living for eternity today

Tag: paul

The Man, The Message

The book of Romans will be our focus for the next several weeks together. Ok let’s be honest, it will be months before we get through Romans, so stick with me here. The goal of this series of posts on Romans that should post every Monday, is to fill in the gaps and kind of summarize a portion of the book each week.

We start this series by circling the runway before landing the plane in Rome. We’ll do this by getting to know the letter as a whole and who exactly wrote it. Let’s start with the who question.

Who is Paul?

Now for some of you this might be a no brainer kind of question. Paul is…Paul right? I mean he used to be Saul but Jesus met him on the road. He was blinded and Jesus changed his name to show his new identity. The name Saul meant prayed for, but Jesus changed his name to Paul which means small or humble. Yikes what a shift!

Paul starts the letter identifying himself by his new name and then gives a couple titles or offices he holds. The first one is servant of Christ Jesus. This is pretty important. He didn’t start by showing his credentials. He started by showing his humility. He’s a slave of Christ. That means his new identity is to submit to what God wants, not what Paul thinks is right in the moment.

So Paul is now a humble servant of Jesus focusing his life and ministry on the things God wants him to do. This is a huge shift in thinking and acting for Paul! It’s only after he demonstrates his humility that he says anything about this new office to which God called him.

Called to be an apostle is the next phrase we see. This is another powerful statement. There are two different ways we see the word apostle in the Bible. One is the title like you see here. He’s an apostle, just like the original 12. There are a limited number of people that fall into this category of use. I’m of the belief that this title is reserved for these 13 men.

Then there’s another way to use the term. Instead of an office or a title, we can see apostleship as a character trait. The gifting of the apostles is a way of seeing someone as a sent one that has been called by God and sent to a place for a specific purpose of spreading the gospel.

Not everyone has this kind of gifting to be certain. Going out and starting something new for the sake of the gospel takes a special breed of individual. Paul here is using the term apostle in both ways. He was called by God to the office of apostle and with the gifting of apostleship. And he takes both of these realities very seriously.

The Message

If we circle the runway one more time, we’ll focus on the second part of what’s found in the first 13 or so verses of the book of Romans. That is the message he’s about to share. And simply put, that message is the gospel of God.

The gospel of God is kind of a unique way of saying this. Normally it’s the gospel of the kingdom in Matthew or the gospel of Christ in most of Paul’s other writings. But here it’s the gospel of God which is intended to show us that all things originate from God and this is his one and only plan. There’s no plan B. There is no other option. The gospel of God is that he would send His Son Jesus for us. It’s that simple.

This gospel will be the primary focus of the entire book of Romans. And this message of the Gospel of God is for all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints. This designation shows us the gospel here is for the believer.

We tend to think of the gospel as the tool we use to share our faith with those around us. We act as if the gospel is something unbelievers need in order to be able to believe. And while that’s true, it’s only half true. The gospel is the only tool God gives us to deepen our faith and grow us as his disciples.

So if the church you lead or attend is focusing on discipleship and your primary tool in discipling isn’t the gospel of God, then according to Paul, you’re doing it wrong.

The man is Paul. The message is the gospel of God. Next week we’ll land the plane with the mission of the gospel.

Rapture

I lost three of my grandparents in about a year and a half. That narrow window of time for a loss is a lot to handle. And if you’ve lost anyone special to you, no matter if it’s three people nearly all at once or something significantly different, it kind of makes you wonder. Where are they? What are they up to? And will we ever see them again?

Those questions, and likely others like them, were swirling around a young church in the latter portion of the Bible. The book of 1 Thessalonians was written to a young church that didn’t have a lot of history. They knew the basics of who Jesus was and what he did. They knew the promise that he was coming back again.

But they didn’t know what that meant for their family members who died before Jesus came back. That seems to be the main issue here in the 4th chapter of this little letter. What will happen to my family who have already died?

I often wonder the same thing. I mean I kind of know, as much as a human can know the details of the afterlife. But I know they’re with Jesus and I know that one day we’ll all be with Jesus together. The challenge was that it seems Paul drew such a beautiful picture of the day when Jesus comes back to gather the living to be with him, that they started to get worried about the dead. You know the whole they’re going to miss out on this wonderful day when Jesus gathers his people to be with him.

