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"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise" (Psalm 51:17).

WHETHER WE HAVE A “BROKEN AND CONTRITE HEART” IS ONE OF THE MAIN FACTORS IN OUR READINESS TO ACCEPT THE GOSPEL. If, as the Scriptures teach, the gospel is about the forgiveness of our sins, we won’t listen to it if we don’t believe that sin is a problem for us. It is “godly sorrow” that puts us in touch with our need for the grace that is available in Christ, and while grief for our sins is not pleasant, it is the one experience that opens us to the gospel.

But godly sorrow is an experience that not everybody has had. Consequently, the gospel will seem like just another “religion” in the world — one more system of social ethics and personal well-being. And seen as such, the gospel may not compare very favorably with the humanistic psychology and social ethics we’ve been using up to now. The lives we’ve put together in this world may not be perfect in every respect, but they are very good, at least for many of us. Absent the grief that comes from seeing our sins realistically, the gospel will seem silly and superfluous. Jesus Christ is an answer to questions we are not even asking.

But a broken and contrite heart changes all of that. “And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner . . . began to wet [Jesus’] feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment . . . And he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven’” (Luke 7:37,38,48).

So is there no joy in the gospel of Christ? Yes, there is a greater joy than can be found anywhere else. But here is the catch: this greater joy is available only when we’ve accepted the loss of our lesser joys, especially those of self-sufficiency and pride. As long as we’re content to believe that we’re doing all right — and that any remaining problems are within the power of science and psychology to solve — we will cut ourselves off from the highest of all joys: reconciliation with the God who created us. Ironically, then, it is only a broken and contrite heart that is in a position to receive the joy that human beings were created to experience.

"Christianity is certainly not despair; it is, on the contrary, good news — for the despairing; but for the frivolous it is certainly not good news, for it wants first of all to make them serious" (Søren Kierkegaard).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/honest-acknowledgment-sins-may-27/

"For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me" (Psalm 51:3).

THE KNOWLEDGE OF OUR SINS IS PAINFUL, BUT IT IS POWERFUL. If we’re willing to look honestly at our sins against God, the door can be opened to confession, repentance, and salvation.

The problem at the root of sin is always pride. It is pride that moves us to sin in the first place (we refuse to submit humbly to a will higher than our own), but having sinned, it is also pride that prevents us from acknowledging what we’ve done. Rather than confess our sins and seek God’s forgiveness, we suppress the truth with all manner of evasions, defenses, and rationalizations.

But if the gospel is about redemption from our sins, we must acknowledge our need for redemption. The first prerequisite to the gospel, therefore, is humility — the willingness to bow before the painful truth about ourselves. We must lay down not only our rebellion but the excuses we have been offering for our rebellion.

We usually think of the confession of sin in two directions: confession to God and confession to others. But I suggest that there is a confession that must precede both of these, and it may be the hardest confession of all. We must admit the truth to ourselves. Only when we ourselves face the facts will we be ready to acknowledge those facts to God and to those we’ve sinned against.

But let’s go a little deeper. The honest acknowledgement of sin requires more than a generic “I have sinned.” We must be willing to confess our actual sins and call them by their right names. In our human relationships, we wouldn’t feel an apology was sufficient if someone said no more than, “I haven’t treated you as I should.” An honest apology requires stating specifically the error that was committed. But again, the real difficulty lies in making that acknowledgement to ourselves. We won’t seek the forgiveness of God (or the forgiveness of others) if we haven’t fully digested the truth about our guilt and laid aside our excuses.

Personally, I know of no part of the plan of salvation that is any harder than this. It is gut-wrenching. But look at the doors that are opened. Humbled, we are ready to come to the foot of Jesus’ cross and say, “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30).

"The knowledge of sin is the beginning of salvation" (Epicurus).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/gospel-unlikely-gospel-true-may-26/

"Philip found Nathanael and said to him, 'We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.' Nathanael said to him, 'Can anything good come out of Nazareth?' Philip said to him, 'Come and see'" (John 1:45,46).

WHETHER SOMETHING SEEMS “LIKELY” IS USUALLY DETERMINED BY OUR CULTURE AND OUR CONDITIONING. If you had asked somebody two thousand years ago whether it was likely that people would ever travel to Mars, they would have said no. Today, however, that feat does not seem as unlikely as it did back then.

But we should not be so arrogant as to think that we’ve broken free from the limitations of culture and conditioning. We may be freer to see the likelihood of some things than ancient people were, but in all honesty, we are less free than they were to see the likelihood of other things —including the truth of the gospel.

The inherent likelihood of the resurrection of Christ (and therefore of the truth of the gospel) has not changed since the first century. If it seems more improbable today, it is only because we approach the question with a set of prejudices that ancient people were not bound by. Before even considering the historical evidence, we’ve already made up our minds that there is no God who could have caused the event, so we dismiss it out of hand.

But if you have ever sat on a jury in a courtroom and had to evaluate evidence, you know how wrong you can be when you start thinking, “It just doesn’t seem possible that this could have happened.” If the evidence is sufficient, you have to revise your opinion of what is possible and go with the evidence. The operative question is not “Is this likely?” but “Is this true?”

And so it is with the gospel. However unlikely, implausible, or even impossible it may seem, the gospel story must be judged on the basis of the evidence, even if we don’t want it to be true. As C. S. Lewis once said, “I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable; but when I was an atheist, I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.” Fortunately, C. S. Lewis did not let his moods determine his beliefs one way or the other.

So if our sense of likelihood tells us that “nothing good can come out of Nazareth,” the gospel simply says, “Come and see.”

"The gospel is wildly improbable -- except that it happened" (Michael Horton).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command  of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope . . ." (1 Timothy 1:1).

IN OUR WORLD TODAY, HOPE OFTEN SEEMS IN SHORT SUPPLY. Despite the prodigious efforts of humanism and secularism to convince us that things are getting better, we all know that there is great cause for concern. For every specific problem that our science and philosophy seem to improve, there are always unintended consequences that, in the greater scheme of things, make matters worse. We can only be optimistic if we ignore many of the obvious facts.

The gospel of Christ is nothing if not a message of hope. But the hope it offers is different from what most people are looking for. Ironically, it tells us that things are going to get better by telling us that things are not going to get better (at least in this world). By remedying the cause of the problem — our sin — the gospel offers a hope that is unaffected by the worsening condition of the world.

GOD OUR SAVIOR. Any honest look at our plight tells us that we were lost. “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy” (Titus 3:4,5).

CHRIST JESUS OUR HOPE. Look closely at how God has saved us. Paul says that it was “by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:5-7). These are powerful phrases. They reflect the truth that is on every page of the New Testament: it is in Jesus Christ that God is providing protection from the condemnation that we have brought upon ourselves.

