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June 26, 2021

6/26/2021

The Meaning of Discipleship: Number 3

        For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? Matt. 16:25, 26, NKJV.

    We have spent a disproportionate amount of time on Matthew 16:13-26. For 10 days we have meditated upon these verses. And for good reason. They provide the pivot point in the gospel story. Up to that point we focused on who Jesus is. After it the emphasis shifts to what Messiahship involves.

    And central to that meaning are the two crosses--Christ's and ours. The teaching of the two crosses holds the core of the meaning of Christianity, in terms of both Messiahship and discipleship.

    To understand Jesus' teaching related to my cross more fully, I need to remember that sin, in its most basic sense, is putting my self and my will, rather than God and His will, at the center of my life. Sin is rebellion against Him in the sense that I choose to become the ruler of my own life--saying "No" to God and "Yes" to self.

    It is the self-centered life principle so natural to human beings that must die. Thus Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks to the heart of what it means to be a Christian when he writes that "when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

    Jesus pointed to the essential human problem when He claimed that "no one can serve two masters" (Matt. 6:24, RSV). The bottom line is: Whom will I put on the throne of my life? My self or God? I cannot serve both at the same time. When I come face-to-face with the claim of Christ, I must either crucify Him or let Him crucify me. There is no middle ground.

    It is in that context that losing one's life or gaining it and gaining the whole world or losing it takes on meaning. What, I need to ask myself, is my price? In what area and at what point would I be willing to sell out my soul in exchange for earthly rewards? Is it popularity, money, prestige, "love," "fun," or something else? In the end it doesn't make any difference, because I am still stuck with a choice that will not go away. The decision is always between something or Jesus.

June 25, 2021

6/25/2021

The Meaning of Discipleship: Number 2

        If anyone wants to follow in my footsteps, he must give up all right to himself, take up his cross and follow me. Mark 8:34, Phillips.

    The second difficult word in Jesus' description of discipleship is "cross." The bad news to Peter and the rest of the disciples (including us) is that Jesus' cross is not the only one. He goes on to say that each of His followers will have his or her own cross.

    To fully understand the statement that each person must take up the cross, we need to put ourselves in the place of those first disciples. The idea of a cross or of being crucified doesn't do much for our twenty-first-century imaginations. To us, "crucifixion" is a word that has lost most of its meaning. But that was not true for the disciples. They knew that bearing a cross was a one-way trip leading to nowhere but death.

    It is with that realization that the word "deny" and the word "cross" intersect. The cross, like the concept of denial of self, has been trivialized by the Christian community. For some people, bearing the cross is wearing it as an ornament around their neck. For others it means putting up with some discomfort or inconvenience in life, such as a nagging husband or a sloppy wife, or even a physical impediment.

    Jesus does not have in mind those caricatures of cross-bearing. He is speaking of the cross as an instrument of death--not physical for most of His hearers, but of the crucifixion of the self, the denial of the center of our life and our primary allegiance to our self. Ellen White points out that "the warfare against self is the greatest battle ever fought" (Steps to Christ, p. 43). And James Denney emphasizes that "though sin may have a natural birth it does not die a natural death; in every case it has to be morally sentenced and put to death." That sentencing is an act of the will under the impulse of the Holy Spirit. Jesus and Paul repeatedly refer to it as a crucifixion.

    Paul is especially clear on that topic in Romans 6, in which he describes becoming a Christian as a crucifixion of the "old self" (verse 6, RSV) and a resurrection to a new way of life with a new center--Jesus and His will. It is that death that is implicit in His command to deny one's self and bear one's cross. Paul points out that baptism by immersion is the perfect symbol of spiritual death and resurrection to a new life centered on God (verses 1-11).

June 24, 2021

6/24/2021

The Meaning of Discipleship: Number 1

        Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." Matt. 16:24, NKJV.

    When Jesus "began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things...and be killed" (Mark 8:31, RSV), He was truly only commencing His instruction, because a new understanding of Messiahship dictates a new perspective of discipleship. And if the new interpretation of Messiahship was distasteful to Peter and the others, the new concept of discipleship would be equally abhorrent. "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me."

    That verse contains two of the most difficult words that a person will ever have to face--"deny" and "cross." When we think of self-denial we imagine abstinence from certain luxuries for a certain period of time, while at the same time, perhaps, congratulating ourselves on how well we are doing in being self-controlled and/or generous.

    But that is far from what Jesus meant by "deny." It is a sharp and demanding word. One scholar suggests that in verse 24 it means "to forget one's self, lose sight of one's self and one's interests."

