Justification and Other Core Ideas

Christian Concepts to Remember (2-2-2022)

             In the sermon at Hillside on Sunday, February 6, I will speak about Justification by Faith. Alister McGrath calls this “the central theme of both the Old and New Testaments”.[i] Do you agree? Or, would you say salvation is the central theme? Or, redemption? Or, New Creation? McGrath would locate all these important ideas along with restoration, regeneration, forgiveness of sins, and many others under the category of justification.

            I do not think the average churchgoer who doesn’t regularly read theology books will be able to differentiate between these terms. I regularly read theological works and tomes, and it’s not easy for me to distill the ideas into concise definitions. Theological thinking is beneficial, and I will, in the preaching, attempt to help the church grow in theological understanding.

            Here, though, I invite you to focus on just two concepts. First, you and I absolutely need God. Whatever justification is, and there are countless books on justification, most every theologian and Bible scholar agree it is instituted and initiated by God. Human beings are sinners cut off from God and we cannot get to Him on our own effort. In Jesus, God comes to us, removes our sin and invites us to receive forgiveness. He invites us to live as His children.

            The second idea is relationship. I am sure a lot of people hear pastors like me talk about relationship with God, and they think, ‘I can’t see or hear God. How can I have a relationship with one I cannot see or hear?’ I get it. This question makes sense. Relationship with God can only be had if we acknowledge there is more to reality than what we can see, hear, taste, smell, or feel.

            God may, on rare occasions, speak in an audible voice, but God is always speaking to our spirits. The relationship God desires with us is one of love, one in which our integrity and autonomy are respected, and one in which we will grow. If you come to God in your need, and if you tune out the distractions of social media, toxic relationships, unhealthy amounts of screen time, and whatever contributes to societal ADHD, you will find that a relationship with God can be had. The relationship will grow and deepen the more you give yourself fully to it. And, the longer you are in this relationship the more joy and richness of spirit you will discover.

            Need for God; relationship with God; proceed in your faith under these ideas. From here, the theological concepts, the preaching, and other modes of experiencing discipleship will enhance your walk with the Lord.

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[i] Alister E. McGrath (1988), Justification by Faith, Academie Books: Zondervan Publishing House (Grand Rapids, MI), p. 11.

The Gospel (a partial Definition) - Romans 3:25

I preached this sermon July 3rd.  I am sorry to posting it two weeks late.

God has done something about it. 

Now hear this, because this is the Gospel.  We hear about “Gospel” music, and the four “Gospels.”  The word “Gospel” has come to mean something that is the essential truth.  Maybe Steph Curry can preach the “Gospel” of shooting a basketball, or Dave Ramsey can preach the “Gospel” of saving money.  And maybe there is essential truth in the pure mechanics of shooting a basketball or the life style discipline in saving.  But the concept of Gospel is not about sports or finances.

Perhaps you have been in church long enough to know that “Gospel” comes from an ancient Greek word that literally means “good news.”  If this is new to you, let me state it again.  The literal meaning of “Gospel” is “good news.”  The idea of Gospel was taken by the writers of the New Testament and applied in a specific way to Jesus.  In a way that can be true of no other, Jesus, who he is and what he did in walking the earth as God in human skin, fully man, fully God – Jesus is the Gospel. 

God has done something about it.  Remember that it.  Write it in the inside cover of your Bible.  Write it on the back of your hand.  Set it as a reminder in your Gmail updates.  Put it in a little frame on the magnet on your refrigerator.  Put it on a bumper sticker on your car. 

God has done something about it.

My wife will tell you one of my pet peeves is the pronoun without an antecedent.  Oh how I hate that.  It makes my blood boil.  And now here I am guilty of the infraction I despise. 

God has done something about it.  God has done something about what, exactly?  To what does the ‘it’ refer? 

ISIS.  The Traditionalist Worker Party.  Al Qaeda. Westboro Baptist Church.  Hamas.  The KKK.  Al Shabab.  Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army.  Islamic Jihad.  Boko Haram.  The ‘it’ in the sentence God has done something about it refers to terrorism.

Mass shootings – there have been 136 in the United States this year and since the year 1966 almost 1/3 of the mass shootings – gun incidents in which as least 3 people die – have happened in the United States.  A slew of high profile incidents in which unarmed young people die in conflicts with police.  Thousands of death due to people driving while under the influence of alcohol.  The ‘it’ in the sentence God has done something about it refers to violence and death.  God has done something about violence and death because God opposes those things.

Racism.  Homophobia.  Judgment and scorn.  Fear of foreigners.  Rejection of people.  Poverty.  The ‘it’ in the sentence God has done something about it refers to the things that erect walls of division between people.  God knocks down those walls because God is love and God’s intent is that we live in relationships of love.

The hateful words we speak.  The addictive drinking your uncle does because of the way his life has fallen apart.  The fact that because of a stupid argument, your father and your brother haven’t spoken in 10 years.  Your secret lusting accompanied with the indifference you show your wife.  The way you are unable to speak without spewing offensive profanity in every direction.  The contempt you show for people you think beneath you.  My short tempter, judgmental tone, accusatory slant, and confrontational approach.  The ‘it’ in the sentence God has done something about it refers to all the small ways you and I live in brokenness and act in ways that hurt ourselves and one another.  God hates that. 

As much as God hate terrorism, racism, fear of all things foreign, and the spectacular destruction in acts of war, God hates the little things we do that slowly destroy our lives.  And because God hates the destruction of His world and because God is God and God is love, God has done something.

The book of Romans says it this way.  “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  Some in our world giggle at the thought of sin and secretly or not so secretly desire the erotic pleasures and deviant stimuli they believe come from sin.  The sin might be sexual or drink or drug induced, or it might be a sin of power or a sin of self-centeredness.  People laugh and say, “Mmph.  Church?  No thanks.”  “God?  Whatever!”  “Jesus?  Please.”  Those same people are getting high or are glued to porn sites, or they are given to enraged verbal explosions aimed at the people in their lives.  Or they routinely commit the sin of omission, where you know there’s a good you should do, but you refuse because it’s inconvenient.  Or, they withhold the love God commands us to share.  Sin comes in countless forms and the enemy convinces us sin feels good.  But God hates it because sin actually destroys us.  Sometimes all at once, sometimes little by little. 

