Wondering Grace for God’s Beloved

Within the contentious issue of how much right God has to choose sinners for adoption, I want to tell you about some very comforting and encouraging phrases he uses to describe people like me (and you, if you are his child).

While I can’t speak for anyone else, and what this might mean to them, and all the debates about how God’s choice of children affects the children’s choice of Father, I simply want to speak of this as what applies to everyone who has been born again by the Spirit of the Living God.

Here is the Scripture, with a few thoughts to follow:

22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? 25 As indeed he says in Hosea,

“Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’

    and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’”

26 “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’

    there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’” (Romans 9)

Here are the phrases within this passage that speak rich comfort to the children of grace.

1.  “vessels of mercy” (23)

I have been meditating on what it means in the Beatitudes that, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”[1] To find this beautiful phrase, “vessels of mercy,” gave a certain tearful affirmation to my heart this morning. Because Jesus has taken the wrath I deserve for my sin,[2] I am not longer “by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”[3] Instead of living in dread of the pouring out of God’s wrath, I am a vessel filled with mercy. I am no longer to live as though under judgment and condemnation,[4] but as a beloved child who is filled and immersed in the mercies of God.

2.  “to make known the riches of his glory” (23)

What God has made known in his mercy towards sinners is the incredible riches of his glory. His glory is glorified in both his judgment against sin in all who do not believe, and in the riches of mercy he shows to those who do believe. We are not to think of his mercy as some mediocre offering of a reluctant, half-hearted deity. Instead, we are vessels of mercy who receive the mercies of God to the degree of the riches of his glory, not to the degree of anything good in us.

If we do not sense how richly God’s glory is revealed in his mercies towards us, we may be holding on to either a works-based sense in which we are earning our own standing with God and so have no sense that we need mercy, or a works-based sense of condemnation in which we think we are too bad for God to love us. When we understand that we are vessels of mercy to whom God has been merciful to the measure of the riches of his glory, we will delight in the safety, and security, and comfort there is in the mercy he expresses to his children.

3.  “which he has prepared beforehand for glory” (23)

On one side, God wanted to show the vessels of mercy the riches of his glory, and, on the other side, he wants to show us that he has already prepared us ahead of time for glory. This ties back to the golden chain of redemption in which God has foreknown his children, predestined us to adoption as sons, called us into the salvation by which this adoption is secured, justified us as righteous in his sight by grace through faith, and secured our glorification as such a settled deal that it is already as good as done.[5]

Every child of God should feel the wondering comfort of being a vessel of mercy now, and on our way to glory in due time. God cannot fail to do this (which is the point of Paul’s references to these things in Romans), so we are to live in the moment as though enjoying the greatest confidence ever, that our coming glory in the Lord Jesus Christ, fully restored to his image and likeness as never before, was already prepared beforehand, therefore God has done everything necessary to make it so.

4.  “us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles” (24)

The vessels of glory are those whom the Lord has called from among both Jews and Gentiles. As Paul gloriously testifies at the beginning of this letter:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”[6]

No one can claim secure standing with God on the basis of their ancestry, but we can live secure in our calling when we know that God has made his gospel known to both Jew and Gentile alike, and all who have faith in Jesus Christ are the ones who are called, justified, and glorified.

5.  “Those who are not my people I will call ‘my people’” (25)

Now we get into some hugely comforting expressions that magnify the contrast between what we were apart from Christ, and what we are in Christ. There is no need to deny the experiences of life in which we have come to understand that we were not the people of God. We Gentiles were not the people of God in any kind of ties to the ancestry of the Jews. We may also have personal testimonies of how we became very aware that we were not considered the people of God by other so-called people of God.

In fact, it doesn’t matter how much any of us have ever felt this stinging experience that we were not God’s people. It doesn’t even matter how much we have felt unworthy to think of ourselves as God’s people. The issue is that God takes people such as this and calls them his people. He takes sinners, in love with wickedness, and delivers us out of the domain of darkness and transfers us into the kingdom of his beloved Son in whom there is redemption, the forgiveness of sins.[7] Those who were not his people, become the children of God.[8]

6.  “her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved’” (25)

In the imagery of a discarded woman who was not loved, the people who make up the church were once “not beloved”. Apart from Christ we had no sense of being loved by God. We have so many experiences of people not loving us, and churches not loving us, and family members not loving us, that we know very well what it feels like to be the “not beloved” God speaks about here.

