Tag: grace

Judgment and Grace

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
Judgment and grace are two prominent themes within Holy Scripture.  You will not find one without the other so that we cannot ignore one over another.  We all need to struggle with the tension between God’s Word to us, and our words to God; between God’s judgment, which opens our souls on a spiritual operating table; and, God’s grace which jumpstarts our broken hearts.  Our most fundamental need above anything else in this life is the need for God’s mercy in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 4:12-16).
 
            God intends that our outer lives and our inner lives match each other.  It is when the two are out of sync that we come under the judgment of God’s Word.  The early Hebrew Christians had slowly drifted from the truth so that their inner and outer lives did not line up well.  Some of them were still performing the outward duties of being a Christian, but were inwardly despising their hard situation.  A growing vacuum was occurring on their insides as they slowly started letting go of Jesus as their object of devotion.  Their hearts began to harden because of their troubles.  On the other hand, there were other Hebrew Christians who began drifting in a different way.  Inwardly, they tried to maintain their devotion and commitment to Christ, but began compromising their outward life to match the culture around them.  In both cases of hardening inwardly, and of compromising outwardly, they each shared the situation of drifting away from their original commitment to Christ.
 
            Even today, it is a very real temptation to try and avoid suffering, to grow weary of our present circumstances and look for a way to get out from under the pain and find a quick fix.  Whenever we find ourselves in such a situation, the remedy is to be reminded that we must continue to hold firmly to the faith we profess because of who Jesus is.
 
            Jesus is our great and ultimate high priest.  He did not enter the temporary sacrificial system of the Old Testament to deal with sins for only a year.  Jesus not only took on the role of high priest, but became the sacrifice, as well.  As a result, we now have a permanent forgiveness of sins through Christ.  So, any Christian who considers going back to an old outdated system needs to be brought back to his senses and embrace the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus. 
 
            Let us then approach Jesus with confidence, with boldness, knowing that with him there is mercy and grace.  Jesus did not just suffer for us; he also suffers with us right now.  Jesus is not detached from us, but is our great high priest, the One whom is intimately involved in every nook and cranny of our lives.  He knows what you are going through, and he is ready to give you grace to help you through whatever it is you are going through right now. 
 
            What is so wonderful about this is that coming to Jesus has nothing to do with being good enough to do so.  Coming to Jesus is all about grace.  Whenever we find that we have drifted from God and are confronted with his Word cutting us to the heart in judgment, the end result is not wrath; the result is mercy.
 

 

            Like the early Hebrew Christians, we all face situations out of our control that wear us down and cause us to become weary.  It is in such times that we can be tempted to let our commitment to Christ slide in some small way.  Over time, the small compromises of faith can snowball into a big slide away from God.  But Jesus is not sitting in heaven frustrated or confounded.  God is not looking for a reason to punish people.  It is just the opposite.  Jesus, the Son of God, our great high priest, is looking for a reason to show grace and help us in our time of need.  He is waiting for us to approach the throne of grace with confidence.  Right now, Jesus is alive.  He is scanning this world, and his church, looking to extend mercy to those who need it.  Thank you, Jesus.

Galatians 3:23-29

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            If you are new to this blog, or to the Revised Common Lectionary, or just need a reminder, here is a very small explanation of how it works.  The Lectionary is one way of reading through the Bible in a three year cycle (known as Years A, B, and C).  The daily readings of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday all anticipate the Scripture texts for Sunday; and, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday readings all reflect back on the previous Sunday.  And each year is attentive to the major events of the life of Christ and of the church.
 
            So, today’s New Testament text looks forward to World Communion Sunday, a day in which we intentionally celebrate the truth that we as individuals and local congregations belong to a much bigger Body of Christ – Christians from different cultures and nations all share Jesus together, symbolized and remembered through our common eating from the Lord’s Table. 
 
