Two Roads Diverged (09/09/25-09/10/25)

In my prior notes, I found my thoughts organizing around various paired images or ideas in this passage.  But as I consider all I have garnered for comment this time, it really comes down to one pair, set in sharp contrast.  It’s hard not to think of Robert Frost’s well known poem in consideration of the thought Paul is pursuing.  “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.”  It’s funny how the actual poem is less in memory than the use that has been made of it.  I think more of Larry Norman’s applying of it in song.  “Two roads diverged in the middle of my life.”  The thing is, it’s not like this is a one time matter.  It is, but it isn’t.  There is that crucial moment when Christ speaks in our inner man, and we finally hear Him.  Salvation has come, and to take the conclusion of that poem, “That has made all the difference.”  But daily come decisions as to which way we shall go.  I look back at Frost’s poem and see the second line.  “And sorry I could not travel both … long I stood.”

Sadly, this can come to describe us as we seek to live this life of faith.  We see both paths, and they both look good still.  That becomes less the case, I trust, the farther we look down the road which once we traveled.  We see more clearly now.  We see not only the pleasures of the immediate, but also the deadly peril to which it leads.  Likewise, contemplating the Way of righteousness, we see not only the difficulties of the path, but the rich rewards of life to which it leads.  Then, too, there are those occasions where the course forward is less clear.  There will be things presented to us as according with righteousness which are in reality leading us away.  There will be things which seem to us benign, leading neither one way nor the other, matters of no consequence which, we may not discover until too late, are in fact drawing us off course.

My imagery here may be blurring, but the picture remains clear.  We are constantly met with choices, and we must  come to consider them all in light of the question:  Which way leads to righteousness?  It might help to consider that really there are ever but two between which to choose, however it may appear in the moment.  The choice is this:  Will you follow Jesus, or will you follow Adam?  You can look at your options in light of this.  Does this option pursue Christ or Adam?  Does this option turn my attention heavenward, or drag it earthward?  That gets much harder, I think, because we must have earthly concerns, as we must continue to dwell here.  Get too caught up in trying to shape everything heavenward, and I’m not at all certain you can still function in this body.  It’s been tried too many times.  The Ascetics, the Manicheans, the Gnostics, even the Monastics; all were trying in some way or other to dismiss the physical necessities of life as inherently evil, or at least dangerously distracting.  But we must face the plan of Christ.  “I am no more in the world, yet they are in the world, and I come to You, Holy Father.  Keep them in Your name, which You have given Me, that they may be one just as we are” (Jn 17:11).  It’s of a piece with Paul’s defense to the Corinthians.  “Our proud confidence, the testimony of our conscience, is this:  that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, especially toward you” (2Co 1:12).  It’s not that he has separated from the world.  No!  He worked hard at his earthly labors, saw to his own provision, dealt with his own needs, but with an eye to this:  To being able to minister the gospel without demanding support from those to whom he ministered.  No prophet for profit, he.

The little church in Philippi – I don’t know how little it was compared to other churches, but certainly, compared to the society in which it dwelt, it was but a speck – may have felt overwhelmed in some regards.  Clearly, they were doing alright.  They were able to send both minister and money to relieve Paul’s imprisonment, after all.  Something was certainly happening there, as we tend to view things.  But they were facing trials, for all their joyous enthusiasm.  It’s not as though the Judaizers had let up with Paul’s departure, nor those who accounted themselves faithful Jews in the city.  And, as with any human group, dissensions arose, though we don’t know in regard to what.  There were differences of opinion, and this can cause no end of disturbance in a group convicted to pursue one God in one faith with one heart and one mind.  If this is our call, and we can’t agree on some small matter, what does this say of our beliefs?  And this was in an era when one city had one church.  Take it to the present with our myriad denominations and splinter groups, and those who decry any involvement in organized religion because, ahem, the church has proven a failed experiment.  But much of that mindset comes of some mix of pride, false promises of perfection in this life, and more than anything, especially in this day and age, a failure to have any grasp of history, particularly of church history.

Given where Paul is turning his attention in this passage, it becomes more evident that many of the issues we think a unique symptom of the modern age have been extent from the outset.  We understand, for example, that many who claim to be Christians are nothing of the sort.  Many operations which claim to be churches of Christ want nothing to do with the Lord Jesus as He reveals Himself in Scripture.  And that, really, is far nearer what we’re dealing with in this passage than might be supposed.  We’ve been coming off a long address of issues with the Judaizers, those who wished to bind the Gentiles to various Judaic practices such as circumcision to mark the covenant, observing the feast days, becoming scrupulous about what foods were permitted and what foods must be avoided lest one become contaminated by their idolatrous associations.  These may have claimed association with Christ, but perhaps not.  Perhaps they simply came seeking to enforce Judaic orthodoxy, and to stamp out this Christian sect that kept spreading in spite of them.

Here, though, it seems Paul has turned his attention to a more insidious issue, that of false professions of faith.  These are myriad.  They were then.  They are now.  Some of them are easier to spot than others, particularly for those of a more mature faith.  The health and wealth gospel still makes headway, but primarily amongst those with little idea what Christianity actually teaches, and as one comes to grips with Scripture, it becomes painfully obvious how far off course that movement is.  Your best life now?  Seriously?  You have Jesus, the Head of the Church, proclaiming clearly, “In the world you have tribulation, but take courage, for I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).  That’s not some subjunctive clause of maybe, possibly this might come about.  It’s an indicative statement of fact.  You will.  You have Paul encouraging the churches – and I always find it starkly amusing that this was considered encouraging, but it is – “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Ac 14:22).  Now, on the one hand, that is a message to firm up those facing present trials.  To know that these trials do not mean we’re off course is strength to persevere.  But it’s also a caution against garden-path faith.  Garden-path faith will not withstand the storms of life.

Another issue which arises is that we see how thoroughly outnumbered are the faithful in this life.  Look around!  The world has run off from Christian faith.  Once strong Christian nations have gone all-out atheist.  We could look at France, the country that gave us such powerhouses as Calvin, which now looks with disdain on religion, putting their faith in humanism, and in that effort, being overrun by Islamic influences.  Britain, once proudly convinced of its place as the New Jerusalem, is much the same.  And America?  We still have liberty to gather for prayer and preaching and whatnot, yet how free are we to speak of faith in the workplace, or in the halls of power?  And how much of what used to be a strong Christian foundation remains sound?  Many a once impactful denomination has given way to worldliness, becoming just one more champion of whatever the latest social movement is.  How many churches do you pass daily that have their rainbow flags out, and proud signs supporting BLM, and what not?  What are you to make of a supposed church, whose hymn book boasts more songs to Gaia than to God, and in whose services, the name of Jesus is rarely if ever heard?

Listen up!  This is not new.  This is not some phenomena unique to post-modern society, although I do think it has grown more severe.  But I look at Calvin, writing back in the 17th century, and what do I see?  His observation that ‘the chaff is more in evidence than the wheat.’  And here’s something to keep in mind.  He’s not discussing society at large.  Were that the case, it would hardly be shocking.  The faithful have ever been but a remnant in society.  But he’s looking at the Christian church and making this assay.  We might even suppose he’s looking out upon the pews of his own congregation and observing this reality.  It is well that we practice a bit of discernment, not to say skepticism, when we look about our own house of worship. This is, I think, an unchanging fact of church life.  The chaff is ever more in evidence than the wheat.  And there lies our greatest danger.  It’s not in those who deny Christ outright.  It’s not in those who promote their competing religions.  It’s not even in those who play some mix-and-match game with religious texts, insisting that all religions are equally valid and pursuing the same God according to their various lights.  It’s patent nonsense, as should be obvious to all.  But again, too many are too ignorant of history to properly assess the claim, and it sounds so nice, doesn’t it?  We could all just get along in harmony if we’d drop all these insistent claims for this god or that god.  But it’s just one more idolatry.

And we have our own problems.  Idolatry in the pews.  Idolatry hiding behind a pious mask.  This was the issue of Pharisaism, and it remains the biggest issue for the church.  It’s the issue for those who push some heavy, legalistic framework, demanding compliance or else.  It’s the issue for those who insist that Christian liberty means anything goes.  And it’s the issue for those who have everybody convinced of what good Christians they are, sound in doctrine, wise in speaking, and yet, in the course of time, are revealed to be living lives that have little to do with their Sunday persona.  And when they are exposed?  How great the damage that is done, and how gleeful the enemy they serve, wittingly or not. 

Now, I am not by any means advocating that we take to looking upon our fellow church attendees with intent to scrutinize, with the nagging question as to whether they are legitimate or not.  We can assuredly pray for our elders, that they would be gifted with the necessary discernment to assess those who would become members of our local body.  But they are as human as we are, and the hypocrite is a practiced actor, well able to say and do the right thing for the short time necessary to convince all of his earnestness.  Wolves in sheep’s clothing.  This is how Jesus described such, false prophets who look the part, but ‘“inwardly are ravenous wolves’ (Mt 7:15-16).  And what does he prescribe?  “You will know them by their fruits.”  It’s one thing to talk a good game.  It’s quite another to produce sound evidence.  And here, I think the evidence that we must consider is that of unintentional corroboration, the testimony not so much offered by the witness, but discovered about the witness.

I think often of that time I had scanned the web for whatever reason, looking for mention of my former worship leader, who had been something of a name at one point in his life.  Just curious to perhaps hear some of what he’d been doing back then.  But what I came across was some comments from one of his students at the time, and what was telling was that their description of the man, of his manner and words, were exactly what I would see and hear on Sunday.  Likewise, a dear brother of mine, when some went to pick up some donated furniture from his employer.  The man they knew was the same man we know.  There was no division of Sunday persona and Monday persona.  And honestly, examples such as these cause me to question whether I could say the same of myself.  I desire to do so, and I pray it would be so, but I know myself too well to believe it so.  It gets closer, but there remain distinct differences.

Yet, I also know this: that my faith in Christ is firm, and rests on the solid ground of truth.  That’s not to say I have a perfect grasp on the whole of theology, and certainly not of the full depths of God’s being.  But I do believe I hold to the God Who Is, and not some fabricated God-lite that suits my temperament better, and forgives my particular foibles, feeling them to be of no consequence.  No.  As we have been hearing this week, and shall for the next several, He is holy.  I should emphasize that more.  He is Holy – the very definition, and the absolute fullness of Holy.  And so, when I hear Paul saying, “Join in following my example,” part of me is stunned at the audacity of such advice, and saddened in turn, because I do not feel I could reasonably advise the same in my own case.  Follow this part, perhaps, but not that part.  Well to recall, then, that there remains that implicit, “as I follow Christ.”  Thus far, and no farther.

Let me try to come back to my point.  In every church one can find imposters.  At some level, I suppose it should surprise us more to come upon those whose ways are true.  Yes, and bless God for them when you find them!  They are rare jewels, worthy to be cherished, though not so as to set them up as idols in their own right.  But know this.  “There are usually two kinds of professing Christians in every church – those who imitate the Savior, and those who are worldly and vain.”  I’m taking from Barnes for that quote, so here is a pastor’s perspective back in the days leading up to the Civil War.  We’ve seen Calvin’s assessment, back a few hundred years earlier.  More chaff than wheat.  There is your church.  I have no reason to doubt that even in Philippi such an assessment pertained, or in any other church we find mentioned in the text of Scripture.  It’s something of a universal, for the church is ever drawn from the numbers of fallen man, and fallen man comes as he is, baggage largely intact.  For many, the baggage still defines our sense of self, the hurts of the past have so shaped the present, that even this promised future doesn’t shake us free.