If Christ is our hope, however, we ought to invest our hope in Him, not only in our words but in the way we live — and we ought not to hedge our bets by putting some of our hope in worldly sources of confidence (just to be on the safe side). It is, in fact, only when we give up on the hope that we can correct our problems that Jesus Christ is able to save us. But oh, what a Savior! He is waiting to bless us more abundantly than we can imagine.

"All we want in Christ, we shall find in Christ. If we want little, we shall find little. If we want much, we shall find much; but if, in utter helplessness, we cast our all on Christ, he will be to us the whole treasury of God" (Henry Benjamin Whipple).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/we-prefer-may-24/

"[Jeroboam] went up to the altar that he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, in the month that he had devised from his own heart. And he instituted a feast for the people of Israel and went up to the altar to make offerings" (1 Kings 12:33).

WHEN JEROBOAM DECIDED TO SET UP AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE WORSHIP IN JERUSALEM, A WORSHIP THAT HAD BEEN DIVINELY AUTHORIZED, HE MADE A NUMBER OF CHANGES. As a substitute for the Feast of Booths in the seventh month, he organized a feast in the eighth month, “the month that he had devised from his own heart.” Having dispensed with any loyalty to what God had prescribed, he saw no reason not to do whatever he pleased.

Unfortunately, this has always been the tendency of human beings. Refusing to admit that God has laid down any real norms or requirements that we must adhere to, we feel free to simply choose what we prefer, somewhat like customers at a delicatessen.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. Are there those who disbelieve because it would suit them better if there were no God and others who believe just because they find belief more comfortable? Probably. But either way, it really doesn’t matter what we prefer. The truth is what it is.

THE NATURE OF GOD. If there is a God, most of us would like Him to be a certain kind of God. But what is congenial to us really doesn’t matter. The only question is: what are the facts?

THE MEANING OF THE SCRIPTURES. Do we twist the Scriptures to make them mean what we like them to mean? If so, we are no more honest than those who prefer to reject them entirely.

THE CONTENTS OF OUR OWN CONSCIENCE. When we listen to our conscience, do we hear only what suits us? Can we tell when what sounds like “ought to” is nothing more than the voice of “want to”?

It takes a person of uncommon honesty to say simply, “What is the truth? That’s what I want.” But that is the very essence of faith and humility, the willingness to trust God and lean upon His wisdom when what He wants is different from what we prefer.

O Lord, help each one of us to learn to bow more humbly before You and to seek Your will more simply and truly. Help us to have the courage to go wherever the truth takes us. At whatever cost, may we follow the path that leads us to see Your shining face throughout eternity.

"Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true" (Francis Bacon).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/churches-in-asia-may-23/

"He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches" (Revelation 2:7).

WHAT MUST IT HAVE BEEN LIKE TO GET A LETTER LIKE THOSE RECEIVED BY THE CHURCHES OF ASIA? Toward the end of the first century, Christ sent a letter to each of the seven churches in Asia. (Contained in the second and third chapters of Revelation, which went to all of the churches, each of the letters were read, it seems, by all seven of the churches.) Each message depicted the condition of that congregation as the Lord saw it, providing a personal diagnosis of their health from the Great Physician Himself. Some of these groups were in better shape than others, but every letter ended the same way: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” It would do little good for a church to get a diagnosis from the Lord if it paid no attention and made no changes.

Churches (by which we mean congregations or local assemblies of Christians) can depart from the Lord just as individual Christians can (Galatians 1:1-7). So there is a need, both congregationally and individually, for us to make frequent mid-course corrections and realign ourselves with the intentions of Christ.

Today, the Lord is not going to send a personalized letter to a congregation, but in a sense, that is what the entire New Testament is. When we read what was happening in that era, when the affairs of the churches were being guided by the authority of Christ’s apostles, we are wasting our time if we don’t apply what we read to our own congregations today. Christ would say the same thing to us that He said to those churches: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

A diagnosis can be painful news to hear, of course, whether it is from a medical doctor or from Jesus Christ. But if we are truly committed to being saved, we will want the truth and nothing but the truth — in order to act on it and change our practices.

The ability to “hear” is an endowment with some serious responsibilities attached to it. Given our tendency to drift away from Christ, our only hope is in our willingness to be warned. Christ loves us too much not to call us back to the right way, but His call will not help us if we don’t see that it applies to us very personally.

"Before the service speak to God. During the service let God speak to you. After the service speak with your neighbor" (Old Saying).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/king-of-kings-lord-of-lords-may-22/

"Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war . . . From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords" (Revelation 19:11-16).

WHOSE AUTHORITY IS THE HIGHEST? In the affairs of this world, that question never has any permanent answer. One person may be the most powerful figure in the world at a particular moment, but that individual is always subject to being surpassed by a more powerful person in the future. Only in Jesus Christ do we encounter a King who is above all kings — both now and forever.

Read the description of Jesus Christ in Revelation 19:11-16 and let its vivid imagery sink in. If the claim of absolute sovereignty embedded in these words is false, the New Testament should be rejected decisively. But what if this claim is true? Here is a figure whose power and authority are not only supreme but unconquerable, a leader who can be followed without the slightest fear that He will ever be defeated. Here is One in whom our faith can rest.

It is crucial, however, for us to understand the sort of King Jesus is. He did not liberate His fellow Jews from the Roman government in the first century, and He does not promise to break the shackles of any particular tyranny today. To be sure, all of the kingdoms of men — every last one of them — will be destroyed eventually, but the gospel of Christ is primarily about deliverance from our own sins. “You will know the truth,” He said, “and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). It is from the bondage of untruth that Jesus wants to liberate us, and if we don’t let Him set us free from the untruth in our own hearts, it won’t matter whether our political situation in this world is one of freedom or slavery.

Against the destructive lies with which the devil has done his work, Jesus came into the world to overcome falsehood and repair its damage. For the time being, it often looks as if the enemy is still winning, and frankly, the appearance of that can be discouraging. But the war has already been won. The outcome of history is now a foregone conclusion. And to keep resisting this King (as the kingdoms of men always do) is to fight a losing battle.

"God will have the last word, and it will be good" (Robert Harold Schuller).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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"Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel" (Psalm 2:8,9).

POWER CORRUPTS. And if this is true of individuals, it is even more true of groups. Consider governments, for example. Can it be denied that governments tend toward corruption, that they always move in the direction of greater self-will? “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us’” (Psalm 2:2,3).

But God cannot successfully be ignored. From His perspective, the presumption of human rulers that they can do as they please is so out of touch with reality that it is laughable. “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, ‘As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill’” (vv.4-6).

In God’s Son, the Messiah (“Anointed” or “Commissioned One”), a kingdom has been set up that is above all the kingdoms of men. To Him, the nations have been granted as a gift: “I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession” (v.8). And God leaves no doubt as to what the Messiah will do in dealing with the nations: “You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” (v.9).

