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Testimony Concerning the Son of God

March 5, 2012 in Christology, Holy Spirit, Jesus with 0 Comments

The First Letter of John

1 John 5:6-12  6 This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.7 For there are three that testify:8 the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.9 If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son.10 Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.11 And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

Are you ever afraid to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with someone?  Are you ever timid to tell what you’ve seen and heard concerning the Son of God?  Don’t feel too bad, you’re not alone.  But we’re all called to share the Good News.  It’s our job to proclaim it to all the world.  But there’s more good news, the results don’t all rest on us.

The thing about being fearful when it comes to witnessing is that most of the work is actually done by the Holy Spirit, not by us.  There’s no reason to be shy about sharing when we realize that we’re just a vessel used by God to reach other people with His message.  He works in the heart of the person who hears the gospel and He works in you and me when we’re telling them.  The Spirit testifies and He does it in the hearer and through the teller.  Does that make you feel more at ease?

When you submitted your life to Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit made His home inside you and you are a walking, talking testimony for Jesus.  The Spirit declares the Good News.  We just need to be available to make it happen.  There’s no need to be afraid.  It’s not all up to us how things turn out.  It’s just our job to speak up and let the world know that Jesus is the hope for all mankind.

Warning Concerning Antichrists

February 6, 2012 in Angels and demons, Christology, Church, Discipleship, Gospel, Jesus, Theology with 0 Comments

The First Letter of John

1 John 2: 18-27 18 Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.20 But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.t21 I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.22 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.23 No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.24 Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father.25 And this is the promise that he made to ust—eternal life. 26 I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.27 But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.

 It will never be my intention to scare you, but there are certain warnings in God’s Word that need to be looked at.  John thought it was important enough to point out the existence of antichrists that he spent a good portion of his first letter warning about them.

There are those who oppose the gospel of Jesus Christ and seek to lead His followers astray.  Though we’d like them to be easily identifiable through something like their black cowboy hat, it isn’t that simple.  Though we’d like to be able to tell who they are based on the fact that they’re “out there” saying hateful things about Jesus, it’s not true.  They are among us, posing as our brothers and sisters.  They say things much like what we say.  They call themselves Christians but their intentions are not to follow Christ.  Their intentions are rather to keep others from following Him.

So how can we spot someone who is an antichrist if they look just like a Christian in some cases?  There is one test given by John to his readers.  They deny that Jesus is the Christ.  The simple fact is that they are called antichrists because they are against Christ.  If someone is opposed to believing that Jesus is the Son of God, sent into the world to redeem God’s people, then he is an antichrist.  Don’t get this mixed up with The Antichrist who will come as the embodiment of all that is evil.  These are individuals who reject the gospel yet try to look like they belong with Christians as they work to  destroy.  It was true in John’s time and it’s true in ours.  Be prepared for lies by knowing what the Truth is.

Solus Christus

November 3, 2011 in Christology, Jesus, Reformation, Salvation, Theology with 0 Comments

I Timothy 2:5  For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

Many and varied are the ways that man tries to get closer to God.  New religions spring up all the time, each seeking to find the right way to become whole.  Hundreds of self-help books are shelved at each book store, none quite adequately fulfilling our quest.  None quite bringing us into that place where we stand in right relationship with our Creator.

It’s sad that we spend so much time searching when the answer our souls seek has already been given.  We don’t attain enlightenment by searching within ourselves.  We don’t achieve entrance into heaven through doing enough good deeds.  There is one way to God and He is Christ Jesus.  He is our Savior, our King, our friend. From Him and through Him and to Him are all things (Romans 11:36) and not one thing was created that was not created by Him (John 1:3). He is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15) and only He qualifies to mediate between God and man (John 14:6).We can try to fix ourselves, try to gain knowledge, or try to work our way to righteousness, but in the end it’s all in vain.  Only Christ can save us.  Only He can set us free (John 8:32).

 

Burning hearts

June 3, 2011 in Christology, Easter, Witness with 0 Comments

The road to Emmaus

Luke 24:32  They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”

The Word of God has an effect on all who experience it.  As Jesus walked with the disciples that were headed to Emmaus, He opened up the Scriptures to them in a very real way, showing them the overall theme of the Bible – Himself.  As they heard all of this, presumably for the first time (though they “knew” the Scriptures), their hearts burned within them.  After inviting Jesus to stay with them their eyes were opened and they saw clearly who He was and that God had revealed Himself, through Jesus and through the Scriptures.

And what happened immediately after that?  The result was exactly what it was for anyone whose heart burns from within – they had to go share what they now knew.  When your heart is burning, you can’t help but tell the world what made it so.  After hearing Jesus’ words, experiencing Him, and having their eyes opened to the truth, they immediately went out and spread the news that the Christ had risen.  There was no doubt left in their minds that it was true and that everyone needed to know.  They knew the value of this news.  They knew what it meant to all mankind.

