You may have heard the old saying “Familiarity breeds contempt” (which is not today’s three-word phrase for daily Christian Living). But it conveys the idea that we tend to take things for granted, having little value for what we believe we can have at any time.  Oh, but if we were to lose it!  We’d be in such a world of hurt!  One of the most familiar phrases in Scripture is John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”  We see it so often on placards at sporting events, on tee-shirts, and hear it from evangelists and pastors that it becomes the religious version of Charlie Brown’s teacher (“Wahn, wahn, wahn, wahn, wahn”) whenever we hear the three words for day-to-day Christian living “God loves you.”

Now I move from the collective (we) to the personal (me), but what about you?  I take God’s love for granted.  In fact, I sometimes doubt it.  Life chews me up and spits me into bed at night to toss and turn only to repeat the process the next day. I sometimes wonder:

Is this God’s definition of love? 

Nope. 

John 3:16 defines how God loves you.  Stop and re-read it.  Let it sink in.

God loves you and He loves me, not just for today, but for eternity.  It’s just so familiar that I don’t value it the way I would if He were suddenly… capable… of withdrawing His love, and decided to because I’m such an ingrate. I’m so glad that everything is possible for God but denying who He is.

Whether times are good or bad; whether life is easy or hard; whether we’re experiencing success or failure, health or sickness; whether we remember or forget, God’s whole character is love (1 John 4:16) and He can do no other.  Let’s do our best to cherish those three words for day-to-day Christian living: God loves you!

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This “three word” series is archived beginning July 22, 2017. 

Do you ever feel like everything is falling to pieces all around you?  The flood waters are rising and it’s all you can do to bring your life to higher ground?  For those of us in Chicagoland, it has certainly felt that way.  We’ve been experiencing floods of not-quite-biblical proportions and have found ourselves clinging to the promises and character of God.  Our prayers perhaps limited in number to three words, but they’re three words of great power, three words of incredible promise, and three words of life-sustaining hope.  Today we begin a series of those three-word reminders to help us face life as Christians in a very fallen world.

• Do you need help?  Encouragement?  A reminder that you’ve not been forgotten?
• Do you need a friend?
• Do you need to know you’re not alone?
• Do you need to know your God is real, present, and powerful?

God has answers for your questions straight out of Scripture, and He reminds us today: He is able.

“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” (2 Corinthians 9:8). 

Just look how expansive and all-inclusive that is!  All grace.  Abound.  All things.  All times.  All you need to abound.  Every good work!

When we feel unequal to the task, our task is no match for God.  Three little words as an excellent reminder:  He is able!

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This “three word” series is archived beginning July 22, 2017.  For further study on how God is able, read Mark 9:21 Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?” “From childhood,” he answered. 22 “It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” 23 “‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for him who believes.” 24 Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” 

Believe today that He is able.

The Christian life is filled with things that don’t seem consistent with God’s love and sovereignty.  How is a Christian to act when evil seems to win?  It looks so unjust.  We can feel like the prophet Jeremiah who complained to God:

You are always righteous, O LORD, when I bring a case before you. Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease? (Jeremiah 12:1)

Why isn’t it total cause-and-effect and completely predictable in this world? Do good, receive good.  Do evil, reap the bad fruit that you have sown.  Why instead does it seem the harder you try to follow God, the more bad stuff happens?  It can certainly feel that way sometimes.

God has some Do’s and Don’ts for the Christian facing that question.

Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. (Psalm 37:1-3)

God’s answer is remarkably simple: 

Don’t look at them.  Look to God. 

Don’t fret.  Don’t envy. 

Don’t adopt the short-term solution and join them, because time is fleeting.  Instead, take the long view when evil seems to win and realize it’s possible for evil to be winning the battle but losing the war. 

Evil has its day and its purpose is to show us God’s justice when it happens. 

For when it’s Game Over, those who have trusted in the LORD and continued to do good, they will dwell continually in God’s kingdom and enjoy His goodness forever.

The disciples asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:25-26)  What is impossible for man is possible for God.  What is immovable and carved in stone for humanity is no challenge for the power of the Almighty.  It’s the Mystery of the Immovable Object as we conclude our look at 1 Corinthians 15  and What it Means to be Resurrected.

