The Only Way to God

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

John 10:1-10
There’s a common belief held by many in our culture these days. You hear it all the time, whether in barber shops, on TV talk shows, or at church meetings. It’s the belief that all religious convictions are equal in their ability to lead people to God. You don’t need to give your sins or your life to Jesus exclusively, some people assert. They say, “All religions are headed to the same place.” Is that true?

Not according to Jesus! And in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus uses two illustrations to point us to Who He is and to the relationship with God that you and I…and every person on the planet…can have only through Him.

But before considering what Jesus has to tell us today, we should set the scene. How is it that Jesus came to speak the words we find in John 10:1-10?

It all started when Jesus gave sight to a blind man in John 9. That caused a controversy because Jesus dared to do this loving deed on a Sabbath day. Jesus’ action made some of Jesus' fellow Jews--the Pharisees--so angry that when the blind man He healed said that Jesus must be from God, they threw the man out of the temple, no longer considering him a faithful Jew.

Of course, at one level, the Pharisees were nothing like people today who claim that all religious beliefs lead to God. The Pharisees believed that only by abiding by their extensive lists of religious rules could one be right with God. But, based on what God has revealed of Himself in both the Old and New Testaments, both the advocates of anything-goes spirituality in the twenty-first century and the Pharisees of the first century have one big thing in common: They are equally wrong. Accepting the assertions of either group will lead us away from God and the life God offers only in Jesus Christ.

Over the centuries, starting with a people to whom God gave a land and a promise, God has revealed Himself and His plan for the human race. From the beginning, the plan for a right relationship with God and for a life with Him that lasts forever has been the same. We are to give our lives back to the Giver of our lives and give our lives only to Him.

Genesis says that Abraham, the patriarch of Biblical faith, believed in God and God’s promises and that God “reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abraham was right with God because he entrusted his life to God. He believed in God.

The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that through the centuries, God revealed Himself through the prophets of Israel, but in these last days, God has revealed Himself definitively in Jesus. If we want to live with God, we need to listen Jesus.

All who turn from sin and believe in Jesus, God the Son, have the same blessings enjoyed by Abraham: rightness with God and life with God.

It isn’t because God is an egomaniac or because God wants to establish an exclusive club that the first commandment is, “You shall have no other gods” or that God commands exclusive fidelity to Jesus Christ.

It’s that God wants to give us life and only He can give it. Indeed, He will only give us life and, as Jesus puts it in today's Gospel lesson, life "abundantly," through Jesus Christ and our faith in Him.

All other roads are dead ends, literally dead ends.

So, in today's lesson, Jesus says that He is the shepherd of God’s sheep. Only Jesus can lead us into God’s sheepfold. People who try to get into the kingdom of God by other means are—whether through good works, other religious beliefs, or all manner of cosmic niceness—are, Jesus says, thieves and bandits. Look at verses 2 to 5 of the Gospel lesson printed on the Celebrate insert:

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.

In this illustration, Jesus is the shepherd. God the Father is the gatekeeper.

For just a second, think of God’s kingdom as a show everybody (including you and me) wants to see. The problem is that the gatekeeper—God the Father—will issue tickets to only one kind of customer: People who are absolutely clean and clear of sin.

That would leave us all on the outside, pining for a relationship with God because, as the Bible says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Standing there in our sins, we would be without hope except for one thing: Jesus, the shepherd of the sheep, tells the gatekeeper, “It’s OK. She’s with me. He’s mine. You can let them in. I paid for their sins on the cross, the sacrifice of a sinless human being who didn’t deserve death on behalf of all other sinful human beings who deserved death.”

All who repent and believe in Christ are ushered into God’s eternal kingdom—long before their lives on this earth have ended, if they dare. Even now--even today--if you dare to trust in Him, you are living in Christ's eternal kingdom. As our second lesson from Peter reminds us, until we rise again, we live in a fallen world where suffering and challenges happen. But if suffering is a reality that can and does come to any of us, it's better to go through this life with Jesus leading us than to try to go it alone.

