in their lives, but not just to them.

In the Body of Christ we learn what true kindness is. We see true gentleness lived out. We watch with amazement true, wonderful, perfect patience. Because people are living the lives of redeemed people, filled with the love of Jesus Christ, and then he adds himself, living in them. Christ is in them.

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Colossians 3:1-10 Setting our minds on Christ in Heaven.

Colossians 3:1-10 Heaven as destination and as fulfillment.

It is one thing to say that you must live for Jesus. It is a very different concern to say that everything you do must reflect your love for him. To live for Jesus can be as simple as saying a prayer in the morning or being kind through the day. Having Christ affect the attitudes, the savor, the direction, the implications, and the tenor of all you do, is very different.

Lightfoot (on Colossians 3:1) says, “All your aims must centre in heaven, where the Christ reigns who has thus exalted you, enthroned on God’s right hand. All your thoughts must abide in heaven, not on the earth. For, I say it once again, you have nothing to do with the mundane things: you died, died once for all the world: you are living another life” (Colossians, 208).

The hidden life.

There is now no outward splendor of the Christian’s life. Your life is hidden, for now. It is hidden with Christ in God. This means we are now to center all our aims in Christ. Our focus is on the Person of Christ. He rules over the entire Universe at the Right Hand of God – the place of supreme authority and power.

You now make decisions, choices, create attitudes, build faith; walk faithfully, because your life, your truest life is now hidden with Christ. Christ is now residing physically in Heaven, and you must keep your attention focused on him there.

Your life is lived out here in this place, reflecting our incorporation into Christ and directly impacting your soon-to-be-revealed eternity with God where you will live and reign with him forever. Your hidden life with Christ is lived today by focusing your attention on the One who redeemed you, who indwells your lives by the Spirit of Christ, and in whom you draw your confidence, are assured of his good pleasure and grace toward you, and by living with him daily, you begin a relationship that will continue forever and ever — the relationship of the one who lives by faith and who is every moment, “in Christ.”

The conflict.

We are still on the Earth. But we are positioned, our standing is in Heaven. We must live on this planet, breathing, eating, working, loving. But our true life isn’t here at all. What is worse is that our nature (our members) is infected with sin so thoroughly that we cannot escape the impact of sin. Even in our most devoted moment, we are assaulted and insulted by our sinful selves. We live on the Earth and we can be quite Earthy. But that is not our truest selves. That is not our redeemed life. That is not what we could be by faith and faithfulness. The NIV translates Colossians 3:1 “set your hearts on things above.” We must turn our Earth-bound, Earthy hearts toward our Savior who lives in Heaven.

The false and the true.

The Earthly system is filled with lies and with unkept promises. Ever sin promises us a kind of joy or freedom that we longed for, but then it disappoints and then it kills us. The claims of the world are impressive to us. We love the new cars, the smell of perfume, the taste of the expensive steak. But they are all fleeting.

Our lives are lived on Earth, but they are redeemed to live for God. Our values are not the utilitarian doctrines of the person who just desires more fun and stuff. Our values have been captured by the God who, in a short time, will reveal himself with great splendor and shouts, with trumpets and overwhelming power, to be only God and Savior of those who trust in him.

The world would entertain us to death, lest we think for a second about what happens when we die. Rather that living for God now, the Earth would have us live solely and supremely for ourselves. The short-sightedness of the world’s view of things is astonishing. It is as though the Earth is a city at the base of a giant mountain, a mountain with millions of giant boulders about to cascade down on the village, but the people refuse to see the danger, or flee to safety. The picture of Pompeii before and during the eruption of Vesuvius is a telling parable about the nature of humans to refuse to think in terms of eternity or, most surely, the God who made all things and who will judge or redeem all people.

Calvin writes that he sees the conflict between “those fruitless exercises which the false apostles urge” versus “true exercises in which it become Christians to employ themselves.” (Commentary on Colossians, ad loc. Colossians 3:1). The challenge is to see the false system, the system of lies and then to view, to cast the gaze much higher to see the true and the eternal, where “Christ is.”

Some key versus on the world.

(Jesus) John 15:19 – you do not belong to the world …

John 16:33 – in this world you will have tribulation …

John 18:36 – my kingdom is not of this world …

(Paul) 1 Corinthians 3:19 – the wisdom of this world is foolishness …

(John) 1 John 2:15 – do not love the world or anything in it …

How do we seek the things above?

Calvin, “When in our minds we are truly sojourners in this world, and are not bound to it.” “Let your whole meditation be as to this: to this apply your intellect – that is your mind.” It is thinking of Christ (who is above) “that we may adore him, and that our minds may dwell with him.”

All the Earthly things have nothing for the believer in Christ. All will perish. All will be taken away, even gold. Isaiah 55:2, “why do you spend your money for what is not bread?” The institutions of worldly glory seem hollow and they taste like death. They do not deliver on their promises. They focus on people, fame, success, money, beauty, and the opinion and praise of others. Human science fails even to see the existence of God and rejects all who would begin with God as the source of all knowledge and insight. They would choose randomness and the wisdom of people over the Christ of history and his redemption — the grandest act of all time and in the whole of eternity. God came to Earth! To live among us! To die for the sins of his people. And to crush death and sin and Hell forever. It hardly makes the news in this day of great human wisdom and with more communication that can be imagined. Yet the world fails to communicate God. He has already spoken.

The point of division. Do we live as citizens of Heaven or of the Earth?

The danger. There is the implication that it would be a tremendous tragedy and an offense to God not to bear up while we are in the world, to abide in Christ, to refuse to die to sin, or to break with the world. On that glorious Day when Christ is revealed from Heaven as Victor, our true union with him will be made manifest; what was hidden about our lives in Christ will be made known for all to see. So those who served Christ well and who died to self, will be honored. Those who did not will not be rewarded, though they may welcomed into the presence of Christ. But those who have a false faith, who impersonated Christian faith but never saw Christ seated and never knew true salvation and did not have a living relationship with Christ, they will be separated from the true Christians in judgment and by eternal separation from God. So they, too, will be revealed to their sorrow and final judgment.

Put to death your “earthly members.”

Colossians 3:5 – what is tied to the Earth, to sin, to our members (various parts, tied into a mass of sin and corruption) must be put off and put to death. Including: Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness. Lightfoot notes that passion is passive (easy to remember), but that evil desire is active and results in specific sins we commit actively. We are warned against passive and active sins. Both should be put to death.

Every true Christian will know the mortification, the putting to death, of sins. It is absolutely impossible for a true believer, a person who is indwelt by the Spirit of Christ, whose life is hidden with Christ in God, to continue to sin and to sin and to sin. There must come a break with sin and putting to death of many sins that had entrapped us when we came to Christ.

Every true believer becomes more and more like Christ. They come to resemble Christ in their character and in the motives behind their moral choices. They do not merely belong to Christ or are forgiven by the work of the Cross (as wonderful and important as they are), but they come to love Christ and he becomes the center of every choice and action. How could he not be that important to the one who loves him more than anything on this Earth?

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