Jesus, the “Christ” or Messiah, said after His resurrection, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). But has He broken the kingdoms of men, dashing them in pieces? If so, the kingdoms seem not to have gotten the announcement. They pay no attention to the Messiah whatsoever.

But the rule of the Messiah does not come about by physical revolution (or democratic voting). He breaks the nations not by dismantling them (for now, at least) but by reestablishing the truthful ideas and words they have denied. “From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations” (Revelation 19:15). When the nations have come and gone, this truth will still be true.

"God did not abolish the fact of evil; he transformed it. He did not stop the Crucifixion; he rose from the dead" (Dorothy L. Sayers).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/sin-self-sufficiency-may-20/

"Yet he sent prophets among them to bring them back to the Lord. These testified against them, but they would not pay attention" (2 Chronicles 24:19).

THE GOSPEL IS POWERFUL, BUT IT CAN’T OVERCOME THE WILL OF A PERSON WHO DOESN’T SEE THAT HE NEEDS TO BE SAVED. And for this reason, the gospel will not be of much interest to people today. Living in an age when the concept of “sin” is no longer taken seriously, we should not expect the gospel to be widely received. It is only the penitent who will come to Jesus Christ.

Actually, that last statement is not true. It is a fact that many today do “come to Christ” without any consciousness of the sins they need to have forgiven. They come seeking relief from a wide range of temporal troubles: poverty, social oppression, physical ailments, psychological disorders, and emotional distress, to name just a few. Yet when people “become interested in Christianity” for these reasons, they are seeking something other than what Jesus went to the cross to provide. Jesus is not unconcerned about the lesser problems that we have, but He was very clear what His mission was: “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

Jesus, then, is our Savior. But is that what we want Him to be? We might prefer Him to be our surgeon, psychologist, or social worker, but the fact remains, He came to be our Savior. And the sooner we acknowledge that we are lost, the sooner His message will make sense to us. Not only are we lost, but we cannot save ourselves. In a helpless spiritual condition, we are doomed to die in eternity if we do not let Him redeem us from our rebellion.

But our self-sufficiency is not easy to give up. These days, science and technology seem to be a better hope. If there is a problem the scientific method can’t solve, that is a problem we need not worry about. And as long as we believe that, we will view the gospel of Christ as little more than a relic of pre-modern superstition.

Indeed, until we humble ourselves before the painful recognition of our sin, we will find Jesus Christ to be insulting and offensive. We will not only be uninterested; we will be angry. How dare this ignorant peasant from ancient Galilee tell us, “Unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins” (John 8:24)?

"There's nothing more irritating than a Savior when you aren’t ready to be saved" (D. Sutten).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/cant-exclude-god-still-have-him-may-19/

"For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual" (1 Corinthians 2:11-13).

RATIONALISM ARGUES THAT WE SHOULD REJECT (OR AT LEAST DE-EMPHASIZE) ALL SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE EXCEPT HUMAN REASON. If knowing a thing requires the operation of something in addition to human reason, that thing should not be classified as “knowledge.” In particular, “faith” is distinguished from “knowledge.” If God exists at all, we cannot “know” that He exists or what His nature is; we can only “believe” . . . and hope for the best.

It is a fact that we could not know much about God if we had nothing but our reason to work with. Paul makes the point that God’s existence and His power can be inferred from the world around us: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20). But if reason had no outside help, God’s existence and power would be about as far as we could go. We would have no way of knowing what God’s nature is or what His will for us might be.

But God has revealed Himself so that we can know a good deal more about Him. (Go back and ponder 1 Corinthians 2:11-13.) And don’t forget this: God’s revealing of Himself culminates in Jesus Christ. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory . . . No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:14,18).

Do you see the dilemma of rationalism? It wants to disallow any knowledge that might come from revelation, yet there are many rationalists who still want to believe in some kind of God. But we can’t have it both ways. If we rule out the possibility of God revealing Himself, then we should get used to the idea of having no God at all. The only God that unaided human reason can believe in is a God who is little more than a question mark. There is no room within rationalism for a God who can save us.

"The failure of rationalism is that it tries to find a place for God in its picture of the world" (William Ralph Inge).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/obtained-with-christs-blood-may-18/

"Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood" (Acts 20:28).

WHAT COULD MAKE US VALUE THE LORD’S CHURCH ANY MORE HIGHLY THAN KNOWING IT WAS OBTAINED AT THE COST OF HIS BLOOD? No higher purchase price is imaginable. And if we think we can appreciate the Lord without valuing the church for which He died, we are deluded. John wrote, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him” (1 John 5:1).

Going back to Acts 20:28, Paul’s statement about the church was made to the elders of the church at Ephesus as he said farewell and exhorted them to care for the saints under their oversight. Paul was speaking of the congregation in Ephesus when he said that the elders should “care for the church,” for in the New Testament elders never had oversight over any Christians except those in the local congregation. But what a charge! If those for whom the elders were to care were people who belonged to the Lord — having been paid for with His blood — well might Paul say, “Pay careful attention.” No duty ever deserved an attention more careful.

But if the reference in Acts 20:28 is to the local church, it is no less true that the universal church (the saved in all places) is comprised of blood-bought individuals. In the great throne scene in Revelation, the Lamb, who is Christ, is triumphantly praised: “for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (5:9). That is one reason the Lord loves His church so much. They are His ransomed ones, the people whom He has saved by His blood.

Each of these thoughts points us emphatically to Jesus Christ — His love, His authority, His majesty. If He bought the church with His blood, it is not our church to do with as we wish. It is His church: the Lord’s church. May we never quit calling it what it is. The church of God. The church which He bought with His blood. The church that belongs to Christ. The Lord’s church.

The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is His new creation by water and the word;
From heav’n He came and sought her to be His holy bride;
With His own blood He bought her, and for her life He died.
(E. E. Hewitt)

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View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/body-of-christ-may-17/

"And [Christ] is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent" (Colossians 1:18).

STRICTLY SPEAKING, THERE IS NO ONE OVER WHOM CHRIST IS NOT HEAD. But there is a special sense in which He is the head of His body, the church. After having refused His rule, these individuals have returned to their rightful King, sought His forgiveness, and sworn allegiance to Him from now on. Christ is truly their head — not just legally or theoretically, but in the way they live.

We could spend a lifetime unfolding different aspects of the truth that the people of Christ are His “body.” It is a fascinating metaphor, to say the least. All of us have bodies, governed (at least in our best moments) by our heads, so when the Scriptures say we are related to Christ in ways that resemble the link between our own head and body, that is an analogy that resonates with us.

For one thing, the fact that Christ is the head of His body should never become so commonplace that we forget how important that truth is. His rule over the church does not require our permission, nor are His instructions for the church subject to our preferences. We serve Christ, and we do not serve Him in an advisory capacity. To repeat: He is the head of the church.

