What Does God Really Want from Me?

Connect to Christ through Whole Life Worship

John 4:23-24; Matthew 11:28-30; John 15:2-4; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Romans 8:14-17.

This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, January 16, 2020.

We are starting a series that looks at what God really wants from us.  It really is a simple answer.  Ultimately, God wants you yourself.  He simply wants us.

Of course, there is more to it than that, so we will take some time to walk through the issues and remind ourselves just how much God loves us.  We will also remind ourselves how much we should follow Jesus without wavering.

Let’s look at our first passage.

Whole Life Worship

In John 4, Jesus is speaking with the Samaritan woman by a well.  She is stuck in the old arguments between her people and the Jews over where the proper place to worship is.  She had unknowingly inherited lies in this matter. 

The history of the Samaritans went back to the beginning of the 7^th Century BC when the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom and deported them.  Other nations were brought to that area and told to live there.  Due to attacks from lions, and terrible things happening, the people complain to the Assyrian king that they don’t know how to please the god of this land.  So, the king sends some of the Israelite priests back to teach them how to please Yahweh.  Of course, they had been kicked out of the land because God was not pleased with their idol worship.  What transpired over the next century was an amalgamation of religious beliefs that rejected everything but the first 5 books of Moses, and they eventually promoted Mt. Gerizim as the place to worship- even built a temple there.

Now, the Jews were right about where to worship, but they were not without their own problems.  Where did they miss the boat?  The place of worship was important only because God had given them a command regarding it.  However, the worship itself was far more important to God than the place of it.  Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that God is looking for people who will worship Him in spirit and in truth.

So, what is worship?  Worship is everything we do to show God that He is the worthiest, most valuable Being in the Universe.  In fact, everything you do is showing what is valuable to you.  Everyone’s life holds something most valuable to them.  They may waver from one thing to the next, but they still value something higher than all else. 

The question is this.  Is it really God the Father that you worship?  Two people can both go to church.  For one it is all about showing God His value, but to the other it may be about being seen as a good, righteous person.  God is looking for people who truly want Him above all else.  You see why I said that He ultimately wants you?

Like Hagar in the wilderness, God saw this Samaritan woman.  She had clearly received religious teaching in her life, but she had not lived a very religious life.  Even then, much of what she had been taught was all lies.  God saw her and sent Jesus to speak truth into her life.  She needed to put her faith in the Messiah. 

Whole life worship of God the Father happens when we come to Jesus and connect to him spiritually by faith.  This spiritual connection will stir up other purposes that God has for us in this spiritual life.  They are not grades or levels that we achieve.   God wants us to connect to Him and His people, grow to be like Jesus, serve one another selflessly, and to share Jesus with those who do not know.  Notice that the Samaritan woman ends up connecting to Jesus and then sharing about him to other in the same day.  It would be hard to say that she hadn’t become more like Jesus by the end of the day, and she clearly served him. 

Over the next weeks, we are going to walk through these four purposes and draw out what God really wants from us.

The Call (Matthew 11:28-30)

Connecting to God is not mechanical like hitching a trailer to a truck.  It is organic like having a relationship with someone.  Jesus is the voice of God saying, “I’m here and I’m seeking a relationship with you.  I designed you to have relationship with Me!”  In Jesus, God shows us that we are valuable to Him, very valuable. 

In this passage, Jesus is inviting, or calling, to anyone who has grown weary of life.  He understands that life in this world without a living relationship with God is hard.  This world is a heavy taskmaster. 

Yet, Jesus doesn’t promise to make our life easy.  Instead, he will take your old burden and give you a lighter burden, even a better burden, to carry.  This world loves to load us up with heavy burdens and sometimes we can be the worst taskmasters to ourselves.  However, Jesus cares about your soul.  The burden that he has for you will feel light compared to the one you carry before coming to him.  It will give you rest for your weary soul.

The Connection (John 15:2-4)

Jesus has made an offer of relationship with you, but it is through the act of putting your faith in him that you actually make a connection.

