He Made Us Kings, Priests to God

 August 22 2021

Matthew 28:16-20

         As many of you are aware, I began my calling to ministry working with the youth of the church and I continued in that work for about twenty years. I found at the age of forty that the youth events that were called overnighters had began to lose their appeal. There was something about a group of teenagers hyped up at three in the morning that was very vexing to my soul, shall we say.Yet I’m still a youth worker at heart and I have a lot of great memories. This past week I was thinking about some of the ice breakers I used to use especially during the first few times of our youth meetings. There was this one game where you separated the group into two rows facing each other and then you would begin to ask questions where they had to choose between two different kinds of things, if they liked the first item they would move to one row and if they liked the second thing then they would move to the second row. So, I would ask the question are you a person who likes Fords or do you only drive Chevys; if they liked Fords they would move to the first row and if they like Chevys they would go to the second row. Or I would ask are you a Pepsi drinker or is it only Coke that’s allowed to touch your lips. Or perhaps they would have to decide if they preferred if they liked M &M’s or was it Reeses Pieces that was their favorite. The whole point of the game was to show that who we are is defined a lot by our preferences, what a person likes or dislikes. Our preferences are a good way to get to know something about people we might not know, a way to start up a conversation like talking about the superior qualities of M &M’s for example.

         Now, what brought this game to mind is that this weeks article of faith which we are going to cover in our summer series, called Confident, is baptism. It seems that when it comes to baptism, church goers begin to line up on in two separate rows, like their playing that youth group game. Are you an infant baptism kind of person or do you go all in for believers baptism? Go ahead, line up. What is kind of mind-blowing is that the Church of the Nazarene does not make that distinction but rather says its whatever works for you. Isn’t that an amazing idea? If you don’t believe me listen to what is written in the Church of the Nazarene’s twelfth article of faith. Baptism: We believe that Christian baptism, commanded by our Lord, is a sacrament signifying acceptance of the benefits of the atonement of Jesus Christ, to be administered to believers and declarative of their faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior, and full purpose of obedience in holiness and righteousness.

         Baptism being a symbol of the new covenant, young children may be baptized, upon request of parents or guardians who shall give assurance for them of necessary Christian training.

         Baptism may be administered by sprinkling, pouring, or immersion, according to the choice of the applicant.

         Well, there you have it, baptism is for believers and it is also for young children. The reason for such curious inclusion of seemingly opposites is that the Church of the Nazarene was formed out of a bunch of little churches who came from vastly different traditions. The Methodist tradition stuck pretty close to their roots which went back to the Anglican Church because the founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, was a priest in that Church. They held pretty closely to Catholic traditions so Wesley quite understandably also stuck pretty closely to the baptism of infants.  Those in the Methodist movement that held fast to Wesley’s belief of entire sanctification, that one could be set free from the power of original sin, were joined in that conviction by others who were of the tradition of believers baptism where only those who could make a confession of faith could be baptized. So, here were two groups with two very different traditions and beliefs coming together to form something new and how would they be able to make this work? The way they made their unification work is that they made this understanding of entire sanctification the most important part of their belief, everything else, including how one felt about baptism, would be a secondary concern. They firmly held to what we read in the twelfth chapter of the book of Hebrews, that they were to strive after holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

         So, we are left wondering just how is it that we can hold these two very different ways of thinking about baptism together, both being just as acceptable to the other? Perhaps the best way to proceed is to remember that baptism is a sacrament that signifies acceptance of the benefits of the atonement won for us by Jesus Christ. A sacrament as its name implies is a holy event, a sacred moment, which points to something else much like a finger pointing at a far away object. To put emphasis on the finger, the method of how we baptize, means that we lose sight of what it is that that finger is pointing to which is the holiness Christ has made possible. When we understand this then we can also understand why the baptism Christ commanded is different from the baptism of John. This difference is pointed out in the nineteenth chapter of the book of Acts where Paul encountered some disciples who had only been baptized with the baptism of John. The baptism of John, Paul explains, was the baptism of repentance. This, as Paul well knew, was not the Gospel  because the Gospel is not about people turning their lives around doing all they can to be righteous before God. No, the Good News is Jesus, the very Son of God has entered into our hopeless estate, taking on our flesh, our life situation, and through his baptism of water and the Spirit in the Jordan, through his baptism of blood on the Cross, Jesus has made all things new. Jesus, having joined himself to humanity, put to death sin in the flesh so that upon his being raised from the dead all might experience resurrection life, a life whose source is the Holy Spirit. This life whose center is found  in the eternal life of God is the gift which is not only ours now but is our reward at the end of the age, our life in glory. It is this resurrection life empowered by the God of glory that these disciples that Paul had found were missing out on by being baptized in the baptism of John.

         So, we now can understand that what the sacrament of baptism is not, it is not the baptism of John. What baptism is is a commandment of Jesus as we heard in our scripture for today. As they were going on their journeys, the disciples were to follow the orders of their commander, the one to whom all authority was given. This statement of authority would be a sign to the disciples that Jesus was without a doubt, the Son of Man who was seen in a vision of Daniel as recorded in the seventh chapter of his book. There we read that this one like the Son of Man was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples and nations and languages would serve him. It is important that we follow that the one who has dominion is the one it is who will be served. This becomes apparent when Jesus tells his disciples that they were to baptize their disciples in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Here we again encounter the Triune God revealed to us by Jesus but we also are faced with the mystery of just what does it mean to do something “in the name” of this Triune God. This idea of baptizing in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, does make us think back to the baptism of Jesus where the triune God was clearly evident. There when Jesus came up out of the waters at the hand of John we are told in both Matthew’s and Luke’s version that the heavens were opened to him and Jesus saw the Spirit descend upon him like a dove. Then there came a voice from heaven who said, “This is my beloved with whom I am well pleased.” These were words that echoed those found in the first few verses of the forty second chapter of Isaiah where we read, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights.” So, the baptism of Jesus is where God the Father anointed his Son with the Spirit as a mark that this Jesus was the Anointed High Priestly King. Luke connects the baptism of Jesus with the beginning of the ministry of Jesus by having him start his work in his home town of Nazareth. There in the village synagogue, Jesus preached from the sixty first chapter of Isaiah, where he told his hometown crowd, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor…”When Jesus rolled up the scroll, he told his audience that that very day, this Scripture had been fulfilled as they heard those words spoken to them. Jesus was telling them that the long awaited anointed servant of God was none other than himself.

