God’s Mercy Leads to an Altar’d State of Mind

 February 18 2024

Romans 12:1-2

         One thing that I can easily admit is that I watch a lot of football. So it goes without saying that I also watch a ton of insurance commercials. I really laughed at the one where a mother and her grown daughter are talking and the daughter tells her mother that she has saved hundreds of dollars through switching her insurance. The mother says that she will make a note of what her daughter is telling her on her cell phone. So she gets out a Post-It note and she writes the information down on it and sticks this note to the back of her cell phone, where she has put about ten other such notes. Even though its poking fun at us less than tech savvy people, the point is that its kind of funny when people still hang on to the old way of doing things, the Post-It notes, even though they have something new like a cell phone which can keep notes if you knew what you were doing.

         I think Paul could relate to the truth that this commercial points out because he too was surrounded by those who were sticking to the old ways when something new and far better was at hand. The question people asked Paul was this: now that we have been given grace by God, this forgiveness of our past and the favor of welcoming us home so that we have a hope and a future, what are we supposed to do now, just keep on sinning because, hey, God’s got us covered? Or maybe we are supposed to go back to keeping the law, you know the Ten Commandments and all that? Paul responds to questions like these just like we responded to someone who puts Post-It notes on a cell phone, like its just weird. This is how Paul begins the sixth chapter of the letter to the church at Rome, with this nonsensical question that people would ask him when they discover grace and see God’s offer like some kind of get out of jail card. To such thinking Paul responds by saying that by no means should somebody do such a thing because how can those who have died to sin, the old Post-It note way of living, continue to do so when they have been given something new, something as different from our old way of life as a Post-It note is from a cell phone, a very new way of living. Paul then proceeds to answer this question, ‘How are we supposed to now live since through God’s grace we have been given a very new way of living? The answer to this question is what Paul gives to us six chapters later, here at the beginning of the twelfth chapter, which at least tells you that the answer, it’s complicated, so we have to go slow and think about what Paul is telling us. This is why we are looking at these few verses as we come to the last segment of our series of messages, called, Think.Good.Work. The gist of these messages is that before we set off to do the good works God commands of us we first have to do a little thinking to get our minds in the right place.

         We see Paul stressing this necessity of thinking when he states that we are transformed by thinking a new way about God’s grace, his forgiveness of our sins and the favor and welcome into the life of God. For us to really wrap our heads around this new way of thinking, Paul tells the grand and glorious work that God is up to. Paul reminds us that all of us start out as people enslaved to sin. Even the people of Israel, God’s own people who had been given his law, were ensnared by sin. Into this rather hopeless situation came a cross. There our old self, the one enslaved by sin, was crucified right there upon the cross when Jesus died for us. Now, if we can know that we have died a death like Jesus died then we can rest assured that we will be united with him in a resurrection like his. This is the story that is reenacted again and again any time the church brings a person up through the waters of baptism. The church witnesses one who was united in the death of Christ and is now raised up to live with Christ in resurrection life. Once they had lived under the slavery of sin but now through uniting with Christ in his death and rising up into new life they are free. The question for all those who are baptized is, just what are we to do with our freedom? Paul gives us, in the sixth chapter, this picture of two kings, King Sin and King Jesus.The question for us then becomes, in our freedom, just which king will we stand before and offer ourselves to be their servant. Who will you now serve, this is what all who have been baptized must consider as people who have a new found freedom. 

         This hope Paul lays out here, that we are able to be free from the power and control of sin is a foundational belief of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement. Wesley preached that because we have died with Christ and are no longer slaves to sin then at last we are indeed able to live righteous and holy lives. This is our hope of being able to break free from addictions and our former ways of evil living to at last live in the power of the resurrection, united always to the Spirit of holiness. So, if living free in a resurrection reality is a possibility for us then we are left wondering, just how can this become the reality we live in? I mean, we don’t just want to be caught in this endless cycle of falling back into sin, repenting and coming back to Jesus, receiving his grace only to fall into sin again and repent again, doing nothing more then spiritually chasing our tails. Here is Paul’s answer: God’s mercy is what leads us to have an altar’d state of mind. An altar’d state of mind is one where we stand before King Jesus and we offer him not just our service but we give him our whole self as an offering upon an altar in our loyalty to God. This giving ourselves to God in total abandonment, this is just what makes logical sense when we consider and think and calculate just what God’s mercy is worth to us. In speaking of God’s mercy, Paul  is speaking of an attribute of God that is different from God’s grace, which is God’s favor toward us, those whom he has forgiven by the blood of Jesus. The connection between God’s mercy and his grace is that his grace flows forth from the deep well that is the mercy of God.