Here is the greatest danger to the church, that so many who set themselves forth as being believers, friends of the faith are in fact and in practice, ‘“the worst enemies of the gospel,’ to take Calvin’s assessment.  They are not ‘“outright enemies,’ open in their opposition to all that God is.  We’re not even dealing, at this point, with those who promote a different gospel, or some alternate religion.  Those would indeed be outright enemies, even if they advertised themselves as being the true Christians.   And be certain, such claims continue even to our own day.  Praise God that we have so much in Scripture to demonstrate their error, and to demonstrate the proper response to their attempts to pervert the Truth of God.  And may we be strong enough in the strength of the Spirit to not only stand fast against their corruptions, but even to counter and denounce their lies.

But here are those who claim friendship with the faith, who claim to have received the gospel to good effect.  They sing the hymns and choruses with us with as much seeming engagement as any other.  They nod along to the sermon, stand up and sit down at the right times.  They even stick around for fellowship, might even attend classes where such are offered.  And they can talk a good game.  Their grasp on the fine points of doctrine may be very well displayed.  They know their Bible, and they can readily talk at length on any of its tenets.  And yet.  And yet, their lives are lived in total disregard for all that they know.  They come, but not seeking the kingdom and God’s interests.  They come seeking their own interests, serving their own appetites.  In many cases, they come seeking cover for their worst inclinations, finding in the church easy prey for their lusts.  Or maybe they just want the veneer of acceptability.  Reasons vary in detail.  But the end result is the same.

How much worse when such a one has become in some fashion instrumental in the life of the church.  How much harder when one who has been in leadership is found to have been false.  Perhaps it is but a temporary lapse, even though it stretches our definitions of temporary.  Or perhaps, for all that they had us absolutely certain of their spiritual state of salvation, they were in fact wolves all along, and are now exposed for what they always were.  We pray for the former, yet we have learned the hard way that it may very well be the latter.  When a pastor falls, it is a terrible thing for that church he pastored.  Here is the one we trusted.  Here is the one from whom we learned so much, who we saw as a true shepherd of the flock, and now he stands exposed a sinner.  And on the one level, of course he’s a sinner.  This is us.  But on another level, it shakes our assurance.  If he can fall, how am I to stand.  If we were to learn that these Apostles of old, whom we hold in high esteem, had in fact been false in the end, how devastating would it be to the Church?  It would be nigh unto fatal.  The same applies with local leadership.  A fallen leader can be fatal to the faith of the led.  It ought not to be so, but it is.  For many, the pastor might just as well be a god, and his failure is a signal that this faith he proclaimed is as false as his practice.

Well, bring it home, folks.  Our failure is a signal to those seeking signals that our faith is as worthless as any other philosophy on offer.  Clearly our message can be safely dismissed, for we ourselves dismiss it with no apparent concern and no visible repercussions.  And we hear it so often.  It’s practically the stuff of folklore at this point, that common accusation of the unbeliever that the church is full of hypocrites.  It’s all an act.  It’s just a social club draped in religious trappings.  Get them at home and they’re no different than we are.  And hey, at least we’re honest about it.  And there’s a lot of truth to that critique.  There are a lot of hypocrites in any church.  And there is a lot about each one of us that might well appear hypocritical.  In the life of holiness, there is, I suspect, always a fair amount of fake it ‘til you make it.  Holiness is beyond us, after all.  But as Paul has been urging in the leadup to this passage, we’re in this race to win.  We try.  To take the line from the old song, we fall down, but we get up again.  (Funny to think that’s already an old song, but it is.)

Understand, though, that the presence of falsity in the pews does nothing to diminish the truth in the Word.  I much appreciated Barnes’ choice of comparison on this point.  The presence of such false believers no more discounts or disproves the value of religion than the existence of counterfeit money discounts the value of genuine coinage.  If I pursue that analogy just a bit, I would have to acknowledge that yes, it does have somewhat of a diminishing impact in that undetected counterfeits cut into profits, and therefore must be accounted for by increased prices, much the same as the realities of shoplifting result in higher prices, as the store must somehow cover its losses.  And there is the erosive impact of unaddressed counterfeit currency as regards trust for the legitimate.  I think of our experiences in Malawi, for example.  The American dollar is much welcomed, but the counterfeit so prevalent that only relatively pristine, new issue, larger denominations are truly trusted.  Your twenty dollar bill may well prove entirely worthless, for none dare take it in exchange.  So, yes, there’s a cost, and it is because of such cost that Paul takes pains to address the issue.

We don’t leave falsity unaddressed when once it is found out.  There is this thing called church discipline.  The professed believer who insists on living in unrepentant pursuit of sins must be expelled, not in finality, but in hopes of eventual restoration.  But until such a one repents in real terms, and turns from those wicked ways, a line must be drawn, a clear rejection made evident.  This is not who we are.  This is not our God’s way.

It’s easy to become discouraged when such disciplinary actions must be taken, and again, especially so when it involves one who has been in leadership.  But sometimes, just the shear weight of failure gets to you.  Many have looked upon this litany of failure and concluded that the Church has failed.  We must run from her and find whatever little enclave of supposedly true believers we can find.  But this misses the reality of the situation.  That little enclave is no purer than the big enclave.  And even should we reduce ourselves to a communion of one, that same story would hold true.  Even in a party of one, we would discover that the chaff outweighs the wheat.  And then, what shall you do?  You have gained nothing by running from the gathered body.  You have changed nothing except to cut yourself off from the positive potentials of life in the body.  Connected to the body, you can at least discover ‘those who walk according to the pattern you have in us.’  No, you won’t discover men made perfect.  And frankly, if you find those who suppose that they are such men, depart from them, for they are blind leaders.  But there will be, in any church, those worth emulating.  Seek them.  Learn from them.  Seek to grow into being one of them.  That’s the message here.  I could stop on that point and call this study finished.

Another useful observation is made in the JFB commentary.  As observed, in every age the weight of numbers goes toward unbelief.  But the weight of numbers is actually against these evildoers, even those who make pretense of belief.  Their numbers preclude them, after all, of being part of Christ’s little flock.  That observation comes with a few verses for backup, the more obvious being Luke 12:32, in which Jesus speaks to His followers, saying, “Don’t be afraid, little flock, for your Father has gladly chosen to give you the kingdom.”  Israel was, and I suppose still is the least of nations viewed in terms of territory or numbers.  Yet it was this nation that God chose to establish as His own.  It was to this people that He came and made covenant.  Christians, certainly within the setting of ancient Rome and its empire, were nothing.  They had no power, no clout.  They had no numbers, measured against the mass of peoples among whom they lived.  It really ought not to have taken a great deal of effort for Rome to stamp them out when it was so inclined.  But God.  And because God, this movement begun, by all appearances, by twelve men of no education and no account, turned the world upside down.

It is still the case.  We don’t seem like we’re having an impact.  It often appears to us that darkness is winning.  The evil around us grows more evident, bolder.  It permeates everything and it seems nothing is to be trusted.  Children shooting up schools and churches with evil glee.  Priests abusing their office for sexual gratification.  Entire denominations run off the rails, denying Christ and promoting every sort of idolatry and sin.  We could go on.  But hear the admonition of Scripture.  “Don’t follow the crowds in doing evil, neither allow the multitude to get you to pervert justice in a dispute” (Ex 23:2).  Numbers don’t determine the issue.  Truth does.  Numbers don’t determine the right course.  “For the gate is wide, and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter by it” (Mt 7:13).  Choose the road less traveled.

We are in an age with many claims.  We are in an age when the majority would like us to believe that every sort of truth is relative, that differences aside, we’re all really reaching toward the same goal.  You may call it God, and I may call it Buddha, and Joe, over there, may call it Gaia, or Allah, or who knows what?  Heck, let’s bring the coyote and the ancestors in.  It’s all one. Well, no it’s not.  There is one way, and one way only that leads to salvation, and that way insists we embrace the Son, Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, relying on His finished work alone as our only and certain hope of life.  To pursue any other course is rebellion against the God Who Is.  It is rejection of His righteous and rightful rule, for acknowledged or not, He IS Lord, and to Him belongs the kingdom.

You, if indeed you believe and have been called by Him, have been made a citizen of His kingdom.  By His decree, not by your merit.  But as a citizen now of His kingdom, left here in this foreign land, you are now given a commanded purpose, to live before these foreigners the life of a citizen of heaven.  Heavenly citizenship, Ironside suggests, consists in the politics of godliness.  And we understand from history how resonant this message would be in Philippi.  Here was a Macedonian city, as such under Macedonian governance, and yet, Philippi was a Roman colony, more fundamentally under Roman governance.  This observation from Ironside is worth contemplating.  “A Philippian subject to imperial authority would not be a lawbreaker in Macedonia, for it was the imperial authority that had instituted the government of Macedonia.”

That mindset also informs Paul’s perspective on civil authority.  Of course, he had likewise grown up a Roman citizen in a distant land, under the local governance of Cilicia, whatever form that may have taken.  But their governance was subject to Roman governance.  Such liberties of self-rule as Israel may have enjoyed remained subject to Roman oversight.  Even the priesthood, wrong though it may have been, was subject to Rome.  And they lost sight, it seems, of the fact that even in such an arrangement, God’s rule came first.  And so we hear Paul’s instruction.  “Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities.  For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves” (Ro 13:1-2).  That can be hard to take as we consider the moral rot in our leaders.  It wasn’t any easier in an age that gave us Nero or Claudius or Caligula.

The quality of that leadership is not the point.  And their stance towards Christianity is not the point.  Yes, you may certainly act to preserve life, and yes, if such governing authorities command you to undertake actions which violate the clear command of God, by no means comply.  That authority which was vested in them has been annulled by their actions.  That’s not the right word, but it’s the one I have for the moment.  They have lost authorization in that they have stepped outside of that which was authorized.  Like an ambassador offering concessions to which the President has not conceded, his word bears no weight.  His offer has no value, for it is a false offer, a matter of opinion rather than authority.  But the general ruling remains:  Be subject to those governing authorities, for you know them to be subject to that same God who is your true Lord.  But where distinction must be made, your true Lord is Christ, and He must be obeyed.  Therefore, stand firm.

Walking the Pattern (09/11/25-09/12/25)

“Walk according to the pattern you have in us.”  That’s Paul’s instruction, or encouragement to his friends.  You know how we were when we were with you.  You know how I am even here in my imprisonment.  You have the example of living for Christ, now follow it.  But if all we are doing is following some pattern, then there must remain a question as to our true state.  I can ape your movements, mimic your mannerism, maybe even cause my voice to sound enough like yours to pass for you over the phone.  But that doesn’t make me you, and it doesn’t mean I have any real understanding of you.

We recognize that children learn a great deal by mimicry.  Language is, in large part, learned by mimicry.  But that level of linguistic skill does not necessarily indicate understanding the rules of the language.  You can go a good part of your life speaking English yet having no sense of what a noun or verb is, or whether a particular word acts as adjective or adverb, or for all that, what it would mean if it did.  You can still garner meaning from the things spoken to you, or the things you read, but might perhaps miss a good deal of that detail which an understanding of syntax might add.

How do children learn what is right and what is wrong?  Well, we may tell them do this and don’t do that.  And some things they will discover by simple experience.  But we hope, don’t we, that they can learn from our example.  And we, as parents, often learn as well, primarily to be careful of the example we set.  For they are learning whether we intend to teach or not.  And for a season, our example will be their framework for truth.  Much of what we must unlearn when we come to faith consists of patterns we have picked up in life, examples we took to be worthy of our emulation which were in fact leading to deadly peril.