            The Apostle Paul needed to give the Galatian churches some remedial teaching on the basic nature of God’s gospel of grace in Christ.  The Gentile believers had begun to buy-in to the notion that they needed to become Jews in order to really be Christians.  Paul would have nothing to do with it because it betrayed the nature of the gospel that in Christ all are one new society, and not old Israel.  “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
 
            The gospel of grace is the great equalizer.  In Christ, God has created a new society in which all come together by faith.  That means people do not need to become Jewish to become a Christian; it also means that no one needs to become an American or any other type of person in order to truly belong to Christ.  The gospel of grace means we are not to only be around people who are just like us, looking for others to conform to us.  It means we appreciate and embrace the wonderful variety of people of all races, classes, ethnicities, gender, and cultures without demanding they be just like us.  In Christ, we are all one new society, one gospel culture celebrating and enjoying Jesus.  It would be poignant for us all to remember this wonderful reality when we approach the Table this Sunday.
 

 

            Gracious God, you established the church as a new egalitarian society through your Son, the Lord Jesus.  Help me to connect meaningfully with others very different from myself so that grace will be my only rule for life.  Amen.

Christ’s Resurrection

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
It is actually possible that some Christians can be laid back concerning the subject of Christ’s resurrection.  Those who have grown up in the church have heard it all before.  They believe it and have signed off on it on their invisible Christian doctrinal checklist.  Yes, yes, Jesus has risen from the grave… now let’s talk about some exciting stuff, like Wisconsin basketball!  When we view Christianity as merely a set of beliefs to hold, it is only logical to have some boredom over the resurrection.  But if we go beyond this and rightly discern that following Jesus is a way of life, then Christ’s resurrection becomes vital, interesting, and wildly significant.  It is necessary to believe in Christ’s resurrection as a real historic event.  But his rising from death was never meant to end there because God has a way of life for us to live into.  God desires us to lean into that resurrection power as the foundation for glorifying him by experiencing a new changed life.
 
            Jesus had in mind to see a community of redeemed people, delivered from the power of sin and death, use their salvation to love God with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strength; to love one another in such a way that demonstrates God’s self-sacrificial love by following him together; and to love the world by talking about the events of the cross and resurrection with people wherever they go, just as naturally as we discuss collegiate basketball.
 
            It is the kind of life that cannot be achieved on our own because spiritually dead people cannot make themselves alive.  It is a life based upon the power and love of Jesus Christ.  God does not choose, adopt, and save based upon how lovely we are or how good we are at making ourselves attractive to him.  He loves us because love is who he is – it is all about his giving us belonging as his beloved child.
 
            Timothy Paul Jones tells in his book Proof: Finding Freedom Through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace about his adopted seven year old little girl.  It was with much prayer that he and his wife decided that God really wanted them to have her become part of their family.  It was not because she was a sweet child.  In fact, this was actually this little girl’s second family because another family had adopted her and did not keep her because they could not handle her.  She had ended up back as an orphan.
 
            After she was adopted and with the Jones’ family for a while, Dad discovered that her former family went to Disney World every year… without her.  The Mom, Dad, and biological siblings would all go, but they would always leave the little girl behind with extended family.  That meant the girl would have to hear all year about the memories of the family and the see the pictures without her in them.  So, after learning about this, Dad decided that the next family vacation was going to be to Disney World, including the adopted girl.
 
            In the month leading up to the vacation, the little girl began lying for no reason, saying incredibly hurtful things to her siblings, and was just a handful to deal with.  Two days before they were to leave, she said to her Dad: “I know what you are going to do.  You are not going to take me to Disney World, are you?”  In her previous family, she had tried being as good as possible, but it never earned her that trip to Disney.  The little girl had been so terrible in the past few months that Dad had the thought to use the trip as leverage to get his daughter in line.  Rather, he wisely responded to her by saying, “This is a trip we are doing as a family, and you are a part of this family, so you are going with us.”  He went on to say, “You will get consequences for your behavior, but we are not leaving you behind.”
 
            The daughter’s behavior did not change, and the car ride to Florida was awful.  But after the first day at Disney World, there was a breakthrough and a turn-around.  Dad asked his daughter, “So, how was your first day at Disney World?”  After a long pause, she said this: “Daddy, I finally got to go to Disney World… but it wasn’t because I was good; it’s because I’m yours.”
 