This chapter drives us to understand this is just not the case. This is where the term rapture actually shows up in the Bible. No you won’t see it in many English translations because while it’s there it isn’t there the way we might think. It’s translated in most English versions as caught up in the clouds. That’s it. Caught up. The word that some translate as rapture and have written books about and formed whole theological traditions about is really a word that means to be caught up.

It’s a hard thing to consider especially with all the Hollywood-izing that’s happened with the term. Planes flying with no pilots. Cars with passengers zapped away. Football games with star players turned to vapor. These are the ways we try to explain it but I think this really misses the thrust of the word Caught up.

Think about the sunrise. You know that array of bright orange, red, purple and pink that somehow paint across the entire eastern sky. Add a little frost on the ground and crisp weather that makes you see your own breath and you’re caught up in something pretty spectacular. Yep you’ve been enraptured by this whole reality. It’s the same idea!

Paul here is telling the people in this little church that they will be caught up with their loved ones and with Jesus on the final day. No hocus-pocus. No slide of hand. No vapored bodies. No planes with no pilots. None of that is found here. Just being totally caught up in the presence of the risen and now returning Jesus.

Could those things happen? I mean I guess they can. God can do that if he wants but that’s not what this passage is about. It’s about you and me and even my grandparents all being fully enveloped or enraptured by the wonderful presence of the glory of Jesus when he finally returns. And that is something that should change the way we see life and death!

A Pastor’s Prayer

Have you ever wondered what was on your pastor’s heart? Like what got him excited in the morning? What keeps him up at night? What breaks his heart or brings a smile to his face?

There are three short verses in a small letter in the Bible that really drive at what’s on a pastor’s heart. Here’s the set of verses – Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you,  and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. There are a few things here that really stand out.

May God our Father and Jesus our Lord direct our way to you.

The first part of this prayer has two really important pieces almost hidden in plain site. You may have noticed that I re-ordered the wording of this line. Most bibles will read “our God and Father and our Lord Jesus” but I think this misses a really cool thing that’s happening here.

Paul wrote this in a specific way to highlight that God is Father and Son simultaneously and yet there aren’t two of them but one God. He shows how God is Father and Sovereign Lord all at the same time. There are two subject (Father and Lord) but the verbs in Greek are singular. So many but one, one but many all at the same time.

Now the prayer is that we would come together. This is a theme everywhere in the Bible – the coming together of the people of God for the worship of God. The prayer of this pastor’s heart is that they would be enabled to continue to meet together.

May the Lord make you increase and abound in love

All too often we get tunnel visioned on what we don’t like and the things with which we don’t agree. We get vocal about our opposition to the newest bill that was passed or the lifestyle choices of those who live differently than we live. Here the prayer turns to enhancing and nurturing what we’re for instead of what we’re against.

The two words used here – increase and abound – are kind of two sides of the same coin. It’s like he’s praying that love would abound abundantly in us. A bit repetitive I know! But the point is that this concept is vital to who we are as Christians. Yet it’s so easy to leave this one by the wayside when we’re upset or don’t get our way.

Establish your hearts blameless in holiness…at the coming of Jesus.

There is a ton packed in this little section but we’ll focus on just one part of it. This is all about God’s acting for us. Have you noticed that every single verb here has the same subject. The same actor. The same person making it happen. In each of these God is the actor. Jesus is the one who’s bringing these things to be.

He’s the one who will make us holy and blameless. This is such a great part of the prayer. We don’t make ourselves good enough or holy or blameless. No matter how hard we try, it just doesn’t work. But God in His Son Jesus, has already made us blameless. Now the prayer is that we are kept in that blameless and holy way of life until Jesus returns.

The prayer of the pastor’s heart is one of togetherness, love for one another and submission to who Jesus is. We pray other things too but this is the heart and soul of all we pray for the people God entrusted to us. And this is my prayer for you even if I don’t know you personally just yet.

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