Jesus pictures it as a branch that is connected to a vine.  The natural connection that we can see is symbolic of a spiritual connection that happens between us and Jesus whenever a we believe in him.  That real and living connection allows the life of Jesus to flow into our soul and spread out into our life.  The fruit of a person who is in a relationship of faith in Jesus is all kinds of life, even in the midst of hardship and death.  It is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Because it is a connection of faith, it must be maintained by faith.  It must persevere until the end.  So, recognize that this world has a counter-call that promises all kinds of “life,” but in the end such life is gravel in the mouth.

God actually cares about you, created you, and wants to help you to continually become more than you are.  This world sees you as a useful tool, a cog in the machine.  A cog that can be replaced if it doesn’t fit the ideas of the modern “aristocracy,” the “elite.”

A New Creation (1 Corinthians 5:17; Romans 8:14-17)

When a person puts their faith in Jesus, they really become a new creation, a new person.  I am leaving the old thinking and the old way of living behind, and I am beginning a new life of trusting the thinking and way of living that Jesus teaches.

Of course, the counter-call of the world means that I still have to maintain my rejection of the old and my embracing of the new every day.  Sometimes people get down the road of following Christ and they feel like its not what they thought it would be.  This can be because we aren’t treating it as a living connection that is a relationship.  You have to maintain relationships for them to last and to be fruitful.  The old you will always be calling, like an old friend from high school saying, “Don’t you want to go back and have some fun?”

Listen, coming to Christ is not about your feelings, and getting things from God.  It is about being adopted into His forever-family.  Those who are in His forever-family are given His Holy Spirit to come alongside of them and to help them.  He leads us and teaches us if we will listen and talk with Him through reading God’s Word and prayer.  It is about trusting The One who cannot and noes not lie.  He wants you in His family.  That ‘s what we were made for and why the Bible says that we were made in His image.  We aren’t gods, but we are able to be adopted into His family as His children.  That is an amazing destiny.

If we are His children, then we will inherit everything with Jesus as Romans 8:17 states.  Forget about the wealth of the world, and the power of this age.  All of these things are destined to be destroyed.  However, we who believe in Jesus are destined to step into a universe untainted by sinfulness, and full of beautiful potential.  Of course, this life is still important.  It is this life which gives us opportunity to be in His family!

Connect to Christ audio

What Are We Doing Here At Abundant Life? Share Part 2

Mark 1:16-18; Acts 1:6-8; Matthew 28:16-20.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, June 28.

Today, we will finish our series on the purposes that Jesus has given to His Church.  We are presently focused on sharing Jesus passionately with those who do not know him.  When we are faithful to do so, it makes a choice possible for people.  They can either believe on Jesus and connect to the life that he gives, or they can refuse to believe and reject the truth of God’s love for them.  Even then, we must never lose our passion to share the lost with those who have previously rejected him.

The first part of this issue is to remember the horrible predicament people are in without Jesus, but the second part is to remember that we have an obligation before God to help them.  On one hand, it is an obligation of His command to us.  However, on the other hand is the obligation of the love of God that should be growing in each and every Christian.

Let’s look at our passages.

We are to be witnesses of Jesus to others

These first two passages (Mark 1 and Acts 1) show us that from the beginning to the end of his ministry, Jesus had the intention of having us help him to reach the world.  It was not just a job for the original apostles, or for the first century Church.  It was for all who would respond to Jesus and thereby become witnesses of him and the live that he gives.

In Mark 1, the analogy is that of fishing.  Peter and Andrew were fishermen and it was quite natural for Jesus to use their profession as a metaphor for what he had in mind.  Now, we could accuse Jesus of using a crass analogy that abuses fish (people) for the master’s ends, but this is an obscene approach to language and communication.  Peter caught fish for fleshly reasons that had no care for the fish.  However, now he would catch people for spiritual reasons that is all about God’s love for those being caught.  The metaphor has both comparing and contrasting elements.

In Acts 1:7, the believers were wondering if the kingdom would be restored to Israel at that time.  Jesus then points them back to his previously stated purpose.  It is not focused on reigning over the earth, but in sharing the good news of his sacrifice for sinners.  In light of the approaching Pentecost, the image that is connected to this passage is a harvest season.  God has allotted a finite amount of time for people to join his Son Jesus and accept his saving work for them.  However, He has also determined that we would not know how long that is.  We are able to recognize that it is dwindling down and getting close, but we would not actually know the date of its ending. 

