On This Day: When the "Since" of Justification is Ours

   But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 4:23-5:1)

 

   I was surprised to discover that “since we have been justified” is ONE WORD in the Greek! All the grammar is in the form of the word. That means that the word “since” isn’t stated, but is necessitated by the grammar. The NASB translates it, “having been justified by faith”. The sense is clear, that justification is something that has happened and is now in effect.

   The Bible Sense Lexicon definition of justified is, “to be or become judicially vindicated as having complied with the requirements of the law (of God).” This is the wonder of the gift of salvation, that sinners are no longer viewed as sinners, but as “the righteousness of God”. The verse I shared in the box is from II Corinthians 5:21, and it makes clear what Jesus became for us (sin), and what we become in him (the righteousness of God).

   But what this brought up for me is my aged-view of life in the church where so many people have professed to have faith in Jesus Christ but have no experiential peace with God.

   This has been a mystery to me, how people can say they believe in Jesus but are constantly challenging whether God loves them, or their sins are forgiven, or they are accepted in the beloved, or so many other ways of saying, “We don’t believe we are justified by faith”!

   The sad thing in my mind is that anyone who genuinely has faith in Jesus Christ is in a state of peace with God because of this justification by faith, and yet so many do not let themselves rest in that peace. Some won’t even entertain the thought that this is their right in Jesus Christ our Lord. They are too busy trying to measure up in church activities to feel accepted and loved. Or trying to suppress childhood trauma or other painful life experiences as if having “a broken and contrite heart” somehow nullifies the work of Christ to give them peace with God!

   Or (the one that took me a very long time to admit), that some people in the church actually do not want to live publicly as a justified believer in Jesus Christ and so the “God doesn’t love me” stuff is just a diversion, blaming God for the fact that they actually love the world more than him. 

   I can’t describe all the possible scenarios of why someone would profess faith in Jesus Christ and yet not live in experiential peace with God through the objective reality of peace with God through Jesus’ redemptive work.

   However, each of us can assess whether we have embraced this reality Paul describes in genuine faith, or whether we are arguing against it, resisting it, avoiding it, or struggling with hopelessness about how we could ever feel it as true.    

   My testimony is that God has spent decades showing me that he will resolve whatever we need as we seek him in his word and prayer about everything. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17), so building up our faith in what God has accomplished through Jesus’ salvation work comes by meditating on what is written in the Scriptures and applying it to everything going on in us and around us.

   And yes, sitting down for half an hour to read from Romans 1:1 up to Romans 5:1 (and keep going) so we can see for ourselves how certain it is that sinners of every kind can be justified by grace through faith is certainly a good thing to do. It’s not that reading Romans 5:1 repeatedly will build up our faith, but that reading the context, and reading other Scriptures that speak of the same things, and telling God we believe him even where we don’t understand, will keep building up our faith as we take these things to heart.

   Do you know peace with God in the way Paul describes? Praise him that he alone could accomplish and apply such a wonder. Do you feel like a stranger to this teaching that you become “the righteousness of God” by faith because Jesus became sin for us? Praise God that it is true anyway, and tell God how much you are hungering and thirsting to know this righteousness. He promises to satisfy that hunger and thirst, and a big part of doing so is simply convincing us of what he has already done. 

 

© 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 Only Way to be Justifiably Righteous

   But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. 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 3:21-25)

   With the proliferation of influencers trying to tell us what the Bible does and does not mean, and the ongoing controversies over every topic of the Bible, one thing is standing out very clearly: some people show what the Bible says and means and use Scripture to interpret Scripture, while others show what they believe the Bible means and then treat their opinions like that’s what the Bible says.

   Sometimes these contrasts are evident simply because a topic is popular and we can tell which sides use “the whole counsel of God”, and which sides add and remove without regard for what God breathed out in his own words.

   And no one seems to spend more time at center stage than Paul. And Romans? Well, let’s just say that the government’s hatred of Romans speaks for itself!

   All that to say that, as I journey through Romans 3 and consider what Paul teaches about justification by grace through faith, I have this very sad marveling feeling that people can “tamper” with God’s word so freely as they do. Yes, Paul’s teachings in Romans can feel like trying to hold a fist full of sand without anything falling out. No sooner do we think we got the last thought straight when the next one sends sand flying everywhere!