Those who heed Jesus’ voice live each day knowing that whatever our sins, deficiencies, and shortcomings, we belong to God forever! He is our ticket into eternity!

Like sheep attuned to the shepherd’s voice, when you dial into God through a relationship with Christ, you begin to know His voice. It brings incredible comfort, hope, and energy, straight from God, into your life!

Sometimes that voice will come with direction we'd rather not hear or will call us to do things we'd rather not do. I was the first person in my seminary class to interview for a call. It was for an associate pastor's position. There was another candidate who would be interviewing. Her candidacy made mine a long-shot because she had done her internship at that congregation. But my interview went well and, before Ann and I headed back to Columbus, the senior pastor told me he would be in touch in a few days. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into a month, and still no word from the senior pastor or the congregation.

More than a month after the interview, I was scheduled to be at the district convention, where, along with all the recently graduated seminarians, I would be trotted onstage to be introduced. In the evening, a service of Holy Communion was held in a college auditorium. We had just finished confessing our sins when I looked to see that senior pastor. "Mark," he said, "God wouldn't let me take Holy Communion until I came to apologize to you. I'm so sorry I never contacted you to let you know that the other candidate received the call. I didn't want to tell you that, so I kept putting off contacting you. Would you please forgive me?"

You see, that senior pastor was known by the Shepherd of the sheep, Jesus. And he knew Jesus. So, when Jesus called on him to make things right, that's exactly what he did.

The Shepherd speaks to His children in other ways too.

A member of this congregation recently told me that after her husband died, she was sobbing in her bed one night, seeking comfort, when she sensed a hand on her shoulder. So real was the touch she felt, that she reached around to feel for the unseen hand. No hand was felt, but the touch was no less real. In that quiet exchange, one of Christ’s sheep heard His voice of comfort and healing. She was comforted because she is one of Jesus’ sheep. Jesus knows His own and His own know Him!

A friend of mine has pastored a Lutheran congregation for decades. In spite of his faithfulness and innovative leadership, the congregation hasn’t grown. It’s actually declined in membership, attendance, giving, and activity. Day after day, year after year, he has prayed and worked faithfully, sharing Christ, leading people to deeper levels of faithfulness. But things have only gotten worse.

Then one day last year, after a long time in prayer, he sensed God asking him, “You pray for this renewal to happen, for new people to come to faith in Christ. But have you prayed that all the evil in the world that conspires against that happening be kept from this church, kept from its people, kept from the places where worship and education and planning happen?” No, my friend told God, he hadn’t done that in prayer. “Do it now!” God seemed to tell him forcefully.

And so, my friend went all through the church facility, praying in every room, asking God to take control of all that happened there, to displace Satan and all evil from every inch, and to fill the building and the people of the church with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with the power and truth of the Word of God!

Things haven’t yet changed in that congregation. But my friend now knows they will change. That’s because after he had prayerfully surrendered himself and his congregation and prayed that God would prevail over all evil that assailed them, the good shepherd assured him that all he had prayed for would come to pass.

God gave him a vision of a sanctuary filled with joyful people excited to be in God’s presence, excited to give themselves in worship to God on Sunday morning in anticipation of using their whole lives to worship God through the week. The voice of the shepherd spoke to my friend and he was filled with comfort, renewed hope, and holy energy!

But Jesus uses another image in our lesson to describe Who He is; He says that He is also the gate to eternity.

Years ago, Ann and I went to a party and realized after we got back home that we’d locked ourselves out of the house. Long story short, with Ann’s help I was able to push myself through a first-floor window that we had left partially opened. I was halfway into the house by this route, my arms and torso inside, my legs still hanging outside, when a thought crossed my mind: How would I explain this to a policeman? After all, if you belong somewhere, you don’t have to break in. You go through the front door.

