"Friend, your sins are forgiven"

"When Jesus saw their faith, he said, 'Friend, your sins are forgiven.'” (Luke 5:20).

When we turn to Jesus with helplessness and such trust as the Holy Spirit has engendered in us (1 Corinthians 12:3), the fear of not being good enough (which we're not) is gone.

So too is the need to "prove" our worthiness because the death of God the Son on the cross proves our infinite and eternal worthiness, despite our sins and imperfections, in the eyes of God. When we turn to Christ, we live, we are forgiven.

I was telling a group at church last night about the professor who, at the beginning of the term, told the hard-charging students in his graduate course that they were all getting A's. That drove some people crazy: How would they prove they deserved an A? Was it fair for them not to get a better grade if they did more and better work?

But what they found was that because they knew they already had A's, they were set free to do their best work, set free from the anxiety of being perfect. They learned more than they'd ever imagined possible.

At the end of the term, the professor explained that this was a picture of God's grace: "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

God approaches the human race with an attitude of grace, love, and forgiveness. This is how He looks at us even when we have our backs (and our lives) turned toward Him.

But when we turn to Him--

away from ourselves,

away from our "clan,"

away from our achievements,

away from our supposed goodness and merit ("all our righteous acts are like filthy rags" Isaiah 64:6),

away from both self-loathing and self-aggrandizement,

away from the little godlets, the idols of our choosing, be they human beings or sticks of wood or money or houses or power or fame--

when we turn to Jesus in helplessness and trust, we receive the forgiveness, new life, peace, hope, and permission to be our best selves that He had for us all the time.

"When Jesus saw their faith, he said, 'Friend, your sins are forgiven.'”

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. More importantly, I'm a sinner who daily claims God's forgiveness and the mantle of sainthood He has in mind for me despite who I am by turning to Jesus.]

Wanted!

Below is the journal from my morning quiet time with God.

Look: “‘In that day,’ declares the Lord, ‘you will call me “my husband”; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’” (Hosea 2:16)

Hosea was called to confront Judah and Israel for their prostitution, their idolatry, worshiping the baal idols rather than the one true God Who saved and nurtured them by His grace.

The baals were sticks of wood (Hosea 4:10) that the people--God’s people--called “master,” which is what baal means.

But God wants to have an entirely different relationship with His people. He wants to be their husband.

Listen: While Biblical faith never ceases to treat the God now ultimately revealed to everyone in Jesus with respect and awe, calling Him things like Lord, Master, and King, God also, throughout both testaments, calls people to an intimacy we could never have with an inanimate stick of wood.

Jesus tells those who seek to follow Him and do God’s will (disciples, ancient and modern): “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15)

Unlike the ancient deities people worshiped that might take on human form in order to have sport with people or to use them sexually, the one true God revealed to Israel and then to the world in Jesus, cares about us. This is also true of all the deities we worship or may be tempted to worship today. (I like how Martin Luther explains idolatry to those of us who may think that it’s solely the behavior of superstitious ancient peoples who aren’t as smart as we moderns are: “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.”)

John 3:16, of course, is one place where Jesus talks about how much God loves us: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

This is stunning whenever I think about it. (And sadly, I don’t think about it enough!) God cares about me. God wants a personal relationship with me, not as opposed to a relationship with the rest of His people in the Church or with those who are outside the fellowship of the Church (with whom I’m called to share the good news of everlasting life with God that only comes through faith in Jesus), but as part of those other relationships!

God is no inanimate, implacable deity. God is the Creator of the universe Who seeks a relationship of love with His creatures, especially with those who are made in His image (Genesis 1:27). He aches for we human beings, weeps for us, loves us, gets angry with us, not for His sake or to satisfy any sick need for codependency, but simply because He wants what is best for us. God yearns for a relationship of intimate love between Himself and, in Lewis’ wonderful phrasing, “the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve.”

The God of the Bible, the God we see in Jesus, is a living God and He wants us to live with Him forever. This is what lay behind the New Testament imagery of Jesus as the bridegroom and the Church, the fellowship of believers in Jesus, the only earthly thing that will survive the end of this world, as His bride.

Respond: Forgive me, Lord, for sometimes keeping you at arm’s length, avoiding intimate, quiet moments with You in Your Word and in prayer. It’s so stupid too, when I avoid You because I don’t want to be confronted for my sins--my failure to love You or love others, because You already know everything about me, yet still love me and want a relationship with You!

Forgive me for hardening my heart to all those other people you love and who you free me to love in Your name.

Today, I cherish and worship You not just as my Lord, Master, and King, but also as my Savior and Friend, Who saves me from myself, from sin, and from death by Your grace through the faith in Christ You have fostered in me. Thank You, Lord. I love You. In Jesus’ name. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Gossip Pushers and Junkies Hurt Everyone

This morning, for my quiet time, the passage of Scripture on which I camped was Proverbs 18:1-8. (You can find those verses here.)

The temptation when we read passages like these is to start thinking of all the people "out there" who are unfriendly, who gossip, who spout opinions without the facts, who trap themselves in their own self-centered verbiage. 

But the moment such thoughts sneak up on me is the one in which I need to say, "God, what are You telling me in these words?" 

Verse 8 brought across to me the importance of refraining from anything like gossip. It says: "The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to the inmost parts."

There are several important points to remember when considering this wisdom given by God through Solomon.

First: From the Christian perspective, the gossip we pass on to others may be factually true or factually untrue. The thing that makes gossip gossip isn't its facticity; it's whether the gossip is less than charitable toward the subject of the gossip. 

In his explanation of the Eighth Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor," Martin Luther says in The Small Catechism: 

We should fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, lie, or gossip about our neighbors, but defend them, speak well of them, and put the most charitable construction on all that they do.

Gossip is designed to denigrate other human beings, questioning things like their integrity, trustworthiness, or intelligence. And defending gossip by saying, "But it's all true," is, in the eyes of God, no defense.

Second: When we gossip, according to Proverbs 18:8, we are feeding people "choice morsels." Gossip is like a slowly-but-surely acting poison wrapped in chocolate and it becomes part of the person who receives it, distorting their views of those being gossiped about and those who pass on the gossip. Gossip harms its recipients spiritually, diminishing their capacity for love. 

A common saying is, "You are what you eat." As Christians who trust that Christ is truly present in the Sacrament of Holy Communion, we believe that, as we receive Christ's in, with, and under the bread and the wine, Christ actually enters us, working to transform us from the inside out. Just so, gossip we receive with credulity stays with us and sets to work to lure us into sin and pride, to corrode our trust in God and others, to make us cynical, separating us from God and from others.