    Another writer points out that "the denial of self is something deeper" than mere self-denial. "It is making ourselves not an end, but a means, in the kingdom of God. It is subordinating the clamoring ego, with its shrill claim for priority, its preoccupation with 'I,' 'me,' and 'mine,' its concern for self-assertion, its insistence on comfort and prestige; denying self, not for the sake of denial as a sort of moral athletics, but for Christ's sake, for the sake of putting the self into his cause."

    Thus there is a massive difference between self-denial and denying one's self. The first is a minor surface operation, while the second is a matter of the heart--or, more specifically, a change of heart.

    Here is a place where each of us followers of Jesus needs to become more transparent, more honest. Jeremiah tells us that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt" (Jer. 17:9, RSV). The last thing that my heart wants to do is to realize that denial of the self stands at the center of being a genuine Christian.

June 23, 2021

6/23/2021

Avoid Being Peter

        He then began explaining things to them: "It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried, and after three days rise up alive." He said this simply and clearly so they couldn't miss it. But Peter grabbed him in protest. Turning and seeing his disciples wavering, wondering what to believe, Jesus confronted Peter. "Peter, get out of my way! Satan, got lost! You have no idea how God works." Mark 8:31, Message.

    The proud Peter got it right between the eyes. He was sincere enough, but had hit the most sensitive nerve ending in Jesus' being. The forcefulness of His rebuke to Peter implies the importance of the cross to His ministry and the need to educate the future leaders of His church on its centrality.

    Not only had the temptation come, but it had emerged from the mouth of a friend. It is a sad fact of life that Satan can use Jesus' followers--even His ministers--to do his own work.

    As Christians we have not only the potential of betraying Jesus, but also one another. We too can guide fellow Christians in the wrong direction and discourage them from doing God's will by advising them to avoid all dangers to themselves and inconveniences to ourselves. Lest we unwillingly play the role of Satan, we need to be more aware than was Peter.

    Peter's experience can teach us yet other lessons. One is that we as Christians are a mixed bag. In one moment I can have a divine insight, then in the next I can be a tool of the devil. At our best we are fallible creatures partly controlled by knowledge and partly by ignorance. All of us have one foot in the kingdom. We have been saved in the sense that we have accepted Jesus, but the plain fact is that He has a lot more to do in us.

    Another lesson is that we need to be careful not to cast off people because of their stupidity and errors. Jesus, in the days and weeks to come, would demonstrate almost infinite patience in working with His erring disciples. One writer has pointed out that "only a massive stupidity could keep them from understanding," but they managed to do exactly that until after the Resurrection. Jesus, however, did not abandon them as a lost cause. Our Savior had begun to teach them about the meaning of being the Christ. Just as He didn't give up on them, so He hasn't given up on me. And I shouldn't give up on you.

June 22, 2021

6/22/2021

The Struggling Christ

        And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, "God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you." But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men." Matt. 16:22, 23, RSV.

    What a fall! All the way from being inspired by God in verse 17 to being Satan in verse 23.

    Peter may have correctly identified Jesus as the divine Messiah, but he had not the slightest idea what that involved. Thus the strenuous education program Jesus begins in verse 21 and extends up through His death on Calvary.

    But why the forcefulness of the rebuke? Because Peter had usurped the role that Satan had earlier taken in the wilderness of temptation. Both of them had suggested that Jesus could fulfill His mission without His death on the cross. And to both Jesus exclaimed, "Get behind me, Satan!" (Mark 8:33, RSV).

    We miss the point if we imagine that Jesus thought Peter was Satan. Rather, He saw Satan speaking through His chief disciple. Peter was playing the part of the tempter. And the temptation was the central one in Jesus' life. In fact, He undoubtedly found the thought of His forthcoming death to be even more distasteful than did Peter.

    Jesus had seen crucifixion in His travels, and like any normal human being, He had no desire to exit the world by the excruciating death of the cross. He would have found it much easier to become the political Messiah that the Jews and the disciples expected.

    But even more important, He had no wish to bear the judgment of the world by becoming sin for all humanity in the sacrifice of Calvary (John 12:31-33; 2 Cor. 5:21). The thought of separation from God while bearing the sins of the world on the cross was abhorrent to Him in the extreme.

    The lure to do His own will by avoiding the cross was the great temptation of Jesus' life. He had conquered it after feeding the 5,000 when they tried to make Him king, and He would face it again in Gethsemane, where He would repeatedly pray, "If this cannot pass unless I drink it, thy will be done" (Matt. 26:42, RSV).

