A Case Study in Conflict

We know that the church of Corinth was a conflicted church. Paul starts his letter to them with a frank statement of their conflict. Here is what he says:

¹⁰ I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. ¹¹ My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. ¹² What I mean is this: one of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”

They were divided into factions that fought bitterly with each other, so that news of their conflicts spread all the way to Paul where he was staying in Ephesus. He had founded the Corinthian church in the first place, and now he heard that they were divided against each other. He names the divisions by the people each faction claimed to follow, but he blames all of the factions equally – even those who said they were following Christ!

Clearly, division and schism are – at least in Paul’s mind – the great denial of Christ’s death and resurrection. Paul is ready enough to talk about issues. In 1 Corinthians, he deals clearly with sexuality and marriage (chapters 5-7), Christian liberty concerning issues of the Law (chapters 8-10), and the way that Christians practice their worship, including use of spiritual gifts (chapters 12 to 14). But dealing with issues in Christian life does not justify division and schism.

We see this truth clearly in chapters 12 and 13, which deal with worship issues, and also apply the basic insight that unity in love is greater than our need to be right in the issues we argue about. Let’s look together at chapters 12 and 13.

1 Corinthians 12

Paul is discussing order in worship in general, and here he brings that conversation to the use of spiritual gifts within worship. The Corinthians evidently were fascinated with the way that some people were able to channel spirits and exercise powerful gifts – possibly a holdover from the spiritual cults they had known before their conversion. [Clearly, they were not Mennonites! We tend to look at such people with suspicion.] Paul discusses the use of tongues in chapter 14, but here he sets up the discussion by looking at the underlying unity we have as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Paul uses this unity to answer the question they seem to have had: “How do we know when someone’s spiritual gifts are really evidence of the presence of God?” He says, “I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.”

If someone tries to set Jesus aside, they know that person does not belong to God. If someone exalts Jesus as Lord, they know that person belongs to God. This is the point that I have made before – that the core of the gospel is to embrace the affirmation, “Jesus is Lord.” Our faith begins with Jesus. Our faith is built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. Without Jesus, we cannot be part of the Christian Church.

This principle applies not only in discussions about spiritual gifts, but it also applies in all of our conversations – from marriage matters to how to use our offerings. [These two are the matters Paul discusses before this section on spiritual gifts.]

You notice that the text states that all of this takes place through the work of the Holy Spirit. Different churches describe the work of the Holy Spirit in different ways. Here is how The Confession of Faith in Mennonite Perspective puts it:

The Holy Spirit calls people to repentance, convicts them of sin, and leads into the way of righteousness all those who open themselves to the working of the Spirit. Scripture urges us to yield to the Spirit, and not to resist or quench the Spirit. By water and the Spirit, we are born anew into the family of God. The Spirit dwells in each child of God, bringing us into relationship with God. Through the indwelling of the Spirit, we are made heirs together with Christ, if we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him. The Spirit teaches us, reminds us of Jesus’ word, guides us into all truth, and empowers us to speak the word of God with boldness. The Holy Spirit enables our life in Christian community, comforts us in suffering, is present with us in time of persecution, intercedes for us in our weakness, guarantees the redemption of our bodies, and assures the future redemption of creation.

The Holy Spirit is the presence of God in our lives. We come to faith through the work of the Spirit. We learn and grow as followers of Jesus through the Spirit. We learn how to live with each other through the Spirit. We learn to love one another through the Spirit. We learn how to work together as sisters and brothers in the church through the Spirit.

Therefore, Paul refers to the work of the Holy Spirit making us one body in Christ. The church is a living organism in which we all play a part – as the Holy Spirit lives in us and gives each one what the whole body needs. “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.” Note the succession of titles: … the same Spirit; … the same Lord; … the same God. The presence and work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is the very presence of God as God. Our unity, then, is the unity of the Spirit, which shows itself in the differences of the gifts given to us to serve the whole body.

Paul continues, “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.”

Different gifts – One Spirit. Diversity and difference are visible in the unity of the Spirit. Paul lists a series of gifts: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, naming the spirits, and tongues. Each of these takes a variety of forms within the church, and in the Corinthian Church they had become a source of conflict and division. Let me do some guessing, going beyond what the text tells us, but I hope consistent with the text.

• Some have a message of knowledge – They talk about the words Jesus spoke and the miracles Jesus did. They know. They call themselves “the party of Christ”.
• Some have a message of wisdom – They talk about the way that the first church dug deeply into the words and actions of Jesus. They have learned wisdom. They call themselves “the party of James”.
• Some have great faith – They are able to trust God in all kinds of situations. They call themselves “the part of Peter”.
• Some perform healings, just as Jesus did. They also are “the party of Jesus”. Those who do miracles are the same.
• There are some prophets, who speak words that God has given them. They call themselves “the party of Paul”.
• Scattered among the parties are some who speak in tongues and some who interpret tongues.

 They all have one basic problem. They are using the gifts that God’s Spirit gives to the church in order to support their own little faction, dividing the church. Paul rebukes them. He says, “These gifts were given to you to unite the church, not to divide it. You are one body, with One Spirit and One Lord!”

The Place of Love (How Love Works)

The basic point in 1 Corinthians 12 is clear: Differences and disagreements in the church are normal. They are not a problem. The fact that we have different gifts and abilities and ideas and understandings is not itself a problem – if these differences are a part of our larger unity. We are the body of Christ, and we differ from each other as the different parts of the body differ. But there remains a basic question. How do we experience the unity of the Spirit? How do we become “one body”, the body of Christ? The answer of course is through the greatest gift of all.

