The Crossing (John 5:19-30)

Posted on April 16, 2023 by salooper57

“I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” – Jesus

Viewing time: 31 minutes (approx.)

The Crossing (John 5:20-30)

Today, we celebrate the biggest – and best – thing that ever happened. Its impact far exceeds that made by the invention of the wheel or writing. The discovery of the new world cannot compare. We are celebrating the victory of God, the salvation of humanity, and the conquest of death! Today, we remember the pioneer who blazed the trail out of the grave. He laid his life down of his own accord, entered the realm of the dead, and then broke out. 

That changed everything. Jesus made it possible for the rest of us to go into death unafraid, knowing that death will not have the last word. He can infuse his kind of life into us, the life over which death has no power. Through Christ, God has rolled the stone from all our graves! 

But we must have the kind of life that outlives death. We must receive it. A little later, we will give you a chance to do just that, but first, I will do my best to explain what the Bible says about this kind of life and how we come into possession of it. Then we will ask you, if you haven’t done so already, to accept God’s unique gift of life. And if that resonates with you, if that is what you want, we will ask you to get out of your seat and cross the room from wherever you are, and come to the front, as a symbol of crossing into a new life.

A new life. What does that mean? What does it have to do with Jesus? What will happen to me if I open myself up to it? Those are all good questions. We’re going to look at John 5 to find some answers.

But first, let me give you a little background, and for that, we need to go back to the beginning, to the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden. It is not just their story; it is our story, too, and we want to try to understand it. God created Adam and Eve to live with him and serve as his regents on earth. But he also designed them to be choosing creatures. They could choose to live with him as their God or set out to be their own gods. They chose the latter.

God had warned them: “On the day you eat that fruit – the day you choose against me – you will surely die.” You remember the story: They ate the fruit and kept living. They were exiled from the Garden, but they didn’t die. In fact, they had children; they propagated the race. So how could God say that they would die? Was that just an empty threat? Did he lie? 

No. When our parents ate the fruit, they cut off their connection to God, and the spiritual part of them, which is as essential to humanity as the physical part, died. Their relationship with God, each other, and the world was spoilt. Jealousy, competitiveness, hatred, and selfishness became part of life. The humans were disjointed. The biological, animal part survived, but the spiritual part withered. The biological part still needed nourishment, which it got from plants and now, animals. But the spiritual part, which was sustained by a connection to God, was no longer capable of receiving nourishment. 

The story of the human race has been the long, sad story of something missing. Sometimes the feeling is unmistakable and inescapable. At other times it is drowned out by the noise and busyness of everyday life, but it is always there, day in and day out, through all the seasons of life. We try to find a substitute for what is missing in pleasures and possessions, in houses and cars, or in spouses and kids. But no matter how many of these things we obtain, something is still missing. Or rather, it is not a thing that is missing; it is us. We are missing in action, missing a part of ourselves – the spiritual part – and we need it to be whole. 

Jesus lived and died and rose from the dead so that we could be whole. God sent his Son to give us what we were missing, or as St. John puts it: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” We are born missing the kind of life that died in Adam. But he can have what Adam lost—because of Jesus.

Now let us look at our passage. Verse 20: “Just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so, the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.” He gives the kind of life that Adam lost; there is no other place to find it. 

The Greek New Testament has two words for life: bios and zoe. Bios is the life we are familiar with; it is biological life (that is where the word comes from). It is a life of pulse rates and heartbeats, and brain waves. After Adam sinned, he and Eve retained biological life for a while. Their hearts went on beating. Their brains went on conducting electrical currents. 

The other word for life, zoe, is the kind that Adam and Eve lost. It is the word Jesus uses here. It is the word used in John 3:16, “But have everlasting zoe.” Bios wears out in about seventy or eighty years. Zoe never wears out. The heart stops, brain waves cease, and bios is gone, but zoe keeps going. You and I were made for both bios and zoe. 

In verse 21, Jesus says that the Son (he is speaking about himself) “gives life (zoe) to whom he is pleased to give it.” There are a couple of words here that we must not miss. The first is the word “gives.” Throughout the Bible, the message is the same: zoe – the eternal kind of life – is a gift. You cannot earn it, buy it, or generate it. If God doesn’t give it to you, you can do nothing to obtain it.

St. Paul says that it is God who will “give eternal life,”[1] and that “the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”[2] Jesus says, “I give them eternal life.” St. Peter says, “He has given us everything we need for life (for zoe).”[3] 

Right here lies the difference between so much religion on the one hand and the relationship God wants to have with us on the other. Religion tries to pay for eternal life. Go to church, give money, sacrifice the things you want, pray enough, do a sufficient number of good deeds, and maybe – just maybe – you will earn a place. But the kind of life we need isn’t earned; it’s given.

But if God must give this kind of life, and we can do nothing to earn or deserve it, isn’t that a little scary? If it is not in our power, how can we be sure of obtaining it? That question brings us to the second word in this verse we must consider: the word pleased. “The Son gives life to whom he is pleased (or wills) to give it” (John 5:21). But if the Son of God only gives this zoe life to those to whom he is pleased to give it, where does that leave me? I cannot earn it. I am entirely dependent upon God to provide it. And I have done some bad things in my life. What if he is not pleased to give it to me?

But he is pleased to give it—that is the point; it is why Jesus died. The Bible describes God as “God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved…” (1 Tim. 2:4). “He is not willing,” says St. Peter, “for any to perish” (2 Peter 3:9) – and that includes you. “Our God is in heaven,” sings the Psalmist. “He does whatever pleases him” (Psalm 115:3). What pleased him was to give his only Son for us so that we would not perish but have everlasting life.

That sounds great. Now, what is the catch? There is no catch, but there are conditions. Now, please don’t misunderstand. Everything about this eternal kind of life is good. It is what we are made for. It fulfills us and makes us whom we were created to be. But some people still don’t want it. Why?

Why would anybody not want this kind of life, the kind that goes on forever? I’ll be candid: they don’t want it because there is no way to postpone its onset. Eternal life doesn’t start at the grave. You cannot purchase it on the layaway plan (sounds like a mortician’s joke). Some people wish they could. But when you accept the eternal kind of life (zoe), it begins immediately. Not everyone wants that.