   Okay, long introduction, sorry (kinda), but I think that happens when we hang around Paul. Some thoughts are just not ready for a period, if you know what I mean. Anyway…

   What stands out is how clear God’s word is when we let it speak for itself. And when we pay attention to the relational dynamic of what stands out any given time we are in the word, we discover that the Holy Spirit is teaching us the very things God has in mind for us in our walk with him.

   Which brings us to this focus on “the righteousness of God”. It has helped me for a long time to consider that holiness relates to nature and righteousness to character. Holiness is God’s nature, who he is, while righteousness is about his character, how he expresses himself. The two cannot be separated, but keep that in mind as we go through this. God is holy. He expresses his holiness in righteousness. And apart from redemption in Jesus Christ, that would be a terrifying reality!

   However, the main point has to do with our experience of the righteousness of God. It shines out from God whether we see it or not. It “has been manifested apart from the law” in the work of Christ and the preaching of the gospel. The Law and the Prophets bore witness to the righteousness of God, including its distinction in the new covenant in Jesus’ blood. And it is experienced by sinners “through faith in Jesus Christ”.

   The addition of “for all who believe” is a huge theme in Romans. There is no distinction in how sinful we are, both Jews and Gentiles, and there is no distinction in how people are saved. This is why Paul already said,

   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.” (Romans 1:16-17)

   Do you see that? Paul says that in the gospel “the righteousness of God is revealed”. In Romans 3 he is getting back to this, that it is about the righteousness of God, how it is revealed, how it is manifested, how it is experienced. And our starting point is that it must deal with the fact that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.

   We will get to this explanation shortly, and all through Romans, but this is the wonder we should consider, that Paul is talking about a gospel he is not ashamed of because it is all about how the holy God has acted in righteousness to make it real that his righteousness can become ours.

   To the Ephesians he would write, 

   For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). 

   To the Corinthians he would write, 

   For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (II Corinthians 5:21).

   But this isn’t just theology, or doctrine, or correcting all those tamperers who mess with God’s words. It’s about whether you and I know that we have become the righteousness of God through faith in the good news that God has given us a Savior who is Christ the Lord.

   Because, with all God did to provide redemption in Jesus’ blood, and communicate all about the new covenant in his word, it would be awful if we missed the wonders of the gift because the haters and hecklers don’t have it.

   So, how’s your faith-attachment to Jesus doing?

 

© 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 Great Kings of Little Old Bethlehem

   Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh. (Romans 1:1-3)

   I learned from John Piper that our delight in God is worship. It communicates to God and others that God is our supreme source of joy. This means that sometimes the main focus of my sharing is the delight I get from meditating on the words of God and feeling the weight of their glory minister to my soul.

   And so it is today that all the prophecies revolving around Bethlehem have magnified the creative genius of God in weaving promises, prophecies, and fulfillments into his word so the divine tapestry is guaranteed to delight the minds of the child-hearted.

   The reason I ended up traveling down the road to Bethlehem was because of Paul’s introductory statement in Romans that Jesus “was descended from David according to the flesh”. This connected to John’s introduction that told us how Jesus was “the Word” who was “with God” and who “was God” and who “became flesh and dwelt among us.” Jesus “come in the flesh” is a big deal, and it must mesh 100% with everything else said about him.

   Jesus’ connection to David is introduced to us when we first learn of David and his family. After king Saul had been rejected by God,

   The LORD said to Samuel, "How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons." (I Samuel 16:1)

Simply because the Messiah must be a descendant of David, it is so significant that Jesse was a “Bethlehemite”. That means, “Now David was the son of an Ephrathite of Bethlehem in Judah, named Jesse, who had eight sons” (I Samuel 17:12).

   As I did a big of research on this, I was reminded that two well-known figures from the Old Testament, Boaz and Ruth, give us David’s connection to Bethlehem. Boas was from Bethlehem (Ruth 2:4). Boas and Ruth were married in Bethlehem. (Ruth 4:13). Boaz and Ruth’s son, Obed, was the father of Jesse and the grandfather of David. (Ruth 4:17). So, the book of Ruth may not make any huge theological statements about God, but the events described therein lay the foundation for both David and Jesus to be born in Bethlehem, so fulfilling Scripture, and tightly weaving together the tapestry of salvation.

   Micah’s prophecy regarding Bethlehem was,

   But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. (Micah 5:2)

And when the religious elite told Herod that the Christ would be born "In Bethlehem of Judea,” it was,

   “for so it is written by the prophet: ‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel’" (Matthew 2:4-6).

