September 2009 Pastor's Highlander Column

SEPTEMBER 2009 / PASTOR'S COLUMN

Brothers and sisters,

As the Summer holiday ends, we all return to the regular rhythms of the school year and “normal” activity, it is a good time to consider the great gift God has given to us in His Law and requirements upon us.

In July, we looked at the First Commandment (“Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”) form the perspective of the vows we make and obligations we bear toward the God of heaven who led the Israelites out of their bondage in Egypt, gave them His Law and statutes in their 40 years of desert wandering, and led them into the Promised Land.

This month we look at how it is that the eternal work and sacrifice of Jesus the Messiah enables us to more fully appreciate and live into the command and obligations settled upon us by that command. In other words, we will look to see how it is that Christ’s salvation applied to us enables us to remain faithful to the One True God.

In his gospel, the Apostle John tells us that Jesus is the eternal Word and Son of God — distinct from the Father and yet also one and the same with Him. He is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And he was fully present and active in the creation of the universe from nothing.

John spells all of this out for us tells us much the same thing in the opening 18 verses of his Gospel.

• John 1:1-18 [NKJV]
• 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
• 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. 8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 9 That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.
• 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the children of God, to those who believe in His name: 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
• 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. . . .
• 16 And of His fulness we have all received, and grace for grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.

He tells us that Jesus is the eternal Word and Son of God who is distinct from the Father and yet also one and the same with Him. And this Jesus is also the God who made the entire universe (down to the smallest sub-atomic particle) from nothing according to His own specifications and design. In this Triune fullness, this God showed His voice and presence to the Israelites at Sinai with lightening, thunder and incalculable majesty and glory. He ordered the construction of the Tabernacle (the precursor to the permanent Temple) and its erection in the dead-center of the Israelite camp wherever they went. God was always in the midst of His people.

In His great love, this God came once-for-all to take on humanity's nature and share its burdens. Our God lives among us. And, when Jesus ascended to heaven to the Father after the Resurrection, the Father and the Son together sent the Holy Spirit to be present with and in the Church as its Guide and Advocate for all time. Thus, God is not only our God and our Father, but also our Companion and Guide, Friend, Lord and Savior.

John further tells us that when God made the decision to live amongst us in human form He maintained the full glory and power of His Godhood and that we have seen that glory. Because God Himself has chosen to live with us and be "like us," (Hebrews 4:14-16) and still maintains and displays that glory, we can be transformed from the frail and sinful mortal creatures we now are into the immortal human beings proudly carrying God's stamp upon us as He designed us to do.

Because God came down to us as a human — a real thinking, feeling, breathing human being — He (Jesus) acts as our elder brother. The Father accepts Jesus the God-Man. And because He is our older brother, God has broadened the family line by adopting us into it as His very own children. No longer are we mere creations.
And this is the essential piece in this present study. We all stand condemned for those times we have let anything take God’s sole place in our lives and have followed and obeyed them rather than the High King of Heaven. Until God made it possible for us to be adopted into His family no one — not even His Chosen People, the Jews — could truly follow where God led. It was impossible even when He was at the head of the column, or at the top of the mountain where they gathered.

In this, Jesus is shown to be fully human and fully God. And because He is fully God, He is able to administer His own Law and to be the righteous and just Judge over it. But in His perfect human nature He was also able to obey and fulfill that Law. And He did so on our behalf. Because He was sinless and sacrificed Himself for the repayment of our sin debt, He is able to account His obedience as ours when we approach Him with trust and faith.

He enacted the completed and perfect redemption of a people from slavery and death in the foreign land of sin. If the Israelites were called upon to obey out of gratitude for extended grace, how much more so are we called to that same obedience seeing how our redemption is so much the greater.

And this brings us to the last of our three strands of Scripture in this present study. Moving from John's gospel to his first letter we find that God is Love, and by extension His Law is an essential and perfect outworking of that love that is part of God's essential nature. This means that the commandments He gives are for our good.

In I John 4:7 - 5:5, John tells us that Christ is the propitiation, or atoning sacrifice, for our sins. He not only covers over our sin, but also eases God's righteous anger and disappointment with our failings. In other words we hand our broken and defective lives, affections, attitudes and actions to the King of kings, and He returns to us the perfect love and obedience that are demanded by the Father.

And such love will and does produce fruit and results. If we have surrendered our rebellion against God's Son, and asked Him for new hearts and minds, then we need have no fear of condemnation. He enables us to believe, live, and enact the perfect fidelity that are demanded of us in the First Commandment.

This is why John can say in 5:1-5 of the letter that:

• 5:1 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also him who is begotten of Him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. 4 For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith. 5 Who is he who overcomes the world but the he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

This is why anything short of total monogamous fidelity to our vows of love and obedience to the God of our Confession yields only broken or incomplete results. Without that love for God, we cannot love brother or sister, wife or husband, neighbor or stranger, countryman or foreigner. With that love we cannot do anything but love them and seek after their best interest.

Let us make them to God and to Him alone. Allow and put no other gods in your lives. The one we have is enough. He fulfills all things in Himself. Yahweh is the Eternal Word. All other things proceed from serving Him alone.

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Rusty+