         Now, it should come as no surprise that baptism was the place where Jesus was understood to be the suffering servant of God because as we study the Old Testament what we find is there is only one instance where a bath is administered by someone else and that is in the consecration of the priests of Israel. In Exodus and the book of Leviticus we read of how Aaron and his sons were to be washed by Moses before their service. John, a priest himself, was bathing people in the Jordan so that the people who did so would understand their connection with the priesthood at the Temple. John rightly understood that all of Israel was to be a royal priesthood before God and he knew that when God would return, Israel would at last fulfill that role.

         This priestly connection also helps us to understand what it means for us to be baptized “in the name” of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy we read that it is the priest who ministers in the name of the Lord. This helps us to understand that baptism can be thought of as when we are initiated into the royal priesthood with Jesus being our High Priest. We are baptized into the name of our Triune God because we serve in the name of our Triune God. Our service to God in his name is the fullness of our benefits of the atonement Christ has won for us. Too often all that salvation is thought of is what we are saved from with no consideration of just what it is that we have been saved for, the eternal purpose God has for us. Yes, baptism is about entering into eternal life but it is more than that it is an entrance into a certain definable life,  life of serving in the name of God. As a sign of the new covenant, baptism is an understanding that now God has written his law upon our hearts and the first two of God’s great ten are that we are to serve only the one true living God and that we are to bear the name of God in a way that God is glorified. This is in a nutshell what is meant by being a priest under the authority of Jesus our High Priest. As we serve God doing so in his name, with his reputation on the line, we do so that those around us may understand that our God exists and that our God is a God who rewards those who serve him because these are what is pleasing to God. This is what we are told that our faith must be all about in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. Yet, faith is not merely a confession, or a one time prayer. Faith is more an understanding that Christ has done everything possible for us to live a life pleasing to God and in baptism we enter into a life where that understanding is being lived out. 

         As priests then we, like the priests who served of old, must understand that we have to take off our common garments and put on the holy attire required of those who serve before the holy presence of the Lord. This is the language Paul uses in the third chapter of Colossians where he writes that we are to take off the old self with its practices and put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. This, Paul continues, means that we are to put away the dirty clothes of sexual immorality, impurity, passion and evil desire and covetousness. We are to be done with, anger, wrath, malice and slander. Then , Paul goes on to say, we are God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved. Do you hear the similarities with what was spoken at the baptism of Jesus? As people who have been spoken of in the same way the Father spoke of Jesus, we are to put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience bearing with one another, forgiving one another as the Lord has forgiven us. We are to most importantly to put on love which binds everything in perfect harmony and let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, hearts which abound in thankfulness for all that God has done. This is what it means for us to serve God and to live so that the name of God, his very reputation and honor, are upheld through all that we say and do because when we live as his priests then people will see in us the image of the God we love. This is why it is easy for us to understand that what is to be taught to those who have been baptized is the commandment of Jesus that we are to love one another as he has first loved us. This is the fulfillment of the law, the very hope of the new covenant.

         When baptism is understood as when people are initiated into the royal priesthood then the issue of whether they are infants or adults becomes less of an issue as well. We can think of Samuel who was brought to live within the Tabernacle as an infant and as he grew he learned the ways of holiness before the Lord. It was no wonder then at a young age that the Lord spoke to him as a young boy. Likewise, little children can come in and live within the new temple which has Jesus Christ as its cornerstone and learn the ways of the priesthood, what it means to serve God and to bear his name. We cannot forget that even if one is initiated into the priesthood as an adult, they still begin as little children spiritually who too must be made new in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.The danger of seeing baptism as a moment of decision is that it can be seen as an end instead of a beginning. Seeing baptism as a decision can also put so much emphasis on a person’s faith that what is lost is that baptism is all about Jesus, his taking on our flesh, his dying to sin, his rising again, his ascension into the throne room off his Father. Only in light of what Christ has done does baptism mean anything at all. The faith required at baptism is the faith which is the understanding that Christ has made everything new; the new creation has indeed broken in upon the old creation. We know this to be true because we are that new creation. We are the ones who know that because of Jesus we know that beyond this life is a glorious future and it is this understanding which changes us. Now, today, we live just like we will live in that future. In that future, set free from sin, people will be free forever from sin which means that they will only serve God and glorify his name. This is the future we are initiated into when we are baptized. As we learn to live within the reality promised to us in our baptism, when we live a life oriented toward serving God and glorifying his reputation, the people in the world will be able to see the glorious future God desires to give to them and they in turn, will desire this gift as well, to live in that future here today. This is what the great commission is all about and why baptism is what that whole commission pivots around. This is why we can embrace many forms of baptism because they, while very different, still all point to the same great and glorious future Christ has won for us! Amen!

 

A Foretaste of Glory

 August 15 2021

Hebrews 3:12-4:11

         Last year’s pandemic had a lot of unexpected consequences and the church like all the rest of society was impacted in surprising ways. With the coming of Covid-19 and the subsequent quarantine there was a sudden push for churches to find ways of reaching their members with the Word of God. Many churches began utilizing technology like never before, creating worship videos and putting them out on social media. Now people who had never been on social media were finding their churches services on places like YouTube. It was really hard to tell just what impact this sudden switch to an online presence was going to have on church goers now that one could worship in their pajamas from the comfort of their couch. Well, when churches could at last go back to worshipping in person it really came as no surprise that a lot of people got pretty comfy being a Christian version of a couch potato.

