“I pray that you may have power to grasp…” (3:16)
This chapter hold out almost every aspect of the believer’s experience of meeting God through Jesus Christ by faith in the gospel. Paul will pray in the next chapter that the believer’s have power to grasp all these dimensions of Christ’s love. The truths are as follows:
· We were dead in our trespasses and sins. We had submitted ourselves to the kingdom of this world, were submitting ourselves to its rules in thought and in deed; and were therefore enemies of God and objects of his wrath.
· Jesus himself takes the wrath instead of us (1:7) God who was rich in mercy made us, who have faith in Jesus, alive. We bring nothing to the table. If we did, we could boast.
· God has given us a new heavenly identity and a new heavenly destiny (5-7). This changes everything.
· Out of our new heavenly identity and on our way to our heavenly destiny, God has already prepared good works for us to do (10). We are his workmanship. He has made us to be a new creation that would do his work in remaking this world.
· The blood of Christ is the effective end of any hostility that can be held between any races. If Jesus can die and show grace to reunite enemies to his father, there is a solution for every racial problem. In that day, it was the divide between Jews and Gentiles (11-18).
· All people can now pray to the father—a royal priesthood- through the Spirit (18).
· Believers are throughout the world being made into a new living temple stretching to every culture in every place through every time in order to demonstrate a living body of people who would bring the rightful praise to God the Father and Jesus the Christ. Each person who is united to Christ by faith is a piece of the wall of this temple that stretches throughout the world and is united and held together by the very Spirit of God. This temple can never be defiled because is cleansed by the once and for all blood of Jesus Christ and kept holy by the Holy Spirit who dwells there (19-22).
Oh, for strength to grasp that…
Posted by Marc
Showing posts with label mercy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mercy. Show all posts
Monday, November 17, 2008
Friday, October 31, 2008
2 Corinthians 4--We do not lose heart
When you seek to do ministry--any kind of ministry--other people’s sin becomes your problem. Are you ministering to a rebellious kid? He or she will rebel against you. Are you ministering to an angry person? They will get angry at you. Are you ministering to someone who is discouraged? Being around them will be discouraging for you. If someone is opposed to the gospel, they will oppose you to the point you identify yourself with the gospel. It can be easy to lose heart doing ministry.
Paul says we need not lose heart. Why? The first reason is that we have our ministry through God’s mercy. Paul says that we don’t preach ourselves. Whether it is children, adults, behind the scenes, or whatever, ministry isn’t about us. Our ministry is to preach Christ and him crucified by word and deed. That means than any ministry we have is a gift to us from God’s mercy. Therefore, we don’t have to lose heart because any success is a gift of his mercy, not our talent. Therefore, when we communicate, we can be plain in setting forth the truth. We do not need to try and be clever or indirect. We are simply passing along a message from God that we received from his mercy and we get to communicate by his mercy.
Secondly, the struggle that comes we experience in our ministry is a demonstration (to complement the message) of God’s power. We give ourselves over to death, so that His life may be revealed in our mortal bodies. When we say “no” to our flesh and humbly serve, the death of Jesus is at work in us to produce the life of Jesus through us. It is like the dynamic of the cross and resurrection combusting in our soul to produce ministry power to impact others. “Death is at work in us, but life is at work in you” (12).
The Third reason we do not lose heart is that the struggles we face in ministering to others is like a persistent 401k that is accruing dividends in our soul from our sacrifices. Though we may not taste the fruits of them here, we can know that we are building up a Spiritual inheritance that cannot be seen. It is tempting to measure ourselves on what is seen, but God looks to the internal and eternal—not the external and temporary. What are you looking at?
Posted by Marc
Paul says we need not lose heart. Why? The first reason is that we have our ministry through God’s mercy. Paul says that we don’t preach ourselves. Whether it is children, adults, behind the scenes, or whatever, ministry isn’t about us. Our ministry is to preach Christ and him crucified by word and deed. That means than any ministry we have is a gift to us from God’s mercy. Therefore, we don’t have to lose heart because any success is a gift of his mercy, not our talent. Therefore, when we communicate, we can be plain in setting forth the truth. We do not need to try and be clever or indirect. We are simply passing along a message from God that we received from his mercy and we get to communicate by his mercy.
Secondly, the struggle that comes we experience in our ministry is a demonstration (to complement the message) of God’s power. We give ourselves over to death, so that His life may be revealed in our mortal bodies. When we say “no” to our flesh and humbly serve, the death of Jesus is at work in us to produce the life of Jesus through us. It is like the dynamic of the cross and resurrection combusting in our soul to produce ministry power to impact others. “Death is at work in us, but life is at work in you” (12).
The Third reason we do not lose heart is that the struggles we face in ministering to others is like a persistent 401k that is accruing dividends in our soul from our sacrifices. Though we may not taste the fruits of them here, we can know that we are building up a Spiritual inheritance that cannot be seen. It is tempting to measure ourselves on what is seen, but God looks to the internal and eternal—not the external and temporary. What are you looking at?
