1 Corinthians 2:2, 4:1
2:2-"For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified."
4:1-"This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. "
First of all, it is important to understand what Paul means when he says "mysteries of God". Within the context of the first letter he wrote to the Church in Corinth, Paul is dealing with a Church that is completely out of control. They are not growing spiritually as they should and Paul charges them with this; "I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh." (1 Cor. 3:2-3a). With that thinking in mind, Paul addressess the "mysteries of God". This mystery is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul, whether he was speaking to those who are "babies" in Christ or those who are mature, always starts and ends with the gospel of Jesus Christ. He begins his first letter to Corinth by giving thanks to God for the gospel of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:4) and end the second letter to Corinth explaining his personal experience of the power of the gospel (2 Cor. 12:9-10). Paul's message is clear: "For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." (1 Corinthians 2:2). Paul, sets for us THE example of the Christian life. If we are saved by the gospel of Jesus Christ, then we must live by the same gospel. Imagine you are locked up in jail and someone comes to free you from jail. You bolt out of the jail and get to the street where the getaway car is waiting and the one who freed you jumps in the car and takes off leaving you at the sidewalk in front of the jail where the police are there to take you back. You are essentially left on your own. This is NOT what Jesus has done for us. He has not only freed us, but He sustains our walk. If it is His gospel that saves us, it must be His gospel that sustains us. And if it is His gospel that sustains us we must FIRST OF ALL consider ourselves to know NOTHING except the gospel of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I encourage you, as well as myself, to live out our walk in a way that is centrally focused on the saving work of Jesus in our lives. There can be nothing good that is produced from starting anywhere else. If our beginning of everything is anything but the gospel, we are headed down a dangerous path that will only leave us with false doctrine and poor Biblical and Christian theology. Theology is the way we think of God. If we start our thinking of God without first thinking of Jesus, it is like trying to start our cars without gasoline. We either get nowhere or we stop short of the desired destination. So my encouragement to you is this; our understanding of God, our spiritual growth and our direction in life NEEDS to start with Jesus and Him crucified. CJ Mahaney wrote a book called "The Cross-centered Life" (one of the most influencial books I have ever read). In his book, he drives home the point that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. The main thing is the gospel. As I reflect on my own life I notice that I do not always start my thinking with the gospel, and when that occures, I begin to fade from Biblical truth. God's Word, from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21, always points us to Jesus. So if Jesus is the desired outcome of our Biblical theology or our Biblical thinking, then we must START with the presupposition that Jesus is the desired outcome of ANY text.
As believers, we are indwelt with the Holy Spirit. Having this security(Ephesians 1:13), we can rely on the Holy Spirit to ALWAYS point us the Jesus. With that thought in mind, we HAVE TO ask for the filling of the Spirit in our lives. Ephesians 5:18 tells us, "be filled with the Spirit." The word "be" literally translated means, "be being", this is a continual state of being filled. It is by the power of the Holy Spirit we will see Jesus and have implanted in our hearts the gospel of Jesus Christ in all situations. Romans 8:30 says that we are justified and then glorified and the idea that we are sanctified is implied in the text. Let me help break this down. Justified is the single instantaneous act by God in which he declares our sins, past, present and future, forgiven and takes from us our sin and gives to us the righteousness of Christ (Romans 3:21-26). Martin Lloyd-Jones called this the "great exchange". Sanctification is the process that begins the moment after we are justified and continues until our physical death on earth. Sanctification is our spiritual growth, or God working in us to make us more like Jesus (Philippians 2:13). Glorification is what takes place after our lives on earth, when we are finally face to face with Jesus and He gives us our crowns of righteousness to glorify us and we will throw them back at His feet in complete recognition that He alone is worthy of ALL GLORY!(1 Corinthians 13:12). As we see this process played out in the Bible, and also in our lives, we can not help but see Jesus at the center of all three places! He saves us, He grows us and He glorifies us. By which we must respond, "All glory belongs to Jesus!" (Revelation 4:11, my paraphrase).
In Conclusion, this is to be an encouragement. That Jesus be the beginning, the middle and the end of our Biblical thinking, our practical life, and our world view. We, as Paul made clear of his own life and mission, must always carry the gospel with us in the forefront of our minds to see Him magnified and glorified!
"Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amem." (Hebrews 13:20-21).
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Biblical Theology for Transformation - 4th Posting
6/12/08
Ephesians 1:19 “And what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might.”