         Now, I don’t think that technology is totally to blame about people enjoying their extended stay apart from their church family. No, what the pandemic did was to reveal that a lot of people didn’t really understand just what it means to be the church. When salvation became nothing more than saying the right words to get in to heaven and a personal relationship with Jesus turned into a me and Jesus mindset then it just followed that church could end up being some Christianized version of a self help seminar. So, what people were looking for was all the ways that Jesus could make life better, a better marriage, a better relationship with my kids and my boss, perhaps better finances, totally forgetting that Jesus never promised to make life better but rather he promised to make life new, which is something all together different.

         So, in this eleventh segment of our summer series called Confident, we are going to take a look at just what does it mean for us to be the church. Right there in saying that we are the church is a good place to start because for many people church is something we go to, not a designation of the people that are set apart for God’s holy purpose. What we go to on Sunday morning is just a meeting place, a place where we are the people of God gathered together as opposed to the rest of the week when we are God’s people scattered. So, knowing this about ourselves who make up the church, we have to ask just why is it so important that we gather together? Is our gathering together just some relic from the past that we do just out of habit or does our gathering together have an important purpose in God’s salvation of the world?

         To answer those questions, let’s look at the eleventh article of faith from the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene.Article 11: The Church. We believe in the church, the community that confesses Jesus Christ as Lord, the covenant people of God made new in Christ, the Body of Christ called together by the Holy Spirit through the Word.

         God calls the Church to express its life in the unity and fellowship of the Spirit; in worship through the preaching of the Word, observance of the sacraments, and ministry in His name; by obedience to Christ, holy living, and mutual accountability.

         The mission of the Church in the world is to share in the redemptive and reconciling ministry of Christ in the power of the Spirit. The Church fulfills its mission by making disciples through evangelism, education, showing compassion, working for justice, and bearing witness to the kingdom of God.

         The Church is a historical reality that organizes itself in culturally conditioned forms, exists both as local congregations and as a universal body, and also sets apart persons called of God for specific ministries, God calls the Church to live under his rule in anticipation at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,

         Well, there you have it, who we are as the church, what our mission is and how we organize ourselves. Yet to understand just who we are as a church we have to begin like we have done quite often in this series, with what we have learned before. What we discussed last week was this idea of entire sanctification or holiness and we said that Jesus through being obedient to do the will of his Heavenly Father, offering himself up upon the cross as a once for all offering has made us to be holy people. He took on our sinful and corrupt flesh yet was with out sin because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Thus when he died upon the cross the power of sin died with him. Therefore, in the tenth chapter of Hebrews we are told that now because of what Jesus has done for us, we have been declared to be holy. Now, why this is so important to us is that because we are now holy we can have confidence to enter into the holy presence of God. Are you beginning to see where the title of our series has its source? This welcome into the presence of God is what is called in the Bible, grace. Grace is the favor of God welcoming us, allowing us to draw near to him. This grace is what we are to place our faith in because we are are told in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews that without faith it is impossible to please God for whoever would draw near to God, accept his grace, must believe that God exists and that God rewards those who seek him. The reward God has for us has several names such as eternal life, and the kingdom of God.

         So, when we know of this grace of God, this gift of being able to enter into his presence then we are to live as people who have already died to this world and are living in this grace, this welcome of God; as people who are certain of the reward of eternal life that God is going to give to us. This means that when we enter in the holy presence of God we enter there as his servants, servants of righteousness as Paul refers to us in the sixth chapter of Romans. At the end of that sixth chapter Paul writes, “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.  But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things that you are now ashamed? For the end of these things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become servants of God, the fruit you get leads to your holiness and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  What is interesting about Paul’s writing about eternal life is that it is found only here in the book of Romans, and only here does Paul bring up the subject of holiness. So, its pretty easy to see that holiness is connected to the reward that God has to give to us.

         Now, what is also interesting is that holiness has a connection with persecution or suffering that comes with our unity with Christ.  The whole book of Hebrews concerns a group of Christians who under severe persecution and suffering thought that they should instead become Jews because at that time the Jews were protected from persecution by Rome. The writer of Hebrews tells these Christians who are on the verge of giving up on their faith that they were to remember the time when they were enlightened , that they endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction and sometimes being partners to those so treated. They had compassion on those in prison and they joyfully accepted the plundering of their property. I want to pause here for a moment and really consider what it must have been like to watch as people plundered what you own, your home, your car and to do so joyfully. Here is why they did so, the writer of Hebrews continues, “because you knew that you had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.” The confidence spoken of here is the confidence that we are holy because of what Jesus has done for us and because of this holiness we have confidence to enter into the holy presence of God. Not even the High Priest of the people of Israel had such confidence because once every year he was to enter the Holy of Holies and he would only do so with a rope tied to his ankle so that if he perished in the Holy presence of God he could be pulled out. So, even the most holiest of people in the people of Israel had no confidence that they were good enough. This same sense of not knowing just what does it take to enter into the holy presence of God is found in the modern sentiments about people who think about heaven apart from Christ who say that there pretty good but in the same breath they concede that nobodies perfect. In other words, they have no confidence in their own goodness to get them into heaven, the holy presence of God because they really don’t know just how good is good enough. You see, the only one good enough was Jesus who perfectly accomplished the will of his Heavenly Father, faithfully loving to the very end of his life, praying that his Father forgive those who had crucified him. Jesus was and is holy and because he has forever bound himself to us we too are holy and we have confidence because of Jesus.This confidence comes with a great reward. This great reward that those who are faithful will receive is a kingdom which cannot be shaken and because of this we offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe. Here we begin to see how what we do as the church follows what is the ground of our faith. It is our knowledge that God is going to reward those who are faithful servants of God, this is why God is worthy of our reverence and our awe. We have a healthy fear of the Lord because we are the ones that know that there will be severe consequences for those who spurn the Son of God, for those who hold in contempt the blood of the covenant by which we have been made holy, to those who have outraged the Spirit of grace.

