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Posts Tagged ‘Messiah’

Living Sacrifices

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , on March 11, 2010| 2 Comments »

More and more paradox! Think about it: how can I be a “living” sacrifice? Sacrifice implies giving up one’s life. And yet, that is exactly the point.

Romans 12:1a
I APPEAL to you therefore, brethren, and beg of you in view of [all] the mercies of God, to make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God. . . . [Amplified]

Among many definitions, this one caught my eye: “The surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim (or value).” In ancient times, sacrifices were usually animals, as close to perfect as possible. These animals were offered as a substitution for the person who was confessing sin, making a vow, or giving thanksgiving. But once the Messiah had completed the ultimate sacrifice, Paul lays it out quite plainly: the new sacrifice is human, but spiritually based.

This is a very well known and often quoted section of Romans. What can I add that hasn’t been said a million times already?

Just do it. That’s all that comes to mind. Just do it. Every day. Today.

Today, I choose. Today I trust God has something for me that is better than anything I can manifest on my own.

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Hearing

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

One thing really gets my goat at home: not being heard. The kids tune me out and apparently, they do the same thing at school (What test? What homework? etc.). My husband is in his own world and even the dogs tune me out. Is it the messenger?

Romans 10:17
So faith comes by hearing [what is told], and what is heard comes by the preaching [of the message that came from the lips] of Christ (the Messiah Himself) [Amplified]

These verses of Romans 10 are often used to support the need for missionaries around the world. After all, they say, someone must go to preach the message, the good news, to all those unbelievers.

But the hearing part is just as essential to the equation. Why don’t people hear? Are they unready to hear? Is the message unclear or poorly presented? Is the message given in love or draped in fear?

Over the years, the messengers (ministers, preachers, missionaries, evangelists) have wrapped the good news into a variety of packages. As a result, we now have the “four spiritual laws,” Evangelism Explosion, Billy Graham Crusade, Seeker-sensitivity, Christian infotainment, Veggie Tales, contemporary, rock, and even hip-hop music, along with movies and multi-media, to name a few. All of these were created to make the “message that came from the lips of Christ” accessible.

But is it really all necessary? Have we possibly diluted the message? Or, have we lost the simplicity of the message?

Jesus came with a story. He spoke it and they listened. We do a greater service to the message of God if we simply tell our story as well. The story of God touching my life cannot be argued. I lived it, I walked it, and it’s mine.

People don’t usually tune out story unless it sounds false.When speaking the story of Christ touching me, it is important to be truthful and transparent. Truth resonates.

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Freedom to Believe

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It’s ironic, when Paul the Apostle declared Christ as the Way, it was a testament of freedom to anyone who chose to believe, whether Jew or Gentile, slave or foreigner. Anyone could enter this new relationship with God. But today, the Christ message is treated as limiting, exclusive, or prescribed.

Romans 10:4
Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness [right relationship with God] for everyone who believes.

Several chapters of Romans are dedicated to the logic Paul lays out for the Jews of that time, the reasons and proof texts to support the reasons a Messiah came. He wants to convince them that the way was now open to God for anyone to believe. The season of the heart had come. “For with the heart a person believes (adheres to, trusts in, and relies on Christ) and so is justified (declared righteous, acceptable to God), . . . ” [Amplified, Romans 10:10a].

Many are guilty of limiting the Christ message, perhaps Christians most of all. We have codified the process and made rules of engagement. We have created denominations that have additional requirements such as specific types of baptism, communion practices, sins by degree, and methods of confession.

Today, we would need another Paul to set the Christians from their own chains of law.

The Christ message is one of freedom. That freedom invites us to participate in an intimate relationship with God that has never been possible before. For Christians, we must return to the simplicity of belief and confession. For non-believers, we must focus on the open door of Christ. All are welcome.

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A Lament

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 24, 2010| 2 Comments »

I think of Paul as a punctilious kind of teacher, quite linearly-minded, regimented, and formal. But then, he surprises me with this verbal requiem over a particular loss he feels in traveling the “new way” in Christ: losing the people and all that was familiar to him to “boldly go” and explore this “strange new world.”

Romans 9:1a, 2
I [Paul] AM speaking the truth in Christ. I am not lying; . . . I have bitter grief and incessant anguish in my heart. [Amplified]

I remember the weeks after I first became a follower of Christ. Even though I was clear about my choice and more than willing to venture forth, I also experienced a type of grief. Who would I be? How would this new way look? Would I lose all of my old friends? Would I have to conform to behaviors that didn’t feel like me because I agreed to follow this Messiah?

But, as the true adventure took hold, a joy and confidence grew within. My spirit was shooting off and I knew, despite any lingering questions and doubts and even grief, this was the way. I started telling everyone my story. But there were only a few who wanted to listen. I had to let go of them because I understood, they were no different than I had been. In the years before my spirit woke up, I had considered the Christian way old-fashioned, ineffectual, narrow-minded, and confining. Their discovery would be in God’s time. I cannot say, even to this day, why the planets aligned and I had that revelation glimpse of Christ. Others would say that I was chosen (one of the elect), but I find that too prideful to say. All have the potential to Christ.

