To those whom he called “friends,” Jesus warned, “do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:4-5). Of course, they were, like we are too, friends prone to fear, fear that is often unfounded, fearing wrong things and wrong ones, rather than the One. And while Jesus pointed them to God’s providential care of creation and our image-bearing place in it, the temptation to fear is a powerful one, especially the fear of others, what they will think of us, what they will say about us, what they will do to us.
Tag Archives: Forgiven
Who Made You Judge?
If there is an aphorism derived from Scripture best known and oft quoted in our day, surely it is, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”[2] Its use is typically meant to refute moral judgment on a particular sin, and its effect is typically the equivalent of “Mind your own business.” The source of the expression is our passage today, as well as Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. And while I am all for encouraging quotes of Jesus in our culture, I’m not for taking Scripture out of context, for whatever reason. As we will see in our passage today, Jesus was no more dismissing sin than encouraging it, but he was confronting it, a sin that often hides comfortably in the church.
Confessions of a Forgiven Sinner
And in trusting the Lord we become “like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruits in its season, and its leaf does not wither” (Ps. 1:3), but we are not a lone tree but one of a healthy forest, a fellowship with others who also trust in the Lord, growing together in the Lord’s provision. We come together weekly on the Lord’s Day to worship our Triune God through his means of grace. We assemble not yet as the church triumphant but the church militant, confessing our sins to one another and praying for one another (Jas. 5:16), but also rejoicing in the forgiveness and fellowship with enjoy, with songs of deliverance. The Lord is indeed faithful and just to forgive us, and cleanse us, and protect us, and hide us, and preserve us, and surround us with other forgiven sinners that we may be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, and sing for joy to the Lord.
Footsteps of the Faith
Like Abraham, there is nothing in us or anything that we have done that would persuade God to bestow his saving grace upon us, but he has. It is only by his grace through faith in Christ that “we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1). And as God’s children, the life we live in the here and now we live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us (Gal. 2:20). As sojourners and exiles we are faithful to preach this good news to ourselves and share it with others near and far, not living as those who have no hope, knowing like Abraham that by faith “our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20). Though “here we have no lasting city,” by faith “we seek the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14).
Planter, Pastor, Preacher 