GOVERNED BY GOD (MARCH 19)

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"So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:36).

FREEDOM IS ONE OF THE PRIME BENEFITS OF THE GOSPEL. In a world characterized by rebellion against God, we find ourselves fettered and frustrated by sin. But we can be delivered from this slavery. “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

Yet freedom is often misunderstood. The very essence of sin is the attitude which says, “I do not wish to do anyone’s will but my own. I wish to be free of any limitations, so that I can do as I please.” And when we first hear about the gospel of Christ, we may see it as a ticket to this kind of freedom. No longer will we be bound by the petty rules of “legalism.” We will be free!

But ponder these words by Charles Kingsley: “There are two freedoms: the false, where man is free to do what he likes; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought.” True freedom is not the absence of any limits at all; it is being governed by the wisdom of God — within limits that help us to do what is right.

What Adam and Eve found was that throwing off the restrictions of God’s law did not enable them to enjoy the “good life,” as they had been led to believe. Contrary to the tempter’s lie, they discovered that God had been telling the truth in the first place: outside of His will, human life leads, in the end, to nothing but death.

After the establishment of Christ’s church in the first century, there began to be those who taught that what one does in the flesh is of no consequence to the spirit. Christians should pursue “freedom” and disregard the old-fashioned precepts of right and wrong. But these advocates of “liberty” were lying, just as the tempter had been lying back in the Garden of Eden. And Peter called them out when he said, “For, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved” (2 Peter 2:18,19).

Eric Hoffer said, “The best test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.” If that is true politically, it’s also true spiritually. We’d do well to listen.

"Christianity promises to make men free; it never promises to make them independent" (William Ralph Inge).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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A NEW CREATION IN CHRIST (MARCH 18)

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"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

NEW BEGINNINGS SHOULD BE WELCOMED INTO OUR LIVES. It is an exciting, strengthening experience to turn a corner and make a fresh start — and there is no more powerful new beginning than obeying the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Christ, our starting over is so deep and complete that we are said to be a “new creation.”

Having died with Christ in baptism, we walk in “newness of life” (Romans 6:4). And what does that mean? Paul described it in Colossians 3:1-17. We have new goals (v.1), new thoughts (v.2), and new habits (vv.5-16). With Christ as our Lord, we live under a new authority (v.17). And most important, having been forgiven of the sins that separated us from God, we live with a new hope (vv.3,4).

At baptism, we commit ourselves to actually living like what we have become: a new creation. Growing to maturity in Christ takes time. We can be encouraged by the fact that God will be patient. He will provide the help that is necessary. But if we don’t open our eyes and see what needs to change, we’ll be hindered.

Unfortunately, most of us fail to see how radical the surgery needs to be. We see ourselves as “good” people — we may stumble now and then, but basically, we think we’ve lived without any very serious errors. Yet nothing could be further from the truth (Matthew 3:7-9). We need more than a little polishing up; we need to be destroyed and completely rebuilt. There is only one word to describe what must be done: “re-creation.” If we’re going to be fit to live in God’s presence, we’re going to have to be “re-created.”

But in Christ, what needs to happen can happen. What God offers us is absolutely unique. There is nothing else like it in the world. So Peter appealed to his hearers in Jerusalem, “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago” (Act 3:19-21).

"In the natural world it is impossible to be made all over again, but in the spiritual world it is exactly what Jesus Christ makes possible" (Oswald Chambers).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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AN INDESTRUCTIBLE KINGDOM (MARCH 17)

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"And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever" (Daniel 2:44).

THIS TEXT IN THE BOOK OF DANIEL GIVES US THE MAIN POINT OF A DREAM THAT DANIEL INTERPRETED FOR NEBUCHADNEZZAR, THE KING OF BABYLON. It speaks of a kingdom that God would establish in the days of the Roman Empire, a kingdom that would be unlike any other kingdom that had ever been known to mankind.

A SPIRITUAL KINGDOM. If people thought the kingdom prophesied here was going to be just a more powerful type of earthly government, they were disappointed. When the King finally came, He did not set up a worldly regime: “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting . . . But my kingdom is not from the world” (John 18:36).

A KINGDOM WHOSE RULE WOULD NOT BE TRANSFERRED TO SUCCEEDING RULERS. Unlike earthly kingdoms in which rulers are always replaced by other rulers, there would be no line of succession in this kingdom — “nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people” (RSV).

AN INDESTRUCTIBLE KINGDOM. The stability of this kingdom would be such that it “shall stand forever.” The ups and downs of history would not faze it, and no enemy could conquer it. With the Son of God as its King, this kingdom would be impossible to overthrow.