   When we add to this that it was a Roman census that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem in time for Jesus’ birth to fulfill prophecy, and it was an evil Roman ruler who sent them fleeing to Egypt to fulfill the prophecy that “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Matthew 2:15), the children of God have so much reason to delight in the evidence of God’s word that Jesus “was descended from David according to the flesh” just as promised and prophesied.

   For anyone who has never trusted in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the evidence for his life, death, and resurrection, all in fulfillment of prophecy, gives us the most eyes-wide-open faith in the whole wide world. In repentance and faith we can receive Christ and everything God has given us in his Son.

   For those of us who are already children of God by faith in Jesus Christ, the magnificently woven tapestry of salvation as pictured in the word of God gives us every reason to “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4).

 

© 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: Attaching to the Apostle Paul

   Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, (Romans 1:1)

   I need to “think outside the box” about this apostle Paul stuff (the box to the left, not the box of Scripture!). There were just too many things to think about in reference to Paul’s calling to “be an apostle” and I don’t want to miss any of them!

   On one side, it’s because I have this new urge to feel relational with Paul on this present journey through Romans.

   On the other side, there’s such a growing trend to criticize Paul, to claim authority to challenge his authority, and to change his God-breathed teachings, that rebuking error and falsehood is a never-ending part of “fight the good fight of the faith”, as Paul described it.

   I think the biggest thing in this, perhaps the most “foundational” thing, is that Paul was called to be “an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God” (Ephesians 1:1). That’s what a call is in the Bible, a calling by God to fulfill some God-designed place in Jesus’ kingdom. Paul was called as “a servant of Christ Jesus” to be “an apostle” by the will of God.

   I am finding that parallels from Ephesians are happily joining me on this journey through Romans. Ephesians 2 contains an architectural diagram of the church Jesus said he would build. So many people seem to know the teaching that, 

   “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9),

but not the teaching that follows describing what we have been saved by grace through faith INTO!

   In short, Paul is telling both Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus Christ that Jesus’ work was to “create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace” (Ephesians 2:15-16). It was never his design to make Jewish churches for Jewish believers and Gentile churches for Gentile believers. Neither did he ever intend that Gentiles would become Jewish or Jews would become Gentilish. This “one new man” is “in place of the two”.

   That’s why Paul, being as Jewish as they come, was appointed as “an apostle to the Gentiles” (Romans 11:13). Jesus was showing that “There is neither Jew nor Greek” in his church (Galatians 3:28) even though there are still Jews and Greeks among the believers. The “one new man” gives us a new identity that supersedes any earthly identities.

   The thing that most relates to us today about Paul and the other 11 apostles is that Jesus’ church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets”. That means that what we have in the apostles’ letters to the churches has foundational authority. Whatever is built on that foundation is to express what is in the “rock” of that foundation.

   What this means is that anyone who tampers with what Paul has written in his letters as Scripture (Peter said so in II Peter 3:16) is one of those Paul warned about who “practice cunning or to tamper with God's word” (II Corinthians 4:2). For Paul to be in our lives as “a servant of Christ Jesus”, and writing to us as “called to be an apostle” by God’s will, means what Jesus told the apostles, 

   “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me” (John 13:20).

   Do you feel the “serious business” of reading Paul’s letter to the Romans? And not just reading it, but receiving it, meditating on it, believing it, applying it, and living in “the obedience of faith” it talks about. How we respond to Paul and his letters is how we are responding to Jesus and the Father.

   It is a huge comfort to me that there are no apostles today. Why? Because God’s “breathed-out” words are already in the Scriptures. No one today has apostolic authority to continue adding to the foundation that Jesus, the Cornerstone, already built through the 12 apostles. We already have “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). The apostles’ teaching through the whole book of Acts is referred to as “the word of God,”¹ and since it is God’s word, it has authority over Jesus’ whole church all through these end times.

   Considering how necessary Paul’s letters are to us understanding who we are in Christ, and who we are in Jesus’ church, it is no wonder that Satan is stirring up church folk to denigrate his writings. Popular speakers are claiming they have a new story about Paul because the one Jesus gave us isn’t good enough.

   Paul himself warned about this when he told the Ephesian elders, 

   “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29-30).

