Month: August 2015

A Christian, like Christ his head, is free from all works, yet he ought to empty himself of his liberty, take on him the form of a servant, be made in the likeness of men, be found in fashion as a man, serve, help, and in every way act towards his neighbor as he sees that God through Christ has acted and is acting towards him. All this he should do freely, and with regard to nothing but the good pleasure of God.
–Martin Luther

Martin Luther tells us that as Christians we are to be like Jesus Christ. Because of grace we are free from having to do works to earn salvation. But after receiving salvation that is by grace alone, we are called to empty ourselves of our liberty and do good works toward others. That is what Jesus did for us, and we are to be a servant to Him and to others, following the example of our Great King and seeking to please Him by our lives. This is taken directly from Philippians 2, where we find Paul telling us to be…

…of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.
     Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
     For this reason, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

May we give up our liberty and serve others with humility to please our Great God and King, the One who served us in love first.

Those of us who follow Jesus possess a kind of dual citizenship. We live in an external kingdom of family and cities and nationhood, while at the same time belonging to the kingdom of God. In his command, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s,” Jesus underscored the fundamental tension that can result. For the early Christians, loyalty to God’s kingdom sometimes meant a fatal clash with Caesar’s visible kingdom. Historian Will Durant, in The Story of Civilization, concludes:
      “There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned and oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the Word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.”
–Philip Yancey

This is important for us to consider and to remember as we worry about the state of our own nation. We are to bear our own trials with fierce tenacity as we quietly multiply while fighting the chaos of our own nation with the Word of God. If we will do so faithfully, we will find that Christ can be triumphant in our nation again, just as He was in Rome.

God — eternal, incomprehensible, and infinitely powerful — does great and inscrutable things in heaven and on earth, and there is no searching into His marvelous works. If all the works of God were such that human reason could easily grasp them, they would not be called wonderful or beyond the power of words to tell.
–Thomas à Kempis

Along with à Kempis, I am glad that God is beyond my understanding. If I could understand everything about God, then what kind of God would He be? Pretty small. So I’m extremely glad that God is not small, nor able for me to fully comprehend. The things I need to comprehend about God, He has revealed to us in His Word. That means that I need to continue studying the Bible so that I can continue increasing my comprehension of how great He is.

Have you taken time to read God’s Word today and grow in your comprehension of the fully incomprehensible God?

If we are not willing to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we are really following Jesus.
–Donald Miller

Self dies hard.
However, it is the requirement of all followers of Jesus:
“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.”
–Jesus (Luke 9:23-24)

Have you died to self today so that you can live for Him – with His goals, for His plans, speaking His words, for His kingdom to increase?

People who are crucified with Christ have three distinct marks:
1. they are facing only one direction,
2. they can never turn back, and
3. they no longer have plans of their own.
–A. W. Tozer

Do you have all three of these characteristics?
Are you facing toward God?
Have you been transformed by Him such that you could never reject Him?
Have you given up all of your own plans so that you could embrace all of His?