But Christ has come.  Christ has called.  Christ has upended our previous pattern and set us upon a new course, pursuing the pattern of a new example.  He has set the pattern.  He has demonstrated the Way in which we should go.  “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father” (Jn 14:9).  Of course, only a very few had this opportunity in the flesh.  And of those, not one really got it while He was with them.  They could mimic, perhaps.  They could do things that He did, but not quite as He did them.  There was emulation, but not real understanding.  That would have to wait for the tutelage of the Holy Spirit.  That would have to wait for a lifetime of learning and experience.  Ultimately, it must wait for the day of which Paul reminds us at chapter’s end, when Christ shall return, and transform this humble body of ours into conformity with His, completing the work of renewal in us, such that we finally become who we are.

And that is our process in this new life of faith.  We are becoming who we are.  The goal of heaven is assured.  The completion of this transformative work is assured.  It is not assured because of our skillful emulation of Christ.  It is assured because of Christ, because of, “the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.”  Beloved, He has already made you a citizen of heaven.  He has already established you as a son of God. You are a child of God, present tense.  You are becoming who you are.  This goes beyond merely aping the behaviors of Christ and trying to put a good face on things.  This is life change.  This is life change beyond which, and compared to which there is no other life changing event.  There is no other flash of insight, no other earthly encounter that can be truly declared life changing.  It may excite us ever so much.  It might lead us to view things a bit differently, perhaps for a season, perhaps for the remainder of our days.  It might give us new focus, new purpose.  But it isn’t truly life changing.  What is life changing is being reborn of the Spirit.

So here we are.  And this is largely the message Paul has for his friends in Philippi.  Short form:  You are citizens of heaven.  Live like it.  Yes, you must abide by the rules of the society in which you live, at least those which are consistent with civil law and do not require you to disregard the law of heaven.  Again, this sort of dual, or tiered allegiance would be familiar to the Philippians, citizens of Rome first, but also of Macedonia, subject to both, but with primacy given to Rome.  And so, for us.  We are first and foremost citizens of heaven, and we recognize, as I looked yesterday, that any earthly governance is exercised under the authorization of God.  No, it doesn’t often look that way, and it’s doubtful that many in government, either in this nation or any other, really think of themselves as subject to God’s rule.  They may, as has been the case in times past, consider that God has put them in power.  But somehow, they convince themselves that having done so, He has left them to their own devices, left them to do as they please.

And honestly?  We’re not much different, are we?  Without such constant admonitions to behave as sons of God, we would happily go back to living our lives as we please, still steeped in sin, but convinced of our immunity from charges.  You don’t think so?  Just look at what we see in civil society around us!  What happens when threat of legal jeopardy is removed?  The criminal recognizes that his gains or just his thrills outweigh the risk, and guess which way he goes?  Where is any incentive toward reform?  Where is any restraint?  And don’t suppose yourself superior.  Don’t go to that place of, “Phew, at least I’m not like him!”  You are.  You don’t know the extent of evil of which you are capable.  But something restrains you.  It might be lack of opportunity.  It might be lack of boldness.  And here, I’m not yet considering the impact of rebirth.  Let’s stick with what’s pre-conversion for just a moment.  Review your pre-Christian life.  What do you see?  What way were you trending?  Now, I don’t suppose I’m the definitive norm, but neither do I suppose my experience is uniquely poor.  There were decisions I made in youth that ought rightly to have ended me, yet they didn’t.  There were times when I was terribly impressed with my abilities, when in fact the lack of ability on my part was causing risk to life and limb.  Even in coming to faith, I would have to accept that my choices were not leading me hence.  If anything, my plans and ideas were drawing me away.  And they would continue to do so, left unattended by the Holy Spirit who has come to be my Tutor, my Advocate, my Advisor.

And this is His whisper, shouted through Paul, but often coming in the soft voice of conscience, particularly when I have allowed myself to slide into patterns of worldly thinking.  “You are a citizen of heaven.  Act like it.”  You might hear it differently.  “This is not who you are!  You’re better than this.”  Now, that’s not a message to bolster us when spirits are low.  It’s a reminder, to recall the old Charlie Peacock song, to aim a little higher.  Break free of the old pattern and pursue the new.  It takes effort.  It takes practice, just like anything else you set out to learn.  My goodness!  I’ve been trying to gain some sort of proficiency with this guitar I bought, and it’s a battle.  It requires effort, focus, change of physical posture, teaching these old fingers new tricks.  Set it aside for a few days and what happens?  Fingers lose their memory.  Muscles tense up because the limbs still don’t know inherently how to implement what the mind is directing them to do.

Take that into the realm of spirit, the place of character.  Character is, after its fashion, another form of muscle memory.  But muscle memory must be established by long practice, by repeated exercise.  It doesn’t come in a flash.  It comes of determined effort.  It comes of rejecting the calls to take the convenient course.  It often comes with that added encouragement of, “everybody else is doing it.”  We looked at that in the last part of this study.  Our instruction is clear.  Don’t follow the crowds.  Don’t let some argument from the numbers lead you to pursue an unrighteous course.  Don’t let the idea of saving a few bucks lead you to pursue underhanded means to obtain what you seek.  It’s easy.  There are plenty of folks ready and willing to work under the table, cut your costs by skirting the laws, rubbing your back with savings if you’ll rub their back by paying under the table so they can avoid the taxes.  It’s practically a way of life for many.  Reported income?  Never heard of it.  Responsibility?  Not into it.  We’ve moved on from, “Information wants to be free,” to, “I want to live for free.”  But what does Scripture have to say?  “Work with your hands.  Earn your keep.  Treat outsiders properly, and live so as to be in no place of dependence on them” (1Th 4:11-12).  “Keep aloof from the disorderly.  We didn’t eat any other’s bread unpaid for.  We worked to support ourselves.  Do you likewise.  Do your own work and eat your own bread.  If anyone will not work, don’t let him eat” (2Th 3:7-12).

For my part, a strong emphasis lies on honoring commitments.  I think this is called for by Scripture.  God keeps His commitments.  His promise is as good as done.  His covenant is unbroken, even though we break our side of the deal regularly.  But we are representatives of the kingdom of heaven now.  We are citizens of heaven, and must strive to make our lives an example of what kingdom life means.  What to do?  Walk godly.  Refuse to take the easy path of sin.  Honor your commitments, even if it’s costly to yourself.  Now, we see from the Bible that there comes a point where honoring your commitment would become in itself sinful.  But that example informs us more in regard to being careful of our commitments, than in regard to maintaining our commitments even when doing so becomes clearly sinful in its own right.  God doesn’t need to repent.  We, however, often find it needful.  Repenting of a foolish vow must surely lead us to turn away from its implied duties, lest in maintaining our word we violate God’s Word.

So, then, we are called to live according to the pattern we have in Christ Jesus.  Make no mistake.  Though Paul omits the clause in this instance, it remains present – to follow his example is to follow the pattern we have in Christ Jesus, for his example is to do just that.  Believe in Christ, and live as you believe.  Trust Christ and love Him, letting this be evident by your effort to obey His commands, to live according to His way.  Any Greek philosopher, any Jewish rabbi, would expect as much, and any disciple of theirs would do so almost instinctively.  Why else follow this teacher if you don’t account him worthy of emulation?  And what value your learning from him if it is not put into practice?  Well, then!  How much more when your teacher is God Incarnate?  And how much less of an excuse do you have, should you allow this all to be no more than a mental exercise?

No!  You have faith?  Stand firm in it.  How do you stand firm?  By walking the pattern, by exercising yourself to maintain course on this new way of living.  And how better to walk the pattern than to observe those who walk together with us, particularly those who have made greater progress than ourselves?  If this is our desire, then let us set ourselves to follow Paul’s advice.  Follow his example, and learn from those who live accordingly.  Take the measure of your brother, not in judgment, but let us say, in assessment.  The whole picture here makes plain that many who claim faith either don’t possess it at all, or have a grasp so tenuous as to be ever at risk.  Observe the one you consider perhaps emulating.  Discern whether in fact they progress in the Way or wander after their senses and appetites.  In all, though, your focus in this effort remains on your own progress.  There is a place, to be sure, for building up your brother, but you can’t build him up if your own edifice is rotting away in disrepair.

Let us, then, set ourselves to remain eyes on the goal.  The goal?  To be like Christ in all things.  The means?  For this life, as Barnes indicates, we focus on character resemblance.  Character is formed by practice, practice proceeding until our moral muscle memory renders the decision to do what is right more nearly innate to our being.  Pursue those characteristics that mark you out as a son of the Father.  Seek to live lives resembling the life He lived in Christ.  That does not necessitate martyrdom by violence, necessarily, though it assuredly doesn’t preclude such an outcome.  As they did to the Teacher, after all, so they will do to the disciple.  That’s a clear part of the message.  But let your character remain unsullied.  Do not repay evil with evil.  Don’t follow the crowds in their pursuit of sinful ends, nor allow the weight of numbers to corrupt your judgment.  Seek as best you may to be fully conformed to your Lord, to your Father, even knowing that full conformity, that full satisfaction of our desire and His, must await His return.

In the meantime, if we would pursue this pattern, we must be willing to inspect ourselves, thoroughly and frequently.  Indeed, we must invite and even beg the Spirit to undertake His inspection so as to inform us of those places that need our attention.  Oh!  May He make evident to us those places that are out of alignment, those places where our actions and our thoughts are not reflective of our heavenly citizenship.  May we be mindful both of our great confidence in Him, and of our covenanted responsibilities to Him.  The JFB sets before our eyes this reminder, which Paul set before the eyes of Timothy.  This is reliable:  Here is bedrock truth.  If we died with Him, we shall live with Him.  If we endure, we will reign with Him.  But then the counterpoint.  If we deny Him, He will deny us (2Ti 2:11-12).  Now, especially as he is addressing his dear son in the faith, these conditionals assume the if clause satisfied.  But then, the same can be said of that final conditional.  So be careful.  We can’t blithely accept the first two as being, “if, as I am sure is the case,” and then change on the last.  The syntax is consistent.  We can only take it as far as, “let it be assumed for the sake of argument that this is the case.”  Or, to put it more simply, if one is true, the other is true. 

The question, then, is which is true of us?  Have we died with Him?  Well, then, how shall we who died to sin still live in it (Ro 6:2)?  That’s not to suggest that we are rendered capable of perfect holiness.  But there’s a huge difference between falling into sin, and living in it.  Both involve choice, to be sure, both are equally acts of the will, for we will hardly do other than what we choose to do, however coerced we may feel in our choosing.  Take a most mundane example.  I choose to pursue the rebuilding of the back deck on our house.  It’s not because I find some thrill in so doing.  It’s not that I want to show off this new deck.  Honestly, I could care less about it.  But it’s a necessary action.  The existing deck is old and rotting away.  It must be done, and I choose to do what must be done.  But let us look to the completion of that undertaking.  If I then choose to turn that deck into a place for sitting and drinking, carousing into the night, that’s a different matter altogether.  That is choosing a lifestyle of sin.

To take another example, I may not be able to avoid exposure to views of women, and even views of women designed specifically to entice.  After all, the world has long understood that sex sells, and given the desire to sell, sex factors heavily into the seemingly inescapable world of advertising.  But I can train my eyes to skip quickly past, to seek safer ground for viewing.  I can, by the Spirit, make covenant with my eyes, and with His aid, I may even manage to uphold that covenant in spite of the constant barrage of inputs.  This is far different, however, than seeking out those opportunities to ogle, than dwelling on the object and its objective.  The one is may prove an occasion for stumbling, but the other is willfully, happily seeking out opportunities to not merely stumble, but wallow in the mire of sin.