He is the head of the church because He was made the head of it by God. Paul affirmed this when he wrote, “[God] put all things under [Christ’s] feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:22,23). And Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). When this world comes to an end, the kingdom will be turned back to God (1 Corinthians 15:24), but for now, God has put all things under the feet of Christ, the Son who rules from the right hand of His Father (Mark 16:19; Hebrews 1:3) until the last enemy has been defeated.

Every Sunday when Christians observe the Lord’s Supper, they remember that their inclusion in the spiritual body of Christ is possible only because His physical body was sacrificed for them. By submitting to the agonizing limitations of a “body,” He gained a “body” of saved people whose own bodies are no longer prisons.

From his imprisonment my freedoms grow, find wings.
Part of his body, I transcend this flesh.
(Luci Shaw)

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View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/if-concept-of-god-wrong-may-16/

"Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen" (Romans 1:24,25).

IF WE THOUGHT THAT “THEOLOGY” WAS AN INTELLECTUAL PURSUIT WITH NO PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCE, WE WOULD BE WRONG. Our theology is our view of God (His existence, His nature, His purposes, His will), and our ideas about God, whether true or false, are more powerful than any of our other ideas. What we think of our Creator is the main determinant of our character and our conduct.

We don’t use the word “idolatry” much anymore, but it is still a concept that needs to be considered. To worship an idol is to worship a god that does not exist. If a person bowed down before a physical object (perhaps one that he himself had made) and called it God, he would be engaging in idolatry. But if we conceive of God in ways that are false, even if it’s only in our minds, we are worshiping not God but an idol, created by our imagination. And that kind of idolatry is still very much a problem in the world.

In the text above, Paul spoke of certain ones who “exchanged the truth about God for a lie.” Tragically, our ignorance of God is often this very kind of willful ignorance, as the apostle indicated a few verses later when he said that “since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (v.28). In the final analysis, the person may not have been wrong who said that sin consists of having a wrong idea about God and deliberately acting as if that idea were true.

So out of all the subjects we think about, we should be the most careful when we are thinking about God. False notions about God will derail even the best of our thinking on other subjects, including morality and our treatment of other human beings. And most important of all, if we view God wrongly, we are going to have wrong beliefs about the reality of sin and the question of our fellowship with God. The gospel will mean little to us if our beliefs about God are such that we see no need for what Christ made possible at the cross. We need to be careful about our “theology.”

"The wrong concept of God leads to the wrong concept of sin, self, and salvation" (Richard Owen Roberts).

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"For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time" (1 Timothy 2:5,6).

BETWEEN GOD AND MANKIND THERE IS A GREAT SEPARATION. We are cut off from our Creator by our sins. And this alienation is a problem we can’t solve by our own wisdom or human effort.

MEDIATOR. Paul states that Jesus Christ is able to serve as a “mediator” between God and us. This does not mean that Jesus serves as an arbiter to work out a compromise between God’s position and ours. It means that He is a “go-between” enabling God to have a relationship with us that would be impossible otherwise.

RANSOM. Jesus makes possible our reconciliation with God because he “gave himself as a ransom for all.” In other words, He paid the price for us to be released from our condemnation, dying in our place and thereby atoning for our sins. So God is now able to forgive us without violating the integrity of His own law. As Paul wrote to the Romans, God is able at once to be both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).

On one occasion, John the Baptist saw Jesus and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Freely and voluntarily, He “gave himself” as our ransom. In 1 Peter 2:24, Peter put it this way: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”

But notice in our beginning text what Paul said about Jesus. Just as there is one God, there is only one mediator between God and men. Without Him, our sins will kill us. And this is exactly what Jesus said: “I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins” (John 8:24).

In this life, we can improve ourselves a little bit, but we can’t save ourselves from sin. We may be able to elevate ourselves, but we can’t grasp eternal life. And even when we come to Christ, we can’t have the life He offers except by dying with Him in baptism and accepting the kind of life He has for us in the here and now.

"The death of Jesus is the only entrance into the life he lived. We cannot get into his life by admiring him, or by saying what a beautiful life his was, so pure and holy. To dwell only on his life would drive us to despair. We enter into his life by means of his death" (Oswald Chambers).

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"And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3).

IT IS FASCINATING TO CONTEMPLATE WHAT IT MUST HAVE BEEN LIKE FOR ADAM AND EVE TO KNOW GOD. Prior to their tragic decision to rebel against His will, they would have had a perfect relationship with their Creator: knowing Him, revering Him, and loving Him. But once that relationship was broken, the knowledge of God would have become an increasingly distant memory.

In John’s record of Jesus’ prayer on the night of His betrayal, we hear the Son of God praying: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him” (John 17:1,2). And then we have this remarkable statement: “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (v.3).

To “know” God means more than knowing about God. The devil has a good bit of information concerning God, but that doesn’t mean he knows God. And it means more than having feelings of closeness to God, for many people feel that way, even quite passionately, while still being outside of Christ and lost in their sins.

One thing is for sure: there is no knowing God apart from the knowledge of Him made possible by Jesus Christ. In Jesus alone is the truth about God made accessible to mankind (John 14:6). But God cannot be known apart from the Scriptures, even if we seek Him through Jesus Christ. The Scriptures contain the only objective information we have about Jesus’ revelation of the Father.

Obeying the gospel, then, we begin to partake more and more of God’s true nature, anticipating the time when we will meet Him face to face (Revelation 22:4). In Christ, we have what might be considered a foretaste of eternal life — or a down payment on it (Ephesians 1:14) — but the fullness of that life is something that will be ours only in eternity (Titus 1:2; 1 Peter 1:3,4). When it is finally ours, however, it won’t be eternal just in duration — it will be a quality of life no one has ever known before except Jesus, the Son of God, who will graciously share with us the life He has always had.

"[Christianity] is a revelation of the true way of living, the way to know God, the way to live life of eternal quality" (J. B. Phillips).

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"O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified" (Galatians 3:1).

THERE IS NOTHING THE HUMAN MIND IS NOT CAPABLE OF FORGETTING, EVEN THE THINGS WE NEED TO REMEMBER THE MOST. Sometimes surprisingly quickly, we get to the point where even the most vivid experiences no longer have any impact. So when the Galatian Christians began to waver in their faith, Paul was amazed. “It was before your eyes,” he said, “that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” Paul himself had preached the cross to them, and they had understood what Jesus’ death meant. How could they now be drifting away from what they knew?

The problem the Galatians had is one most of us are familiar with: we forget things we need to remember. The truths that should keep us faithful to God slip away from our conscious awareness.

