The Bible in One Short Sentence

Today we want to return to an author that we featured only once here, in 2012, and share for the first time an archived post from his blog from 2016. David P. Kreklau blogged at For the Glory of God, which you can also reach by clicking the header which follows.

I Am God: The Point of the Bible

Listening to a seminary lesson years ago, the professor asked what the central theme of Scripture was for the whole Bible.  What would you say?  Well, he entertained several opinions and he eventually offered that it’s hard to settle on one.  I thought at the time, “Seriously? It’s redemption… right? RIGHT?”  But thinking about it now, even the events that stand inside God’s great redemptive historical narrative are all meant for a very specific purpose: to glorify God.  This glorification of God is all for the purpose of Him demonstrating His greatness… more than that, His holiness, which means His “set apart” self.  I.e. He is the only God, the one true God.

His whole point of Scripture is to demonstrate that “I Am God.”

Redemptive History

The Bible, as a whole, is about how God preexisted creation, God spoke into existence that creation of all things (including us and our world), God entered into creation to redeem what we destroyed, and God is making and will ultimately finish making new that creation.

Recall that in the Garden of Eden, He had one rule: do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17)… the basic gist of this command: “You can do anything but be God because I am God.  Do not try to be God!”

So naturally… we tried to be God (Genesis 3).

And then He spent the rest of the Old Testament describing how despite our treason of trying to be God (when only He is God), He would find a way to rescue us…

And then He begins the New Testament revealing how God, at great personal sacrifice, made a way through Jesus Christ to redeem us from our treason.  He continues the New Testament by revealing how God, through the Holy Spirit, picks up the mantle of redemption in the Church Age, and He finishes the New Testament with a glimpse of the close of history and what it looks like when God’s plan has come to fruition.

Scriptural Pronouncements

When Moses first meets God in the burning bush in Exodus 3, God tells him His name is “I AM WHO I AM (written about previously here).”

The intro to the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 start with “I am the Lord your God,” which pretty clearly states the thesis of this blog.  He goes on to spend the next three commandments basically saying “do not try to be God or make any other gods because I am God.”

In the Gospel of John, we see Jesus make several pronouncements of His divinity, statements of “I Am” followed by supporting clarifications:

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst (John 6:35).”

“I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life (John 8:12).”

“I am the door.  If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture (John 10:9).”

“I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:11).”

“I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die (John 11:25-26).”

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6).”

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.  Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit (John 15:1-2).”

And one additional statement that speaks to Christ’s preexistence of Abraham, the patriarch of the Jewish faith (but I would argue is also indicative of His preexistence to all creation as a whole), is John 8:58, “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I Am.’ ”

In fact, the beautiful irony is that we could never make ourselves God.  Yet out of love when we least deserved it, He made us one with God through His Son, and gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit to live in us.  We are now one with Him, and at the end of all things, everything will be renewed… including our perspective where we will no longer have a mutinous desire to be God, but will joyously spend the rest of eternity proclaiming the breath-taking glory of He who is the one and only God (Cf: Revelation 4).

A Final Word

One final thought to drive home this thesis: at the beginning of Scripture, He gives us the one rule that basically says, “Don’t be God because I am God.”  And I already spelled out above how the Ten Commandments and the whole of Scripture underline this message that “I Am God.”  So when we come to the consummate kingdom, one may notice that there are no longer any rules… and one might say, “Well why not?  Can’t we break that one rule again like we did before?”  But this time, the difference is that God has come to live in the lives of believers and we are now one with Him.  We are no longer alone in our wretched selves, but, as 2 Peter 1:4 says, we have become partakers in His divine nature.

Thus, so it is that the only thing that will keep us from usurping God… is FROM God.  Left to ourselves, we cannot coexist with Him without trying to usurp Him.  The only answer is for Him to come to us and help us let Him be God… which is what he did through Christ Jesus… the one and only God… the one and only way to God.

He Is God.

His Mission, Your Mission

This is our third time with Mel Wild, senior pastor at Cornerstone Church and director of Radiant School of Ministry, both based in Wisconsin USA. Clicking the header which follows takes you to where we sourced it, along with pictures and the opportunity to explore other articles.