Brothers, we cannot live like this.  We must not!  And if we find a fellow believer purporting to claim otherwise, we must undertake to edify and correct that brother, if he is able to receive such correction, or we must excise.  It’s a painful thing, the exercise of church discipline, but necessary.  The disease will metastasize if left untreated.  Sin will spread if left unchecked.  Just look at the impact we see in society from having removed the restraint of expected consequences for criminal acts.  If, by our tolerance, we demonstrate disregard for godliness, expect ungodliness to flourish.  If, on the other hand, we seek to live so as to be an example others can imitate to good advantage, if we live our lives governed by heaven’s law, and call those who walk with us to come and do likewise, then godliness will flourish.

God has called us together as a body, and He has done so for good reason.  One suspects He has done so for many good reasons, but as we consider this matter of walking the pattern, I would focus us on this aspect of it.  In being gathered together, we find ourselves among many physical plane, tangible examples whom we can emulate to good, godly advantage.  And, it is supremely to be desired, we in turn may serve as examples for others to emulate.  We each have our individual strengths and weaknesses, our strong points, and those places where we are in need of improvement.  Living apart from such tangible teachers, we will rapidly corrupt our supposed pursuit of godliness into reshaping God after our own image.  You will deny this.  Oh, I would never!  But indeed you would.  It is the deceitfulness of sin, and sin remains in you.  Let us never become so foolish as to suppose we have devised a wiser plan for our growth than that which God has established and shown us.  Forsake not the gathering together, as is the habit of some.  No!  Encourage one another, taking all the more care to do so as the day draws near (Heb 10:25).

Don’t be fooled.  The internet and its enabling of conversation across the globe is no substitute for the church as the local body.  Watching things on the screen will never serve as a suitable replacement for living life together in community with the saints.  To be sure, it’s much harder to live in this local body, for we must rub up against those who differ from us in various perspectives, those whose progress is not, by our lights, up to our standard.  But humility might lead one to recognize that if this is so, then it is also the case that we have not progressed up to the standard of others.  We are not the pinnacle.  We are not the apex, and we most surely are not the head.  There is one Head – Christ Jesus, and the Church is His body.  You may be frustrated by this, but it changes nothing as to the truth.  You are called to draw near, not to hide away.  You are called to grow together, to be an example, and to follow an example.  God in His wisdom has arranged it thus, and far be it form us to suppose we have a better way than His Way.

Walk the pattern.  It is a pattern of obedience to our Lord.  It is a pattern of emulating our Lord, the which we can only do by pursuing to emulate those who have walked before us.  This is not some exalting of traditions of man.  It is the humble wisdom of standing on the shoulders of those who have proceeded farther than we have.  May God grant us the humility to seek such examples and learn from them.  May God grant us the maturity to serve as examples for those who see us and learn from us.  May we, in short, live lives governed by heaven’s law, as we serve as representatives of heaven’s King.

Walking with the World (09/13/25-09/14/25)

I find I may need to correct one aspect of my thinking about this verse, and that concerns the nature of those to whom Paul is now turning his attention.  I had taken this as continuing to address the issue of Judaizers or those of like mind, who seek righteousness in the merit of their works.  But his attention has now shifted to the other danger, that of the antinomian mindset which turns the liberty we have in Christ into license to do as they please with no regard for holiness whatsoever.  The commentaries, I note, are unanimous in recognizing this shift, and most telling, for me, is the point made by the Wycliffe Translators Commentary, that were he still considering those Judaizers, his response would not be that of weeping, but rather, as we see in so many places, a response of vehement rejection, and even condemnation, given their unwillingness to change.  But here, his concern is an ostensible Christian who claims his faith permits a total release from moral restraint.

It seems improbable, doesn’t it?  And yet we come across this very mindset revealed in one or another among us from time to time.  I suspect many of us have felt the urge to fall back on grace as an excuse to sin with impunity from time to time.  But the Spirit will not allow us to remain under such false impressions for long.  And we must take our queue from Paul, from him who calls us to follow his example.  He doesn’t reject their claim of faith exactly, though he does declare to them, as a prophet should do, what their present course will have as its result.  And here, I think we must perceive a warning not only to those whose wantonness threatens their claim of salvation, but to each one of us.  To the degree that we allow our appetites to become our idols, to the degree that we insist on focusing all our attention on the physical considerations of this present life to the point of neglecting our spiritual life, and begin to set our priorities first, leaving God to have whatever may be left over, we are driving toward this same goal.

Now, as has been a recent example, raising objections to works righteousness will be no defense in this matter.  To claim to rest on the grace of God while making no effort towards repentance or towards righteousness is, in the end, to make false claim in a false hope.  Understand that it is not a matter of God being false, or His grace being insufficient.  The falsity lies in the claim of being a recipient of said grace.  It’s all well and good to repeat the sermon point that concerned awareness of one’s sin is strong evidence of faith.  But if it ends in concerned awareness and refuses to undertake any effort at course correction, then I’m sorry, but I am unconvinced of saving faith.  It has not set you beyond redemption, no.  But it renders any claim of being redeemed already suspect at best.  Nobody is calling for works righteousness in pointing out that to continue in sin as though it were no issue is in fact a serious issue.  What we are calling for is fruit that gives evidence of that claimed faith.  What we are saying is that where the seed of faith grows, the fruit of the Spirit must surely form and ripen.  If it is wheat that has been planted, and not tares, then there must be a head of wholesomeness rather than of poison to the soul.  So, yes, we shall weep for the state of that one whose appetite has displaced his passion for holiness.  And we shall weep for ourselves, that we are so easily moved in that same direction.

Lord, give us eyes to see ourselves in truth.  Let us not think we are immune to such distractions of the flesh.  I see it too much even in myself.  It can be hard, wading through the necessities of life, to rightly discern where I am doing what is necessary or what is right and called for, and where I am simply gratifying some fleshly desire.  This matter of the porch, for example.  Yes, it needs repair, but have I allowed a sense of nice things to make it an excessive matter?  Or, in this business of picking up the guitar.  Have I heard You in this, or simply scratched a life-long itch?  I have felt that I had Your backing on that front, but if I was fooling myself, well, bring correction.  And if I was right, I might well pray that You would show me how to address this elbow pain that seems in some way connected with that pursuit.  In short, keep me mindful of my many shortcomings, not just to know embarrassment at them, but to actually address the matters that are holding me back from You.

Okay, so let’s turn to the real issue before us in this section.  It hinges on understanding what Paul means by calling them enemies of the cross of Christ.  Somewhere or other it was observed that he does not address them as enemies of Christ period, nor of God, but specifically of the cross.  The cross, of course, is emblematic of the humiliation of Christ, the public shame to which He was put, and the rejection that is to be expected, really, for the Christian who walks the pattern set before him.  Recall the sermon.  “Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and cast insults at you, and spurn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man” (Lk 6:22).  Expect it.  Don’t expect the world to wrap you in welcoming arms as you give evidence of your heavenly citizenship.  Don’t expect the idolater to be thrilled at seeing his idolatry exposed.  The only way that’s going to happen is if in fact the Holy Spirit has been sent to call that one to salvation.  But it’s a remnant operation.  The chaff, to go back to Calvin’s assay, will ever be more extent than the wheat.

Have you ever seen a wheat field?  The great majority of that plant is unsuitable for harvest.  It might serve as straw to line the barn, and soak up the waste from your animals, but as foodstuff, it’s worthless.  And there is way more stalk than grain.  It’s true with most plants, it seems.  The mass and volume of the cornstalk, which will probably just be burned, is far in excess of the mass and volume of the ears of corn.  Subtract the weight of cob and husk, and the grain itself is a mere pittance.  So, too, the grain of the faithful amongst the chaff of all humanity.  Numbers aren’t the point.  In fact, as was observed in the last section, numbers may well be counter evidence, a warning that here is a church more interested in the world’s opinion than God’s.

So, let us discern the issue with those walking in the world rather than in the pattern of holiness.  I find Barnes particularly helpful here.  He writes, “Their attention is directed to honor, gain, or pleasure, and their chief anxiety is that they may secure these objects.”  You can tell a lot about a man by what causes him to be concerned.  If your retirement account is of more concern to you than your eternal rest, it just might be a hint that something’s wrong.  That’s not to say that concern for retirement is a sin, nor that seeing to the necessities of life and seeking to have something to leave for your survivors is wrong.  It’s a question of degree, I think.  We do well to heed Paul’s words, as ever.  Writing to the church in Rome, well before this point where he was imprisoned there, he observes that those who set their minds on the things of the flesh are fleshly, whereas those who are spiritual contemplate the things of the Spirit (Ro 8:5).  Now, we mustn’t take this to the extremes of Manicheism or Gnosticism, and denounce all physical matters as inherently sinful.  We mustn’t dive into the ascetic camp, and seek to reduce physical concerns to an absolute minimum, denouncing the comforts of life to go live in a cave alone, taking sustenance from whatever we can scrounge, and giving no thought to life or limb.

God is Life!  God is for life.  So much of Jesus’ issue with the Pharisees came of their misunderstanding of this fundamental point.  God was never calling to adherence to His Law to the point that caring for life became a secondary, disposable matter.  Think of that one whose vow led him to slay his own daughter rather than to be humble enough to admit the error in his vowing.  Think of the Pharisees offended at men and women made whole because it happened to be the Sabbath day.  How skewed must your understanding of God be to suppose that He would prefer sin and suffering to continue while you scrupulously turn your eyes away and refuse to do what lies in your power to help?  How is it holy to let life die so that you can claim adherence to the rules?  But that’s again no cause to simply get on with whatever you please in total disregard for the command of God.  Just recall that His command begins with loving Him more than anything, including your honor and reputation, and proceeds directly to loving your neighbor as yourself.  If you were in their position, would you want your righteous brother to leave you to suffer because he needs to keep his hands clean?

Let me try and get back on course.  We are discussing those who walk with the world, and I need to make a clear distinction here, particularly as I look ahead at the next section of my notes and see the similarity in title.  We must walk in the world, but that’s a rather different matter than walking with it.  And that’s the distinction we must keep in mind.  Walking in the world is a necessary feature of being in this life.  There’s no escaping that.  But walking with it consists in trying to fit in, as it were, seeking the approval of man rather than the approval of God.  Now, let me point out that we are in fact called to live, as Christ did, in such fashion as will meet with the approval of both God and man.  I think particularly of that summation Luke presents of His youth.  “And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Lk 2:52).  Paul picks up on that with his instruction to the church.  “If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men” (Ro 12:18).  That’s going outside the church.  The problem comes when the world’s opinion becomes more important to us than God’s.  When we see churches upholding that which God rejects utterly, well, in all fairness, we no longer see churches.  We see what claims to be a church but is in fact a synagogue of Satan.

Harsh words, but true.  And we who hold to the sound doctrines of Scripture must be clear in our rejection of such falsehoods.  We must make plain that, “An immoral life is enmity to the cross of Christ; for He died to make us holy.”  I return to Barnes again for that quote.  We must recognize that in such things, silence will be seen as acceptance.  Silence in the face of evil is never right.  It may seem prudent at times.  And to be sure, we must recognize those limits at which we are casting pearls before swine (Mt 7:6).  Yet, that is not an argument against exposing evil for what it is.  Evil must be identified and rejected.  Utterly.  No place for euphemisms, no excuses for societal influences or issues of mental health, which is itself a euphemism.  No, the one who commits evil is, by definition, suffering issues of mental health, certainly of moral health, and it would be hard to separate the one from the other.  Call out evil for what it is.  Reject it utterly.  And refuse – a message which seems particularly needful this week – refuse to repay evil with evil.  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Ro 12:21).  Hard words, but right.