Gossip is horrible stuff: The one who gossips is like a drug pusher; the credulous recipient is an addicted junkie; and the entire process of gossip transmission and reception, like any other addiction, has a destructive impact on all who encounter pusher or junkie. 

We need to pray both that God would keep us from engaging in gossip and from giving it a place in our lives. 

At least this is how God spoke to me in this verse today. What do you think?

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

God, Help Me Not to Be the Prostitute

Here's the journal of my quiet time today. It's important for Christian disciples to seek to maintain a regular quiet time with God on as many days a week as they can swing. It's also important that we let God call the tune, set the agenda, and give us our marching orders through quiet time. I try to keep these in minds each day when I meet with God.

To see how I keep quiet time, read here.

Look: “One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits by many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.’” (Revelation 17:1-2) 

In spite of many efforts to complicate Revelation, the message here is simple. The seven bowls of wrath that John has seen in his heavenly vision constitute the full (hence their number, seven) consequences of unrepented sin. Sin known to us that hasn’t been confessed and covered by the grace of God given in Christ to those who believe in Christ will lead to eternal separation from God and the life that only God can give. 

Throughout the Old Testament and in the New Testament, idolatry is portrayed as adultery, unfaithfulness to God. The first commandment tells us, “You shall have no other gods.” To violate any of God’s commandments in the moral law (the Ten Commandments and those commands that elaborate on them) is to commit idolatry because, in violating any of God’s commands, we hold our own judgments or own desires, we hold ourselves, to be more important than God. 

Listen: Here, I think, we see an adulteress whose adultery and adulterous influence over others may be subtle, deceiving people into thinking that what they believe in or lure others into believing in, is actually of God and righteous and reflective of God’s will.
Sly politicians, like every American president from Reagan to Trump, Republican and Democratic, dress their politics, to one extent or another, in godly language, invoking the name of God and the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, for their political agendas. But to adulterate our faith in Christ with earthly political, social, financial, or personal agendas is to worship our agendas and to leave Christ in the dust. To do that will inevitably lead us to death, separation from God, the life-giver. 

Many social and political systems, philosophies of life, and ways of living are built on the notion that those systems and not God Himself are preeminent. And even well-meaning people who think of themselves as Christians fall for this prostitute and betray Christ: They conflate their own opinions, interests, or desires with God. When these systems deliver the goodies of this world--military victories, financial well-being, a sense of supremacy, often at the expense of others--we risk becoming “intoxicated with the wine of [the prostitute’s] adulteries.” 

We risk becoming devotees of the system, the philosophy, the desire, the self. When this happens, wrath will follow...if not in this life, certainly in the life to come. We will condemn ourselves absent repentant belief in Jesus Christ: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (Jesus in John 3:17-18) 

Belief in Jesus is not intellectual assent. Belief in Jesus is the commitment to trust in and follow Him and not the world every day, the commitment to ask Jesus to help us believe in Him (Mark 9:24). Belief in Jesus is surrender to Him.

Respond: Alert me, Lord, to the ways in which I aduterate my faith in You. 

Help me not to play the prostitute for any earthly thing that offers to give me comfort or boost me in the eyes of myself or others, but help me to rely only on You as revealed in the Servant King Jesus. 

Help me not to follow You with any expectation other than that, in doing so, You will make me new each day, alter my desires, and give me eternity with You as an undeserved gift. 

Help me to be focused on doing Your will and giving You glory, not my own, because Your will is always in my eternal best interest. 

Help me to pray for and respect those in authority; but help me to put my trust in Jesus Christ alone. 

Help to work for the salary I’m given; but help me to not prostitute my faith or integrity for my own selfish pleasure or advancement. 

Help me to love my country; but help me to remember that You are eternally more important than my country or any country. 

Help me not to be prostitute, loving You alone as my God and Savior. 

Help me to be angry at injustice. 

Help me to speak up for the weak, the despised, the neglected, the poor, the put-upon. 

Help me to be angry at Satan and the ways in which he imprisons people. 

Help me to be bold and loving in sharing the good news of Jesus with others. In Jesus’ name. 

Today, help me to resist the temptation to desire or take anything more than I absolutely need to live; You are and You provide my daily bread. 

In Jesus’ name, by the power of the Holy Spirit, grant these things, I pray, Father. Amen

[I'm pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Just because I'm OK, it doesn't mean I'm OK

I try to start most days in quiet time with God. Here you'll find how I approach this time each day. Below is today's journal entry from my quiet time.

Look: “The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.” (Revelation 9:20-21) 

As the end times unfold, God allows Satan and his demons to do their worst to the whole human race not yet marked for salvation. By three different plagues, a third of the human race is destroyed. 

Yet we see here that the survivors don’t repent and, in fact, continue their unrepentant living: worshiping idols, murdering, relying on dark arts, committing sexually immoral acts, stealing. 

For them, eluding the torments of the devil and the wrath of God endows them with a feeling of invincibility, I think. Since they haven’t yet experienced the consequences of their selfishness and idolatry, they seem to think that no consequences will ever occur. 

They refuse to repent. They are apparently unmoved either by Law or Gospel. They put their trust in themselves and in their “idols that cannot see or hear or walk.” They think everything is OK. But just because I'm OK, it doesn't mean I'm OK.

Listen: In some ways, these untouched survivors are like the idols they worship. Like the idols, they seem incapable of seeing or hearing. They are insensitive to what God and life and the demons are all telling them: Their numbers are up. They are vulnerable. They are mortal. And nothing in this world will save them as this world hurtles toward death. Only Christ can save them. Jesus says in Luke 12:56: “Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don't know how to interpret this present time?” 

When we’re chasing after the things we want, even if they’re contrary to the will of God, we can be facile in shielding ourselves from all that God tells us through His Word, experience, the input of friends, and the pangs of our conscience. We ignore those signs. We easily become dumb (like our idols) to the signs of God’s displeasure with our sin We hypocritically pursue our own selfish ends, ignoring the clearly-revealed word of God. We follow the ways of death instead of the one way of life (John 14:6; Matthew 17:13-14). 

The people in Revelation 9 are completely deluded. They are oblivious to their own vulnerability and need of God because nothing bad has happened to them yet. They see themselves as being in a different class from those who have been tortured by the plagues discussed in the chapter. They don’t think, “If something like that were to happen to me, I would need God.” Instead, they seem to think, “I am protected from such evil because I and the things I rely on are stronger than anything. I’ll just keep living the way I have been. God is irrelevant. God is a fantasy. I need to look out for myself.” 