1 Corinthians 15:48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. 50 I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

It’s impossible for us.  We are the immovable object.  Created in God’s Image, born into man’s image after Adam, we remain Adam’s offspring, and sinful ones at that…apart from the work of Christ. 

Our flesh and blood likeness to Adam isn’t enough to get us into heaven no matter how well we live as humans.  Only the actions of God can move us, change us, redeem us so that we’re fit for heaven.

1 Corinthians 15:51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed– 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

Some will not “sleep” (that is, die) for some will be alive when Jesus returns.  It could be our generation, it could be tomorrow, or it could still be years in the future.  No one knows apart from God the Father.  But we’re told to be ready.  Not by having accumulated a Do-It-Yourself-Salvation portfolio of good works and good behavior, but by having acknowledged that apart from Christ we are immovable and dead as a doornail.  Christians will be changed.  God moves the immovable object of His love and saving grace.

1 Corinthians 15:53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” 55 “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

So Paul reminds us to be immovable, unshakeable, undeterred in our devotion to Christ.  Labor as if it all depends on us, believe as if it depends completely on Him, for it does.  We are the immovable object that only God can move from death to life as we experience what victory over death looks like and what it truly means to be resurrected.

Happy Independence Day!

To some of us, the Fourth of July is descriptive only of the date, after all we wouldn’t say “Happy February 14th,” December 25th, or even April 1st.  The meaning for us is Independence, grounded in American history (and patterned after the freedom in biblical history from Genesis to Revelation and its connection to life).

Therefore, the Fourth of July is less about the fireworks we love than what they celebrate: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.  Freedom and everything that Liberty makes beautiful. 

Not all nations are free, but those nations that aren’t still know what freedom means.  To oppressive governments, America and its freedoms pose a threat to their way of life and control.  To those being oppressed, freedom is a distant hope they desire to taste and see someday.

It means something wonderful to those who passed through Ellis Island or today take the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America:

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”

People take this oath and obligation freely because the freedoms of the United States of America represent to them a fresh wind of opportunity and a blessing, particularly in contrast to the violence and persecution many have fled.

It is no surprise that in nations of tyranny the first things to go are often monuments to a prior history.  There is a reason why ISIS (and other regimes) destroy places of historical importance, especially religious significance. 

Erase a history, forget its meaning, and oppression will have no competition.  There is vulnerability in being a nation with no memory.

On this Independence Day, it is good to remember that to our founders, the Fourth of July wasn’t a date on a calendar for a picnic or a barbecue or a convenient document signing.  It was a day to remember as history because our founding fathers knew what it was to be in bondage and what it feels like to be free.

Happy Independence Day!

“Hold on,” you might say. “How could Jesus be the last Adam?”  Isn’t that like saying Jesus was the Last Man?  And haven’t plenty of men been born and lived since Jesus?  What on Earth is Paul saying as we continue our study of 1 Corinthians 15  to answer the question, What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?  Well, it’s not hard to understand when we see it’s as easy as the difference between being given life and giving life.

1 Corinthians 15:45 So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven.

When Adam was created out of the dust of the earth, he was given life.  God breathed it into him.  Easy, right?

Jesus was and is not a created being.  He’s God.  He’s always existed.  In a sense, it was Jesus (before He had a body of flesh) breathing life into the very first Adam and Eve.  About Jesus we read, John 1:4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

To any men looking in the wrong place (among other men) in order to find life, Jesus makes it clear that He is the last Adam.  In effect, He’s the other bookend to the Image of God in man.  If one bookend on the shelf was Adam made in God’s Image and Adam’s decision to sin extended into every volume on the shelf, the other bookend is Christ’s forgiveness.  It is finished.  Jesus is the Last Man standing when it comes to being sinless and therefore, the only Man we’ll ever need.

John 6:31 “Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'” 32 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world … 38 I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day”

Are you still looking among men and among the created things of this world to find true life and eternal happiness?  Are you looking to acquire life for yourself by amassing all the things you can and thinking they are giving life? 

Or have you chosen to trust Christ, the last Adam and life-giving Spirit of God?  He is the bread from heaven and is the only One who is giving life to you.  What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?  Listen and hear the words of Jesus who said,

John 6:. 40 “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” 

It’s the difference between being given life and giving life.

How amazing the Resurrection will be!  That moment when the truly transforming power of God completes the work and changes the natural into the spiritual.  That day when the reality we cannot presently see becomes every bit as natural to us as the world we presently see.  Both are real, but one is hidden in glory.