Sin is the word that sums up has happened to God’s world.  And it is widespread, universal.  “All have sinned,” the Bible says, “and fall short of the glory of God” (3:25).  We hear this familiar passage, but do we grasp it?  Sin damages, cuts us off from God.  The only possibility of joy and true love is slashed by sin, and every person you meet is a serial sinner.  Worst of all, the one you see in the mirror sins without ceasing. 

The extent of the damage is worldwide.  Sin is so deadly Paul writes in Romans 8 “The whole creation has been groaning in labor pains” (v.22).  Paul lived in a time before anesthesia.  Many birth resulted in the death of the baby or the mother or both.  Induced labor – not an option.  C-sections – not an option.  Epidurals – not an option.  When he thought of childbirth, he thought of something extremely painful and horrifyingly unpredictable.  At the same time, it came with the hope of new life.  When he writes of creation groaning in labor pains, he has in mind the pain sin brings to the entire world, but also the hope that God will bring out of the pain something new and beautiful.  His picture hurts and inspires.

Yes, sin hurts; it hurts the entire world.  But God has done something about it.

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”  Justified.  This word identifies what happens in salvation. God makes us right.  But more than making me suitable for a right relationship with God, or making you right, God makes everything right.  Our church.  The world.  The way the book of Revelation puts it, it is like Heaven and Earth fade and are replaced by a new heaven and a new earth (see Rev. 21). 

Several scholars apply Paul’s sensibility here, especially found in 2^nd Corinthians 5:17.  I appreciate our associate pastor Heather helping me understand this line of thinking.  It is not that the earth and Heaven are replaced.  Rather just as 2^nd Corinthians says we become new creations, this Earth and the Heaven where Jesus currently resides in his raised body are made new.  Our bodies die, but at resurrection are raised and made new.  All of this is related to Paul’s word in Romans 3:24 where he says we are justified.  Sin has made us completely unfit for relationship with God, but Jesus makes us right.

Also in that same verse Paul writes of redemption.  In first century Rome, the world in which Paul used this imagery, this specifically referred paying what needed to paid to redeem a slave so he was no longer a slave.  His freedom was purchased.  We are slaves to sin and cannot purchase our own freedom. But Jesus has. In his death on the cross, he buys our freedom. 

Over and over, I have read that the Bible doesn’t exactly say how this works.  How is it that by dying as he did, Jesus, accomplishes salvation?  Did he satisfy God’s justice?  Did he defeat evil?  Did he pay a ransom owed to Satan?  Did take our punishment on himself?  Even if we can answer each of these questions, it still doesn’t show how his death on a cross in the first century accomplishes anything for you or me in this century.  The “how” is not answered.  However, repeatedly the New Testament asserts that the death of Jesus on the cross is the vehicle of our salvation.

I have tried to be clear from the start of this series a few weeks ago that I believe the only way we can fully understand the Gospel is by seeing the cross and the resurrection as inseparable events.  The cross alone is tragic and evil.  Only when we realize that it ends with an empty tomb is our account of salvation complete.

For now, our focus is on what happens when Jesus dies the cross and Romans 3:25 gives a key piece of the story.  Leading to this verse, it has been established that sin destroys what God made good.  Sin brings death.  And all of us sin.  In verse 25 we read that God put Jesus Christ forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood.  Worship as it is established in the book of Leviticus is based up confession and repentance and then expressed through the sacrifice of an unblemished animal.  However, that sacrifice had to be repeated because sin was repeated and that sacrifice could not bring atonement for future sins.  The death of Jesus on the cross brings atonement for all sins. 

We can say two things at this point. First, God is satisfied.  Does that mean God demanded blood?  Is God a sadist whose thirst for blood must be satiated?  Or is there a deep divine justice that demands death?  What I can say about that is I don’t see the cross that way.  On the cross, I see the love of God.  We looked at verse 24 which mentions redemption and justification.  Beneath those accomplishments, what drove Jesus to the cross is the love of God.  For God so loved the world, he gave his only son.  Whatever the price of sin is when God sees Jesus on the cross, God it satisfied.  The faith of Jesus is sufficient for us.  God is “well pleased,” as the Gospels say, with Jesus.  Thus, when an individual is in Christ God is well please with that person.

Second, sin is wiped away.  In the matrix of Jesus on the cross and you or me putting our trust in him, repenting of sin, and receiving his grace, we become free.  As we know well, even after people commit to Christ, they still sin.  As individuals and as a church, we are not perfect.  But in Christ, we are made right.  God is satisfied and our sins are removed.  The sacrifice of Jesus brings this atonement. 

That’s the “it” when we say God has done something about it.  I recited sins earlier.  Racism.  Violence and death.  Rebellion.  Hatred of other humans because of their accent or because of their ethnic origins or because of their religion.  Sin is awful. And for us, the most awful sins are the ones we commit, or the hurts inflicted upon us.  The ultimate fulfillment of God’s solution – our salvation – comes at the return of Jesus on Judgment Day when we are raised in resurrection. 

That’s the ultimate fulfillment and it has not yet come.  Not yet.

For now, today, we live toward that future day by living out Kingdom of God values even as we live here.  For us, “here” is the United States.  Our country celebrates our independence tomorrow.  I think the Bible clearly shows that our allegiance is to the Kingdom of God, not to America.  In the Kingdom, we live as people of peace, mercy and grace, joy, selfless willingness to help others, and with a spirit of gentleness and kindness. 

I know some of my fellow Americans would be quite unhappy to hear me say that as Christ followers our allegiance should be to the Kingdom, not the United States.  To them I pose this question. What kind of America would we have if all the Christians truly lived their salvation?  If the millions in our country who claim to follow Jesus commit to live as people of peace, mercy and grace, joy, selfless willingness to help others, and with a spirit of gentleness and kindness because we know who we are in Christ, what would America look like?

That would be a country worth celebrating.  That would be a society transformed from within by people who live in light what God has done in Jesus.  Sin destroys the world.  On the cross, God has done something about sin.  I pray our lives will show what life can be like based on what God has done.

AMEN

Come Together (Galatians 3:23-29)

Sunday, June 23, 2013

            You and I walk into a Wendy’s together.  I want a frosty.  You’re having a fries and a Sprite.  A mom with a 6-year-old and a 1-year-old is ahead of us in line.  She looks haggard.  Carrying the young one, the 6-year-old mercilessly, relentlessly pulls on her free hand and demands a kid’s meal with toys. 

