“So then, brothers and sisters, we are not obligated to the flesh to live according to the flesh, because if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Have you ever met somebody who somewhat slavishly sought to live up to the expectations of others? It almost didn’t matter who the other person was, if this person felt like she might have an expectation on her, she just about killed herself trying to meet it. In truth, though, the real expectation she was often trying to meet was to herself. In many such cases, this person had been shaped by a potent blend of personality and life experiences to have a need to please other people. This need, understandable as it might be, was making her sick. Obligations can be a heavy thing, especially when they aren’t good. Let’s talk about it.
“Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through his Spirit who lives in you.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
When Jesus was talking with Nicodemus about the new life God was preparing to introduce to the world through the work He was going to do, He used the language of being born again. Nicodemus had a lot of trouble wrapping his mind around this, but Jesus wanted him to understand that the transformation this new life would work in a person would be like they were born entirely anew and starting life over again. In other words, it’s a pretty extreme transformation. Paul here uses another analogy to make the same point. This one is even more graphic. Let’s take a look.
“You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
How does someone know she is saved? What kind of assurance do we have that we are bound for God’s kingdom when this life ends and the next one begins? That is a very important question, and one whose answer has variously troubled or even eluded not a few people over the centuries. The promises of Christ and from the various New Testament authors are pretty amazing. They are definitely something we want access to if we can get it. So, again, how do we know we have it? Paul offers us an important piece of the puzzle here as he continues to unpack the new life available to followers of Jesus.
We’ve all been there before. You were going along, enjoying life, and all of a sudden, tragedy strikes. There’s no good explanation for it. There’s no justification for it. There’s nothing obviously good that could possibly come from it. It’s just evil. Right in your lap. The problem of evil has been one of the most vexing plaguing humans since time immemorial. Something in us knows the world isn’t like it should be, and we’ve long since struggled to explain why it’s not. Evil, though, tends to be something experienced personally, not academically. So, academic answers won’t often do. Personal ones are best. In the Scriptures, we find just such a personal answer in the story of Job. For the next three weeks, we are going to take a look at his remarkable…and remarkably hard story to see what wisdom we can glean for our own hard experiences. Let’s get started.
What to Do When the Wheels Fall Off
Several years ago, I saw a movie called The End of the Spear. The movie is about a group of missionaries who were martyred in the course of their efforts to advance the Gospel. Most famous among this group were two men named Jim Elliott and Nate Saint. In 1955, Jim, Nate, and three other missionaries were attempting to make contact with the Huaorani tribe deep in the jungles of Ecuador. The tribe was known to be very aggressive toward others, especially outsiders. After making several initial peace offerings by lowering various goodies for the tribe down in a bucket from their plane, the team finally decided that it was time to make personal contact with the tribe. On the morning of January 3, 1956, they landed and met some of the tribe members for the very first time. This was one of the first times the tribe had had any contacts with outsiders. They were received with excitement and hospitality. It was looking like things were going to go smoothly. This road for advancing the Gospel was appearing most promising. But just five days later, everything fell apart.
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Over the last few Fridays (last Friday, of course, being an exception), we have been taking a long look at Jesus’ response to Peter’s confession of Him as Messiah in Matthew 16. Jesus’ response to Peter is the first mention of the church we encounter in the Scriptures, and the two verses here are perhaps the most important foundation statement on the church in the Scriptures. In our Wednesday night Bible study group, we’ve spent a total of nearly eight weeks talking about these two verses and exploring their implications for the church today as thoroughly as we can. Needless to say, there’s a lot here. This past week, we finally finished the section. Since we’ve touched on all the rest of it here as well over the last few weeks, I thought we would take a look at the last part of it too. Let’s reflect for a few minutes today on what Jesus meant by binding and loosing things on earth and in heaven.
The Nexus 