Thus, we should have the attitude that Jesus demonstrated for us in John 9:4.

“I must work the works of Him who sent me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work.”

This analogy of a work day has a dark tone to it, and it begs the question, “Exactly what does this spiritual night correspond to?”  It may mean the days after the rapture, and the following rampage of Antichrist, or it may reference the 2^nd Coming and the inability to change one’s fate, or even to the Lake of Fire.  Regardless, it is a serious answer that challenges Christians to focus and do the work that we have been given because we do not know when the harvest season will end.

Though the task is important, Jesus then emphasizes that they should wait until the Holy Spirit was poured out upon them.  We are not to rush ahead of Jesus in this task, but let him lead and empower us by the Holy Spirit.  Part of the reason they waited was that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit had to be associated with the Feast of Pentecost.   It celebrated the natural harvest, but prophetically pointed to the spiritual harvest that Jesus was beginning with his Church.  The harvest is also too great for us in our natural strengths.  Jesus tells them that they would receive power from the Holy Spirit.  Any time the Church forgets this, it descends into a worldly system that merely seeks to perpetuate itself.  We must resist this tendency among all groups, and continually seek the help of the Holy Spirit in this work.  This is a spiritual work that must be done by spiritual people in communion with and empowered by the Spirit of God.  In short, we must wait upon him, and be led by him.

Lastly, Jesus emphasizes that this is to be a global endeavor that reaches the ends of the earth.  The salvation of Jesus is extending to the whole earth, and yet, it will be effective only for those who believe upon him.  This is further defined in Revelation 5:9. There we have the four living beings and the twenty-four elders surrounding the throne of God saying this.

“You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals; for You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation,”

The individuals are emphasized, but so are the scoping divisions of humanity.  Our task is not just to reach a bulk of people, like miners setting up over the richest spot.  Rather, it also has an aspect of reaching every people group on this planet.  There are many Christians who work in Bible Translation and Missions.  They have sought to create metrics in regards to where we are at in this endeavor.  The website www.Joshuaproject.net even has a status sheet that is quite interesting to think about.  In some ways, the Gospel has gone to the ends of the earth, but in other ways we still have our work cut out for us.  The problem with metrics is that we do not know what God’s metrics are.  All we can do is analyze the problem and do our best to be faithful to the original task that we have been given.

We are to make disciples of all nations

It is not enough to simply put the message of Jesus in the hands of people.  Jesus makes it clear in Matthew 28 that we are to also disciple those who believe.  Today’s new believers become the mentors for tomorrow’s new believers.  However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

At the end of Matthew 28, the followers of Jesus have gathered at a mountain in the Galilee area.  The movements of Jesus during the 40 days between his resurrection and his ascension are roughly this.  He first appears throughout the Jerusalem area and tells his disciples to meet him at a pre-arranged mountain in Galilee.  Matthew 28 is the account of that later meeting with his disciples there.  Many believe that this is the most likely place for the meeting that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 15:6. There he states that over 500 people saw Jesus at the same time.  A mountain in the Galilee region would allow for a large group to meet without drawing the attention of the Romans.  Jesus is giving his plan to them.  Later, his last meeting (Acts 1) happens on the Mt. of Olives outside of Jerusalem.

In this passage, Jesus emphasizes that the task he is giving us is under his command and by his authority.  There is a long history of Christians coming to new cultures and sharing the gospel.  Many today make arguments against Christian conversion as a destruction of culture.  What gives Christians the right to try and convert Hindus and Pagans?  Ultimately, the Jesus has been made the Lord of all lords and the King of all kings, both in the heavens and on the earth.  He has the authority to require changes in our life.  Of course, a person does not have to completely change all aspects of their culture to be a Christian.  The style of clothing, music, food, etc. has nothing to do with the call to follow Jesus.  That said, all cultures have sinful and rebellious aspects to them that are not good, including the American culture.  So, if you are concerned about the morality of teaching a Native American about the True Great Spirit then Jesus is our authorizing Lord.  However, this does not authorize everything that has been done in his name over the years.  We should recognize that we will be held accountable for doing this task, but also for how we did it.  God’s command is for all men everywhere to repent and believe on Jesus Christ for salvation.  This will not only transform culture, but also transform the individual.