Jesus is the front door, the only door—the only gate—to life with God, to the abundant, everlasting life that God wants to give to all people. You can't get into God's kingdom in any other way! “No one comes to the Father except through Me,” Jesus says elsewhere. “If you know Me, you will know the Father also. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him.”

The real quest of the Christian life is to get to know the God revealed in Jesus Christ. This “quest” isn’t an onerous task. It’s a joy like falling in love.

That’s why I hope that every member of Saint Matthew will not only regularly worship and receive the Body and Blood of our Lord, but also join us, even belatedly, in reading the Bible in a year.

I hope that every member will be in Sunday School. (Yes, every member.)

I hope that we’ll all make prayer a daily habit.

I hope that you’ll help us share Christ in a very practical way when we collect those filled grocery sacks next Saturday during our PPSST! Food Drive.

These are all ways to follow the voice of Jesus, ways to enter more deeply into a relationship with God that only comes through Jesus.

This past week, at the graveside of our friend Betty, we heard her confirmation verses. Betty chose them sixty years ago when she was confirmed at the age of 23. They're words of Jesus from Matthew 10:32-33:

"Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.” 

Freedom from sin comes only to those who turn away from the dead-end ways of the world and trust the only One Who can give us forgiveness and new life, Jesus, the good shepherd and the gate—the front door—to eternity.

Let yourself get to know Him better.

Trust in Him and in His Word alone.

As you do, you’ll hear His voice over the din of an often-confusing world and He will lead you to a life prepared for you, a life that here will sometimes bring inexplicable challenges, but also a life that never ends, a life filled with the presence of God, today and always.

The Shepherd is calling you today. Follow Him…and live!

The Shepherd, the Gate...and Oprah

[This sermon was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

John 10:1-10
I saw video clips of a world-famous talk show host this past week. Her initials are Oprah Winfrey. In these clips, Winfrey, who seems like a nice person, was holding forth on spiritual issues. She said, for example, that sin doesn’t exist. She also claimed, several times in several ways, that all religions and spiritual quests may lead people to God. Is that true?

Well, not according to Jesus. And in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus uses two illustrations to point us to Who He is and to the relationship with God that you and I…and every person on the planet…can have through Him. But only through Him. Jesus calls Himself a shepherd and a gate. More on that in a moment.

First though, we must establish the context for these illustrations. How is it that Jesus came to speak the words we find in John 10:1-10?

It all started when Jesus gave sight to a blind man in John 9. It aroused controversy because Jesus had the temerity to do the loving will of God on a Sabbath day. The Pharisees accused Jesus of doing work when He shouldn’t have. It made them so angry when the blind man declared that Jesus, in spite of this Sabbath violation, must be from God. It made them so mad, in fact, that they excommunicated the guy.

Now, at one level, the Pharisees were nothing like Oprah Winfrey. Unlike Oprah, who seems to say that any religious belief will get you to God, the Pharisees believed that only by abiding by their extensive lists of religious rules could one be right with God. They differed in other ways as well. But, based on both the Old and New Testaments, both Winfrey and the Pharisees have one big thing in common. They are equally wrong.

Over the centuries, starting with a desert people to whom God gave a land and a promise that they would become a light to all the nations, through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of a Man Who showed Himself to be God in the flesh, God has revealed Himself and His plan for the human race.

From the beginning, the plan for a right relationship with God and for a life with Him that lasts forever has been the same. We are simply to believe in Him and only in Him.

Genesis says that Abraham, the patriarch of Biblical faith, believed in God and God’s promises and that God “reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abraham was right with God through belief in God.

Now, the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us, God has revealed Himself in Jesus. All who turn from sin and believe in Him have the same blessings enjoyed by Abraham, rightness with God and life in His Name.

It isn’t because God is an egomaniac or because God wants to establish an exclusive club that the first commandment is, “You shall have no other gods.” It’s that God wants to give us life and only He can give it. All other roads are dead ends, literally.

In the words of our lesson for today, Jesus is trying to convey this truth to the Pharisees and others who may be listening to Him, the truth that salvation comes to those with faith in the God revealed to Israel and ultimately, in Him.