The Mission

What has always struck me when I first encountered God is that, in those life-changing interactions, my sins never came up. This was long before I knew Him as a Father. I found that He never deals in shame or condemnation. Now, He is a father, so He has corrected me many times, to help me mature as a son. But never with shame or by rubbing my sin in my face.

Then, after these encounters with God, I began to understand the theology behind what I was experiencing in real time. Apparently, God does not count our sins against us.

that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Cor.5:19 NIV*)

This is remarkable when I think about how much Christians seem to obsess over sin…. especially everybody else’s sin.

What I’ve found is that to encounter God is to encounter Love—pure, unadulterated, other-centered, self-giving love—for God IS love. If we simply replace the word “love” with God in the following familiar passage, we can see what God’s love looks like:

GOD is patient, GOD is kind. GOD does not envy, HE does not boast, GOD is not proud. GOD does not dishonor others, HE is not self-seeking, HE is not easily angered, GOD keeps no record of wrongs. GOD does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. GOD always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Cor.13:4-7 NIV*)

The Passion Translations renders the first part of verse 5, “Love does not traffic in shame….”

So, it’s true. God does not traffic in shame.

This is the true character of God, not the religious nonsense we make up about Him. God looks like Jesus, and Jesus looks like love.

The writer of Hebrews reminds us of the following New Covenant promise that Jesus fulfilled on the Cross:

“Their sins and lawless acts
    I will remember no more.” (Heb.10:17 NIV)

Beloved, if God is remembering our sins no more, why are we?

Still, to this day, I have trouble convincing people—especially believers—that when we personally encounter God, our sins will not be the subject of our conversation. If it is, we are probably projecting our own guilt and shame on God.

This may be the biggest reason why people, including believers, hide from Him.

We tend to prefer hiding behind religious activity instead letting God love us, which is quite sad when you think about it.

Beloved, our sin is not the problem; it’s that we put more faith in the power of our sin than in the power of the Cross.

I bring all this up because our inability to accept this reality ourselves may be one big reason why we’re not very effective at convincing others to accept it.

We don’t seem to understand the mission.

On that subject, just this week I was reading about our mission in 2 Corinthians from the Passion Translation:

And God has made all things new,  and reconciled  us to himself, and given us the ministry of reconciling others to God. In other words, it was through the Anointed One that God was shepherding the world, not even keeping records of their transgressions, and he has entrusted to us the ministry of opening the door of reconciliation to God.  (2 Cor. 5:18-19 TPT*)

What first struck me here was the Aramaic rendering of the Greek “reconciliation” as “shepherding.” God was shepherding the world through Christ on the cross.

A shepherd is one who herds sheep. And he doesn’t turn his back on his sheep, or ever abandon them; he protects them, even laying his life down for them.

And, likewise, our heavenly Father is a good shepherd. He doesn’t do abandonment either. He didn’t turn His back on His Son on the cross. He was shepherding US through His Son.

This is why the Cross was not about an angry God having to kill His Son so He could forgive us. That’s absurd when you think it through.

No, the Cross was a rescue mission. It was the loving act of a Shepherd.

Think about it. Jesus was the Good Shepherd because His Father was a Good Shepherd.

Then Paul goes on to say….

We are ambassadors  of the Anointed One who carry the message of Christ to the world, as though God were tenderly pleading  with them directly through our lips. So we tenderly plead with you on Christ’s behalf, “Turn back to God and be reconciled to him.”  (2 Cor 5:20 TPT*)

Looking at the last line first, you could say that God is pleading with us all to “be shepherded by Him.”

But also notice that He’s now pleading through us, which describes OUR mission. Which, save dying on the Cross, is the same mission as Jesus’ mission.

In light of all these things, my question is this: what kind of God are we projecting to those who don’t know Him? Are we like good Pharisees, rubbing people’s sin in their faces? Or, are we offering our lips to be used by Him to “shepherd” them, so that they can finally know Him as He truly is?

It’s not that sin isn’t important. It’s just that God seems to think He nailed it to the cross and buried it with Jesus’ death 2,000 years ago. And He also seems to have forgotten about our sins ever since.

What God IS remembering is that His Son removed EVERYTHING that would hinder us from knowing Him, so that we could know and experience Love.

And Love wants to use our lips, if we’re willing, to proclaim this crazy good news that brings great joy, to everyone we know.

That’s our mission….if WE decide to accept it. And if we accept it, they may too.