Yet the problem goes deeper than mere forgetfulness. All of us “know” that Jesus died for our sins — but in too many cases, the significance of what we know hasn’t really sunk in. The devil is perfectly content for us to “remember” Christ’s death as long as it never dawns on us what the implications of that event really are.

Even worse, however, we don’t see the personal significance of the cross. We may, on some level, grasp that Jesus’ crucifixion was a monumental event in human history, but rarely does that truth come home to us individually. Do I see that Jesus bled and died for MY sins? Do I understand the personal consequences of really believing that?

Clearly, we need to take two steps. First, what we know of the cross must be constantly deepened. If we don’t understand what happened at the cross more deeply today than we did last year, our love for God is probably not growing and we may be headed in the same direction as the Galatians. But second, what we know must constantly be refreshed. The Lord’s Supper each first day of the week is a public memorial that Christians share, but we need to ponder the cross in our private devotions as well. Every day of the week is not too often to remember what Jesus suffered and feel anew the full, shattering impact of His death. We must make up our minds that having seen Jesus crucified for our own sins, we will not forget what we saw.

O my Savior, make me see
How dearly thou has paid for me.
(Richard Crenshaw)

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"Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul" (3 John 2).

IN JOHN’S PRAYER FOR GAIUS, HIS BROTHER IN CHRIST, THERE IS AN INTERESTING ORDER OF PRIORITIES. Whereas most people would think first about a friend’s physical state and then also hope they were doing well spiritually, John prays that “you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.” In other words, John knew that Gaius was doing well spiritually, and that was the main priority. If he was also healthy physically, that would be a nice extra.

There is such a thing as “soul health,” and it is a much more important issue than most people acknowledge. In these days of emphasis on holistic health and wellness, many people do pay attention to “spirit” and “mind,” but in the New Testament, the health of the soul goes a good bit deeper than peace of mind, tranquility, emotional balance, and a sense of oneness with the universe. If the gospel of Christ is true, we are not in good spiritual health if we are not in a right relationship with the God who created us — and that requires the objective, actual forgiveness of our sins through obedience to the message of salvation in Christ.

The evidence of a right relationship with God is not to be found in our feelings but in the text of the Scriptures. If there is consistency between our commitment to Christ and what the New Testament teaches must be true for us to have eternal life, then our soul is in good health. The hope — and therefore the joy — we have is based on the objective promise of God in the Scriptures, and not on the feelings of peace generated by meditation or mindfulness.

This is not to say that the neurological and psychological kinds of tranquility that come from meditation are of no use at all. They can be extremely helpful in many ways — and this writer is a devoted practitioner of mindfulness. But tranquility should not be confused with rightness of relationship to God. And if, not having been saved from our sins by the gospel of Christ, we do not enjoy justification with God, all the tranquility and wellness we might have achieved by worldly means will come to a screeching halt when we die. Bodily health, including emotional serenity, is well enough. But of far greater import is how well our souls are faring.

"Body:  not a home but an inn — and that only briefly" (Seneca).

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"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me" (1 Corinthians 15:10).

OBEDIENCE TO THE GOSPEL IS A RESPONSE. We do not initiate the process; God does. Whatever we do, we do in response to what His love has done to make our salvation possible. And surely, God wants our response to be wholehearted. That is, each of the three components of our hearts should respond rightly to the gospel.

INTELLECT. Sin resulted from Satan lying to Adam and Eve about the character of God (Genesis 3:1-6), and ever since then, untruth has been at the root of mankind’s broken relationship with God. The gospel wants to put truth back in its proper place, and if our intention is to respond to God rightly, we’re going to have to study, learn God’s truth, and conform our intellects to that truth.

EMOTION. This part of the gospel is emphasized nowadays, almost exclusively, but even in our emotional response to God we are sometimes dangerously imbalanced. God created us with a very wide range of emotions, all of which are healthy. As we see in the Psalms, we are to respond to God with all of our emotions — not just the warm and fuzzy ones, which most people like the best.

WILL. In its most basic sense, sin is the rebellion of our will against God (1 John 3:4). The gospel proposes not only to forgive our past disobedience but to transform us back into persons who submit to the will of their Creator. So there can be no rightful response to God’s grace without obedience. As Jesus said, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” (Luke 6:46).

There are, in fact, many ways our response to God might be less than wholehearted, but most of these come down to one thing: a response that is merely passive rather than active. In other words, we do not really respond to the gospel; we are content just to bask in the glow of thinking about how gracious God is. But that was not the response of the apostle Paul, and we need to ponder his words frequently: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

"Those things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us also the grace to labor for" (Anonymous).

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". . . just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures" (2 Peter 3:15,16).

IN THIS TEXT, PETER, WHO WAS ONE OF THE APOSTLES OF CHRIST, ALLUDES TO THE LETTERS WRITTEN BY PAUL, ANOTHER ONE OF THE APOSTLES. As a Jew, Peter makes an astonishing claim. He classifies the letters of Paul as a part of the “Scriptures,” a Jewish expression referring to the documents accepted as having originated in the mind of God. Peter would have known the Pentateuch, the Hebrew prophets, and certain other books to have been inspired by God; but he also recognized Paul’s writings as a part of this canon, the authoritative collection of books that, taken together, constitute God’s written word to the human race.

Just the other day, I happened to be reading in Deuteronomy where Moses was anticipating the day when Israel would have a king. The king would need to be, above all else, a godly man, faithful in his adherence to God’s teaching. But being a godly man would depend on his attention to the writings that contained that teaching. These writings could not be neglected. “He shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law . . . it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them . . . so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel” (Deuteronomy 17:18-20).

We have to stretch our minds to accept that there could be books written in human language that ultimately came from God’s own spirit (2 Peter 1:21), but that is exactly the claim made for “the Scriptures.” Yes, human writers were involved. They were the agents through whom God brought these books into the world, but somehow, the writings are from God Himself. If we “twist” them, as Peter puts it, we do so to our “own destruction.” The Scriptures are given to us by God’s grace. They can make us “wise for salvation” (2 Timothy 3:15) — but since they are a communication from our Creator, we dare not bandy them about carelessly.

"The Bible is a supernatural book" (A. W. Tozer).

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"And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, 'This is my beloved Son; listen to him'" (Mark 9:7).

WHEN GOD SPEAKS, WE OUGHT TO LISTEN. Other people may say things we have little interest in, but surely, when the Creator of the universe is addressing us, as He does today through the Scriptures, the least we can do is sit up and take notice.

It was an extraordinary claim when Jesus said that His teaching was authoritative because He was God in the flesh (Matthew 11:27; 28:18; John 5:18-27; 8:28; etc.). This was not merely the claim of a prophet, a human being whom God was using as a spokesman; this was an assertion of equality with God and ultimate authority, a status far greater than Moses or Elijah ever had. “And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus . . . And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, ‘This is my beloved Son; listen to him’” (Mark 9:2-4,7).

