On This Day: When Friendship Destroys a Church’s Love

   “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another." (John 15:12-17)

   This was quite the eye-opener for me this morning. I had never noticed before that Jesus had just told the apostles that they were his friends, but he never used the word for friend-love to describe the aim of all his teaching. The "love one another" was agapè-love, which means the same kind of love we receive from God.

   This makes sense that, if Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, the love that flows through us to others is the love that flows into us from the Triune God. And this is why Jesus has repeated the “agapè-love one another” command so many times!

   And yes, agapè-love is a “command” (friendship-love is not). So why do churches sacrifice agapè-love for friendship-love, or family-love?

   Part of the answer is that we have not been taught “the gospel OF THE KINGDOM”. People always hear about “the gospel”, and that this is a one-on-one interaction between us and Jesus. But Jesus and the apostles taught “the gospel of the kingdom”, meaning that the good news of salvation is not a solitary experience of Jesus coming to us, but an individual’s experience of coming to Jesus IN his kingdom and becoming one of his brothers in the brotherhood of believers.

   That’s why Jesus taught so many parables about “the kingdom”. It’s why he would tell the religious hypocrites, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes GO INTO the kingdom of God before you” (Matthew 21:31). Everyone understood that Jesus was calling people out of the kingdom of the world and into the kingdom of God.

   This is also why Paul would remind the churches, “He has delivered us FROM the domain of darkness and transferred us TO the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14). When someone is born again, they are born INTO Jesus’ kingdom. When someone “comes” to Jesus, they come to him IN his kingdom. When someone “receives” Christ, they receive him as their King IN his kingdom.

   What Jesus kept telling his disciples (constantly affirming that he would need to be alive for the things he taught them to be experienced) was that agapè-love was the love of his kingdom. You could leave all your friends behind and come into the agapè-love of his kingdom. You could leave your whole family behind and come into the agapè-love of his kingdom. You could have friendships in the kingdom that were under the authority of the agapè-love of his kingdom. You could have family relationships in the kingdom that were under the authority of the agapè-love of his kingdom.

   But you could NOT cover your relationship with Jesus and his kingdom with friendship-love, or family-love, or self-love. When those lesser loves have authority over agapè-love, we end up with the divisions and schisms based on friendship, family, and self-rule that Satan freely promotes amongst church-goers.

   At my six-decades-of-knowing-God stage of life, I have come to cringe when people talk about their friendships but not their agapè-love for Jesus’ church. When I see people act as if the church is about friendship or family, but there is no talk about “the kingdom of his beloved Son”, I know we are in trouble.

   The fact is that we either topple the idols of friendship and family (as Gideon was required to do with his own father’s idolatry), or those idols of friendship and family will topple the agapè-love focus of Jesus and his kingdom. If a friendship has more authority over how we follow Christ than Jesus does, we are not following Christ. If family members have more authority over us than Christ the Lord, then they are the ones we are confessing as Lord.  

   Some of us will know what it is like to lose family and friends in our determination to follow Jesus wherever he leads. We understand that the agapè-love of Jesus still covers how we relate to those people when we see them, but we must keep pursuing the agapè-love of Jesus in his kingdom even if they keep rejecting us for doing so.

   When I look back at all my church experiences in both the institutional and home churches, when people changed from seeking the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace within the church to building private friendships and family alliances behind the scenes, we were already past the point of no return. I have some painful lessons of trying too hard to salvage what people had already rejected.

   Others of us may realize that we are the ones whose devotion to friends and family have kept us from following Christ in his kingdom. As Jesus said to the church of Ephesus when they had “abandoned the love you had at first” (the agapè-love of Jesus’ kingdom), “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (Revelation 2:5).

   Yes, that’s how seriously Jesus takes it when we turn from agapè-love to any other kind of love. We cannot be his church (lampstand) unless we are receiving and expressing his agapè-love.