    Here is a fruitful thought. We too often picture Jesus as above the daily problems that we are content with. Not so! He struggled also as He passed through life one step at a time. And He had to constantly resort to His knees. So do I.

June 21, 2021

6/21/2021

"Must" Means Necessary

        Then Jesus began to teach his disciples: "The Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the teachers of the Law. He will be put to death, but three days later he will rise to life." Mark 8:31, TEV.

    Must" means necessary. Jesus was telling His disciples that He "must...be put to death." From His perspective, the cross was not an option but mandatory. He had come to earth not only to live a sinless life as our example, but "to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45, RSV). "This is my blood of the covenant," He told His disciples at the Last Supper, "which is poured out for many" (Mark 14:24, RSV).

    Christ's death was central to the plan of salvation. Without His substitutionary death there would be no salvation at all. Because of that necessity He began to teach the disciples plainly. But as the events related to His first attempt make plain, it would be a difficult task.

    Why? Because everything in the disciples' background went against it. Their understanding of Messiahship taught plainly that the Messiah would "arise from the posterity of David" to "deliver in mercy the remnant" of God's people and at the same time destroy their enemies (4 Ezra 12:32-34). He would come "to smash the arrogance of sinners like a potter's jar; to shatter all their substance with an iron rod; to destroy the unlawful nations with the word of his mouth" (Ps. of Sol. 17:23, 24).

    The Jews knew nothing of a suffering Messiah. As a result, Jesus' proclamation that He must suffer and die caught the disciples totally off guard. No line of reasoning could have led them to conclude that Jesus must die. A suffering Messiah was an impossibility. They were not ready for a Messiah who would perish to save them from their sins. They expected one who would rescue them from their Roman oppressors.

    And not understanding the role of the Messiah, they certainly were in no position to capture the meaning of His resurrection--a lack that would later cause them great anguish.

    The preconceived ideas they had brought to Scripture blinded the earliest disciples. The same dynamic threatens all of us.

    Help us, Lord, to have eyes to see and hearts to believe.

June 20, 2021

6/20/2021

The Meaning of Messiahship

        From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. Matt. 16:21, RSV.

    By now it had become evident that Israel as a corporate body was not going to accept Jesus as the Messiah. That left a major task for Jesus to accomplish: to prepare the disciples for His death.

    Matthew 16:21 is the first explicit announcement of that fact. We should be aware of each of its elements. He
        1. "must go to Jerusalem,"
        2. "Suffer many things from the elders and chief priests,"
        3. "be killed,"
        4. "and on the third day be raised."

    It wasn't as if He hadn't alluded to some of those events before. But now it was time for straight talk. Thus the significance of "Jesus began." He must teach those things openly and explicitly.

    And why, we need to ask, did Jesus choose this precise time to set forth such important teachings? Because Peter's confession that He was the divine Christ indicated that he and the other disciples had begun to gain insight. They now knew who Jesus was. But it was one thing for them to confess that Jesus was the Messiah, but quite another for them to understand the nature of that Messiahship. The disciples had visions of glory and triumph in their heads, but Jesus knew that His end would be death and rejection. As He saw the plotting of the religious powers, He realized that it was vital to instruct His followers on the true reality of His mission.

    Why the urgent necessity? Without the knowledge of His forthcoming death, it would have completely shattered their faith. And even with it their faith bordered on being wiped out. But He told them before it came to pass, so that when it did they might believe (John 13:19).

    Earlier on, Jesus could not have given such information. Had He done so, because of the universal conception the Jews had of a kingly Messiah, the disciples would have rejected Him outright. They would have refused to believe because, as far as they were concerned, Jesus didn't even know what Messiahship was all about. But now, because they knew who He was, He could explain to them what His mission was.

June 19, 2021

6/19/2021

The Keys of the Kingdom

        I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Matt. 16:19, NASB.

    Here we have another verse that has ripped through Christian history. Just what is it that Jesus promised Peter? What are the keys and the binding power of the church?

    A key is an obvious metaphor for admitting people through a door. A hint to understanding the "key" symbol appears in Luke 11:52, in which Jesus condemns the scribes for misusing "the key of knowledge" and thereby hindering people from "entering" the kingdom. In Matthew 23:13 we find Him berating the scribes and Pharisees because they "shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces" and refuse to "let those enter who are trying to" (NIV). We should couple those verses with Jesus' saying in John 17:3 that to know Him is eternal life.