Notice that Jesus does not say for us to go into all the world and make converts.  The grammar of the passage makes it clear that the main work is to make disciples, or better, to disciple those who believe.  Going, baptizing, and teaching are all the things that we do as a part of discipling them.  In order to make disciples, we will need to go to people (the whole earth), we will need to baptize them as a show of their acceptance in the community, and we will need to teach them the commands of Christ. 

Often, the Church has emphasized getting a confession of faith out of people, but not helping them to grow afterwards.  Just as children need parents at birth and beyond, so the spiritually newborn need help from other mature believers.  This should not be done in the way that we come between them and God, taking the place of Jesus, but in a healthy way that is more like an elder sibling helping out a younger sibling.  If an elder sibling forgets that they are not the parent then they will eventually get in trouble with Jesus. 

Many people have made a decision to follow Christ, but then, in the weeks or months following, they gave up on it.  Discipling is not easy, and it takes love and time.  Technically, we are never done learning as a student in this life, but the critical need for another person to help us should diminish because of the spiritual roots that we develop.  Even then, we must never think that we have arrived at a point where we no longer need other believers.  God uses other believers in our lives to keep us humble, no matter how spiritually mature we are.

Jesus ends this command to disciple all nations with the promise that he will always be with us, even to the end of the age.  He is with us through the Holy Spirit.  We may be weary and ready for it all to be done, but Jesus is not done as long as we have breath and are still on this planet.  Don’t be weary in this day of hard labor.  Instead, draw near to Jesus and ask for the Holy Spirit to strengthen you for the task at hand.  Let’s be a people who are passionately sharing Jesus with the lost and helping them to connect to his Abundant Life!

Share Part II audio

What Are We Doing Here At Abundant Life? Share Part 1

Isaiah 53:6; Romans 3:9-11, 23; Ezekiel 18:20; Romans 6:23; John 3:16; Acts 4:12.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday June 14, 2020.

We have been talking about the purposes of the Church and its members.  We will now look at the last purpose, which is to passionately share Jesus with those who do not know him.  It can be seen as part of purpose #2.  In a way, we are serving those who are lost by telling them the good news.  However, since it is quite different then the ways we serve other believers, it is best to give it its own purpose.  Unbelievers have only one overwhelming need and that is Jesus.  Everything else pales.  They need to connect to the Lord of life, and only those who know Jesus can help them do that.  If you feed a person’s belly, but don’t help them connect to Christ then you have not helped them in the way that they needed.  Of course, you can do both, but we must never lose sight of our true purpose in their life.

People need Jesus whether they know it or not, and Christians must be convinced of that enough to go out of our comfort zones.  So today, let’s talk about the fact that people need to hear the good news of Jesus.

Each of us is a sinner

The first two passages that I have listed impress upon us that each person on this earth is a sinner.  Even those who are trying to keep the righteousness of God fall short.  It is interesting that people typically feel like they are doing a good enough job, and that their good outweighs their bad.  However, the revelation from God tells us that this isn’t true.

Mankind wasn’t always this way.  Back in Genesis chapters one and two, we are told that God created humans good and without sin.  Yet, in Genesis three, Adam and Eve rebel against God’s command and purposefully sin.  Sure, they were deceived, but they still knowingly broke God’s command.  At this point, Adam and Eve entered into a fallen, dying state.  This fallen state would also affect all of humanity that would come after them.  The death that God warned them about was both physical and spiritual.

All humans born after Genesis three would also be dying beings who were separated from the direct presence of God.  This may seem unfair, but there is no logical way around it.  The choice of parents always affects what a baby experiences: where it is born, how well it is taken care of, whether or not it is raised for the Lord, and the list goes on.  We can scope this out to recognize that the choice of families determines what a neighborhood experiences, and the choice of neighborhoods determines what a city experiences, and so to the state, nation, and ultimately the world.