However, in another divine contrast in the mercies of God, those who know that they were not the beloved of anyone, particularly of the holy God of heaven, come to be called “beloved”. We are now able to “be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”[9]

As strange as it may feel, God wants his children, his “vessels of mercy”, to feel beloved because we are beloved. We are to enjoy being the beloved of God because God chose to love us, and he set his love on us before the beginning of time, and secured the whole work of redemption from foreknowing us all the way through to glorifying us. Every child of God was once a sinner under the wrath of God, but now called the beloved of God forever.

7.  “’You are not my people’… “will be called ‘sons of the living God.’” (26)

Jesus told a story that is often referred to as the parable of “the Prodigal Son”.[10] In this story, a young man demands his inheritance, goes to a faraway country, squanders everything on reckless living, and ends up in such poverty that he is feeding pigs and wishing he could eat their food to satisfy his hunger. This is a picture of the “sinners” in Israel who were condemned by the religious elite who did not understand that they, too, were sinners under the judgment of God.

As the story continues, Jesus describes how this young man came to his senses, realized how wrong he had been, and how he imagines that, if he would just go home and plead with his Father to take him in as a servant, he would be way better off than what he was experiencing right then.

However, as the young man approached home, his Father came running out to meet him, welcomed him with open arms, ignored his sad request to please let him be a servant, and reinstated him with the full rights of his sonship.

The point is that, the sinners who were coming to faith in Jesus Christ were the ones who were “called ‘sons of the living God’”, while the religious elite were missing out on this sonship because they would not admit that they had failed to become God’s people through their good works. Those who know they are not the people of God by religious works are then open to receive the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in which they become the very sons of God forever.

The message to me in all of this is an increased awareness of the grace of God towards vessels of mercy like myself. The more I see that I am what I am by the mercy and grace of God, not by any sense of being a good Christian, the more I grow in my wonder and worship of God’s free gift of grace through faith.

No wonder the apostle John would write,

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.[11]

God has prepared his chosen ones beforehand for glory, and he will fulfil this plan at the return of Jesus Christ when we become like him forever. There is no greater glory than this, that a creature made of dust could live eternally in the image and likeness of the eternal Son of God. God who began this good work in us will not fail to bring it to completion at the day of Christ’s return.[12]

© 2017 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)

---

[1] Matthew 5:7

[2] What the Bible refers to as “propitiation”, see: https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=propitiation&qs_version=ESV&limit=500

[3] Ephesians 2:3

[4] See Romans 8:1-2

[5] Romans 8:28-30

[6] Romans 1:16-17

[7] Colossians 1:13-14

[8] Cf John 1:12-13; I John 3:1-2

[9] Ephesians 5:1-2

[10] See Luke 15:11-32

[11] I John 3:1-2

[12] Philippians 1:6

The Meek Inherit the Earth

I have been continuing to process the promises of the Beatitudes through the three dimensions of our salvation, our justification (past), sanctification (present), and our glorification (future). At the moment I have been meditating my way through what it means that the meek inherit the earth.[1]

Since the earth is the Lord’s,[2] and we are his children,[3] in our justification we are already heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ Jesus,[4] meaning the earth is our inheritance. However, in our sanctification we are presently growing up in Christ as strangers in a foreign land.[5] I appreciate the picture of Abraham living in the Promised Land himself, but as a stranger to the land because it was not his time to possess it.[6] That’s us now.

In our glorification, something like children who have grown up and now fully experience their inheritance, we will have the earth as our inheritance, but in the Promised Land kind of way (perfectly, of course) where we enjoy it as our possession, never messed-up by enemies invading or attacking or in any way making life miserable for us in our land.

Here are some Scriptures that really ministered to me about this: Peter wrote, “But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”[7] Our inheritance is not to receive the present earth and heavens in their deteriorating condition. That would be like Gramps leaving us his car that was nice when he bought it but is run into the ground by the time we get it. Instead, our inheritance is the new version of the earth, something that is purged of all evil, renewed, and given to us as an eternal home.[8]

What struck me today is the way God spoke of this about twenty-seven centuries ago in prophecy, and then pictured it twenty centuries ago in the book of Revelation, describing what it will look like in its fulfillment.

“For behold, I create new heavens

    and a new earth,

and the former things shall not be remembered

    or come into mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever

    in that which I create;

for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy,

    and her people to be a gladness.

I will rejoice in Jerusalem

    and be glad in my people;

no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping

    and the cry of distress.[9]

There was something about reading this as a prophetic description long before Peter spoke of it. He said that our view of “waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells”, is “according to his promise”. This includes what God stated in Isaiah, that he will create a new heavens and a new earth. Since he already promised it (and we know he cannot lie), we look ahead to our inheritance, knowing that we will enjoy something of what we enjoyed of the present heavens and earth, but in a perfection that presently defies our best imagination (since the present earth has overwhelming evidence of destruction from the flood and we don’t really know what the renewed earth will look like).