    In tier work, the scribes and Pharisees have been misusing the key and blocking people from knowledge of Jesus. Peter, by contrast, is to open the way. That is exactly what we find him doing in Acts 2 and 3, in which his preaching brings many Jews into the kingdom, and in Acts 10, in which he opens the door for Gentiles to enter. That role, of course, is not restricted to Peter. All true disciples proclaim the central key: that Jesus is the divine Christ. In Matthew 28:18-20 we find Him commanding all disciples to carry His message to the ends of the earth through the use of the teaching key so that many can come to a knowledge of Him and be baptized.

    Peter's blessing also includes binding and loosing--a responsibility extended to all the disciples in Mathew 18:18. Most translations seem to infer that whatever the church decides on earth will get ratified in heaven. But that is not what Jesus said. The Greek verb tenses make it clear that the church on earth will carry out heaven's decisions, rather than heaven confirming the church's decisions.

    With Matthew 16:16 and Peter's confession that Jesus is the divine Christ, we have come to a turning point in the gospel story. The disciples at last know who Jesus is, but not what that means. The what will provide the thread we need to follow as we turn our eyes upon Jesus as He moves toward the cross.

July 6, 2021

6/19/2021

July 6                                The Limits of Forgiveness, Part 2 Again

        But that same servant, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat he said, "Pay what you owe." So his fellow servant fell down and besought him, "Have patience with me, and I will pay you." He refused and went and put him in prison till he should pay the debt. Matt. 18:28-30, RSV.

    Scene two in the parable moves the action from the divine-human perspective of scene one to that of the relationship between two human beings. And it is at this level that we Peters get into trouble.

    Let's catch the dynamics. Having just gotten off my knees and left my place of prayer, I am truly in a good mood in the full assurance of God's forgiveness. So far, so good.

    But 10 minutes later I run across a jerk who has been avoiding me for weeks. And for good reason. He owes me money, and I am the last person he wants to see.

    And it is no small amount. After all, 100 days' pay, approximately a third of a year's salary. Even at the modest minimum of $7.50 per hour for 100 eight-hour days the amount equals $6,000. That is a significant part of my yearly budget. I want my money, and I want it now. So I grab him by the throat and order him to pay up or else.

    And what is the response? A falling on the knees and a request to have patience and a promise to pay what he owes.

    That's not good enough for me. I have had to deal with this slick dude long enough. Now is the time for justice and to make things right. Gracious too long with this shifty character, I will give him exactly what he deserves.

    In act two of Christ's parable on forgiveness we find the human perspective. This person has used up the quota of forgiveness. Having reached the limits of forgiveness, I can at last cut loose with my righteous fury. It is time for me to hand out the legal punishment.

    Completely overlooked is the fact that his request for mercy from me almost exactly echoes my recent prayer to God on the same topic. Also, conveniently, I have "forgotten" that the money owed to me is really a part of my debt to God.

    But why remember such technicalities when I am right and others are wrong? It is only just that I give them what they deserve. Or is it?

June 19, 2021

6/19/2021

The Keys of the Kingdom

        I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Matt. 16:19, NASB.

    Here we have another verse that has ripped through Christian history. Just what is it that Jesus promised Peter? What are the keys and the binding power of the church?

    A key is an obvious metaphor for admitting people through a door. A hint to understanding the "key" symbol appears in Luke 11:52, in which Jesus condemns the scribes for misusing "the key of knowledge" and thereby hindering people from "entering" the kingdom. In Matthew 23:13 we find Him berating the scribes and Pharisees because they "shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces" and refuse to "let those enter who are trying to" (NIV). We should couple those verses with Jesus' saying in John 17:3 that to know Him is eternal life.

    In their work, the scribes and Pharisees have been misusing the key and blocking people from knowledge of Jesus. Peter, by contrast, is to open the way. That is exactly what we find him doing in Acts 2 and 3, in which his preaching brings many Jews into the kingdom, and in Acts 10, in which he opens the door for Gentiles to enter. That role, of course, is not restricted to Peter. All true disciples proclaim the central key: that Jesus is the divine Christ. In Matthew 28:18-20 we find Him commanding all disciples to carry His message to the ends of the earth through the use of the teaching key so that many can come to a knowledge of Him and be baptized.

    Peter's blessing also includes binding and loosing--a responsibility extended to all the disciples in Matthew 18:18. Most translations seem to infer that whatever the church decides on earth will get ratified in heaven. But that is not what Jesus said. The Greek verb tenses make it clear that the church on earth will carry out heaven's decisions, rather than heaven confirming the church's decisions.

    With Matthew 16:16 and Peter's confession that Jesus is the divine Christ, we have come to a turning point in the gospel story. The disciples at last know who Jesus is, but not what that means. The what will provide the thread we need to follow as we turn our eyes upon Jesus as He moves toward the cross.