Of course, there is more to this than just our choices.  There is also the fact that the devil and his cohorts have interfered in our relationship with God.

Given enough time, every person born on this planet will become sinners.  Isaiah is speaking about a people, Israel, who knew God’s law and yet he recognized that none of them were righteous before God.  He revealed that God would one day put our sins upon another, the Messiah.  I will talk more about that later.  In the Romans passage, Paul also emphasizes that both Jews and Greeks (basically everybody that wasn’t Jewish) fall short of God’s glory because of their sin.

We are born to sinful parents, who are in a sinful world, and we have a propensity for sin, that is, a sinful nature.  This is quite evident in each person.  You do not have to teach a child to sin.  It comes naturally.  However, you do have to teach and train them to do what is right.  This does not mean that everyone becomes as sinful as they can possibly be.  It simply means that, in the middle of all our choices, none of us measures up to complete righteousness.  It would be good for us to remember this in our social discussions and arguments.  Usually, it is the first thing we jettison.  When I am railing against someone else’s sin, I should remember that I too am a sinner.

How about the aborted baby, or the baby who dies within the first year?  Technically they are not guilty of sin before God, but they are stuck in the human condition.  They die and go into a spiritual holding place where all other humans have gone before them.  Without Jesus, they would still be stuck there.  There are some who have taught that we are born having inherited the guilt of Adam.  I don’t believe that this is a proper reading of Romans 5:12 and other passages about the effect of the original sin.  It was death and separation from God that spread to all the rest of us, not Adam’s guilt before God.  However, if they had been allowed to live, they would have eventually become sinners too.  At some point, they would become aware that they were doing something wrong and yet, would do it anyways.  It is at that point that we become guilty before God for our own sins.

The judgment of God is upon us

Yes, man is a sinner, but Ezekiel tells us the decree of God.  The soul who sins will die.  The wages of sin is death.  In Genesis 3, we see God meting out judgment.  Though we could talk about painful childbirths and the sweat of our brow, the most important part of our punishment is that we die.  Before that day, Adam and Eve were not as we are today, growing old and dying.  However, this is not only true physically, but spiritually as well.  They were kicked out of the Garden and were separated from the presence of God.  This spiritual separation is the death of a relationship, but it also leads to an eternal spiritual death if it is not fixed.  We will all be held guilty for our own sins, not the sins of our parents, or our neighbors.  The question is not, did they sin, but what did I do because of their sin?  Usually, we use it as an excuse for our own sin.

This sets up a dilemma, not in the sense that God was stumped and couldn’t figure it out, but in the sense that there is a tension between God’s love and His Righteousness.  The Old Testament emphasizes both and even posits the need of a sacrifice to cover our sins.  God is love, so He wants to save us.  However, He is also just, so He cannot overlook our sins.  It is easy for us to say, “He’s God!  He can do anything that He wants.”  However, we fail to recognize that God cannot quit being Himself.  He is fully love and yet fully just.  We can overlook sin because we are sinful humans.  However, God is not.

Let’s look at an illustration.  If someone raped and murdered a loved one of yours, and then was arrested, confessed, and proven guilty at trial, what would you think if the judge chose to overlook the case and simply let the guy go free?  Something within us would cry out, “That’s not right!”  Even if we weren’t bloodthirsty for his death, we would still think that something more than just letting him go should happen.  We easily pick and choose when to demand justice and when not to, but God cannot.  As Paul says in Romans 6:23, He must give us the wages that we deserve.  The good news is that there is a way out of this, but we must not jump ahead of ourselves.

We cannot save ourselves

So, we are sinners, and therefore are under the judgment of God.  This last point is that we cannot save ourselves.  Many people will recognize the bad stuff of the world and its need for some kind of answer.  However, God tells us that we are in a situation that no human or group of humans can fix by themselves.