I used to think like these people and am sometimes tempted to do so even now. I even sometimes allow myself to be deluded by my sinful nature into thinking that if I do a sin it must not really be a sin because I’m a good person. 

But I’m not a good person. I’m a saved person, saved by the grace God gives to sinners who daily turn from sin and daily trust in Christ above all. 

When God’s Spirit incites me to confess again that Jesus is my Lord, God come to earth, I’m set free again from these delusions. In this confession, I am confessing Him as the only One Who can save me from my sins and the only One Who can give me life with God. Jesus is the name above all names (Philippians 2:9). 

“For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Romans 8:14-17) 

“...no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3) 

Respond: Lord, by the power of Your Holy Spirit, help me to remember how much I need You and the life that only comes through Jesus. I know that more today than I did yesterday. Events of the past twenty-four hours have shown me that again. If I yield to any thought or action of utter self-sufficiency today, Lord, rein me in. It is in You that I live and move and have my being. Forgive me my sins. Guide me. Show me the way. Give me Your wisdom. You alone are God. You are my God, no matter what the devil or the world may do to me or tempt me with. In Jesus’ name. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Only Worthy One

Today, for my quiet time with God, I read Revelation 5. To see how I approach quiet time, see here. Below is my journal entry for this morning.

Look: “Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’” (Revelation 5:5) 

The scroll, containing God’s plan for saving human beings from sin and death, is in God’s right hand. Its perfection is signified by its being sealed seven times. 

As John sees and experiences this vision, he’s driven to despair. Because no one is found who is worthy, that is, no one is without sin, to open the scroll, humanity is doomed.
But then one of the elders reassures him. The Lion, Who also has the appearance of a Lamb who has been murdered (Revelation 5:6), is worthy, the elder says. This is "the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29).

I'm unworthy of opening the scroll. 

The human race is unworthy of opening the scroll. 

But the Lion Who is the Lamb, Jesus, true God and true man, can and does open the scroll because with His blood, He “purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). 

Listen: Jesus is able to save me from sin and death, to save me from myself. And Jesus alone is able to do this. 

Only He is able to break open the scroll and unleash life on and bring into the kingdom those who believe in Him. 

I can’t break open the seal myself. I’m incapable of offering myself and making a perfect atoning sacrifice for my sin (or anybody else’s). I can’t perform my way into God’s kingdom. Intellectually, I know this is true. But I am sure that at some level, I still harbor the legalistic notion that I can be good enough to deserve the kingdom of God. I can’t be. My good works can’t break the seal. 

Nor can the seal be broken by anyone or anything else. Revelation 5:3: “...no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it.” That means that it can’t be broken by religions. Buddha, Allah, Mohammad...none of them are true God and true human, none of them died for my sins, none of them were raised from the dead by God the Father. 

Only One has conquered sin and death. Jesus says: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). 

Jesus says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:16-18) 

Jesus is the One Who has earned the right to break the seals on our behalf by dying for us, although we weren’t worthy of the sacrifice of the sinless Lamb of God. “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) 

Jesus is God. Jesus a sinless Man Who bore all of our sins and took our punishment for them. Jesus is the only way to life with God. 

It’s telling that, in Revelation 5, after Jesus steps forward to break the seals of the scroll, not only do the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders who have been worshiping the Father, now worship Jesus as well, but they each hold “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people” (Revelation 5:8). 

Before His crucifixion, during His time on earth, Jesus had said: “Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete” (John 16:24). The One Who breaks the seals is the one to Whom and through Whom the prayers of God’s people must go. To speak to God in any name other than that of Jesus, is to send letters to the wrong address. 

(This doesn’t mean that parroting the words, “in the name of Jesus,” acts like a good luck charm for our prayers. To pray in Jesus’ name means also that one understands that we only dare approach God’s throne in the name, in the power, and in light of the self-sacrifice of Jesus. In other words, we pray in Jesus’ name when we have faith in Jesus as our Lord, God, and King.) 

The bowls of incense containing the prayers of God’s people are brought to Jesus. He is the only way to God. 

Respond: In many ways, this is a despairing day. So much bad news from Washington and other parts of the country and the world. And there is bad news from among our friends. I want God’s kingdom to break into this world in its fullness, banishing the bad, the sad, the sinful, toppling the arrogant and the foolish. 

But I must not regard Jesus’ seeming delay in making all things right as a bad thing. “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) I have repenting to do. I have witnessing to do. 

Since I’m not the one who can break open the scroll and its delay might actually be to my advantage, giving God more time to break me of my sin and fashion Christ in me (2 Corinthians 3:18), I should not weep (or sigh, or complain, or bemoan, or rail against rotten people, or murmur, or give into misplaced spiritual pride, or despair over my own sin). 

I should worship the God revealed by God the Holy Spirit in God the Father and God the Son, Who has saved me by grace through faith in Him, and be about my business. My business is Matthew 28:19: “...go and make disciples of all nations...”
God, help me to be focused on worshiping You and making disciples today. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Learning to Love Christ More Than I Love Myself and My Favorite Sins

This is the journal entry for my quiet time with God this morning. See here on how I approach my daily quiet time.

Look: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:12-13)

These words are part of Jesus’ farewell discourse in John’s gospel.

They encompass the new and higher command that Jesus gives to His disciples. Jesus’ new command sets a higher standard than does the great commandment, Jesus’ summary of the two tables of the ten commandments. That commandment, given in Matthew 22:37-39, is: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Jesus tells His Church that our command is to love each other as Christ has loved us.

And how did and does Jesus Christ love us?

He died on the cross for us.

He gave up on the easy path in order to follow the hard path for our sakes.

He died to Himself in order to liberate us and claim new, everlasting lives for all who believe in Him.

This is how Christians are called to love each other: to willingly give up our lives for the sake of others’ eternal salvation.

This isn’t to say that our lives can redeem sinners; Christ’s death alone accomplishes this.

But Christians are called to so die to self--our desires, our preferences, our orientations to our own individual inborn preferred sins, our own advantages or comforts--for the sake of others’ salvation.

A neighbor of my brother lived this call out in a truly heroic way. The neighbor was gay and he worked daily on an AIDs hotline. He also was celibate, explaining to my brother, that he knew it was God’s will that sexual intimacy be confined to marriages between women and men. That man died to himself in order to follow Christ and to help others know life with Christ.

This loving others as Christ has loved us, of course, is impossible for us to do in our own power. In the command to love each other with such self-denial and self-sacrifice is another one of those acts of righteousness Paul was referring to when he wrote: “I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:19) After this, Paul throws up his hands and asks: “Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” (Romans 7:24)

And this is exactly where the commands and laws of God leave us: They point us to the right and show us that we are incapable of doing it.