Okay, so again, here were looking within the walls, within the camp.  Without becoming cynical narcs, seeking any least error in our brother so that we can out him and claim a scalp, we must be mindful that presence in the pews is no assurance of redeemed state.  It’s a passage I bring up often, but it fits here.  Paul wrote to Corinth, observing that there is no reason to be surprised when Satan’s servants are found disguising themselves as servants of righteousness.  Neither does their pose alter their outcome.  “Their end will be according to their deeds” (2Co 11:15).  It falls to the leadership of the church to be aware of the spiritual health of its members and attenders.  It’s harder with attenders because they are not officially subject to church discipline.  But the member is.  And if he will not submit to that discipline and seek to correct his ways then, again, the evil must be faced, identified, and rejected.  As Barnes writes, “One secret enemy in a camp may do more harm than fifty men who are open foes.”

Nothing is more dangerous to the Church than that enemy of the cross who sits in the pews, who speaks his false counsel to others willing to listen, and who may, by his false beliefs, lead many a young, immature believer astray.  Is he so dangerous as to destroy the work of God?  I think not.  If Satan is powerless, in the end, to destroy God’s work, it’s hardly to be supposed that some mere man could do so.  But that’s far from saying that either devil or man can do no harm.  No, the harm can be great and the cost to those led astray great as well.  Christian love demands, surely, that we would seek to prevent such harm if it lies within our power to do so.

So, to be an enemy of the cross, what does this mean?  After all, these purport to be lovers of Christ, believers in Christianity.  If they seek to associate with us who believe, how then are they enemies?  What it comes down to is wanting the benefits without the requirements, or, as the saying goes, to have their cake and eat it too.  The cross is set as representing His humiliation, the shame to which the worldly seek to put the Christian.  It may be as simple as comments such as, “Oh, you believe that stuff?”  Or, “I don’t need a crutch.”  Or claiming equivalency between believing in God and believing in the tooth fairy.  Or, it may come to the taking of a life for having the audacity to speak the truth in love.  But it comes with trials, and honestly, we don’t much like trials.  Given our choice, we would go with the garden path every time.  Only, an earnest reading of Scripture makes clear that this is not a choice open to us.

But these enemies of the cross seek to be able to claim belief while remaining free of such annoying trials as are assured to the true follower.  I’ve repeated it often enough.  “In the world you have tribulations, but take courage!  I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).  And that marvelous word of encouragement, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Ac 14:22).  That wasn’t consolation, but rather, encouragement.  Take encouragement from the trials you face!  They are indicative of being on the right course.  That’s not to suggest we go out and seek to stir up trouble for ourselves.  Frankly, there’s no need.  If you are a believer, and living as a believer, speaking as a believer, each day will bring trouble enough.  But these, though they profess a soft, cuddly Jesus, do so in a fashion which avoids all danger of reproach.  It has far more in common, I think, with the pantheism of Rome and Greece.  You worship your god, I’ll worship mine.  Heck, I’ll even toss a coin into your god’s plate.  Might as well hedge my bets.  Just so’s we all believe something, right?  It’s the mindset of the all roads lead to heaven crowd.  Sounds lovely, but it’s an entire falsehood.  These are such as, “wanted the benefits of Christ’s death while refusing to identify with His shame,” as Ironside relays the case.  They claim faith in Christ but all of their confidence remains in the earthly.  And having confidence in what is earthly, they grow complacent, negligent as to faith and practice.

And again I must caution:  we are not immune.  We are inclined toward the safe, the comfortable.  We value peace, which we define as being able to avoid all argument and debate.  We make an idol of our comfortable cocooned existence.  And if we can have God on these terms, we’ll take it.  But let it become difficult.  Let jobs be threatened, or reputation ruined because it has been found out that you believe this God stuff, or because your love for Christ will not allow you to remain silent in the face of evil, and will you stand?  Lord willing, we shall discover the answer to be yes.  Lord willing.  Apart from Him, I am quite certain we should all fail, and probably at the first challenge.  But if God is with us, beloved, who can stand against us (Ro 8:31)?  If God is with us, we shall stand, because He is able to make us stand (Ro 14:4).  It’s not our strong moral fiber that wins the day.  It’s His indomitable power, His irresistible grace, which brings us to the place of being unbending, willing to face whatever may come just so long as we come home to Him.  This is the security in which Paul faced his imprisonment and trial.  This is the security in which we face the evil day, assured that, as our Lord has declared, believing in Him, even though we die, even though we be put to death by means most awful, yet shall we live (Jn 11:25).

And through it all, we hear the heart of a pastor, breaking for these who remain captivated by the false creed of humanism.  We feel the deep concern of a pastor for his flock, let they come to harm through the corrupt influence of such examples of casual, welfare Christians, if I may call them such.  Let us be, then, mindful of our own condition, and prepared to break off all such thinking.  If we would share in the benefits of grace, let us undertake to pursue the duties of obedience.  And if we will not undertake the duties of obedience, let us not be so foolish as to suppose ourselves under grace.  Let us be as we ought, truly submitted to the will of our Father, and of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Walking in the World (09/14/25-09/15/25)

I will continue on the same theme I was on at the end of the previous section.  The issue before us is that of embracing the humiliation of the cross.  And I can’t help but recall the exercise I undertook what is now many years ago, of considering this symbol of the cross.  There was, and I suppose must remain, concern as to whether we have made of it an idol, as those Israelites in the desert took the serpent emblem on its staff and made of it an idol that Moses found it necessary to destroy.  It is entirely possible for us to take what was given as a good thing and make of it an idol that becomes for us a tool of evil, as an idol must inevitably do.  So, we do need to consider well just how we perceive this symbol of the cross.

For many around us, it is nothing more than a pretty bit of jewelry, hardly even contemplated as to its significance.  It could as well be an ankh or some Chinese character whose meaning we don’t really know, but we’ve been told it’s something good.  It’s just a charm for the bracelet, a trinket to decorate the neck.  It means nothing.  It can’t even be taken as assurance that the wearer believes in Jesus, certainly no assurance that they believe the Jesus revealed in Scripture.  But even in the church, there is danger, is their not, of seeing the cross merely as a sign on the wall, of thinking no more about it than that it’s pretty there with the white robe draped upon it come Resurrection Sunday?  The significance of it, the humiliation associated with it seems too quickly to fade from thought.  We might recollect it as we celebrate Communion, but come back next Sunday, and it’s just an object of religious art and no more.

But to embrace the cross must be to embrace the humiliation – not just tolerate it as a necessary thing to endure, but to embrace it.  Think of those early Christians, not just the Apostles, but many in the early church, who were marched off to face death by either crucifixion, or fire, or becoming prey to the lions.  They didn’t cringe back from the event, but even relished it.  Here was opportunity to demonstrate to the world their true embrace of Christ.  Here is the strength of faith to look upon the event and say, as Paul said earlier, whether I live or die, it is for Christ, and He will be glorified by the manner of it.

Whatever else we may say of the cross, it is the sole means chosen by God to close the divide between Himself and man.  You cannot embrace the Son except you embrace the cross.  Any claim of the one without the other is a claim of false hope.  Any claim of trusting in Christ that quails back at the first sign of opposition, that silences itself lest the worldly be offended, is no claim at all.  If we have made claim to faith, but make of it an excuse to continue on unchanged, then our claim is baseless.  I know I’ve hit this point already, but I’ll hit it again.  How can we, who have died to sin, continue to live in it?  How can we so sully the name of this Christ we claim to serve by continuing to sin in hopes that grace will increase (Ro 6:1-2).  No!  He who has died is freed from sin, freed to live with Christ who freed us (Ro 6:7-8).  Let us, therefore, examine ourselves. 

Lord, I know too well how readily I can blind myself to my own sins, how readily I turn to making excuses for myself, assured of Your forgiveness.  Yet, forgiveness calls for repentance as precursor.  So, I come again with the prayer I offer too often.  If I have been too passive in my faith, if I have been claiming to trust You, but only as excuse to make no changes, I repent of this, as best I am able, and I pray that You would so strengthen me in resolve and in character as to repent of it truly.  Make of me the man You intend me to be, and let me not suppose to remain passive in the process, but may it be that I am actively alongside, watching Your working, and working alongside You.  May I indeed, strain forward towards the goal of the upward call of heaven to which You have called me.

Let’s not lose sight of this.  We are in a race, but not against each other.  We are in a race, but not a timed trial.  But it’s a race we must finish, and we will.  The question is whether we shall finish in success or failure.  The good news is that in Christ, if indeed we truly are in Christ, success is assured.  It is assured not by our willpower but by His divine power.  For, as Paul has said already in the fine letter, God is at work in us both to will and to work for His good pleasure (Php 2:13).  I cannot escape that verse, nor would I wish to.  Our race is towards the goal, the goal of the upward call of Christ, and so, race we do, ever onward.  Some days it is more a struggle than others.  Some days our progress seems greater than others.  But we continue on regardless.  We continue on aware that so long as we remain in this life, we are in the race; the goal remains before us, beckoning us onward.  And so we run, but not rushing.  And so we labor to exercise ourselves for godliness, not because we suppose ourselves capable of perfection, but because we know we are being perfected.  And the process of being perfected lies in having our head in this race, of becoming ever more purposeful in our pursuit of that toward which God is directing us.

From another perspective, and one commonly heard from those who have run this race before us, this is as a training ground for the age to come.  Ironside observes this, writing, “That which we call ‘time’ is the training school for the ages to come.”  Yes, and with that in mind, he proceeds to a particularly sound admonition not to waste this gift of time on things of no value.  And something rises in my spirit saying, yes, Lord!  But…  But there are so many things to do, so much that requires my attention, or at least touches a desire in me to give it attention.  And to be sure, much of that has potential value.  These studies on which I spend my mornings’ first hours are one such, and the value cannot be denied.  Though, I must confess it seems that often enough, the points learned are gone almost as quickly as closing the editing software.  My longstanding love of music would happily occupy most hours of my day, were my body and mind up to the task.  And there are times I have wondered if the time and expense of it has been wise.  But then I see small surprises, places where the skills I have gained, such as they are, can be turned to good use for godly purpose.  And I am in wonder.

I could say the same of these studies.  I mean, for the most part, they seem to be private musings with which I occupy myself for an hour or so.  And I do wonder at times just how much I retain.  But I know God lodges those things that should lodge.  He has been building a storehouse in me, and I have seen how He is able to guide me to draw from that storehouse.  I may not always remember it’s there, but when I do, He has made me able to make good use of it.  And so, as I was reminded by my wife last year, at something of a low point while serving over in Africa, He has been preparing me for that assignment for decades, and by His grace, I am able to lay hold of those preparations and be of some use to Him, imparting, I hope, a desire to be in His Word among those who are leading their churches in that region.  Assuredly, that is time well spent, though it be difficult, and may leave one wondering to what effect we labor.  I suppose that’s the way of it for any pastor or teacher in any setting, though.

Yet, I know as well just how readily I can waste away the hours reviewing various websites or dealing out hands in solitaire just to pass the time.  And I begin to know greater physical limitations on what I can be doing.  I am, to be honest, rather frustrated by my elbow these days, as it pains me often, and makes it so much more difficult to contemplate picking up the guitar to practice.  And I might express a touch of frustration that the labor of learning guitar has led to a need to set aside saxophone far more than is desirable.  But I know that somehow these are both pursuits that are fit into God’s plan.  I don’t know how.  I do know that when I bought this guitar I had a clear sense of it being an acceptable pursuit and the right time to pursue it, a nod from God, if you will.  But these last weeks could cause me to wonder.  I think how rapidly my elbow fell to complaining even with the brief practice I put in last night.  It is something I must figure out how to address, I suppose.  But I am not as yet willing to give up.  I don’t think it was a mistake.  I do think there are mistakes in my approach, my posture, what have you, and these must be corrected.