Posted by Marc
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Acts 9
There is a wideness in God’s mercy.
It is easy to get why God would be gracious to Dorcas. She was the kind of person we all should be, “always doing good and helping the poor.” But Saul—he “breathed murderous threats.” It is difficult for us to understand how radical the grace is to Saul. If you are a disciple, the name of Saul could have well produced an immediate response of anxiety because of his track record of persecution, violence and threats. His persecution of Christians had become famous throughout the region. We see in the passage that Ananias was quite familiar with Saul’s opposition to God’s people.
Or, let’s consider it from this angle. How many people had to suffer before Jesus would make his blinding appearance to Saul? Why doesn’t God heal the other Dorcas’s (the humor in her name is not lost on this author) who die while doing good and helping the poor. Why doesn’t God ________?
A clue might be found in the conversation between Saul and Jesus. In response to the flash of light and the call of his name, Saul ignorantly asks, “Who are you Lord? The flash of light convinced him that he was in the presence of deity. He was just less sure of that deity exactly was. Jesus introduces himself and replies to Saul with a repeated statement emphasizing to Saul that his persecutions are not falling upon aberrant Jews, but rather upon The Lord himself.
Jesus’ reality was that the persecutions fell upon him over and above his people. This should give us a greater glimpse into his love. Jesus so identifies with his church that his church’s experience of persecution is His experience of persecution. That is the beauty of our union with Him. He knows and has infinite capacity to suffer with us, to enter into our pain, our shame and our regrets. He knows them and feels them as if they are His. Knowing this kind of compassion enables you to trust Him doesn’t it?
It did for Paul. He tells this story again in the book of Acts and it is never far from his conscience. Hearing about how Jesus himself felt his actions against God’s people must have been unending reminder of the grace of through his own sufferings. Jesus tells Ananias that Saul would suffer much for the name of Christ. But Saul learned something through his transformation—that his sufferings are never alone—they are always shared by the man of sorrows, the Lord of grace, Jesus himself. In Philippians 3, Paul would later declare, “I want to know the fellowship of sharing in your sufferings,” because that, in some way, is the path to truly knowing Christ.
When things are hard and difficult, it is tempting to not pray, thinking we need to get ourselves together first. That is a trust in a narrow mercy. God’s mercy is wide. Jesus shares in your sufferings. In your strongest moments and your weakest moments, he shares in your victory and your brokenness. Jesus shares in your sufferings—are you willing to share in His?
It is easy to get why God would be gracious to Dorcas. She was the kind of person we all should be, “always doing good and helping the poor.” But Saul—he “breathed murderous threats.” It is difficult for us to understand how radical the grace is to Saul. If you are a disciple, the name of Saul could have well produced an immediate response of anxiety because of his track record of persecution, violence and threats. His persecution of Christians had become famous throughout the region. We see in the passage that Ananias was quite familiar with Saul’s opposition to God’s people.
Or, let’s consider it from this angle. How many people had to suffer before Jesus would make his blinding appearance to Saul? Why doesn’t God heal the other Dorcas’s (the humor in her name is not lost on this author) who die while doing good and helping the poor. Why doesn’t God ________?
A clue might be found in the conversation between Saul and Jesus. In response to the flash of light and the call of his name, Saul ignorantly asks, “Who are you Lord? The flash of light convinced him that he was in the presence of deity. He was just less sure of that deity exactly was. Jesus introduces himself and replies to Saul with a repeated statement emphasizing to Saul that his persecutions are not falling upon aberrant Jews, but rather upon The Lord himself.
Jesus’ reality was that the persecutions fell upon him over and above his people. This should give us a greater glimpse into his love. Jesus so identifies with his church that his church’s experience of persecution is His experience of persecution. That is the beauty of our union with Him. He knows and has infinite capacity to suffer with us, to enter into our pain, our shame and our regrets. He knows them and feels them as if they are His. Knowing this kind of compassion enables you to trust Him doesn’t it?
It did for Paul. He tells this story again in the book of Acts and it is never far from his conscience. Hearing about how Jesus himself felt his actions against God’s people must have been unending reminder of the grace of through his own sufferings. Jesus tells Ananias that Saul would suffer much for the name of Christ. But Saul learned something through his transformation—that his sufferings are never alone—they are always shared by the man of sorrows, the Lord of grace, Jesus himself. In Philippians 3, Paul would later declare, “I want to know the fellowship of sharing in your sufferings,” because that, in some way, is the path to truly knowing Christ.
When things are hard and difficult, it is tempting to not pray, thinking we need to get ourselves together first. That is a trust in a narrow mercy. God’s mercy is wide. Jesus shares in your sufferings. In your strongest moments and your weakest moments, he shares in your victory and your brokenness. Jesus shares in your sufferings—are you willing to share in His?
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