         Yet we not only worship God with a healthy fear of God we also worship God in reverence, this word translated as “reverence” actually means to aggressively hold fast to that which is good. That’s a great image for our worship that we grab a hold of our good God with both hands clasping upon him so tight that our fingers are turning white. You see, the question of our faith is just what value do we place upon it? Do we place a greater value upon our future reward that God has for us than the pleasures of our sins today? Is this gift of an eternal life with God worth more to us than anything we treasure in our world? Can we say with Paul that anything we face here on earth as far as persecutions and sufferings are merely momentary afflictions in comparison to the eternal weight of glory that is beyond compare? You see, in our scripture for today, there were those in this church that was written to by the writer of Hebrews, who had had enough. They had suffered horribly, they watched as everything they had worked for all their lives was destroyed or robbed and they were hurting, troubled people. For them, the future reward of God was just not enough of an incentive for them to keep going. They were looking for a way out, a quiet easy life where one could eat, drink and be merry. You see, when we think of just what is an evil unbelieving heart we conjure up images of all kinds of horrific behavior yet I think that what is actually being spoken of is this choosing an easy life apart from God instead of accepting the difficult  hardships that are a part of being united with God. It is a denial of the truth that their among the afflictions and the pain, God and his grace are more present than any other time. This is evil because this is when one no longer is aggressively taking hold of the good, the good who is God. What is amazing is what we are told is the antidote to having an evil, unbelieving heart which leads others to fall away from the living God. We are told that we are to exhort, to encourage, one another every day as long as it is “Today”. The word translated as either exhort or encourage is the Greek word, “Paraclete”. It is a compound word, “para” to come along side such as parallel lines and “clete” which means to call. What you may also remember is that Paraclete is the name given to the Holy Spirit in the last chapters of the gospel of John. So, here is an image of the church, those who have faith in the grace, the favor or welcome of God, that this is our final reward and together with God, the Holy Spirit, we walk alongside each other calling out to each other to take hold of that which is good, to not let go of the glory that is to come.

         In the life of the believers there are three different but important ways that we speak and are spoken to. There is proclamation, where the good news of Jesus Christ is spoken as the very Word of God so that an awareness of God’s grace might be discovered and in the knowledge that Jesus is raised from the dead, fear might be conquered so that faith, at last might come. As Paul states in the tenth chapter of Romans, one doesn’t have to climb up to heaven in order to bring Christ down to us nor does one have to descend to the land of the dead to bring Christ up. No, the word is near to you, to your mouth and to your heart; it is right down the street where any church is gathered. So, there is the speech of proclamation but there is also the speech of teaching so that we might learn how to live out our faith for as James famously put it, faith without works is dead. To these two types of speaking in the church there is also a third which is often forgotten and that is the speaking of encouragement, this coming alongside one another, to call out to one another, to speak to one another of the worthiness of what we have placed our faith in, this God and his reward that awaits us. 

         Now, when we are told to encourage one another I believe that this encouragement is to be more than just words. In the first chapters of Second Corinthians and the book of Ephesians, Paul writes that the Holy Spirit can be thought of as a foretaste of our future bliss. We have to wonder just how the Holy Spirit accomplishes this giving to us a sample of what is to come? I believe that he does so through his work within the church, through those who have placed their faith in God’s grace and favor. The Greek word which we translate church is ecclesia which means those who are called out. Are you seeing the importance of God calling out to us to come together because there in the midst of the people God has called together he has made real in the here and now a sampler platter of the future great banquet. Right there among what look like common, ordinary people God is present and the white light of his love is turned into a rainbow of care and concern when it is shone through those very same lives. Here there is one serving and there is one teaching. Over there is one listening and there is one giving generously. Grace and mercy and the sharing of lives is ever present here in the common and everyday. It is this creation brought forth by the hovering of the Holy Spirit where there is found the encouragement that is needed because when one gets a small taste of what lies ahead then they become certain that what God desires to reward us with is worth everything, as Paul so well knew. You see, when the church, the people of God are gathered, on a Sunday, a Sabbath day, this is when we once again can experience the rest, the peace of knowing that that which lies ahead, the Promised land, is definitely greater than any treasure we cling to here on Earth. This reward God holds out is worth the loss of all things so that in the end we might know Christ especially in his sufferings. You see, we had to stop meeting last year because of the real dangers from the Covid virus yet the reason the church longed to come back together is that in the absence of each other they had become hungry. They longed to have that small sample of future glory so that their grip on what is good which had slacked a bit in difficult days might once again become firm. You can taste a good many things on your couch but what can’t be experienced there is the foretaste of our future glory which is only found in the midst of the people that God calls together. To his honor and glory! Amen.

An Honorable Holiness

 August 8 2021

John 17:14-19

         I am not sure everyone is aware of it or not, but my hometown of Dover now has the distinction of being the home of an Olympic Gold medalist. Hunter Armstrong, someone whose family we have known for a long time, ended up being the second fastest men’s backstroke swimmer in the United States. Needless to say,  that qualifies him for the U. S. Men’s Swim team. Now, he didn’t go far in his category at the swimming trials at the Olympics but he was called back to be part of the men’s 4 X 100 men’s medley relay team where he helped them place seventh which was good enough for them to compete in the finals. Even though he wasn’t part of the final relay team which won the gold because he helped them get through the preliminaries he was able to receive a gold medal just like the other relay swimmers. How cool was that? A young man, twenty years old, from a little town in Northeast Ohio doing something that was truly outstanding. It is kind of weird for those of us who knew him as this scrawny awkward kid at VBS and church camp to see him now as this muscular athletic Gold medalist.

