Kept by Jesus Christ
As Christians who have assurance of eternal life, we must be people of strong and biblical convictions. We must know that we are heard by God, liberated from sin, protected from Satan, distinct from the world, and united to Christ. It is my prayer for our churches that, in an unstable world built on shifting sand, we would be people who embrace these immovable convictions built on the rock, the true God, our Lord Jesus Christ.
One of the blessings of being a believer in Jesus Christ is having a certain knowledge of our salvation and eternal destiny. This knowledge, however, must produce certain convictions throughout our Christian life.
We live in a time where people are often weak, wishy-washy, devoid of real convictions, and content to just go with the flow and swim wherever the tide of the world take them. The apostle John rejects all of that in the life of a believer, asserting that if we have eternal life, then we should be strong; we should have convictions; and we should have certainty as a defining mark of our spiritual lives. In 1 John 5, John gives us five convictions that we should manifest as Christians who know that we have eternal life.
The first conviction we should have as believers is that we are heard by God.
Our confidence about our salvation should lead to confidence in our prayers. When we come into the presence of God in prayer – to make requests, to cast our burdens upon Him, to seek His grace and His help in a time of need – we should come with confidence and boldness. This attitude in prayer should be expansive; John tells us we can ask for anything according to God’s will. We have a certain knowledge God hears us because we know that we belong to Him and that He will give us whatever we ask of Him that is according to His will.
The one qualifier is we must ask according to His will, referring to anything revealed in Scripture. If we go through the New Testament, we see hundreds of promises and commands from God we are called to believe and obey – and we should pray that God would strengthen us to believe and obey His Word. The amazing thing is that we can pray all of these things with confidence, knowing God will perform His work in us to answer our prayers.
The second conviction we have as a result of our certainty of salvation is that we are liberated from sin.
If we want to be strong and stand firm in the evil day, then we must be convinced that not only are we saved and have eternal life, but we must also have been liberated from sin. We cannot be the kind of people who, when confronted with sin in their lives, respond, “I can’t help it!” We can help it because we have been born of God. We know we can battle against sin and win because of what God has done for us in Christ.
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The Way, Truth, and Life
Written by Reuben M. Bredenhof |
Saturday, August 27, 2022
It’s not enough to have found the way to God, knowing who Christ is. It’s not enough to have learned much truth about God. We also need someone who can make us alive. And this is who Christ is: “I am the life.” He restores our life to how it was always meant to be: enjoyed with God, even in his very presence.Someone’s last words are important. When a loved one speaks just before he passes away, you should listen carefully.
This is what’s going on in John 14. Jesus is with his disciples in the room where they have celebrated one last Passover. But celebration is far from their minds, for the Lord is about to be betrayed and arrested. Soon He’ll be dead. The dark shadow of the cross is looming over his words in verse 6,
I am the way, the truth, and the life.
The next days were going to be unspeakably painful. Yet it had to be this way: the cross was needed because our sin had estranged us from our holy Creator. Our unholiness meant we were banished from God’s presence and barred from ever coming back on our own. Only God could open another way. So on this night before the cross, Jesus announces the gospel by saying that He is “the way.”
We get a picture of this from the ancient world. Imagine a powerful king seated on his throne. Access to his presence is carefully controlled by one of his officials. Not just anyone can approach—and certainly not uninvited. If you dared to come near, it’d probably mean a summary execution.
But supposing that the king had a cherished son, he would put aside the requirement. No permission needed: his son could freely enter. And even the friends of the son, if they accompanied him, could go in to see the king.
That’s who Jesus is: He is the beloved Son. And when we sinners go with Christ, He is our way back to the heavenly Father.
When Jesus says, “I am the way,” He says He is willing to take us by the hand and bring us into God’s presence, even into the glory of God’s holiness. Because Christ died for sin, the way to God is now open.
You’re allowed to pray to God whenever you want. You’re allowed to meet with God in worship every Lord’s day. You’re allowed to hear God’s voice in the Word as often as you open it.
There is just one requirement to go this way: be united to Christ by faith. Remember who was allowed to go in and see the great king: only those who are the friends of the son.
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God and Healing
Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, January 22, 2023
It is important to wrestle with these questions in an attempt for answers. Why is God’s will so, seemingly, horrible to some people who love him? Here’s my answer: I don’t know. But I continue to believe that he is the sovereign King of the Universe, that he is Goodness itself, and that he loves me more dearly than I can imagine.I’m a charismatic, I believe that God heals today and that this happens frequently. I’ve watched someone’s leg grow while someone else prayed for them. I’ve felt the muscles in someone’s back untwist while I prayed for them. I’ve known a friend’s brain cancer to disappear. God heals. We can, in a general sense, suggest that God wills that everyone be healed, not least on the basis that sickness has no place in his inbreaking kingdom (Revelation 21).