Take St. Augustine. He prayed earnestly, “Lord give me chastity” – make me sexually pure  – “but not yet.”

Years ago, I talked to a friend about trusting Jesus and receiving this life, but he said, “Look, when I’m old and done having fun, then I’ll look into religion. But not yet.” He did not want to change his life. Now that he is old, I wonder if there is anything still in him that wants to “look into religion”? Perhaps that interest died years ago – that happens to people like my friend.

Someone once asked the philosopher Mortimer J. Adler why he had never become a Christian when he admitted to believing that Jesus was the Son of God. His answer was blunt: “I don’t want to have to change my life.”

Those men realized something you need to know. If you receive the eternal kind of life, it will change you, and the change starts now, not when you die, not at some far-off date in the future. Jesus said in verse 24, “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.” He has it. Present tense. Eternal life starts when we hear and believe, not when we die. 

You may be thinking, “But you said, ‘There is nothing we can do to earn it – going to church, giving money, and all that religious stuff.” Exactly. We cannot earn it, buy it, or delay it; but we must receive it. We must hear – and people can be very good at not hearing what they don’t want to hear – and believe. But if we do, it will change us.

Imagine that I offer you a pup from the litter of last year’s American Kennel Club’s Grand National Champion English Mastiff. Some people would pay thousands of dollars for a pup like that, but I will give it to you for free. But you need to know that pup is going to grow into a dog the size of Rhode Island. It is going to eat you out of house and home. Is it free? Yes. But it is not cheap.

It is that way with the eternal kind of life. When you accept God’s gift of life, it starts small. But it grows. And as it grows, it begins to change you. It seeks nourishment. (That means taking time to read the Bible and pray.) It wants to be around others with the same life. (That means church and Christian friends.) It wants to please God. (That means getting rid of selfish habits.) It loves. (That means vulnerability and self-sacrifice.) It changes you, and if a person does not want to change – like my friend – then the last thing he’ll want to do is let this eternal kind of life get into him. He’ll be sure not to listen for Jesus’s voice and will fill his life with noise to drown it out. 

So, you need to ask yourself: is my life so fine that I don’t want to change? I’m not talking about circumstances – everyone wants to change those at times; I am talking about you, about your life. If you are satisfied with yourself, you probably won’t feel the need to move toward God. But before you conclude that you don’t need this life, there are other factors to consider. One of those is represented by the word “death.” “He has,” verse 24, “crossed over from death to life.” 

The word translated “crossed over” is the same word used elsewhere for moving from one house to another. Although we have biological life in our fallen state, we live in the house of spiritual death. St. Paul puts it this way: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…” (Eph. 2:1). Transgressions and sins grow like weeds in the decomposition that accompanies spiritual death. What’s worse: when the spirit is not alive, we cannot connect to God. We are dead to him. Nietzsche famously said that God was dead, but he was mistaken. He was, as usual, confusing himself with God. 

Another factor to consider: without this zoe life, we are also dead to heaven. People frequently object to the doctrine of hell on the grounds that a loving God would never send anyone there, but they are looking at the thing upside-down. If God could put a person whose spirit is not alive in heaven (and I don’t know if that is even possible), it would still be hell to him. He would not appreciate it, understand it, or feel it. He is spiritually dead. You might as well seat a corpse at your table for Easter dinner. He wouldn’t enjoy it any more than someone without zoe life would enjoy heaven.

We accept the fact that when a person experiences biological death, something needs to be done with the corpse. The dinner table is not a suitable place for it, so we bury or cremate them. Well, heaven is not a suitable place for the spiritually dead – for those not alive to God. If you choose to be dead to God, you cannot choose to be alive to heaven. You cannot have it both ways. And if you won’t have heaven, there is only one alternative.

There is another factor to be considered. Jesus goes on to say that everyone who has ever been biologically alive will eventually face judgment: Verse 28: “… he [the Father] has given him [Jesus] authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.”

The last book of the Bible speaks about this judgment. In Revelation chapter 20, verse 11, we read: “I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life (zoe). The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

Everyone will be judged according to what they have done, but no one will be condemned on that basis. Only those whose names are not found in the book of life are condemned. “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” Cremated.

Do you see? In the judgment, God is looking for life, for zoe. Whoever has it will be received into heaven. But if someone doesn’t have it – how would putting that person in heaven help him? It is like seating the corpse at the dinner table: unhelpful to him and unpleasant to everyone else.

People sometimes turn to God because they want to go to heaven when they die; I did, and that is a sensible motive. But I am inviting you to turn to God so you can get heaven into you while you live. I am inviting you to a different kind of life, which just happens to be forever. So, if you are ready to change, if you are prepared to begin a new life, today is the day.

Notice what Jesus says in verse 24: “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me…” Does that describe you? Have you heard the voice of Jesus speaking to your soul, saying: This is your time? Come to me. Believe in me. If so, I will ask you to make a definite response by slipping out of your row and coming to the front at the close of this service. 

If you have already moved toward God – you have believed in Jesus – but you haven’t been living out of your connection with God – perhaps you don’t know how – you come, too. 

[1]Romans 2:7

[2]Romans 6:23

[3]2 Peter 1:4

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Why the Church is Essential to God’s Plan for Humanity

Posted on April 15, 2023 by salooper57

The church is more important than is generally understood, even by church members. It is crucial to the future, for it lies at the center of God’s plan for humanity. Without the church, the world could never be right, and individual lives would always be incomplete.

Doubts on this matter are understandable. “The church? It is enamored with political power. Its people mess up as much as anyone else. They can’t get along. They can be revoltingly self-righteous.”

No one denies these criticisms – not even Jesus. He once rebuked a church for being lukewarm and told them bluntly that they were wretched and pitiful. St. Paul accused one of his churches of worldliness because they were filled with jealousy and quarreling. He told another church that he feared he had wasted his efforts on them. The church is not and has never been the home base for those who have it all together.

If that is true, why even bother with the church? Because there is a power at work in the church that comes from outside the church and is capable of transformative change. Because the church is integral to God’s restoration plan for the world. Because the church is in contact with a life outside the range of ordinary human experience: God’s own life, which He shares with people through His Spirit.

