Category: Romans (Page 2 of 26)

Re-Thinking: Part 2

My good friend Blu Malone sent me this picture yesterday. A good friend knows you well enough to understand what really irritates you and how to use it to make you laugh. Well done. I love this. I would like it on a sticker. Like six of them. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

Here at GCR, we’re trying to tackle the reluctance we have to speak to our friends and neighbors about Jesus. We haven’t stopped believing in Jesus Christ as our risen and coming Lord and the source off all truth and light and the only way to salvation. But we have mostly stopped talking. We’re not sharing the good news of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the way we used to. It seems to me that as we address the problem, we should acknowledge a few things we need to stop believing. There are some things we accept as real, that just simply aren’t. And those things can keep us from sharing the Gospel with the people God puts right in front of us every day.

I mentioned two of these things in this space yesterday. We need to stop believing that the Church is in decline and that the Church is irrelevant. Here are three more things we need to stop believing so that we’ll feel more able to talk about Jesus with others.

Don’t believe that people in our culture are not seeking God. It’s not true. Yes, we live in a pluralistic, post-modern, post-Christian society now and there’s no going back. Yes, Christianity is no longer viewed as the only way to God and truth is no longer a fixed, eternal reality. Truth is now something each person decides for himself or herself. And, yes, there are more agnostics, skeptics, and atheists in this country than there’s ever been. But that doesn’t mean they’re not searching. They’re all searching! They’re all seeking! And there’s tremendous potential here for God’s Church.

The research is showing that we’re on the front edge of a backlash against all the pluralism and individualism in the U.S. We’re discovering that living in a world without universal truth is a lousy way to live. We’re learning that addiction to our screens and earbuds isn’t healthy, that it’s doing real damage to our relationships and what it means to be human. And people are looking for something else. They’re searching for a meaning outside of themselves. They’re seeking a purpose higher than their own tweets and posts, something more important than their careers and entertainment. People today are starting to recognize all the noise and clutter for what it is and they’re looking for something genuine and authentic. Something they can trust. People are open to it. People are seeking. And that gives the Church an exciting opportunity.

And what about the idea that everybody’s a Christian? No, we’ve got to stop believing that everybody in Midland or everybody in your town already goes to church. Because they don’t. And we also need to stop believing that people who don’t follow Christ have all heard the Good News about Jesus and thought it through and made the choice to reject it. That’s not true. Census data in Midland County and a couple of more recent surveys show that almost 50% of the people in our city don’t have a church home. Almost half! Barna research that was released last week shows that only 38% of the people in Texas go to church at least once a month. The chances are higher right now than they’ve ever been in your lifetime that your next-door-neighbor doesn’t go to church.

And there’s an increasing number of people who just don’t know much at all about Jesus. Over the last couple of decades, kids in this country are being raised differently than the ways you and I were probably raised. And there are lots of men and women in their 20s and 30s who’ve never heard the Good News. They’ve never heard it. We need to stop believing everybody has.

And we must stop believing that the Gospel is too complicated to share. The Good News of salvation from God in Christ is not hard. It’s simple. But for several generations now–for sure in Churches of Christ, I think–we’ve put too much emphasis on knowing all the details of our rules and regulations and being able to explain and proof-text our inconsistencies and loopholes, that we’ve made sharing the Gospel kind of scary. We’ve turned into a people who’d rather not say anything to our friends about Jesus than risk saying something “wrong” or not being able to answer a tricky question. For a variety of reasons, we’ve come to believe it’s a sin to admit to somebody, “I don’t know.”

The Good News is not complicated. It’s the very simple and beautiful truth that God’s eternal salvation through his crucified and risen Son Jesus is a gift. It’s a loving gift. And his limitless grace continually washes us and covers the stuff we don’t know.

If God is for us, who can be against us? Who’s going to oppose us? What’s going to stop us? What are we afraid of? Trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or sword? The culture, the media, the government, or the atheists? No! In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us!

It looked bad when the world carried out the crucifixion of Jesus. But God used it to save all humanity. It felt bad when the world executed Stephen and scattered the Church. But God used it to expand the borders of his eternal Kingdom. Today, we can be certain that our God is using the circumstances and conditions in Midland right now, and in your community, to do more through his Church than we can possibly dare to ask or imagine.

The question is: What do you believe?

Peace,

Allan

Best. News. Ever.

If God really was born in a manger in Bethlehem, then we have something no other religion in the world has ever claimed. God became a human being. God himself, the Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth, has become one with us by becoming one of us. The best news in the whole world is that God and us are brought together in Jesus. In fact, God taking on our everyday human condition is the means of our salvation. God reclaims us as his own by becoming one of us. That’s the best news ever!