   When Peter wrote, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (I Peter 4:8), the “loving” and “love” are the agapè-love of his kingdom. Only when Jesus’ command to pursue THAT love is obeyed, can we “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved (agapèd) children. And walk in love (agapè), as Christ loved (agapèd) us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1-2).

   I have heard so many stories of what it is like for someone to come to Christ in Muslim countries. They know that their family and friends will hate them, and maybe even be the ones trying to kill them if they confess Jesus Christ as Lord. But here in North America, if a young person can’t follow Jesus because they are afraid of losing friends or upsetting family, we just change our youth ministries to accommodate them. And then we wonder why they leave the church as adults when we never actually brought them to believe “the gospel of the kingdom”. They didn’t repent and trust in Jesus in the way described in God’s word, so once all the fun of youth group is over, the fun of the world awaits.

   For those who hear Jesus when he says, “These things I command you, so that you will love one another”, walk in “the obedience of faith” and leave the lesser relationships to him. This is part of the “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” characteristic of relationship with God. Friendship and family are optional; agapè-love is not.

   So look in the mirror of truth, admit any ways lesser loves constrict your agapè-love, repent if and how much is needed, and deliberately “pursue righteousness, faith, love (agapè), and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart” (II Timothy 2:22). It’s a command from Jesus.

 

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: Pruned to Bear Fruit in the Beatitudinal Valley

   "I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples." (John 15:5-8)

   There are times when I am feeling negative emotions to the point of despondency, but suddenly I look around and realize where I am: in the Beatitudinal Valley! That always reminds me that it is a blessing when we find ourselves feeling poor in spirit about what we are reading in God’s word.

   As I considered this in relation to a dubious track record in the “bearing much fruit” category, God again blessed me with another Beatitudinal Journey that reminded me who I am, and for whose glory I am alive.

   If "bearing much fruit" requires saving lots of souls, or building up lots of disciples into living for Christ, or helping people spend a lifetime seeking God in his word and prayer, I am obviously a failure.

   If "bearing much fruit" means looking to others like we are filled with "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control" (the fruit of the Spirit) then this would be strike two.

   However, if letting myself meet God in the Beatitudinal Valley so he can bless me with a genuine journey into real fruit bearing is how I will "bear much fruit", then recognizing where I am on the downside of the valley gives me hope that the upside is ahead.

   The Beatitudes are the way Jesus began his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). They are eight statements that begin, “blessed are…”, and then describe the qualities people will find in themselves when God is blessing them. Yes, this is the focus, that Jesus is describing what it looks like to be blessed by God, NOT what we must do to earn God’s blessing.

   So, if any of us feel “poor in spirit” in relation to bearing much fruit, that willingness to admit how poorly we are doing is a blessing from God.

   And if any of us go deeper into “those who mourn” what is wrong with us, it is further evidence that the Father is at work to bless us by grace through faith.

   When we find ourselves going even further into meekly acknowledging that we cannot fix our problem of bearing so little fruit and so we must submit to Jesus Christ who can “transform” us into his image, that meekness is a blessing of God to break our attachment to self-effort and lead us to fully rely on his Son.

   When we submit to Jesus Christ and find ourselves hungering and thirsting for the righteousness of bearing much fruit to the Father’s glory, we are being blessed. This downside of the Beatitudinal Valley brings us to valley bottom where God satisfies our longings by grace through faith in ways no amount of doing good works or trying harder could ever accomplish.

   This results in God blessing us to become his “merciful” children with “pure hearts” in our single-hearted devotion to him. We become the “peacemakers” whose pure hearts want nothing more than to see everyone we meet come to experience peace with God through the good news of Jesus’ kingdom. And we become such an annoyance to the world, the flesh, and the devil who do not want people glorifying God by bearing much fruit, hence their incessant efforts to “persecute” Jesus’ church into oblivion.

   Since I am sharing this on the morning of Easter Sunday (Resurrection Sunday), it is fitting that we would celebrate the new covenant in Jesus’ blood by seeking with all our hearts to bear much fruit in this world to the glory of God the Father, and the glory of Jesus Christ our Lord who has provided so great a salvation.