It is necessary to state that this is only true of the church as it is biblically, not culturally, defined. Just because a building has a sign on its front lawn that says “church” does not make it, or the people in it, a church. It may have a pastor with the title “Reverend” before their name, a 5013(c) (3) tax status, and hold religious services, but none of that makes it a church.

A group of people is only a church when they confess Jesus Christ as Lord and share God’s life between them. When a church gathers, God is present in a way He is not present when the Kiwanis gather, Congress convenes, or the university’s religion department holds a conference.

The church comprises individuals who have been brought to God through the instrumentality of Christ and are connected to God and each other through one Spirit. They form a kind of network, sharing a distinctive type of life. That means a person can attend a church meeting yet not be part of the church because they are not on the network. They lack that distinctive kind of life.

Without this life, a person cannot reach their potential; doing so requires both kinds of life, biological and (for lack of a better word) spiritual. Think of a balloon that is made of the finest rubber. It is dyed the most beautiful color. It is a perfect balloon, yet it only reaches its potential when the magician fills it with air and shapes it into a flower or a bunny.

We have biological life. Perhaps we are healthy, strong, and intelligent. But unless the Divine Magician breathes spiritual life into us and shapes us into something beautiful, we live beneath our potential. Without God, we cannot experience the richness of human life as the Creator intended.

This illustration, like all illustrations, cannot be pressed. God is not a Magician. He doesn’t do tricks; he performs miracles. He shapes us into something that is both beautiful and valuable. He does not breathe his divine life into us to leave us isolated but to combine us with others: not a lone flower but a bouquet; not a piston, but an engine; not a soldier, but an army. That bouquet, that engine, that army is the church of Jesus Christ.

In Ephesians, St. Paul describes the church as the “new humanity” powered by love, not fear. It is the nexus linking the creator with his beloved creation and is a principal instrument of God’s activity on earth.

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What Does the Resurrection Say to American Culture?

Posted on April 11, 2023 by salooper57

America does not believe in resurrection. At least, that appears to be the case from what America does believe. In this class, we clarify what the Bible means by resurrection and then examine American culture’s competing beliefs.

45:36
Posted in Bible, Christianity, Theology, What the Bible Has to Say to American Culture, Worldview and Culture | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Family of God (Series on the Church)

Posted on April 9, 2023 by salooper57
Viewing Time: Approximately 24 minutes (Text below)

You are a young man in first century Israel (though what I am about to say would have been true of men almost anywhere in the first century). You got married on Sunday. Your family, your bride’s family, your friends, and pretty much the entire village showed up. The celebration went on for a long time.

Now you have a wife. You have your own home, which is physically connected to your old home, where your parents and siblings live. Of course, the most important person in your world now is your wife. She is the apple of your eye. She has first place, top priority in your life.

Except … that is not how things worked in and around the Mediterranean in the first century – or the tenth. It was not how things have worked in most of the world. Even after a man was married, his highest priority relationships were with his brothers, not his wife. If a man had to choose between his brother and his wife, of course he would choose his brother. Everyone knew that.

Herod the Great was well-known, and perhaps even ridiculed, for being head-over-heels in love with his wife Mariamne. But after Herod had a falling out with Marc Antony that involved her brother Aristobulus, he had Mariamne executed. Herod understood that, when push came to shove, his wife’s loyalty to her brother would outweigh her loyalty to him. Loyalty to siblings came first.

This is hard for us to grasp. The idealization – even idolization – of Romantic Love is part of our culture. It was not part of theirs, or of any culture until medieval times, more than a millennium after Christ. We take it for granted that our spouse is (or at least should be) the most important person in our lives. Children grow up and move out. Friends retire and go to Florida. Our spouse comes first.

We assume that it was always this way, so when we read Scripture, we tend to miss the extraordinary nature of early Christian relationships. They called each other, and thought of each other, as brothers and sisters. That means they placed each other at the top of their relationship priority list.

We cannot imagine how topsy-turvy that must have seemed to onlookers. Everyone knew that a person’s family of origin, especially siblings, especially brothers, held the top spots on the priority list. It was scandalous to suggest otherwise. Yet here were followers of Jesus elevating outsiders to the status of family, of brothers and sisters. They would have thought a man absurd or henpecked who elevated his wife to that level, but to raise outsiders to that level was shocking.

Where did the Jesus-followers get this crazy notion that people outside their bloodline could be inside their family? They got it from Jesus. And this crazy notion turned the Roman empire upside down. People wanted to be part of a family that accepted them, loved them, and shared life with them. Much of the gospel’s appeal in the ancient world was sourced in how the church treated its members like family.

Mark 3 details a very busy time in Jesus’s ministry. His popularity was soaring. He was working long, jam-packed days. The crowds that gathered around him were so large that they nearly swallowed him up. As soon as people found out where Jesus was staying, they came to him in droves. In verse 20 we learn that there were days when he and his disciples didn’t even get a chance to eat.

Now look at verse 21. “When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.’” Mark interrupts this story with a second narrative but comes back to it in verse 31. This is a technique he often employs. You can find the same kind of thing in chapters 5, 6, and 11. He starts a story, interrupts it, then returns to it. When he does that, you can be sure that the story on the inside is connected to the stories that sandwich it. We’ll come back and see what that connection is before we’re finished.

This first story is fascinating all by itself. Jesus’s family went to take charge of him. The Greek word for “take charge of” can mean “to seize” or “to arrest.” Do you know what is happening here? This is an intervention. Jesus’s family thinks that he “is out of his mind,” or, more literally, “is beside himself.”

This strange story supports the early biblical interpreters who claimed that Jesus had older stepsiblings. In this society, it would be unthinkable for younger brothers to attempt an “intervention” on their oldest brother – especially an older brother who enjoyed the social standing of Jesus. Those old interpreters held that Joseph had been married previously, that his first wife died, and that he brought older children into his marriage with Mary.

So, Jesus’s family thinks that he is out of his mind. They do not understand him. We see this misunderstanding replayed in John 7, where his brothers taunt, “You can’t become famous if you hide like this! If you can do such wonderful things, show yourself to the world!” (John 7:4 NLT) They didn’t get Jesus. They didn’t understand him at all.