         As I, like most of Dover, have been fixated on Hunters success at the Olympics, I began to wonder about Olympic athletes, in general. I wondered just what motivates them to put in the long hours of training, pushing themselves to their utmost limits, knowing that what will determine their success or failure is the matter of one-hundredth of a second. The stress to perform must be unbelievable! Then I wondered, are they motivated more for their own honor, so that they might get the accolades and the applause or are they pushing themselves like they do so that they can bring honor and fame to their country that they represent?

         Perhaps the reason that I am also fixated on this idea of honor and fame is that much like athletes competing for the gold, who push themselves for the prize because of the honor and fame that it brings not only to them but for the country they represent, this same motivation, this striving after honor, this is an important part of the subject of our tenth article of faith which is about holiness. This summer series we are going through is entitled Confident, because as we study just what it is that we believe, these sixteen articles of faith of the Church of the Nazarene, we should come away being more confident and assured  in what Jesus has done for us, that he is the one who has overcome the world and because he has overcome the world then we can be confident that we can overcome the world as well.

         Today we are going to look at the tenth article of faith which concerns Christian Holiness and Entire Sanctification. Here is what we find there:We believe that sanctification is the work of God which transforms believers into the likeness of Christ. It is wrought by God’s grace through the Holy Spirit in initial sanctification, or regeneration, (simultaneous with justification), entire sanctification, and the continued perfecting work of the Holy Spirit culminating in glorification. In glorification we are fully conformed to the image of the Son.

         We believe that entire sanctification is that act of God, subsequent to regeneration, by which believers are made free from original sin, or depravity, and brought into a state of entire devotement to God, and the holy obedience of love made perfect.

         It is wrought by the baptism or infilling of the Holy Spirit, and comprehends in one experience the cleansing of the heart from sin and the abiding, indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, empowering the believer for life and service. 

         Entire sanctification is provided by the blood of Jesus, is wrought instantaneously by grace through faith, preceded by entire consecration; and to this work and state of grace the Holy Spirit bears witness.

         This experience is also known by various terms representing its different phases, such as “Christian perfection”, “perfect love”, “heart purity”, “the baptism with or the infilling of the Holy Spirit”, and “Christian holiness”.

         We believe that there is a marked distinction between a pure heart and a mature character. The former is obtained in an instant, the result of entire sanctification; the latter is the result of growth in grace.

         We believe that the grace of entire sanctification includes the divine impulse to grow in grace as a Christlike disciple. However, this impulse must be nurtured, and careful attention given to the requisites and processes of spiritual development and improvement in Christlikeness of character and personality. Without such purposeful endeavor, ones witness may be impaired and the grace itself frustrated and ultimately lost.

         Participating in the means of grace, especially the fellowship, disciplines, and sacraments of the Church, believers grow in grace and in wholehearted love to God and neighbor.

         So, there you have it, holiness and entire sanctification, seems simple enough doesn’t it? Since this is perhaps the most important doctrine in the Church of the Nazarene, I have had many classes which required the study of this article of faith and trust me, the way that it has been written up has caused a lot of confusion and misunderstanding which is unfortunate. Perhaps the worst thing that has occurred through the emphasis on entire sanctification in our denomination is that it has caused there to be a division among its members between those who have experienced entire sanctification and those who haven’t which goes against the work of Christ to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth. This article of faith has also led to a focus on the outward actions that some attribute to what holiness should look like which ends up with people who are more holier-than-thou than they are actually holy.

         So, with all that in mind, lets consider just what is meant by holiness. Probably the best place to start is in the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus, where God instructs Moses to tell the people of Israel, that they were to be holy because God was holy. So, what is holy? We can say only that God is holy. In the New Testament, we have the prayer that Jesus teaches his disciples, “Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed or holy be your name…”This tells us then that it is God’s name, his unchangeable character that is holy. Knowing this then we can say that God’s name which is that he is a God of steadfast love and faithfulness, this is the essence of holiness.  This helps us understand the connection in our scripture for today where Jesus asks his Heavenly Father to sanctify his disciples. The word, “sanctify” is just another way of saying, “make them holy”. The way that we are made holy Jesus tells us is through the truth, and it is God’s word which is that truth. Here we begin to see that it is the faithfulness of God which is the basis of the truthfulness of the word that he speaks. When God speaks, his word always results in the action that it calls forth. This is the essence of the truth of God and it is this truth which is what makes us into holy people.

         Now, another important idea to hold on to is that through what Christ has already done through his taking on our sinful and corrupt flesh, through his dying upon the cross and through his being raised from the dead, all of this has resulted in all of us being made holy. As we might remember from what we learned about Prevenient grace,  Christ chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In other words, the reason why Christ has united himself with us, taking on our flesh, making peace with us upon the cross, the whole point of all of this was so that we might be fully and completely holy. This idea is elaborated on in the book of Hebrews where we read in the tenth chapter, that when Christ came into the world, he came to do the will of his Heavenly Father. It was through this will, we are told, that we have been sanctified through the body of Christ, once for all. Let’s just pause for a moment and let what we just heard sink in. In a once for all action of Jesus, all of us have been made holy. This means that Christ, once again has accomplished what would have been impossible for us to do by making us fully and completely holy. We read further in this same chapter of Hebrews that when Christ offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins he has perfected for all times those who are holy. So, just as Jesus was justified through his resurrection and because of this we can claim as people united with him that we too are justified, so too when Christ perfectly fulfilled the will of God being faithful unto death, an act reflecting the holy nature of God, we then are holy because of the holiness of Christ to whom we are bound to. This is why when Paul addressed the believers at Corinth in his first letter to them he could say, “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified, made holy in Christ Jesus, called to be saints or holy ones…’ So, we must never believe that holiness is something that must be achieved through our efforts but instead we must understand that through the finished work of Christ we are already holy and not just us but everyone for whom Christ died for. 