I have often heard 1 Corinthians 13 read at weddings. That is good, although Paul did not write it for weddings. He wrote this chapter for you and me when we are in conflict in the church. Using the passage at a wedding is good. I hope that this kind of love characterizes our marriage relationships! I encourage applying the passage to family life, but Paul is talking about the church. We are the family of God, and the Spirit gives one special gift to all of us: God’s love. Consider the qualities of love that we find in the “love chapter”. Love:

•          Is patient and kind.
•          Does not envy or boast.
•          Is not proud and honours others.
•          Does not seek its own benefit.
•          Does not get angry easily or remember past wrongs.
•          Rejoices in what is true [that is, it avoids what is not true].
•          Protects and trust the other.
•          Hopes for God’s best and perseveres when loving is not easy.
•          Never gives up.

It is a remarkable list! It is also an impossible list. I can honour others just fine, provided that I’m getting lots of honour too. I’m not proud, unless I start to feel as though people don’t care about me. I don’t envy others, at least if someone is envying me. I protect others provided they are also protecting me. I can keep my temper, so long as no one provokes me. I don’t remember past wrongs, but then I don’t remember lots of things from the past.

In short, I can do most of these as long as life is going well and I feel good about myself. That doesn’t take the Holy Spirit! A reasonably nice person will get a lot of these right on a good day. The problem comes when we find ourselves in conflict with other people, especially when the people we are supposed to love are the people we are in conflict with. How do I trust the other and hope for God’s best in their lives when we belong to two different factions?

That’s when love becomes the greatest gift that the Holy Spirit gives us. I can persevere and never give up in love only if the Holy Spirit is at work in my life. I can seek the benefit of those I disagree with only if the Holy Spirit is leading me. I can forget [really forget] the wrongs someone does to me only if the Holy Spirit clears my mind for me. [My mental computer has trouble clearing the trash folder properly!]

Humanly speaking, we require complete agreement in order to be in the unity of the Spirit, but that is not what Paul describes. Paul describes a unity based on love, which applies when we agree and when we disagree. My church of origin – the Brethren in Christ – has sometimes loved well and sometimes not. Our church historian, Morris Sider, tells a story that shows us at our best [Stories and Scenes from a Brethren in Christ Heritage].

Jacob Ginder had been Bishop of the Manheim District in Pennsylvania for many years. In his retirement and during the years of significant change in the church, he had retained his strongly conservative views on church doctrine and practice. Henry asked his father to accompany to the General Conference held at Manhattan, Kansas in 1951. Jacob declined, saying that the conference would be discussing making significant changes in church practice, and he would be distressed by what he heard. But Henry, by promising to drive to Kansas, persuaded his father to go with him. One the way home, Henry asked Jacob, “How did you like the conference?” Jacob replied, “Oh, I didn’t like what I heard, but I trust the brethren.”

The BICs, like the Mennonites have their faults, but they and we are learning and re-learning the lesson of love – to trust each other even when we disagree. Such love and trust really are possible only through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives individually and corporately. As we meet together this morning, we confess our lack of love, and we ask God for the fullness of God’s Spirit, and we worship and adore the Lord who gave his life for us on the cross. The real focus of our worship is always God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God, who alone makes us one and enables us to live together as one body with all of our unique gifts. Amen!

Steinbach Mennonite Church

10 February 2019

Texts

1 Corinthians 12: 1-14, 27-31

Concerning spiritual gifts

12 Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. ² You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to dumb idols. ³ Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.

⁴ There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. ⁵ There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. ⁶ There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

⁷ Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. ⁸ To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, ⁹ to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, ¹⁰ to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues.¹¹ All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.

Unity and diversity in the body

¹² Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³ For we were all baptised by one Spirit so as to form one body – whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. ¹⁴ And so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

1 Corinthians 12: 31b – 13:13

Love is indispensable

And yet I will show you the most excellent way.

13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The Triumph of God’s Spirit

Last week we talked about the failure of being human. Chapter 7 lays out the dilemma we face: We know what is good and we want to do what is good, but we are slaves to Sin. Even our best efforts lead to failure, so that we long for the victory that God gives through Jesus Christ.

Today we talk about that victory. Paul turns a corner here in Romans 8. Chapters 1 to 7 have laid out the problem with being human. As Ben Witherington puts it, Paul works from the general (all people have sinned) to the particular (even the Jews have fallen short of God’s glory) in chapters 1 to 3, then back from the particular (Abraham) to the general (sinful humanity) in chapters 4 to 7. He has set up the problem carefully and comprehensively; now he gives the cure: Life in Christ through the Spirit of Christ.

The Text

We walk through the text together to see what Paul is saying. Although we read Romans 8: 1 to 11, I will go through verse 17 this morning.

Verses 1 to 4: Those who are “in Christ Jesus” are free from “condemnation”. The Spirit of God sets them free from the power of “sin and death” (that is, the power of Satan). God [the Father] sent the God the Son in human form (fully human), but as the perfect one [the New Adam: see Romans 5] whose righteousness in dying on the cross sets us free from the penalty of sin and sets us free to fulfill the law of love [“Love God; and love your neighbour].

There is a huge amount of material packed into this basic thought, most of which we cannot explore. Just two comments this morning. 1) The Son sets us free from the penalty of sin. We call this atonement. We have various images drawn from the New Testament to describe how God sets us free on the cross.  Given that we are finite creatures, we cannot comprehend the mind of the Creator, so we draw on God’s self-revelation in Scripture to understand what is going on in the atonement.