Mark resumes the story down in verse 31: Jesus’s mother and brothers have arrived. I suspect it was the brothers, not his mother, who were behind the idea of an intervention. They want Jesus but cannot get into the house because of the crowd. One of the brothers, probably the oldest, is asking the crowd to tell Jesus that his family wants him, and the word is passed from person to person and finally to Jesus.

His surprising response is significant. He asks, verse 33, “Who are my mother and brothers?” I wonder what flashed through people’s minds at that moment. “His brothers are James, Joseph, Simon and Judas…” But Jesus pauses, perhaps gesturing to take in the crowd around him, and said: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

What a remarkable thing to say! Who has top priority in the relationship hierarchy? Brothers in the family of origin. But Jesus looks past them to his new family. This would have sounded to James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas like it would sound to you if your brother was telling people that his family is the Heaven’s Gate cult or the Order of the Solar Temple.

Now take note of who Jesus’s family is. They are not those who attend church or those who read the Bible. They are not those who believe a particular doctrine regarding Christ’s atonement. They are those who do God’s will. They are the Brothers and Sisters of the Obedience of Faith.

Jesus’s followers were listening. They took him at his word when he told them, “You are all brothers” (Matthew 23:8), and they treated each other that way. The intimacy and commitment among the early church was well-known.

In the highly stratified society of the first century Mediterranean, the church was radically countercultural. Nowhere in the Roman Empire could a freedman call a patrician, “Brother”– except in the church. Slaves called their masters, “Brother,” and, more surprising still, masters called their slaves “Brother.” The church was startlingly different.

James, one of the family members who came to take charge of Jesus, eventually joined the brotherhood of faith. When he wrote to his fellow Christ-followers, “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food,” he knew that his readers would understand he was talking about the brotherhood and sisterhood of Jesus.

Listen to what the Apostle Paul wrote Pastor Timothy (from 1 Tim. 5:1-2): “Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as a father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.” The church is a family.

Of course, in every family there are problems, and the church is no exception. The biblical writers were not naïve about this. They knew the “kids” would sometimes behave badly – and so would the “adults.” When that happened, a reprimand might be needed or even a time out. That is what 2 Thessalonians 3:15 is about: “If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him. Do not associate with him, in order that he may feel ashamed.” But even this is done in the context of family, so Paul hastens to add: “Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.”

We see the family dynamic again in Romans 14. This time, the family is having an argument. Some in the family are eating – and think that everyone should eat – meat butchered in a pagan temple, ritually offered to its god, and then sold at a reduced price at the market. Their argument goes like this: “The ‘god’ of that temple is a fiction – Apollo is a myth. It is all a sham. So why not eat it – especially when you can get the meat on sale!”

Other family members – ones who until recently worshiped in the Temple of Apollo – are horrified: “Everyone knows that eating the meat of a sacrifice joins a person to the god to whom the sacrifice was made. I just came out of that life. I don’t want my friends to think I’ve gone back. Is getting a good price on meat so important to you that you are willing to destroy your testimony?”

Paul conceded that each side has a point. It is a “disputable matter,” he says, and insists there is room for disagreement. But, more importantly, it is a family matter. What they need to do is look out for each other and love each other. He tells them not “to put any stumbling block in [their] brother’s way” (Romans 14:13) and reminds them that everyone in the family answers to Father: “…why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat” (Romans 14:10).

There are many other examples. I’ll mention one more from 1 Corinthians 7. While answering questions about marriage, Paul addresses the husband who has become a Christian but whose wife has not. This is verse 12: “If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.”

Notice that the husband is a brother – he’s part of the family – but the wife is not yet a sister. She may be valued and much loved, but she is not part of the family since she does not share the family’s spiritual DNA. She does not have the Spirit of Jesus. She may go to church gatherings with her husband, but she will not be in the church until the Spirit of Christ is in her. She may critique the church, enjoy the church, have valued friends in the church, but she will not become a sister until she entrusts herself to God through faith in Jesus.

I’ve already mentioned how countercultural the family nature of the church was in the first century. It still is. But it is not only countercultural; it is also appealing. In different eras, various benefits of Christ’s atoning death have had special appeal. In Martin Luther’s time, the possibility of justification and forgiveness was powerful among people who were profoundly aware of their sins. In John Wesley’s time, the possibility of being redeemed from sin’s slavery – freed from its addictive power – was a great draw.

In contemporary society, the hope of reconciliation catches our attention. The idea that relationships can be restored – to God and to others – has immense appeal. We are living through the disintegration of embodied relationships on a massive scale. The growth of digital technology has hastened the breakdown of intimacy, even in families. 55 percent of married people in a recent survey said that their spouse spends too much time on their phone. 60 percent of parents believe that technology has interfered – it is called technoference – in their relationship with their kids.

According to the medical doctor and political philosopher Ronald Dworkin, the United States has seen a hundredfold increase in the number of professional caregivers since 1950. The U.S. has 77,000 clinical psychologists, 192,000 clinical social workers, 105,000 mental health counselors, 50,000 marriage and family therapists, 17,000 nurse psychotherapists, and 30,000 life coaches—not to mention hundreds of thousands of nonclinical social workers and substance abuse counselors. Dworkin writes that “under our very noses a revolution has occurred in the personal dimension of life, such that millions of Americans must now pay professionals to listen to their everyday life problems.”[1] That role used to be filled by family.

People – people we know – are primed for satisfying relationships. When the church is living as a family, as Jesus intended, they can find them here. We can be the portal through which people pass into relationships with God and his family.

But how? By intentionally nurturing our relationships in the church. By spending time with the family – certainly on Sunday mornings but at other times as well. There is no substitute for spending time together. This is a rule of thumb: people who have the most satisfying church experience are the ones who spend the most time with their church family. The person who attends a worship service once a month does not have a very satisfying church experience. The one who attends weekly will be more satisfied. The one who sees brother and sister Christians during the week, who does life with them, will be most satisfied.

That is not to say that their life is sourced in the church, or that they have to be on campus three times a week, or anything like that. Their life is in God, but they share that life with their church family. They go out to eat together. Play games together. Start businesses together. They help each other with projects, both at home and at church. They go to concerts and plays. They fish together. They waste time together.