We can sometimes feel so weak in our Christian lives. Our feelings of inadequacy and inability to perform our Christian service keep us from making further attempts at serving Christ. Thoughts of self-doubt and self-worthlessness can often accompany the walk of a follower of Jesus. We look down on our own attempts of service and begin to tell ourselves that we are useless in this fellowship of believers. The result is Christians who do not serve and believers whose lives do not reflect the work of Jesus and His saving grace. I suppose by this time you are expecting me to hand out the encouragement you are being set up for. In your mind you might be expecting some sort of self-motivating scripture and an explanation of how we are supposed to get up in the morning, look ourselves in the mirror and say, “I’m smart enough, I’m good enough and gall-darnit, people like me!”. This is the sort of thinking our culture and world have imposed on those seeking a purpose in life. They want us to believe that real joy and peace come from within. This is where the downtrodden believer gets caught in the snare. If thoughts of self-doubt, self-worthlessness and inadequacy surround your mind, the last thing I want to do is tell you that is wrong. You should doubt yourself. You are worthless and you are completely inadequate to do anything on your own. This is the problem with American thinking, we try to convince ourselves that we are not these things and when we continue to fail at getting away from these downfalls, we think we might as well stop trying and we give up on serving Jesus.
Now that I have completely squashed your hopes of ever accomplishing anything in the name of Christ, the encouragement is this; Jesus is your confidence, Jesus is your worth and ONLY Jesus is adequate. We have to veer away from this self reflecting mentality and start doing some Jesus reflecting. Stop trusting in ourselves and start letting the power of Jesus take hold of our lives and our service. David says in 1 Chronicles 29:14, “But who am I, and what is my people that we should be able thus to offer willingly? For all things come from You, and of Your own have we given You.” David realized that His service to the Lord was not of his own power and strength but that the Lord worked through David to serve Him.
Ephesians 1:19 gives us great insight on why we need to stop trusting ourselves and start trusting Jesus. You will notice that I put in italics four words; power, working, great and might. These four words, though different in English and also in the original Greek, all mean the same thing: POWER!!!! The original word for power is dynameos. From this word we get our English word “dynamite”. Like dynamite, Jesus’ dynameos is an explosive power. The original word for working is energeian, which is where we get our English word “energy” from. These four different words show the immeasurable greatness of the power of Jesus. Notice that these words are attributed not to YOU, but to Jesus. However, His power is directed towards us. He invests His power into His believers for service to Him so that He may be glorified and magnified. Also notice that of these four words, they are all of immeasurable greatness. That means the magnitude of Jesus’ power goes beyond measure and cannot even be fathomed by our futile minds.
Your encouragement is this; stop the pity party and stop trying to find the answer inside of yourself. As I tell my kids all the time; you are not as cool as you think you are. When we look into ourselves for the answers we will only be disappointed and discouraged. It is when we realize the immeasurable greatness of the power of Jesus at work in us that we can begin to unravel the twisted mess of self-reliance we weaved for so long. Begin every morning with a simple recognition that Jesus is your strength (2 Corinthians 12:9, 10). If your service to the Lord is powered by your own will and power you will end up spinning in a spool of legalism trying your hardest to please God by your own power. YOU CAN NOT DO IT!!!! Jesus is the one who possess the power to do great things and we possess Jesus. Find your power to serve Him, in Him!
Ephesians 1:19 “And what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might.”
We can sometimes feel so weak in our Christian lives. Our feelings of inadequacy and inability to perform our Christian service keep us from making further attempts at serving Christ. Thoughts of self-doubt and self-worthlessness can often accompany the walk of a follower of Jesus. We look down on our own attempts of service and begin to tell ourselves that we are useless in this fellowship of believers. The result is Christians who do not serve and believers whose lives do not reflect the work of Jesus and His saving grace. I suppose by this time you are expecting me to hand out the encouragement you are being set up for. In your mind you might be expecting some sort of self-motivating scripture and an explanation of how we are supposed to get up in the morning, look ourselves in the mirror and say, “I’m smart enough, I’m good enough and gall-darnit, people like me!”. This is the sort of thinking our culture and world have imposed on those seeking a purpose in life. They want us to believe that real joy and peace come from within. This is where the downtrodden believer gets caught in the snare. If thoughts of self-doubt, self-worthlessness and inadequacy surround your mind, the last thing I want to do is tell you that is wrong. You should doubt yourself. You are worthless and you are completely inadequate to do anything on your own. This is the problem with American thinking, we try to convince ourselves that we are not these things and when we continue to fail at getting away from these downfalls, we think we might as well stop trying and we give up on serving Jesus.
Now that I have completely squashed your hopes of ever accomplishing anything in the name of Christ, the encouragement is this; Jesus is your confidence, Jesus is your worth and ONLY Jesus is adequate. We have to veer away from this self reflecting mentality and start doing some Jesus reflecting. Stop trusting in ourselves and start letting the power of Jesus take hold of our lives and our service. David says in 1 Chronicles 29:14, “But who am I, and what is my people that we should be able thus to offer willingly? For all things come from You, and of Your own have we given You.” David realized that His service to the Lord was not of his own power and strength but that the Lord worked through David to serve Him.