         The mercy of God is at the very core not just of what God does but mercy is who God is in his essential nature. This is why when Paul speaks of mercy in the New Testament, he has in mind the name of God that is found in the Old Testament, his steadfast love and faithfulness. God’s unchanging character is that he is always a God of steadfast love and faithfulness. Both words are used together throughout the Old Testament in order to enhance the meaning of the other so that we know that our God is faithful because of his love for us and that we also know that our God loves us and he demonstrates his love through his ever faithful presence. This is just who God is, and it does not matter if we respond to his loyal, faithful, love with a loyal, faithful, love of our own, or whether we do not respond at all, God’s love for us remains. This is what the whole story of Israel proves to us that God in his love is always faithful to keep his promises even when those he is faithful to are blatantly unfaithful in their love toward God.

         So, yes, God is faithful to us, and he loves and wants the very best for us. This is why God has always had a special place for us, a destination Paul tells us that was there for us from the very foundation of the world. This place of wonder is called glory. This is the truth Paul tells us in the ninth chapter of Romans that God makes known the riches of his glory for us who are his vessels of mercy, those whom he has prepared ahead of time for life in glory. This same idea is found in the eighth Psalm where the writer states, “Yet, you O God have made humans a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned them with glory and honor.” This is where God desires to take us, think about that for a minute and consider just how wild such a claim really is! Yet this is where God’s mercy begins, with his always having a special place for us, and God is going to stop at nothing until at last we are set where we have always been created to live, there in a place called glory.

         So, the mercy of God is his continual work of moving us from where we are at, people enslaved to sin and he brings us from there all the way until we at last are a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor. Again, lets stop and think about what God desires to bring about in my life and in your life? It is hard not to be in awe of this God who loves us. Paul, in speaking of God’s mercy, uses three different phases to speak of the work of God’s mercy: his call, his justification and his glorification, as we find at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans. In the following chapters of Romans, Paul elaborates on these three phases of God’s mercy by using the story of God’s people, the Israelites as a demonstration of the faithfulness of God. God’s call for example, is heard when he heard the cries of his people and he sent Moses to call his people out of slavery, through the waters to new life. You see, we have a God who talks to dead people as far-fetched as that sounds. Yet, listen to Jesus who, in the fifth chapter of John, says, “…the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.” Jesus, is not speaking of the death we will experience at the end of our life, but rather he speaks of the sentence of death we are under because of our slavery to sin. While we are as good as dead, enslaved in our sin, the voice of God calls us to come out of the tombs of death into life.

         God not only calls us out of death, but he calls to us in anticipation of a response. What messes up our response to hearing the voice of God is our fear of judgment, our sheer unworthiness to come into the presence of a holy God. To speak to our concerns of condemnation, Paul writes of the experience of the people of God, who in their sin had broken their covenant with God and as God had promised, were sent into exile far from their home. This is an image of death. Yet, this was not the end for them because God told his people, in the thirtieth chapter of Deuteronomy, that even in exile, in a very death like situation, even there if they heard the voice of God and trusted that voice, they could once again experience the mercy and compassion of God. But we have to ask, how could they find the courage to trust God? The answer is that in thinking about their situation the people of God would at last realize that even though they had broken their covenant with God, and even though he had every right to walk away from them, still, God went beyond what was required by the covenant, because God in his mercy remained faithful to his people out of his great love for them. This is the perfect love of God. John, in his first letter, the forth chapter, writes this about the perfect love of God, “By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in the world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” This perfect love of God is the love of the cross, the love which held Jesus there so that by that same love we might be held by him who died and was raised for us. Paul tells us in the eighth chapter of Romans that the Spirit takes hold of us in our weakness, and through are allowing God in his love to take hold of us, the rightness of our God becomes our own.This is how God justifies the claim of our being righteous, because we trust him to take hold of us and lift us out of sin.