I’ve also prayed for numerous people who have not been healed, including a dear friend who is going blind, I’ve known a friend die from a brain tumour despite our prayers.
Which at the very least raises a theological question for us. It raises a range of pastoral ones too. Why was it that these people aren’t healed? Is it their fault? Is it mine for not praying correctly?
Some of the big American charismatic churches that are popular in my circles would probably suggest that the problem was with our faith. One particular church suggests in their popular teaching that there is no ‘deficiency’ on God’s end (sure, no one disagrees), so when someone isn’t healed all the ‘lack’ is on our end.
Thankfully they don’t always blame the person being prayed for their lack of faith, though this sadly does happen, more often they would situate the lack of faith in those praying. Which raises some important pastoral questions. And it’s nonsense.
Let’s go back to the Bible. Sometimes, we’re told that Jesus ‘healed everyone he met’ so therefore we would too if we could, indicating that the problem is ‘on our end.’ Except clearly he doesn’t heal everyone he meets: think of Mark 6, which raises its own questions, or of characters healed by the apostles who Jesus presumably knew (e.g. Acts 3).
In the pages of the Scriptures, we find a God who heals, marvellously, time and time again. We also find a God who wounds (2 Corinthians 12). Our theology needs to be big enough for both. We know that the revealed will of God is to heal and to bless. And we know that God sends calamity (Isaiah 45).
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An Open Letter to the Church Member Hurt by Their Local Church
Written by Daniel P. Miller |
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Set your eyes on eternity. This is not a means of ignoring reality, but the only way of truly facing it. There is a day when all the pain you suffer from the presence of sin and Satan will vanish. Focus more on your future accounting before Christ than on those who fail you on earth. Above all, trust in the Lord who promises never to leave or forsake his children (Heb. 13:5). Local churches hurt people. Thankfully, the Lord of the church will one day wipe away every tear, including yours.Dear Brother or Sister,
Local churches hurt people. People hurt people, of course, but since churches are people, churches have the capacity to inflict severe relational pain.
By God’s grace the reverse is also true. The local church is designed by Christ to function as a spring of encouragement and joy to its members. I hope that you have experienced the blessing of walking in fellowship with a body of believers that Jesus used, or is now using, to strengthen your faith and envelop you in covenantal love.
But despite Christ’s gracious provision, you may find yourself experiencing heartache in the context of a church for which Jesus died. Ironic, isn’t it? By grace alone the risen Christ is gathering out of the nations a people for his name (Acts 2:38–39). He forms us into a new humanity, uniting us to himself (Eph. 2:11–22; Gal. 2:20). We are adopted as his children and chosen as his holy bride (Rom. 8:14–17; Eph. 5:23–32; Rev. 19:6–8). He sovereignly places us in the body to complete one another (1 Cor. 12:12–27). How ironic, then, that relating to God’s people can result in such deep heartache.
Ironic, but not mysterious. The closer the human relationship, the more pain one suffers when that relationship falters. We routinely witness this in families. It’s why divorce, child rebellion, family feuds, neglect, and the like are such bitter heartaches. The closer the relationship, the greater the potential not only for joy but also for sorrow.
In the spiritual family of a local church, such heartache often stems from personal offense—one member wrongs another. At other times the problem is more corporate in nature—the departure of a leader, a change in policy, an altered ministry direction that seems to betray much of what you once loved about your church, and the like.
It’s not hard to identify the source of the pain we suffer in the context of a body of believers. It’s considerably harder to respond to that pain in God-honoring ways.
Don’t breeze past that “God-honoring” bit. Expressive Individualism programs us to feel our pain while avoiding hard questions about our responses to it. Hurt feelings are as natural as shivering from cold on a wintry day, we are assured by our therapeutic world. Therefore, how I feel about someone’s ill treatment of me or how I feel about a hurtful ministry change becomes not only my responsibility to own but everyone else’s obligation to affirm.
The Bible does not counsel us in this direction. Rather, it calls us to respond to such pain with a devotion to love others and glorify Christ in his church. This means that despite how terribly I may feel, Christ’s renown remains of supreme importance. Therefore my affections for his honor in the assembly must never fall below affections for my own. If they do I am likely to cause as much damage in the future as I’ve suffered in the past.
Our Redeemer is never surprised by sin, nor has he ever promised us a church that’s free of it. Every church family hurts people one way or another. What the Lord has done is to arm us with wise, Christ-honoring habits of response. While not an exhaustive list, consider the following disciplines.
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