When we look to the book of Revelation, we discover that the description of the new heaven and new earth that we love so much is actually worded after the description given to Isaiah.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”[10]

·         Isaiah quoted God as promising to create “new heavens and a new earth”. John, “saw a new heaven and a new earth”.

·         Isaiah stated that “the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind”, and John said that “the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,” and that, “the former things have passed away.”

·         Isaiah described how God would “create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness,” where God would “rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people”, and John saw the “holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband”, with the declaration that “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”

·         Isaiah quote God as promising, “no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping an the cry of distress”, and John wrote, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore”.

It is of great interest to me to now interpret Old Testament Scriptures with this view of our glorification into the new heavens and the new earth as our eternal inheritance:

In just a little while, the wicked will be no more;

    though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there.

But the meek shall inherit the land

    and delight themselves in abundant peace.”[11]

While this clearly spoke of a scenario in which Israel experienced peace in their land because they were walking with God in obedient faith, look at what this means when we receive the new heavens and the new earth as the home of righteousness where there will NEVER be any wicked people messing things up!

So, because God promises that, “The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son”,[12] we heed Peter’s encouragement that, “according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”

In our present experience of sanctification, growing up in Jesus Christ, this is our eternal hope, that we who meekly accept we cannot fix ourselves, and trust in Jesus for our salvation, inherit the earth because it belongs to God our Father. He created it, and he will recreate it. We live in our Promised Land now, as strangers and aliens who cannot yet lay claim to what is already ours; and we look to that day when not even Trudeau can take away our rights and privileges, or tax us on what is rightfully ours.

So, yes, “we are waiting”, but in the same hope as our brothers from under the old covenant:

Wait for the LORD and keep his way,

    and he will exalt you to inherit the land;

    you will look on when the wicked are cut off.”[13]

The land we inherit is the new heavens and the new earth, and the wicked will indeed be cut off from this land as never before experienced so purely and completely and permanently. Therefore,

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,

    and in his word I hope;

my soul waits for the LORD

    more than watchmen for the morning,

    more than watchmen for the morning.[14]

© 2017 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)

---

[1] Matthew 5:5

[2] Psalm 24:1

[3] John 1:12-13

[4] Romans 8:17

[5] Hebrews 11:13

[6] Hebrews 11:8-10

[7] II Peter 3:13

[8] This has to be part of what Jesus meant when he said he was making a home for us and would take us there at his return (John 14:1-6).

[9] Isaiah 65:17-19

[10] Revelation 21:1-4

[11] Psalm 37:10-11

[12] Revelation 21:7

[13] Psalm 37:34

[14] Psalm 130:5-6

An Enduring Joy For Looming Trials

Lately, I have been prayer-journaling through the Beatitudes of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount,[1] considering the descriptions of blessing that belongs to the children of God. For each of the promises I considered what they would look like as seen through the three dimensional properties of our salvation, that is, our justification, sanctification, and glorification.

As I arrived at Jesus’ promise, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”,[2] I wanted to know how much of this is our present experience because of the settled gift of our justification in partnership with the immediate work of our sanctification, and how much is our future hope, the certainty of what will take place upon the return of Jesus Christ.

At the same time, I have been looking at these things through the filter of world events in which persecution reports show the ever increasing hatred of the world against the church of our Lord Jesus Christ. This now includes our own Canadian government taking steps to deny the freedom of speech of our citizens, setting the stage for Christians to face criminal charges for proclaiming Jesus Christ as “the way, the truth, and the life,” with no one coming to the Father except through him.[3]

Between this ever deteriorating condition of our world, and the Beatitudinal promise that the meek shall inherit the earth, I arrived at this Scripture below as one of the descriptions of how we relate to this blessing in our present sanctification. If the meek indeed inherit the earth, what does it look like in the present as Jesus continues building his church, and we continue growing “into a holy temple in the Lord… being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit”?[4] Consider one of the distinctive ways the heirs of the kingdom live during this season of our sanctification as we relate to the world as “sojourners and exiles”,[5] strangers in a foreign land.[6]

For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.^[7]

For you had compassion on those in prison,

This is not telling us that the church went around visiting criminals in prison. While there is nothing wrong with churches feeling a call to minister to people in prison, seeking to reach out to them with the gospel, that is not what this verse is talking about.