The smartest and best individuals of humanity cannot fix the sinful nature that is within each of us.  Paul says in Romans 3:23 that our attempts at righteousness fall short and are unacceptable.  In fact, they are woefully short.  Imagine someone giving you a glass of water, but it only has a couple of specks of feces in it.  Is that acceptable?  But, Lord, it is better than that other glass that is half full of crud.  It doesn’t matter.  A couple of specks of feces is still too much, and unacceptable.  Another way to look at this is this.  If the best among us only sin between one to three times a day, that is still between 365 to 1,000 times a year.  Over a typical lifetime, we would amass between 25,000 to 75,000 sins, and this is the best-case scenario.  If your plan to save yourself is to be a good person then hear what God’s Word is telling you.  It won’t work.  It falls woefully short in even the best of people, and most of us are average.  If your plan is to follow the wise people of this world who can lead us into Utopia then hear what God’s Word says.  It won’t work.  It not only falls short, but always leads to a destructive end because humans are sinful. Globalism won’t solve our problem.  It will only dismantle the protections that God installed at the Tower of Babel against an evil man ruling over the entire earth.  This is exactly what the book of Revelation tells us is on the agenda for the last days.  A man of sin will take over the earth and the world will eat it up.  However, it will also bring great destruction upon the world.

No, our righteousness falls short and always will.  What we need is God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.  Jesus was, and still is, God’s solution for the world.  Because He loved us, God sent His Son to pay the price for our sins.  All who put their faith in him can have their sins covered by His righteousness, and then be justly allowed to join His family.  Only God’s plan will work.

As we close, I want us to remember that there is a whole world of people in need of the truth before they leave this earth, which few get to know when that is.  They are in the same situation that you were in before you met Jesus.  They are lost and without hope.  Some have never really heard the good news.  Some have heard a little of it, but it is fuzzy and without resolution.  Some have heard it, but also experienced a bad witness.  Perhaps they were in a cult, or were hurt and wounded.  Some have heard the gospel and have outright rejected Christ.  Yet, God loves them.  He made them to become like Him, to reflect His image, to dwell with Him.  This is the plight of the world around us.  They are under judgment and cannot save themselves.  Oh, the need is great for laborers who will go out into the field and share the good news of who Jesus is.  May God help us to have the guts to go do it!

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What Are We Doing At Abundant Life? Serve Part 1

Romans 12:1-2; John 13:6-7, 12-17.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty on Sunday, May 24, 2020.

We have talked about connecting to Jesus and his people through whole-life worship, and also, growing spiritually to be like Jesus.  These are the first two purposes Christians should be fulfilling. 

Today, we are going to talk about serving.  Those who believe in Jesus are called to serve him. He is the Lord, the master, and we are his servants.  Let’s go to Romans 12 to explore this further.

We selflessly serve Jesus by presenting our lives as a living sacrifice

In verse 1, Paul is clearly using imagery from the temple sacrifices that would have been familiar to his Jewish audience.  Even the Gentile believers would have understood this imagery since their lands were filled with temples to false gods where people brought offerings and sacrifices to them.

Paul calls this a “living sacrifice.”  This is clearly an oxymoron and yet, it makes complete sense once it is explained.  Jesus is the only one who literally sacrificed his life so that our sins could be removed from us.  It has been said that, since he died for us, the least we can do is live for him.  This is simplistic and yet true.  Paul even refers to this as our “reasonable service,” which we will look at in a bit. 

So, what does it mean to be a living sacrifice?  It means that we are living for God’s purposes, and not our own.  It means that we sacrifice the desires of our flesh, and all the ways that we lived before we met Jesus, and pick up the desires and ways of Christ.  Of course, a person may lay down their life in martyrdom, but this is never seen as a means of removing sin.  Thus, even the martyr, who physically dies, goes to be with the Lord and is not really dead.  They are still living.

The word that is translated as “service,” at the end of verse 1, has a religious connection to the ceremonial duties Israel had in the temple.  For Christians, living for Jesus is presented as parallel to the work that priests did in the temple.  This connects to the New Testament concept that all believers are priests before God in the New Covenant.  What we do in this life and the purposes for which we do it requires sacrifice and serving the Lord Jesus.  I have added the adjective “selflessly” just in case a person doesn’t get what sacrificial living really means.