And isn’t there a spiritual lesson in that?  For in our desire to reach the goal of heaven, we are forever discovering things that need correction.  There have been those times when I found long-held aspects of doctrine and belief needed to be revised and even rejected.  And that’s hard!  But harder still to come to the end of the race and discover we’ve been on the wrong course all along!  Harder still to finally meet Jesus face-to-face and find that I never knew Him and worse, He never knew me.  No!  I’ll accept the correction.  I will seek to know Him in truth, and to follow Him in truth.  And I will rejoice in the knowledge that when I stumble yet again, He will be there to pick me up yet again.  Oh!  But may I learn not to waste this precious gift of time on things of no value.  May I indeed run the good race and finish the work that He has set before me to do.

And with these things in mind, I come to Calvin’s observation regarding our passage.  He writes, “It is necessary that we should in spirit dwell apart from this world.”  Now, I might choose to emphasize that clause, ‘“in spirit.’  For, as Paul acknowledges, we cannot very well live apart from this world, not while we are as yet in these bodies of flesh.  We are not called to a life of monasticism and withdrawal, but rather left in the world to engage with the world.  And let me tell you, if, in our engagement with the world we cannot contain our disgust with the sins of the world, we shall be of little use to God or man.  I cannot imagine that Jesus, dining with a house full of sinners, was tickled by their sins.  I cannot imagine that He was well pleased with the failure of His disciples to understand Him.  But neither can I imagine that He sat seething at the table in that house, angrily eying each person there with clear rejection in His eyes.  No, what we read of Him gives us a clear sense of compassion, and even a degree of comradery, not entering into their debauchery, certainly, but neither reviling.  Rather, He held out hope, and He held out an example of a better way.

I am not thus reducing His Way to a self-help program, some twelve-step to recovery.  But I am saying that Jesus came as a friend to sinners, the truest friend they could ever hope to meet.  For only a true friend would lovingly address the sin and encourage us to better pursuits, to recovery.  I can take Paul as another example of like mindset.  As vehement as he could be when countering those who sought to mislead the Church, towards those as yet outside the Church he was, it seems, quite respectful.  I keep coming back to that example of Paul in Ephesus, when riots arose not because Paul was being obnoxious, but because he was being effective.  And who came to his defense in that city?  The asiarchs, those who had charge of the religious festivities celebrating Artemis.  This was, by our lights, the competition.  This was the leadership of the Hindu temple down the street coming to the defense of Christ’s emissary.  Isn’t that something?  And they spoke to their own, observing that this Paul had done nothing against the temple, nothing against the priests of Artemis, but had only declared his beliefs.

I write this in the wake of this shooting out in Utah; a young man, a devout Christian by all accounts, who was, I am informed, contemplating a future as an evangelist, shot in front of his family and in front of a watching audience for having the audacity to speak truly – not judgmentally, not  angrily, but with compassionate engagement.  Here he was, as it were, in the lion’s den.  Here he was facing the crowds gathered of a different worldview, a different religion, though no doubt most there would have insisted themselves atheists.  But he was civil.  He listened respectfully.  And he answered only with truth.  And for this he died.  And yes, we see this in our fellow citizens, and we see the reports of the many, in positions of influence and power, who celebrated this outcome, and you what?  One can easily become tired of the fight, tired of seeking to live godly in this god-awful mess.  But then, we are reminded that this world is not our home.  Perhaps, in times such as this, we feel it a bit more deeply.  This is not who we are, and this country, certainly in its present form, is not our homeland.

Matthew Henry writes, “The life of a Christian is in heaven, where his head is, and his home is, and where he hopes to be shortly.”  Some days we feel it.  Some days, we are too much in the world.  And in those latter days, let us turn the page ahead to Paul’s advice in the next chapter.  “Whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things” (Php 4:8).  Allow me the corollary position.  Whatever is false, dishonorable, wrong, sinful, hideous, destructive of reputation, lacking entirely in excellence and worthy only of utmost denunciation, get your mind off of those things, and turn off the feeds that seek to stoke your anger.  You cannot turn your eyes heavenward by focusing so fully on news of fallenness.

Remember who you are and Whose you are.  Remember that you are in His hands, from which no power earthly or otherwise can possibly dislodge you.  Remember your citizenship.  You have been reborn for eternity, you whom the Father has called by name.  You know this in your soul, and your spirit, like mine, yearns for this eternity.  Not just eternality.  Honestly, I can think of few conditions more miserable than to find this present order going on and on without end.  What mercy our Father showed back there in Eden when He expelled Adam and Eve rather than leave open the possibility of them eating from the tree of life in their fallen estate, and thus condemning themselves to just such an eternity.  And that end yet awaits those who set themselves as enemies of Christ and of His cross.  Make no mistake.  “Their end is destruction whose god is their appetite, who glory in their shame, and stay focused entirely on earthly things.”  But our minds have been renewed, our spirits reborn, and as such, yearn for home.  Oh!  The joy of knowing our inheritance awaits in heaven!  Oh!  The joy of knowing that the eternity for which we are reserved is one not consisting in more of the same, but one in which all has been restored to its original order, in which the Son in all His glorious brilliance is our constant Light, and no darkness of sin enters in.  This is our goal.  This is our legacy.  This is the enormity of the privilege that has been made ours in Christ Jesus.  Let it be as well our earnest, most longed for expectation.

If indeed, we live in expectancy, gladly anticipating the return of our Lord, then this must, as Barnes points out, produce in us the desire for readiness.  I think of a Vineyard song from some years back.  “I want to be found ready when He comes.”  Well, that’s a fine desire, but only if we undertake to see to it that we are in fact ready when He comes.  How do we do so?  We come to a place of recognizing earthly affairs as being of comparatively little importance, concerned as they are with matters of a world to which we have died.  Now, that’s not to say we simply disregard things like earning our bread, housing our families, seeing to our support and so on.  No does it suggest that we seek to become entirely ignorant of the news of the day.  But we must set it in proper context.  However dire the reports, however disturbing the events of the day, they are but, “momentary, light afflictions producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2Co 4:17).

Barnes continues his point, observing that this was the most dearly held doctrine of the early church, and one well suited to produce in us a delight in the contemplation of our Lord and of His certain return.  This, I dare say, is the strength of the martyrs.  This is the strength of Paul, there in his prison cell, fully assured that live or die, he would do so in the service of Christ, by the direction of Christ, to the glory of Christ.  Whatever, dear Lord, best serves Your purpose, let it be so.  If it be living to serve further in Your house and for Your people, then my soul says, ‘Yes, Lord!’  If it be that my labors are done and it’s time to come home, then my soul says, ‘Yes, Lord!’  If it be that pain and sorrow remain ahead, but You walk with me through it all, then my soul says, ‘Yes, Lord!’  Even so.  Thy will be done, here in me, today and always.  Let me remain true, and let me be about doing those things which are to Your purpose and delight.  Amen and so be it.

The Joy of My Salvation (09/16/25-09/17/25)

I am moving into the last verse of this chapter and the closing verse of our passage this morning, and by the looks of it, I shall be here for a while.  One thing I note quickly, as I review the commentaries is how glad I am that the NASB has chosen to phrase reference to our current body as ‘“the body of our humble state.’  Go back to the KJV, which is nearer the text used by these commentaries, and we have ‘“our vile body.’  Perhaps it’s simply that the meaning of vile has changed through the years, but it really does carry connotations of evil to our ears, doesn’t it?  But to view this body which God created as evil must be to accuse God of evil.  No, the matter of our humble state is far better at conveying the point.  It’s not an evil body, and we are not called to hold material existence in contempt.  That was the error of the ascetics, of the Gnostics, of the Manicheans, all of whom are roundly rejected even before the Apostles have ended their course.  Well, the Manicheans, being a later development, were not, but then, they were effectively an offshoot of Gnosticism.  But each of these movements, in their way, sought to not merely keep attention on things of the spirit (though being less than discriminating as to what spirit), but made it a matter of good and evil.  The body may be necessary, but it is evil, only the spirit is good.  That was their thinking, and in varied form, that thinking still finds its way into the church, or certain corners of it.

But no.  The point is not to decry the body as evil, but to observe that it is lowly, common.  Compared and contrasted to that body which will be ours in glory, it is indeed inconsequential.  Yet, we cannot help but recognize that Jesus Himself, our glorious Lord to whose bodily form we await conformity, took upon Himself a body like our own.  We read of it not that far back in this letter.  “He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, being made in the likeness of men.  And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Php 2:7-8).  You really can’t help but see how that passage parallels this notice of transformation, and the call to walk in obedience.  He obeyed in this body.  We are called to obedience in this body.  He took upon Himself the body of our humble state, became as one of us, and not merely in seeming, but in reality.  He entered into this lower state of existence, setting aside the prerogatives of deity, though assuredly still fully God in Person.  How can we hold in contempt that which our beloved Savior saw fit to take upon Himself?  Don’t lose sight of this!  He is still fully Man in His post-Ascension being.  But the body in which He now exists is no more the humble, earthbound contraption with which we are familiar.  It is the body of His glory.  And that, Paul tells us in terms most certain, is to be the end result of our transformation.

I don’t want to leave room for us to suppose that we shall be deities in our own right, which seems an overshooting opinion that we may arrive at too often.  It’s not that we’re going to be just like Jesus.  The creature, no matter how exalted, can never be deity.  However transformed our future, to take the most obvious issue with such a mindset, it remains the fact that we have a beginning.  There was a time when we were not.  To posit otherwise requires sliding into all manner of error, and demonstrates a drift into something nearer to Buddhism than Christianity.  No.  You came into being.  God always is.  There remains for us an eternity future, but we cannot lay claim to an eternity past.  God can.  But we shall be like Him.  I notice, on checking that we are not talking metamorphosis here, that all-out change such as transpires when caterpillar becomes butterfly.  Other passages may speak of that degree of change.  But here we are talking metaschematisei.  It’s more nearly an assuming of another’s appearance.  Of course, we see the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountaintop, which is of this same idea of altered appearance, and recognize that there, we were closer to seeing His true being, leaving the period of His humiliation as more nearly being a case of assuming another’s appearance.

And that must give us warning not to push the distinction too hard.  His was no merely appearing human, but a truly being so – more truly, I should think, than any other human since Adam.  For in Him, humanity finds its fulfillment.  Humanism likes to posit some idea of humanity perfecting itself as it progresses.  I have to say, the evidence to date shows quite the contrary.  But Christ came that we might in fact be perfected, and it is toward that goal of being perfected that we now walk, or to return to the earlier image Paul used, we race.  We shall not arrive at it in this life, but we shall arrive at it, for He has said it, and He will do it.  He will transform us by the power He has to subject all things to Himself.  That’s the message here.  He will.  It’s not about us somehow rendering ourselves perfect in order that He may.  It’s about Him doing so and us recognizing that point.  Our citizenship is in heaven.  Already.  But as citizens of heaven, we are called by our Lord to remain for this season in a foreign land, in this life, and to do so as His representatives – not as saints perfected, but as sinners redeemed.

That may feel a struggle at times.  Indeed, I dare say it is most often going to feel a struggle.  It’s hard to swim upstream against the cultural currents.  We live in a period when there has long been a certain cachet to being counter-cultural, but if you look upon the proudly counter-cultural you begin to notice that they’re really just the culture.  The truly counter-cultural in our day are swimming against the flood.  They’re rejecting the ‘“just do it,’ ‘“whatever floats your boat,’ mentality that guides the general public, and seeking to walk godly in this ungodly world.  And that gets uncomfortable.  It gets uncomfortable for us, because it inevitably leads to rejection, isolation, maybe a sense of missing out.  It also gets uncomfortable for those around us, because it cannot help but give cause for a bit of introspection, a reassessing of one’s choices.  Seems to me we’re seeing a bit of that happening in recent days.  I read many who perceive it as a true revival, and perhaps it will prove to be so.  I hope so.  We certainly need one.  Would that it could have come by something other than the murder of one who seems, by all accounts, to have been a godly and kind-hearted man.  But it has ever been the case that the blood of the martyrs was the life of the church.  No reason to suppose that has somehow ceased to apply in our day.