   And then we go from here to abide in Jesus Christ as branches abide in the vine, and to praise the Father for any ways he deems fit to prune us (knowing that much more is required than pride would ever admit). If we truly hunger and thirst to bear much fruit to the glory of the Triune God, we welcome every pinch of Father’s pruning shears as a gracious and necessary good to make us like his Son.

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: The Children Who Know What Only God Knew

   “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." (John 14:26-26)

   My journey through the Last Supper account in John 13-17 is amazing me with how many ways Jesus told the disciples they would see him again after his death and they couldn’t grasp it because of what they expected the Messiah to do to deliver Israel from the Romans. There are big lessons in that regarding how we often cannot accept what God is teaching us in his word because we are already clinging to something contrary we were taught by our family, church, or Bible college.

   The thing that hit me like an arrow finding the bull’s eye is how Jesus’ teaching about the Holy Spirit presents evidence that we are born again. It focuses on Paul’s elaboration in I Corinthians 2:9-11. The primary focus for the moment is this:

But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,

    nor the heart of man imagined,

what God has prepared for those who love him”—

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. (vss 9-10)

   Paul is writing after the fact of what Jesus was telling his disciples on the night of the Last Supper. As Jesus’ promised, the Holy Spirit had come, he had been teaching the church through the apostles all about salvation and the righteousness of faith, and he was constantly reminding the church of what Jesus had already taught during his earthly ministry.

   Paul quotes from the Tanakh (the Hebrew Scriptures we call the Old Testament) what was being fulfilled in the work of the Holy Spirit. There were things no one had seen because they were hidden in God. There were things no one had heard because God hadn’t yet told anyone. And there were things no one had imagined God to be doing (as shown very clearly with the disciples during the last supper and the few days Jesus was dead) because God’s thoughts and ways are higher than our thoughts and ways.

   Paul makes clear a few verses later that “the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (vs 14). This is why Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to be born again to see and enter the kingdom of God. This is why Jesus said that people had to become like little children in order to see Jesus and hear what he was saying. The point is the same all the way through, that in and of ourselves we are dead in our trespasses and sins and cannot know and do the will of God.

   And that’s when it hit me. Because I do know and do the will of God, and because I do know the things once hidden in God, the only explanation is that I have been born again and taught by God. In fact, what Paul writes in this section is, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given to us by God” (vs 12).

   Today I needed this comfort of knowing that knowing what only God knew is a clear sign of the new birth. I can be transformed by the “renewal of the mind” given to us in regeneration because “we have the mind of Christ” (vs 16). God has been pleased to reveal this to me as a little child so that, even though I could never keep up in a debate about doctrine, I know that I know what once only God knew.

   And now that I know that, I want to make it known to all who will hear Jesus’ voice, that we can still be those who are taught by God and know what only can be known by the word and the Spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: How the Deity of Jesus Simply Adds Up

  When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once." (John 13:31-32)

   Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)

   The deity of Jesus Christ is denied by Muslims, Mormons, and JWs, but clearly taught as fact in God’s word, the Bible.

   For me, this is a mix of revelation (what God tells us in his word about his Son), and relationship (how I have come to know Jesus in the way revealed). Both make it feel utterly crucial that we do not let go of this glorious reality that Jesus is glorified as the Son of God who makes his Father known.

   Part of the deep feelings I have about this comes from the rhyming thoughts of Scripture on the topic. God presents truth in parallel thoughts so that, just as multiple threads are woven together to make a strong cord, the revelation of Jesus as God the Son is so strong that anyone who hangs his/her life from it will never be ashamed.

   The point is to see how all the rhyming thoughts are synonymous in revealing the relationship between the Father and the Son. The Father has his place in the Triunity of God, and the Son has his. And, just like my son and daughter are as much human as I am even though I am the dad and they are my children, Jesus is just as much God as his Father even though the Father is the father and the Son is the son.