So, first He tells them that He is the shepherd. Only Jesus can lead us into God’s sheepfold. People who try to get into the kingdom of God by other means are, Jesus says, thieves and bandits. He says:

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.

Sheep are pretty dumb creatures, I’m told. But if a stranger comes among them, they will en masse, move away, alarmed. Once a person familiar to them shows up, they relax, knowing that this person won’t lead them astray. They respond to the voice of the shepherd who takes care of them.

We may be brighter than sheep. But it's not that different for us.

Have you ever noticed how you can hear the voice of someone with whom you’re close even in a crowded, noisy place? Both of our kids were in a 100-plus-voice choir in high school. I can remember when we accompanied the kids on a concert tour in England. I particularly remember listening to them during a performance in the Milennium Dome in London. Like all parents, Ann and I found that if we perked our ears just right, we could hear both of our children’s voices in the midst of the others. You can dial into the voices of those you love and those you know love you.

When you allow the God we know in Jesus Christ to communicate with you through His Word, the Bible, through prayer, through the fellowship of other believers, and through Holy Communion, you begin to know His voice. You go to Him when He calls you. And when other voices call you to walk away from God’s will, you ignore them.

Jesus, our Gospel lesson tells us, called Himself the shepherd of God’s sheep. But his listeners “did not understand what He was saying to them.”

So, like many a frustrated communicator, Jesus tried another illustration to make His point. Now, He wasn’t a shepherd. “Very truly,” He says, “I am the gate for the sheep…Whoever enters by Me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief [which can include perfectly nice people who follow some other path in life, like Oprah] comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Jesus is the gate to eternity. Years ago, Ann and I went to a Halloween costume party. She went as a man, coat and tie and Mascara beard. It was the era of the first Battlestar Gallactica the sci-fi series on TV. So, I went as some interplanetary character, my costume composed of a Hefty bag around my torso, cinctured at the waist by a wide cloth belt, and…I hate to admit it…leotards. Leotards!

Now, if you made a list of the worst time for us to forget our house keys, this particular night would have been it. But, of course, we did lose our house keys and when we got home, struggled to find a way to get into the place.

Picture this, folks: Ann is in drag and I’m in leotards. Leotards! We began working our way around the first floor of the place, trying every window. Finally, on one side of the house, I stretched up and could tell that one of the dining room windows, which set about 7-feet off the ground, was slightly ajar. If I could hoist myself up, I might be able to slide the window open, throw myself into the house, and let Ann in.

The previous occupants had left behind half of an old pickle barrel they'd used as a planter. It wasn’t very big. But by standing on it and letting Ann push me from behind, I was able to throw myself through the window. I was halfway into the house, my hosed-legs still hanging outside, Ann no longer able to help me, when a thought crossed my mind: How would I explain this to a passing cop? You see, if you belong somewhere, you don’t have to break in. You go through the front door.

Some people think that getting to God happens as the result of a long spiritual quest. The Christian life does have its challenges. Belonging to Jesus doesn’t insulate us from the difficulties of this life, for example. And sometimes, as our second lesson for today points out, we face rejection precisely because we follow Jesus.

But we know too, that Jesus is the front door, the only door—the only gate—to life with God, to the abundant, everlasting life that God wants to give to all people. The real quest of the Christian life is to get to know God, which isn’t an onerous task, but a joy as wonderful as falling in love.

That’s why I hope that every member of Saint Matthew will not only regularly worship and receive the Body and Blood of our Lord, but also get involved in a Bible study, whether in Sunday School or the next offering of the Witnesses for Christ class or the WELCA group. I also hope that we’ll all make prayer a daily priority and that you’ll choose to participate in the upcoming Pentecost Prayer Vigil, when we’ll invite Jesus to enter even more deeply into our life as a church.