            The two women taking orders behind the counter are named “Cranky” and “indifferent.”  They seem annoyed that this six-year-old is acting like a six-year-old.  Really, they seem annoyed by all customers. 

            Behind us we hear someone cursing a blue streak.  It is a girl yelling at her boyfriend who is not actually there.  She’s giving the cell phone attached to her ear what-for.  It might be funny, her sitting there alone, yelling at someone not present while those who are present stare.  It might be funny if it were not so sad, foul-mouthed, inappropriate, and loud.

            A man in business attire is seated alone, going over charts, as he sips his drink. 

            The mom struggles through her order as the six-year-old goes to the table in tears.  She did not cave.  She did not get that kids meal.  She told him 10 times that he already had three copies of the toy at home and he never eats his chicken fingers.  And he’s upset.

            We step up to order.  Cranky looks at us with dead eyes and says nothing.  “Hi.”  I say.  “How are you?”  She says nothing.  You smile at her.  She gives no expression.  She won’t crack.  She is on the clock for three more hours.  She can play this game.  She won’t reveal a hint of personality.  She won’t affirm our humanity, not for a second.  She knows we want our food and we have to get through to get it.  She’s not going anywhere.  She can wait. 

            In shameful surrender, we order, pay, and slog to our seats, trying to find the joy we lost. 

            How could the trip to the fast food place go differently? 

Were any sins committed?  Any laws of God or laws of men broken?  Did faith fail? 

            In Galatians 3 we see law and faith juxtaposed, set in opposition to one another.  Both are from God.  We read that before faith came, we were imprisoned under the law. 

What does that mean, exactly, “before faith came?” 

            Jesus changed everything for Paul.  After his death and resurrection the ways humans related to one another and to God were forever altered.  This includes the law and our understanding of the people of God.  “Law” refers to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy – the foundational scriptures for Israel.  Paul calls the law a disciplinarian.  The word he used referred to someone in his culture that saw to the education of wealthy children.

            The disciplinarian was not actually the teacher.  Rather the disciplinarian was the one who made sure the kids went to class.  The disciplinarian was a family’s personal truancy officer.  In most cases this role was filled by a highly trusted slave.

            We humans, even the most grown up and brilliant among us are as children before God.  We’re not just any children.  We’re children prone to misbehave in the worst ways imaginable.  Prior to Jesus, we needed our disciplinarian, the law, to show us how wrong we were. 

            Faith does something different that the law.  Law shows sin.  Faith calls us to holiness.  In Jesus, Paul believed a fundamental shift happened; life moved from law obedience to faith calling. 

I remember a conversation with a friend in which I asked him about church.  He’s a neighbor and he knows I am pastor of HillSong.  We had had 100’s of conversations about parenting, about baseball, about his time as a swimmer at Clemson.  When I asked about church, I just wanted to continue our conversation but on another topic.  I wanted to hear more of his story.  But I am a pastor asking about church.  He had this look on his face, as if I had watched him shoplift a candy bar from a convenience store.  “I know should be back in church” he sighed under a blanket of guilt.  He was afraid of getting caught by the truancy officer.  He was raised in a generally Christian worldview, but he still yields to the disciplinarian, the law. 

            So many Christians talk about salvation by grace through faith but then live in a good-bad, legalistic mindset.  Our actual living, which is law bound, doesn’t match the ideology we speak, salvation by faith as a gift of grace.

            Paul says no, no.  Jesus has come.  Faith has come.  Verse 24: “the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came.”  God always intended Jesus, and now he has come, so we don’t live as naughty children held in check by the strictness of the law.  In Christ we are sons and daughters of God called to the holiness of God.

            We are called by God to live out this holiness in our daily lives here and now.  This is not the end-times Kingdom of God.  We are physically in the fallen world that has been corrupted by sin.   But with Christ in us, we are, even while here, full of the stuff of the kingdom and all its goodness.  We are to live into and to share the grace we’ve been given.  It is essential that we bid farewell to the disciplinarian and live into the new life, the life of faith. 

            The law shows sin.  Faith, which is a gift of God’s grace, calls us to holiness.  Law is our disciplinarian.  Faith is a joy producer. 

The law shows what makes for death.  Because of sin, death is our destiny.  But again, faith has come because God has come in Jesus.  Verse 27, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”  When we are baptized, we go under the water, buried, dead in sin.  But then we come out of the water, clean, fresh, clothed with Christ so that our life belongs to Him, and his resurrection becomes ours.  The disciplinarian law which reveals sin points to death.  Christ our savior calls us beyond sin avoidance to something new, something God always intended for us: holiness.  Christ our Lord does not stand over us with a thundering hand but walks beside us, grinning, laughing, making music and giving joy.  Christ our God calls us to eternal, abundant life. 

One more contrast shows we have moved from law to life, from a disciplinarian to a relationship in which God sees us as His daughters and sons.  This was quite important in Galatia and is equally important in church and in a Wendy’s restaurant.

            In Galatian churches, Jewish Christ followers worshipped alongside Gentile Christ followers.  In Christ, slaves were equal members – even equal to their masters.  Men and women were adopted by God on equal terms.  It is hard to say which divide was greatest.  Jews saw non-Jews as being unclean and unfit for relationship with God.  Men saw women as reduced humanity.  Many of the ancients thanked God above all else that they were created male and not female.  And slaves were non-human.  Even when slaves were treated well and given great responsibility, they were still slaves. 

            These cruel categories were not banned in the law.  But they had no place in Christ.  Galatians 3:28 is one of the defining moments of all Paul’s writings.  N.T Wright imagines this great scripture when he says, it is “like one of those symphonic finales where the composer seems to be trying to bring a many instruments into the action as possible, all playing different motifs but somehow combining into a glorious paean of praise” (Justification, p.127).  If you only ever memorize one verse, maybe Galatians 3:28 ought to be it.  We are baptized into Christ.  We are clothed with Christ.  There is no longer Jew or Greek.  There is no longer male or female.  There is no longer slave or free.  In Christ we come together.