         So, God calls us out of death and into life and through his perfect love which loved us even when there was no good reason for God to do so, we yield ourselves to God and allow his love to take hold of us so that as Paul writes in Second Corinthians, the fifth chapter, “the love of Christ controls us, because we have made up our minds that one has died for all therefore all have died; and he died for all so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but live instead, for the One who for their sake died and was raised.” Can you see how the mercy of God can lead us to have an altar’d mind? We no longer live for ourselves, we can offer up all of who we are and what we have to God because it just does not make any sense to live to gain anything for ourselves especially in light of glory. You see, the God who has called us out of death, and by his love caused us to place our faith in his strength, this is the God who will not stop until we at last are where God has always intended us to live which is summed up in the word, glory. You see, our hope of glory changes everything. Again from Second Corinthians, Paul says, “…this light and momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory which is beyond comparison.” This is why the love of God refuses to let us go because he desires more than anything to bring us to this place that has been prepared for us before the foundation of the world. It just makes logical sense that we should give all that we are, our heart, our treasures, even our very lives if necessary, as an act of worship to God, its just a no-brainer. If we just allow God’s mercy to overwhelm our minds, then when we stand before King Jesus, the decision to offer him all that we are as a pleasing and acceptable offering is an easy decision, so easy, to quote another insurance ad, that a caveman can do it. If we don’t want the world to force us into its mold of those who think the world is all about how much you can get then we must stop, and consider this mercy of God, so loyal, faithful and true. It is God’s mercy that causes us to not only have an altar’d state of mind but to have an altar’d way of life as well. So let us be done with trying to fit ourselves into the mold of this world. Let us live instead as people who know that because of the wondrous mercy of God we are indeed bound for glory! Praise be to God. Amen!

Good Minds Think Alike

 February 11 2024

Philippians 4:4-9

         My wife, Jennifers work schedule is such that she works from ten in the morning to eight in the evening which is a ten hour day so she gets Friday off. Now for the most part this schedule is pretty rough, no matter how you look at it, a ten hour day is a long day. Yet, we have found that this schedule does have its perks because it gives us time in the morning together. What we do, besides eat breakfast together, is that we play word games, you know the ones like Wordle or Quordle, where you have to guess what word or words are in the puzzle for the day. These kind of games are supposed to exercise your brains but I never feel overly smart after I finish them. It does help that Jennifer and I work on these word puzzles together because sometimes one of us just can’t seem to have any clue what the word is. Now, what is also interesting is that staring at a jumble of letters for a while, both of us will blurt out the answer at the exact same time, and what always follows is that we say, “Great minds think alike”!

         In this message series that we are going through called, Think.Good.Work., we are looking at this connection between the thinking of our minds and our doing of good works. Today, what I want us to think about is not how, “Great minds think alike” but rather how, “Good minds think alike”. Last week, in the third chapter of Titus, we saw how imperative it is that we exercise our minds to live good.We have to consider our past, that time before God has entered our life and remember how very lost and wandering from the truth we once had been. Then we needed to stop and really think about what God in Jesus Christ has done for us, saving us so that we have a hope and a future. We learned that there on the cross the blood of Jesus was not only the blood necessary for the forgiveness of our sins but that same blood ratified a new covenant with God, signifying his favor towards us, the very welcome of us into his life. Through the loving embrace of the Holy Spirit we are made a new creation able at last to do the good works that God desires of us, this extravagant giving and forgiving of others just as God first has extravagantly gave his Son to forgive us of our sins.

         Today then, we are going to build off of what we learned from the letter to Titus so that we know that it is not just great minds which think alike but rather it is good minds which think alike. This doing of good works is something that God intends for us to do as part of a group of like minded people. The reason why this is so true is that, as funny as it may seem, doing good works upsets some people out in the world. Today from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi we are going to figure out just why it is that doing good works sets people off and how having good minds which think alike can help us weather the storm that comes against us when we do those good works.