   Part of the glory of all these references to Jesus in his relationship with the Father is the pattern they follow. In the center is “of”. On the first side is something about Jesus; on the other side is something of the Father. Every such phrase tells us a different color of the spectrum of the divine light of their relationship.

 

Something about God the Son

Of

Something about God the Father

 

   Here are a variety of these expressions listed together so you can see their unity and harmony in revealing this relationship.

 

Something about God the Son	Of	Something about God the Father	Scripture
The image	of	the invisible God	Col 1:15
The radiance	of	the glory of God	Heb 1:3
The exact imprint	of	his nature	Heb 1:3
The form	of	God	Phil 2:6
The Son	of	God	Too many!

 

   We can add to this that Jesus is “the Word” of God, even though the exact phrase is not found in Scripture. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2). Jesus was with God, he was God, and as “the Word” he is the ultimate revelation of God.

   One of the beautiful pictures of what it will be like in the new heavens and the new earth is “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23). What a beautiful summary of everything the rest of Scripture teaches, that Jesus is the lamp who makes the Father’s light known to the world. He had that “form of God” in the beginning, “the Word became flesh” in time, and we will see the glory of the Father in the Son for eternity.

   This is why it is such “good news of great joy” that “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II Corinthians 4:6). Let yourself picture that. It is ours already. By faith, we see in the face of Jesus Christ the glory of God. Jesus came to make this known to us!

    So, when Jesus is just hours away from his crucifixion, and he tells us, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him” (John 13:31), it is to prepare us for what we would see of the world’s hatred of our Savior. Death and the grave would have no victory over Jesus even though he would humble himself to experience both.

   But because of his resurrection, we believe that Jesus will appear in glory soon enough no matter how long it seems to take for his return. For “we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (I John 3:2).

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: When the ‘If Onlys’ Meet the Good Shepherd

   Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. (John 11:17-21)

   Four years ago, we lost our four granddaughters to what my wife and I came to call “relational suicide”. She had been helping a hospice client through the loss of a loved one by suicide, and we suddenly realized that we were going through the same thing!

   There’s never a day goes by that I do not have some kind of “if only” thought about how things could have been handled differently. To know they were convinced to make such a decision haunts us. To know they are still alive to come home but won’t mocks us. It’s our story. It’s of the “nothing new under the sun” category. I get it.

   But that’s my stage. I am not in Bethany with the grieving sisters. I am not at Lazarus’s tomb with Jesus showing up. I’m not feeling what Martha felt to have come to know Jesus Christ in person as “Lord” and have to accept that he wasn’t there when I needed him most. I can easily relate to it all, but it’s not my stage!

   My stage is mine. Your stage is yours. We can join hands with Martha and face our losses together. We can “weep with those who weep” as taught by God’s word. We can go around the circle telling our own stories and listening to theirs. We can feel the bubble of pain that won’t come to the surface. We can feel the tsunami of grief that won’t stop pouring out our pain. It doesn’t matter how we would describe it, we have a stage with Jesus as much as Martha did.

   That’s why I am going no further than this today. My experience with church folk is that we have a hard time stopping and feeling. We miss out on so many facets of getting to know God because we won’t admit how we are doing. We won’t pray like Martha did. We won’t talk to Jesus like our IF-Onlys matter to him. We read these accounts like a grief brochure that tells us, “It ends with a resurrection!”, but do not stop and make the journey to the promised destination.

   But there is no immediate promise in this. A future one, yes. Absolutely. But this is a historical event. It happened then and there. It does not promise us that Jesus will always show up to raise a loved one from the dead, or to even change people’s minds about dying to us. That is not the promise.

   The absolute and unshakable promise in this is that there is a future resurrection for all who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord. Jesus came into the world to save sinners into the gracious gift of eternal life. ALL who believe in him will not perish but live with our Savior forever.