            Of course we hold onto what makes us unique.  Christ calls for us to die to self but not to forfeit the things that make us who we are.  When John, in Revelation, viewed the throngs of persons saved for eternity by Jesus, he noticed some things.  There were more people than he could count.  They came from every tribe on earth.  They did not lose their individuality.  He could see that this was a coming together of all people – joined in Jesus.  Note the final sentence in Galatians 3:28.  “All of you are one in Christ.”  In our glorious diversity, we are united in Him.  Women are still women, Jews are still Jews.  But we are all free from sin and joined to one another as brothers and sisters.

            Obviously there is no place in the Kingdom of God for any kind of racial or ethnic prejudice.  God has no sympathy for those who think races should not intermarry.  The notion that people should stick to their own kind is foreign in God’s kingdom for we are all His.  Our differences are reasons to celebrate one another and our likeness is that we are buried in sin and raised to new life in Him.

            Knowing this, does it make a difference when you and I go into a Wendy’s restaurant? 

            Maybe, Cranky and Indifferent don’t know that they are invited to come to Christ and that we are all invited to come together as children of the new age.  In their own minds  you and I are named annoyance numbers 1 & 2.  But, we love them because Jesus has come and with him faith.  Whether or not we have the chance to say they are invited by God, we love them.  By faith we are saved, you, me, and Cranky and Indifferent.  The Kingdom joy we put forth in that Wendy’s may or may not win them over.  They may never crack that smile, but we keep on pouring out Jesus because we know He wants these Wendy’s workers in His kingdom.  They each mean as much to him as any lawyer, pastor, doctor, or CEO.  In him there is no separation between them and us.  The moment the come to him in faith, we come together. 

            So, maybe we help out the mom with the crazy toddler.  We carry her tray.  We say a silent prayer for the young woman cussing her boyfriend over the cell phone.  We smile and hold the door for the lonely, rushed business man who spilled a bit of ketchup on his white shirt.  He needs a smile and a touch of Heaven’s love.  The Kingdom of God is made up of people who used to cuss but then met Jesus.  The Kingdom is made up of tired moms who find energy to continue in Jesus.  The kingdom of God is populated by frustrated fast food cashiers who think their lives are dead-ended until meet Jesus; and business men who discover the bottom line is not all there is; and girlfriends and boyfriends who treat each other with respect, love, and patience.  All these people belong to each other and to us in Christ. 

            Carrying a tray, sharing smile, and maintaining joy are not world-changing actions.  They are though deeds done in a spirit – the Spirit of the one who changed the world by coming and dying and rising and then calling all people together into His body, the church. 

            That’s the end game of grace and the deepest meaning of Galatians 3:28 and the entire gospel of Jesus Christ.  God calls the world together in His love.  Heaven is not a place where we each get our own mansions and get to be with the people we like.  Heaven is where we sit around one table and like and love the people we are with because Jesus is there it could be no other way.

            We begin living Heaven the moment He takes up residence in us.  We thank God for what the law accomplished and we acknowledged that it is finished because Jesus has come and the age of grace and faith has dawned.

AMEN  

Grace Received

June 2, 2013

“A certain ruler asked [Jesus], ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life’” (Luke 18:18)?

            Evangelical Christians think such a question to be absurd.  We don’t do things to earn salvation and with it eternal life, it is given as a free gift from God.  Yet, if we read Luke 18, we have to acknowledge that Jesus does not tell the man salvation and life cannot be earned.  The man asked what must I do?  Jesus tells him what he needs to do.  He has to sell his possessions, give the money to the poor, and follow Jesus.  We doubt that Jesus would give the same answer if another person asked about eternal life.   The context is clear; Jesus was speaking to this man’s idol – his wealth.  He has to get rid of the wealth he worshiped so it would not prevent him from following Jesus.

            But even with that caveat, it still sounds like something the seeker does: remove an idol and follow Jesus.  We say salvation is a gift from God.  Is that consistent with the Biblical accounts?  Or are there requirements and if we fail to meet them then do we have no hope?

            A few years ago, a popular book called Love Wins by Pastor Rob Bell raised all sorts of controversy.  Many readers decided that Bell, in the book, had discarded the Biblical view of Hell.  The critics accused Bell of universalism – the notion that in the end all people go to Heaven.  In numerous interviews, Bell tried to defend his writing and beliefs.  He maintained that he does believe there is a Hell.  He asserted that his views are in line with the Bible.  Two extremely popular pastors – David Platt and Francis Chan – did short videos responding.  Neither named Bell, but both were clearly refuting his ideas. 

            The conversation boiled down to a question.  Who is in?  When it is all said and done, who gets to be with God for eternity?  Who is consigned to Hell – eternal separation from God and the people of God?  These two questions have tormented the conscience of men and women for centuries.  Who is in?  What must I do to make sure I am in?

            In theological terms, these basic questions come up in the centuries old debate over justification.  I won’t spend a lot of time on that term.  I will though add to our discussion a late 20^th century version of this debate.  It centers on the writings of the Apostle Paul.

            Paul is unquestionably the author of Romans, 1^st & 2^nd Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1^st Thessalonians, and Philemon.  The New Testament also lists Paul as the author of 2^nd Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, 1^st & 2^nd Timothy, and Titus.  Some scholars doubt he wrote the letters in that second set.  In most cases, I tend to think Paul was the author or extremely influential over the one who actually penned the letter.  What is clear is that this Christian, after Jesus, was the most important in terms of forming Christian thought in the first century. 

            The debate of the last 30 years is over what exactly Paul was saying in terms of who’s in.  Was Paul more concerned with what we need to do to be saved?  Or was Paul answering the question who is in and who is not in?  In other words, was Paul worried about a single individual?  What does Joe Smith need to do to make sure Joe Smith goes to Heaven?  Or was Paul dealing with groups?  How do we know the Jews are saved?  How do we know if non-Jews can be counted among the people of God? 

            Bible scholars get pretty worked up over the finer points in these conversations.  We’re not going to join the argument per se.  We’re not going to debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. 

            The letters Paul wrote were to specific churches.  Sometimes he wrote theological treatises.  Romans and Ephesians are this type of writing.  Paul also wrote very pointed letters in which he was responding to things he had heard.  First and 2^nd Corinthians fall in this category.  Reading these texts so many centuries later, we are disadvantaged in that we don’t know what Paul was responding to.  We have to read his letters along with the rest of the New Testament, especially Acts, and we try to piece together the situation to which he responded.