One [substitutionary atonement] is that Jesus takes our place: We deserve to die, and Jesus took our death into his own so that we can live. Another is that Jesus conquers sin and death [Christus Victor]. Satan thought that he had won when Jesus died on the cross, but in the resurrection of Jesus we find that death itself has died. We are therefore free from the power of sin and death. A third is that Jesus invites us to follow him [Imitation of Christ], to take up our cross and die with him so that we can rise with him. A fourth is the simple image of sacrifice. The sacrifice [or offering] for sin, as the Jews understood it, cleansed the sinner and made him/her able to stand in God’s presence, righteous and unafraid of the Holy God. We do not think often of this category of cleansing today, but you recognize its psychological truth in life. I think of Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play, after she and her husband have murdered their king, Duncan. She comes on stage miming the action of washing her hands and talking about the spot of blood that she can’t get off her hands. She knows that she and Macbeth had the power to kill Duncan, but cries out, “Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.” Our sin leaves us feeling dirty and ashamed, and we need cleansing from our slavery to sin.

All four of these are present in verses 1 to 17, and we do not need to choose between them. I recommend that you use the image that speaks most clearly to you. There are other “theories of atonement” besides these, but we don’t need to comprehend the process fully. Indeed, we cannot. In my mission studies I had a professor from Kenya (Timothy Kiogora) who once said to us, “You Americans try too hard. You think you have to understand mystery. Sometimes you need to stand under mystery.” This passage is, I believe, one of those times.

Verses 5 to 8:  There are two realms. The realm of the flesh is the place where people do what they want according to the desires of this world. [Note that “flesh” here means self-willed; it is not a statement about physical matter.] The realm of the Spirit is the place where people live according to God’s Law and desires. Those who live in the realm of the flesh do what they want, and therefore they cannot please God. They will die, because they have decided to live for themselves and not to live for God.

“They will die.” Everyone will die physically, but death in these verses refers to eternity without God. If you want to live with God here on earth and in the eternity that follows, you need “the mind governed by the Spirit.”

Verses 9-11: When you give yourselves to God, the Spirit of God [that is, the Spirit of Christ] lives in you. Christ in you then gives you the life and ways of Christ. You begin to walk the way that God wants everyone to walk.

We do not need to think of what some call “sinless perfection”. At the end of the next section in verse 30 Paul lays out a progression from being predestined to being called to being justified to being glorified. The point these is that “sinless perfection” [being glorified] comes when we die and are made perfect in God’s presence.

I remember a long time BIC minister who preached sinless perfection on the basis of such passages as Romans 8. He was a pastor in Pennsylvania and a noted camp meeting preacher. Then he went to Zimbabwe and taught in a Bible School there for 10 years, when he was in his mid-50s. When he returned to Pennsylvania he said, “The people in the Bible School in Zimbabwe taught me that sinless perfection is not true.” And he went around to the churches he had taught before, reminding people that we live with the reality of the realm of the flesh until we die.

But we do not need to feel afraid or trapped by “the flesh”. The triumph of the Spirit is real. Although we may fall into sin from time to time, we have God’s Spirit with us to help us stand up and seek and receive forgiveness. I have been learning this lesson through an inner voice that spoke to me last year when I was about to indulge in a habit God wanted me to break. The voice said, “I don’t want that.” I discovered that, therefore, neither did I. God’s Spirit gives us freedom in areas of our lives we may have never expected.

If you ask me how I reached that point, I can’t tell you. But I have prayed each day for many years something like this: “Lord, teach me to know you better, to love you more deeply, and to serve you more fully.” We enter a relationship with Jesus in which the Spirit of Christ takes control.

Verses 12 to 17: So we live by the Spirit, who leads us into an intimate relationship with God, so close that we can cry out to God, “Abba Father!” Walking closely with Jesus, we find that we are God’s children, we are God’s heirs, and we share in the sufferings and glory of Christ.

What Does This All Mean?

I have a friend who no longer believes in God. When we have talked about what he believes and what I believe, he has said to me, “The trouble is, I don’t know what you mean by ‘God.’ The word doesn’t mean anything to me.” This is a common problem as we try to express what we believe as Christians. People listening to us wonder what we mean. This problem is especially acute in a letter such as Romans, in which Paul speaks as a Christian teacher to Christians about their common faith. He is not trying to speak to those outside the faith.

What then do we mean when we say that God gives us victory as we live in the Spirit? I must admit that the answer is not obvious to me. To some extent I can only say, “Come and see!” Give it a try and see what is there. Jesus told us that God is Spirit, and those who worship God worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4). I can add also, God is a person – not a person with a body, but a person who relates to us. If I tell you about Lois, you may wonder who she is. But when you meet her you find out. That’s the idea with God. You can’t explain God so much as you have to meet God.

I think that is what is going on in Romans 7 and 8. The Jews were trying to become part of the realm of the Spirit by keeping the Law of Moses. They failed. Paul suggests a different way that does not contradict the Law, but goes around it in order to fulfill it. The point of the Law is to become people who love God and love each other, but the Law cannot produce such love. Instead, Paul tells us that the Spirit of Christ living in us makes us people who fulfill the Law, that is, people who love God and love each other completely.

The beginning essential step is that we become people in whom the Spirit of Christ lives. How does that happen? This is like the question, how does the atonement happen? All I can do is give you images that together try to show the picture of Christ living in us. If you want to know what that means, I can only invite you to come to God and ask for God’s Spirit within you.