* All emphasis added.

 

When Those Who Oppose Jesus Fall Down

^{Revelation.7.9} I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars—I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you.

Today we are back again with Stanley J. Groothof who blogs at The 4th Point.  Why is his blog called that?

I’m a husband, dad, friend, and pastor. In connection with that last role, you may know that traditionally sermons often have 3 points. When I research and reflect on Sunday’s messages, often I find more material than can fit in my message for the day. Here is a place for some “fourth points” that, while not showing up in a message, I feel still should see the light of day.

As usual click the header below to read this at source. Scriptures referenced in today’s devotional are included in full after today’s reading.

Falling down with my enemies

To the church in Philadelphia, Jesus gives the encouragement to keep holding on. They have little strength left from enduring rejection and persecution from the leaders of the local synagogue who deny Jesus is Lord. But they can indeed hold on knowing their current situation will not last forever. Jesus promises He is coming soon, giving the church hope that the time is coming when wrongs will be righted.

More than that, Jesus tells the Philadelphian church they can look forward to the day when those who hurt them will “come and fall down at [their] feet.” Those opposed to God and His people will one day experience the return and victory of King Jesus. At that time they will hear Him say He is on the side of His people and He loves them.

But as Lou Lotz once noted, this talk of enemies groveling at one’s feet smacks of triumphalism and vengeance, and seems to be out of character with Christ’s command to love our enemies. True, but the picture of poor souls who have always resisted Jesus and harmed the church bowing down to Jesus’ followers helps me in two ways:

1. I’m given hope: Ungodliness will not endure forever. One day, to quote Pastor Lotz, “the tables will be turned, and God’s people will be vindicated.”

2. This picture also offers inspiration: Christians desire to love their enemies, to love their enemies to Christ. The more Christ’s reconciling grace is in me, the more I want no one being punished at my feet. I’m not saying there won’t be anyone; I’m just saying Christians love their enemies and the church’s enemies with the dream that all of them will change and love Jesus today and in eternity.

I’m fascinated by the actual words used in Jesus’ letter to Philadelphia, that those who oppose Jesus and His church will one day “fall down.” This is the same language used elsewhere in the Bible (in Revelation 4, as one example) for falling down in worship! I think I’m supposed to love my enemies, praying that they’ll fall down in worship with me and all God’s people.

LOVE
YOUR ENEMIES
DO GOOD
TO THOSE WHO HATE YOU
BLESS
THOSE WHO CURSE YOU
PRAY FOR
THOSE WHO MISTREAT YOU

~ Jesus

---

Scriptures in today’s devotional:

^{Revelation.7.9} I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars—I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you.

^Matthew.5.44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

^{Revelation.4.9-11} Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:

“You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created
and have their being.”

The God Who Desires My Trust Through Obedience

Today we’re paying a return visit with John Curtis at the Exchange Ministry Blog. Click the header below to read this at source.

One Act of Righteousness

Romans 3:18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

It was only one piece of fruit.  One time.  “How bad could that be?” asks all of humanity.  Well, it was an act of rebellion that led to the condemnation of all men.  If I would deny God a central attribute of holiness, I would certainly insist on the primacy of my own ethics, rules and perspectives.  If God does not conform to my compromises and indulge my pleasurable tastes, however they progress and escalate, then I want nothing to do with that God.  For it is not only one piece of fruit.  It is an endless orgy of fruit, and one that I delight in discovering, uncovering and feasting on, my mouth dripping with juice.

Why does this condemn?  Isn’t fruit good?  If I entertain there is a Creator, wasn’t it then created for my enjoyment?  What kind of spoil-sport God would show me a tree and its fruit then deny its consumption?

The kind of God whose limits and boundaries are for my good, not my harm. The kind of God who desires my trust through obedience.

It is a chief fault of mine if I fail to see the reason in this verse. I made choices. They were NOT good, no matter how I revel in them and point to other factors in making them. And Holy God does not endorse rebellion or rebels like me. I have separated myself deliberately, even exuberantly. God finds me hiding behind a tree in the garden and I decide to miss out on the most pleasurable walk in the company of One so intimate and loving. I leave behind the most precious time I have ever known and could ever know, in the cool of the day with God. Oh, what I’ve traded for my indulgence!