But a lot of us are missing it.

I saw a survey early last week from 2022 that showed 43% of U.S. Christians agree with this statement: “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God.”

How can that be? That’s impossible! Unless Jesus is both 100% fully God and 100% fully human at the same time, the Gospel is powerless to save. The Good News is just an empty announcement.

Think about, in the Bible, how people responded to Jesus. It’s mostly over-the-top extreme reactions. Nobody was ever just “meh” about Jesus. Some are so furious with him they try to throw him off a cliff. Others are so terrified they cry out, “Go away from me!” Others fall down before him and worship. Why all the extremes?

Because if Jesus is God, then you have to change and center your entire life around him. If he is not God, then he is someone to hate or fear. No other response makes any sense; it can only be one of the two extremes. Either Jesus is God or he’s not. So he’s either absolutely crazy and dangerous or he’s infinitely wonderful and good.

But our world is filled with people who say they believe in Jesus, they say they understand who he is, but it hasn’t revolutionized their lives. There’s no change. They still look and think and act like everybody else. The only way to explain this is that, contrary to what they claim, they haven’t really understood the meaning of Immanuel, that Jesus Christ is God with us.

The Advent of Christ, the arrival of Jesus changes everything. If anyone is in Christ, there is new creation! The old has gone, the new has come! Ezekiel says we’re given a new heart and a new spirit. Romans 12 says we’re given a new mind. Jesus tells us we’re given a new identity and a new family in him. And at the end of Matthew 19, Jesus gives us the hope of living in a brand new world, what he calls the renewal of all things!

Something has happened. Something has been done. And it totally changes everything. It’s the best news you’ve ever heard. And it gives you and it gives all of us a whole new world.

Peace,

Allan

Nuts and Bolts

Alright, let’s get down to it. Christian unity. Accepting all Christians, all baptized followers of Jesus, for the sake of the world. Being one with all disciples of all denominations. Worshiping and serving together with all Christians and churches.

Well, what about the Christian who disagrees with me on divorce and remarriage? Or weekly communion? Or church leadership structures or church names?

Yes, let’s go there.

In Romans 14-15, the divisive issues of the day are eating meat versus vegetables and the observance of holy days. The apostle Paul certainly has his opinions on what’s right and what’s wrong. He has his convictions on these divisive topics. But in Christ Jesus, he says, those things don’t matter.

“Accept the one whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters… Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand… We all belong to the Lord.” ~Romans 14:1-8

Do you believe you are perfect? Do you think you’ve got everything figured out perfectly? Do you believe everything in the Bible exactly right, do you worship God perfectly, do you live God’s will righteously and without fault, do you practice your faith perfectly? Do you have all of God’s will perfectly interpreted and figured out? No?

Then how are you saved? What covers you in your honest shortcomings?

The grace of God. His matchless grace.

Do you believe the Churches of Christ have every single thing perfectly interpreted and figured out? Are the Churches of Christ doing everything exactly right? No?

Well, what covers us in our innocent misunderstandings? How can we be saved? God’s grace. His wonderful grace.

You think there’s any chance at all the Methodists might be doing something right according to to the will of God that we’re not? You think the Presbyterians might possibly have something figured out that we don’t? What if First Baptist’s understanding of something is fuller and richer and more in line with God’s will than ours is?

What covers us in our sincere misunderstandings? What saves us when we don’t have everything perfectly right?

God’s grace. His limitless grace.

Okay, let’s flip it around. Let’s assume that we have it right on the Lord’s Supper and the Methodists have it wrong. Let’s pretend that we’re right about baptism and the plurality of elders, and the Presbyterians and Baptists are wrong. Does God’s grace not cover them completely? Are they any less saved?

Yeah, but they’re wrong! We’re right!

So, you get God’s grace where we’re messing it up, but they don’t? We get God’s grace to cover us, but nobody else does? Why?

Because we’re trying harder. We’re more honest with the Bible. We’re more sincere.

That might be the most arrogant thing a disciple of Jesus could ever say.

The grace of God applies to both conduct and doctrine. We are all saved by grace through faith in Jesus. We’re all in the same fellowship, the same boat. So, why do we have such divisions among us Christians? Because we confuse doctrinal issues we feel strongly about with “faith.” Because we refuse to consider our own positions or opinions as disputable. Because our distorted theology of grace sometimes depends on the hot church topic of the moment or which preacher is writing what book or what church is doing something differently. We define ourselves by our differences from others instead of by the relationship we all have with God in Christ.