         Now, the reason why this holiness that has been accomplished for us by Christ is not more readily seen is that many have not heard of the grace of Jesus Christ, how he has made peace with us and has thus always been with us where we are at and when we are aware of this fact then we might begin to believe that we are united with him to be where he is at, ascended into heaven, in fellowship with our Heavenly Father through the Holy Spirit. Have you ever considered that when you sat down at the dinner table that at that same moment you are seated with Christ in the heavenly places? This is what Paul tells us in the second chapter of Ephesians. The same thought is heard in the third chapter of Colossians where Paul writes, “If then we have been raised with Christ, this is our justification and new birth we receive through our union with Christ, then Paul tells us that we are to seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Why are we to seek these heavenly things? We are to have our minds focused on the things of heaven  because we have died and our life is hid in Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears then you will appear with him in glory.  The only way that it would be possible for us to consider ourselves able to be in the most holy presence of God is if that we were holy ourselves.

         This entering into God’s presence because of the favor or welcome that he shows to us is what we know as grace.  It is this grace, this hope of being able to be where Christ is, to be in that most glorious of places this is what we are to place our faith in. Now, that we live in the justification, this place where life now reigns, where we have been raised to new life through the Holy Spirit, so that we have no reason to fear the future because we know that Christ and his love for us is our future, in this reality, faith appears.  In Hebrews, the eleventh chapter, we are told that whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Jesus is the one who has come to us so that we might know with certainty that God exists and it is Jesus who is our certainty of our future reward.The importance of this reward that God desires to give us is found in something that Jesus says in the fifth chapter of John, where he tells a group of unbelieving Pharisees, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes only from God? What Jesus is saying is that what destroys our faith is when we seek to be honored and thought well of by those around us instead of seeking to do those things which God honors. Our faith then is anchored in our understanding that we are to be living in light of the glory Christ has made possible when he died to make us holy. 

This seeking after the glory that only God can give us is important in our figuring out how it is that we are sanctified in the truth, the truth which is the word of God. In the seventh chapter of John, Jesus tells the unbelieving crowd, “If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether my teaching is from God, or whether I am speaking on my own authority. The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent them is true and in them there is no falsehood. Here we see the connection between seeking after the glory of God and being sanctified by the truth. It is only when we seek after the glory of God, only as we are seeking the reward that God has for us, only then are we true, because only God is true. If to be holy is to be people who bear the name of God being people who are people of steadfast love and faithfulness then the only way to be true to this way of life is to be people who seek after the glory that God has to offer us.

We continue in our understanding of just how it is that the word of God brings out in us the holiness that Christ has won for us in something Jesus says in the twelfth chapter of John where Jesus states that he had not spoken on his own authority, but the Father who sent him gave him a commandment-what to say and what to speak. Jesus further tells us that he knows that the commandment of the Father is eternal life. Here the reward for faithful fulfilling of the commandment of the Father is eternal life, a life lived in the eternal glory and presence of God. This commandment that the Father had given to Jesus was revealed to the disciples on the night in which he was betrayed when Jesus, after telling them that his time had come to be glorified, that he had a new commandment for them that they were to love one another; just as he had have loved you, they also were to love one another. So, if God is holy and his name, his steadfast love and faithfulness are holy then when the disciples are true to this word or commandment of Jesus, when they faithfully love one another this then is where holiness is at last revealed. What makes us and the disciples be faithful in our love is that we know that God will reward our faith that he will glorify us with eternal life. This is what Jesus promises in the twelfth chapter when he told his disciples, “If anyone serves me he must follow me all the way to the cross; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor them. You see, its this amazing idea that if we are willing to love faithfully even unto death that this act does not go unnoticed by our Heavenly Father but rather these acts of sacrificial love are exactly the ones he is going to reward.

So, yes, holiness, this idea of entire sanctification is not an easy idea to wrap our heads around probably because the ways of God are always beyond us. Yet, here is what we can say. First, what Jesus has accomplished on the cross has rendered us all holy. The certainty of this holiness gives us the certainty that we are now able to be where Christ is, in the most holy place of heaven. It is this knowledge that God will reward us with this glorious future, this is the focus of our faith. It is this glory that awaits us that makes us forget about seeking the glory of those around us. It is when we seek this glory that God has for us that we become true people who are under the authority of a true God. We obey his commandment to love each other as he has first loved us, willing to be faithful to love even unto death because Jesus has done the same. When we do so we know that our faith will be rewarded, honored by God. Yet, we do not do all of this apart from the Holy Spirit who is the source of our spiritual life because as Jesus told his disciples as recorded in the sixteenth chapter of John, the Holy Spirit will declare to us the thing that are to come. In a moment, the Holy Spirit comes upon us, and the reality of our future glory and eternity is impressed upon us. This is when our faith becomes certain and this future that is waiting for us brings forth the holiness that has always been ours to experience. To God be the glory! Amen.