It was only one man, perhaps erroneously killed by oppressive authorities who were jealous of his persuasion over the people. That injustice was scarcely unique, and is not unique to this day. Yet the dying man had said prior that his death was voluntary, that there is no greater love than someone who dies for his friends. He called himself the Good Shepherd and his sheep were people. He taught denial and lived it and died it. His proposition was that in giving up his life he was purchasing mine. And even in that, granting me the volition to say yes or no to him.

That “one act of righteousness” speaks through time. Hallelujah! God did not leave me this way. Blood drips from the veins of the crucified One, not any man but the dying Messiah. The pleasure fruit and its effects die with him, along with the shame that I bore and curse I swore.

My rebellion is justified, paid for and I am reconciled to take that walk through the garden in the cool of the day again. My obedience doesn’t come at once, salvation is progressive and my depravity deep and pervasive. Yet his cleansing deeper still.

My life is his; there is no one else.

 

Will Broken Relationships With Other Believers Be Reconciled in Heaven?

Once again we’re paying a return visit to the website Blogos which features a variety of writers. Today’s author is Christopher Schwinger. Click the title below to read at source, and then click the banner at the top to see other recent articles.

Relationships in Heaven

He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”
 -Revelation 21:4 NLT

I recently got a question asking whether heaven will be painless and have perfect reconciliation of relationships with others who belong to Christ. The simple answer has to be yes, but there are complexities which are troubling. I have heard it said that all of God’s wrath was poured out on Christ, so Christians who are unkind still are good in their ultimate standing with God. Does that really mean there is no such thing as God “disliking” a Christian who is unkind? That sounds like our painful experiences with other Christians are invalidated. An equal source of concern is whether everyone will get to have equal rewards in heaven even if they were ungracious to other people, as long as they believed in Jesus. I’ve often thought about whether we are supposed to expect the past to be nonexistent in our relationships when we get to heaven, because even though it’s unhealthy to want other people to suffer like we have, it just doesn’t seem fair that everyone would be on the same degree of perfection in heaven, from those who got only a little progress made (the thief on the cross by Jesus), to those who went backward or became stagnant, to someone who suffered because of other Christians’ lack of mercy.

Some people think it undermines the fullness of what Christ accomplished if we desire to have all our pain understood by the people who caused the pain, and I think that depends on whether they are trying to reconcile or trying to use pain in a vengeful way. The only way for that to feel right is if the Christians who are more obedient get more privileges in eternity than those who are more selfish. But as Jesus said to Peter in John 21:21-22, don’t worry about how God wants to bless someone else, or who is more or less deserving.

A further source of anxiety about heaven is whether our sins will be publicly exposed if we don’t confess them between our conversion to Christ and our death. Being ashamed for our previous spiritual immaturity can only be a factor in heaven if we didn’t heed the warnings God gave to us in our lives. For those who struggle with “feeling” clean after confessing their sins to God throughout their lives, that shame will be gone.

As a lot of our hope about the afterlife is just hope, not something we can know in a carefully defined way, it’s almost like we have to make heaven a philosophy more than a precise theology. Even the term is philosophical, because characteristics of God are evident in the cosmos and it’s the opposite direction of where people get buried. I used to try to visually imagine heaven and how it could be better than my current life, and I always wound up unsatisfied with the courtroom and music concert imagery, and that was probably because I missed that the emphasis in the Book of Revelation is that every group of people finds unity under God.

It’s not the luxurious description of heaven which should inspire us, but the relational healing.

I have 3 sources of comfort about heaven:

1. What has convinced me that heaven even exists, besides Jesus’ fulfillment of specific Old Testament prophecies, is the poetic and wisdom literature of the Old Testament. The Old Testament passages in Job and the psalms which express hope about eternal life after death, with no more pain, happen after the writers have experienced sufferings and reflected on the meaning of it all, and God gives them hope as they continue to do the right thing. I have learned from this to not expect faith about a better hereafter to be something I can force on myself. Faith can’t be just forced, but is partially the natural outcome of making good choices. Another way of putting it: God gives hope/faith as a gift to those who pursue virtue.