If you are a Christian – you have come over to God by entrusting your life to Jesus – but you are not satisfied with church and you don’t have the kinds of relationships I have been describing, then the ball is in your court. Jesus wants us to live as family. Take steps to make it so. Invite someone out for lunch today. Come and celebrate the baptism. Join a project at church with a few others. Start a church golf league or bowling league. Have a game night at your house. Become part of the care ministry team. Invite people over to watch the college final four games. Join a D-Group. Do life together with Jesus’s family.

Now, back to Mark 3. Remember that Jesus’s family came to take charge of him, to stage an intervention. His family thought he was “out of his mind,” was “beside himself.” They didn’t understand Jesus at all.

In verses 22-30, Mark pivots from what Jesus’s family thought about him to what the teachers of the law were thinking. His family said he was out of his mind. The teachers of the law said that he was possessed by a demon. They did not understand Jesus at all.

In verse 31, Mark pivots back to Jesus’s family, and in verse 34 we hear these words: “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” They were the ones who “got” Jesus. You’ll never get Jesus just by attending church services. You’ll not get him by reading books. You’ll get him when you intend to obey God.

In St. Paul, we read (more than once) of the obedience that comes from faith. From Jesus we learn of the perception that comes from obedience. He said, “Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own” (John 7:17). The people who have resolved to do the will of God are the one who grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus. They get him. Will you be one of those people?

[1] Quoted by Ross Douthat in Bad Religion (Free Press, 2012), pp. 240-241

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Why Coming Near God Is Both Risky and Redemptive

Posted on April 8, 2023 by salooper57

People sometimes ask, “Why doesn’t God just show himself? Why doesn’t he come near?” In the Scripture, God promises to come near, but that coming near is always a kind of judgment. The presence of God is a spotlight, revealing not only our actions but our thoughts and motives. The truth about us, including truth we have not known, becomes clear when God comes near.

Even so, the prophet Isaiah pleaded with God to come near: “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!” But do we really want the one who causes mountains to tremble to come near? When he did so at Sinai, the mountain “was covered with smoke, because the LORD descended on it in fire … and the whole mountain trembled violently.” People suddenly found they did not want God to be so close. They said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

Here lies the incredible tension under which we live—and not just us, but God too. According to Isaiah, people’s hearts are hard when God is far away, yet if he comes near while they are wrapped up in their sins, they will be hurt. If he does not come near, their hearts will become harder and even more entwined in sin. If he comes close, he might destroy us, but if he does not, we will destroy ourselves.

This is the disaster that Adam’s rebellion perpetrated on all his children. If God comes close, we are ruined. If he stays away, we are ruined. The Bible is the story of how God solved this most intractable problem. It tells how he made a way to come near without destroying people.

How did he do that? “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” The eternal God entered time. The infinite God was confined in space. God’s plan involved thousands of years of preparation. An entire people group was groomed for millennia. The right woman was selected through whom the Word would become flesh. Finally, God sent “his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, for sin…” Only in this way could God come among humans without undoing them.

And what happened? The humans killed him. This did not take God by surprise. He knew through all those thousands of years that this would happen, and he incorporated it into his plan. It was the way – perhaps the only way – the intractable problem could be solved. God also knew through all those thousands of years that he would raise Christ from the dead, which was how the problem of human mortality would be overcome.

According to the biblical story, Christ ascended to heaven following the resurrection. Doesn’t that mean that we are back where we were? Is God not once again far from us? Do we only get God for the 33 years that he lived among us in human form? No, God sent his Spirit, which was also the plan for thousands of years. Through his Spirit, his presence brings restoration and not ruin.

Long ago, the prophet asked: “But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears?” The answer is the person who has received God’s Spirit. The presence of this Spirit enables humans to endure God’s coming. And he imparts his Spirit to the person who believes in his Son.

God has not changed. He is still the same God who, when he came near, made Moses cry out, “I am trembling with fear.” God is not a toy for religious people to play with. Coming near him is risky. It can unmake a person—or remake him.

Because of what God did in Christ, and because of the ensuing gift of his Spirit, “we can come near to God” knowing that “he will come near” to us. We can do this with confidence, certain that his presence will heal, and not harm, us.

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Leaving Home (not knowing where we are going)

Posted on April 7, 2023 by salooper57

I will be finishing up the work that God gave me to do at Lockwood Community Church over the next few months. It has be a long, fruitful, and (for the most part) happy time. My wife and I have loved being here. Our three sons grew up at Lockwood and all three remain committed followers of Christ. We have made many friends here, friends who are dear to us, friends who have made us better people, friends we will cherish for the rest of our lives, in this age and in the age to come.

When I first told our elders that Karen and I would be finishing up here, one of them (a dear friend) told me that he thought COVID and the stress of the last couple of years was influencing our decision. I could see why he felt that way. COVID was a nightmare: making almost daily decisions, which we knew that half the congregation would support and the other half would oppose. We lost some people during COVID – people who were (and are) dear to us.

But COVID and stress had nothing to do with this decision. In fact, the post-COVID years (if there is such a thing) have been a time of contentment and joy. We were not wanting to leave Lockwood. We are happy here and, in fact, to stay would be easier.

But I believe that God has told me to finish up the work that he has given me to do here. This belief came directly out of my daily times of Bible reading and prayer. One day, over a year ago now, I was praying when two words flashed into my mind. That is a poor way of describing it. The two words were simply there, as if they had just been spoken from somewhere out of the blue. The two words were lake turnover.

It is hard to describe how odd this was. I was not thinking of lakes at all. I suppose I had come across the term at some point in my life, but I could not remember doing so, and I had never given the concept any thought. I stopped my prayers momentarily and wrote the words down so that I could google them later.

In my online search, I discovered that lakes in colder climates “turn over” – that is, as the air temps drop the surface water cools. As it cools, it become denser, heavier, and sinks, displacing the water beneath it. Eventually, the water on top sinks to the bottom and the water on the bottom rises to the surface.

When this happens, the oxygen trapped at the bottom is released and refreshes the lake. At the same time, though, other gasses (like methane) are also released, which are capable of causing a foul odor.

When I read this, I was immediately certain that our church was going through “lake turnover.” Many of her foundational members were leaving influential positions because of age, or because they were moving, or because of death. Others were gradually taking their place. This, I realized, was healthy for the church even though, in the short term, it might raise a stink.