Thinking It Through

This is a process that begins with conversion and continues throughout our lives. I have spoken before about my encounter with darkness when I was 58 years old. The healing of my darkness came through a dream in the night and a voice in the morning. God came to me in my darkness and told me what to do. If you want me to tell you how this happened, I can’t. I can only tell you that it did. In my last dream I remember floating in the sea, and thinking, “It’s all right. This is the sea of God’s love. Even if it gets stormy, I’m floating in the sea of God’s love.”

I have not achieved perfection in loving God or loving others as God’s Spirit lives in me, but I’m on the way, and I know that God is with me and in me. Who is God? I can tell you about God, but I can’t really answer your question. I can only invite you to join me in the way.

I think of another person’s experience. Don Jacobs was a Mennonite missionary in Tanzania. He came to faith in Pennsylvania, joined the Mennonite church there, and married a Swiss Mennonite from Lancaster County. They went to Tanzania in 1954, where they came in contact with something called “The East African Revival.” Missionaries and African Christians experienced the inbreaking of God’s Spirit in wonderful ways. They became known as the Balakole, “the saved ones”. At first Don resisted their influence, figuring that he was already a Christian, and that was good enough. Then he met Mugimba.

Here’s how he describes what happened through this dear Ugandan brother:

My relationship with Eliezer Mugimba opened a new chapter in my spiritual journey. He was tall, tender, and kind, like a caring family member. He opened his heart to me, encouraging me to come out of my spiritual shell and be willing to walk in light with another person. His love overwhelmed me, and at last, my reserve broken, I poured out all my frustrations and fear, my cynicism and critical spirit and a host of other sins that I was pampering in my life. The dam broke. In an instant my resistance to the revival collapsed, and I knew that I had found a truly human context in which to learn of Jesus.

Many years later, I visited Mugimba, then an old man, almost blind, in his village in Uganda. As we reviewed those early days, he said, “When you came to Katoke, the Holy Spirit said, ‘That young American is your mission field!’” That explained it all. I was sent to the mission field, not knowing that I was that “field.” I surely was. God turns things upside down often.

Jacobs describes life with others who had experienced revival as a relationship within which people regularly reviewed their lives and sought forgiveness for the normal clashes among those who live and work together. When he visited another group of missionaries who were in conflict, he described the distress he felt that they could not bring their conflict into the open and seek the presence of God’s Spirit to heal their conflict.

But how does this happen? How do we “receive God’s Spirit”? The images of atonement I mentioned earlier are one clue.

·         The image of substitution lets us know that this is something God does for us by taking the penalty for our sin on the cross. This substitution sets us free to live “in Christ” as slaves of righteousness.

·         The image of victory lets us know that God breaks the power of sin on the cross, absorbing sin’s work into himself and defeating it in the resurrection. This victory sets us free to live in Christ as servants of righteousness.

·         The image of imitation lets us know that we have a part to play. We imitate Christ—loving God fully and loving each other without reserve, acting as servants of righteousness. As we put our hands to the tool and start to do our work, God takes our hands and guides them to do what we cannot do. God fills us with the Spirit of Christ to live God’s way.

·         The image of sacrifice, cleansing our sinfulness, lets us know that we are remade in God’s likeness and as God’s representatives [“images of God”—“in God’s image”]. As God makes us the way we were meant to be, we are free to live in Christ and to serve righteousness.

You see that this process combines our choice to follow God [“whoever would be my disciple must take up their cross and follow me”] and God’s work in us. In ourselves we cannot love with God’s love, and we cannot live as God’s people. God must do the work. But equally God respects our choice to serve Christ or to serve ourselves.

Another clue: in Don Jacobs personal story, you note the place of community. We receive God’s Spirit most easily and most fully when we are searching with our brothers and sisters. When I was at Asbury Seminary, I heard stories about the Asbury Revival that had come to first to the college campus and then to the seminary in 1970. Both of the elements I have noted above were present: God entered people’s lives doing what they could not themselves do; and people were seeking for God’s presence. Paul says it like this in Philippians: “Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to do his good will.”

Conclusion

You see that I cannot really answer the question: How does this happen. I can only echo my Kenyan friend: “We are too eager to understand mystery. Sometimes you have to stand under God’s mystery.” What I can tell you is this: If you desire God’s Spirit in your life and continue to search for the Spirit of Christ, God will give you the Spirit of Christ. Christ will live in you, “the hope of glory.”

How? All I can say is, “Come and see that the Lord is good.” If you ask me, “How can I meet your friend?” all I can do is introduce you to my friend. Meeting my friend is up to you and my friend. The same is true of meeting God and receiving the Spirit of Christ. Paul is clear: The Spirit of Christ living within each of us is the path for every Christian, not a special gift for a few holy rollers. We meet Christ, and we live with Christ, and Christ lives in us, setting us free from the power of sin to fulfill the goal of law, which is to love God fully and to love each other with God’s love. Sin is power that seeks to destroy us; Christ is the Person who sets us free.

Grace Bible Church

16 July 2017

Text: Romans 8:1-17

Life through the Spirit

8 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, ² because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. ³ For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

⁵ Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. ⁶ The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷ The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. ⁸ Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.