This kingdom, we now know, is the rule of God in Jesus Christ, inaugurated on the first Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection. In Christ, we submit to this rule and are saved (Colossians 1:13,14).

When we consider the majesty of God’s plan to bring us back under the benevolence of His rule, we are struck with awe. And it is our privilege to honor Jesus Christ, “the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen” (Revelation 1:5,6).

"Only when God hath brought to light all the hidden things of darkness, whosoever were the actors therein, will it be seen that wise and good were all his ways, that he saw through the thick cloud, and governed all things by the wise counsels of his own will, that nothing was left to chance, or the caprice of men, but God disposed all strongly and sweetly, and wrought all into one connected chain of justice, mercy, and truth" (John Wesley).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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GOD’S PROMISE TO DAVID (MARCH 16)

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"When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom . . . And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever" (2 Samuel 7:12-16).

THIS TEXT IS ONE OF A HANDFUL OF OLD TESTAMENT TEXTS THAT ARE ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL FOR AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Much that is said in the New Testament about Jesus Christ would be incomprehensible without an understanding of what it was that God was promising to David in 2 Samuel 7:12-16.

OFFSPRING. On the first Pentecost after Jesus’ death, Simon Peter, a pious Jew, affirmed that he and others were eyewitnesses of the fact that Jesus had been resurrected. And Jesus’ resurrection, he argued, fulfilled what the Scriptures had foretold about the much-anticipated Messiah. To make his point, he quoted Psalm 16:10, where David had said, “For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption” (Acts 2:25-28).

Now follow very carefully what Peter said next: “Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses . . . Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:29-36).

KINGDOM. God said to David, “Your throne shall be established forever.” Just as “offspring” meant more than David’s son Solomon, there would be more to David’s “throne” than the government of Israel. The kingdom of which God spoke to David would not be geographical but spiritual (John 18:36) — and this is the very kingdom over which Jesus Christ, the Messiah, now reigns. So if we’ve obeyed the gospel, we may gladly say that God “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13,14).

"The kingdom of God does not exist because of your effort or mine. It exists because God reigns. Our part is to enter this kingdom and bring our life under his sovereign will" (T. Z. Koo).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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THE SORROW THAT SEEKS SALVATION (MARCH 15)

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"Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24).

SORROWFUL. PENITENT. CONTRITE. These don’t sound like positive words. But if we’re looking at life from the perspective of the Scriptures, they are some of the most positive words in the dictionary — not because they are comfortable but because they are conducive to our salvation. Ponder with me their importance.

There are a handful of texts in the Bible (I call them “fundamental” texts) that describe the heart of the person who is truly turned in God’s direction. We might think, for example, of Micah 6:8 or Deuteronomy 6:4,5. Out of all the texts like these, none is more helpful to us than David’s cry in Psalm 51:17: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” I believe this basic truth would have been the background of Jesus’ statement of blessing in Matthew 5:3,4: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Godly sorrow is not an end in itself; it is a part of the path that leads us back to God (2 Corinthians 7:8-11). Without sorrow for our sins, we will not seek salvation with any deep passion or fervent desire. And in the end, it is this sort of seeker who will be rewarded. It is not the one interested in intellectual information or theoretical philosophy, but the seeker of salvation who will find the object of his desire. And as often as not, it is our tears that show what is most important to us in regard to God (Luke 7:36-50).

If we’re seeking salvation, we will naturally be eager to experience the joy God has promised to us. We long to be reconciled to Him. There is, however, no shortcut to salvation. The path to heaven passes through the territory of repentance, and as anyone knows who has been there, it is a painful place to be. But the horror of our sins has to become real to us. If that does not happen, the Promised Land will not seem much better than the wilderness. “Until sin be bitter — Christ will not be sweet” (Thomas Watson).

Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May the Lord Christ enter in?
(Oscar Wilde)

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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WHERE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD IS REVEALED (MARCH 14)

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"For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by faith'" (Romans 1:17).

PAUL WANTED IT UNDERSTOOD THAT HE WAS NOT RELUCTANT TO COME TO ROME. Rome might have been the most powerful and prestigious city in the world of that day, but Paul was just as willing to preach the gospel of Christ there as he was anywhere else. “I am not ashamed of the gospel,” he wrote to the church in Rome, “for it is the power of God for salvation” (Romans 1:16).

And then, still speaking of the gospel, Paul said, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith’” (v.17). It is in the gospel that the righteousness of God is revealed. That sounds important, obviously, but we need to know what Paul meant by “the righteousness of God.”

In the context of Paul’s letter to the Romans, the phrase does not refer to God’s personal righteousness but rather His way of making sinful man righteous — that is, God’s chosen means of reconciling us to Himself, as opposed to any system of righteousness or plan of salvation by which we might try to save ourselves.