         This passage from the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians may be familiar to us perhaps because of the song which goes, “Rejoice in the Lord, always! Again I say rejoice...”. So often we know passages like this so well that we don’t stop to consider just what is meant by this word, ‘Rejoice”. What is curious is that the roots of this word are the same roots for the word, “grace”.  What ties these seemingly different ideas together is knowing that grace is the favor or welcome of God. Holding on to that idea, we then listen to the words from Matthew 25 where Jesus, at the end of a parable states, “Well done good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” What is implied here is that joy is what sweeps over us when we come before our Master and we bask in the glow of his joy. The joy of our God, then, becomes the very source of our own joy; rejoice, indeed! We enter into the presence of our God having served him by giving more than was required for us to do. Jesus, in the fifth chapter of Matthew, describes such extravagant giving like this, “…if one slaps you on the right cheek, turn and give him the other cheek as well. If anyone sues you and takes your coat go on and give him your shirt, too. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him the second mile. Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” Here we can see just what excessive forgiveness and extravagant favor, looks like in real time. When our life is marked by such lavish generosity, God is joyful and in his presence, so are we. The radiance of the joy of the Lord glows upon our faces.

         As wonderful as this scene is, us being filled with joy before our God, all is not as good as perhaps it should be because Paul abruptly interjects his letter with a warning against being anxious. What Paul is referring to, in this instance, is not a condition like worry, or a wringing our hands about some crisis we are facing, but rather, Paul here is speaking about being double-minded, that our minds are no longer solely focused upon doing those good works that God desires. We are left wondering just what has happened to cause our minds to become divided in their devotion to God. In the first chapter of this letter to the Philippians we find that Paul writes to the church at Philippi hoping that they, “…are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel…”.Here Paul’s hope is that the church can overcome this division of their minds by their coming together to help one another. You see, what happens when our individual minds waver in our loyalty to God is that the church as a whole is no longer united, no longer standing firm in one spirit. Paul knows that such division is a grave threat to the life of the church. Paul also knows that the source of this wavering of the minds in the church is that the gospel has its opponents, those who want to inflict suffering and fear upon the church. In these times of persecution, this is when doubts arise as to whether living a life of extravagant giving is really the life we ought to be living.

         You know, what also should make us wonder is just why anyone would get upset by those just striving to do good, why get mad at those whose goal is to love God and each other with a profound passion, why would this cause such an uproar. Part of the answer is found in the second chapter of this letter to the Philippians, because there Paul instructs this church that they are, “…to be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life…”. When we live doing good works, works which show forth excessive generosity, when we give to others and forgive others, then we stick out from the crowd because were to be as different from those who do not know God as light is from darkness. When Paul says that we are to shine like stars, he is quoting a saying from the twelfth chapter of the book of Daniel, where we are told that the righteous who sleep in the earth will awake and enter into everlasting life. These are the ones who will shine like the brightness of the sky above, like the stars forever.” You see, the Holy Spirit has lifted us up from death into a new life. It is the Spirit poured out upon us without measure, this is what raises us up to live a life where we give ourselves in return, to God without measure. It is when we are people of the light, this is when the people of our corrupt and twisted world take offense. The reason for their opposition is explained to us by Jesus who in the third chapter of John says, “This is the judgment :the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light, lest his works be exposed for what they really are. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so it may be clearly seen that their works have been carried out in God”. What Jesus is saying here is that when we do good works, we can be utterly certain that we do so in partnership with God. We might say that God is in the giving. The people of the world though, are only concerned with what they can get, not what they can give. They are looking for some way that they can manipulate God so that he might be the source of fulfilling their desires. Can you understand why Paul calls such people crooked and twisted, to think that they might actually discover a way for Almighty God to be at their beck and call. God, quite rightly wants nothing to do with such schemes. So can you understand why such people are so angry at such news? It is hard to accept that God is in the giving and that he works through those who give. Those who have this, “ what’s in it for me”, mindset simply refuse to believe that the kingdom of God can actually be brought into existence through excessive giving. Yet, this is who our God is, the Father who generously gives his Son to save the world, the risen Son who gives usthe Holy Spirit without measure so that through the Spirit we might be given without measure to the Father. 

         So, yes, in this world we will have trouble, the question is just what are we going to do about it? Paul tells us, at the end of the first chapter of his letter to the church at Philipi that the answer to our question is that we are to, “…stand firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.”. You see, facing the opposition is a team effort, an athletic undertaking we do together. Think of it as a work out of faith to make us strong against what comes against us. So, we train together in order to be ready for the fight. This training, Paul tells us at the end of his letter, consists of four actions,-prayer, peace, praise and practice. 

