Win with Christ
Written by Reuben M. Bredenhof |
Thursday, December 1, 2022
Christ our King has already defeated the kingdom of darkness. He did it when he hung on the cross, when he died, and he came back to life three days later. Now Christ is in heaven, reigning over all things. Jesus still has many enemies, like we do. But in your struggle, take heart. Your victory in Christ is secure!
Why did David have so many enemies? When we read his psalms, it seems like he’s always fending off another attack from his adversaries, trying to escape yet another conspiracy. Do you ever wonder what made him so hated?
He was Israel’s king, which meant he was involved in regular warfare against the nation’s political enemies. The Philistines and the Amorites had good reason to hate David, seeing as he was Israel’s highly successful wartime leader. Hard to like someone who has wiped out your battalions, time after time!
But there was more to it. For David was on the side of God. And those who hate God will also hate those who stand with him.
This is why we have enemies too. We’ve all learned from our Catechism that a Christian has three sworn adversaries: the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh (Q&A 127). Far more than we realize or admit, we are in constant warfare against the spiritual forces of evil.
And for this confrontation we need so much divine help and steadfast protection.
That’s what David understood too, for he prays in Psalm 143 that God would judge all his enemies. They had been hounding him again, and David feels almost crushed.
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The Responsibility of Shepherding God’s Sheep
As we consider the responsibility entrusted to the hands of shepherds, for those of us who are pastors we must approach our post seriously. As a Christian take time to consider the work of pastors in the life of the church and pray earnestly for the men who are called to shepherd you and your family. Pray that they will be able to engage in the work of ministry with joy and that they will remain steadfast without wavering for the glory of God.
Jesus made a very important, yet simple statement to Peter after his resurrection. In effort to restore Peter after his failure to fully obey him in the midst of the heat of controversy—Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”1 What a simple little phrase that is filled with such heavy responsibility.
All throughout the Scripture, we find references to sheep and shepherds. “For he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care” (Psalm 95:7). Jesus is the Good Shepherd (John 10:11) who lays down his life for the sheep. Jesus is also referenced as the Door of the sheepfold (John 10:9) which provides another shepherding analogy. When Jesus references his people as lambs, he is spotlighting their nature as immature and vulnerable and in need of tending and care.
As we consider these words of Jesus to Peter and the many references to sheep farming in the Scripture, we must be reminded of the responsibilities of a pastor in the work of shepherding the sheep.
Leading Sheep
One of the key principles of pastoral ministry is leadership. Sheep cannot lead themselves. God has designed the church to be led by pastors are literally shepherd-leaders. The elders of the local church are men who must take their leadership responsibility seriously. An elder (ἐπισκοπή) is one who is given responsibility of overseeing the church.
Such oversight is to be carefully measured through the pages of Scripture. There is no room for error when it comes to the spiritual wellbeing of God’s church. If sheep are not led properly, they will wander off and get entangled in all sorts of theological controversies and become vulnerable prey for false teachers who function as wolves.
Leadership is necessary in the church, and God has designed the church to be led by faithful shepherds. This leadership responsibility is not to be solo-shepherding, or as is often the case within evangelicalism—CEO-shepherding. God has designed his church to be led by a plurality of elders in each church which means biblical leadership in the life of the local church is shared leadership. Tom Schreiner observes, “Every piece of evidence we have shows that elders were widespread in the early church. They are mentioned by different authors: Luke, Paul, Peter, and James. They stretch over a wide region of the Greco-Roman world: from Jerusalem, Palestine, the whole of Asia Minor, and Crete. It is also likely that elders functioned as a plurality in the churches since the term is always plural, and Acts 14:23 says elders were appointed ‘for them in each church.’”2
When a faithful group of shepherd-leaders work together to care for God’s church, it spreads out responsibility, provides internal accountability (shepherding), and creates a healthy church culture where God’s people grow strong and pastors are able to maintain a healthy spiritual life and work-life balance. Regarding pastoral ministry—this is the way.
Feeding Sheep
The pastor must be able to teach the Scripture (1 Tim 3:1-7). In other words, the pastor is not an entertainer or comedian. The pastor is a shepherd of sheep not an entertainer for goats. The word for doctrine is “διδασκαλία” which means, teaching. The pastor must have healthy teaching. Just because a man stands before a congregation and talks doesn’t mean it’s necessarily healthy.
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What the One-Anothers Do
Anything we hope to accomplish in our stirring one another up to love and good deeds, our bearing one another’s burdens, our hospitality to one another, our exhortation of one another, or our serving one another—can only flourish by the power of God.
