Daily Devotions

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Current Study: First Peter

Today’s Topic:  Suffering Destroys Sin (continued)

Scripture Reading:  1 Peter 4:1  Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin.

Do not take this as cynicism. It’s about me first and foremost. I just wonder how many of you are in the same predicament. After reading yesterday’s devotional we went back to our normal routines of life and, whether consciously or sub-consciously, we did everything we could to avoid suffering and enhance our lives according to the world’s standards. We went right back to the lives we have established in the flesh, and by the end of the day we were already wondering why we aren’t done with sin. My mind has been working non-stop all night trying to figure this out. I’m getting close. Let me share with you what I’ve learned so far.

To start with, we have defined suffering incorrectly. When we think of the suffering of Christ and our willingness to do the same, we think of death. Most of us, if a gun were pointed at our head, would not deny that Jesus is Lord. As a result, we believe we are really willing to suffer for Christ. Trouble is, not many of us are actually suffering in any way. So we thank God that we live in a free country, and then we exploit the opportunities we have in this country to satisfy the desires of our flesh. We are not free from sin because we don’t really understand suffering.

Let’s look at the life of Jesus, our model of suffering and freedom from sin. Maybe we can learn something about an aspect of suffering we have denied – the concept of sacrifice.

• As God in the flesh, He was willing to be born in a manger to poor people who couldn’t even afford a lamb for a sacrifice.
• While being fully God in human flesh, he was willing to live an obscure life for 30 years, demanding no recognition or affirmation from the world.
• When told by a wannabe disciple that he would follow Him, Jesus asked the man if he was sure because Jesus had no place to call home and no bed to crawl into at night.
• When instructing His followers about the priorities of life, Jesus said that the tendency for all of us would be to worry about how we were going to feed and clothe ourselves and the family. Then He told them not to worry but to trust the Father in Heaven. If their priority was right – to serve  the King in righteousness and advance the Kingdom of God – then God would provide everything they needed to accomplish His will, not their own.
• As a result of doing the will of the Father and speaking the words of the Father, Jesus was rejected by the people He came to save. Yet He did not live for the approval of people. In fact, He told His disciples that it was hypocritical to try to serve God and please people at the same time.

I cannot begin to list all of the ways emotionally and materially that Jesus must have suffered because of what He was willing to sacrifice to honor His Father. I also cannot begin to list all of the ways we continue to pursue emotional and material stability rather than suffering the loss of those things for Christ’s sake. I am overwhelmed with the thought of how much time is invested and how many resources we spend on satisfying the desires of our flesh, whether it’s through our possessions, our position in life, or through personal relationships. Let me say clearly that I am not opposed to success or wealth. What I am opposed to is the idea that we think we need that stuff to validate our lives as meaningful. I am opposed to anything from which we gain value that should be coming from Christ alone. And friends, we try to gain a lot of value for ourselves through our possessions, our success, and our relationships.

We have fallen prey to materialism and we don’t even know it. We claim that we would suffer death for Christ, but don’t want to be asked to sacrifice the life we now have. Yet Jesus said, “Whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” If only we would discover that the key to being done with sin is to deny the flesh and walk according to the Spirit of God. Yet the desires of the flesh still dominate our decision-making.

It’s time for change. It’s time for sacrifice. It’s time to truly prove we are people of faith in the Father by renouncing the dreams we have for this life and reclaiming the mission Jesus gave us to be the living representatives of His resurrection and victory over sin. Please don’t brush this off. This is the transformational message of the Gospel, and we should be living it.

Pastor John

Daily Devotions

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Current Study: First Peter

Today’s Topic:  Suffering Destroys Sin

Scripture Reading:  1 Peter 4:1  Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin.

I love the word therefore. It perks up my mind to make a connection between what has previously been said and what is about to be said. It is the one word which more than any other helps me to keep things in context. That’s because it is the word that helps me fulfill my insatiable need to understand cause and effect.

