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Saturday, October 21, 2006

Clogging Clergy

God said to Solomon, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (II Chronicles 7:14). Notice the first condition there. God’s “people, which are called by [His] name,” must “humble themselves.” Certainly this must be true as well for the leaders of God’s people. It must begin there. This is quite fitting as one of first clogs encountered in the flow of effective Christian ministry is often the pride of the ministry leader. It is understandably difficult for a pastor to acknowledge that he may have “gotten it wrong” for the past 20 years in a particular area of his belief, vision, teaching, practice, etc. But the church has had certain things wrong for centuries; so why not admit the mistakes over a few decades? We within the ministerial leadership must acknowledge the barriers in our humanity, those personal clogs in our own understanding. We must humble ourselves. Not only must there be a humbling, but it needs to be by ourselves (as the Holy Spirit gives us grace).

We must be strong enough to fall to our knees. Else such strength will be given to another who will force us to our knees. “For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 14:11). “Every knee shall bow” (Isaiah 45:23). As He proved with the children of Israel at the border of Canaan, then again at the battle of Ai, then again with the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, then again with the Roman Catholic Inquisition, then again with the Christians in communist Russia, then again with the so-called Christian nation that hosted and boasted the World Trade Center, God has shown Himself quite capable of bringing “[His] people, which are called by [His] name” to their knees. So the question is, “Will we humble ourselves, or will we be humbled?”

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Forgiveness

Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). He further states, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15). Notice that after Jesus teaches us to focus first in our prayer upon God, His Name, and His kingdom, then on Christ as our daily Bread, He subsequently reminds us of our obligation to love our neighbor. And what better way can we express selfless love than by forgiving others who have wronged us?

Forgiveness is especially, if not only, necessary when we are in the right (or at least when we perceive that we are right) and the other party is not. In a culture that always demands its rights, refusal to absolve someone of guilt toward us when they have not deserved such absolution is just another one of our rights, we claim. Refusal to forgive is self-centered, while forgiveness thinks lovingly of the other. But the Lord offers us some motivation as well as possibly an initially unsettling realization about the necessity and efficacy of our forgiveness.

If God’s forgiveness of my sins hinges upon my forgiveness of others who wrong me or by whom I perceive that I have been wronged, this then leads me naturally to wonder how well I forgive others. Indeed, how (or in what manner) am I to forgive others?

The Holy Spirit encourages us, through Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians, to be “kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven” us (Ephesians 4:32). So I am to forgive as God has forgiven me. And I have reason to hope that His forgiveness will be very efficacious – consistent and entire. When God forgives, He forgives perfectly. So then when forgiveness is required of us, we are to forgive perfectly – sincerely, consistently, and entirely – “as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven” us.

But do we ever do anything perfectly? This is yet another reason to abide in Christ. If the works of Christ are put on our account, and if Christ forgives perfectly, then we can forgive perfectly when we abide in Christ.

Grow in Grace

The Holy Spirit said in 2 Peter 3:17-18, “Beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.”

If someone were to say, “Nothing can be known for certain,” they would be making a self-destructive statement; for if “nothing can be known for certain,” this would then include this very own declaration. In other words, it must not be certain that “nothing can be known for certain.” Anyone who makes this statement has just forfeited his right to an audience. Not too differently would be the old man who says, “The older I grow, the less I know.”

In Leviticus 19:32, God commands, “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD.” Then, in Proverbs 16:31, the Holy Spirit specifies that “the hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.” The elderly are to be honored, but such honor is more glorious if the elderly are in the “way of righteousness.” According to the previous text from 2 Peter, the “way of righteousness” includes growing “in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord” Jesus Christ. Maturity in a Christian should include growth in the knowledge of Christ. And that additional knowledge ought not be solely the discovery that “the older I get, the fewer the things about which I am yet convinced.” Where is the hope in that for the Christian young person?

The Proverb previously mentioned about the “hoary head” is preceded by much encouragement “to know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity” (Proverbs 1:2-3). We need older men (and women) in the church who can honestly say, “My son, hear the instruction of thy father,” (Proverbs 1:8) and then afterwards still have something worthwhile to say.

Our Daily Bread

In John 6:48-51, Jesus says, “I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” When the Israelites were traveling through the wilderness, God gave them food rations sufficient for a single day. He did this everyday for at least six days a week throughout their forty years of wandering. If they gathered more than what they needed for a single day, the extra would spoil by the next day. This is likely one of the tests that God gave them to manifest their level of trust in Him. They needed to believe that once their day’s supply of food was gone, God would still be faithful on the next day to provide what they needed to sustain them.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). This is not just a request for physical food, nor is it just (even as I have previously thought) a reminder to read the Bible daily. This latter suggestion, however, can help guide us to a more appropriate understanding of this text from the Lord’s prayer when we also realize that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word was made flesh” (John 1:1, 14). But the text from John 6 tells us plainly that our daily Bread is Christ Himself. Jesus came that we “might have life, and that [we] might have it more abundantly.” So we are being taught to pray daily for Christ to be our sustaining life. We are being reminded to daily partake of Christ’s flesh and drink of His blood.

We are what we eat. We become that of which we partake. So if you are called to be like Christ, if you want the glory of His Spirit’s presence to shine through you, if you would have eternal life, if you long for “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” then exercise faith and hope in Him by regularly praying, “Give us this day our daily bread.”