As a living sacrifice, it is important to present ourselves as a holy sacrifice.  This adjective ultimately means that we are declared as belonging to God, or set apart for Him and His purposes alone.  As believers in Jesus, we are to be following Jesus, not the culture of the world around us.  They continue to plunge into ever diverse ways of rebellion against God, but we are to restrain ourselves and live for Jesus.  Of course, this is easier said than done.

Thus, our holiness has two aspects to it.  Our identity as being holy is immediate upon our belief in Jesus and it is inseparable.  It is he who declares us to be one of his holy ones.  We live for him and not the world or ourselves.  In this sense, a person never becomes more holy.  You can’t be declared as holy to any higher degree.  It simply is what you are. 

However, the other aspect of holiness has to do with our practical holiness.  No one perfectly lives their life (both internally and externally) for Jesus and his purposes.  We call this discipleship and “sanctification,” (the process by which one better lives their lives for Christ alone).  In this sense, we can become more holy.  Yet, this should never be confused with salvation.  Our salvation gives us the identity of being holy and cannot be separated by the messy process of discipleship.  In fact, discipleship is a battle that we wage against our own flesh, and should be done in the power and with the help of the Holy Spirit.

May God help us to be secure in the knowledge that we are the saints (holy ones) of God, but may He also help us to be courageous in our battle against our sin and the pull of this world upon our hearts and minds.  Yes, we must keep our faith in Jesus for salvation, but we must also learn to trust in his commands and his example of how to live this life in order to please the Father.

Another concept that is added is that of being an acceptable sacrifice.  We should seek to live our lives as an acceptable sacrifice to Him.  This again relies upon the Old Testament sacrifice imagery.  A sacrificial animal had to fit all the requirements that God had placed upon it.  They were to be without blemish and in the way He commanded.  Without Jesus, none of us can be an acceptable sacrifice.  It can be easy to look at our discipleship performance and think that maybe we are not acceptable.  However, our acceptability comes directly from trusting Jesus for our salvation.  We are acceptable to God because we approach Him with a relationship of faith in His Son. 

This sets up a tension between knowing that we are acceptable because of our faith in Jesus, and the fact that true faith in Jesus will seek to be like him by cooperating with the discipleship process.  We should never deceive ourselves that we can be acceptable without both, and yet the foundation of our acceptance is Jesus, and not our ability to perform.

In verse 2, Paul moves away from the sacrifice imagery and speaks to our lives.  The life of a Christian is not to be conformity, but rather a transformational relationship.  Paul is talking about conforming to this world, but part of that world is the religious pretenders who only conform to an outward veneer of righteousness, and are inwardly one with the world system.  Church cannot become a machine that forces everyone to look, speak, and act like the pastor or the elders.  Jesus is our template, but also the inner source of our transformation.  The world teaches people to conform to the system in order to get ahead.  Many who are nonconformists may make a different way for themselves, but even this is part of the world system.  They have conformed to the world in a nonconformist way.  When we come to Christ, the Father will not accept an outward conformance to Jesus.  If the Church merely duplicates the conforming method of the world and simply uses it for its own purposes then it is not what Christ desires.  We would be relying upon the flesh rather than the Spirit of God.  People do not necessarily need to look a certain way.  There is no power in that.  What we really need is the Holy Spirit within us fueling and directing a change that is more than surface.  It is a complete transformation that is related to the word that we use today, “metamorphosis.”

Don’t settle for a life that isn’t changing to become more like Jesus, but neither settle for a life that only looks enough like Jesus on the surface to get you by.  Paul states that this transformation takes place as our minds are renewed.  The world has taught us all manner of things that are completely hostile towards the things of God.  We don’t often know all the ways that our mindset is actually antichrist, like Judas was.  God’s Word, His Holy Spirit, and the community of mature believers, surround us with the power to change our minds and thus to transform our lives.  This is not merely a power of the mind, but is a mind renewed by the working of God’s Spirit.