Cause and effect is the relationship between two things when one thing makes something else happen. For example, if we eat too much food and do not exercise, we gain weight. Eating food without exercising is the “cause;” weight gain is the “effect.” I just wish that my understanding of that would start to change me. Which brings up another cause and effect – my choice to ignore the eventual effect for the immediate enjoyment of the food is the real problem.

It is that same attitude of choosing the immediate enjoyment of sin regardless of the long-term effect that is being addressed by Peter as he begins chapter four. He starts with the word therefore, so he is connecting an effect with a previous cause. The previous cause is that Jesus Christ suffered in the flesh and was raised in the Spirit in victory over the flesh. The effect is to be that we can experience the same thing and be done with sin.

Wouldn’t it be great to be done with sin? Peter seems to be telling us that we can be. But the big question that comes to my mind is this – If I can be done with sin, then why do I still sin?  Other questions also arise. If being done with sin is the result of suffering, then why have I not suffered enough to be done with sin? What kind of suffering is he referring to? These are all legitimate questions, and they can be answered, with one contingency – that we understand that our personal choice is the real issue. None of what I’m about to teach will be of any value to anyone who hasn’t already or is will to now take responsibility for their own choices. It is not anyone else’s fault for the effects you are experiencing. Your choices are the cause.

Peter H. Davids, in his book More Hard Sayings of the New Testament, helps us to understand how to interpret this passage about being done with sin. There are five different explanations of this passage.

1. 1.    First, it might refer only to Christ (the “he” is Christ and no one else).
2. 2.    Second, it may refer to a Christian’s identification with Christ at his or her conversion-initiation (especially baptism). That is, when one identifies with Christ’s death, sin has no more power over that person (Rom 6:1-12; 1 Jn 5:18-19).
3. 3.    Third, it may mean that when a Christian decides to suffer for Christ, that believer has chosen decisively to break with sin and its compromises.
4. 4.    Fourth, it may mean that when Christians suffer, they break the power of sin over their life.
5. 5.    Finally, it may mean that when Christians die, they will be freed from sin as Christ was.

Let’s look at some facts we already know. Unlike Paul, when Peter talks about sin it is never in the abstract, but always in reference to concrete, identifiable actions of sin. That makes options 2 and 3 not viable. Peter knows that the power and penalty of sin have been removed from the Christian’s life at the moment of his salvation, but he is talking about the presence of sin in our lives in specific forms.

We also know that Peter is not talking in his letter about martyrdom as the only means of deliverance from the presence of sin. The suffering to which he refers is social in nature, not legal. That makes option 5 out.

Of the remaining two, both are probably in Peter’s mind. As a result of His victory over sin on the cross, confirmed by God in Christ’s resurrection, He is done with sin forever. But what we must understand is that the same resurrection power that was exerted in Christ to conquer death now lives in us to conquer sin as well. What is missing in our lives is our willingness and choice to suffer for Christ so that we might experience the victory of Christ.

The law of cause and effect is at play here. According to God, the originator of cause and effect, whatever a man sows is what he reaps. Plant corn; harvest corn. Scatter seeds of selfishness; harvest loneliness. Choose sin; harvest discipline, correction, and judgment. But the flip side of the cause and effect coin is also true. Choose suffering for Christ; harvest victory over sin. God’s law of cause and effect for the Christian is this – choose to set aside any and all immediate gratification of the flesh and suffer the loss of the pleasures of this world, and He will give you victory over any and all sin.

Peter Davids is helpful again when he writes, “if Christ is really the one they are following, their great example, then suffering will separate them more and more from sinful acts, making them increasingly invested in heaven, until they come to that point when they die like Christ, and, like him, are totally finished with sin and all its effects in this world.”

“We may in fact still be sinning because we have not chosen to suffer and thereby are not done with sin. Perhaps when we come to the point of choice, we choose compromise and then wonder why we cannot overcome temptation. On the other hand, we may still be sinning because we have not suffered enough. While we have chosen Christ and are against sin and are making good progress in the battle, we have not yet died. We may be longing for a perfection that will only be ours in resurrection, not that very real maturity that is possible in this world.”