Paul had his own supernatural experience on the road to Damascus and subsequent miracle when his eyesight was restored through the prayer of a man who should have feared being in the same room with Paul, a former enemy because of his faith in Jesus. [Acts 9:10-17] Paul was the least likely conversion.

As I walk through Paul’s writings, his dominant proof message is that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah. For Paul, this was the whole point! And he could not fathom why his own people didn’t “see” what he saw, didn’t understand what he understood, didn’t accept what he had accepted. They had all the information, the genealogy, the promises, and the prophecies.

But to accept the Messiah meant changing everything. It was easier to keep waiting for the Messiah than to consider he might have come.

My lament is that many people see the trappings of Christianity and cannot project themselves into that perceived lifestyle. They are actually rejecting what they assume it means to become a follower on the Way. But I know now that accepting Christ doesn’t have to “look like that.” The first step is to open the inner door and simply allow God to direct the way.

There is always some loss in change, but there is also gain.

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Small Deaths

Posted in Christmas Through Epiphany, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 6, 2010| 1 Comment »

As a believer, I am promised a new life when I accept Christ’s sacrifice (his death) as the propitiation (satisfactory compensation) for my sin. Although the sacrifice is enough, my ability to embrace the truth of it in daily life is wanting.

Romans 6:3, 5
Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? . . . If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.

I firmly believe the faith walk is a process. And although our beloved Messiah did everything necessary to repair the separation between God and us, I am still learning how to walk the new path (the Way). I struggle with the paradox: death = life. I tend to hold onto what is familiar instead of letting those parts of me die.

I understand in my head that I must be more like the seed that dies before the plant will grow. Instead, I keep trying to be the best seed I can be. I’m missing out on the real transformation.

But God is patient. My old nature, my old self, is in various partitions and states of renewal. Gradually, sections do die. And with each small death, new life finds root. This is sanctification, my rite of passage from death to life.

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There is only one God

Posted in Christmas Through Epiphany, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 29, 2010| 3 Comments »

I love this. God is God: there is only one God. And it doesn’t really matter what name is given to God or whether one believes “in” God or not, God is still God, in fact, the God of all gods. My faith in God does not change God, it only changes me.

Romans 3:29-30
Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.

For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome . . . [Deuteronomy 10:17]

Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever. [Psalm 136:2]

The king said to Daniel, “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings . . . ” [Daniel 2:47]

So, here’s this God of all gods willing, able and ready to accept the faith of the people, all people. When anyone puts his/her faith in God, a way is opened toward justification, toward relationship.

Jesus says in John 14:6 that “he is the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me.” and I believe him. The promise is that relationship with Jesus opens the door to relationship with God as Father.

But, it rankles most non-Christians and non-believers that Jesus would claim to be the “only way” to God (both then and now). Even I am uncomfortable with this strict “way.” So, what is there to say?

Jesus is a sure thing. If a person wants to know God, to experience God, to be in relationship with God, then follow the way of Jesus and you will find what you seek. It is a promise. And I can testify to the truth of it. I was lost and through Jesus, I found my way.

But I will give an additional interpretation: Since God is God of all… then who am I to say that Jesus does not manifest alternatively to others? Said differently, if a person truly seeks God, then I believe that person will also find Jesus on the way. But it is more difficult.

The way of Jesus is easier, more direct. It is not burdensome. And in it, there is freedom.

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Presenting Justice

Posted in Christmas Through Epiphany, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Justice has gotten pretty fuzzy in our current culture. How often do the guilty go free if they simply have a good lawyer? How can we expect a modern world to connect to the concept of God’s justice and actually appreciate true mercy and atonement?

Romans 3:25
God presented him [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement, . . . to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished . . .

Even in Bible times, the Apostle Paul spent a lot of his time convincing people that the long-awaited Messiah had arrived in Jesus of Nazareth. But the Jews had built an entire culture and way of life around the observance of “law” and a complex set of requirements to exact justice with various acts and sacrifices. Did they really believe the Messiah would come or had they put the idea so far into the future that such a reality was unimaginable?

In essence, no matter when the Messiah would appear, the prophecies promised that his arrival would wipe out the old ideology and replace every sacrifice, every payment, and every atoning act, with his own blood. It would change everything. Justice would have new meaning.

If they had accepted the “fact” of a Messiah then, their entire temple system would have been obliterated in a single day. Is there any wonder the priests and accompanying temple staff were resistant? Their livelihood, their routines, and all of their traditions were in danger of collapse if they accepted this man Jesus as the Messiah.

To accept the atoning act of the Messiah is to have faith in a new execution of justice. To appropriate the ultimate sacrifice/justice of the Messiah requires a person’s confession of sin and lawbreaking.

Unlike a court of law where the defendant is trying to convince everyone that he/she didn’t really “do it,” this court is strictly for those willing to say, “guilty as charged.” And through that personal confession of guilt, suddenly, there is mercy and grace in a way that is beyond our understanding.

This is justice without fear. This is justice married to mercy. This is justice covered by love. Thanks be to God for the Anointed One whose sacrifice made it possible for me to live under a banner of justification.

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