I also realized with a feeling of certainty that Karen and I would be part of the lake turnover.

She and I talked, prayed, and prayed together about this. Some months later, during a time of prayer – how often my thoughts, my actions, my life have been changed by prayer – I read these words: “See to it that you complete the ministry you have received in the Lord.” The words jumped off the page at me. I reread them in Greek. I felt certain that the message for Archippus was now being spoken to me by the Spirit.

That certainty has solidified as the months have gone by. So, after decades of fruitful ministry, we are finishing up the work God has given us to do. We are being obedient. Yet, it is sad, a little scary – what does God have for us next? – and a even exhilarating. Perhaps Abraham felt this way when he obeyed and went out, not knowing where he was going.

We, of course, are not Abraham.  Would you remember us to God today? Would you pray that God will help the church we love discern their next leader? And would you ask him to grace Karen and me to trust him completely as we go through this transition and into our next sphere of service?

Thanks for joining with us in this adventure!

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The Secular Creed (What the Bible Has to Say to American Culture)

Posted on April 5, 2023 by salooper57

Woke: is it good or bad – or both? Should Christians adopt, adapt, or wage war against what Rebecca McLaughlin calls “the secular creed”? In this class, we look at the Five Commandments of the secular creed (Black Lives Matter, Love is Love, Women’s Rights are Human Rights, We’re all Immigrants, Diversity Makes Us Stronger) and think through where Jesus’s followers should stand.

Viewing Time 41:07
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The Day You Came Into the Church (1 Corinthians 12:1-13)

Posted on April 2, 2023 by salooper57


Viewing Time: 24 minutes (approximate)

Last week, we looked at the day the church was born into the world. This week, we will look at the day you were born into the church. But first, we need to think a little further about what the church is.

In ordinary conversation, we use the word “church” in four different senses.[1] First, we use it to refer to the building or campus where worship services and corporate events are held. I frequently say to Karen, “I’ve got to go to church,” which is a kind of shorthand for saying that I am headed to the building that is situated at 41.8844529 degrees latitude and -85.0369717 degrees longitude. My wife knows that I can get pedantic about the details, so she appreciates the shorthand.

A second common way the word “church” is used is in reference to an event. Someone asks us to go golfing on Sunday and we reply, “Sorry, I’ve got church.” We mean that we have an event – usually a worship service – to attend. So “church” is an event that happens from 8:30 to 9:30 or from 11:00 to 12:00 on Sundays.

Third: we might be talking about an institution – in our setting, the one known as Lockwood Community Church, with its covenant partners, officers (like the pastors, elders and deacons), and administrative board. Usually when people are critical of the church, it is this institutional expression they have in mind. When they say, “The church needs to change,” they mean the institution needs to adapt or make corrections.

A fourth way of talking about the church is as the group of people who have been united to Jesus Christ as Lord and to each other as family by the Holy Spirit who lives in them. This is what the biblical writers mean when they speak of the church. A person can attend Sunday “events” and be joined to the institution by membership yet not be a part of the people who are united to Jesus and to each other by God’s Spirit.

It is in this last sense of people united to Jesus and to each other by the Holy Spirit that we are thinking of the church. As such, the church is comprised of believers from every part of the world. A believer in New Delhi and a believer in Coldwater are connected to each other by the Spirit and both are part of the church. And not just believers in every part of the world, but also in heaven, for they too are united to Jesus Christ and to his people on earth.

There is only one church, and it is comprised of all the people through all of time who have been united to Christ and to each other by the Spirit of God. There is one church, but it has many expressions. Lockwood Community Church is one.

An illustration may help. In the Malheur National Forest in Oregon lives the world’s largest living thing: a single specimen of Armillaria Ostoyae, a giant fungus that covers more than eight square miles. Over the space of those 8 square miles, it breaks the surface of the ground in many places, but under the surface this vast living thing is completely connected.

So with the church. Lockwood breaks the surface here as a local expression of the church of Jesus Christ. First Baptist does too. In Timbuktu, Mali the church is expressed as the Evangelical Christian Church, and in various other ways. But it is one church united across space and time, joined together by the one Spirit of God.

From my repeated use of the word, “Spirit,” you might get the idea that the Spirit is important to the church. You would not be wrong. There is no church apart from the presence of God’s Spirit. There is no member of the church who does not have the Spirit. Without the Spirit, you can still have a church building, a church event, and a church institution, but you cannot have the church. Sermons and sacraments do not a church make apart from the Spirit of God.

In First Corinthians 12, where Paul talks about how we come into the church, it is worth noting the preponderance of references to the Spirit: thirteen in the first thirteen verses. The essential difference between the Christian and non-Christian is not that one assents to certain beliefs and the other does not – though that is usually the case – but that one has the Spirit of the eternal God enlivening him and the other does not.

It is the Spirit’s presence in a person, which we cannot see but that God can, that marks the difference between the Christian and the non-Christian. Back in chapter 2, Paul wrote: “What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God … The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:12, 14).

In Galatians 3:3, Paul marks the beginning of the Christian life with a person’s reception of the Spirit. In Romans we learn that it is the Spirit that makes a person a son of God and Paul says that if a person does not have the Spirit, he does not belong to Christ (Romans 8:9).[2]

It is the presence of the Spirit in a person that marks him or her out to be resurrected. God tags people with the Spirit – in biblical language, he seals them – and all those who are tagged will be resurrected. So, in Romans 8:11 we read: “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”

The same Spirit that transforms ordinary people into children of God, gives them spiritual understanding, and marks them out as “resurrectionable” also unites them in the church. Listen to First Corinthians 12:12-13: “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”

Paul uses an analogy here that was familiar to first century Roman citizens – like the people in Corinth. He compares the church to a body: it has many parts, but they serve the body, not themselves. It functions as a single unit, even though it is comprised of so many parts.

A few years ago, I read Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein for the first time. I had seen the movie with Boris Karloff when I was just a boy, but the book was quite unlike the movie. In the book, Victor Frankenstein robs graves and burial vaults to find body parts for the creature he is building. Can you imagine if the hand and the mouth, taken from different corpses, didn’t operate in sync – if the mouth kept biting the hand that tried to feed it? Or if the leg from one person did not keep time with the leg from another? What if each body part had its own spirit and operated independently of all the others? It would be chaos.