It is sobering to realize that our destiny depends on how we listen to God’s Son. Jesus pointed to the problem of those who have heard but not obeyed when He said, “If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day” (John 12:47,48). In the end, it will be a painful recollection if we have to remember that we closed our ears to the words that could have saved us.

These days, it would be a rare person anywhere in the world who has not “heard” the gospel. Printed Bibles are everywhere, and digital copies of the Scriptures are even more universal. So for most of us, the main question is what we’ve done with what we’ve heard, however much or little that may be. Or perhaps we could put it another way: the question is not whether we’ve heard; it’s whether we’ve listened. We’ve heard enough truth to save the whole world. But are we paying attention? Is the truth sinking in?

"Hearin’ is one thing and listenin’ is another" (William Frend De Morgan).

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"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world" (Psalm 19:1-4).

THE HEAVENS DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD. So said David, a man who would have pondered the sky on many occasions, especially in the days of his youth as a shepherd. Every part of the world is full of wonder, obviously, but there is something special about the sky. We need to admire it more — and think more deeply about why it is that the sky moves our hearts as it does.

The heavens do not just declare the existence of God (although that is a point of immense importance in itself); it is His “glory” that is proclaimed. The word “glory” literally means “brightness” or “splendor,” but I want to propose an idea. When we are speaking of God, might we not think of glory as the joining of beauty and power? I think so, and I suspect that the blending of these two is why God’s creation has such an undeniable impact on us.

There are those who are not much moved by beauty. For them, power is of more interest. And then, there are those for whom beauty has more appeal than power. But whoever you are, I predict that in the presence of something equally beautiful and powerful, your heart would melt. If you don’t shut it down, your heart will tell you the truth: the heavens declare the glory of God. God is real.

I used to doubt it, but I doubt it no more. Even though, for me, the “days of trouble” have come (Ecclesiastes 12:1 NIV), my heart has been ravished with Beauty and Power. The Beauty is too powerful, and the Power too beautiful, to resist. The truth is not only true; it is a glorious, magnificent reality. And when I shall have been mended and made whole by the God who became Man, I will thrill to the joy of being a part of His rescued people, forever.

The Spacious Firmament on high,
With all the blue Ethereal Sky,
And spangled Heav'ns, a Shining Frame,
Their great Original proclaim:
Th’ unwearied Sun, from day to day,
Does his Creator's Pow'r display,
And publishes to every Land
The Work of an Almighty Hand.
(Joseph Addison)

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"For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made" (Romans 1:19,20).

HAVE YOU EVER HEARD THE EXPRESSION “PREPONDERANCE OF THE EVIDENCE”? It’s a cumbersome string of words, I’ll grant you, but it contains a useful idea. The preponderance of the evidence means “the greater weight of evidence.” Disputed questions are (or should be) settled in this way. When all the evidence has been heard and all the arguments made, on which side does the evidence weigh more heavily? In which direction do the scales tip?

The existence of God is a disputed question, to say the least. And it seems that disbelief is the “trending” position right now. Yet the evidence has not changed; it is what it has always been. And no matter what the social, cultural, and political pressures may be, our task also remains unchanged. We must decide whether the evidence is heavier on the side of belief or disbelief.

Now, it is one thing to sit safely in Starbucks and debate the existence of God. But what if your life depended on it? Suppose you were going to be asked whether God exists, an envelope would be opened revealing the truth of the matter (“May I have the envelope, please?”), and if your answer was wrong, you would be taken outside and shot to death. What would you do? You would ignore the opinion polls and hang your hopes on whichever position had the greater evidence. With your life on the line, you would disregard even your own prejudices. Only one thing would matter: the actual evidence.

Paul argued that God’s “eternal power and divine nature” are clearly seen “in the things that have been made.” Many have agreed, including Joseph Addison, who was no fool when he wrote, “The Hand that made us is Divine.” It is reason (based on thoughtful observation and not childish simplicity) that urges this conclusion.

What though, in solemn Silence, all
Move round the dark terrestrial Ball?
What tho’ nor real Voice nor Sound
Amid their radiant Orbs be found?
In Reason’s Ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious Voice,
For ever singing, as they shine,
The Hand that made us is Divine.
(Joseph Addison)

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"For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body" (Ephesians 5:29,30).

HUSBANDS ARE EXHORTED TO NOURISH AND CHERISH THEIR WIVES “JUST AS CHRIST DOES THE CHURCH.” As the head of the body, Christ is deeply concerned about the body’s healthy functioning. It is more than a minor interest of His. He died to make the church possible, and having done that, there is nothing He wouldn’t do to provide for the ongoing needs of the church. His nurturing of those who are His special people is without measure.

Paul made this point in Romans 8:32 also. Speaking of God the Father, he wrote, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” As the CEV words it, “If God did this, won’t he freely give us everything else?” The cross proves everything we need to know about our Lord’s benevolent intentions toward the saved.

As those who have obeyed the gospel and been saved from our sins, we are, as Paul says, “members of his body.” This is one of many ways that Christians are described in the New Testament. In other passages we are spoken of as a kingdom, a household, a vineyard, and so forth. Even “church” is a metaphor, comparing the Lord’s people to an assembly or gathering. But to speak of the Lord’s saved ones as His “body” is a very special way of speaking. Every time we Christians partake of the Lord’s Supper on the first day of the week, we are reminded that His body was broken for us in order that we might become His body. And again, if He would make such a difficult sacrifice, should we doubt that He desires to nourish and cherish the body that He has brought into being?

Christians have been saved in order to serve. Whatever blessings we’ve received, we are to view those as resources to be used rather than treasures to be hoarded. Similarly, we can say that the “nourishing” and “cherishing” of the church by Christ are not meant to be enjoyed selfishly but evangelistically. How could a cared-for people not care for others? How could they fail to serve — and sacrifice for — the spiritual needs of those around them?

"The church was not designed to be a reservoir, ever-receiving and retaining for itself God’s spiritual blessings, but rather a conduit, conveying them on and out to others everywhere" (Robert Hall Glover).

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"Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25).

HERE, WITHIN THE SPACE OF JUST A FEW WORDS, WE HAVE ONE OF THE PROFOUNDEST STATEMENTS OF THEOLOGY EVER MADE. Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Here is the heart of the truth about Jesus Christ and also our main motivation for obeying His gospel. And since the statement is part of Paul’s discussion of husbands and wives, we should add: if husbands are to love their wives with anything close to the love Christ had for the church when He went to the cross, they’ve got their work cut out for them.