Experiencing Jesus does this to a person.  He has such an impact on us that our hearts burn from within and we can’t help but share the Gospel with all of those around us.  No one has ever had such an effect on all the world.  Those who experienced Him for who He is turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6) and we can continue to do so for His glory.

The Invitation

June 2, 2011 in Christology, Easter with 0 Comments

 

The road to Emmaus

Luke 24:29  but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them.

On the road to Emmaus, the disciples didn’t see Jesus for who He was.  Even after He had opened up the Scriptures to them as an ongoing story concerning Himself, they didn’t realize who was in their presence.  They were intrigued, maybe even amazed by His brilliance, but they did not yet see Him as the Christ because their eyes were still closed.

As they came upon their destination, Jesus acted like He was going to keep walking (knowing full well what was going to happen).  The disciples invited Him to come along with them.  They wanted to know more.  They wanted to spend more time with this man.  Only after this invitation were their eyes opened.  All that they knew in their heads became real finally when it hit them that they were talking with the Christ all that time on the road. He became more than they had ever expected.

The journey of a disciple requires an invitation to Jesus.  This doesn’t mean salvation, because He does the inviting in our hearts and we respond.  This is an invitation for Him to join us along the road as we travel into spiritual maturity.  We can’t understand it all on our own, we need Him walking with us.  As the disciples headed to Emmaus saw, Jesus is more than willing to accept and open up our eyes.

 

Jesus in the Scriptures

June 1, 2011 in Christology, Easter, Theology with 0 Comments

The road to Emmaus

Luke 24:27  And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Can you see Jesus?  There He is, in the Garden of Eden, as the serpent is cursed by God and promised that One would come who would crush him (Genesis 3:15).  He’s there as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stand among the flames without being burnt up (Daniel 3:24-25). He’s the one foretold by the prophets (2 Samuel 7:12–16; Isaiah 7:14; 9:6; 50:6; 52:13–53:12; 61:1; Jeremiah 23:5, 6; Daniel 7:13, 14; 9:24–27; Micah 5:2; Zechariah 6:12; 9:9;12:10; 13:7 and so on) and ushered in by The Baptist (John 1:29). And yes, we find that even in the very beginning, He was there (John 1:1). But so much more than these examples, He’s the central character of every story in every book of God’s Word.

As the disciples who walked to Emmaus spoke to Jesus, He pointed out to them how all of the Scriptures they knew concerned Him, they all had a purpose of shedding light on the man who was also God.  God revealed Himself to mankind through Jesus and He revealed Jesus through the Scripture.  When the eyes of the disciples were opened, they saw it.  When our eyes are opened to who Jesus is, we see it too.  It’s all about Him, every story, every prophesy, even the Law is given to show that we needed Jesus to come (Galatians 3:24-25).  It’s genius, if you think about it.  Who else, ever, in the entire history of the world, has written such an extensive story with so much action, so much rich dialogue, such beautiful poetry, such love, such applicable moral teaching, that reveals in the end to be about a great Hero that was the basis for the rest of the story up to that point?  It’s brilliant!  And it’s God-inspired.

What the disciples got that day is that Jesus is the central character.  He’s the one that matters in the big scheme of things.  We can learn a lot from Moses, David, Solomon and other heroes, but their main purpose was to point to Christ. Their good deeds and their flaws alike were to show us Jesus.  The prophesies, the plagues, the desert wandering, the flooding, all to point us to Jesus.  Not every view of theology agrees with this notion, but what matters is that Jesus did.  He’s the one who said Moses wrote about Him (John 5:46) and made claim to be the One that the prophets spoke of (Luke 4:21).  If Jesus believed it, it’s best to follow His lead.

Head knowledge is not heart knowledge

May 31, 2011 in Christology, Easter with 0 Comments

The road to Emmaus

Luke 24:25  And he said to them,“O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

Our friends who encountered Jesus along the road to Emmaus days after His death on the cross were very knowledgable of the Scriptures.  They longed for the promised Jewish Messiah because they had been taught from a young age all about the manuscripts and the Law, the oral traditions and the customs.  They knew the stories of their ancestors inside and out.  But Jesus pointed out to them that their head knowledge did not equal knowing the Scripture in their hearts.

He rightly pointed out to the disciples that they were being foolish for knowing the promises of God through the prophets without realizing that they were being fulfilled right in front of their eyes — by the very man who stood before them!  They were so concerned with what they “knew” that they didn’t know anything.  They couldn’t see the forrest for the trees.  All of that teaching did them no good if they couldn’t recognize the One whom the prophets had foretold.

Before we get down on the poor disciples of this story let’s take a look at the modern day church, at ourselves.  We’re a very educated society, with so many schools and so much at our disposal for learning about God and His Word.  Many of us have quite a few verses memorized and have learned the stories of the Bible from a young age.  We could tell someone who asks almost anything about any story…but how do those stories apply to our lives?  Do we know that answer?