    However, there is another promise of our Savior that is illustrated in this death-and-life scene. As David said, there will still be our seasons of “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”. But the “You are with me” part is in effect for us even more profoundly than what David had experienced. That, “your rod and your staff, they comfort me” is still true and real, but more so in the person of the Holy Spirit who is Jesus’ “behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

   That’s why we talk to him in prayer the way Martha did in person. We pray about our If-Onlys like the one who could have healed those relationships cares about our grief, even while we lament that he chose not to do so.

    And when we will pour out our hearts to the Good Shepherd like Martha did, and admit whatever is going on in there the way David did, there is a promise. Not for a physical resurrection of a deceased loved one now. Not for a relational resurrection of loved ones who disowned us. But the opportunity to get to know our Savior today, in our grief, better than we have ever known him before. Yes, THAT is a promise!

    Paul expressed it like this,

   “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (II Corinthians 1:3-4).

   Yes, I have many times been comforted by God in my grief. I have accepted that, if he taught his children to “weep with those who weep”, it is what he is like as well (we will soon see that “Jesus wept” at Lazarus’s tomb even just minutes before raising him from the dead!).

   And so, I trust that sharing my stage in personal application of the stage John is describing to us will be an added wave of comfort to others on whatever stages we are living on. Martha invites us to remain steadfast in the faith we had in Jesus before any loss shattered our souls. And if we will keep relating to him about everything we go through, we will continue getting to know him in the real and personal ways that are shouting out to us from the pages of Scripture.

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: Why the World Hates Jesus Christ

   After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Jews' Feast of Booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” For not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.” After saying this, he remained in Galilee. (John 7:1-9)

   There is a well-known Christian evangelist named Ray Comfort who begins his sharing of the good news by walking people through the 10 commandments. He sees that “since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20), people need to see themselves first measured by the law so they realize they are condemned sinners, and then to hear the good news of great joy that God has given us a Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord, who came into the world to save sinners.

   Today I noticed that, when Jesus was explaining to his brothers why he wasn’t ready to go to the “feast of booths” in Jerusalem, he distinguished between them and him by the fact that they were of no threat to the world’s worldliness because they were part of the religious world system of Israel, while he was a threat to the world system of Israel because he was testifying “about it that its works are evil.”

   One thing that really stood out was Jesus’ use of “the world” in relation to Israel. Israel’s spiritual standing before God was so lost that Jesus identified it as “the world”. The same world the Romans and Greeks lived in. It was the world system operating without God. That world would hate him because he was not of the world. He had a kingdom that was not of the world. Israel was not of his kingdom because it was of the world. And, at that time, so were Jesus’ earthly brothers.

   What Jesus was saying was that Israel’s worldly hatred toward him was based on him testifying that their works were evil. What they were doing as a nation was evil. There were some faithful ones in the mix (Zechariah, Elizabeth, Joseph, Mary, Simeon, Anna, John the Baptist, etc), but the nation itself was of the world. And it hated being told that it was living in sin, particularly because they were such good religious people.

   As I pondered this in prayer, it then stood out how the reference to “the world” is used in John’s gospel. That famous verse, John 3:16, states it clearly, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” For a long time, I have noticed the contrast between God loving Israel (as seen throughout the Old Testament), and God loving the other nations. John 3:16 is Jesus words to Nicodemus, a leader in Israel, identifying that the message of love God had communicated to them was for “the world”, meaning, all nations. But it also means that Israel was part of that world as well and needed the same salvation as the despised Romans, Greeks, and Samaritans of the day.

   All of this together got me realizing that if the world loves the message, the messenger is likely NOT addressing that “its works are evil.” On the other hand, those who know the good news of great joy the best know that “through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20) leads to,

   For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. (Romans 3:22-25)

   You see, even there it’s “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” as a necessary-to-believe truth that prepares hearts for “and are justified by his grace as a gift…” Jesus came into the world to save sinners, so he told them the truth about their sin (which is why the worldlings hated him), and told them the truth about the so great salvation he would secure through his death (which is why the poor-in-spirit sinners loved him).