1 Corinthians 3 says you’re still worldly. You’re acting like mere people. You’re being worldly.

Yeah, that’s right. That is how the world acts, maybe more so now than ever. If I disagree with one politician or one celebrity on any one point, I’ll vilify that whole person. I’ll write him off. Everything that person says now is wrong. Everything he does, everything about him is wrong. So, I don’t see anything redeemable about his party or his movie or his team. A politician could say the sky is blue, 2+2=4, and Blue Bell ice cream tastes great and some of us would disagree with him because he’s not in our party.

We can do the same thing in Christ’s Church. If I disagree on one point with any Christian or congregation or denomination, I vilify that Christian or congregation or denomination. Everything about that Christian or their church is wrong. So, I can’t fellowship or worship with them.

And the unbelieving world looks at that and says, “No, thanks.”

A religion as visibly divided as ours can hardly reflect the truth. It reflects the fallen world, not the glory of our God. Our Christian unity will have an eternal impact on the world. But the world has to see it. It can’t just reside in our hearts and minds. Christian unity must be lived out loud and seen in public. It has to be visible. And when it is, the world will believe.

Peace,

Allan

The Will of Jesus to Practice

More and more research is being released about the effects of cell phones and digital technology, telling us what we already know, what we’ve known for 20 years. But somehow it keeps being presented and received as groundbreaking. What? Cell phone bans result in academic improvement? No way!! Who could have ever guessed that? The latest is coming out of the Dallas School District where Robert T. Hill Middle School banned all phones on campus five years ago. According to school officials there, the campus culture has shifted. There has been a 75% decrease in bullying (I’m not sure how they measure that), and a 13-point gain in the number of students meeting the standards of the STAAR tests. According to the story from Channel 5 in Fort Worth, the biggest pushback generally comes from the parents. Not the students. Parents complain they need to be in constant contact with their children. Of course, because we want to raise our kids to need to live with us into their 30s.

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Our first “4 Midland” pulpit swap and Thanksgiving service is this Sunday. I’m preaching at First Baptist this Sunday morning and Steve Brooks, our brother from First Methodist, is preaching here at GCR. Darin Wood, the pastor at First Baptist is preaching at First Presbyterian while their pastor, Steve Schorr, is preaching at First Methodist. And then all four of our churches are coming together Sunday evening for a combined Thanksgiving service. In advance of these glorious events, I’m posting this week about Christian unity as a gift of God to receive, our Church of Christ heritage to embrace, and, today, the will of Jesus to practice.

My prayer, Jesus says, is that all of them may be one. May they be brought to complete unity. It’s this unity, this uncompromising love and acceptance we have for all baptized disciples of Christ, that will prove to the world Jesus really is who we say he is. Our unflinching commitment to love and accept and unite with all Christian brothers and sisters will astonish the world!

Well, Allan, not ALL people who’ve been baptized. A lot of people are not baptized like we are. A lot of churches don’t do the Lord’s Supper like we do. We can’t worship with and have fellowship with ALL Christians.

That’s why the Church is not astonishing the world.

Our Lord’s prayer is for unity. Christ’s will is for complete unity among all his followers. We need to get there. So, let’s lay it out.

If God accepts someone, I have to also. I can’t be a sterner judge than the perfect judge. I don’t know anybody who would say, “Well, God certainly accepts this woman as a full child of his, but she doesn’t meet all of MY standards. I’M not going to accept her.” Nobody would say that. The truth is, I must fellowship everybody who has fellowship with God. All the saved. Everybody who’s saved.

So, who is saved?

Well, all those who hear, believe, repent, confess, and are baptized (by the way, that’s another Church of Christ creed).

All those who hear what? The Gospel! And believe what? The Gospel! Who repent and confess what? The Gospel!

Okay, what’s the Gospel? That Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God, that he alone is Lord, and that we’re saved by faith in him.

The Bible sums it up in several places, but that’s pretty good. Believe in Jesus as the eternal Son of God, declare him Lord, and, by faith, submit to his lordship in baptism. We’ve never required anything else. The Church through the centuries has never demanded anything more. We’ve never asked anybody their position on atonement theory or women’s roles before they’re baptized. We don’t put a person in the water and then catalogue all their beliefs on the plurality of elders and the age of the earth before they’re saved. Now, some of us try to do that after they’re saved! We can act like a health club sometimes: “The first month is free but then, after that, you’re going to pay through the nose! For the rest of your life!” No, that stuff is not the Gospel. The apostle Paul says nothing but Christ and him crucified.

“Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” ~Romans 15:7

We are called to accept others by the same standard as when Jesus Christ accepted us, to continually accept others based on the way they were accepted at their baptisms–the way you were accepted at your baptism. Your acceptance by God is a gift. The fact that Christ Jesus accepts you is nothing but pure grace. Now, show that same grace, share that same gift, to everyone who calls Jesus Lord.

Peace,

Allan

Reality Check

Most Christians I know will be voting in this country’s general elections tomorrow. For a variety of reasons and motivations, with a mixture of hopes and concerns, most Christians are heading to the polls. To those who are deciding to vote, I generally say something like this: I believe it’s okay for followers of Jesus to vote; just don’t pretend it’s an act of righteousness.

Here in the United States, where we live, we’ve got, for all practical purposes, two political parties. Generally speaking, there are some Kingdom of God values in both party platforms and also things in both party platforms that fall woefully short, if not straight up oppose Christ. I don’t think all Christians who vote against abortion hate immigrants and I don’t believe all Christians who vote for civil rights and refugees want to normalize gay marriage and gender fluidity. It’s complicated. There’s room for a carefully discerning Christian to vote for either party with a clear conscience before God and his Christian brothers and sisters.

But both parties get their way through power and threat, wealth and numbers, insults and lies, division and force. The goals and the methods of both parties are not at all in line with what I call Christian politics.

As Christians, we have our own unique politics. We are citizens of the Kingdom of God. We have a King. His name is Jesus. And he’s not on the ballot tomorrow. The Bible says our King was declared with power when the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead to be the Son of God: Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 1:4)

And he has told us how to live, how to function with others for the greater good, what to prioritize for the sake of society. In other words, politics. What laws are going to govern how we take care of others, how are we going to get along together, how will we help people flourish? That’s politics. And God through Christ has told us what it looks like. We follow very clear and very specific politics. The Ruler of God’s Kingdom has shown us how to change the world, how to make things right, how to fix things for all people.

It looks like Jesus on the cross. It’s sacrifice. Suffering. Forgiveness. Love. Mercy. Grace. Compassion. Empathy. Serving others. Unconditional love, for all. The crucified and risen Jesus is our King. These are our Kingdom of God politics. And you can’t find them in the politics of the world’s kingdoms.

I don’t see one good party and one bad party in the United States. I don’t believe it’s one righteous platform and one evil platform. It seems to me it is one broken, fallen, sinful, political system of a temporary and fading worldly kingdom that’s opposed to the politics of the Kingdom of God.

As Brian Zahnd pointed out in his recent voter’s guide, “The bottom line for political parties is power and the bottom line for Christians is love; therein lies the rub.”

The U.S. political system has very little to do with how God is saving the world. The fate of the Kingdom of God is not hanging in the balance tomorrow. It’s much more important that your soul be filled with love than for your party to win the election. We all need these reminders. It’s okay to vote, but voting is not how we witness to the Way of Jesus.

Hunter S. Thompson is given credit for saying, “There’s a terrible danger in voting for the lesser of two evils because the parties can set it up that way.” The current circumstances make it difficult to argue against his point.

More to my point, the great preacher Charles Spurgeon said, “Of two evils, choose neither. Christians must turn from the endless cycle of voting for the lesser of two evils and expecting an unrighteous act to produce a righteous result. Choosing the lesser of two evils is still evil, and never should we do evil that good may come.”

Each of us has to make our own decisions about what we’re going to do tomorrow–whether or not to vote; if we do vote, for which candidate to cast a ballot; and to what extent we place our hopes and dreams in this country’s politics and candidates. The guiding principle for Christians is that we know our God is chasing different goals and using different methods than those represented on the ballots. The way of our God is always different from the way of the world.

It’s not a cynical position like that of 20th century activist Emma Goldman, who said, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” It’s more about a proper perspective when weighing just how much, if any, of himself or herself a Christian wants to pour into the process. Pay attention to how much energy and emotion you’re putting into this thing. Be aware of how the ups and downs of this week, and maybe the rest of this month, impact your behaviors. Keep your allegiances in the proper order.

C.S. Lewis once observed, “He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation or a party or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God himself.”

Peace,

Allan

God + Shared Pain = Glory

“The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose… Those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” ~Romans 8:26-30

All of creation is groaning. We ourselves are groaning. And God’s Holy Spirit, seeing all this, watching all this, experiencing all this with his creation and with his people–now the Spirit’s groaning with groans that words cannot express. God’s Holy Spirit lives and works in that shared pain.