⁹ You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. ¹⁰ But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. ¹¹ And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

¹² Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation – but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. ¹³ For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

¹⁴ For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. ¹⁵ The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ ¹⁶ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. ¹⁷ Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Power for the Powerless

Introduction

Paul’s closing words in 2 Timothy stand like a beacon at the end of his life: “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”

How did Paul reach the point where he could speak with such confidence? The language of racing and fighting successfully suggests a life full of power and success. Before we look more at Paul’s closing words, we turn to the passage from Joel, which gives something that was understood to be basic to the life of Christians in the first church in the book of Acts.

Joel 2:23-32

You know of course that these words are spoken in Acts 2, as describing the followers of Jesus at the Day of Pentecost. But hear them first in their own time and context. The precise dating of Joel’s prophecies is unclear. We read that the prophecies come from Joel: “The word of the Lord that came to Joel son of Pethuel.” And that’s it. No direct statement of when or who was king. The three chapters refer to Judah and Jerusalem, so prophecies spoken first in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. I am assuming that the prophecies were spoken roughly in the middle of Judah’s history separate from Israel, and that the crises that faced the people were the sort of problems that they faced throughout their history—danger from their neighbours, such as Egypt to the south and Syria to the north; and danger from within through religious and political corruption.

God speaks to them through Joel. They are faced with potential destruction—the locusts of chapters 1 and 2. In some way that is not obvious to us, God works through the destruction and against the destroyers. When destruction comes, it proves to be the catalyst for renewal—“rend your hearts and not your garments (2:13)—which leads to God’s Spirit poured out on all people. The presence of the Spirit is the prelude to judgment on the enemies of “Judah and Jerusalem” and the restoration of “Judah and Jerusalem”.

As he describes the blessing of God’s Spirit and the restoration of Judah, Joel uses terms such as “in that day”, “after this”, and “then”—describing a time of God’s blessings that follows God’s judgment. This time has come to refer generally to the eschaton, the end of days when God restores creation and brings in the New Heavens and the New Earth.

So we come to the verses in our text:

23-27: After the judgment, God will restore the people’s fortunes and make God’s person and name central to life in Israel.

28-29: This restoration leads to the full presence of God’s Spirit in all people—old and young, men and women, on all people who serve the Lord.

30-31: This presence of the Spirit will be accompanied by miracles and signs and wonders, bringing in “the great and dreadful day of the Lord.”

32: Then God will save all those who call on God.

God promises Judah God’s Spirit for the last days. The way that this passage is used in Acts 2 builds on the way that Jesus transformed the Jews’ expectation of the Messiah. The Jews expected a political Messiah who would overthrow Rome and lead them to God’s reign through Israel over the whole world. Jesus gave them a dying and rising Messiah. Jesus taught them that God’s reign was within each person and within the new community of the church. Now at Pentecost Peter uses Joel’s words to say that the last days had come. They had entered the time when God reigns on the earth—but that time looked quite different from what they expected.

We also live in the time between the beginning of God’s reign and its coming in fullness. God’s reign began in the church through God’s Spirit available to all people at Pentecost, and God’s reign comes fully in the return of Jesus. We live in this already-not yet time, and we seek to live with the power of God’s Spirit in a world that is often either unaware of God’s reign or actively opposed to it. We need God’s power to survive. A few good miracles and manifestations of the Spirit would encourage us a great deal.

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18

Paul also lived in the already-not yet. He could remember when they all thought that Jesus would return really soon—in a few years at most. But the years went by, and by the time he writes in 2 Timothy he is probably about 60 or a little older, near the end of his life. We have two paragraphs from his letter for our text:

6-8: Paul uses the image of a war (I have fought the good fight) and a race (I have finished the course) to say that he has lived faithful to God and to the gospel of God. He has, in Eugene Peterson’s phrase, practised “a long obedience in the same direction.” Now as he waits for his death, he knows that God will receive him into the fullness of God’s reign, which waits for all those who are faithful.

16-18: Then Paul looks towards the immediate threat. I wonder if he was going to be on trial again and thought that this trial would end with his death. If so, he says, he will die victorious through the grace and strength of Christ’s presence.

Synthesis

So back to the question: How could Paul speak with such confidence at the end of his life? Joel promised God’s Spirit for the last days— the already-not yet of God’s Reign. How did Paul live so fully with God’s Spirit? How can we emulate Paul and also live filled with God’s Spirit. For each of us, the last day comes as we approach the end of our own lives. God’s Spirit gives us supernatural power to live in and through situations beyond our control. How can we know this and live fully in the Spirit and power of God?

A Thought from Joel

One might think that Joel describes an unusual threat to Judah’s existence, but in fact this kind of language permeates the prophets and the lives of Israel and Judah. I suggest that the possibility of destruction was Judah’s normal state. Situated on the crossroads of the Middle East, between competing empires from the south and from the north, they lived in many periods of peace, but danger was never far away.

Some countries have been protected from invasion by geographic features—for example, England has been protected by the Sea. Other countries have lived under constant competition from neighbouring empires—such as the way that the Korean peninsula has faced pressure from Japan and China throughout its history. It’s a bit like the way that one plays the game of Risk: Asia and Europe are bad centres to build from in the pursuit of world domination; Australia and South America are much better. The Middle East was like Asia and Europe in Risk—a road for invading armies to march through.

[Disclaimer: This description is my non-specialist impression. If Old Testament scholars tell you I have it all wrong, believe them.]