If he knew it would happen in the years immediately following his departure, how much more now that we have had a couple of millennia of battles over the authority of God’s word, the Bible.

   And the whole while we have an apostle Jesus himself chose to go to us Gentiles with the message of the gospel, the message of Jesus’ kingdom, and the message of how to be the church, the one body of Christ, so that we could live “by every word that comes from the mouth of God” today, just as Paul and the other apostles were leading the church to live by God’s word in the beginning.

   Folks, whatever you’re reading in the Bible is Scripture. All Scripture is breathed-out by God. Its authority is in God our Creator, Savior, and Lord. So, even if you are not presently meditating your way through one of Paul’s letters, let the apostolic authority of those letters remind you how to apply anything else you are hearing from God’s word so that your “obedience of faith” is all to the glory of God.

 

© 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.)

 

Note 1: references in Acts to the preaching of the gospel as the word of God:

Summary: 

·         Acts 2:22 - “these words” (5:24)

·         Acts 2:40 – “with many other words”

·         Acts 2:41 - “So those who received his word” (Peter’s word)

·         Acts 4:4 - “the word” (6:4; 8:4; 10:44; 11:19; 14:25; 16:6; 17:11; 18:5)

·         Acts 4:29 - “your word”

·         Acts 4:31 - “the word of God” (6:2,7; 8:14; 11:1; 12:24; 13:5; 13:7; 13:46; 17:13; 18:11)

·         Acts 5:20 - “all the words of this Life”

·         Acts 8:25 - “the word of the Lord” (13:44,48,49; 15:35,36; 16:32; 19:10,20)

·         Acts 9:25 – “preaching the gospel” (15:7)

·         Acts 14:3 - “the word of his grace” (20:32)

 

 

On This Day: When Deadly Sorrow is Returned to Joy

   “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” (John 16:20-22)

   Do you KNOW Jesus as the Shepherd who returns his sheep to joy? Do you see him as the Savior who saves us out of the horrible cursedness of our sinful state and saves us into his kingdom of “righteousness and peace AND JOY in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17)?

   I ask this because “this is eternal life, that they KNOW YOU, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Every Scripture that promises eternal life to those who believe is calling us to KNOW God by personal experience through our interactions with him in his word, in prayer, and in his Spirit.

   And I ask this because the Scriptures are SATURATED with God’s determination to return his children to joy. We see this constantly throughout the whole Bible, God returning his children to joy after discipline, after defeats, after failures, after exiles, and even after outright violent persecution of his people.

   But we see the bull’s eye of this returning-children-to-joy in the evangel (gospel) itself. Prophecies spoke of the joy to come: “WITH JOY you will draw water from the wells of salvation” (Isaiah 12:3).

   God’s birth announcement to the shepherds was an announcement of joy: “Fear not, for behold, I bring you GOOD NEWS OF GREAT JOY that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11).

   Jesus’ desire for his disciples just before his arrest and crucifixion was for them to experience the fullness of his joy: “These things I have spoken to you, that MY JOY may be in you, and that YOUR JOY may be full” (John 15:11).

   And the description of the effects of salvation in Christ could not be presented without this emphasis on joy: “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and REJOICE WITH JOY THAT IS INEXPRESSIBLE AND FILLED WITH GLORY, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (I Peter 1:8-9).

   The whole message of God is that he returns his children to joy in Jesus Christ our Lord. The evangel is not primarily about an escape from hell but an entrance into eternal life. Eternal life is “to know” the Triune God. The fruit of the Spirit is “Love, JOY, peace”, because that is what God is like, and the kingdom of God is about “righteousness and peace and JOY in the Holy Spirit”.

   This is why Paul would summarize the whole gamut of history with this testimony: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with THE GLORY that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). This is why he would emphasize, “the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is CHRIST IN YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY” (Colossians 1:27).

   In Luke 15, Jesus told 3 parables (the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son) to emphasize how joyful God is that there is rejoicing in heaven every time a sinner repents. Why? Because God feels joy to have us as his own people.

   And when we are his people, he promises this wonderful description of our eternal return to joy in the coming glorification:

   Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory WITH GREAT JOY, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude vss 24-25).

   The only question is, are we coming to God in our joylessness, our griefs and sorrows, our losses and laments, our mistakes and failures, our despondencies and depressions, our guilt, shame and fear, and letting HIM return us to joy instead of us putting on that role-playing façade of joy so we look like “good” Christians?