Jesus once told Thomas and the other disciples, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you know Me, you will know the Father also…”

After mouthing the famous words of John 3:16, He told Nicodemus, “…God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Those who believe in Him [that is, in Jesus] are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the Name of the only Son of God.”

And after Jesus became the only Savior in the history of the world to die and rise so that all who believe in Him will not suffer the consequences of our sin, eternal separation from God, His first followers proclaimed the same message about Jesus. When the religious authorities in Jerusalem arrested the apostles Peter and John for bringing healing to a man in Jesus’ Name, the two disciples told them, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

Jesus is the good shepherd and He is the gate—the front door—to eternity. Let yourself get to know Him better. As you do, you’ll hear His voice over the din of an often confusing world and He will lead you to a life prepared for you, a life that never ends, a life filled with the presence of God.

A Pass at This Sunday's Bible Lessons (April 13, 2008)

[These passes are designed to help all worshiping with us at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio to prepare for Sunday worship. Because we use the Revised Common Lectionary, as slightly modified by Lutherans, I also hope that these brief ponderings will help others too.]

The Bible Lessons:
Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 23
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10

The Prayer of the Day:
O God our shepherd, you know your sheep by name and lead us to safety through the valleys of death. Guide us by your voice, that we may walk in certainty and security to the joyous feast prepared in your house, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

General Comments:
1. The Fourth Sunday of Easter is always Good Shepherd Sunday on the Church calendar. The Gospel lessons for these Sundays are all different for the three years of the Church Year. But all come from John 10.

2. The first lesson for the week, as is true throughout this Easter season, is from the New Testament book of Acts, not an Old Testament book, as is usually the case. More on that text below.

3. The Acts passage and the one from First Peter present an interesting contrast. We read that in the very first days of the Church's life its members enjoyed "the goodwill of all people," maybe not to be taken literally, but certainly reflective of the high esteem in which the first Christians were held. Having come through Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection and the first Pentecost with their faith not only intact, but made stronger by God, they were appreciated by the Jerusalem community.

But by the time Peter writes his letter to the dispersed churches of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey), Christians are subject to official persecution and social shunning. Peter writes his letter while imprisoned in Rome. It had become illegal to be a Christian, the Church's confession, "Jesus is Lord," called atheistic, because Christians would not acknowledge either Roman deities or the emperor as "Lord," ultimate boss.

In any and all circumstances, whether accepted or not, Jesus Christ is our Lord.

4. Three of the four appointed Scripture passages refer to Christ as our shepherd. It's a little tough for us today to identify with this imagery. Even few people who live in the countryside these days have much connection with livestock. More on the possible meanings of the imagery below.

5. Acts 2:42-47: The text begins on the first Pentecost. By this point in the narrative, Peter has preached, the people have asked what they must do to be reconciled with God and so have life, Peter has told them to repent and be baptized in Jesus' Name, and 3000 heed this call, powered by the Holy Spirit.

The text tells us then about something of the life of the early Church and how those around them responded to it.

6. Two things especially should be noted here, I think.

First of all, the first Christians, through the power of the Holy Spirit in the Church, were engaging in the wonderworking that made up part of Jesus' ministry. Jesus never performed His signs or miracles in the same way twice and there were a diverse numbers of signs He performed. There was a similar diversity in the signs performed by the early apostles.

As applied to church life today, I think that it's important for us to remember that, through the Holy Spirit living in Christians, Christ is still in the miracle making business. But it is, in my estimation, to think that miracles, meant to be signs of Christ's lordship over sin and death, are meant to be commonplace. As someone has said, if miracles happened all the time or any time we took it into our heads that they should happen, we wouldn't call them miracles; we'd call them ordinaries, as in ordinary, everyday stuff.

Furthermore, the unique character of each Biblical miracle should caution us against ready acceptance of the absurd spectacle, seen on some televangelist's shows, of assembly line miracle working, seemingly desperate souls, "slain in the spirit" by microphone-wielding charlatans who "heal" all comers in precisely the same way.