Life today is also full of danger. We look back to the 19^th Century as a time of peace, but it was also a time of empire-building, which was not peaceful to those places brought into the European empires. We may think that the 20^th Century was relatively peaceful, but it saw two world wars, and several other wars (such as in Korea and in Vietnam) that belie any sense that it was really a time of peace. In the first 16 years of the 21^st Century we have seen war in the Middle East and conflicts in various other parts of the world. Violence and conflict are more normal than we might think.

We can add to the dangers of the world arena the stress of daily life. Although we are technologically far more advanced than 100 years ago, we face an epidemic of family problems and personal struggles. Clearly technological progress does not bring us to a state of complete personal and public peace. The number of people looking for ways to die is evidence of the struggle to live that surrounds us.

If the description of impending disaster in Joel is more or less normal, we can guess that the ordinary dangers of life are our path to God’s full presence. God uses the locusts to purge Judah before God can restore Judah. God promises us also that the Holy Spirit will be poured out on us as we face the dangers of life today.

But How?

Sometimes we turn this question of how we receive God’s blessing around. We start asking: How can I get this blessing? How can I gain God’s power? That’s the wrong question—like Simon in Acts 8, who asked Peter to give him the power of the Holy Spirit. When we start asking for power because we want to be powerful, we find that the locusts are waiting for us.

I said earlier that a few good miracles and manifestations of the Spirit would encourage us a great deal. The fact is that we do see manifestations of God’s Spirit. I have not seen many wonders, but I have seen enough to know they are real and that God is at work in our world. I remember when my wife’s parents called us in Zimbabwe, September 1990, to tell us that Dad was dying of cancer. We went home in December and were able to have three months that we could visit Mom and Dad regularly. One day we were talking with my sister, and she told us how in September she had a sense that something in our lives was very wrong and we needed help. So she started praying. It was just at the time that we got the call from Mom and Dad. God gave comfort and strength to deal with the locust of death.

I remember a friend of mine 20 years ago now who sought release from the oppression of an evil spirit. I saw him set free, and six months later he testified that he had found continued freedom of a sort he had never known: That experience was real! Sometimes I think that God showed me God’s power for my friend’s benefit and for my encouragement.

A side note: As the story of Simon in Acts 8 and of the story of the seven sons of Sceva in Acts 19 make the point that we dare not try to take this power for ourselves. Emmanuel Milingo was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Lusaka in the 1970s. He had an extensive healing ministry. Once he was asked how to get the power to heal and cast out demons. He said that you should never seek such power. “Unless the Holy Spirit compels you to do this so that you cannot resist, you should not try it. If you do, the spirits will eat you alive.” [The quote a paraphrase from memory, from The World In Between.]

I could go on, but the theme would be the same: I have seen God’s power at work in various times and places, but God’s Spirit has never been ours to control. God acts as God chooses, and we receive God’s power for living in a dangerous world.

The question, however, will not go away: How? Consider Paul’s example. He began his life pursuing God through the Law. He was a Pharisee, which means that he was “set apart” for the Torah, the Law of God. When Jesus came to him on the Damascus Road, he found a new source of life, and a new pursuit for his life. In Romans 1 Paul says that he is “set apart” for the gospel. That is, where he used to be a Pharisee for the law, he is now a Pharisee for the gospel of God. That is why in Philippians 3 he can still call himself a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He never stopped pursuing God; only the means changed. He allowed Jesus to transform from the inside out through the gospel of grace. Now he pursued God through the gospel of God’s grace.

So when Paul says he has fought the fight and finished the race, he means that he has been faithful to this lifelong pursuit of God. In Philippians 3: 12-14 he puts it this way: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.”

How do we receive God’s power? By repentance: “Rend your hearts and not your garments.” And by living for God, pursuing God, keeping God in Christ at the centre of all that we think and say and do. I have been doing research on Brethren in Christ World Missions, reading the reports sent home by missionaries in my church 100 years ago. There are many things about these letters that they sent regularly to our church periodical, The Evangelical Visitor. Some are disturbing, such as the relentless reminder of the extent of a casual racism in the conversation of that time. They refer, for example, to the boys that they work with—but those boys were full grown adult men, worthy of the same respect as any other man. Clearly the missionaries loved the people they worked with, but equally clearly they were part of the colonial structure and shared the assumptions of the colonial powers.

At the same time I observe the difficulties and hardships that they took for granted. They walked many miles through the bush to visit the people. They accepted the risk of dying from tropical diseases that were not well understood. At times they put their own lives on the line to save the people they had come to serve. Like us, they were people bound up with the problems and blindness of their time. Like us, they became conduits of God’s power bringing new life when the locusts pass through.

Twelve years ago, veteran CBC journalist Brian Stewart gave the convocation address at Knox College, Toronto. He talked about how he had assumed that the church, so weak and ineffectual, would soon disappear. He told how, over a 40-year career in reporting, he came to realize that the church was filled with an amazing power. He gave several examples, and then said these words:

I rather regret that the term muscular Christianity has gone out of use, because a lot of the Christianity I’ve seen is very hard muscular work, where there’s lots of sweat and dirty hands. The spirit of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is alive. Many of us in news crews noticed something else hard to put into words. So often after a day in the field filming volunteers at work, we’d be sitting back over our nightly drink and one of us would say something like: “Strange people those, know what I mean? There’s just something different about them. They’ve got something that we don’t.” I believe that a form of human happiness emerges when based on a flourishing life in which spirit and intellect are used to the full, for the purpose of the good of all. Yes, they seemed to be “flourishing.” C.S. Lewis wrote of Christianity producing “a good infection.” Christian work on the front lines infects those around them, even those who are not Christian, with a sense of Christ’s deep mystery and power. I've felt it. It changes the world. Still.

