Connecting God’s love to our love, John goes on to say, “God is love,” John tells, “and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16). Loving our enemies does not make us “sons of the Most High,” but it does reveal that we are. Doing good to those who hate us, blessing those who curse us, praying for those who mistreat us, expecting nothing in return, does not mean that they will love us in return, but God will reward us for it in conforming us more and more to the image of his Son, who in love laid down is life for us.
Tag Archives: Hope
He Will: Be Clean
Such is the case in our passage today, where a man “full of leprosy” approached Jesus. And this was a problem.
The First Gospel
Throughout history, man’s bias has been of his own time, a chronological snobbery, as C.S. Lewis called it, affecting how we see both history and the future. Our self-importance seems to breed a deception of self-improvement, a myth of progress leading us to think of the culmination of time as in our purview. Given the variety of modern media, it would be easy to entertain such a view, amusing ourselves with the developing events of the day with titillating speculation. Breaking news seemingly announces more clues of history’s denouement. And yet, today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fire-starter.
When Everything Sad Comes Untrue
In his mercy and by his grace, God has dealt with our sin problem: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Positionally, by God’s grace through faith in Christ we are perfectly righteous. Practically, through his Spirit we are enabled to live in obedience to him. And while in this life under the sun, we battle our sinful flesh, Christ is preparing a place for us where the inequities of this life are not true, where the righteous don’t die, where there is no folly nor sadness because sin no longer is. This is the Christian hope, that in the final consummation, we will hear from heaven “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5), and on that day everything sad comes untrue.
Deep Woes, Enduring Hope
In this, we are reminded of God’s steadfast love for his people. We rejoice that our redemption in Christ is so plentiful that it covers the sins of our past, present, and future. For, we are a people who have received the gift of God’s grace in Christ, who has redeemed us from all our iniquities, and he is the God who hears our cries, answers our prayers, sustains us moment by moment, and gives us hope, even in the depths of woe.
Take Him at His Word
Hope is one of the defining characteristics of the Christian life. It is not worldly wishful thinking but conviction that what God has promised will be fulfilled. Hope takes God at his Word. Christian hope is also future oriented. For example, in the eighth chapter of Romans, Paul explains, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Rom. 8:24-25). Although we have not yet entered the heavenly realm, we know it exists, that it awaits us. Our Lord has promised us the kingdom, given us the guarantee of his Spirit, and is preparing us for glory.
In Accord for God’s Glory
In a choir, a selfish voice creates dissonance. A submitted voice enjoys consonance. If you can hear one voice above the others, a choir sings not as one voice but a dissonant two. But when every individual submits to one another together, a choir produces the beauty of harmony in one voice. Likewise in Christ’s church, who is composed of many yet sings as one, we submit to one another resulting in harmony, living, singing forth, to the glory of One. May we as Christ’s church, as one voice, sing forth beautiful praise to the One who not only gives us life but also lives that we may glorify him forever.
Members One of Another
Modern Evangelicals have seemingly accomplished a miracle (Or, maybe it’s a magic trick?), something foreign to Scripture yet readily embraced: the churchless Christian. Emphasizing our desires over God’s design and our pleasure over pleasing him, we have relegated the cherished assembly of the Beloved into a consumer’s option. This not to say that God is forgotten. But with the reign of easy-believism, the individual is all-important, and the authority of the self stands sovereign. In his commentary on Romans, James Boice (writing in 1995) observes, “It strikes me…that today the problem is our individualism, which I would define as hyperpersonalized religion. It is the religion of ‘Jesus and me only.’”[2] Boice goes onto label this phenomenon a form of narcissism, warning, “you cannot have ‘one body in Christ’ if everyone is creating a private little a la carte religion for himself.”[3]
The Good Life
The Holy Spirit “helps us in our weakness” (8:26). The subject is the Holy Spirit, who as the “Helper” whom Christ promised and sent (John 14:16), helps us. The inspired implication is we need the help. But if “we have been justified by faith” and at “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1), and if there is “now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1), and if we are children and “heirs of God” (Rom. 8:17), what help do we really need? Should we believe as we often act, or pray the cowboy prayer, “Give us rain and a little luck, God, and we’ll do the rest”?
In This Hope
We hope then for what we do not (yet) see, which rests on the bedrock of certainty that “since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:1-2). Indeed, “those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30). From dust to glory is our destiny, a hope-filled truth to which we look with patient fortitude.[9] For, we know who promised, who delivered, and who sustains us, and he is our hope and salvation.
Planter, Pastor, Preacher 