The second thing to note is how the Church is obeying Christ's directive in Acts 1:8. There, Jesus, about to ascend to heaven, tells the first disciples:

...you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

After the Spirit came, Jesus said, the Church would be empowered to do its mission in the world, being His witnesses with the aim, of course, of making disciples.

But they were to start their work in Jerusalem, among God's own people, the Jews (or Judeans). (This underscores Luke's particular emphasis on the continuity between the Old and New Testaments. In fact, I doubt that Luke would even like the terms Old and New Testaments. To Him, Jesus was simply the fulfillment of what God had planned for the whole human race from the beginning. To work reconciliation between Himself and alienated humanity, God always planned to call a people of His own into being, the Jews. He always planned to cultivate faith among these people so that the world would know that our lives are made right not by what we do, but by trusting in and being reconciled to God. He always planned to send a Savior among these people in order to bring salvation, life, and hope not only to them, but to the whole human race.)

After establishing itself in Jerusalem, the Church called the Spirit's prompting to move out in Judea at large, then to Samaria, the onetime "Northern Kingdom," and to the ends of the earth.

I like the way Leonard Sweet describes the mission of the contemporary Church. We are to be "glocal" about our mission, local and global. We begin, in the case of Saint Matthew, with Logan. But we also reach out to Hocking County, the United States, and the world. We do that not only with the dollars we give to local ministries, the World Hunger efforts of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and so on, but also through our personal participation in sharing Jesus right here.

7. Psalm 23: Chris Haslam has a brief, thorough summary of this familiar psalm. He writes:

In the ancient Near East, the king was seen as shepherd (vv. 1-4) and as host (vv. 5-6). God faithfully provides for his sheep, and constantly cares for them. He revives our very lives (“soul”, v. 3), and guides us in godly ways (“right paths”). Even when beset by evil (“darkest valley”, v. 4), we have nothing to fear. God’s “rod” (a defence against wolves and lions) protects us; his “staff” (v. 4, for rescuing sheep from thickets) guides us. The feast (v. 5) is even more impressive, for it is in the presence of his foes. Kings were plenteously anointed with oil (a symbol of power and dedication to a holy purpose.) May God’s “goodness and mercy” (v. 6, steadfast love) follow (or pursue) him (as do his enemies) throughout his life. He will continue to worship (“dwell ...”) in the Temple as long as he lives.

8. 1 Peter 2:19-25: I wrote this a few weeks ago regarding the New Testament book of First Peter:

First Peter, one of my favorite books of the Bible, is a letter meant to be circulated among Christians living in Asia Minor, located in what is today Turkey and part of the Roman Empire. Traditionally, it's been believed that this letter was written about 62AD to Christians facing persecution and marginalization for their faith in Christ.

9. Our lesson from First Peter is part of a bigger section of the letter, running from 1 Peter 2:11 to 3:12. This section is an example of what New Testament scholars call household codes.

Household codes existed as a literary form in the secular Roman world. They outlined the duties of subservient persons to their superiors.

But in the hands of first century Christian writers, the codes which employed the established literary form discussed responsibilities all Christians had toward one another and toward those with whom they interacted on a daily basis. They envision all Christians, irrespective of their status within society, treating one another with mutual submission: husbands and wives, parents and children, slaves and masters. For the sake of being a positive witness to outsiders and giving non-Christians no cause to reject Christ, the codes commend imitating Christ in relating to all people.

The codes that existed in the larger Roman world carried implicit threats of punishment, underscored by the fact that they were never directed at the superior member of a two-person relationship, only at the subordinate. For example, slaves were subject to the typical Roman household code, not the master.

But the household codes of the New Testament are significantly different. They might fall under a category of what some Lutherans--including this Lutheran--call the "third use" of God's law. The "law" in Christian terms, incorporating both the Old and New Testament, can be summed up as God's commands that we love God completely and love our neighbor as ourselves. On these two Old Testament laws, Jesus says, all of God's law is built. The law cannot bring a person a right relationship with God or eternal life because none of us is capable of keeping the law. That can only happen through the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, most famously summarized in John 3:16.