Paul wants us to know that God is not building some Frankenstinian monster. As he said a few verses earlier: “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7). It is “one and the same Spirit,” verse 11, that animates the body of Christ and each part within in it. Paul wants us to understand that in the church of Christ, which is his body on earth, there is great diversity (many parts) and yet true unity (just one body).

You, if you have the Spirit of God, are one of those parts. So am I. We need each other to function well.

This is one of the elements of God’s genius. He has designed us so that we can only reach our potential in company with others, when others depend on us, and we depend on them. You might think, But I don’t want anyone depending on me! Then you don’t want to grow spiritually.Eugene Peterson was right: “There can be no maturity in the spiritual life, no obedience in following Jesus, no wholeness in the Christian life, apart from an immersion in, and embrace of, community. I am not myself by myself.”

Today, as never before, people are trying to go it alone in the spiritual life. They have been hurt by, or are angry at, or have just lost interest in the church, and so they walk away. According to Pew Research, about 167 million Americans say they are Christians, yet only 58 percent of Evangelicals, 39 percent of Catholics, and 33 percent of mainline Christians attend church on a weekly basis. Why don’t they gather with the church? Because they think it is optional.

Do you know what that means? They are thinking of church as an event – perhaps one you attend for extra credit. But the church is not an event. It is the community of God’s people, united to Christ and each other by God’s Spirit. That is not optional.

“I am not myself by myself.” Many of us have come to understand that we can’t be who we’re meant to be without God, but we haven’t yet grasped that we can’t be who we’re meant to be without each other. The most important thing about you, if you are a Christian, the thing that makes you “you” is that you are in Christ. But I am in Christ with you. We need each other.

In Corinth, there was a group of people who believed that the church couldn’t make it without them. They were the spiritual ones. They were the ones with something to offer. Sadly, other people in the church believed them, and concluded that they themselves had nothing to offer.

When the Spirit of God brings any person into the church, he gives him or her a gift to share with everyone else. Paul gives examples of what some of those gifts are in verses 8-10. This is not an exhaustive list, but it gives us an idea of the kinds of things he has in mind. Some people bring wisdom to the table, and some bring knowledge. Some inspire the rest of the church with their remarkable faith.

God works through others by bringing healing – emotional, physical, or both. Another is very discerning – he or she senses quickly whether something is good or bad. Another can speak God’s perspective into situations – delivering messages from God. Another can speak in tongues or interpret them.

In Corinth, the people who fancied themselves “spiritual” were enamored with the speaking gifts. They wanted to get up in front and talk. But Paul knew that Christ is not just a talking head – and neither is his church. Of course, the body of Christ needs a mouth, but it also needs eyes and hands and feet.

In 1 Corinthians 12:12, Paul said that a single body has many parts and added that Christ is like that. His body, the church, is one even though it has many parts – us. Now, listen again to verse 13: “For we were all baptized in one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”

The baptism Paul is talking about is not water baptism but the spiritual reality it represents. This baptism is immersion in God’s Spirit, which unites a person to Christ’s body, the church. Notice again the diversity: all of us, whether Jew or Greek, whether slave or free. And notice the unity: we are baptized in one Spirit into one body.

We often speak of people being baptized into Christ (which is biblical language, see Galatians 3:27; Romans 6:2) but overlook the fact that such a baptism is always and invariably into the body of Christ, the church. That is why, when we hold a water baptism (as we will next week), which is the physical expression of this spiritual baptism, we want the church to be present to welcome and receive the baptized. We not only recognize that they are in Christ but that they are with us. Christ not only justifies people, he “familifies” them, as Joe Hellerman says – he places them in his church.[3]

We are not only immersed in the Spirit and into the body of Christ, Paul says that we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Some Bible interpreters think Paul is referring to the wine at Holy Communion. They point to what St. John wrote: “For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood.” They see the Spirit’s activity in the water, which they take to be baptism, and in the blood, which they take to be the wine at communion.

But that does not seem to have been on Paul’s mind at all. He is talking about a two-fold experience of the Spirit. The believer is immersed in the Spirit and the Spirit enters into the believer. Because the believer is in the Spirit, he or she in a part of the body of Christ, and because the Spirit in the believer, he or she has something to offer to the body of Christ.

That “something” is not expendable; the body of Christ needs, for example, what you have to give – what God gave you to give us. A while back someone handed me $500 to give to someone in need. What kind of person would I be if I had held onto that money – even if I didn’t use it for myself but just left it on the shelf? And when God gifts us in some way the church needs and we don’t pass it on to the church, what kind of people are we? Christ’s church needs what you were given to give. Do you believe that?

Some of the church members in Corinth didn’t. That is why Paul continued: “Now if the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body” (1 Cor. 12:15-16).

Paul goes on to imagine what a body would be like if it was all one big eye. What if the church were all one part, reproduced again and again? It would not be the body of Christ but the body of a monster.

Let’s pull this together. When you believed on Jesus Christ and received his Spirit, you were united to his body the church – and the church to you. You cannot have Christ and pass on his church; he won’t let you. John Wesley was wise to share what a “serious” Christ-follower once told him: “Sir, you wish to serve God and go to heaven. Remember you cannot serve Him alone. You must therefore find companions or make them. The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.”

You not only received Christ; you received a gift to share. The church needs what God gave you to give it. More than that: your own spiritual health, the spiritual health of your family, and the people closest to you depend on you doing so.

Now here is the problem: you might not know what gift God gave you to share with us. It came wrapped and you only find out what it is when you give it away.

I challenge you to ask God what he wants to give to the church through you. Then listen for God to speak to you. Guidance may come from something said at church or at home, something you see being done or needing to be done. Get in there. That is the best way to find how God wants to bless the church through you.

As most of you know, Karen and I will be finishing up the work God has given us to do here sometime this year. After making that announcement, I learned that the average church’s attendance drops 11% when her pastor leaves. But Lockwood is not average. I want us to grow by 11% by the time I leave and then keep on growing.

The future God has planned for Lockwood is good but make no mistake, that plan includes you and the gift you have for, and are to, the church.

[1] I am indebted to Sky Jethani, What If Jesus Was Serious About the Church, Moody Publishers, for the four categories used.