And this is where Jesus comes in. Paul answers his own question: “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25)

Jesus delivers the same answer in John 15, when He says: “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:4-5)

Through faith, inspired and maintained by God through our daily repentance and renewal, Christ’s obedience works righteousness in us, declaring us righteous for the sake of what Jesus accomplished on the cross and making us righteous--sanctifying us--by the power of the Holy Spirit working in those whose belief causes them to daily surrender self again and again. God truly treats repentant believers with amazing grace! And I am thankful!

Listen: But I must not fail to hear God’s law. I must hear it, not because it can save me, but because it’s God’s declaration of His will and because it’s so easy, in the rush of everyday events, for me to wander away from Christ (like a lost sheep) and try to live life in my own power.

I need to know how God’s law judges me so that God can lead me back to Jesus, God in the flesh. That’s why I always think of the prayer in Psalm 139:23-24: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Jesus’ command that I love others in the same self-sacrificing and self-denying way raises the question in me: Do I love others in the way Christ loves me? The answer, of course, is no...and not just because I haven’t given up my physical life for another’s salvation.

This leads to another question: In practical terms, how can I die to self in order to help others to know Jesus and have life in His name? What am I willing to sacrifice in order to help others have salvation in Christ?

And there’s another question: What sins have I indulged in my own life that have led others not to Christ, but to sin, because I was looking out for my desires rather than dying to myself? 

All of this can be distilled to a single question, really: What do I love more: The God known in Christ, my fellow disciples, and other people or my sins?

Because Christ loves me, died for me, rose for me, and saved a place for me in eternity (John 14:2-3), I am set free to live with the same selflessness with which Christ lived and still lives.

Respond: Father, help me to discern practical ways in which I can love others as Christ loves me, including ways to avoid leading people away from you.

1. Let my ears, in Luther’s phrase, be a tomb to gossip.

2. Help me to live modestly, including refraining from the overconsumption of food and of food not good for me, a sin to which I am prone. Overindulgence in food is a sure sign of being tied more to the world and the gratification of desires more than I am to Christ.  (Philippians 3:19) I really need to attend to this, Lord. I pray Your Holy Spirit's help in doing so.

3. Grant that my conversations will only honor You. I don’t mean that I should spout religious cliches in my interactions with others; that wouldn’t honor You. Help me to remember what Paul says in Ephesians 4:29 and 1 Thessalonians 5:11.

4. Help me to look for ways to be helpful to others, to not be so caught up in my “to do list” that I don’t have time for others.

5. Help me not to brag. Jeremiah 9:24 and 1 Corinthians 1:31 say: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

Show me other ways today, Lord, and root loving others as Christ has loved me, along with repentance and renewal, into my daily habits. In Jesus’ name. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Trust?

[These are reflections from my morning quiet time. To see how I approach quiet time, read here.]

Look: “Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.” (John 2:23-25)

This takes place early in Jesus’ earthly ministry, according to John. At the start of chapter 2, Jesus turns water into wine at the wedding in Cana. Then, He cleanses the temple of moneychangers. After that comes these verses.

In verse 23, where we’re told that after Jesus performed signs, people believed in Him, just as earlier, the disciples believed in Him in light of the miracle at Cana.

“But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people,” verse 24 says.

The verb is a form of pisteuo, the same term routinely used in John’s gospel for believing faith. It’s the verb used by Jesus in John 3:16.

The message is clear: Jesus doesn’t put His faith in human beings, because He knows all about we human beings. He knows that we’re fickle, unreliable, unworthy of trust. And even when human beings claim to trust in someone, that belief is subject to change, even when the One trusted is the foundational truth of the universe, Jesus (John 14:6).

The human condition is such that we tend to break trusts, turn on others, change our minds. We’re not reliable in any ultimate sense. I know that I'm not. No human being, no thing, no idea, can be believed in to make us whole, happy, sane, forgiven, purposeful. At least not over the long haul. Certainly not for eternity.

Only God can be trusted. This is what I think Paul is saying in Romans 3:14: “Let God be true, and every human being a liar.”

Listen: If I believe in anyone but the God revealed in Jesus, my belief--my faith--will be disappointed.

I have put too much pressure on trembling human shoulders when I’ve placed my faith in them. And people have made the same mistake when reposing similar faith in me. We just can’t bear the weight of the need of every human being has for the one true God. Imperfect, sinful human beings can’t be God. As Paul also writes: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

This doesn’t mean that we should have nothing to do with others, I don’t believe. Quite the opposite.

What it does mean is that we need to enlist the help of God in all of our relationships: marriages, friendships, churches, small groups so that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can become more trustworthy. We believe in God to help us be trustworthy.

When we fail to be trustworthy, we must repent, seeking God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of those we let down.

When others fail to be trustworthy with us, we must forgive as we’ve been forgiven (Ephesians 4:32).

This doesn’t mean that we should continue regular relationships with those who continually betray us. We can forgive others even when we realize that they’re chronically and unrepentantly--with repentance affirmed by a real life commitment to living differently--untrustworthy.

To understand that no one is ultimately trustworthy isn’t to be cynical or resigned to a life of loneliness.

It means that we love and accept others just as Christ loves and accepts us.

We confront. We talk things through. We pray. But we place our ultimate trust in Jesus Christ alone.

Respond: God, forgive me for so often believing in people, human leaders, or human ideas more than I believe in You. You alone can make me whole, purposeful, joyful, alive. Help me today to trust You more so that I can love both You and others better. In Jesus’ name. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Protect me, God, from the lies I tell myself

This journals my encounter with God and His Word today during my quiet time. See here to see how I spend my time with God; it may help you to keep your own quiet time.

Look: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” (2 Timothy 4:3)

Paul addressed these words to Timothy to explain why he had given the instructions that immediately precede them: “I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.” (2 Timothy 4:1-2)

The times that Paul describes--”when people will not put up with sound doctrine”--have arisen often in the history of Christ’s Church.

Today is no different.

For example, Joel Osteen promotes a “prosperity gospel,” teaching that if people have enough faith, they will become rich. It’s possible for faithful people to be wealthy, of course. Abraham, the earthly father of Biblical faith, had wealth. But the notion that a lack of wealth is a sign of little faith is a lie, a lie which Osteen is willing to sell you with the tickets he sells to attend his events around the country.

And then, there’s the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the body I left several years ago, who recently told an interviewer from the Chicago Sun-Times that if there is a hell, it's empty. No Christian should be anxious for a person to go to hell. In fact, our mission is to make disciples so that people can have God’s presence, salvation, and blessings now and for eternity. But Jesus is very clear throughout the gospels, as are the apostles: There is a hell and it is populated not only by Satan and his demons, but also by those who refuse to trust the God revealed in Christ with their sins and their lives.

