Tag: Following Jesus

Morning Musing: Romans 6:1-2

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“What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? (CSB – Read the chapter)

When you write a lot of things, you occasionally find when you go to write something new that you’ve written it before. That happened a couple of weeks ago as I was starting to studying Romans 6 in preparation for writing about it as we continue our journey. More specifically, I discovered that I had written about these two verses before. I also found myself agreeing with what I said then. So, with some updates after six years, and for the first time ever in nearly eight years of writing this blog, here’s a repeat of an old post.

What should be the relationship of a follower of Jesus to sin? Obviously we shouldn’t do it, but let’s be honest: a simple “ought not” isn’t usually sufficient to keep us from it. We need to understand the why behind the ought before we’re going to wrap our hearts and minds around it to a sufficient degree that it begins to have the kind of power in our lives it needs to have. Here in beginning of Romans 6, after Paul has just been telling us about the power of grace in light of the power of sin, the apostle explores this very idea. His treatment may not be exhaustive, but it is powerful. Let’s start unpacking this today, and continue with Paul on the idea over the next several days.

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See

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We have spent the past six weeks looking at different miracles Jesus performed over the course of His ministry. Some of the miracles have been pretty dramatic. Others fairly easily blend into the background of all the other miracles Jesus did. Some were directly beneficial to a particular individual or group. At least one didn’t seem like it really helped anyone. For all of the variety among these miracles, the one thing the apostle John notes that draws them all together is the fact that they were all really signs intended to point beyond the miracles themselves to something deeper and richer lying behind them: a vision of God’s kingdom and who Jesus really was. This next miraculous sign brings attention and emphasis to Jesus’ efforts to help us see. Let’s talk about His healing a man born blind.

See

For someone accustomed to sight, being blindfolded can be a disorienting experience. I remember once our youth minister did an activity to teach us about trusting Jesus where they had us all put on blindfolds, loaded us in the church van, and took us to a park across town, but didn’t tell us where we were going. If you can believe it, I was the smart-alecky kid who kept up with all the turns the van made and knew exactly where we were the whole time. That’s not totally my fault though, as the driver took all the main roads and didn’t try to disguise the route at all. It so happened that I had a pretty thorough map of the city firmly rooted in my memory then. Without that, though, I would have been sorely tempted to peek through the blindfold just so I knew where I was. Being able to see is essential to getting through life.

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Digging in Deeper: Matthew 16:19

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“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)

About halfway through Jesus’ earthly ministry, He took His disciples on a little field trip. They went deep into some nearby Gentile territory to a region that was about as pagan as it could be. It was pagan, and it had been pagan for a very long time. They were near the city of Caesarea Philippi, named both for the Emperor as well as the grandson of Herod the Great who ruled over the region. They were not far from the site of an ancient shrine to the Greek god Pan, located in a cave that was believed to be one of a handful of entrances to the underworld, also known as the “Gates of Hades.” There, when the distractions of home were about as far from their minds as they could be, Jesus asked them a question: Who do you say that I am? This led into a key confession from Simon whose name was there changed to Peter. Even more importantly than that, Jesus revealed to them His plans to leave behind an institution that would carry on His work when He departed from them. This institution would be known as the church, and this is perhaps the most foundational passage in the Scriptures as far as shaping our understanding of what the church is and what it should be doing. You could write a whole book on these few verses, but today, I want to explore just one idea Jesus introduced and an implication it has for what the church should look like today.

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Bigger

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When life gets hard, we often want to know where God is. When we hurt, we want to know why God didn’t stop it. When circumstances threaten to completely overwhelm us, we want to know if God is big enough to really help. As we continue our journey through the seven signs the apostle John identifies in his Gospel as helping us to better understand who Jesus is, we are looking today at a sign that didn’t seem to benefit anybody when it happened. But when we look past the miracle itself to the thing at which it is pointing, we find reason for great hope in hard times. Let’s dive in and see what happens next.

Bigger

About fifty years ago, a man named Harold Kushner lost his fourteen-year-old son to a rare disease. It was a tragedy. All such losses are tragic. Parents should never have to bury their children. That they do is a symptom of the brokenness of sin in the world. Kushner happened to be a Jewish rabbi. As part of his efforts to deal with his grief, he channeled his emotions into writing a book. The book, released in 1981, had a major and immediate cultural impact. The title promised an insightful look into a challenging question that people have been asking for a very long time. It was called, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. The question of course is why. Why do bad things happen to good people? We’ve all seen it happen. We’ve seen people who seem to us to be good and faithful, kind and generous with others, conscientious citizens, and so on and so forth, but who nonetheless face tragic situations that their character seems like it should preclude as far as we reckon such things. How can there be a good and just God presiding over creation if things like this happen to people like that? 

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Satisfied

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In the superlatively successful Broadway show, Hamilton, the Founding Father’s greatest weakness is that he is never satisfied with what he has. He is always reaching and stretching for something more. When pointed in the right direction, this resulted in incredible success and achievement. When pointed in the wrong direction, though, ruin for himself and others. We all have desires that we long to have satisfied. For some of these desires, though, there doesn’t seem to be anything in this world that can do the trick. As we continue in our series, All Signs Point to Jesus, this week we are looking at a sign that points us toward His ability to satisfy all of our desires. Let’s explore the Scriptures together.

Satisfied

When was the last time you felt really and truly satisfied? What was it that gave you that feeling? Maybe it was finishing a really big project and having your contributions graciously recognized by others. It could have been working with another person, teaching them to do something, and then seeing them succeed wildly. Perhaps it was just a really good meal. There are lots of things that might satisfy us in this life. The thing about getting satisfied in this life, though, is that whatever desire it is that was satisfied has a tendency to return. You ate that great meal, but then you were hungry again. In fact, you were probably hungry again by the time the next mealtime rolled around. You finished that one project, but then there was another one behind it. And if there wasn’t, you went looking for one. That one student succeeded, but then there was another student who needed help. And when those desires returned, sometimes the same things satisfied them again, but sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes you needed more. It’s almost like underneath these more common, daily desires we have there are deeper longings that cry out for satisfaction. Yet try as we might, getting these addressed often seems to be just beyond our reach. 

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