[2] Gordon Fee: NICNT: 1 Corinthians. P. 668

[3] Joseph Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family, B&H.

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Doubts and Dissonance: How Jesus Responded to Doubting Thomas

Posted on April 1, 2023 by salooper57

My nephew and his wife began deconstructing their faith a couple of years ago. I like my nephew. He is a smart, thoughtful man. His parents are Christians. His grandfather was a Baptist pastor. Two of his uncles are in ministry. And now he, according to his mom (the pastor’s kid), is deconstructing his faith.

To deconstruct is not the same as to demolish. He still believes in Jesus. The last time I spoke to his mom, he was still involved in a church. From what I understand (and I hope I’m not misrepresenting him), his doubts have driven him to dismantle his belief system and discard some of its components. I don’t know when his doubts started, but I suspect it was years ago, maybe even decades.

Doubt is not a sin (though sin – ours or someone else’s – may cause it), but it is a terrible inconvenience, a painful experience, and a symptom that something is not right. Pretending we don’t have doubts is not helpful. Yet many people are – or have been taught to be – ashamed of their doubts, terrified to admit them, and thereby helpless to do anything to change them.

My nephew, if I understand correctly, realized that some of the things his parents and his church had taught him conflict with other things he now accepts as true. I suspect that realization took time, perhaps years. But it doesn’t always happen that way. Sometimes doubts do not grow within but assault us from without.

The Apostle Thomas’s doubts did not arise out of a growing dissonance of conflicting beliefs. One day he rested easy in faith. The next he was drowning in doubt. Whether doubts arise slowly or attack without warning, the way Jesus dealt with Thomas in his doubts can instruct and encourage us.

When Thomas heard that Jesus had risen from the dead, he did not believe it. I think that Thomas didn’t want – didn’t dare – to believe it. He had believed that Jesus was the Messiah and spent three years following him. He didn’t marry. He didn’t work a job. He left everything to follow Jesus and what had it gotten him? Anguish.

He wasn’t going to let that happen again. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!” Thomas was not going to be fooled twice. He held onto his skepticism, which was rooted in disappointment, to protect himself.

Here is what he said: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” “I will not believe” is emphatic because of a double negative in the original language: “I will not – will not – believe!”

Thomas had set his conditions for belief, and they were stringent. He required redundant proof. He must see; he must feel. He demanded both visual and tactile confirmation, and not just of Jesus hands but also of his side. Thomas would have made a good scientist, right at home with double-blind tests and repeatability of results requirements.

How must Jesus have felt about Thomas’s doubts? His personally chosen apostle refused to believe in him. His friend, for whom he died, continued to doubt him.

The Bible does not tell us how Jesus felt, but it does tell us how he responded. Instead of reproaching, demoting, or ousting Thomas from the Apostolic band, he accommodated him. He helped him.

Millions of people doubt Jesus today. Across the country, untold numbers are deconstructing their faith. They are doubting what they have been taught, sometimes with good reason. But some are also doubting the One about whom they have been taught; they are doubting Jesus. How does he feel about that? Does it make him angry?

People who get angry under such circumstances get angry because they are insecure. Jesus is not insecure. He does not get angry when people doubt and question him. He is ready to help anyone who genuinely wants to know the truth.

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God is Beautiful

Posted on March 28, 2023 by salooper57

(My good friend Michael Wickey, a computer programmer (who was raised Amish!) and a terrific guy, wrote this devotional and shared it with our church’s diaconate. I asked if I could share it with you. I hope you enjoy!)

I sometimes lose sight of or don’t think often enough about this idea; that God is beautiful. Not only is he beautiful, he himself loves beauty. Ubiquitous with the idea of beauty are, sunrises, sunsets, mountain landscapes, Caribbean beaches, clear blue water, massive glaciers, grazing herds of bison, or a cute and cuddly kitten, but I think, if God loves beautiful things, then he loves all these things too. But first, let me backup a little bit. How do I get to the conclusion that God loves beauty?

Well, there are many reasons, but one that just came to me this week was the sacrifice of Jesus, who died while still sinless, who took our just punishment, and rose again on the 3rd day. Yes, that alone is beautiful. Not much stacks up to the beauty of sacrifice. Jesus says in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” But how does that make me think God loves beauty? There is much more that could be explored here because Jesus died for those who persecuted him as well as his friends, but for now my point only concerns the beauty of sacrifice.

We were made in God’s image. He knows us inside and out, and even with the fall, we carry a lot of Him within us. He knew what could bring us back to him. Beauty, and namely his (this is only one aspect and I’m only covering this one, for my point.). Beautiful things are a source of gravity, though it is the type of gravity that can be denied, they pull and change the things they act upon. A real world example is playing with a kitten when in a sour mood, or being around people with overflowing joyfulness. It is really hard to stay the same while encountering beautiful things. Either we need to leave and possibly even hide from the beautiful thing, or we will be changed by it.

Beauty is somehow wrapped up in the essence of God and a sense of it was imparted on all His creation, and since we are made in His image, we can also do more and change more through it. By this I mean that we have the ability to actively foster beauty and to let ourselves be changed by it.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” – Psalm 19:1-4

The Gospel is beautiful, and it will change us if we recognize it (this does not negate us choosing), but it can also be denied which also changes us. Denying its beauty is only done if we use a different standard of beauty, namely our own, which is worthless (since we are mere fallen humans as opposed to the Creator God, our creations necessarily fall short)  in comparison and will lead us to nothing or rather nothingness.

Why and how does this particular beauty change us? My wife Jenny theorized that “it is our natural longing to become what we are meant to be, and we, who recognize the Gospel, know that this goal is to be like Jesus!”

“For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” – Romans 8:29

“Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” – 1 John 3:2

“One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.” – Psalm 27:4 This connection didn’t seem like a lot at first, but it makes me feel closer to Jesus, though this is only a feeling because Jesus is never far, but it is not nothing. It is a feeling of confident peace. A good and confident feeling, a solid and steadfast heart are forces that carry a soldier into battle and fireman into a burning building. I need that feeling of closeness in order to overcome some obstacles and challenges, and I love the thought of standing there on my back porch, with steaming coffee in hand, watching the sunrise while the birds chirp, with Jesus!

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