2. The story of Jesus and Lazarus in John 11, from the most personal of the four Gospels, is important to me because Jesus actually identifies with the sorrow as they’re going through it, even though He knows it’s not going to continue after He raises Lazarus from the dead — until Lazarus eventually dies again, that is. Jesus felt their pain and cried even though He knew it would be short-lived pain. Until the amazing restoration actually happens, there is going to be pain, but somehow even the pain feels meaningful when we know God is feeling the pain with us. Gaining the confidence that He feels the pain is a difficult thing, though. Sorrow is not something to hide from, even if we hate it, because it actually is meaningful in its own way when we know God feels the pain.

3. The Apostle Paul’s expectation about the 2nd Coming, based on Jewish apocalyptic literature about Judgment Day, was that everyone who belongs to Christ, even from before the time of Christ in the first century, would be reunited and forever be together. It’s hard to know how much of the imagery we have of the End Times is symbolic and how much will really come true in the exact way described, but the Biblical writers are convinced that heaven is not just an idea we hope for, but a reality which Jesus already made possible.

Reconciliation of hurts in heaven does not mean the past never happened, but the fundamental relationship problems we have with other Christians will be gone in heaven because the atonement of Christ will be complete then. The atonement of Christ helps us become free from sin during our lives, but it’s still a struggle because we have our “sin nature” which we’re born with, what Paul calls “the flesh.” But when we make it to the next life, which you can call heaven, God’s transformation of us will be complete and we’ll have new bodies. The reason I can believe this is because the Holy Spirit’s work in my life right now is proof that there is more to come, what Paul called a pledge, like a deposit which proves there’s more where that came from. The Holy Spirit’s work in our hearts, when we sense it going on in ourselves, proves to us that we’re not being defrauded by God, but are given a trustworthy deposit, with the promise that the deposit will be completed later. The Holy Spirit didn’t just give me hope in my struggles only for it to all end in nothingness. Thus I can view even death as a gateway to a brighter future if I belong to Christ.

Never Thirst Again

Jen Rodewald writes at the blog The Free Slave’s Devotional and posted this exposition of the familiar story of The Woman at the Well. I hope you find something new in the story today. Click the title below to read at source.

Out of Bondage

“Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again—ever.” –John 4:13-14a, HCSB

I wonder what she was thinking as she walked that well-worn trail on her own. Every day that trek to the well must have been a reminder…Of dreams unfulfilled. Of a longing unmet. Of shame. It was a walk most women made together, a chore done as a social engagement. Except for the outcast, the scorned.

With every step toward that well she could hear the whispers in her restless soul. All she ever wanted was love, the lasting kind. But men…they’re not the faithful types. And because she cannot extinguish the thirst to be held, wanted, she is that woman.

A kept woman. A mistress.

A man’s voice meets her at the well, drawing her attention from her feet. “I am thirsty.”

She stares at him. He is a Jew. Jews don’t talk to Samaritans, especially Samaritan women. Unless… She gauges his inspection. His look is not the seductive kind. She would know, after all.

“Why do you speak to me?” she stammers. “I am a woman. A Samaritan woman.” And it’s so much worse than that.

He cracks a small grin, as if he knows a secret.

Oh, no. Does every man in Judea know about me as well?

His voice drifts with kindness over the well between them. “If you knew who spoke to you, you would ask me for living water.”

Does he think he’s a magician? She snorts. “How will you draw the water, sir? This well is very deep.”

“Ah,” his grin spreads full. “But you see, woman, everyone who drinks from this well will thirst again. I am talking about living water—whoever drinks of it will never thirst again. It will become a spring life within.”

No more drawing water? No more taking the lonely walk of shame throughout town? “Sir, give me this water so I will not have to come here again!”

That knowing look crept back in his eyes. “Go, call you husband, and come back.”

Her heart stalled. Husband? Did he know? “I—” She swallowed. “I’m not married.”

His gaze didn’t waver. “Indeed, not at the moment. But you have been, five times. But the man you are with now…”

Her face burns as she casts her look to the ground. How is this possible? How can this man know the ugly, intimate details of her life?

How can he know all this…and still speak to her?

“You are a prophet.” And not like any religious man I’ve ever met. What makes you so kind to a woman you clearly know is unworthy? “Tell me, how do I worship God?”

“The Father wants people who will worship in spirit and in truth.”

Truth? I know the truth about me—and apparently so do you. Does God know? Probably.

She chances a glance back at him again. His face is gentle, and yet, absolute. Truth. Can He be? “The Messiah is coming. He will tell us Truth.”