Pernicious lies like these never lose their appeal to people. I think that’s so for several reasons:

1. Lies like those told by Osteen make people feel more in control and more self-righteous. If people have wealth, they can tell themselves that this is a sign of their righteousness. Such beliefs existed in Biblical times and Jesus condemned them. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God,” Jesus says in Mark 10:25. Jesus understands that wealth can delude us with the idea that we are self-sufficient and wealth can become our god. The advocates of the prosperity gospel find passages like this inconvenient. I’ve been told about Christians who truly think that if people in poverty had more faith, they wouldn’t be poor. That is a self-aggrandizing lie.

2. Lies like those told by the ELCA bishop make God seem like a liar when He tells us in His word, repeatedly, that there is condemnation for those who refuse to trust in Christ. In John 3:16-18, for example, Jesus says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” And Jesus isn’t shy about speaking of hell as the place of condemnation filled with unbelieving people (Luke 16:19-31). Nor is Jesus shy in speaking of eternity with God as the reward for simple repentance and faith in Him. To the thief on the cross, dying alongside Him, Jesus said, “...today, you will be with Me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

Listen: It’s easy to see the lies that other people readily accept.

But, Lord, are there lies to which I am susceptible? As I reflect, there is one big lie that I find myself needing to guard against.

It’s this: The idea that since I’m a Christian, anything I take into my head to do must be OK. That is a big lie!

Although I would never consciously frame things in this way, the thinking here is: “I’m saved by Jesus from sin and death. So, if I decide to do so-and-so, it must be all right. After all, Jesus knows how much I love him. He’ll give me a break.”

This lie exemplifies what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” It’s an expression of that “buddy God” lie. Cheap grace is what we tell ourselves God gives to us in order to wrestle with the reality and consequences of our sinfulness and our sinful actions.

This is why the Lutheran practice of “daily repentance and renewal” is so important. Otherwise, like a “lost sheep,” we rationalize our ways farther and farther away from Christ and the life only He can give.

The reality of my sin is something with which I must daily wrestle. And I need to be open to remain silent before God and His Word to show me where I have gone wrong.

Psalm 139:23-24 teaches believers to pray: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Paul engages in daily repentance and renewal when he talks about his daily struggle with the reality of his own sin and his utter dependence on God’s grace, given in Christ, to save him from himself (Romans 7:21-25).

Another subtle lie against which I want to remain vigilant is, I imagine, quite alluring for many Christians when they see things like earthquakes in Mexico or hurricanes in Florida, Texas, Cuba, Puerto Rico, St. Croix, St. John, St. Thomas, and elsewhere. The lie people not in affected areas might be open to accepting is, “This hasn’t happened to me. Therefore, I must be blessed and favored by God, while those facing these catastrophes are not.”

Jesus specifically called out people prone to accept such lies when, referencing disastrous events that must have happened shortly before He spoke to a crowd. Luke 13:1-5 says: “Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, ‘Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.’”
Unforeseen disasters happen in this world. They happen to the righteous and unrighteous alike (Matthew 5:45).

And, as Dave, a disciple who is part of the congregation I serve as pastor, mentioned to me the other day: “Disasters come all the time to people.” He went on to mention things like heart attacks. We could also name traffic accidents, cancer diagnoses, deaths.

To believe that because particular disasters haven’t struck us yet, we’re exempt by reason of righteousness, isn’t just a delusion, it’s a lie.

Respond: Protect me today, God, from my impulse to believe my lies, the world lies, or Satan’s lies rather than Your truth, revealed definitively in Christ and in Your Word. Help me to hear You clearly throughout my day and help me to call on You constantly so that when I start to wander, I return to You. Help me to remember always the truth:

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:8-10)

I place my life is in Your hands, and not mine.

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Living Water is a congregation of the North American Lutheran Church (NALC).

Saved for a Life Lived On Purpose

I begin most days in quiet time with God. To see how I approach this time, see here. Below is my journal for today's quiet time.

Look: “He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. (2 Timothy 1:9)

If Paul were a televangelist, I suppose you’d expect him to write here that we have been saved and called to live with God for eternity, focusing more on the sweet-by-and-by beyond death.

But that’s not what Paul writes. He says that God in Christ “has saved and called us to a holy life.” It’s an accomplished fact. Right now in this messy world.

The follower of Jesus is saved for and called to a different way of living in this life. Believers in Jesus aren’t waiting for their own resurrections to start living like people who have been called and saved by the God of the universe. They can do it right now.

Listen: That the implications for everyday life in this world is what Paul has in mind here is underscored by what he writes in verse 7: “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.”

God doesn’t give the Holy Spirit to believers just so that they can have goose-bumpy experiences with the wild and uncontrollable Holy Spirit. God’s not a junkie whose aim is to sell us a dose of Holy Spirit-religion, our fix until the next time we need to feel something.

The God we meet in Jesus Christ is uncontrollable by human beings, even wild as perceived on this side of the resurrection. He is the Lion and the Lamb (Revelation 5:5-6). Lewis has it right when several characters in The Chronicles of Narnia say of Aslan, the Christ-figure in his books, “He’s not a tame lion. But he’s good.” But God does not set us free to be Jesus addicts.

To all with faith in Jesus and through our Baptism, He gives us the Holy Spirit, Who bears down on the chaos of our lives (Genesis 1:1) of jumbled motives and self-serving actions to make us new (2 Corinthians 5:17), set free from the tyranny of sin and our selfish motives. As we attend to Christ faithfully, we can no longer be tossed to and fro by the latest craze, impulse, religious fad, or need to feel “relevant” (Ephesians 4:14).

Instead, we hold steady, filled with the strength of God for living.

The Holy Spirit empowers us with the boldness to live out our trust in Jesus by giving us “power, love, and self-discipline.”

He saves us to live holy lives, lives set apart for God’s purposes for our lives, according to the blueprint He set for us when He formed us in the womb.

I find that when I’m seeking to live in tune with the Holy Spirit, in submission to Christ and the will of God, I become more myself, not less. Jesus died and rose to save me for just this: to be myself, not the person my sin-darkened heart and mind sometimes imagine that I should be. I become more straightforward, less ambiguous, less complicated. Not simplistic, simple. Self-disciplined, more dependent on my Creator and therefore more the bold, powerful, loving, and self-disciplined child of God I am meant to be. Liberated to be my true self.