Ephesians 1:19 gives us great insight on why we need to stop trusting ourselves and start trusting Jesus. You will notice that I put in italics four words; power, working, great and might. These four words, though different in English and also in the original Greek, all mean the same thing: POWER!!!! The original word for power is dynameos. From this word we get our English word “dynamite”. Like dynamite, Jesus’ dynameos is an explosive power. The original word for working is energeian, which is where we get our English word “energy” from. These four different words show the immeasurable greatness of the power of Jesus. Notice that these words are attributed not to YOU, but to Jesus. However, His power is directed towards us. He invests His power into His believers for service to Him so that He may be glorified and magnified. Also notice that of these four words, they are all of immeasurable greatness. That means the magnitude of Jesus’ power goes beyond measure and cannot even be fathomed by our futile minds.
Your encouragement is this; stop the pity party and stop trying to find the answer inside of yourself. As I tell my kids all the time; you are not as cool as you think you are. When we look into ourselves for the answers we will only be disappointed and discouraged. It is when we realize the immeasurable greatness of the power of Jesus at work in us that we can begin to unravel the twisted mess of self-reliance we weaved for so long. Begin every morning with a simple recognition that Jesus is your strength (2 Corinthians 12:9, 10). If your service to the Lord is powered by your own will and power you will end up spinning in a spool of legalism trying your hardest to please God by your own power. YOU CAN NOT DO IT!!!! Jesus is the one who possess the power to do great things and we possess Jesus. Find your power to serve Him, in Him!
Friday, June 6, 2008
Christ-Centered Theology
There are many joys in ministry as well as many struggles. The greatest joy is to be Christ-centered or Christo-centric in our theology. I call it a struggle because we should toil and strain over every word of God. We should be investing all of our mind into every word of God(2 Timothy 2:15).
I am blessed to be involved in a new ministry through Grace Partners. We have created a ministry called "CCT" or "Christ-Centered Theology". The purpose of our ministry is exactly what it sounds like. We desire to be Christ-centered in our thinking about God. Through careful exegesis we desire, as sound theologians should, to see Jesus in ALL the texts. Our aim in our exegesis is not only to pull Christ out of the text but to see the text in light of Christ. We want to be wearing our "Jesus goggles" when we exegete the text. That is why are purpose statement reads; "Exegeting Jesus to see Him magnified and glorified". If Jesus is the purpose of ALL the texts, then we want to exegete Him through our study of His Word.
Our ministry will contains a few dimesions. We have and will continue to conduct phone interviews with renown pastors, authors and theologians. Currently, we have conducted phone interviews with Philip Graham Ryken and Thomas Schreiner. We have Mark Driscoll lined up for an interview on July 22, 2008 and John Piper on August 12, 2008. We are currently in contact with many more experienced pastors, teachers and theologians to have on the program.
Another aspect to our ministry will be conferences. We have Bruce Ware coming to speak at our conference in December and we will make the audio of that conference available on our website. Since our website is not currently up and running yet, we will temporarily have it on a blog site.
Our website will also contain our writings. They will range from short devotionals to longer theologically constructed articles.
We will attempt to have our sermons and teachings on our site as well.
We desire to equip pastors and those in ministry to be encouraged and built up for their ministry and therefore better able to equip their flock. We certainly gain from this experience ourselves and hope to pass this edification on to others. As young pastors, we want to glean from the knowledge of more experienced pastors and theologians.
Exegeting the text is our starting point and we want to make it our chief-end. We want to see Jesus glorified through careful exegesis!
I am blessed to be involved in a new ministry through Grace Partners. We have created a ministry called "CCT" or "Christ-Centered Theology". The purpose of our ministry is exactly what it sounds like. We desire to be Christ-centered in our thinking about God. Through careful exegesis we desire, as sound theologians should, to see Jesus in ALL the texts. Our aim in our exegesis is not only to pull Christ out of the text but to see the text in light of Christ. We want to be wearing our "Jesus goggles" when we exegete the text. That is why are purpose statement reads; "Exegeting Jesus to see Him magnified and glorified". If Jesus is the purpose of ALL the texts, then we want to exegete Him through our study of His Word.
Our ministry will contains a few dimesions. We have and will continue to conduct phone interviews with renown pastors, authors and theologians. Currently, we have conducted phone interviews with Philip Graham Ryken and Thomas Schreiner. We have Mark Driscoll lined up for an interview on July 22, 2008 and John Piper on August 12, 2008. We are currently in contact with many more experienced pastors, teachers and theologians to have on the program.
Another aspect to our ministry will be conferences. We have Bruce Ware coming to speak at our conference in December and we will make the audio of that conference available on our website. Since our website is not currently up and running yet, we will temporarily have it on a blog site.
Our website will also contain our writings. They will range from short devotionals to longer theologically constructed articles.
We will attempt to have our sermons and teachings on our site as well.
We desire to equip pastors and those in ministry to be encouraged and built up for their ministry and therefore better able to equip their flock. We certainly gain from this experience ourselves and hope to pass this edification on to others. As young pastors, we want to glean from the knowledge of more experienced pastors and theologians.
Exegeting the text is our starting point and we want to make it our chief-end. We want to see Jesus glorified through careful exegesis!
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