In the life of the believer, there can be tendency to make a spiritual to-do list of the “one-another” commands—the fifty-nine or so phrases sprinkled throughout the New Testament that characterize our Christian responsibility of love toward one another, literally signified by the words “one another.” Given both the sheer number of them and their varying difficulty to apply, remembering all of these responsibilities we have for others in the church—let alone living them out faithfully—seems a task impossible for even the most mature believer. Thus, the one-anothers become a to-do list of recurring responsibilities, with some consistently lived out, some pursued when convenient, and yet others neglected.
The one-anothers form a crucial category of instruction for the life of the church that reflects the Christlike love we are to have for each other, enumerating elements of care for one another in the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:25), bearing the fruit of the Spirit in the life of the church (Gal 5:22–23), and ultimately forming a testimony of the Gospel to the world (John 13:34–35). In and of themselves, the one-anothers are filled with action: we are to love, care for, serve, bear with, bear the burdens of, teach, comfort, encourage, pray for, confess to, be kind to, stir up, and exhort one another—to name a few. That’s a lot to do.
Amidst this plethora of church life to-dos, there are a few underlying actions that are constantly running in the background—simple actions that are integral to the one-anothers as a whole. What goes on in our hearts and minds when the church is living out the one-anothers like it should? How exactly should we embark on this intimidating endeavor of devoting ourselves to the one-anothers? Here are 4 actions that set a foundation for a life committed to the one-anothers:
1. The one-anothers give.
As responsibilities of love that are centered on others in the body of Christ, the one-anothers are inherently a giving endeavor. When you live out the one-anothers, you give of yourself: your time, your attention, your rights, your preferences, or your resources. You make a conscious decision to let go of whatever it might take in order to best love, serve, or care for someone else. The idea that because you are a follower of Jesus, you would divest of yourself to benefit others (and not just as a tax-deductible good deed for the day), is a radical concept in a world that measures in net worth, uplifts self-worth, and revolves around you. But that’s exactly what we are called to in the one-anothers—a lifestyle of giving, that others would be benefitted, encouraged, and helped, and the body of Christ built up.
The basis for this kind of selfless giving is our Savior’s own giving of Himself, even unto death (Phil 2:3–8). In His example, we see a mindset of service toward one another such that you “consider others more significant than yourselves” (Phil 2:3). Beyond being the ultimate example for the kind of humility that is fixed on serving and loving others, the truth is that this redeemed mindset is also “yours in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5).
Thus, enabled by the Spirit and given the mind of Christ, we can give like He gave and die to ourselves like He died, all for the benefit of others around us.
Whether it’s giving up your rights to hold something over someone when we forgive one another (Eph 4:32), giving up your entitlement to your opinions and preferences as you pursue living in harmony with one another (Rom 15:5), or giving of yourself in terms of emotion, effort, or resources as you seek to love others earnestly from a pure heart (1 Pet 1:22)—the one-anothers give.
2. The one-anothers listen.
How can we most helpfully care for one another, bear one another’s burdens, comfort one another, or pray for one another? We must listen. We must be keenly aware of others’ actual struggles, sorrows, burdens, and needs. We must therefore, with our ears, seek to understand others in order to appropriately and selflessly carry out our responsibility of love for one another. The kind of listening integral to the one-anothers is admittedly different from the kind of listening we first think of in Scripture (that of listening to God and His Word), but all species of listening share the common posture of humble receptiveness.
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Freedom in Christ to Love and Obey
Just as sometimes children disobey their parents and are disciplined for their own good, God disciplines us because we are his beloved children in Christ, and he will use our failures to teach us through the work of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Earthly children don’t stop belonging to their parents when they are disobedient, and likewise God’s children are never forsaken by their Father in heaven.
One of the most important aspects of the Christian life I learned about in seminary has to do with our freedom in Christ to love and obey God. I’m always thankful to my professor R. Scott Clark for emphasizing the following point, and it’s something I wish I had learned as a new Christian.
The point Dr. Clark made to his students is that as Christians we need to distinguish between contingent and consequent duties. When it comes to our salvation in Christ, a contingent duty would be something we need to do to be saved and/or remain saved, whereas a consequent duty is something we need to do because we are saved.
Jesus kept all the contingent duties of God’s law on our behalf that we should have kept.
Since Adam’s fall in the garden of Eden, there is no path via performing contingent duties to earn eternal life because we “all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory” (Rom. 3:23). Thus, when it comes to our salvation there is nothing we can do to save ourselves. We are dead in our sins and trespasses, and only God can give us new life in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is why Jesus and Paul make the following points:“Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:7-8)
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. (Eph. 2:1-2)
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Eph. 2:8-9)Even one sin prevents us from having a righteous status before our holy God (Rom. 3:23).
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