This isn’t passivity. I don’t stop dreaming or having ambitions. But my dreams and ambitions are set on being the me God sets me free to be.

Respond: Lord, You know how I wander from You and want to be my own god and become disappointed by dreams that come from my ego, from Satan, and from the world, rather than following the path of freedom to be all that I am made to be in Christ. Help me to live like a new creation and not an old Adam, mired in sin.Today, help me to live like a disciple of Jesus. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Ultimate Makeover

This my journal entry for my quiet time with God today. To see how I keep this time, read here.

Look: “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18, NIV)

“All of us, then, reflect the glory of the Lord with uncovered faces; and that same glory, coming from the Lord, who is the Spirit, transforms us into his likeness in an ever greater degree of glory.” (2 Corinthians 3:18, Good News Translation)

Paul, who has had some sharp things to say to the Corinthians has also spent time in the previous verses, underscoring the authority of his team and himself to say sharp things.

Apparently, some have questioned that authority. Basically, Paul is saying, “You Corinthians are credentials for my authority. The fact that Gentiles who were once unbelievers confess faith in the God of Israel revealed in Jesus is our authority. Once you were no people, now you are God’s people. By the power of the Holy Spirit working through our witness, You have life from the God previously known only to Israel. That shows my authority!”

As Paul warms to his subject, he posits an idea found in the book of Hebrews and elsewhere in the New Testament that the old covenant, given through the Patriarchs and Moses, both necessary and of God, was a prelude to the new, definitive covenant God makes with people of any race or nationality through Jesus and their faith in Him, made possible by the Holy Spirit.

He contrasts the old and new covenants.

“Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, transitory though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?” (vv.7-8)

“If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness!” (v. 9)

“For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was transitory came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts! (v.10-11)

It’s not that the old was bad, it’s that it couldn’t achieve what the new can achieve. It wasn’t definitive. The old always pointed to the new and now the new has rightly supplanted the old.

Paul’s words echo the opening verses of the New Testament book of Hebrews: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.”

In other words, in the past, God spoke to His people Israel through a multiplicity of voices, the voices of prophets. Now, however, God has spoken directly to the world through the One Voice, the same voice that bore down on primordial chaos and brought all life into being (Genesis 1:1). That Voice, God made flesh, speaks the definitive, life-bringing Word to the entire human race. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

“My authority comes from the way in which the Holy Spirit keeps speaking Jesus’ life-giving Word through those who follow Him,” Paul is telling the Corinthians.

It’s not an authority he claims as his own by his own will. It’s the same Word that all who confess Jesus as Lord are to speak to others. For the Christian, there is one authoritative Voice and Word: the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.

Listen: All of which leads to verse 18. Moses was given the terrifying privilege of seeing God in all of God’s blazing glory. But Moses had to veil his face when he went back to his fellow Israelites. To see God’s glory directly would mean death for them. God was perfect; they weren’t. (Moses wasn’t either, but God set Moses aside for the purpose of acting as his leader/priest.)

But when ancient Israel saw God’s glory reflected in Moses’ face, that too was terrifying for them. His face had to be veiled and they told him not to make them see God. Just tell us what God wants us to do and we’ll do it, they told Moses. (They didn’t, it should be pointed out.)

Why didn’t Israel want to see God? To come into the presence of God, as we do when we confess our sins to God in Jesus’ name in private prayer or public worship, is to be made mindful of the chasm between God’s holiness and perfection, on the one hand, and our unrighteousness and imperfection, on the other.

Thanks to God, we can approach Him through Jesus, Who covers us with His righteousness when we trust in Him and His righteousness, rather than in our own power and our own unrighteousness, making it possible for us to be God’s presence without dying on the spot. When we are covered with Jesus, our High Priest, and come in His name, we have no reason to fear about approaching the One Who Jesus taught us to call, “Our Father.”

That’s why, also in Hebrews, the preacher exhorts: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet he did not sin [Jesus]. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16-17)

Set free from our bondage to sin and death through the crucified and risen Jesus, we no longer need to “veil our faces” in God’s presence. We don’t need to be hesitant about approaching God.

In fact, we should approach Him often, with confidence. That’s why Paul says elsewhere: “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

And, picking up on these themes, Martin Luther writes in The Small Catechism regarding the introduction of the Lord’s Prayer (“Our Father, who art in heaven”):

God encourages us to believe that he is truly our Father, and that we are truly his children, so that we may boldly and confidently pray to him, just as beloved children speak to their dear Father.

Paul says that we’re to “contemplate” or, better yet probably, “reflect” this glorious God.

That means that we’re not to be afraid to come into His presence: Even if doing so will show our weaknesses, God has shown Himself to be, in Christ, not only as the people of the old covenant confessed “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,” but also the God Who has shared our lives, borne our sins on His sinless shoulders, and wants nothing more than to give us new, everlasting life through faith in God the Son.

When we choose to spend time, choose to spend our lives, in God’s presence, we are transformed. The more of our lives we give over to God, the more we surrender to Jesus, the more He gives of Himself to us and the more we become like God in the flesh, Jesus...even when we ourselves can’t perceive it.

Ole Hallesby, in his book Prayer, has an illustration that clarifies this reality. He talked about what was often done for tuberculosis patients. They would be taken to sanitaria where the most effective treatment often turned out to be wheeling the patients out into the sunlight. There, in the brightness and the warmth of the sun, these once-sickly people would be transformed. The sun would clear the disease from affected lungs. The patients were healed.

Because of Jesus, we no longer need to fear the blazing, consuming fire of God. When, in humility and need, in simple trust in what Jesus has done for us, we come into God’s presence, He, the brilliant Lord of all, heals us of our fevered sin-sickness. He fills us with His life, which can’t even be ended when we draw our last breaths on this earth.

It was this humble attentiveness to Him, this passive saturation in God’s presence and Word, that Jesus commended to Martha, the busy sister of Lazarus and Mary, in Luke 10:38-42. He tells the frenzied Martha, concerned about making a good impression, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:41-42)

Jesus isn’t condemning work or commending laziness. He’s saying, “Follow Me and heed Me, whatever you’re doing.” Jesus doesn’t say this because He’s an egomaniac. He’s saying it because it’s only in Him that we find life from God. Jesus is the good portion.

When we, our faces no longer veiled in shame or fear, can peer into the face of God as we meet Him in Christ, He can work changes in us. Paul says that we are, through our surrender and attentiveness to Jesus, “transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

The glory of God becomes more manifest in us, in ways that we are hardly conscious of, because our thoughts are no longer about us, our reputations, our sins, our comforts, our perks, our fears. Our thoughts are on Christ, of Christ.