   Take another look at the way Jesus spoke to his disciples before they were even conscious of the loss of their Messiah and consider how you need him to speak his “truth in love” to your soul to return you to joy in him. And then keep listening and obeying until you KNOW HIM as your shepherd who returns his sheep to joy.

 

© 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 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: 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: 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: I Heard the LORD Call My Name

   Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? (John 6:28-30)

   Every day, as I spend time with my Father in his word and talk to him in prayer, there is a weaving together of his world and mine. He is not outside my world speaking in, but “God with us” in everything.

   Today, this ministered to me in another journey with God from one thought to another. Each discovery is an experience of knowing, and each truth known prepares for the next truth to be told.

   One of the most notable experiences of my present journey through John’s gospel is noticing themes that have not stood out before. And one of the most glaring is hearing Jesus teaching the same things to different groups in different words. It is like I am hearing a rhyming of thoughts emphasizing the realities of God for all people.

   For example, when Jesus talked with Nicodemus (John 3), he went straight to, “You must be born again”. No new birth, no kingdom of God experience.

   Then, in talking with the Samaritan woman (John 4), Jesus told her that if she had known who he was, she would have been asking him for living water, and that this living water would well-up within a person to eternal life.

   When Jesus got in trouble for healing an invalid on the Sabbath (John 5), he told the Religious Elite, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” Being born again, drinking the living water, hearing and believing Jesus’ words, are rhyming thoughts emphasizing the need to trust in Jesus for eternal life.

   And today, I’m in the midst of Jesus’ dialogue with the multitude that had experienced him feeding them with a miraculous distribution of bread and fish. First he confronted them with the fact that he knew they were looking for him only because he had filled their stomachs and they wanted more of the same.

   But what stood out was that it was the same kind of response as Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. Nicodemus wondered how in the world he was to re-enter his mother’s womb so he could be born again. The Samaritan woman wondered how Jesus could give her this living water so she could stop coming to the well.

   And when Jesus began telling the multitude how “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent”, and the people wanted to know what works they were to do “to be doing the works of God”, Jesus reiterated, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

   And when they continued presenting their queries, he told them “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” As with the new birth, and the living water, the bread from heaven was all about Jesus.

   However, when the people replied, “Sir, give us this bread always,” it was the same as the Samaritan woman asking for the earthly version of the living water.

   In other words, Jesus kept speaking to the people the truth of God and watching the crowd to see who heard him. He would so often say something like, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” All seven letters to the churches in Revelation end with the same appeal of, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

   We cannot escape the fact that faith comes from “hearing”, not from “seeing”. The people all wanted to see signs. Even the religious elite who were bothered that Jesus gave the sign of healing an invalid couldn’t accept it because (to them) it was a violation of the law to heal on the Sabbath and so they asked for more signs. The multitude who went out to see Jesus because of his signs, concluded he was the Messiah because of his signs, and wanted a relationship with him based on his signs. However, he was only using the signs to reveal his glory so people would hear his voice and follow his words!

   And that’s when God took me back to seven years of age. I was in the front yard in Sandspit BC. Something made me suddenly look up at the sky and know God was watching me, and that it was good. Except that I didn’t “see” anything. No signs. But what God clarified this morning was that my experience was not of me thinking about him. It wasn’t me asking for or responding to a sign. Rather it was me hearing him call my name. In that childhood moment, I was responding to his thoughts about me as he chose to make them known right then and there.

   My next memory was of “hearing” my mom teaching our Sunday School class in Sandspit about Jesus. At twelve years of age, it was “hearing” the gospel and believing. At fourteen years it was “hearing” a certain facet of the finished work of Christ that settled that Jesus’ “once for all” death gave me my “once for all” salvation. And from there, the hearing and believing has continued to grow.

   I love what I have been able to share with you this morning as a golden thread in the divine tapestry, connecting the new birth, the living water, and the bread from heaven as God’s provision of salvation in Jesus Christ.

   But the greater thing is a testimony that if we will have a daily time with God in his word and prayer, and listen to sermons, Bible studies, biblical podcasts, Bible-centered videos, and even the Scriptures while driving places, we who belong to Jesus will constantly hear his voice, know what he is saying, and discern how to join him in his work.

   And, in doing so, we will keep getting to know the Triune God better every day than we have ever known him before.

 

© 2025 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.)