This is what Paul talks about as we continue our look at What it Means to Be Resurrected from1 Corinthians 15. 

1 Corinthians 15:42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

When the dead are raised, there is a transformation.

• Perishable>>>Imperishable
• Dishonor>>>Glory
• Weakness>>>Power
• Natural>>>Spiritual

Just look at the transformation and what the natural world can offer presently!

Death, perishable, dishonor, weakness and natural. 

And then look at what God does!

Eternal, imperishable, glory, power, and spiritual!

I don’t know about you, but there are plenty of days when I look at the world we live in and the day ahead and feel a looming sense of fatigue and weariness.  I long for that transforming power.

This natural world is, by consequence of sin, in a constant state of dying, oppression, and dishonor.  But for the Christian, this natural world will be replaced someday by a New Heaven and a New Earth as God makes everything new, including you and me.  Looking forward to that day.  What about you?

I don’t know about you, but I wonder sometimes what the post-resurrection me will look like.  No, I’m not thinking you’re wondering about me and my body, but have you ever thought about you and yours?  To each its own? Let’s continue our look at What it Means to Be Resurrected and a study of 1 Corinthians 15.

I used to joke that I wanted my post-resurrection body to have a nice tan and a flat stomach.  I was imagining heaven as being no skin cancer and the Bible says there’s no more sun, so I guess it’d have to be a lasting sunless tanner or a permanent natural tan.  Jesus wouldn’t serve food that’d kill you at the wedding feast of the Lamb, so I guess there’d be no need for Nutrisystem to get rid of stubborn belly fat for that flat stomach.  When I imagine heaven, I don’t think I’ll eye every future meal as a potential assassin looking to kill me like earthly food can sometimes make me feel. 

Every week there’s a new food reported to kill me and if I don’t eat at all, that’ll kill me!  Post-resurrection, nothing will.  Just let that sink in.

I don’t know what our bodies will look like.  But if I understand what Paul is saying, to each its own.  God will take materials–perhaps the very ones used to give us a body now—and God will perfect it, not just back to the pre-Fall body, but to an eternal one.  We’ll be us, but different.  Somehow Jesus could look like Jesus, but at the same time…not look like Jesus (Luke 24:15-32) to the men on the road to Emmaus.

How is this possible?

The Apostle Paul offers an analogy of the various bodies that exist now and as he builds his case and points ahead to what redeemed humanity’s glorified bodies will be someday.

1 Corinthians 15:38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39 All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40 There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. 41 The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

Perhaps Paul (in his vision unto thorn) received insider knowledge or maybe the Holy Spirit revealed a pattern … that there’s more to the story.  Paul talks about our resurrection bodies in the same way that Genesis talks about Creation.  To each its own.

Read through the Creation account again and how God gave all created things mass, flesh, being, or substance.  If God could do that ex nihilo (out of nothing at Creation) God can give us something wholly new through His same creative genius.

But unlike reincarnation, when we get new bodies, we will not become a different kind of creature to cycle through in an endless quest for perfection.

Biblically speaking, to each its own and we remain human. 

And to every human being, there is one life, one death, and then resurrection to a forever status: redeemed perfected or not-redeemed sinner, that is the question.

By its definition, resurrection requires death first.  Given that death is a guarantee—your chances of dying are 100% if Jesus doesn’t preempt it by His return—resurrection changes the whole human trajectory.  The unavoidable fact of death (something even non-Christians believe is real) testifies to the truth of God’s existence and God’s law.  It transports every man, woman, and child back to the Garden of Eden and the Fall of mankind.  Evolution can’t explain mortality.

In our look at “What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?” and study of 1 Corinthians 15, we’re now at verses 35-37 to deal with that unavoidable fact of mortality.

1 Corinthians 15:35 But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 

The Apostle Paul was dealing with Resurrection-deniers, those cynics who were asking how dead people can possibly rise.  After all, in a natural world, mist settles and rises, dead people don’t.  They stay dead.  But in a supernatural world of Christ’s intervention, people can rise to life again.  

I like Paul.  He uses gardening analogies.  He says a seed ceases being a seed when it is planted.  That’s true: it dies to being a seed.  But the seed will produce what was sown. 