            In Galatia, where there were several churches, there was crisis.  Paul had preached the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ.  He founded those churches on the idea that a person acknowledges sin and then receives forgiveness and new life from God.  The individual is baptized in the name of Jesus and that’s how salvation comes about.  It is an act of receiving what God gives.

            Paul built the church on this gospel of grace, and then he went on to other places.  After he departed, another group of evangelists visited the Galatian believers.  They agreed with Paul that it is necessary to put one’s faith in Jesus.  But they then added an additional requirement.  The believer must be circumcised and must keep the Law of Moses. 

            Were these other evangelists saying that one has to earn salvation by keeping the law?  Or were they saying that one has to keep the Moses tradition to be counted among the people of God?  The war scholars wage in lectures and the pages of journals is a worthy one.  It drives the church deep into the pages of scripture, where we need to be.   But we don’t need to settle this debate.

            What we find in Paul’s words, which we believe were inspired by the Holy Spirit and are thus a word from God, is that we are saved by grace.  And it is by grace that we, every one of us who follows Jesus, are counted among the people of God.  The gift we hold is the Word.  The Word of God came about, in the case of Paul’s letter to Galatia, because He has to clarify his Gospel in the face of a serious challenge.  His response stands before us and shows us what it means to receive the Gospel of Grace. 

            Grace is a tricky word.  It is a popular name for girls, a beautiful name.  It is something said before meals.  A simple definition of grace is it is something we receive as a free gift, with no strings attached and nothing required of us.  But is that a uniquely Christian definition?  What does the Bible mean by the idea of grace?  We are going to spend the next six weeks looking at this.

The Gospel of Grace

1 – Grace Revealed

2 – Grace Received

3 – Grace Lived

4 – Grace Shared

5 – Grace Declared

6 – Grace Sought

            The problem Paul faced confronts Christ followers all time.  We give lip service to salvation as a gift.  But in our minds, we label others as “good” or “bad,” and we determine one’s eternal destination based on how we have categorized them.  Oh, and we also have ourselves and the people we love in the “good” category.

            Someone spends his life drinking, goes through two divorces, skips out on child-support payments, never darkens the door of a church, and never prays.  At his funeral, his old drinking buddies gather around his casket.  “Well, he was a good man,” one says.  Another chimes in, “At now least he is in a better place.”

            We verbalize salvation by grace through Jesus Christ, but in actuality, we live with a good-bad, salvation by works mentality.  And we convince ourselves we’ve done enough.  Paul responds, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ” (Galatians 1:6a).  For Paul the issue of Gospel – the right Gospel or a false gospel matters.  For us it is of eternal significance.  

            Thankfully, in his opening remarks in Galatians, Paul lays the groundwork for the Gospel of grace.  Imagine that what he is writing to the first century believers in Galatia is also to us, 21^st century believers in North Carolina.  The Holy Spirit has given life to Paul’s words so that his writing is God’s word to us. 

            “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father” (1:3-4).

            What do we mean when we say word ‘grace?’  We mean Jesus gave his life for us.  His act of doing that has set us free from sin.  A light is shed on the works argument.  What do I need to do?  Well, there’s nothing I can do, but there is something Jesus did and did with us in mind.  He went to the cross.  He gave himself for us.  We are free from sin’s grip.  No matter how dark the days in which we live, we are free from the evils of this age.  Grace means Jesus gave His life for us. 

            It also means we are in the family of God.  Paul declares we are all members of God’s family (1:2).  He will go on to introduce adoption as a concept for understanding our place with God.   He legitimate adoption as a way of being family and he sets it as the way of understand our standing with the Lord.  Over and over Paul refers to God as father and “our father” (1:1, 4).  Grace means that in Christ, we are related to one another.  To suppose the thickest connections among people are blood relations is a worldly way of thinking.  Paul implies that our connection in Christ runs much deeper than any blood kinship.

            His energies reach their peak as he writes, “I want you to know that the gospel [I proclaimed] … I received through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:11, 12).  Human wisdom is not in play.  This idea of grace as God giving himself by become human and dying for all is a God-originated plan.  The only way we can know it in any sense is if God gives it.  Grace is something revealed by God in Jesus.  Any other definition of grace – a free gift; given something I do not earn; or any other is OK.  It is valuable.  But grace as a description of the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be understood in these terms.

            It is Jesus giving himself for us.

            It is a declaration that in Him we are related; brothers and sisters in Christ. 

            It is something revealed.  We only know it because God shows us.  We only have it because God gives it. 

            So now we turn back to our opening questions.  What must I do to receive eternal life?  How do we know who’s in with God at the end?

            I can’t do anything, but Jesus has done what was needed by giving himself on the cross.  So I receive what he gives.  And all who do this regardless of ethnic background, gender, education, or social status are in with God, forever. 

            This morning we’ve barely scratched the surface of Paul’s thought.  We have in the most general terms summarized grace.  What’s the next step?  Between now and next Sunday, I want each one here to read 1000 or so pages on the idea of grace.  I will provide reading lists.  Or you can find your own sources.

            Of course we probably won’t accomplish that.  I am sure I won’t.  So, read Galatians.  And with every verse, seek Jesus.  In your quiet moments, seek Jesus.  In your most difficult conversations, seek Jesus.  He is the giver of divine grace.  Ask Him to reveal it to you.

AMEN

            

First Sunday of Lent, 2013

Letting God Work (Romans 3:21-26)

I__, what are you working on there?  Bring that up here.

(Preplanned: my son I__ brings up on the platform a Lego house he has built.  He hands it to me and I look at it. And then I begin the Sermon.)

            This is a good Lego house.  For at least three years now, I__'s abilities in Lego-construction have far surpassed my own. 

Imagine this house represents a human being, maybe you.   Imagine a human created in the image of God – not perfect, but good, very, very good.  You and I are God’s image-bearers. 

            This week in our Ash Wednesday service, we were invited to take up the Spiritual practices of confession and acknowledgement.  We confess that we, God’s image-bearers, have sinned.  We are sinners.  And we acknowledge that sin has a destructive impact on us and on humanity.  Sin pollutes God’s good creation and there is nothing you or I can do to overcome it.  Sin is more powerful than we are.

            Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned” (throw I__’s Lego house into the air), “and fall short of the glory of God.”  All we who are God’s image bearers are nothing more than smashed Lego houses, pathetically small pieces of plastic scattered about without purpose.

            (It is important at this point that I__ shows no emotional reaction.  He simply begins putting the house back together.  His only focus is reconstructing the house.  It is as if no one else is present.)

            All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  This belief about sin is fundamental to the entire Jesus story.  God became human because humans, in their sins, were and are cut-off from God.  God detests evil.  God wipes out that which rebels against Him.  Our sins put us in rebellion against God.  We are thus in the direct path of God’s fierce wrath.  In Genesis the story of Sodom and Gomorrah depicts how God feels about sin.  Those cities were full of perverted people and corrupt practices.  God annihilated both cities in avalanche of consuming flames.  That picture of God’s wrath is also a predictor of the fate of anyone who sins.  We all sin.

            On Ash Wednesday we heard two things. First our grand spiritual goal is to live in relationship with God.  Second, Sin makes the achievement of our goal impossible. 

            The good news is Jesus came to take care of sin.  So, we were invited and I invited every one this morning to spend time in prayer contemplating sin.  Think about your own specific sins.  And think about the way sin, in the big picture of your life and the even bigger picture of human history, has distorted the beautiful relationship God wants with each one of us. 

            How you specifically enter this spiritual practice of confession & acknowledgement will surely differ from how your neighbor does it.  Maybe you write down mistakes you’ve made, thing you’ve done that fill you with shame.  Then, you remember your forgiveness and you light the piece paper and burn it up, knowing you are forgiven. 

            Maybe, thinking big picture, you read a book about the holocaust.  That could be a Lenten discipline.  You read and you pray as your read.  The reading is informative, filling your mind with knowledge of a very dark chapter of human history, but it also is a call to prayer.  You ask the Holy Spirit of God to be at work in the world, healing and redeeming. 

            The spiritual practice of confession of sin and acknowledgement of the sin problem can take many forms.   My prayer is this work of confession and acknowledgement will enter our minds and our hearts and our daily thinking throughout Lent.  In raising our consciousness of sin, we become intensely aware of our need for Jesus. 

            Our spiritual goal is to be in relationship with Jesus – a relationship that is present and real and felt and even tangible in every part of our lives.  A new understanding of relationship with God: that’s the Lenten program at HillSong in 2013. 

            A goal within that goal is to shed the sin.  We talked about confessing and acknowledging on Wednesday and I hope you find in the rhythms of your life an intentional process of prayer in which you confess and acknowledge.  I strongly encourage you to do this throughout Lent.  But it can’t stop there.  That would not be good news – ending the story saying, “Yep, we’re sinners, cut off from God.”

            We want to be cleared.  The problem is we can’t.  We cannot on our own power erase our sins or the damages of sin.  We cannot make up for sin.  We cannot do away with it.  We cannot make amends that will make it all better.  And worst of all, we cannot stop sinning.  We want to, but we don’t have the power.  Paul says, “I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin.  I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:14b-15).  Sin gets in the way.  We long to walk with God, but we look at our lives and see pain and mistakes repeated and hurt.  It is not good.

            For the goal of relationship with God to be realized, sin has to be removed.  Thus innocence is a spiritual goal.  Every one of us needs to be able to stand before God and be declared innocent of sin and cleared of all sin’s damages.

            This is where Jesus goes to work.  In re-creating us so that we become new creations, sons and daughters of God, Jesus has clean-up work to do.  In Romans 3, Paul illustrates this through three metaphors.  His writing here, thanks to the influence of people like Martin Luther and John Calvin, is at the very core of what we believe as Christ-followers.  For the most part, we aren’t even aware of how much Luther’s thought was shaped by Augustine and Augustine’s thought was formed in his reading of Paul and specifically Romans.

            I say that just to point out that the metaphors in Romans 3 are extremely helpful in showing what Jesus has done.  But the story is not the terminology.  The story is Jesus at work making a way for us sinners to be declared innocent of sin and free of sin.  The real spiritual work is accomplished by Jesus.  Paul’s metaphors illustrate something Jesus is getting done.  McClendon, a theologian I referred to on Ash Wednesday describes Paul’s use of metaphor.  “Metaphors are not the furniture of some fairyland of unreal or pretended existence; metaphor is not an alternative to true utterance or a way of avoiding the (literal) truth.  [Metaphor is] a native device for speaking the truth in as plain and helpful as way as can be” (Systematic Theology: Doctrine, p.216).

            Thus Paul offers a legal metaphor.  “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift” (Rom. 3:24).  Thousands of pages of ink have been spilled by some of the greatest thinkers in Christian history debating what ‘justification’ means.  I find value in the conversation, but for our purposes, striving after relationship with God, the key truth is that justification renders us innocent even though we are sinners.  In this courtroom metaphor, we stand trial, accused of sin.  God sees what Jesus has done on the cross for us, God looks at us, and declares, “Innocent.”  Remember all the awful things said about sin?  They’re all true.   But we are innocent because of Jesus.

            Paul also offers a crass economic metaphor.  We are “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”  Redemption refers to slavery.  A slave is freed when his freedom, his manumission, is purchased.  We’ve already referred to Romans 7.  Slavery is the master and we are in chains forever.  But Jesus has crushed the cruel taskmaster.  Jesus has redeemed us.  We are slaves no more because what he has done. 

            We are innocent.  We are free.  The third metaphor is a worship metaphor.  We are “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith” (3:24-25b).  I am severely limited in explaining this third metaphor.  For me personally, this sacrifice metaphor – the blood atonement – does not unveil truth in native speech in a “plain and helpful way,” to use McClendon’s terms.

            But it was very much in common vernacular when Paul wrote it.  In first century Rome, pagan worship involved shedding of animal blood to cover human sins.  In Jewish worship in the temple, the same thing happened.  There is a scene in the movie the Nativity, about the birth of Jesus.  Herod is in the temple and the priest says, “Transfer your sins to the animal.”  Herod leans over and touches his forehead to the cow’s head.  Then the cow is slaughtered.  Paul is saying that when Jesus’ blood was shed, that was the last blood sacrifice ever needed for the sins of all people of all time.  And his first century readers might be surprised by such an audacious claim.  They certainly understood it.