Rather, this is what Jesus spoke about when he told the church of Smyrna, “Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.”[8]

The reference to the believers’ “compassion on those in prison,” is a reminder that, in the early days of the church, as believers were put in prison because of their proclaimation of the gospel, the church felt compassion for them. They had not hardened their hearts in fear of what might happen to them if they associated with their brothers in prison. Instead, they related compassionately, sharing in each other’s troubles. Instead of treating the imprisoned brothers as on their own to face whatever troubles had come, perhaps including loss of income to care for their families, the church related out of compassion, and acted accordingly.

Our view of the meek inheriting the earth accepts that, in the present time, we are living as strangers in a world that hates our Savior. This means that we do not view imprisonment as a conflict with the work of Jesus to build his church, but a right of passage, so to speak, where we identify with the sufferings of Christ since we are presently growing up to be like him “from one degree of glory to another”.[9]

and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property,

Part of our present experience of life in this world includes the loss of property and privilege. Even though Canada is suddenly on the verge of taking away rights and freedoms that have been ours for as long as I can remember, the concept of a world that hates the church is nothing new, and is quite solidly established in the words of God.[10]

Our response to the changes in the world is not to bemoan what we might lose, or to shut down because of fear of what could happen, but to “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”^[11]

In our present experience of life, losing out on worldly advantages is normal, and responding with joy a distinctive characteristic of our maturing in Christ. We do not need to live without property or possession if peaceful times prevail, but when such times of persecution come, as they will, it is characteristic of Jesus’ brothers to rejoice in our trials, partly with the knowledge that we are obviously becoming more like our Savior.

since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

This is the clincher, that we KNOW what we have in Christ, and so, as Paul said, “if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”^[12]

Even Abraham “was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.”^[13] Although he knew God had promised his descendants an earthly nation, it was not his hope of ever living in Israel, but of living in the eternal kingdom of God. His descendants would live in the land as their own nation, but Abraham, “went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.”[14] In both the realization of the promise of his descendants living in the Promised Land, and his knowledge that there was an even greater city designed, founded, and built by God, his earthly experience was one of looking ahead in hope.

Everything is about the “better possession” we have in Jesus Christ, “an abiding one” that cannot be taken away from us even though our earthly possessions can be plundered. As is described of the witnesses of our salvation:

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.^[15]

A distinctive characteristic of this season of our sanctification is what God describes of Moses, “He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.”[16] As Moses gave up the worldly treasures of Egypt because his view of his reward made the reproach of Christ a “greater wealth”, and Paul counted “everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”,[17] including his expectation to “share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,”[18] so we are to keep our eyes on the “better possession and an abiding one”, so that even our losses and persecutions in this lifetime are cause for joy in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

We do not hang on to some kind of confidence that we can get through life without trouble from the world. Our confidence is not in a trouble-free life in this foreign land. Our confidence is in the coming glory of the kingdom of God in which we will experience the reward of our sufferings, the reward of being with Jesus forever in the delights and pleasures of his eternal kingdom.

We hang on to our confidence because of the sure foundation of our salvation, that those God foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the image and likeness of his Son, and so he called them into the justification that is by grace through faith in order that he will one day glorify them in his presence as the highest and greatest of his creation.^[19]

In this present lifetime, we do not yet experience our inheritance, so we do not live as though we have a right to take over the earth. While the whole creation belongs to our Father, his plan for our future involves judging all Worldlings and purging the earth with fire,[20] creating a new heavens and a new earth as the home of righteousness for his children.[21] Because there indeed is “a great reward” ahead, we do not throw away our confidence just because the world is acting like the world. This world is not our home, so we press on in confidence as we wait for our reward.

For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.

What we need is not deliverance from our troubles, but endurance in our troubles. Our aim is to do the will of God in this evil world, knowing that we will receive all that is promised to the children of God. No matter what the world does to mock and persecute the sons of the kingdom, our aim is to know and do the will of God with a view to the prize that is set before us.

Jesus warned that,

“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.^[22]

This is what will happen to the church during this season of our sanctification. Tribulation will come; death will be inflicted in persecution; hatred from the nations will pour out from Satan’s evil heart. People falling away, betraying us, hating us, is not a shocking surprise, but something of which we have been forewarned. We won’t stop false prophets from arising, or many going astray. We will see hearts grow cold because of the increase of evil all around. None of these things contradict the promises of God during this time of our growing up in Christ. We simply endure whatever comes knowing that there is a reward, and that we will indeed receive what is promised, including the complete fulfillment of all that it means for the meek to inherit the earth.