         It goes without saying that we must pray together and do everything in a spirit of prayer. We are to know that good minds pray together.  Prayer is an act of humility, an act of kneeling before God admitting our need for him. In our humility we find that our God, as Isaiah tells us in the fifty seventh chapter, is a God who, “…dwells in the high and holy places and also with those of a humble and lowly spirit”. God kneels, comes down to us, when we kneel. What we find in this moment, as Jesus explains, in the sixth chapter of Matthew, is that our Heavenly Father knows what we need before we even ask him. So, we pray knowing that our Father already is aware of our need, absolutely certain that our God knows us, that he is indeed the very searcher of hearts. Together in prayer, we become known to one another as God already knows us. Thankfulness fills our hearts. Our relationship with God is founded on gratitude for we are people who know that we have been given everything by God. In prayer, we come to know the people who God has given to us, as gifts to be thankful for. Kneeling together, then, gives us strength, for in our humility we declare our need for God and each other.

         From our kneeling then, we rise and stand. This is the image Paul gives us in the fifth chapter of Romans when he speaks about the peace God has made with us. Paul writes, ‘Therefore since we have been justified by faith, we have peace  with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand…”. So, it is the peace of God which makes it possible for us to stand with God. We know that good minds know of God’s peace, and in this peace we stand together. You see, the peace of God guards our hearts and in this peace we know that not only do we stand with God but we also stand with each other.  So, together, then, we need to encourage each other, make each others heart strong, by always reminding each other that no matter how hard the fight, God still stands with us.

         Our third action is praise. We do so because we know that good minds praise God together. We need to stop and breathe in, take into ourselves the Holy Spirit, the breath of life and consider the greatness of the life God has given to us. You see, a glorious new way to live has been revealed to us through Jesus Christ, a life that Paul tells us is worthy of the very honor of God, a life where all people are equals, a life cleansed from the pollution of the world, a life that finds everyone worthy of love, a life worth talking about, a life that others can tell is morally good. So, breathe in, draw in the Holy Spirit, and consider the greatness of this life; how can this life not be worthy of our praise?  Our praise tells God that no matter what God asks of us, no matter what the cost to us, God alone is worthy of all that we are. God is worthy because he found us worthy, worthy of the giving up his only Son for us upon a cross so that through his death we might be able to receive his life. So, we breathe in the Holy Spirit, we find our life in Jesus and we breathe out our praise, ready to pay any price, even the offering of our lives because our God is worthy.

         Finally, after we have knelt in humility as we pray, and risen to stand with God and find that God stands with us because of the peace he has made with us, and we fill our lungs with the Holy Spirit and with this life breath we lift our voices in praise for our God is worthy, then we are ready to go forth to practice what we know in our hearts to be true. Jesus tells us that we therefore must be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, and as they say, practice makes perfect. This means that we need to make a habit of doing good works, loving others with the perfect love of our Father with no thought of receiving love in return. As we go, we do so knowing that good minds practice together. We try hard to get it right, yet we are always ready to confess when we fail. So, in our, prayer, in our peace, in our praise and in our practice, this is when our good minds are thinking alike about our gospel faith. These actions assure us that God is with us, willing and working for his good pleasure, In his presence we rejoice and again, I say, rejoice. Amen.

Exercise Your Mind to Live Good

 February 4  2024

Titus 3:1-11

         One of the things that has been interesting about our children moving out and living their own lives is that they do things that you just never imagined that they would do. Take for example our son Matt, who is twenty-seven, who can be found at the gym more often than not. Now, Jennifer and I were never the kind of people who could be found running on treadmills or lifting weights. I always thought that if I was going to work that hard then I wanted paid for doing so. So, it catches us off guard that Matt spends so much time working out but in his defense he has a very good reason for all of this exercise and that is so he can eat all of the junk food that he craves and not have any guilt about it.

         Now, Matt is not alone in his exercise endeavors because, as he told us,  January is one of the few times that his gym, Planet Fitness, ever advertises. The reason why this is so is that at the start of the year there is always this mad rush of people going off to the gym to work off everything that had been put on in November and December. It is here, at the beginning of a new year, that people stop and take stock of their life and perhaps decide to do something to alter the course that they are on. Most people know that they need to exercise to live well and what better time to put this truth into action than here at the beginning of a fresh, new year.