A Fearless Love

 August 1 2021

Romans 4:13-25

         Today in our ninth segment of our summer series, called Confident, we at last come to the subject of faith. Now, it may seem that faith is coming in a little late to the game but there are several things to keep in mind. The first is that as we read in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, faith is the assurance of things hoped for. So, we have to know what it is that we are hoping for before we can ever be certain that what we have decided we want to happen is actually going to occur. The second thing to keep in mind is that faith is not the end all goal people make it out to be. Somehow, we have tried to simplify what this salvation Jesus has given to us is all about that we have made it out to be solely about having faith in Jesus. What we cannot forget is that while faith is important, as Paul tells us in the thirteenth chapter of first Corinthians, if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love I am nothing. All those who somehow think that they can say that they believe in Jesus with all their heart and then turn and spew out hatred toward the people around them might want to take note of what Paul is saying. Then the last thing that we have to remember is that as we work out just what salvation is about what we can not forget is that our salvation is like a chain which is only as strong as its weakest link. That weakest link unfortunately is going to be us and our faith whether we care to admit it or not. We need to not put so much importance on our faith that we forget that our salvation is more about God holding on to us, as Jesus tells us in the tenth chapter of the gospel of John, then it ever is about us holding on to God. We need to keep in mind that in the book of Hebrews when faith is written of there in the third chapter, it is spoken of as being a state of rest. In other words, if you’re straining to keep a hold of God as an act of faith then you might be doing something wrong.

         So, keeping all of that in mind, lets take a look at the ninth article of the articles of faith from the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene. Article 9: Justification, Regeneration, and Adoption. We believe that justification is the gracious and judicial act of God by which he grants full pardon of all guilt and complete release from the penalty of the sins committed, and acceptance as righteous, to all who believe on Jesus Christ and receive Him as Lord and Savior. 

We believe that regeneration, or the new birth, is the gracious work of God whereby the moral nature of the repentant believer is spiritually quickened and given a distinctively  spiritual life, capable of faith, love and obedience .

We believe that adoption is the gracious act of God by which the justified and regenerated believer is constituted a son of God.

We believe that justification, regeneration, and adoption are simultaneous in the experience of seekers after God, and are obtained under the condition of faith, preceded by repentance; and that to this work and state of grace the Holy Spirit bears witness.

Whew, was that a mouthful. So, many big churchy words to sort out and make sense of! We start with the word “justification” which is a word that comes to us from the courtroom, where after hearing all the facts, the judge declares the accused to be “not guilty”. As the article of faith states it, there is not only a pardon of all guilt but there is also a free release from the penalty of sins committed. As Paul writes in the first verse of the eighth chapter of the book of Romans, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.That is amazingly good news! The second word that might trip us up is the word “regeneration” and if  you look at the word, it has the partial phrase, “gen” in the middle of it. This is the same phrase which begins the first book of the Bible, Genesis, which as we know has to do with creation. So, what is meant by the word “regeneration” is simply this idea of the new creation. We hear of this new creation in the fifth chapter of second Corinthians where Paul writes, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation; the old has passed away, the new has come.” So, the importance of this idea is that something brand new has occurred and because of this the old version of who we were is gone.  This is also captured in the idea of the new birth, of being born again which is a theme in the primarily found in the writings of John. It just makes sense as well that the idea of being adopted into the family of God would follow after our new birth because babies quite rightly are born into families who can care for them until they can care for themselves.

As we have frequently done in this series, we will take what we previously talked about and build upon what we know. We have said that ones faith journey begins with Prevenient grace, the grace of God that has come before our awareness of that grace. We were chosen before the foundation of the world by Christ to be holy people. The way that we know this is that Christ, the Son of God, left his Father’s side in heaven and he came to us, to be born as one of us, through the power of the Holy Spirit. God, in the life of Jesus, took on our sinful and corrupt flesh but was without sin because his was a life filled with the Spirit of holiness.  It was through what Jesus has done for us by carrying his cross, to suffer, to shed his blood and die for us that he became for us a once for all offering for the sins of the whole world. Now, we who were weak, unholy sinners, the very enemies of God, we have peace with God because of the saving work of Jesus on our behalf. This means that Jesus has bound himself to us, from the very moment of our life to be with us as a constant and faithful friend. This grace, this favor shown to us by God in Jesus Christ is discovered when we hear the gospel message, the word of truth which lets us know that God has always loved us and has always desired to be united with us. This is why he gave his only Son to die for each of us. This love that God has for us will always be there for us even if we reject this love and condemn ourselves.

Then when we understand that Christ has always been where we have been we come to understand that we have the hope of being where Christ is, in glory. Yet this hope is not just for us but Christ has died for the whole world. This means that God has bound himself to every person on the planet whether they realize that amazing fact or not.  So, if we take this thought a little further that if every person is bound to Christ then it just stands that Christ, at the same time has bound all of humanity together. Christ then is not only our mediator between us and God but he is also the mediator between all people. Taking this thought one step further, we can also say that not only has Christ united all of humanity together but he has also united us with our Heavenly Father through the Holy Spirit so that as Paul writes in the first chapter of Ephesians, Christ is the fulfillment of the will, the plan and the purpose of God which is to unite all things in heaven and on earth.

The question then becomes that if we know that Jesus has shed his blood in order to unite everything in heaven and on earth what should be our response? The answer as to what we should do when we know that Christ is pulling everything together is that we should, first, stop tearing things apart. This means that we need to repent, or turn away from, change our mind and instead of putting our needs, wants, and desires first we should instead make the unity a priority. This is why Jesus calls us to forgive others as he has forgiven us because forgiveness is the way that a broken unity is restored. This same idea is also found in the teaching of Jesus in the fifth chapter of Matthew, where Jesus teaches us that blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God. As Jesus, the only begotten Son of God has made peace going so far as to even shed his blood in order to do so, we too are called to do the same making our life work the creation of peace, the healing of the unity Christ is bringing together.