It seems pretty clear to me that we Canadian Christians are about to be tested the same as our brothers throughout the world, and throughout the ages. Perhaps some of you reading this are in countries already facing persecution and hatred from the world more strongly than us Canadians have yet to face. I have heard of brothers from persecuted countries feeling sorry for us North American believers because of the bland and lifeless version of Christianity we present as normal. Whatever the case, and wherever we live, we know that, “the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.”[23] The only thing that matters is that we endure to the end. It might seem like a trite cliché, but the darker it gets, the more brightly we shine.

For those of us who have reason to bemoan how poorly churches are doing, or how religious people have treated us, or how our families have acted towards us, our hearts must not nurse our wounds, so to speak, but seek the greatest experience of the Spirit-filled life so that we can do the will of God. We must accept that we are the ones making our churches what they are by our own choices and actions, not what others have done to hurt us, or the world, the flesh, and the devil are doing to “steal and kill and destroy”.[24]

The fact is that God’s will will be done, and we are called to work out our salvation with fear and trembling knowing that the thing that really matters is what God is working in us to will and to work for his good pleasure and purpose.[25] The world will always be working to hinder the work of God; it is imperative that we join God in his work by “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God”.^[26]

© 2017 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)

---

[1] Matthew 5:1-12

[2] Matthew 5:5

[3] John 14:6

[4] Ephesians 2:21-22

[5] I Peter 2:11

[6] Hebrews 11:9,13

[7] Hebrews 10:34-36

[8] Revelation 2:10

[9] II Corinthians 3:18

[10] John 15:18-19; 17:14

[11] James 1:2-4

[12] Romans 8:25

[13] Hebrews 11:10

[14] Hebrews 11:9

[15] Hebrews 11:13-16

[16] Hebrews 11:26

[17] Philippians 3:8

[18] Philippians 3:10 (see context of Philippians 3:1-21).

[19] Romans 8:28-30, Ephesians 2:8-10

[20] II Peter 3:7

[21] II Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1

[22] Matthew 24:9-14

[23] I Peter 5:9

[24] John 10:10

[25] Philippians 2:12-13

[26] II Peter 3:12

Home Church Video: Belief, Baptism, Communion

A friend asked if I would do a short video explaining how belief, baptism, and communion fit together so she could share it with her Bible study group. Since questions about these things are quite common, I present it here for anyone else who would benefit from the clarification.

In our day, many people believe they can believe, but without any association with the death of Jesus Christ as commemorated through communion. Others want to participate in communion as if it magically makes them okay with God even though they have no faith in Jesus, and have never confessed him as Lord and Savior through baptism. Some people want to say they believe in Jesus, but without obeying him regarding baptism, and others want to be baptized as a fire insurance policy to keep them out of hell, but neither want a life of faith, or a focus on what Jesus did for us through the shedding of his blood.

For such reasons as these, I share this in the hope that we will honor God by joining him in all he teaches about belief, baptism, and communion. If you have any questions, feel free to email me, or ask in the comments section below so we can invite others to join the exploration of God’s word on the matter. 

© 2017 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)

God’s Book Still Speaks

Question: Does God’s Book talk about implicit memories, dissociation, childhood sexual abuse, PTSD, eating disorders, Asperger syndrome, autism, ADHD, types A and B trauma, drug addictions, comfort foods, or brain injuries?

Answer: No, not directly.  

Question: Does God’s Book have anything to say to people struggling with such things, or those who are seeking to help others through these things?

Answer: Absolutely!

Question: What does God’s Book have to say?

Answer: That God invites everyone out of the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of his beloved Son in which there is redemption, the forgiveness of our sins (Colossians 1:13-14), and there in his kingdom God begins the transformation of our lives from our broken and sinful condition (including symptoms in body, soul, and spirit), into the glorious likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In this lifetime, God will continually help his children through anything they are facing, and he will continually help every gathering of his family as they seek to help one another through anything they are facing, so that we are able to band together so that “we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image (as Jesus) from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (II Corinthians 3:18).

No matter how much (or little) progress we seem to make in this lifetime, “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28), and that “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).

Therefore, as we keep “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:15-16).

No matter where we are starting from, if we are “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (I Peter 1:3-4), “we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (I John 3:2).

We don’t need to understand, or even agree, with every label people are given, but we can bring everything people are dealing with into the life of the church so that every child of God is loved and cared for, assured that God is working in their lives and in his church for their good. We press on by faith now, in the living hope of the certainties that are ahead, thankful that not one description of brokenness will exist in our new home.

Perfection is up ahead; therefore, we persevere in growing up in the here and now, whatever that means we need to deal with in each other’s lives. God’s Book teaches his children how to live, and so we live that way no matter what new labels describe the broken condition of humanity. God is at work to make us like his Son, so face life’s troubles together in Christ, and keep growing up in Jesus.

© 2017 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)