Paul is describing the process of sanctification. It’s the process by which the holy God of all creation makes believers in Christ holy, their lives increasingly reflecting the presence of God’s goodness and love and grace in their lives. Sanctification, just like the justification that initially sets us free from the power of sin and death through faith in Jesus, is a gracious act of God alone. It is not our doing.

Sanctification happens when the Holy Spirit incites us, through God’s Word, whether mediated through other people, the Sacraments, or reading it ourselves, to spend time in the presence of God, to yield control over more aspects of our lives despite our desire to go our own way.

The human impulse is to hide from God when we sin or our sin is shown to us, like Adam and Eve after they ate the fruit.

The human impulse also is to pretend that we’re self-sufficient, gods to ourselves who don’t need God, again like Adam and Eve, who wanted to “be like God.”

But when, by the power of the Spirit, we come to believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, the only way to the life with God for which we were made and which we all secretly want, we give the Holy Spirit access to our minds, hearts, and wills. He makes us mindful of what we really need and want: a deep fellowship with the God in Whose image we were first made.

There are times when I have been so busy with the things I wanted to do or thought that I needed to do, I didn’t realize how hungry I was. It’s not until I finally sit down for a meal and begin to eat that suddenly I realize how famished I am.

It’s the same with God. We can go through our days and lives--Christians and non-Christians alike--and become oblivious of our need for fellowship with God. But once the Holy Spirit creates or re-creates that “taste” for God in us, we realize how, without Him in our lives, we’re starving. (That’s the way it was for me when, after a decade of atheism, I got to know God as revealed in Christ; I couldn’t get enough of Him.)

The Bible is speaking perhaps more than metaphorically when it invites people to “Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.” (Psalm 34:8)

And because the God Who is Spirit (John 4:24) understands that we are fleshy dust (Psalm 103:14), He compassionately reaches out to us by becoming one of us, yet without sin (John 1:14; Hebrews 4:15), so that He can be touched and seen (John 1:14) and then redeem us by offering His own flesh and blood at the cross.

And this isn’t a privilege only enjoyed by a few hundred residents of first-century Judea. We can taste and see the goodness of the Lord, God in the flesh, Jesus, every time His body and blood are offered to us in the Sacrament of Holy Communion: "Take and eat; this is my body,” He says to us when His Word meets the bread at the table in Christian worship. "Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins,” He says when His creative, transformative Word meets the wine of Holy Communion (Matthew 26:26-28).

This meal, along with God’s Word and the fellowship of the Church, are all meant to be tools of the Holy Spirit by which God feeds us on Himself and incites a still greater hunger for God, a hunger to have Him in every part of our lives.

And when, by the power of the Holy Spirit and not our own power, we militate against all the distractions of this world that would keep us from God, and we, like Mary, come into God’s presence, He infuses us with His glory: the power to live, to have peace, to be the bold, humble, purposeful, forgiving, joyful, loving people we were made to be.

Respond: I get too busy and distracted, Lord. Thank You for this time with You today. Make me over in Your image and in doing so, help me to reflect Your glory. Free me from the need to impress others or be what others want me to be. Help me to be who You want me to be, which I know, corresponds with who in my gut, I want to be. Grant that this will not be a selfish or self-aggrandizing pursuit, but one that will allow me, as You invade more of my life, give all glory to You alone. Help me to be my God-self with reckless, joyful abandon. I pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Smelling Good to God

From a recent quiet time. I explain quiet time here.

Look: “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” (2 Corinthians 2:14-16a)

The passage from which these words are taken is shot through with both humility and confidence, each born of faith in God.

Paul has just said in vv. 12-13, that while God had opened the door for he and his team to do ministry in Troas, he’d felt uneasy while there owing to his inability to find Titus. This dovetails with what he talked about in 1 Corinthians 16:9: Even when God opens doors for us to follow Him, there can also be troubles when we walk through them. We can be in “triumphal procession” with God and still encounter troubles, whether sadness, opposition, or difficulties of other kinds.

I believe that Paul truly took to heart what Jesus says: “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). I can be following the path laid out for me by God in Christ and still be subjected to sorrow and death. In fact, if I follow Jesus, nothing is more likely; after all, this is precisely the path Jesus took. There is no Easter without Good Friday.

Our procession is triumphal, whatever comes our ways, because it follows Christ, not because we’re all that.

And for reasons known truly only to God (though we may speculate), it’s through believers in Jesus that God spreads the fragrance of “the knowledge of Him everywhere.” Then Paul says: “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing…”

“Aroma to God” reminds me of the incense offered to God in the ancient temple in Jerusalem. Incense was meant to carry people’s prayers, sacrifices, worship, and commitment to faith offered to God. Paul says that believers in Christ are like incense lifting praises, prayers, and surrender to God through their lives.

When we read about such offerings being made, we might think of the people of God gathered for worship, times together with the Church when we confess sin and receive God’s forgiveness, sing God’s praises, hear God’s Word, and receive the gift of life in the Sacraments. And, according to Paul, worship with God’s people is one place in which we are to be “the aroma of Christ” to God. We’re to be this when we are “among those who are being saved.”

But we are also to be the aroma of Christ after we’ve left Christian worship “among those who are perishing,” among those who don’t know or refuse to receive Christ and His gracious offer of new, everlasting life with God. In other words, we’re to keep offering ourselves to the purposes of God, the glory of God, and the sharing of Christ, in our everyday lives with everyone.

Paul doesn’t sugarcoat things either. People will perceive the Christ we share with our lives, actions, and words differently. Some will perceive the “aroma of Christ” as “a fragrance from death to death” and others as “a fragrance from life to life.” Or, as these words are rendered in The Message translation/paraphrase: “Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God, which is recognized by those on the way of salvation—an aroma redolent with life. But those on the way to destruction treat us more like the stench from a rotting corpse.”

In other words, the good news of new life through the crucified and risen Jesus, will seem like death to some people. And they’re right in that it is a death to the dead life of sin into which we’re born and which spells an instant death sentence for every human being absent the gracious intervention of Jesus.

But to those open to the Holy Spirit’s proclamation of this message through us, this good news, this gospel (this aroma of Christ), even as it spells the death of this old dead life, it will be perceived that life with Christ moves us from life with God here and now to life with God in full perfection in eternity. From life to life.

Paul writes elsewhere: “...the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).

And Jesus says to Martha, grieving for her brother, Lazarus: ““I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25-26)

Listen: Intentionality about being the “aroma of Christ” is important, of course. Jesus says, “You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). I need to take that as His will for my life as a disciple, wherever I may be.