CHRIST LOVED THE CHURCH. When Jesus said to His disciples, “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18), He spoke of a future event. Even when He died, the church He said He would build did not yet exist. So how can it be said that He gave Himself up because He “loved the church”? We can say that He loved the church prospectively, knowing it would soon come into existence, but it was not the church in the aggregate that He died for. He died for individuals who needed to be saved. So when Christ died, those whom He loved were the individuals who would obey the gospel and receive the forgiveness His death would make possible. We all need to see ourselves in this picture. Even if I am one who has not yet obeyed the gospel, I need to envision myself coming to be a part of the church that Christ loved so much. How could I not want to do so?

AND GAVE HIMSELF UP FOR HER. None of us could have been saved without Christ’s sacrifice. It was His death that atoned for the guilt of our transgressions and opened up the door of God’s grace to us. Surely no one in the history of the world has ever made a greater sacrifice for others than Jesus made when He put Himself in our place and was executed. And for whom did He do this? His church.

When all is said and done, it is sacrifice that shows the extent of love. Christ did more than speak words of love; He gave Himself up for us. So let’s celebrate Christ’s sacrifice. And let’s not be reluctant to celebrate the church which, by His love, became His bride.

For Christ, our dear Redeemer,
For Christ, the crucified;
For the church His blood hath purchased,
The church, His holy bride.
(E. E. Hewitt)

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"For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands" (Ephesians 5:23,24).

THESE VERSES OCCUR IN A PASSAGE THAT SEEMS TO BE ABOUT THE HUSBAND-WIFE RELATIONSHIP. There is certainly an analogy between this relationship and that of Christ to His church, but Paul is clear that the Christ-church relationship is the primary idea, and the other is the one serving as an illustration. “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (v.32). So while we could profit from studying God’s will for the marriage relationship, let’s think today about Christ’s relationship to the church, which is His bride (Revelation 19:7; 21:2,9; 22:17).

First, Paul emphasizes that Christ is the “head” of His church. In fact, He is its only head. He has no vicar on earth. His will for the church was recorded in the New Testament writings, and if His headship is to be respected, those writings cannot be disregarded.

Next, notice that the church is the “body” of Christ. Many practical lessons can be drawn from this, but one is that if the body ever becomes disconnected from the head, it dies. In John 15:5, He used a different analogy (vine and branches), but the point is still the same: “apart from me you can do nothing.”

Finally, meditate on Christ being the “Savior” of the church. In its universal sense, that is what the church is: those who have been saved by Christ. But the danger is that the church will forget that it has been saved, or even that it needed to be saved. Surely, we ought to sing more often the great hymn “Hallelujah! What a Savior!”

All of this should impress us with Christ’s preeminence in all things relating to His people. He is “first” in every sense of the word. He said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). But it is in grace and benevolence that Christ’s authority is exercised, at least toward those who have laid down their rebellion and received His amnesty. To those individuals — His church — His rule results in their highest good. If we are “in Christ,” there is no rightful need that He does not gladly supply.

"Christ is full and sufficient for all his people. He is . . . a Foundation to support, a Root to quicken, a Head to guide, a Treasure to enrich, a Sun to enlighten, and a Fountain to cleanse" (John Spencer).

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"Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen" (Ephesians 3:20,21).

PAUL’S WORDS HERE CONSTITUTE A “DOXOLOGY.” From the Greek doxa (“glory, honor”), a doxology is an expression of praise to God. To God be glory, Paul says, throughout all generations.

IN CHRIST JESUS. Everything about Christ results in God’s glory. On the evening before He died, Jesus prayed, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you” (John 17:1). So we may certainly pray that God will be glorified in Christ.

IN THE CHURCH. Because it deals with human beings, this part of the passage is hard for some to understand, and yet it is no less true. The work of Christ in accomplishing the Father’s purposes resulted in a people saved from their sins. God is glorified by the very existence of these people. Even prior to their perfection in heaven, those saved “in Christ” are those by whose redemption God is greatly glorified.

Our prayer should be that God will receive glory “in the church and in Christ Jesus.” Yes, we do need to resist sectarian, institutional, and “party” concepts of the church, but we must not be so preoccupied with false doctrine that we fail to emphasize important truths that should be preached positively. I fear that some can’t even hear the mention of a passage like Ephesians 3:21 without hastening to remind hearers of what it does not mean. But surely, what the passage teaches is extremely important, and we shouldn’t be hesitant to proclaim it. May God be glorified in Christ Jesus. And may He be glorified in the church, as Paul teaches us.

God chose that Christ’s glory would be closely related to the glory of His people, people who have been saved from their sins by His own blood. These people — broken, fallible, but forgiven people, growing in holiness as they learn from their mistakes — are the people who “embody” Christ and glorify God the Father. If you have obeyed the gospel of Christ, you are a part of Christ’s body, His church. In your new relationship with God, you are not alone. You are part of a people, each of whom it glorified God to rescue.

In Your church, Lord, be glorified, be glorified.
In Your church, Lord, be glorified today.
(Bob Kilpatrick)

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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"The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law" (Deuteronomy 29:29).

THERE ARE SOME THINGS WHICH GOD HAS NOT REVEALED TO THE HUMAN RACE. In fact, it seems likely that only a small portion of what God knows has been revealed to us. We can think of many reasons why God has not spoken of some things. Some would be beyond our ability to understand even if He should tell us. Others are none of our business, which is to say, we have no need to know them. Other things are more than we could bear — it is in mercy that He has not spoken to us of these. But whatever the case may be, “the secret things belong to the Lord our God.”

Yet the main point of Moses’ statement in Deuteronomy 29:29 is about the things that have been revealed. These, he said, “belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” God would surely be pleased if we paid more attention to the “do-able” and “obey-able” aspect of His revelation. He has not revealed Himself merely to inform us or to satisfy our curiosity. It is, instead, for the purpose of our obedience. If the problem of sin boils down to our refusal to obey God, that problem can’t be corrected until we’re brought back to a wholesome sense of the goodness of God’s law. Even in the revelation of His character, God is wanting not just to correct our intellectual misunderstandings of His nature or improve our emotional responses to Him. He is wanting to bring us back to the blessings of a creaturely will that is conformed obediently to its Creator (as reflected in Psalm 19:7-14).

Blaise Pascal made a good point when he said, “Instead of complaining that God has hidden himself, you should give him thanks for having revealed so much of himself.” Given our rebellion against Him, the wonder is that God has spoken to us at all. And if we are thinking rightly, we will drink in every bit of truth about Himself that God has shared with us, eagerly wanting not only to know it but to act on it, hoping always to respond to God with a more perfect blend of reverence and gratitude.

"Faith instructs us in the depths of God. Faith stands above any human system, no matter how valid; it is concerned with the revealed data, with that glory which cannot be named by any human name, yet has desired to make itself known to us in words which all may understand" (Jacques Maritain).

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"O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens" (Ezra 9:6).