He smiled like a proud parent. “Woman,” his eyes dance, as if he’s about to share that secret, “I am He.”

She knew it. But He is here, talking to her? A woman of…filth. Tears gathered in her eyes. He talked to her, and offered her living water—the kind that would satisfy her forever. The kind that she’d been longing for her whole life.

Suddenly, the invitation became clear. Everything that she’d searched for in life He held in His kind hands. Love. Belonging. Forgiveness. All that she’d thirst for, quenched by his living water. Water that would satisfy. Water that would cleanse.

He would give it to her. All she must do is ask.

Forgiving Each Other…As God Has Forgiven You

Some thoughts on forgiveness, from Neil Anderson at yesterday’s and today’s devotional at Crosswalk.com:

It was for freedom that Christ set us free ~Galatians 5:1

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you ~Ephesians 4:32

How does God intend for you to resolve hurtful, controlling past experiences? In two ways ….

First, you have the privilege of evaluating your past experience in the light of who you are now, as opposed to who you were then. The intensity of the primary emotion was established by how you perceived the event at the time it happened. Remember: Your emotions are a product of how you perceived the event, not the event itself. As a Christian, you are not primarily a product of your past; you are primarily the product of the work of Christ on the cross. The flesh, which represents how you processed those events according to the world and without Christ, remains. But you are able to render it inoperative.

When a present event activates that primary emotion, many people believe what they feel instead of believing what is true. For example, people who have been verbally abused by their parents have a hard time believing they are unconditionally loved by Father God. Their primary emotions argue that they are unlovable to a parent figure. They believe what they feel and their walk is off course. Believing the truth and walking by faith is what sets us free.

Now that you are in Christ, you can look at those events from the perspective of who you are today. Christ is in your life right now desiring to set you free from your past. That is the gospel, the good news that Christ has come to set the captives free. Perceiving those events from the perspective of your new identity in Christ is what starts the process of healing those damaged emotions.

God’s good news about our identity is revealed in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” This is what you must believe first in order to be set free from your past.

The second step in resolving past conflicts is to forgive those who have offended you. After encouraging Cindy, a rape victim, to deal with the emotional trauma of her rape, I said, “Cindy, you also need to forgive the man who raped you.” Cindy’s response was typical of many believers who have suffered physical, sexual or emotional pain at the hands of others: “Why should I forgive him? You don’t know how badly he hurt me!”

“He’s still hurting you, Cindy,” I responded. “Forgiveness is how you stop the pain. You don’t forgive him for his sake; you do it for your sake.”

Why should you forgive those who have hurt you in the past?

First, forgiveness is required by God. As soon as Jesus spoke the amen to His model prayer–which included a petition for God’s forgiveness–He commented: “If you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions” (Matthew 6:14, 15). We must base our relationships with others on the same criteria on which God bases His relationship with us: love, acceptance and forgiveness (Matthew 18:21-35).

Second, forgiveness is necessary to avoid entrapment by Satan. I have discovered from my counseling that unforgiveness is the number one avenue Satan uses to gain entrance to believers’ lives. Paul encouraged mutual forgiveness “in order that no advantage be taken of us by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his schemes” (2 Corinthians 2:11). Unforgiveness is an open invitation to Satan’s bondage in our lives.

Third, we are to forgive like Christ forgave in order to keep our hearts from bitterness. Paul wrote: “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:31, 32).

Your act of forgiveness will set the captive free, then you will realize that the captive was you!

Prayer: Loving Lord, thank You for making me a new creation in Christ. Help me walk away from anything in my past that is restricting my freedom.

Continue reading archive editions of Neil Anderson’s writing at Daily in Christ; you can also subscribe to receive his messages daily by email.

Today’s two-for-one special: After preparing this, I found this quotation on Tim Keller’s Twitter feed:

When you forgive, that means you absorb the loss and the debt. You bear it yourself. All forgiveness, then, is costly.