“Knowing” the Scriptures is not the same as seeing Jesus for who He is and what He’s done by seeking Him.  Knowing God on a personal level enables us to really know the Scriptures and see them with eyes wide open.  Jesus has enabled us to know Him if we’ll just seek Him out.  If we look for Him, we’ll see that the entirety of God’s Word is about Jesus. From Genesis to Revelation.

Hoping for something more

May 30, 2011 in Christology, Easter with 0 Comments

The road to Emmaus

Luke 24:21a  But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel…

Have you ever looked back on something in your life and realized how foolish you looked for not seeing what was right in front of you?  The story in Luke’s account of the Gospel about two disciples who were talking while they traveled, just days after Jesus’ death on the cross, makes one wonder just how foolish they felt as they looked back at their encounter with Jesus.

As they walked along sulking that this man they had followed, who that had placed their trust in as the promised Messiah, the one who would redeem His people Israel, the resurrected Jesus actually joined them.  These two of His disciples recounted the story of Jesus’ crucifixion to Him (because they didn’t recognize Him as being Jesus) and expressed lament over the fact that He hadn’t lived up to their hopes.  We look back now and wonder how on earth the risen Lord could have disappointed anyone’s hopes, but these Jewish men had been awaiting a Messiah who would establish an earthly kingdom to save them from their oppressors and Jesus did not do that.  No, instead He was killed by those oppressors.  This fell short of what they had wanted from Him.

But Jesus came to do so much more than just save Israel from an oppressive government. He came to bring reconciliation with God, to all, Jews and Gentiles alike.  But the men didn’t know this yet because they were so focused on their own expectations.  Can’t we do that sometimes?  Don’t we sometimes expect God to answer us in some small way and when we don’t see it we get all upset with Him, when really there’s a much bigger blessing in store if we’d only open our eyes?  The guys in this story opened their eyes and eventually saw Jesus for who He was and what He came to do.  That’s hope for all of us.

Jesus, the life

May 27, 2011 in Christology with 0 Comments

Who is Jesus?

 

John 11:25-26  Jesus said to her, “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. Do you believe this?”

 

Are you dead?  We all die at some point, but some of us die before others, some of us give up our lives and die while we still live.  Is this confusing?  We’re all destined to die in our earthly bodies, bound for eternity either in heaven with God or hell apart from Him.  But those who live in Christ have already died to themselves (in spirit) and taken on Christ’s life.  That’s why we say we “live in Him”.  It’s why Paul wrote of us dying to sin, dying to our old nature, etc.  We’ve taken on a new life in Christ, we’re “hidden in Him” (Colossians 3:3).  Eternal life, for those who are in Christ, has already begun while still living on the earth.

 

Jesus said that He is the only way to God (John 14:6).  He also stated that He came to give life (John 10:10).  But the core truth behind this is that He is life and that’s how He’s able to offer it to us.  Sin equals death, Jesus equals life.  We choose one or the other, there are no other choices.  Sin doesn’t mean doing bad things, it means having an unrighteous nature.  But following Christ brings onto us His nature and therefore we die to the sinful one.

 

He is the resurrection (the way to heaven), and the source of eternal life.  If we’re in Him, we’ll never die (in the sense that those who spend eternity in hell “die” apart from Him). It all rests in Him, everything here and now and everything that comes after this.  It begins with Him (John 1:1) and it ends with Him (Revelation 22:12-13).

Look for this and other devotions about Jesus in the upcoming Exagorazo Press book entitled “Devotions for Disciples:  Who is Jesus?” due out in October 2011.

Jesus, the truth

May 26, 2011 in Christology with 0 Comments

Who is Jesus?

John 14:6  Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

What is truth?  The question has been asked through the ages.  Even Pontius Pilate, with the Son of God standing before Him, posed the question.  So often we’re like Pilate, asking what truth is when it’s standing right in front of us.  Truth doesn’t exist outside of God.  Jesus is truth in the form of a man.

No one has ever spoken nothing but the complete truth their entire life except for Christ.  No matter how hard we may try, we all speak untruth from time to time, even when it’s not intentionally.  But not one word that ever came from the mouth of Jesus was false.  If He said it, we can believe it.

So what did He say?  He said He was God (John 10:30).  He said He would rise from the dead (Matthew 20:19).  He said He had all power and authority (Matthew 28:18).  Now we either believe Him in all of it or we believe none of it.  There is no in-between.  If we say He was a good teacher but discredit Him as the Son of God, we have to look past the fact that He claimed Himself to be God.  If He claimed to be God but wasn’t, that isn’t a good teacher…that’s a liar.

The source of truth is God.  His goodness testifies to truth and there is only truth in Him.  He can’t lie (Numbers 23:19).  If He says it, it’s worth believing.

 Look for this and other devotions about Jesus in the upcoming Exagorazo Press book entitled “Devotions for Disciples:  Who is Jesus?” due out in October 2011.

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