   We all know that Jesus did not only go around testifying to the sinfulness of the world. He didn’t say that was the whole message, only that it was the part of the message that caused the world to hate him. But it was a necessary thing for people to know that only because God put Jesus “forward as a propitiation by his blood” to deal with the evil in us can we have a redemption that is “received by faith”.

   The reason “repent” and “believe” must always be kept together (even when one is used as a summary for the whole) is because repentance focuses on changing our minds about our evil deeds so that what we once loved we now hate, and faith focuses on changing our minds about the triune God so that the God we once hated we now attach to in childlike trust and love.

   I am ever so thankful that God has been quick and relentless to call me out on my evil deeds. By seeing that I was,

   dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:1-3),

I could also see how,

   God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7)

   Earlier in John’s gospel we read, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19). Today we see how Jesus became hated by the world because he was calling them out on their evil works in order to open their hearts to the good news. Many continued loving the darkness, their very religious darkness, while others heard the good news that there was a kind of redemption from sin they had never experienced, and they came into Jesus’ kingdom to have it.

   So, what is your reaction to Jesus putting the spotlight on your evil works?

   And does your answer show you where you stand with him?

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: A New Year of Comings and Goings

   When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. (John 6:60-66)

   I’m one of those folks Paul spoke about who sees every day as the same. Today that means that New Year’s day of 2026 is just another day for me far more than it feels like the start of something new.

   However, because our culture does consider it a special day to bring closure to the past year and try to start fresh, I was curious what Scripture would disciple me today. And the one that did certainly has me on high alert!

   I often encourage people to focus more on the daily journey with God than charting where we imagine we are in our travels with him. If our attention is on how we are getting to know God in the moment, we will have the joy of knowing him no matter whether or not we get any sense we have “made progress” in any other way.

   With that in mind, I had lots of “little child” wonderings about what it was like for Jesus to have a multitude of people walk away from him. In his deity, he had a level of attachment with the Father and the Spirit that we can’t even imagine. How much did that affect him in his humanity when people walked away from him? Was that unfailing attachment a comfort to him when his humanity experienced broken relationships of the most personal kind?

   I was reminded of a line from a wonderful old hymn that I have really come to… well, not like! In the song, “I Stand Amazed in the Presence” (Charles Hutchinson Gabriel, 1905), the writer expressed, “He had no tears for His own griefs, but sweat-drops of blood for mine.” Let’s just say that I really don’t think that is accurate!

   In my own heartaches and griefs, I am often drawn to the description of Jesus that “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). How easily my heart is drawn to such a man as this, the God-man, deity in bodily form, the Word who became flesh to live among us. He was despised like we are. He was rejected by men like we are. He had so many sorrows that it characterized him as “a man of” such things. He was acquainted with grief just like ourselves. I don’t see anything of him not having feelings about his own griefs in experiencing all such injustices, and that’s why he is so approachable when I experience such painful things myself.   

   We just passed the fourth Christmas season since I was “renounced” by the people who were closest to me in life. Today I see Jesus “renounced” by people he had fed with a miraculous multiplying of bread and fish. They had seriously considered that he might be their promised Messiah.

   But then the steppingstones to faith turned into the stumblingstones of unbelief. They simply couldn’t attach to a Messiah who was different than their religious expectations. He had to be their way, because there was no way they would think differently about him.

   So, what did they do? They went back to their self-dependent religion. Claiming God’s word as theirs, but not following what God said, or believing in the One of whom he wrote.

   If it means anything at all that we are entering a new year, then I would want this year to be a year of comings not goings. I want to be known by my daily coming to Jesus and growing in him. I want to see “the many” who go away to the wide road to destruction matched by “the few” who come to Jesus and live every day to know him better than ever before.

   And, if the comings and goings of this year add to the heartache and grief of being disowned by people I love, I will rest in the Man of Sorrows to hold me close to his heart, and teach me his love that would bear such things in such greater intensity than I could ever know, and then go and lay down his life for his friends.

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)