         Since it is here, at the beginning of the year, that we take stock of life, I believe that perhaps we should take this time to pause and to think about our spiritual life as well. Today is the first of a series of messages I’ve given the title, “Think.Good.Work.” The idea is that there is a connection between our thinking and our doing good work. Much like people know that they must exercise their bodies to live well, we as followers of Jesus must exercise our minds to live good. Yes, this sounds like bad English but nonetheless, to live good is the very way God has for us to live. Yet in order to live good, being people who do good work, requires that we exercise our minds. At least this is what Paul explains to his friend,Titus, in this letter Paul has written to him.

         There in the third chapter of this letter to Titus, Paul in the eighth verse, says, “I strongly desire, I insist emphatically, make absolutely certain, about these things that I have just written, so that those who have faith in God might connect what you know to be true in your minds with your outward behavior”. In other words, Paul is telling us, that we need to be people who exercise their minds, people who think about the good and then go get it done. We are to exercise our minds to live good, always standing ready to do the kind of work which is helpful, beneficial. This is the kind of good that makes the people around us to sit up and take notice of our life of love.

         This life of good, a good which is the kind of good that draws others to stop and wonder what we are up to, this kind of living good, this all has its source, Paul insists, in what we are thinking about, the way that we are exercising our minds. The first area of our lives that we are to think about is our past, you know,  before God reached into our lives and turned us around. It is telling that the first thing Paul describes is those who are far from God. They are people who are foolish, literally, “without a mind”. So, as we begin to exercise our minds we need to remember that there was a time when we were those who seemed to have no mind to exercise. No wonder we refused to put any faith in God. In our past, we just did not have any confidence in what God is doing. We were unpersuaded in the truth of what God said because we did not want to consider just what it is that God is up to. Having no faith in God to anchor us, we instead became people who wandered off just as Jesus describes in the fifteenth chapter of Luke, where the shepherd must leave the ninety-nine to go after the one who had become lost. You see if we are not persuaded by the truth does it not just make sense that we will be those who go chasing after every lie? We should not be surprised to hear Paul tell us that we end up being slaves to our hungers and our lusts wasting the time we have been given. We were people not living the good but instead living opposed to the good purposes of God. This evil intent shows up in real life as an embittered mind, always comparing ourselves to our neighbors, angry when all is well with them instead of us, somehow believing that to complain at another’s good fortune can somehow make our life better.

         You see, this life before God entered into it, is one that unravels into a life that Paul calls, “detestable”, a life that is disgusting and repulsive. This life Paul finds so ugly is a life consumed by hate. Now, the word that Paul uses here for hate is a word which really means that one loves somebody less than someone else. What Paul is speaking about here is this picking and choosing who we will love and who we will refuse to love. Can you see why Paul says such a life is so nasty? Yet, this life Paul describes is the very life that we see out in the world on any given day. This is kind of how we normally think about living and loving; there are those that I am going to choose to love and there are those who just don’t make the cut. That is very much the norm and the reason that Paul is so grossed out about such a life is that it is just common; there is nothing about living such a life that would catch anyone’s attention. It is quite normal that everyone is living with two sets of lists, those who get our love and those who get our contempt. That is where we all begin in life, our past, where we love some and hate others. We were people who might show you some love or you know, today just might not be your day, and tomorrow is not looking very good either. This is why Paul insists that we cannot forget where it was that we came from so that we make sure our past remains just that, the past. We need to exercise our minds and consider this: are we still hanging on to those two lists, you know the ones we love and the ones we don’t? We also need to remember our past so that we remember that most of the people in the world are living just such a life. Remembering where we came from is supposed to temper us when we interact with the people we meet. We are to see those we share life with as people who might not yet be persuaded of the truth that God is speaking. There are still many people who have wandered off, chasing after every lie, enslaved to their base desires. We know this is who they are because that is who we used to be, before Jesus.

         You see, we begin with our past because it is there that God through Jesus Christ reached into our lives and gave us a hope and a future. Yes, we had a past but then…God. Here is where our story turns with this exclamation that the goodness of God, his giving to us exactly what we needed, calling us one of his own, this is the God who saves us, the one who has made himself real to us. This is the only way that life changes, when the arm of God reaches into our life and takes hold of us. The word for the love of God that Paul uses here is an unusual choice, “philanthropy”, which means the warm brotherly and sisterly love felt between people. Perhaps Paul uses this very human word for love because we have a God who became human for us, to love us as brothers and sisters. This is the love that saved us, the very human Jesus, taking our place upon the cross to save us, tasting death for all of us. He took upon himself our deserved judgment, as one of us, so we could experience the mercy so undeserved.