The choice is yours. Do you believe that the resurrected life of Jesus lives in you, and that the power of His resurrection to conquer sin is yours today? Or have you become convinced in your mind that we must suffer with sin in this life until we are finally taken to glory? I do not proclaim sinless perfection in this life. We will still sin. But why are we satisfied with that? It’s because we have chosen, even though we may be in denial of that choice, to enjoy the pleasures of sin, claiming that the grace of God will cover us. What a cheap grace that is! The grace of God brings us the life of Christ in all of His glorious victory. Let us not cheapen what He has done by choosing to gratify the desires of the flesh while claiming the victory He offers.

Pastor John

Daily Devotions

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Current Study: First Peter

Today’s Topic:  Baptism Controversy

Scripture Reading:  1 Peter 3:19-22  …through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.

Today we take up a phrase in this difficult passage that has caused much confusion in the ranks of the religious. Peter says, “In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God.” The controversy is this – Does baptism save anyone?

Whenever we study Scripture, we must interpret it in its proper context. The context of Peter’s teaching here is still the encouragement he is giving to the saints to endure suffering for the cause of Christ. That context will carry well into the next chapter. The reference to baptism, therefore, must have something to do with encouraging Christians to endure suffering. The reference to baptism, then, becomes an analogy, just like the Apostle Paul’s reference to Moses in First Corinthians 10 when he writes, “For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” These are historical analogies of another reality, and they are not the reality in and of themselves.

When the people of Israel stood at the Red Sea with the Egyptian army bearing down on them, they had a choice – have faith in God and identify with Moses or turn and retreat back into the world from which they came. They chose to identify with Moses. They were “baptized” into Moses when they went through the sea on dry ground and when they followed the pillar of cloud and fire wherever it went. Baptism, therefore, is an act of identification.

Peter uses a different analogy to enhance the meaning. When Noah built the ark he suffered constant insults and rejection from the world. For 120 years he was made out a fool for his faith in the Father. Then it started to rain, and only those who by faith identified with the Father were saved. The suffering they had to go through to experience the fulfillment of their salvation was extreme, but they were saved the moment the entered the ark and the Lord shut them in. They were in the ark with hundreds of stinky animals for over a year. No toilets. No lower level ventilation. No outdoor recreational activities. No friends except immediate family. There was just suffering for their faith. Yet they were considered saved the whole time. The water didn’t save them. Their salvation took them through the water.

That’s the analogy of baptism. The water doesn’t save anyone. It is the identification act of a person of faith who has already been saved by the resurrection of Jesus in their lives. It does not remove sin. That can only be done by faith in Christ’s work on the cross. Baptism is a Christian’s pledge to God of a good conscience that has been cleansed by the Holy Spirit in through His work of regeneration.

For this reason, according to the truth of Scripture, only those who have made a personal commitment to Christ through the repentance of sin by faith in Christ’s work on the cross can be baptized. Infants don’t qualify. No offense intended, but we must be Biblically accurate. A baby cannot identify with Christ, and the Scriptures give no evidence or support to the idea that the identification of the parents can be applied to the child. Every person must make the decision to repent of their sin and be forgiven by faith in Christ individually.

Baptism is the act of identification with Christ’s death and resurrection. (See Romans 6:1-6) That’s why the Scriptural method was immersion, so the representation of death and resurrection is experienced. Baptism is also, according to the analogies of Noah and Moses, the beginning of suffering for Christ. It is the commitment of an individual to take a public stand for Jesus regardless of the cost. That’s what it was for Jesus, who was not baptized for the forgiveness of sins, but rather to identify himself publicly with the Father and His mission for life and death.

Your salvation will take you through the water. It will be hard walking through life by faith alone, but on the other side of the water you will be delivered. You will suffer along the way, but because you have publicly identified with Christ, He will lead you and empower you to follow. And it all starts in the water of Baptism. Take that step of faith, and identify yourself publicly with Jesus Christ. Let it be the pledge of your good conscience that Jesus has saved you by His resurrection power. 

Pastor John