A seed contains DNA that will produce what its DNA says it will be.  A zucchini seed will produce a zucchini plant which will produce zucchinis that eventually make zucchini bread or grilled zucchini (or the unavoidable fact that too many zucchinis end up as baseball bats that no neighbor wants or gardener in good conscience gives away).  But the point is: a zucchini seed produces zucchini plants which produce zucchinis.

A sinner (when he dies in his sin) has a sinner’s DNA.  That’s why Christians need to be born-again by the Holy Spirit.  By faith, we get transformed by the death of Christ in order to have DNA that says “Redeemed!”  Resurrection will either be to eternal life as Redeemed or to eternal separation, commonly called Hell, for those who have tried the do-it-yourself method of salvation.

We not just natural, physical beings.  We have supernatural souls and spirits–that breath of life God gives which transcends our body’s physical death.  What does your spiritual DNA say about you?  The unavoidable fact of death is … well, unavoidable.  So is resurrection.  So the question is: will you rise redeemed or with the sinner’s DNA? 

Ya’ hang around bad theology long enough and you’ll adopt it.  It’s as simple as that.  And many people you’d otherwise respect in prominent evangelical and “mainstream” Christendom are leading the pack.  Today’s Social Gospel preachers are turning a culturally relevant theology into a culturally based theology. 

What’s the difference, you ask? 

A culturally relevant Gospel is a God-glorifying, Resurrection-based, evangelically motivated, historically preserved, and socially concerned Gospel promoting good works to a culture from a Christian’s changed heart. 

The Social Gospel is culturally based.  Its aim is an increasingly perfect world by glorifying man’s innate motivations and abilities.  The Word of Truth in a Social Gospel becomes subservient to relative truth (i.e. what’s true for you and what’s true for me are different things).  The necessity of man’s improving social circumstances betrays a belief that God isn’t actually real and Christ isn’t needed.  We’re all we’ve got and that’s enough.  

The two gospels (the Gospel of Jesus Christ versus the Social Gospel) are markedly different to the discerning mind because they are founded on different views of the Truth.  But, God doesn’t evaluate our world and our actions the way we do.  

A case in point: The hysteria regarding the US non-participation in the Paris Climate Accord. Where’s God–especially among the countries pushing for it?  To some, we’ve abandoned the world and condemned it to death.  Mankind is going to perish completely unless we find technologies to make Mars livable for when the Earth is not.  This is not what the Bible teaches. 

According to the Bible, when the Earth goes, Mars goes. God is still sovereign and the only thing left when it’s “Game Over” is … what you did with Christ.

A Social Gospel is being preached in plenty of churches these days.  They’re preaching racism and refugees more than Christ’s Resurrection; injustice more than the One who justifies; relative truth versus Jesus as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life;” and an the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it consequence of climate change and politics versus the “end of the world” because frankly, God promised it (2 Peter 3:11-13).

In a Social Gospel, there is a blending of Christianity with multi-cultural awareness until it becomes genuine syncretism (a theological smoothie of many religions), and adopting a chameleon gospel that changes with its political surroundings—all of this is way too easy and really, really wrong.

To that kind of mentality among the Resurrection-deniers, the Apostle Paul tells the church at Corinth,

Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”  Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God– I say this to your shame. (1 Corinthians 15:33-34)

To Social Gospel proponents, we must ask “What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?”  Resurrection is both the Gospel’s turning point and the determinant of humanity’s future.  This Earth will perish—it’s supposed to. 

As good environmental stewards, we won’t hasten its demise, but eternal life requires Resurrection and a New Earth.  The Kingdom of God isn’t better health care while nurturing Mother Earth, or colonizing Mars just to be safe.  The Kingdom of God in the hearts of believers displays sacrificial service until Jesus’ return.  Then there will be a New Heaven and a New Earth just as Jesus promised. 

This is the Gospel that the Apostle Paul talks about to those of his day:  Galatians 1:6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel– 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.

How do we get through to many evangelical, Protestant, and Catholic leaders of our day?  How can we show them the seductiveness of exchanging exclusive truth of the Gospel for a worldly facsimile, just enough off to become corrupt?  To become a different gospel? 

The truth is the Resurrection changed everything now and forever. In the future, we don’t need a Social Gospel and we don’t need Mars to live. 

What do we need to live?  We need Jesus whose Resurrection paved the way for ours.  And that’s the Gospel truth.