And perhaps that will serve as segue to a thought pulled over from my earlier notes.  It pertains to a pertinent assurance from our Savior to those who were already suffering rejection, broken family ties, and quite probably ousting from the synagogue for the crime of following Him.  To them He speaks this great comfort.  “There is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God, who shall not receive many times as much at this time and in the age to come, eternal life” (Lk 18:29-30).  I emphasized it then, and I emphasize it now:  at this time, or in paraphrase, in this life.  In the here and now, you will receive.  Think of the example of Job, where this receiving was quite literal.  He had lost as near to everything as makes no difference and why?  Because he would not deny God.  Or, we might say, for the sake of the kingdom of God.  And the outcome?  He received back all and more.  No, it was not the same sons.  No, the servants and the cattle he had lost were not restored to him once again alive.  But he was restored, his earthly lot was once more abundant.

Or, we could take the example of Abram, walking away from what by all appearances was a well-established life in Ur, with a secure and prosperous future ahead to pursue a course to who knows where.  And he went.  He may have taken more with him than God intended, but he went.  And as we watch him on his journey, we find him gaining family, gaining herds, gaining lands.  Take it into the spiritual, and we see that just as God promised, he became the father of many nations, the father of all who have come to salvation by faith in Christ.

And that gets us to the point of Christ’s promise.  You will receive a much larger family.  There are days when this really hits home as I look about the church of a Sunday.  Here is my family.  Here are brothers and sisters I account dear.  And many more that I cannot as yet account dear simply because I have not come to know them as I ought.  I think of these new additions to our worship team, and though I know some are assuredly temporary, and others may prove so in due course, it really feels like family, and that warms my heart no end.  There is a kinship here.  There is a mutuality of love for God and for His people.  And in that closeness, there is joy.

I have watched one of my new brothers lay aside his employment for no other reason than that it was hindering him from pursuing the course God had set for him in coming here.  And I know for others the travel time they are putting in to be here with us twice a week is significant.  But each one of them expresses this same perspective.  God is calling me to be here for this season, and I must obey.  And it’s not grudging obedience.  It’s not pained accepting of the inevitable.  It’s pursuit.  It’s glad acquiescence, rejoicing to see what God is doing in and around them, in and around us.

This hits close, given the state of affairs as I continue to prepare for this next sojourn in Africa.  It’s going to be longer this year, and we are heading into a much different region, at least for the first leg of our ministry.  And I know that my wife is not on board with this, and that pains me no end.  It’s truly disconcerting, but it cannot be cause to walk away from what God is calling me to.  No, if it’s a choice of pleasing my wife or pleasing God, the right choice is plain.  It may well be that this is the cross I am called to take up in this season.  And I can and do pray that she might indeed come around to understanding this, and to praying for God’s purposes to be met in this embassy.  In the end, though, as I see I was addressing this even in those earlier notes, “If possessions or family are preventing you from walking the walk, then it’s time to walk away.”  That feels so harsh, so hard-hearted.  But it’s not.  It’s not being bull-headed about going one’s own way.  It’s a matter of conviction, of prayerful conviction.  Those notes were from almost a year ago, and I was praying then of this feeling of conflict between church life and home life.  Then, it was merely a matter of not both being part of that local body.  Now, it’s a matter of mission.  Yet, even then, I was praying, “You know how I should proceed, and You will, as You see fit, make it clear to me.”  And He has.  He has made it very clear to me that indeed, this is the good work He prepared beforehand that I might do it. So, I shall do it, and if I must do it with heart-pain for the in-house strife, so be it.  But I trust my God not only to strengthen me to my purpose, but to minister to this household as well, and to bring about such comity and harmony as seems tried by this decision.  I would like to think that I am already seeing this.  But it’s hard to say.  It’s simply not a subject of conversation at presence, a matter more or less avoided.  But I do see love prevailing, and I know my God shall prevail.  Praise be to His name.

Paul begins to transition from this issue of false beliefs filtering into the church to matters of practice.  It’s not much of a transition, really, is it?  It’s more a matter of coming at the same concern from a different angle.  But as he begins to shift his thoughts, he is moved to recollection of his friends in this church.  He speaks again of his longing to see them again, and then notes them as his joy and crown, his beloved.  Twice he speaks of them as his beloved.  His feelings for the church are strong.  But this matter of being his joy and his crown stand out.  Was it that Paul felt this church had progressed much more than others he had planted?  That could be.  Given the flavor of this epistle over against most of the others, it would be easy to think so.  But then we have that note of growing discord that follows.  Philippi may have been an active church, but it was hardly perfect.  Yet they are his joy and crown, for he’s not just spouting words to flatter.  He continues, as well, to be writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  These words are meaningful and significant.

How are they a crown to the Apostle?  Let’s start there.  And this, we must notice, is not some unique accolade for Philippi.  It should put us in mind of Paul’s earlier letter to their sister church over in Thessalonica.  To them, Paul wrote, “For who is our hope, our joy, our crown of rejoicing?  It’s you!  You in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming!  You are our glory and joy” (1Th 2:19-20).  It’s much the same accolade, isn’t it?  It’s not the unique gifting of this church or that.  It’s steadfastness.  It’s fruitful evidence of the Spirit’s work among them.  Recall how news of the church in Thessalonica had spread.  Even as Paul began work in Corinth, news had already come to that place, presumably by ship, as to how effectively they had received this gospel, and how they had dispensed with former practices to live in this newness of life.  And that is cause for joy in the evangelist.  My work is not in vain!  God is changing lives through His work in and through me.

Can you imagine the sorrow, the embarrassment, a minister must feel to stand before his Lord and discover that for all the years he labored, there are none present to show him effective?  I think back to that rather angry letter Jonathan Edwards wrote to his church upon news of his ouster from the pulpit.  He spoke of how pastor and congregation would stand together before the Lord in that day, assessed, as it were, together, the minister for his efforts to rightly shepherd and instruct that church, and the congregation for duly receiving and acting upon that instruction.  No fault to the minister if his congregation proves to have been all goats and no sheep.  He went to the post his Master assigned him, and undertook to perform the duties of that posting.  The farmer, to shift analogies, is not responsible for soil that proves unable to supply nutrients to the seed.  He cannot be blamed for lack of rain or sun.  His function is to plant seed, and in terms of gospel ministry, to do so rather indiscriminately.  And yes, he waters.  Yes, he weeds, and seeks to supply these seeds and seedlings with all that is needful for growth.  But if the seed proves infertile, can any blame him for that?  No, to borrow Paul’s explanation to Corinth, one plants, another perhaps waters, but withal, it is God who brings the growth (1Co 3:6-7).  The planter is nothing.  The waterer is nothing.  God gives the increase, else there shall be no increase.

That said, what farmer, having planted and watered, and tended this farmland through long days, would wish to find at the end that nothing had grown?  No, his joy and crown will be found in the harvest.  And doesn’t that put us right back where Paul has his eyes trained.  You, my beloved, shall be my joy and crown, when we stand together before our Lord at His return.  For then will be the evidence of the harvest.  Then will be the assurance that this labor of mine was never in vain.

Let me turn this in a slightly different direction, as it comes to mind this morning.  If such is the joy of the minister of the gospel, to find himself surrounded by those whose faith was either ignited or simply encouraged and enhanced by his efforts as he arrives in heaven, how much more our Savior, Jesus Christ?  After all, every success of the minister is lain at the feed of Him Who lived, and died to bear the sins of His people, and to pay in full the debt due for their crimes against holy God?  He is spoken of as resurrected unto life so as to be the firstborn of many brethren (Ro 8:29).  To this end, Paul writes, we whom God foreknew are predestined to being conformed to Christ’s image.  How greatly He shall rejoice in that day to see His many brothers come home to Him!  Oh, such rejoicing there shall be!  If angels rejoice to see the sinner saved, that first dawning moment of salvation realized, how much more in that day when every last one of the redeemed stand in the fulfillment of salvation!

And for us?  I don’t know as we can rightly imagine the thrill of it, the indestructible joy of it.  But I know this, it is our great comfort when once we lay hold of the fact that this fulfillment is assured.  Go back to that wonderful passage from Romans 8.  He foreknew, He predestined completion, He called, He justified, He glorified (Ro 8:29-31).  As Paul proceeds to exult, If God is for us, as this whole chain of Aorist Indicatives proclaims, who can be against us?  It just keeps going.  There is none who can bring charges in any meaningful fashion.  There is no record of wrongs in the court, as concerns us, for the case has already been settled, the penalty paid, and the annals of the court have seen all notice of any issue expunged.

We may not always feel this way as we progress along our course.  There are times, whether moments, or long months, when we may feel distant from Christ.  We may feel stagnant in our faith.  We may even feel a degree of doubt as regards our standing before God.  But assurance returns as the Spirit ministers to our spirit.  It’s not about our steadfastness, though we are ever urged to remain steadfast.  Let me restate that just a little bit.  It’s about the steadfastness of the Lord in us.  It’s about our steadfastness, but only in that He causes us to stand (Ro 14:4).  The point comes in reference to being judgmental about our brothers, but the point stands regardless.  The Lord is able to make His servant stand.  And not only, able, but determined.

Matthew Henry brings before us a dual point made by Jesus.  We find it in John 6:44.  “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.”  There’s one side of the equation.  The only entry comes of calling.  But it is followed by this.  “And whom the Father draws I shall raise up on the last day.”  So, on our part, albeit in the negative, there is a question of potentiality.  On His part, there is no potentiality, only assurance.  And observe the middle ground here.  It begins with you can’t.  Unless the Father draws, there’s really nothing you can do to alter the outcome.  But when He draws, it’s not just the possibility of response that is enabled.  It’s not as though the Father calls, but you check your caller ID, and decide not to pick up.  No, no.  His word does not fail of its purpose, and His call is His word, surely.  So, then, whom He draws – a term, I might note, which already implies response – Christ shall raise up.  If there was nothing you could do to alter the outcome without His call, it strikes me that there remains nothing you can do to alter the outcome after His call.  Whom He draws, Christ raises.  Your actions are really removed from the equation rather thoroughly, aren’t they?  And that, again, is our assurance, in particular during those periods of life when things seem doubtful.

But it’s no cause for indolence, no permit to live as you please.  That’s pretty much exactly what Paul has been addressing here.  No!  To continue as you were would surely be to declare yourself an enemy of the cross.  It would be running headlong toward destruction.  But God does not lose sheep.  If indeed you are His, He will not leave you to plunge over the cliff.  He will pull you back in, restore you to the paths of righteousness.  He will see you matured, perfected in His image.  It has been His choice, after all, to pursue this transformative work in us.  It is His will and His power that is working the transformation, His Spirit which has come to abide in us, overseeing the project, speaking to our conscience, guiding us to maturity of character, that we might indeed resemble Him more in this life.  In all, He has charge of the process, and the worst thing we could possibly do would be to try and take control of it.  Don’t ever suppose you can make yourself holy.  But you belong to Him who can.  Don’t suppose you can work yourself up into some place of worthiness.  You can only accede to the work He is doing, do your best not to make it any harder for Him to accomplish.  But your maturation is in His hands, and He will do it.