            Jesus died and rose again, giving us the grace of forgiveness and a new life not because we were either good or attractive; he did it because we belong to him.  There can be no grace without people who flip their middle fingers at God.  Jesus died and rose again because of our sin; because we needed a Savior.  God’s grace is a farmer paying a full day’s wages to a crew of deadbeat day laborers with only a single hour of work (Matthew 20:1-16).  God’s grace is a man marrying an abandoned woman and then refusing to forsake his covenant with her when she turns out to be a whore (Hosea 1:1-3:5).  God’s grace is the nonsense of a shepherd who puts ninety-nine sheep at risk just to rescue one lousy sheep that is too dumb to stay with the flock (Luke 15:1-7).  God’s grace is the extreme commitment to save people from their own sinful stupidity and stubbornness by sacrificing himself on a cruel cross and rising from the dead just so people can live brand new lives full of peace, love, and joy in a new family of redeemed people with lots of siblings who love each other and want to love the lost world who still does not know what they can have in Christ.
 

 

            A true and real grasp of the grace of God in Christ never results in yawning or boredom; it leads to unending praise and extreme gratefulness.  In the wake of Easter Sunday, the resurrection of Jesus is more than a once-a-year recognition for believers; it is to be a way of life in grasping the power of grace and belonging in Jesus.  It ought to change our lives.

Shame

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
            There is a vulnerability crisis in the church today.  What I mean is that far too many Christians keep up appearances and keep their human interactions on the surface level.  Simple exhortations to not be that way will do no good because at the root of the behavior is shame.  If we want to have healthy behaviors in the church, Christians will need to have their identities fully based upon the person and work of Jesus Christ.
 
            Shame is a mindset, not a behavior.  It is the notion that something is wrong with your personhood.  It is to believe that somehow you are deficient, defective, or worthless as a person.  It is to not have the ability to distinguish between what I do and who I am.  When we live with a sense of shame (either knowingly or subconsciously) we are setting ourselves up to practice idolatry.  If we really think there is something wrong with our very humanity, we will seek something to base our value and acceptance upon.  This is why the workaholic cannot stop working, because he believes that by much effort, hard work, and productivity it will make up for the deficiencies in his life.  Others will then accept him.  Indeed, he will accept himself.  This is also why so few people take Sabbath breaks or take advantage of a day off or even all their vacation time.  After all, they feel too guilty if they are idle.
 
            People who live with a sense of shame do not realize that they have the right to set personal boundaries.  If you have a terrible time of saying “no” to people, then it is a good bet that there is some level of shame working underneath the surface.  It just seems selfish to such people to refuse a request.  Living with shame is awful because one feels as though she is simply not good enough as a person compared to others.  The over-responsible, over-achieving, over-functioning person is compulsive about doing things perfectly well so as to avoid feeling ashamed of poor performance.  Conversely, others avoid responsibility, under-achieve, and under-function in the belief that if they were to do the job they will surely fail – so best to not do it at all.
 
            The real problem with all this is that it is a performance-based life.  And, so, it is crippling.  Always wondering if you measure up is a depressing way to live.  Unfortunately, there are far too many performance-based churches out there which shame people for struggling, asking honest questions, not complying with man-made rules, and not being like everyone else.  If I have not made it clear enough yet, trying harder does nothing to break the cycle of shame.  Satan has enough of the world on a self-improvement path; let’s put ourselves on God’s path to freedom.
 
            If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).  Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed (James 5:16).  Jesus has taken our shame away because he faced it down and achieved the victory for us that we could not achieve ourselves.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2).  The cross may have been a humiliating experience, but Jesus did not let that stop him from bringing us salvation from sin and shame.
 

 

            We do not need to wear our hearts on our sleeves in order to become more vulnerable with one another.  Struggles with life do not mean we are defective – it just means we are real people.  Unless we come to grips with scorning shame, we will live stunted Christian lives in plastic Christian churches.  Only through embracing the truth about ourselves, and accepting Christ’s sacrifice on our part, will we experience genuine spiritual and emotional freedom.  There is no need to live in the isolation of shame.  Our identity is in Jesus.