         So, yes, as Paul reminds us, we are not saved because of us living life in the right way. No, the only thing that rescued us was that God, in Jesus, was merciful to us. It was Jesus who gave us the undeserved gift of the Holy Spirit, the God who comes to us to make all things new. As the Spirit hovers over us the world begins again, our world begins again, and we are made new. The Spirit reaches into our lives and seizes hold of us, transforming our life. The very favor of God welcomes us, people who hate others and those who are hated by others, into his life of holy love. This love of God is an uncommon love because God only has one list of people, and on it are the names of each and every person, giving love to all. Our God is the one who makes his sun to shine on the evil and the good, giving life to all. This love that draws us close to God is grace, the very grace that claims us as being people who belong to God. This is why we make the claim that at last, we are right with God; his love forgave us through the blood of Jesus. Through that same blood God made a covenant with us, an unbreakable bond of love. This is a bond which not even death can dissolve. This is the ground of our hope that we will be at home with God even in the age to come.

         So we exercise our minds. We consider, first, our past apart from God, a life opposed to God and what he is up to. Then we thought of God, breaking into our life, a life that was so lost. God has taken us and through his love, has made us a new creation. The Holy Spirit hovers over us, we are transformed through the grace of God. Now we have a future and a hope.  If we think about it, does it not make sense that what God has done will impact this present moment? Of course! This is why Paul teaches us in the first verse of this chapter, that we are to exercise our minds in order to live out the good, right here in the present. Paul has already told us that we are not saved by our good works; no, we have been saved byGod so that we might be people who are able to do good work. This just leaves us wondering, well what do these good works look like. Paul anticipates this question. He goes on to give us a description of just what is meant by good works. Good works begins by how we talk to each other. Paul very strangely tells us that we are to not blaspheme another person which is odd because normally blaspheme is unholy talk against God. So, why would Paul use a word that is only used for God here where we consider how we are to talk to each other? The answer is that all people are made in the image of God. There is something sacred about the way that God has created us but more, there is something even more holy about the way that he saved us. You see, our God considers our humanity not only worthy of being redeemed by the life of his Son but God also finds us a fitting place for him to dwell through the Holy Spirit. We need to exercise our minds, then, whenever we speak to one another because the fingerprints of God are all over every person we encounter. God takes it personally whenever we speak less of those he considers to be his own. As we think about the saving work God does through his love and grace then we must also consider that God does this not just for us, but God does this for every single person. When we exercise our minds and think about this then it just makes sense that we are to be done with fighting words, words that tear down and tear apart. We cannot tear apart those God is working so hard to make whole. No, instead of people picking a fight we are to be gracious and extravagantly forgiving those who have an axe to grind with us. The words Paul uses here echoes what Jesus taught in the fifth chapter of Matthew, “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and let him have the other one as well, If anyone wants your outer coat let him have your shirt as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” Why would Paul want us to live like this? Well, if we think about it, this is what God has done for us. On the cross the blood gave us not just forgiveness, which dealt with our past, but Jesus went further because that same blood ratified the new covenant, granting us the favor of God, which gave us our future. Here in the present then, forgiveness and favor must be our way of life. And why should we choose to mimic God in this way? Paul, says that we need to exercise our minds because when you live this kind of life, people will see something different about us, we might even say, something beautiful, the rare beauty of the cross. Through our life their Savior will appear for they will see the Christ who lives and works through us. They too will come to know the God who loves them like no other. Paul continues that such a life is one that is heaping over with abundance. The image here is the one given to us by Jesus as found in the sixth chapter of Luke where we hear Jesus say to us, “Forgive and you will be forgiven; give and it will be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over and pouring into your lap, for the measure you use this is how it will be measured back to you.” This life of overflowing, abundant, blessing, this is the reason why Paul’s words scream at us off of these pages. We must emphatically resolve to exercise our minds, to think about our past, to think about our future and think on this life of good we can do here in the present. Jesus promises us that the more we offer forgiveness and favor, grace and love to all people the more grace and love, favor and forgiveness will overwhelm our life. This life is the life we were made for, saved for, this wonderful life we have with God, think about that. So by all means, do a little exercise to live well, but most importantly, exercise your mind to live good, all of your days. Amen!