Romans 5 in The Voice

BibleGateway.com has added The Voice to its list of available translations. This is a truly different approach to Bible translation. Some of you will immediately resonate with what the translators had in mind and will gravitate toward this fresh approach. For others who prefer the traditional approach to scripture, this is not the version for you.  At the Bible Gateway blog, they highlight the unique aspects of the translation:

• The Voice uses a screenplay format for dialogue and conversations. One advantage to this style is that it removes the need for lots of repetitive conjunctions and verbs (“he said,” “she replied,” etc.) that slow down reading. It also lets the translators use some clever and useful ways to convey key details: for example, in Matthew 8, note the use of stage directions to add detail and clearly identify the audience.
• Words and phrases in italics represent words that aren’t found in the original text, but which are important for bringing out the original intended meaning of the passage. In the words of The Voice translators, this brings out “the nuance of the original, assist[s] in completing ideas, and often provide[s] readers with information that would have been obvious to the original audience. These additions are meant to help the modern reader better understand the text without having to stop and read footnotes or a study guide.” Here’s an example from Romans 6.
• Another feature you’ll quickly encounter upon reading The Voice is its collection of explanatory material embedded in with the Bible text. These short paragraphs contain devotional material, study notes, background information, and other clarifying detail of the sort that you might typically find in a study Bible or commentary. These notes are placed near the passages they’re expounding on, and are clearly delineated from the text of Scripture as seen … in Romans 7.

Learn much more about the translation here. Also, I recently reviewed a book which tells the story of this version.

Our reading for today is from The Voice; I had chosen ahead of time to also use a chapter of Romans, but I selected Romans 5.

Note: While The Voice uses boxed and indented sections, that was not possible here. Scripture text in green is a convention we use here at C201, but the green and blue is not part of the original formatting of this Bible edition.

Romans 5

The Voice (VOICE)

In God’s plan to restore a fallen and disfigured world, Abraham became the father of all of us, the agent of blessing to everyone. Jesus completes what God started centuries before when He established Abraham’s covenant family. Those who put faith in Jesus and call Him “Lord” become part of Abraham’s faith family. Because God is gracious, loving, and merciful, men and women from every corner of the earth are not only declared right, but ultimately are made right as well. It happens through God’s actions—not our efforts—in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus who was crucified for our misdeeds and raised to repair what has been wrong all along. So the promises of God made long years ago are being realized in men and women who hear the call of faith and answer “yes” to it.

  Since we have been acquitted and made right through faith, we are able to experience true and lasting peace with God through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, the Liberating King. ² Jesus leads us into a place of radical grace where we are able to celebrate the hope of experiencing God’s glory. ³ And that’s not all. We also celebrate in seasons of suffering because we know that when we suffer we develop endurance, ⁴ which shapes our characters. When our characters are refined, we learn what it means to hope and anticipate God’s goodness. ⁵ And hope will never fail to satisfy our deepest need because the Holy Spirit that was given to us has flooded our hearts with God’s love.

⁶ When the time was right, the Anointed One died for all of us who were far from God, powerless, and weak. ⁷ Now it is rare to find someone willing to die for an upright person, although it’s possible that someone may give up his life for one who is truly good. ⁸ But think about this: while we were wasting our lives in sin, God revealed His powerful love to us in a tangible display—the Anointed One died for us. ⁹ As a result, the blood of Jesus has made us right with God now, and certainly we will be rescued by Him from God’s wrath in the future. ¹⁰ If we were in the heat of combat with God when His Son reconciled us by laying down His life, then how much more will we be saved by Jesus’ resurrection life? ¹¹ In fact, we stand now reconciled and at peace with God. That’s why we celebrate in God through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed.

¹² Consider this: sin entered our world through one man, Adam; and through sin, death followed in hot pursuit. Death spread rapidly to infect all people on the earth as they engaged in sin.

God’s gift of grace and salvation is amazing. Paul struggles to find the words to describe it. He looks everywhere around him to find a metaphor, an image, a word to put into language one aspect of this awesome gift. One of those is “reconciliation.” There is hardly anything more beautiful than to see two people who have been enemies or estranged or separated coming back together. When Paul reflects on what God has done through Jesus, he thinks about reconciliation. Before we receive God’s blessing through His Son, we are enemies of God, sinners of the worst sort. But God makes the first move to restore us to a right relationship with Him.