Ultimately, Paul says that we will end up proving that God’s will is perfect.  This is one of the ways that we serve Him.  We serve as His proof to the world and to the devil and his angels.  Satan has rebelled against God because he thinks his way is better.  May we live in such a way- you know, like Jesus- so as to prove the Father’s way right.  In fact, our transformation doesn’t stop in this life.  On the day of Resurrection, our transformation will be completed and we will stand beside our Lord Jesus as completed, adult Sons of God.  We will be a myriad of proofs against the will of Satan and those who follow him.

Now, let’s look at one more passage to talk about another side of our service to Jesus.

We selflessly serve Jesus by serving one another

In John 13, Jesus is interacting with his disciples in the last hours before he is arrested and crucified.  There is a duality throughout the first three purposes in which Jesus and his people are inseparable.  I can’t only connect to Jesus.  I also need to connect to his people.  I can’t only grow spiritually as an individual.  I also need to grow as a part of a group of people that are becoming more like Jesus corporately.  So, it is here.  We must serve Jesus, but part of that service is to serve one another with a selfless attitude. 

Jesus employs the washing of feet as a powerful picture to prove to us that he means business in this area of service. He took up a basin of water and a towel, and washed each one of their feet.  Think of it.  They had gone through dinner lying next to each other’s dirty feet.  Not one of them was willing to take the lowest place and wash each other’s feet.  In fact, they hadn’t even taken the time to wash their own feet.  This is important because Jesus did not rebuke them and tell them to wash their own feet.  Instead, he gets up and focuses their attention on serving one another.

Peter is surprised at what Jesus is doing.  Of all of the people there, he was the last one that should do such a menial task.  Peter protests, and, in so doing, becomes a picture of how our flesh protests learning to selfless serve others.  What Jesus was doing was so across the grain of Peter’s own mentality (if we are honest, ours too) that he doesn’t want to accept it.  Humility is not something that our flesh immediately embraces.  Humility simply means that there is nothing that is “beneath me,” when it comes to serving Jesus and serving each other.  When love sees that something lowly must be done, it rises up and goes to work without pride or arrogance.  Our flesh doesn’t like this.  We can only do it if a true transformation is happening in our hearts, minds, and lives.  You could say that it is a test to see if we will follow over the top of the protests of our flesh.

The noble motivation for serving one another is to have our hearts so transformed by the love of God that we now serve each other out of that same love.  However, love is not just a feeling.  It is a decision for a beneficial course of action that is mixed with the understanding that we are obligated by Jesus to serve each other.  Once Jesus took the lowest place, none of his disciples could ever again pretend that service of others was beneath them.  To refuse to serve each other is to demonstrate that we think we are above Christ.  In question form, it is this way.  If taking the lowest place to serve us was not beneath Jesus then how could it be beneath me?  It isn’t.  We either cling to our pride, and then perish, or we surrender it and follow Jesus.  Just like the cross is a hideous image to our flesh, so the basin and the towel are another image that causes our flesh to shrink back. 

Jesus drives the point home in verse 16.  The servant is not greater than the master.  None of us are greater than him, and he took the lowest place.  We can’t out do Jesus, but we can surrender and seek to become like him.

Jesus also calls this an example.  His intention is not to set up a ritual of foot-washing services, although they can serve the purpose of shocking us out of lethargy.  This was just one small area that was relevant to those 12 men in that moment.  Elsewhere in the New Testament, we see Tabitha making clothes for the poor, and others selling some of their possessions in order that widows could receive the care that they needed.  The key is not conforming to a particular act, but rather being transformed into a servant that sees the needs of people and serve them.

In the moment, Jesus washed their feet because his love for them compelled him to do it.  He knew that they would need this lesson in the trying times ahead.  May God help us to see each other enough to know how to use the gifts that He has given us in order to serve one another with humility.

Jesus ends the portion by telling us that we will be blessed by God if we do this.  This blessing is both as an individual and as a group.  Our families will be blessed when we serve one another, and our church will be blessed when we serve one another.

The blessing of God should not be seen as some kind of lucky rabbit’s foot that makes everything go well.  Instead, the blessing is the pleasure of God who walks before you, behind you and at your side.  Lord, we bless you today because you are the source of all blessings.  Help us to learn how to serve like you did.

Serve I audio