EZRA DID NOT DOUBT GOD’S READINESS TO FORGIVE, BUT NEITHER DID HE DOUBT THE REQUIREMENT OF REPENTANCE. His grief was an indication of his deep reverence for God, coupled with a recognition that sin is never a trifling matter. It must be dealt with boldly, bravely, and with a commitment to return to God’s will.

In 2 Corinthians 7:10, Paul contrasted “godly sorrow” with the “sorrow of the world” or mere self-pity: “For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death” (NKJV). While selfish sorrow will certainly produce misery, it does not produce repentance. Only godly sorrow does that. When we recognize the seriousness of our transgressions against God and how much He loves us, we are strongly moved to lay aside our sin and come back to obeying Him.

A lack of godly sorrow is one reason the “repentance” of many people disappears so quickly. Never having pondered how seriously their sins affected their Heavenly Father and His work in this world, they are not powerfully motivated to repent. If they make any commitment to repentance at all, it is little more than “I guess I’ll give it a try.” But godly sorrow is a more potent force. It produces, as Paul says, “repentance leading to salvation.”

In an age when feeling good is the highest priority, the process of godly sorrow is often short-circuited. Many of us know the value that God places upon “a broken and contrite heart” (Psalm 51:17), but we rush past that stage pretty quickly. Eager to be happy again, we fail to grieve our sins in a way that would put us on the path to a true and deep reformation of our character.

If repentance is an essential part of God’s plan of salvation (and it certainly is), then the godly sorrow that leads to repentance is critically important. It requires humility, certainly. But if we are willing to bow before God in the honest recognition of our sins’ seriousness, we may be sure that He is ready to help us and heal us.

"It does not need to be a formal prayer: the most stumbling and broken cry -- a sigh, a whisper, anything that tells the heart's loneliness and need and penitence -- can find its way to God" (Phillips Brooks).

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". . . our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction" (1 Thessalonians 1:5).

PAUL’S ENEMIES IN THESSALONICA WERE PROBABLY SAYING THAT HE WAS A FAKE. The gospel of Christ was false, they would have said, and what is more, Paul knew it to be false. He was deceiving people deliberately, for reasons that were purely selfish. So Paul was anxious about those who had obeyed the gospel in Thessalonica. Knowing of their persecution and that they were hearing hateful charges against him, Paul was concerned — not about his reputation but about their steadfastness. The last thing he wanted was for their faith to be overthrown by doubts about him personally.

To these brethren, Paul wrote, “We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers . . . For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake” (1 Thessalonians 1:2-5).

Paul wanted several things to be clearly understood. (1) Although the gospel is communicated by words, it was far more than the reasonableness of the words that had moved the Thessalonians to believe. (2) In addition to the words, there had been “power.” This is a reference to the miraculous powers by which the apostles guaranteed the truth of their message (Luke 24:44-49; Acts 1:4,5; Hebrews 2:3,4). (3) The Thessalonians also needed to remember that the gospel had come to them “in the Holy Spirit.” This may be a second way of referring to the miracles, but it probably also points to the source of the gospel. The message had come from the Holy Spirit and not merely from Paul’s intellect (1 Corinthians 2:11-13). (4) Finally, the gospel had been presented “with full conviction.” Paul believed the gospel deeply. He and his coworkers might be many things, but they were not charlatans or liars. “You know,” he said, “what kind of men we proved to be among you.”

This text merits our careful attention. Even though the apostles are no longer preaching in person, the foundation has been laid and the record stands firm. The gospel, as preached and confirmed by the apostles, is just as powerful for us as it was for the Thessalonians!

"The world has many religions; it has but one gospel" (George Owen).

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"I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians" (Exodus 6:7).

AFTER ISRAEL WAS DELIVERED FROM CAPTIVITY, WHAT THEN? That is a question God answered even before He liberated them: “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God.” Having rescued them from four centuries of servitude, God would enter into a “covenant,” a special two-way agreement, with them. He would be their God in a unique sense, but as His people, they would have some responsibilities along with their blessings. “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine” (Exodus 19:4,5). Israel would have to keep their part of the agreement.

In Leviticus 26:12, God said to Israel, “I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.” Surrounded by the moral and religious corruption of Canaan, they would need to keep themselves free of those influences, so that they could truly be God’s people, in practice as well as in name.

Paul quotes Leviticus 26:12 in the New Testament and applies it to Christians living in environments like Corinth: “For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’” (2 Corinthians 6:16). If it was true of Israel, it is also true of Christians — if God is to “walk among” us, we must do more than rely on the privilege of a special status; we must maintain a purity in our actual lives that identifies us as belonging to God. God said then the same thing He says now, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:45; 1 Peter 1:16).

For here is the truth of the matter: we haven’t really been liberated or “saved” if, for all practical purposes, we continue to live in “Egypt.” God requires that we leave our chains behind, not only as a group, but also inwardly, privately, and individually.

O Thou, to whose all-searching sight
The darkness shineth as the light!
Search, prove my heart; it pants for Thee.
Oh, burst these bonds, and set it free!
(Gerhard Tersteegen)

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"Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven" (Lamentations 3:41).

IN HIS COLLECTION OF SORROWFUL SONGS FOLLOWING THE DESOLATION OF JERUSALEM BY THE BABYLONIANS, JEREMIAH CAPTURES THE PENITENT SPIRIT THAT ISRAEL SHOULD HAVE HAD AT THIS TERRIBLE TIME. “Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven,” he says. Although God had brought judgment upon Israel (just as He had said He would if they did not cease their idolatry), their future could still be bright with hope if they would repent.

Repentance is a sincere turning of the heart back to God. In our outward actions, repentance involves ceasing to do what is wrong and starting to do what is right, but these outward results of repentance proceed from a heart that is sorry for the sins that have been committed against God (2 Corinthians 7:9-11). Theoretically, a person might change his ways for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with God. Repentance, however, is the reformation of one’s thoughts, words, and deeds because of godly sorrow. It has to do with God and it requires a certain kind of heart (Acts 26:19,20).

This doesn’t mean that the outward aspects of repentance are optional or unimportant. There are some individuals who, when they hear that something depends on what is in the heart, conclude that as long as their heart is right it doesn’t matter what they do in their outward life. But if that is ever true, it certainly is not true with regard to repentance. John the Baptist rebuked the Pharisees, all of whom would have said their hearts were deeply devoted to God: “Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God” (Matthew 3:8 NLT).

Any honest person who has been a Christian very long will confess that repentance must be engaged in continually. Yes, it is one of the initial requirements for becoming a Christian, but to become a Christian is to enter a process of godly growth that will require repentance anytime we see that we’ve failed to trust and obey God. In fact, one of the evidences of spiritual maturity in Christ is that we live with a penitent frame of mind, instantly going to God in prayer the moment we see that we’ve not responded rightly to His love. It’s a new and better way of thinking.

"Repentance is an attitude rather than a single act" (Richard Owen Roberts).

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