¹³ Before God gave the law, sin existed, but there was no way to account for it. Outside the law, how could anyone be charged and found guilty of sin? ¹⁴ Still, death plagued all humanity from Adam to Moses, even those whose sin was of a different sort than Adam’s. You see, in God’s plan, Adam was a prototype of the One who comes to usher in a new day. ¹⁵ But the free gift of grace bears no resemblance to Adam’s crime that brings a death sentence to all of humanity; in fact, it is quite the opposite. For if the one man’s sin brings death to so many, how much more does the gift of God’s radical grace extend to humanity since Jesus the Anointed offered His generous gift. ¹⁶ His free gift is nothing like the scourge of the first man’s sin. The judgment that fell because of one false step brought condemnation, but the free gift following countless offenses results in a favorable verdict—not guilty. ¹⁷ If one man’s sin brought a reign of death—that’s Adam’s legacy—how much more will those who receive grace in abundance and the free gift of redeeming justice reign in life by means of one other man—Jesus the Anointed.

¹⁸ So here is the result: as one man’s sin brought about condemnation and punishment for all people, so one man’s act of faithfulness makes all of us right with God and brings us to new life. ¹⁹ Just as through one man’s defiant disobedience every one of us were made sinners, so through the willing obedience of the one man many of us will be made right.

²⁰ When the law came into the picture, sin grew and grew; but wherever sin grew and spread, God’s grace was there in fuller, greater measure. No matter how much sin crept in, there was always more grace. ²¹ In the same way that sin reigned in the sphere of death, now grace reigns through God’s restorative justice, eclipsing death and leading to eternal life through the Anointed One, Jesus our Lord, the Liberating King.

Get Over It!

They were putting together a list of people to invite to a dinner party.  She threw out the name of a particular couple and he frowned at her.

“Not after that thing that happened at the golf course.  We’re not having them here.”

“The golf course;” she screamed, “That was TEN YEARS AGO! That happened a DECADE ago! Is that why we never get together with them? Don’t you think it’s time to get over it?”

Unfortunately, we don’t all do a good job of getting over it.  This post is from Mark D. Roberts, and appeared today at High Calling Blogs as How Can We Stop Nursing an Ancient Grudge?

Read: Ezekiel 35:1-15

Because you nursed an ancient grudge, you handed the Israelites over to the sword in the time of their distress, during their final punishment.

Ezekiel 35:5

Ezekiel 35 is a word of judgment against “Mt. Seir,” a geographic representation of Edom. In this chapter, the Lord judges the Edomites because they took advantage of the Israelites when they were being invaded by the Babylonians. The people of Edom even “exalted” themselves against the Lord and spoke against him (35:13).

Edom’s reaction to Israel’s plight reflected longstanding enmity between the two nations. In fact, the Lord identifies the source of Edom’s action in this way: “Because you nursed an ancient grudge, you handed the Israelites over to the sword in the time of their distress, during their final punishment” (35:5). The Hebrew of the beginning of this verse reads literally, “Because you had everlasting hatred [’evat ‘olam] . . . .” This is the same phrase that appears in Ezekiel 25:15, where it refers to the “old hatreds” of the Philistines. The “ancient grudge” of the Edomites was similar to the “old hatreds” of the Philistines. Both peoples let old rivalries and animosity govern their behavior, leading them to oppose not just Israel, but also the Lord.

The Daily Reflection on Ezekiel 25 asked the question: What will set us free from old hatreds? Today, I want to ask a similar question: How can we stop nursing an ancient grudge? Once again, I want to emphasize that the power to do this rests in God, the source of peace and reconciliation. God alone will help us forgive those who have wronged us.

This happens as we take to heart the merciful forgiveness God has given us. In Ephesians 4:31-32 we read: “Put aside all bitterness, losing your temper, anger, shouting, and slander, along with every other evil. Be kind, compassionate, and forgiving to each other, in the same way God forgave you in Christ.” We are able to put aside all bitterness and forgive others when we take seriously the way God has forgiven us in Christ. We will stop nursing grudges when we allow our hearts and minds to be transformed by the forgiving grace of God.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER REFLECTION: Do you have any ancient grudges? Are there people in your life whom you struggle to forgive? Have you spoken to God about this?

PRAYER: Gracious God, even as you have forgiven me, so may I forgive others. May your grace so permeate my being that I cannot help but be gracious to everyone in my life, even those who have wronged me. Set me free, Lord, from old hatreds and ancient grudges. May I live in the freedom of your grace each day, in each relationship, in every situation. Amen.

~Mark D. Roberts