A good infection of power for the powerless—not just for those who go overseas or engage in extraordinary work, but for all those who follow Christ and keep their eyes on him to the end of their lives. Then they, and we, can say, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day – and not only to me, but also to all who long for his appearing.”

Grace Bible Church

23 October 2016

Clothed with Power from on High

Introduction

My original title was “The Christians’ New Clothes”, which I changed to “Clothed With Power From On High”. I thought of the first title because of a practice I learned about some years ago. Among the Nisga’a, Gitsan, and Tsimshian nations there is a cleansing ritual when someone has sinned against his/her family and the community. For example, if a man commits adultery and later wants to be fully reintegrated into the community, he undergoes this cleansing ritual. (Described for me at a NAIITS conference at , September 2004, by Joe, a native of the Tsimshian First Nation living among the Gitsan people.) Here is the ritual:

• Confession to elder in the family and to the chief of the tribe – public ceremony in which his close relatives circle him – conversation with the aunties and uncles who tell him what he did while his old clothes are taken off – a new set of clothes, purchased by the family put on him – accepted back into the community as a new person – the offence may never be referred to again – ceremony paid for by the family – all present throw money into a basket to help out with the ceremony.

I describe this ritual to set the stage for our texts. We are people who have confessed our rebellion and God wants to dress us with new clothes: power from on high.

Ascension Sunday serves as the first church’s introduction to the Holy Spirit. Because Jesus stopped appearing to the disciples after his resurrection—and we call this stopping the ascension—the Holy Spirit came to continue his presence with the church. Now it’s a curious thing that the ascension of Jesus is recorded only in Luke’s writing. I don’t know why Matthew and John do not refer to it. Mark ends his story with the resurrection itself, but Matthew and John could have referred to it, and don’t. The longer ending of Mark refers to it, but this is Luke’s story, so this morning we heard passages from Luke 24 and Acts 1.

In these two chapters I observe three basic ideas:

1. Walk: Jesus walked through the Scriptures with the disciples. We study the Bible together.

2. Wait: Jesus told the disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit. We wait for God’s presence together.

3. Witness: Jesus told the disciples that the Spirit would make them witnesses. We witness to God’s Spirit together.

These three themes together describe who we are when we are “clothed with power from on high.”

Walk Through the Bible

On the road to Emmaus (Luke 24: 13 to 35), we read: “Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” As Jesus walked with the two disciples, he walked them through their Scriptures—our Old Testament. In Luke 24: 44-45 we read: “He said to them, ‘This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’ Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.” In Acts 1 Luke covers the same time period. Observe the action there. Verse 3 reads: “He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.” We can take it that this instruction was expanding their understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures.

The disciples knew their Scriptures well, but they had not thought through what it meant for Jesus to be the Messiah. After the resurrection, Jesus took them back through their Scriptures, rereading the Hebrew Bible with this new information—that the whole book was fulfilled in him. Paul went through a similar process when he was converted. In Galatians 1 Paul says,

¹¹ I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. ¹² I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. ¹³ For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. ¹⁴ I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. ¹⁵ But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased ¹⁶ to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being. ¹⁷ I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus.

¹⁸ Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. ¹⁹ I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. ²⁰ I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.

The highlighted section gives a period of three years during which Paul was doing something. Arabia (verse 17) probably means what we call Saudi Arabia—desert. What was Paul doing for these three years, a part of it in the desert? I think he was re-evaluating his life. He had defended the Hebrew Scriptures and traditions against all comers, but now he had to re-interpret them. He fought against Jesus and the disciples because he thought they blasphemed against God, but once he accepted Jesus as divine, he had to find out how the Hebrew Scriptures foretold him. In short, he was doing what the disciples were doing with Jesus in Luke 24 and Acts 1. Study the Scriptures to find Jesus and know Jesus better. Walk through the Bible with God and with each other.

Wait for the Spirit

In both Luke 24 and Acts 1 Jesus tells the disciples to wait for the promised Holy Spirit.

Luke 24: 49, “I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” The promise of course is the Holy Spirit. The city is Jerusalem. The  command is, “Wait in the city.”

Acts 1: 4 and 5, “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Again, the gift is the Spirit. The city is Jerusalem. The command is, “Wait for the gift.”

Jesus told them to wait in Jerusalem. Jerusalem as the city of God represents the place where we meet God. As we walk through the Bible together, we wait in God’s presence for God’s Spirit. We don’t read in order to go out and do something dramatic. We don’t worship here together on Sundays and meet at other times in order to do something dramatic. We read and sing and pray and worship is how we wait for God’s Spirit.

Sometimes people try to turn this waiting for the Spirit into a system—whether the Keswick view of the higher life or a more extreme view of perfectionism as developed in some Wesleyan circles. Hear me carefully, you cannot put the Holy Spirit into a box and control the moving of the Spirit. Rather we wait for the Spirit to move, and then we follow. An old hymn says it:

Hover o’er me, Holy Spirit, Bathe my trembling heart and brow;

Fill me with Thy hallowed presence, Come, O come and fill me now.

Refrain

Fill me now, fill me now, Jesus, come and fill me now;

Fill me with Thy hallowed presence, Come, O come, and fill me now.

I am weakness, full of weakness, At Thy sacred feet I bow;

Blest, divine, eternal Spirit, Fill with power and fill me now.