“He who searches our hearts” is God. He knows what’s inside our hearts. And I know God comes across things in our hearts we’d like to keep hidden. But God is looking for the sound of his Spirit’s groaning. When we are sharing the world’s pain, when we’ve decided to embrace the world’s pain and sit with it and live with it and groan with it, we realize we don’t have any answers. We don’t know what to do. We don’t even know what to pray for! And that’s where God’s Spirit comes in very obviously. God the Creator, our Father, is always in constant communion with his Spirit who lives in the hearts of his people. God totally understands what his Spirit inside us is saying, even when we don’t. Our God hears and answers the prayers of our heart, even when they don’t feel like prayers, even when it just feels like heartache or hopelessness or inadequacy. When the pains and the groanings of the world weigh heavy on your heart, you become one with the loving and groaning and redeeming working relationship and conversation between the Father and the Holy Spirit.

It’s a mystery, for sure–I don’t understand it. But the Bible says God works through that for glory. For our glory. And ultimately for his.

The present pains and sufferings are not even worth comparing with that coming glory (Romans 8:18). Paul can’t find the words, he can’t describe the difference between where we are right now and the glory that’s coming. Everything he might say falls short. He doesn’t even try.

God has called us and justified us and will glorify us (Romans 8:30).

We know that in all things–even in the sharing of so much pain–maybe especially in the sharing of pain–we know that in all things, God works for our good! For ultimate glory! (Romans 8:28)

We share in the sufferings in order to share in God’s glory (Romans 8:17).

The devil means all of this mess for evil; God our Father is working through it for good. By the life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ and by the power of his Holy Spirit, it’s going to be good. As Christians, we don’t shake our heads and wring our hands and say look what’s happening to the world. We open our eyes and lift our hands and say look who came into the world!

All of God’s plans for the restoration of the world, all of God’s promises for glory for us and for all creation–all of what God is bringing about for our good–it’s all “Yes” in Christ Jesus. It’s not sometimes “Yes” and sometimes “No.” In him, in Christ Jesus, it is always “Yes!”

“No matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him, the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God. Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” ~2 Corinthians 1:20-21

Sin’s dominion over us and over this world is being broken. Our bondage to corruption and decay is coming to an end. And the Church speaks the ‘Amen.’ We say it! ‘Amen!’ We believe it! ‘Amen!’ And we live it! ‘Amen!’

The Holy Spirit guarantees the glory that’s coming because of Jesus. When the politicians say ‘No,’ God says ‘Yes’ in Christ. When the culture says ‘No,’ God says ‘Yes’ in Christ. When your friends say, ‘No,’ when the peer pressure says ‘No,’ when your family says ‘No,’ when your favorite network or website or app says ‘No,’ when your gut says ‘No,’ when all the experts say ‘No,’ our God says ‘Yes’ in Christ every time! Every time! All the time! Yes, yes, yes in our risen and coming Lord Jesus!

Hey, we’ve got a vaccine for COVID and measles and polio. We’ve got flu shots. Pneumonia shots and shingles vaccines. But not for the sin that has plunged God’s world into so much. There’s no shot, there’s no pill, there’s no medicine for this pain that has us and all creation groaning. The only prescription for the pain is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel is the only cure.

Romans 8:18-28 are about the prescription. This is God’s plan, this is his purpose, to redeem us and shower us with the heavenly glory of his Son and our undying hope in his plan. It’s a divine plan that provides fully for your eternal future. A loving and gracious plan that leads to ultimate glory for all God’s children. And Paul wants us to come away from this passage, not with a bunch of theological questions, but with an increased assurance and confidence that the God who began a good work in us will indeed bring it to completion on the day of Christ Jesus. That’s the promise. That’s the hope.

Everything you do and say, everything people do to you or say about you, every experience you will ever have, it’s all lovingly used by our God for our good. You don’t always understand. You don’t always enjoy it. But we know our groanings are not in vain. They serve an eternal purpose that’s being worked out by the Creator of Heaven and Earth who groans right along with us to make it happen.

We do see sin and the sorry state of our world, but we also see our God’s redeeming love and power. So life for us is not a dreary waiting for some inevitable end to the death and decay, it’s an eager anticipation of the liberation, it’s an exciting hope and joy for the restoration and re-creation that’s already here and is still coming. It’s not a weary defeated kind of waiting. It’s a pulsing, active, vivid expectation and hope.

Hey, the pain and the groaning is real. But so is the glory! We’re not finished yet! God’s not done! He has a plan for you and for the whole world and it is glorious! He has established his risen Son on his eternal throne and the whole world that’s been plunged into pain by the ravages of our sin is being redeemed. The renovation is coming. The new heavens and new earth is coming. This is our Father’s world and he will do whatever he sees fit. And he sees fit to appoint it and us to groaning right now and glory forever.

Peace,

Allan

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