But the law has three main uses:

1. The Law is a mirror showing us the true state of our own lives and the distance we are from God, no matter how many religious works we may do or how wonderful we may appear to others. Here, the Law is meant to drive us to Jesus Christ. Knowing that we cannot save ourselves, we turn to Him for salvation.

2. The Law is a check on sin in the world, even among those who have no respect or knowledge of God. The Bible says that God's law is written on our hearts. While we are often deaf to it, we implicitly acknowledge its call for us to love God and love neighbor. As C.S. Lewis says, most human arguments involve disputes between parties, each of whom claim that they're in the right. But unless there were some implicit of understanding of what is right and what is wrong, the two parties would have nothing to argue about. Unless the law was written on their hearts, their tangle would be no different between the battles between two male bucks over a doe or a hyena fighting off a lion, a mere battle of wills and power. Without an agreed-upon set of standards, you couldn't use the term "argument" to describe their confrontation.

When oppressive or corrupt governments pull power moves, they may be flouting God's Law, but they always have a rationale at hand for their actions. Those rationales always implicitly acknowledge the existence of some objective standard of right and wrong and claim that they are either abiding by them or that, in a particular instance, a higher standard overrides the one violated.

3. The Law is a guide for those who are in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and, grateful for forgiveness and everlasting life, seek to live in ways that are pleasing to God. This last use of the Law is, I think, what the psalmist has in mind when he writes:

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)

This is what Martin Luther called living in "daily repentance and renewal," regularly bringing our lives before God and, in a process the great spiritual guides called examen, asking God to show us our sins, draw us to repent, and to renew our relationship with God.

The Law cannot bring life or forgiveness or hope. Only the Gospel can do that. But the Law, in all its uses, clears a path for the grace of God, offered in Christ.

10. The four major examples of New Testament household codes are Colossians 3:18-4:1, Ephesians 5:21-6:9, Titus 2:1-10, and the section identified in First Peter.

These codes, I feel, get misunderstood, misused, and misappropriated.

Some Christians, for example, claim that they mandate a male-dominated marriage and family structure. They overlook the mutual servanthood in the codes dealing with marriage. The codes have bigger fish to fry than changing the laws of the Jewish or Roman worlds on marriage, which were tilted to the man. Rather, they subversively posed the question, "Given the realities within which believers may live if married to non-Christians, how can the Christian, particularly the woman, win a hearing for Christ with their spouse?"

Some outside the Church and even those within who are trying to score debating points say that the codes endorse slavery. But acknowledgment doesn't confer endorsement. First century Christians lived in an environment in which slavery was the norm. The question before the members of this small, subversive movement that claimed Jesus as Lord was not how to go about abolishing slavery, but how to be a witness and to live faithfully for Christ in the midst of existing society. Slavery was a given. How then to live for Christ if you were a slave or a master?

11. Peter's basic point in our passage is that if you are a slave--slaves are who he is talking to here, as we see in verse 18, just before it--then make certain that you never suffer punishment for doing the wrong thing. Christ is glorified only when we suffer innocently. Let Christ's example hearten you in those circumstances, Peter says.

[For a great discussion of the New Testament household codes, see here.]

12. John 10:1-10: As I've said many times in these "passes," context helps us understand content. In other words, we better understand a particular passage of Scripture by noting what's going on the passages that come before it and after it. John 9 helps us understand our lesson. There, Jesus upbraids the Pharisees blind to what the once-blind man saw, that Jesus is Lord. Now, he talks about these blind shepherds who sometimes are misled by those who really don't know the Good Shepherd, confusing their words of religious legalism for the voice of Jesus. His true followers, His sheep, Jesus says, will never be mistaken about Him. They have come to know Jesus well. "I know my own and my own know me," Jesus will say in verse 14. In short, religious fakes can't pull the wool over Jesus' sheep!

[That's enough for this week.]