“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.
“For those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their minds set on the things of the Spirit. Now the mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the Spirit is life and peace. The mindset of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit to God’s law. Indeed, it is unable to do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
One of the things I desired when I created this blog was to have a space where people interacted with the ideas I was putting forth. More specifically, I hoped to see it become a forum to foster interactions with people who don’t necessarily agree with the ideas in order to have convicted and civil dialogues about them together. Over the last year and a half that’s begun to happen…sort of. If you are someone who bothers reading the comments, one thing that has become clear over the last couple of years is just how profoundly folks committed to other worldview positions don’t understand the Christian worldview. Paul here explains why. Let’s take a look at this with him.
“For what the law could not do since it was weakened by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering, in order that the law’s requirement would be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
The Old Testament seems complicated. More specifically, the Old Testament Law of Moses seems complicated. There are just so many rules to keep (613 to be exact). How is someone supposed to get (and stay) right with God when it seems like you are always going to be breaking some law or another. It feels like the whole thing was just set up to condemn us. Well, as Paul has already talked about, that isn’t the case, but it became the case because of sin. Thankfully, God fixed that through Jesus. Let’s look here with Paul at how.
The Nexus 