Looking Back

 Before moving ahead, we should maybe look back at the thrust of the past three months of posts. A good pastor friend of mine asked me if I was always on the attack since he could identify sacred cows being slaughtered. I am not on the attack at all. I simply want us as Christians to be duly mindful of our place in this world and to not be drawn in by worldly thinking. The world is our present home, but not our homeland, so it does us little good to think of ourselves as anything other than aliens in temporary residence.

The world itself, no matter how old anyone claims it is, is temporary and destined for destruction. Everything in it will be consumed and destroyed – kingdoms, dominions, political positions, philosophies, pleasures and pains – all will be destroyed. And all who do not belong to God through His Son Jesus Christ will be destroyed with it. The world and all who are part of it will be gone, so there is no advantage in staking any claim on the world or its wisdom or falling prey to its seductions by believing we can achieve Heavenly ends by worldly means.

We have no idea when the end will come. Scripture is clear on this. Therefore we have to be constantly on guard and eager to spur each other to love and good works. We cannot afford to dissociate ourselves from other believers but need to be working to build them up. The Church is there for our care, our nurture and our growth in Christ. This doesn’t mean we should pull ourselves totally away from the world, but we need to not be influenced by it or the world’s cause of the moment.

God wants us to build homes, establish families and prosper, but those things are not and should not be our focus. He wants us to abide by laws, pray for and support our governments, pay our taxes and do nothing that can be fairly used to call us troublemakers. No matter how unfair, unjust, or inhumane we think a government is, God has still ordained its existence. Governments are of the world; we are not. It is just that simple. In this as in everything, we need to be sure that we are above reproach.

The thrust of our lives should never be to make the world comfortable for Christians. We do want to make the people in the world comfortable enough with us that we can spread the gospel of grace through Christ Jesus. Our duty is not only to care for and comfort each other, but also to pull others into our ranks.

There are two things we want to be careful to avoid. We do not want the Church to look like the world in any way. If that happens, there is no incentive for anyone to leave the world. We also do not want the Church, and with it Christ, to be held in contempt because we are on the attack. Defensive sinners are unrepentant sinners who reject what they see as a gospel of hate.

We were all sinners and dead in our sins. That is a fact. It doesn’t matter whether we were raised in churches or in drug houses or anywhere in between. Before we personally accepted the grace of God through Christ, repented our sins, and actively embraced salvation through baptism, we were dead – alive to sin, but dead to God. We were His enemies and deserving all judgment and condemnation. We were ripped from the world through grace and given the hope of salvation in Christ and with it a hope of eternal life. We accomplished this through acceptance through faith of Jesus and His saving grace, not through any works of our own or by our own strength. We must never, ever, forget that.

For this reason we are not sent to judge or condemn the world at this time, but to stand out as lights of God’s grace. In an evil world we are to be beacons of goodness, and kindness, of gentleness and humility. We will be tried. We will be tested. We may even be persecuted, beaten and even killed. And through it all, we will not fight back nor take up arms in revenge because those are the ways of the world. Consider Christ Jesus who suffered death on the cross. Though he was unjustly accused, inhumanely beaten, spat upon and cursed, He did nothing in protest. Had He wanted, he could have called legions of angels to His defense. Instead, for our sake, He went meekly, as Scripture says, like a lamb to slaughter. That should be our model. Can we do anything less and still say we are of Christ?