            Is there literally a courtroom where we stand accused and God sits at the judge’s bench?  Are we literally in chains on the auction block and Jesus comes along and buys our freedom?  Is Jesus literally the perfect blood sacrifice?  I am not even trying to answer these question and I am not Paul was either.  Paul was saying, we humans have this serious sin problem.  Jesus’ death on the cross eliminates it completely, forever.  We believe in him and what he did become effective for us.  Paul uses the legal, economic, and worship metaphors to point to Jesus, his death on the cross, and our status before God.  That which would prevent us from being sons and daughters of God is gone.  The path is clear.

            In the debates about what exactly justification means, one things is agreed upon.  Jesus is the one who accomplishes it, not us.  So what then do we do?  If the spiritual goal is innocence and the means of achieving that goal are entirely in Jesus’ hands and he’s already done it, where does that leave us? 

            A spiritual practice for us in Lent in 2013 is to receive.  Receive the grace God gives.  He’s working. We need to receive what he’s doing for us and giving to us.

            What I mentioned Wednesday related to sin, confess and acknowledge, sounded a bit less than specific.  It’s not a guided discipline like fasting every Wednesday throughout Lent.  Maybe fasting helps us acknowledge and confess, but I wasn’t suggesting fasting.  I was prescribing the work of acknowledging and confessing.  Now I am prescribing even more strongly the work of receiving, paradoxical as they may sound.  I had a brief conversation with someone this week.  She said she needed something more concrete.  I understand, but this is where each of us has to take responsibility in our personal Lenten practice. 

            To receive the grace God is giving in Jesus Christ sounds vague.  It is not vague.  It is abstract to an extent, and it might be general, but not vague.  Receiving demands that we slow down.  We take in less input, less stimuli.  We spend time in quiet and solitude joyfully contemplating that no matter what has happened or what will happen, we are innocent, free, and sin is covered forever.  Jesus has done this and is doing this for us and in us constantly. 

I find it helpful to walk and pray.  Prayer walking is a way to set ourselves to receive God’s grace.  Perhaps praying in the early morning, before the world is awake when all else is quiet will help us be quiet and hear from and receive from God.  Maybe in the middle of Lent a silent retreat is in order.  These are a few suggestions.  The key is recognizing that Jesus is the one working.  And God is at work.  As Paul says, “He justifies the one who has faith in Jesus” (3:26).  This is hard for highly successful, determined people to grasp.  It you have accomplished a lot in your life, you surely hear the faith story at church and think, ‘what do I have to do.’  What you and I have to do is quiet down and slow down and let God be at work in us, cleansing us, remaking us. 

(Call I__ up and hold up the repaired house).  In his hands, with Him working on us, we become the new creations God wants us to.  So, we are in Lent.  Find a way that works in your life that is affective for you, to slow down and quiet down.  Set yourself to receive what God is giving.  When it comes to sin, don’t strive to overcome it.  Rather we turn to God and in faith, let Him be about His work in our lives.

AMEN

Declared Innocent (Hebrews 10:1-10)

You’re in a tough graduate school class – the subject matter is really advanced and the professor has high expectations. There are numerous quizzes but the major portion of the final grade is determined by the three exams. You must make at least a ‘C’ in this class to earn your degree. It is a required course. Going along, you do alright on the quizzes, making 9 out of 10 most of the time. But you’re nervous on the day of the first exam and with good reason. It is comprehensive. Everything that was covered in the course to that point is on this exam. The professor is tough, remember?

You fail it badly! Now what? You have to have this class. Your score was so low, mathematically it will just about take a miracle for you to pass. Even if you ace the next couple of exams – and oh by the way the material is getting more and more difficult –you’re still not sure it will pull your grade up to a passing grade. And you cannot see how you will possibly ace the exams. Your performance to this point has made that prospect pretty doubtful. The failing grade sticks to you. It clings and won’t release you. The ‘F’ in the class, or ‘D’ if you’re lucky, affects your overall GPA. And you will have to retake the class and pass it to graduate. Even though you admitted your failure, admission is no help. You have to make up for it.

This exact scenario happened to one of my best friends in seminary. We were required to pass one semester of Biblical Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament. The story is exactly as I laid it out. My friend made something like a 37 out of 100 on the first Hebrew exam. He and I had an emotional talk about him dropping out of seminary and giving up the dream of being a pastor. He knew he couldn’t pull that grade up. The professor knew it too, and he called my friend into his office.

My buddy was shaking in his shoes as he approached that meeting. He was a wreck. Surprisingly, this hard core academic professor was kind. He was pastoral. He said to my friend, “You’re averaging between 85 and 90 on your quizzes and you never miss class. If we get past the anxiety, I think you can get at least a ‘C’ on the next two exams. If you promise never to try to go into ancient languages as a specialty, we will not count the first exam against your final grade.”

My friend had no hope. But then, because of the professor’s grace, he passed. The failing on the first exam was washed away and not counted against him.

From Hebrews 10:10, “We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.”

Sanctified means made holy as God is holy. Sin is what makes it impossible for a human being to be holy. Made in God’s image, declared very good at the creation, we have marred what God has made by worshiping that which is not God, by going our own way instead of God’s way, and by doing harm to one another and to ourselves in large and small ways. We all sin. Most of us make mistakes and in some form or fashion disobey God every day. We cannot ever, ever be holy. We have no place in God’s new heaven and new earth. We will be banished from that place, sent to outer darkness, because our sin sticks to us. But, like my seminary friend who had the professor, a notoriously strict prof, mercifully forgive an awful exam, through what Jesus did on the cross, ours are forgiven and forgotten. As verse 2 implies, when we are in Christ, we no longer have any consciousness of sin.

I realize that saved persons still sin. We all do. Even though Hebrews says we are made perfect, we know that beleivers aren’t perfect. Churchgoers are not better than other people. But we are free from sin’s clutches and consequences. With the Spirit in us, we have help, so we can commit fewer sins and do more good things, acts that show we are God’s service as he works at establishing His kingdom. Because of His grace and mercy, we get to be part of what God is doing.

At the risk of declaring the obvious, one of the reasons we are acceptable to God is Jesus takes care of our sins by taking the punishment on himself. Now in the post-crucifixion/post-resurrection world, the sins of all who trust in Jesus are erased. Yes, we sin, but those sins don’t count against us in God’s eyes, and it is because of Jesus.