Yet, while our ceasing to tear apart that which Christ is bringing together is important there is more yet that we must do. Repentance, is the turning from one way of being, a way marked by putting ourselves above the needs of the unity, and then turning to becoming people who love with self-sacrificing love. What then must be figured out is just what is it that must be addressed for us to be people who can love with a self-sacrificing love?  The answer is found in the fourth chapter of the first letter of John, where he simply puts the issue as this: there is no fear in love. This fear we experience comes from our sense of loss. As we can readily see wherever we turn in our world, it is not the lack of possessing stuff that destroys the happiness of people it is rather the security of the possessions one does have which is the real issue as to whether a person can truly be happy. You see, when we understand that losing what we have is what makes us fearful then we can also understand that it is death that is the ultimate loss. It is death that is the ultimate object of our dread and it is the possibility of death that makes our whole life become oriented toward the future. As Jesus teaches us in the sixth chapter of Matthew, anxiety always has its focus on tomorrow. This is why fear is such a problem when it comes to be people who are called to love each other with self-sacrificing love because love always happens in the present. I can regret not loving you in the past and I can promise to love you in the future but to actually love you I must love you in the here and now. So, what happens when I am fearful is that my thoughts, my heart, is on future events, what might happen, so much so that I am no longer actually present to anyone in the present and the opportunities to love people who need loving right now are for ever missed.

Into this dilemma of being people whose hearts are focused on the future while, at the same time being people who desire to love others as God first loved us, comes these three actions of Christ into our life, the actions of justification, new birth and adoption. What may not have been evident when you first heard of these ideas is that all three are connected to time. Justification deals with what we have done in the past because as we well know the past so often affects our future. The new birth concerns life in the present in the here and now and adoption has to do with our inheritance that is the promise of a future held firmly within the very life of God.

Of course as we speak about justification, new birth and adoption we cannot forget that these we are told are ours by faith. The question becomes just how is it that people consumed by fear can muster up the effort to bring forth a decision of faith? The answer as we have said many times before is that everything we believe must go back to what Christ has already done for us. This means that our justification must be built upon the justification of Christ.  This justification of Christ is what we read about in the third chapter of first Timothy where Paul recites a confession of his faith concerning Jesus; Jesus, Paul states, was manifested in the flesh, was justified by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. If you want all that Jesus accomplished in a nutshell, there it is. When Paul speaks about Jesus being justified by the Spirit, it is a little difficult to understand just what life event he is speaking about until we remember that Paul also states elsewhere that Jesus was raised by the Spirit of Holiness. What this is stating then is that it is the resurrection of Jesus that proves the righteousness of the cross. If Jesus is dead, then we would still be in sin but because of the resurrection we now know that the cross has canceled out our transgressions and we have the declaration of righteousness because of the righteousness of Christ. So, it is the faithfulness of Christ and not our own which is what is the source of our justification. It is Jesus who has through his obedience and death who has ended the reign of sin and death and in doing so has begun the reign of life. This new situation where life reigns is what Paul means by justification.

So, this unity Christ is bringing together is the new temple he began building the very moment when he stepped out of the grave on Easter morning. In this unity, death is in the past, it has been dealt with so that now we are free to live in resurrection power. This is what is meant by our being justified. As the resurrection of Jesus was done through the power of the Holy Spirit, so too we are raised to newness of life through that same Spirit. As Paul says in the fifteenth chapter of first Corinthians, what is sown a natural body is raised a spiritual body. Our new birth, then is when we begin to experience our spiritual body, a body whose life is sustained by the Holy Spirit, our resurrection life, right now in the present. This means that our life is now held secure within the very life of God. Through the Holy Spirit we have a living connection to our living Savior because as Jesus tells us, it is the Holy Spirit who will bear witness to him. In the power of the Holy Spirit, we are made certain of one thing about the future and that is that Jesus is already there. Jesus is there in the future because his faith and his obedience to do his Father’s will were vindicated by his resurrection from the dead. It is no longer death which waits ahead but instead there is Jesus and his perfect love for us which casts out all of our fear. So, in the absence of fear what can remain except for faith? At last, in the frame of mind free of anxiety, worry and fear, love is finally able to flourish. This is exactly what John records in his first letter where he writes about being born anew six times in five short chapters. John writes that those who practice righteousness are born of God; he writes that those who are born of God do not make a habit of sinning; he goes on to say that those who love have been born of God and thus they know God; and further John writes that everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Then we come to the fifth chapter the fourth verse, where John writes that everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. This should, as people who have been following this sermon series, make a little bell go off in your head because Jesus told his disciples that in this world they would have afflictions but they were to be confident because Jesus tells them that he has overcome the world. How does Jesus overcome this world? Jesus wins the victory over this world through his sacrificial love, the power that secured the victory upon the cross. Now, because we have new life through the Spirit we, like Jesus, are empowered to to be more than conquerors. The last wisdom John gives about being born anew is that the one who was born of God, Jesus will protect them and the evil one will not harm them. So, do you see how what Christ has accomplished through his resurrection from the dead has brought us from being people fixated on our fear to being people who are over-comers assured of the very protection of the living Christ.

It is the same Spirit which raises us to new life that is the Spirit who gives us the assurance of our adoption into the family of God where we know God as our Abba, Father. To know God as our Father means that we are assured an inheritance beyond this life of which the Holy Spirit is but a down payment of our glorious future. While this is indeed a wondrous news, we can quite honestly have our faith shaken from time to time. The way to have absolute certainty about our future is to do as Jesus teaches us, be a peacemaker because then, and only then, do you have the certainty of knowing yourself as one adopted into sonship by your Heavenly Father. As Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, has made peace with our Heavenly Father for us through the shedding of his blood and as he made peace between all people through that same blood it should not be hard for us to understand that the way of all those who call God their Father is none other than the way of peace. The whole reason Jesus has taken the fear of death from us and has raised us to new life in the Spirit is so that we might know that every moment called the present is a moment for us to love, to heal, to bring peace either through our service or our sacrifice. To God be the glory! Amen!