This contrast is clearly seen in Romans 10:3: “For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.” Paul was speaking here of the Jews who had rejected the gospel. It grieved him, as a former rabbi, to point out that by preferring a Jewish system of moral credits to achieve their own salvation, his Jewish brethren had turned away from God’s salvation: the plan that He had provided for all mankind, one based on faith rather than Jewishness.

God, as the Sovereign Ruler of the universe, has the right to set the criterion separating those who will be saved from those who will not, and it is in the gospel that He has revealed His choice. The righteousness that He is willing to provide is based upon faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. We might have devised some other plan, but God’s plan is what it is — and it is in the gospel that He makes it known. The “good news” is that, because of Christ’s death, the door of forgiveness is open to the entire world. Only God could have opened this door. The wonder is that He did so.

"Christ died that we might live — but live as he lives, by dying as he died who died to himself" (George MacDonald).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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FAITH: THE MAINSPRING OF RIGHTEOUSNESS (MARCH 13)

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". . . but the righteous shall live by his faith" (Habakkuk 2:4).

IN THE WHOLE BIBLE THERE ARE FEW TEXTS MORE BASIC THAN THIS ONE. The principle embedded in this passage from Habakkuk is fundamental and far-reaching. And it illustrates an interesting fact about the Scriptures: the more basic the principle found in a passage, the more different ways it may be applied in other passages.

In its original context in Habakkuk, “the righteous shall live by his faith” was a part of God’s answer to the prophet’s perplexity at God’s use of a nation like Babylon to accomplish His purposes. Based on a human being’s limited information, such may seem puzzling, but God has always proven Himself trustworthy, so those who are committed to justice will trust Him. Their trust in God will guide them through life’s apparent contradictions.

In the New Testament, Paul quoted the familiar words of Habakkuk 2:4 in Romans 1:16,17 to emphasize one of the most basic truths of the gospel: it is faith (rather than race, social status, or any other criterion) that is the basis of righteousness before God. No one is excluded; the gospel is open to any person who will make the choice to trust God obediently. And no congregation needed to hear this more than the group in Rome, where the mixed Jewish and Gentile membership needed to keep in mind that they had all been accepted in Christ on the very same basis.

So here we have one of the key elements of the truth about our relationship to God. Beginning with Adam and Eve and coming all the way down to our own day, sin has always been a refusal to trust God enough to obey Him, and salvation has always required coming back to a trust that will obey Him. In the gospel, faith is required for our initial reconciliation to God and also our continuing lives in Christ. It is the mainspring of the watch (to use an antiquated illustration), the source of the energy that drives the mechanism. Yet real faith involves a good deal more than just accepting the facts of the gospel intellectually. That may be the starting point, since faith is based on what our minds recognize to be true. But as it grows to maturity, faith turns into trust — a trust that will risk everything in order to act on what God says about Himself and His will for us.

"Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you cannot understand at the time" (Oswald Chambers).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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ABRAHAM, THE FATHER OF THE FAITHFUL (MARCH 12)

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"And [Abraham] believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness" (Genesis 15:6).

ABRAHAM WAS AN OLD MAN AND CHILDLESS WHEN GOD TOLD HIM HIS DESCENDANTS WOULD BE AS MANY AS THE STARS OF HEAVEN. Sarah, his wife, was well past the age of childbearing. Yet he knew enough of God’s track record to believe that whatever God promised, that’s what would happen. So he trusted God’s promise, and the text says that God “counted it to him as righteousness.”

The operative element in Abraham’s faith was an obedient confidence — a trustful willingness to yield to God’s word. “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8). And James wrote, “You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’ — and he was called a friend of God” (James 2:22,23).

Abraham is the person most often cited in the Scriptures as an example of faith’s role in God’s plan of salvation. “Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith” (Galatians 3:7-9).

Abraham’s faithfulness was the product of his decision to trust that God always tells the truth. Today, we very much need to get back to Abraham’s kind of faith. Far from mere gullibility or blind faith, his faith was a reasoned choice to believe the promises he knew God had made. And unlike those who think that feelings of faith are sufficient, Abraham was obedient to God, even in situations that required great courage. Whether it was in the operation of his intellect, his emotions, or his will, Abraham’s point of departure was always this: what has God said? And all these years later, he continues to be the spiritual forefather of those who take bold, sacrificial steps based on the dependability of what God has said.

"Faith does not begin with what the human intellect has discovered . . . [but] with what God has revealed" (William Barclay).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

For more information, visit http://AreYouaChristian.com