In the meantime, let us recognize our estate.  We bear His name.  At our church, we have occasion to sing a song to this very point.  It’s a reminder to represent.  We bear His name, and as is often observed, when people recognize this, they watch.  They look to assess the evidence of your life and character.  And for the most part, they do so hoping to find in you an excuse to dismiss this God you claim to represent before them.  It is on this basis, I think, that we are so firmly urged to walk the pattern, to stand fast in faith.  We are the testimony of Christ, and if our testimony is faulty, who shall come to Him on that basis?  No.  We bear His name.  Let us undertake to do so in a fashion befitting of His majesty.  This we can only do by relying on His guidance and His power.  This we can only do as He causes us to stand, as He causes us to live godly, as He causes us to make right such wrongs as we may fall into along the way.  And through it all, don’t allow your limitations to lead you into doubt!  Doubt, as regards our standing before God, comes of the limitations of our understanding, as Calvin observes.  Assurance is found in recollection of His proven efficacy.  If I may, doubt is ever in the subjunctive future.  Maybe, maybe not.  Assurance comes in the perfect tense, the present result of past actions, and in this case, it’s His past actions.  We have seen what He can do.  We have the testimony of our own past, as He has moved to protect us from our own worst instincts, as He has so radically changed our thinking, our character, our habits.  Oh yes, there are habits yet to be changed.  There are those stubborn places of resistance in us.  But to focus on those is to return to doubt.  Focus instead on those places He has already worked, and find in them the assurance that in due course those stubborn places will likewise be transformed by His proven, irresistible power.

No, you are not stuck with who you are.  I am not stuck with being who I am.  We are being transformed.  Christ has overcome on our behalf, and He has overcome us.  Our stubborn ways are no obstacle to Him.  Our persistent sins are no match for His persistent grace.  Again, no excuse to simply continue in sin.  Far be it from us!  But there is assurance here, great comfort.  He’ll get to it.  The day of our liberation even from those most persistent points of failure shall come, for He has overcome.  Rejoice, therefore, and get on with walking this pattern together with your elder Brother, together with your Lord and King.  Adam and Eve once knew the joy of walking the garden together with God.  We shall come to that place.  But even here in this present life we have the honor, the privilege, the joy of walking alongside our Lord as He guides us beside still waters and leads to rich pastures.  Let us, then, join Him in the way.  Let us enjoy His company today, even as we go about the necessities of the day.

Father, I know I pray this often, but only because the need is so constant.  But I pray that You would so work in me as to keep me that much more mindful of Your company today.  Let me meet my day in Your Spirit.  Let me face my coworkers not with despondency or frustration, but with the joy of Your companionship, with the encouragement of a glad spirit.  Let me be a blessing to those with whom I interact today, and let the grumbling cease.  Let me represent.  In whatever way I may, let me represent, and represent You well.

Stand Fast (09/18/25)

Our chapter headings make the call to stand fast appear as the start of a new line of thought.  However, the introductory ‘“therefore’ of the verse ties us firmly to what has preceded.  It might serve to consider this a transitional thought, but I think it is far better seen as a conclusion, an implication drawn from what has been said.  Calvin observes how, in this way, Paul concludes doctrinal discussion with exhortation, and suggests this ought to be our order in presenting the gospel of Christ.  I note that Paul generally seems to have this flow to his epistles, and this suggests that the same applied to his preaching.  Here is what God has said.  Here are the facts laid bare, and explained so as to be clearly understood.  Now, on that basis, see the implications, see what comes of this truth.  Pastors often undertake this same approach.  In our church, for example, you would soon recognize that each sermon ends with two or three questions to consider prayerfully.  Of course, sinful flesh being what it is, many hear the introductory, “I have three questions for you,” and tune out.  It becomes just a marker that they can leave soon.  But that is to miss the point utterly.  That is to make of what should be a transformative training session something more like grabbing a coffee together before work.  Nothing of consequence.  Just biding the time.  And that’s a terrible way to approach the means of grace.

But the proper effect ought to be that exhortation, application, fixes these holy truths in mind, that we might carry them into our week, factor them into our being.  And that is assuredly the intention here.  The call to stand fast comes with the notice of our heavenly citizenship, as well as notice of our coming bodily transformation.  This is who you are!  This is what lies before you!  Stand fast!  Keep with the pattern.  Walk it out.  What you have, and what lies in store as your assured inheritance, are solid cause to be stand fast and keep the faith.  Matthew Henry concludes the thought.  He writes, “The believing hope and prospect of eternal life should engage us to be steady, even and constant, in our Christian course.”  That believing hope is not the stuff of fantasy.  It’s not wishful thinking, fingers crossed and trying to convince ourselves of some improbable end.  No.  This is assured hope founded upon a history of God’s clear and apparent working in and through and upon us.  We have seen what He has done to date.  And we can recognize the improbability of such things transpiring had it been left to us.  There is effectively no chance that I would have become who I am given who I was.  I would account it highly questionable that I should be alive today, let alone a success by some measure, had I been left to my own course.

I have no particular desire to delve into my past here, but I have enough recollection to recognize how readily I was pursuing self-destruction.  Why, I couldn’t begin to tell you.  It wasn’t from self-hatred or any such thing.  It was primarily just a lack of sense and backbone.  But be that as it may, God saw fit to preserve me.  God saw fit to change me.  God undertook to make of me something I could never have imagined, to equip me when I was unwilling to undertake the necessary discipline to equip myself.  I recall that conversation I had with a young man in Lesotho last year, and in talking to him of my background, he had eyes to see just how thoroughly God’s hand had been on my development.  It wasn’t that I was trying to lay it out in such terms.  In large part, I hadn’t really thought about the whole development of my life in those terms.  But he saw it, and through his eyes, I began to see it.  Yes.  It is truly a catalog of God’s grace that I am what I am today.  I have no business being what I am professionally.  I have no business being what I am musically.  I have no business being what I am theologically.  And yet I am.  Why?  Because God had plans.  God has plans.  Sometimes I can see just enough of those plans to get onboard.  Sometimes, I can only see enough to look back in wonder at where He has taken me.

But there is also this other aspect that Mr. Henry has brought into view.  It is encouragement to stay the course, to hold fast to the truth of God as He has chosen to make it known to me.  This is not a matter of dogmatic insistence on maintaining my views unchanged, rejecting the very thought of any challenge to them.  It’s a matter of recognizing where these truths derive and how I have come to know them.  And that recognition must leave me open to correction from my God, where my understanding is as yet insufficient, or where I have drawn conclusions that don’t truly hold.  That is something far different than bending to every new wind of doctrine.  That is something far different than being enticed away by every novel idea that is presented as if it came from the Lord.

And that really is what has been addressed in these last two chapters.  Some seek to bend Christianity to their own dogmatic beliefs.  That is the urge to bind faith by tradition, to constrain Christian liberty with the imposition of manmade rules, to make holiness a matter of our doing rather than His.  Some seek to bend Christianity to suit their pleasures.  And that has been the primary issue of this last passage, those who insist that Christian liberty means not having to care about much of anything, winding up at a total disregard for holiness.  But God is holy, and He calls us to be holy as He is.  As Pastor Matthews has been observing these last couple of weeks, this is not a matter of perfection, certainly not in this life.  It’s a matter of being set apart to Him.  It may, almost certainly will, require change in us.  There are practices that were once familiar to us that cannot continue if in fact we are devoted to God.  There is that message that comes to Corinth,   “Such were some of you.  But no more!  You were washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God” (1Co 6:11).  There’s been this great change, and having changed, we dare not lust after going back to what was.  That was the sin of Israel, pining for the material comforts of their slavery in Egypt, such as those comforts were.  Holiness is hard.  It takes effort, and it takes making that effort even knowing that true holiness is beyond us to achieve.  That effort comes not by way of proving ourselves, not to ourselves, not to God.  It comes of love for God who has loved us.

We know, and if we don’t yet, we soon will, that we shall fall short of the devotion we feel.  However well we love God, it isn’t enough.  However great our desire to walk holy in the morning, by afternoon we will have failed yet again.  But, as the song goes, I fall down, but I get up again.  From a more proper perspective for the Christian, I fall down, but He picks me up again.  Try again.  It’s like those early days learning to ride a bike, or learning much of anything else.  We try and we fail.  We try and we fail.  But there is that one alongside encouraging us to try again.  And we keep trying until we get it.  That is how it is with most any earthly skill or talent.  Keep trying.  That is assuredly how it is with matters of spiritual maturity.  Keep trying.  Keep seeking to be in practice what you are in Christ.  And do so from that place of rest which comes of assurance.  You are a citizen of heaven.  You shall be resurrected, renewed in body as you are being renewed already in spirit.  This transformation will come.  As we go through the process, stand fast.

Don’t become bored with the preaching because you feel you’ve heard it all before.  Don’t watch for the end so you can get up and get some coffee, or pick up your things and go home to start the rest of your day.  No!  You need reminding.  I need reminding.  We remain subject to human weakness, and that includes a dreadful forgetfulness which seems only to become a greater problem the greater the import of what should be remembered.  Recall a meal at some restaurant years back?  No problem.  Recall the fun we had on vacation that one time?  Piece of cake.  Recall the point of last week’s sermon?  Okay, that’s going to be a bit harder, but something may have stuck.  Recall what I just read in Table Talk this morning?  Not really, no.  But in all, I trust God to lodge those points that need to persist.  I trust Him, as well, to dredge those points from memory later when I have need of them.

This is, after all, a part of what I have taught these last two trips to Africa:  Fill the storehouse of sound Scriptural knowledge, in order that you have something to draw from when need arises.  When questions come, how shall you answer?  If you would have a godly answer, you must have a godly store from which to draw.  And, come those open question times, you need that storehouse well stocked.  More, you need your Advocate to pull from stock and provide to you the answers that are needed.   Truly, it’s a wonder to see it, to be part of it, when it happens and God is in it.  And it’s a most awkward and scary place when we try and meet the challenge in our own power.  Human weakness remains, and as such, is a proper concern to be addressed repeatedly.  We need it addressed in us, lest we become overconfident.  We need to be attentive to address it with others, where we have commission to speak.

And ever the call is stand fast!  Don’t be pushed off course by these competing, corrupting ideas.  I think of that section of 1Thessalonians 5 we read last week for men’s group.  “Don’t quench the Spirit.  Don’t despise the prophetic word, but test it, and hold onto what is good, reject anything of evil” (1Th 5:19-22).  Don’t despise it, but don’t just take every claimed prophecy as a given, either.  The word preached is not simply to be taken as self-evident truth.  There are plenty of so-called preachers out there preaching things that just aren’t so.  And we needn’t travel outside the circles of claimed Christianity to find it so.  Neither did Paul.  Those he warns of in this passage are in the house.  They’re not some competing religion.  They are misleading from within the camp.  And that makes it all the more needful that we remain attentive to the pattern given once for all to the saints.  That makes it all the more needful to stand firmly on the proven truth of God, to keep the ground, the progress we have made to date, and be undistracted by these attempts to entice off into the weeds.

Persevere!  Don’t be sophomoric, convinced of your greatly advanced state and as such, blinded to your own weakness.  You say that you are rich and have need of nothing, and don’t even realize any longer that you are in fact wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked (Rev 3:17).  That’s an ever present risk to us.  We think we have arrived, but in fact, we are trailing far behind.  We think we are something, but in fact we are less than nothing.  We’re so convinced of our holiness that we fail to see the trail of sinful slime we are leaving behind us, so proud of our spirituality as we decry materialism that we fail to notice our own materialistic focus.  Oh dear.  Persevere!  Hold fast to Him Who is the Head.  Let go of mere opinion and seek after Truth.  Grow less attached to self-esteem, and esteem Him Who is truly worthy.  Face the trials that come not with pride and steely grit, but with utmost dependence upon and reliance in Christ.  Blessed is he who perseveres under trial, for having been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him (Jas 1:12).  Blessed in trials!  Supremely happy and well-off in the place of perseverance.  Why?  The Lord has promised.  And His promise is sure.  So stand fast.  Stand fast to the end.