Looking at Hebrews 10, especially the first five verses, and several other passages, the great reformer John Calvin in his monumental work Institutesdescribes an important distinction he sees in the passage. “In the Jewish ceremonies,” referred to in verses 1-6, “there was confession of sin rather than atonement for them.” Yes, the sins of individuals and the community were acknowledged. But as he reads Hebrews 10, Calvin says that in confession which happened in the old sacrificial system, “there was no release” from sin.

The sin was named and passed on to an animal that was then butchered. But that act did nothing for future sins and did nothing to change the status of the person. He or she was still a sinner, completely unable to be seen as holy in God’s presence.

Imagine the scene. You and I and all of us here are seated along with all others we have ever known. The room is large, but one by one we are called before God to be judged for all we have done in our lives. How many times have we spoken rudely? Or shouted “God,”only not in prayer but as an expression of anger or surprise? That would qualify as taking the Lord’s name in vain. How many times have we despised another human being or looked down on someone? Do these seem like nickel and dime sins? Maybe we could throw in pre-marital sex or cheating on an exam or gossip or gluttony. We might be tempted to be appalled that God would condemn someone for such fluff. But is it fluff, as it piles up over the course of a lifetime, year after year? Greed, selfishness, drunkenness, lust, sloth – without going into $20 and $50 sins like theft, rape, and murder, we can see we are indeed sinful and over the years we build up a sin record.

So, then our name is called and it is that sin record we carry in before God. It is on that record we stand when it is time for final judgment – a judgment that is repeatedly forecast in the Old Testament and the New. What do we say? O Lord, I went on 10 mission trips! But God, I gave not 10% to the church and other ministries, but 12% and some years even 15%. Our good deeds don’t outweigh our sins and even if someone did more good than bad, the bad is still there. The mistakes and times of disobedience and moments when we decided our way was better than God’s way or we just weren’t into the ‘god-thing’ right then – it all continues to soil the good creation God has made. In the renewed earth and new heaven, there will be no soiling, no spoiling, no polluting, no profaning – no sin. With our sin caked on us, we must go away. We cannot enter the kingdom. God won’t have us. We are banished to an outer, lonely, dark, miserable place.

A religion dependent on our ritual observance does nothing for us on that day. We’re only as cleaned as our most recent act of worship and even the admission of guilt does nothing to remove the guilt. Calvin juxtaposes the confession of sin that accompanied the worship rituals we read about in the Old Testament with the atonement Jesus achieves in his death on the cross. As Calvin holds side by side a sacrificial worship system and the sacrifice of Jesus, it becomes clear that Jesus’ death was a permanent solution whereas the sacrifice in the tabernacle or temple is only good until the person sins again.

Calvin says the people of faith from the Old Testament era were “partakers of grace” just as we are, but not because of their diligent worship practices but because of God’s love. God did not suddenly become loving and merciful. He has always been so. But the coming of Christ changed everything for everyone. Calvin’s point is not that Christians have a superior spirituality over Old Testament believers. His point is the sacrifice of one man one time – Jesus erases all sins for all time for those whom Calvin refers to as the elect. I believe – and I am sure I diverge from Calvin on this – any and all who turn to Jesus in faith are among the elect. God sent Jesus to die for the sins of all people. His grace is for all and all are intended to be elected by God. There is no limited atonement, at least not a pre-planned one. There is no irresistable grace. We choose to live in the election granted us when we bow before Jesus; we opt to increase our sin when we reject Jesus and thus reject God’s grace. God created us and sent Jesus to redeem us so we could be free from the sins we can’t shake even when we try. God chose us out of deep, deep love for us. When we choose to receive what God gives and live in faith, his Spirit fills us, we are born again, and we are free. We are free from guilt and free to live for God.

That means we are free to bask in God’s joy when we go on mission trips; we aren’t going to earn salvation. We’re going because Jesus earned our salvation and we know how good it is to be saved.

We are free to give our money and some among us experience God’s joy in a uniquely wonderful way when they give; all of us are freed and invited into the joy of sharing. We don’t give 10 or 12 or 20% of our incomes to earn salvation. We give because we have been saved and we want our financial gifts to empower the church and empower international ministries to carry the gospel of salvation to the world.

By God’s will, we have been sanctified – made right, made holy. Hebrews 10 takes us from the frustration of having to repeat worship rituals over and over to the declaration that we are made to be holy. Just as Jesus said before his death on the cross so we now repeat, “it is finished.”

The last day then is different than we previously imagined. Go there with me to the final scene, the very end. We’ve died, and in death, we’ve waited. In sort of sleep, or in a place called Paradise, we have waited for God’s final consummation, and it arrives – the final judgment when God sets all things right in the world. Along with all others that we know, we wait in a large room. Individual names are called, and one-by-one, we enter. Carrying the burden of a lifetime of sins, we know this isn’t going to go well.

Entering in fear, we are surprised to see Jesus himself, and even more surprised to see his smile as he welcomes us. Suddenly we remember a theological term – justification. In means the court rules in your favor, sees you to be in the right. Here, at your final judgment and mine, Jesus looks at us and rules in our favor. He sees us to be in the right. But what about God’s demand for holiness? What about our sins, our mistakes, and our failures? Jesus has it covered for us – all of us. Because he took on himself the penalty for all our sins and we put our trust in Him, we are sanctified and he declares us innocent.

It means we are free to enter His kingdom, inhabiting our resurrected bodies as we live in glorious relationship with God.

If we have confessed our sins and received Jesus into our hearts and acknowledged him as Lord, we know that’s how it will go. Obviously I don’t the specifics down, no one does. But at the judgment, because of what Jesus did for us, the verdict will go in our favor.

That future hope and future freedom frees us to live as Kingdom people, resurrection people, today. We are free from sin’s hold and death’s shadow. In the here and now, sin still hurts, but it doesn’t stick to us at all. We’re forgiven and made new. We are free to go on mission trips, give our money to God’s work, to invest our lives in loving people and sharing the gospel. We’re free to be completely sold-out for Jesus in every phase of life.

His verdict? Innocent of sin, holy before Lord. Knowing that, we are free to follow the Lord and do His work in the world right now.

AMEN