But I also know how little good my good intentions do when push comes to shove. That’s especially true when it comes to doing the things God wants me to do. Like Paul, I confess that the force of sin that lives in me scores easy victories over my good intentions and sincere resolutions: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19).

If I’m going to make good on being the “aroma of Christ” to God among all sorts of people, my good intentions and heartfelts resolutions will do no good. I need to take to heart Jesus’ words: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

Being the aroma of Christ in the world will seem compelling to some and repulsive to others. If I focus solely on people’s reactions to me following Christ, I’ll lose the aroma of Christ. I’ll be like Peter, full of faith when he asked Jesus to call him to walk on the stormy water with him, but full of fear when I lose my focus on Christ and look, instead, to my circumstances.

If I don’t take a shower every day, I won’t have a very compelling scent any longer. And if I don’t spend time with Christ every day, I’ll lose the scent of Christ and His sacrificial offering for me in my life.

I need to keep bathing in Christ. I need to spend time with Him. I need to worship with the Church, read His Word, receive the Sacraments, and spend alone time--quiet time--with the God revealed in Christ.

As we abide or remain connected to Christ, it won’t be us but Christ that people “smell” in us.

And if some don’t like the scent, they may let us know. But we won’t be shaken because we know through our constant fellowship with God revealed in Christ to Whom we belong. The only one to Whom we need to smell good is God...and all who turn from sin and trust in Christ and His righteousness rather than their own, smell very good to God, covered in the sweet aroma of Christ.

Respond: I need to remember all of this because I have a tendency to be a people-pleaser. My antennae are particularly attuned to others’ reactions to me. Lord, free me from the worries to which this can give rise. Free me from the temptation to compromise your truth and to blend in with my surroundings that this creates in me. Help me to stay grounded in You so that today, my life will be an offering to You no matter who I may meet. In Jesus’ name.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Help me to walk through the doors You open, God

This is the journal entry on what God shared with me today during my quiet time. See here for information on how I keep my daily quiet time with God.

Look: “I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me.” (1 Corinthians 16:8-9)

This interests me because, as Paul gives the Corinthian Christians a rundown of his plans, he mentions going to Ephesus. In one breath, he seems to give two almost contradictory reasons for being in Ephesus through Pentecost: (1) A door for effective work there has opened to him; (2) There are many there who oppose him.

On the second point, The Lutheran Study Bible says that Paul’s fellow Jews in Ephesus were offended that he “welcomed uncircumcised Gentiles into the churches.”

It seems almost silly to use the offense he will cause people as a reason to go among them.

Silly? Not when I consider what he wrote to the Gentile-Christian church in Rome about his fellow Jews. Paul agonized over the fact that God’s chosen people, who had the patriarchs and the ordinances, whose Messiah had come to be Lord and Savior of all the world, could miss out on the promises given to them through the patriarchs and Moses and the prophets by refusing to accept or trust in the God ultimately disclosed to them and the whole world in Jesus. At one point in the extended section of Romans in which he addresses his concerns, chapters 9 to 11, Paul says that he’d be willing to give up his own eternal salvation if only his fellow Jews would receive and believe in Jesus. “For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race,” he writes in Romans 9:3.

So, Paul doesn’t look forward to being in Ephesus merely to be provocative. He has an opportunity to share the gospel with many people. But he also has an opportunity to get his fellow Jews’ attention placed on Christ and His gospel. Paul's hope is that he will incite them to listen to the message and come to believe in Jesus, too, as God and Savior.

But first they must be provoked.

Paul talks about this very strategy--of provoking his fellow Jews in order to incite them to faith in Jesus--in Romans 11:

“I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I take pride in my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them.” (Romans 11:13-14)

Paul sees the opportunity to share the gospel--the good news of new life for all who repent and surrender their lives to the crucified and risen Jesus--as good not only for the Gentiles who are receptive to Christ and the gospel. He also sees the opportunity, the door opened, by his ministry to the Gentiles, to provoke his fellow Jews to jealousy of the Gentile believers for the forgiveness, peace, joy, and new life they have through their faith in this Son of David, Jesus.

Listen: By now, Paul is familiar with the opposition and even violence his proclamation of Jesus can bring upon his head. Jews and Gentiles have an inborn predisposition--rooted in our sinful natures--to reject any message that calls us to admit our wrongs and to surrender to anybody else, even to God. In Ephesus itself, Paul would be denounced by Gentiles tied to the production and sales of statues of the greek goddess Artemis or Diana.

But Paul can also see the “open door," the door that God has swung open, allowing him to win some people to Jesus. So, even when he sees opposition beyond that open door, he walks through it. He follows where Jesus seems to be leading him. He doesn’t do so with the naive notion that all will be well. He fully understands the danger and simple unpleasantness that awaits him if he passes through the open door. His eyes are wide open. But he plunges forward anyway.

In one of the books I’m reading right now, Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, speaks of discipleship being made up, in part, of being with Jesus. Whether Jesus leads us to places of difficulty or ease, each of which have their own peculiar temptations to unfaithfulness, the disciple follows. And, it seems to me, they must do so with eyes wide open and constant prayer. Paul understands this, I think.

Respond: In looking at these two verses, I have to ask, Lord, if I haven’t too often opted for the comfortable ways, if I haven’t dodged controversy, if I haven’t failed to provoke when I should have been provoking--for the sake of those with whom I needed to share Christ’s gospel?

Have I opted for ease?

Have I passed open doors knowing that beyond them lay great promise, both for those who are immediately receptive to the gospel and for those who will be initially offended, but might later receive Christ?

The answer to those questions is yes, often.

And in passing on those open doors, I’ve also taken a pass on sharing the gospel with people You had called me to share it.

Which leads to another question, a haunting one: Once a Christian has passed on so many open doors, will You ever entrust them with the call to enter through others?

Jesus says that He only entrusts bigger things when they’ve been faithful in addressing smaller things (Matthew 25:23). Later, Jesus says: “For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” (Matthew 25:29)

So, God, I simply ask that, no matter the size or implications, You will open doors for me to share the gospel, following Jesus in order to share Him with others. Help me not to worry about the troubles it might bring my way. Jesus tells us that in this world we will have trouble, but that He has overcome the world. So, troubles shouldn't keep me from being faithful. Forgive my unfaithful past. Grant that Your Holy Spirit will empower me to be faithful today.

Open the doors that You call me to notice and let me walk through, whether my doing so will provoke some or not. So long as my end goal is not to provoke (because who wants to be someone who provokes just for the sake of provoking?), but to bring the gospel message of new life for all people, I need to go where You lead. Help me to do just that!

In Jesus’ name I pray.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]