Refrain

It’s an old campground hymn, and easily becomes emotional and sentimental, but the idea is right. When we focus on action and results, rather than waiting in God’s presence for God’s Spirit, we lose the power of resurrection joy, which God wants to give to us. Instead, waiting and doing go together. We wait for God while we do the work of each day. Waiting is the condition of our lives, the space within which we anticipate God’s renewed coming into our lives repeatedly.

Witness!

The disciples misunderstood the point of waiting for the Spirit. They immediately jumped back into ideas that Jesus had worked so hard for three years to remove. They thought the gift of the Spirit meant that now the kingdom would come in power and Jesus would reign with them forever. Jesus rebuked them—again—and gave them the real purpose of waiting for the Spirit: Witness!

Think of what a witness is. Imagine that as one of you was walking up to the church today you saw an accident. Two cars driving down Oakwood got too close when passing so that they hit each other. It looks like a pretty bad accident.  Imagine that I was sitting in the office going over my sermon to be ready to preach. You come in to the office and tell me what happened and then call the ambulance and the police. When the police come, who will they want to talk to? They might ask me, “What happened?” I reply, “So-and-so came in and told me that two cars hit each other.” Immediately they want to talk to the person who saw the accident. I am not a witness. I only heard about it.

That’s what’s going on here. The disciples were witnesses to Jesus’ earthly life, as well as to his death and resurrection, but God wanted something more. God wanted to make them witnesses to the continued presence of Jesus through the Holy Spirit after Jesus ascended into heaven. They could not witness to this reality until they experienced it. That is why they had to wait in Jerusalem for the Spirit. Only then could they say, “We have something to tell you!” In chapter 2, that is exactly what happened.

Is any of this for us?

A fair question asks if any of this applies to us, or if this just tells what happened to the first disciples. This is where Ephesians 1 comes in. here the text again:

¹⁵ For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, ¹⁶ I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. ¹⁷ I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. ¹⁸ I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, ¹⁹ and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength ²⁰ he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, ²¹ far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. ²² And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, ²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Paul wants the Ephesians to be filled with the Spirit, just like the first church. Paul himself did not see Jesus in his earthly life. He came on the scene just after the resurrection, and met Jesus on the road to Damascus. If walk—wait—witness applied only to the first disciples, then it did not apply to Paul. But clearly Paul sees this response to Jesus’ resurrection to include him, and in Ephesians 1 he applies the same filling of the Spirit to the new Christians in Ephesus. Is this pattern for us? Short answer: You bet it is!

Clothed With Power from On High

When we walk in the Scriptures together, when we wait in God’s presence together, we become God’s witnesses together, “clothed with power from on high.” Different theologians have used a similar set of terms to say what we would look like. John Stott has a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, which he refers to as God’s way for the counter-culture of the church. Larry Miller (of MWC) refers to the church as the microsociety in the macrosociety, showing what God’s reign looks like. Michael Goheen (who used to be theologian at Trinity Western) calls the church a contrast society that lives in contrast with the world around us.

You see, Jesus is the incarnation of God. Jesus shows us what God looks like in human flesh. The church is the incarnation of God’s reign, as in Ephesians 1:22-23, where we are called “the body of Christ.” Our job is to show the world what God’s reign look like in human flesh. When we are clothed with power from on High, when we are filled with the Spirit, we become God’s people, making God’s reign visible in our lives.

I think of the church that I come from, the Brethren in Christ. In Ontario we were called Tunkers (from the practice of baptizing by trine immersion), or sometimes just “plain people.” I read somewhere about the attitude of their neighbours in the Niagara Peninsula. Someone was talking to the customs and immigration official at Niagara Falls about the Tunkers, and the customs officials said something like, “Oh we never worry about the plain people. Every year at their Love Feast, they come to make right anything they brought over the border in the previous year.”

What happened was this. Someone might bring something in from New York State without declaring it properly, but every year at Love Feast the brothers and sisters examined their consciences. Then they went to the customs officials to pay duty on everything they might not have declared. Their behaviour might cause a certain amount of laughter among more sophisticated folk, but they were clothed with God’s Holy Spirit, and they knew what God wanted them to do.

That’s what the first church was like too. Acts 1 to 4 tell us that they cared for all their poor people, because they were “clothed with power from on high.” A famous quote from Julian, a Roman ruler from the fourth century states: “These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them into their agapae, they attract them, as children are attracted, with cakes.” After warning us not to idealize the first Christians, Stephen Neill describes them like this:

In those days to be a Christian meant something. Doubtless among the pagans there were many who lived upright and even noble lives. Yet all our evidence goes to show that in that decaying world sexual laxity had gone almost to the limits of the possible, and that slavery had brought with it the inevitable accompaniments of cruelty and the cheapening of the value of human life. Christians were taught to regard their bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit. The Church did not attempt to forbid or abolish slavery; it drew the sting of it by reminding masters and slaves alike that they had a common Master...and that they were brothers in the faith. (A History of Christian Missions, page 41.)

This was the period in which Christianity conquered the Roman world through love. That conquest led to major problems, most notably the way that true Christian faith became a political matter rather than a relationship with God. But it shows also how thoroughly the church can influence our world—this counter-cultural microsociety living in contrast with the world around us. Like the first disciples, we walk with each other in God’s Written Word, we wait with each other in God’s presence, and we witness the reality of God’s reign in our lives. We are clothed with power from on high.

8 May 2016: Ascension Sunday

Grace Bible Church

Texts: Acts 1:1-11, Ephesians 1:15-23, Luke 24:44-53