Why should we not sin?

“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?”

- Romans 6:1-2

If our acceptance before God is based entirely on the righteousness of Christ, and consequently not on our performance, then why should we not sin? If we were just to let ourselves do whatever we wanted, wouldn’t that relieve a lot of pressure? And if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that the reason we sin is because we enjoy it. So why not relax a little and get the best of both worlds?

There are many good and valid answers to this question. The one that’s most compelling to me is that when we sin, we don’t get the best of both worlds. When we sin, we force ourselves to miss out on the greatest possible experience of the greatest possible good. In its place, we get something that is both infinitely less valuable and that by its very nature keeps us from that which is best. Any way you cut it, that’s just not worth it.

God is infinitely more valuable than anything that is not God. He is our greatest possible good. And as a Christian, you get to experience this good through the most intimate of all possible relationships: God living through you. You cannot get any closer to God than that. You cannot experience God in any more significant way. To have God express Himself through you is the greatest possible way to get the greatest possible gift. That’s what it means to “walk in newness of life” (v 4). We get to do that! People who haven’t died to sin are “free in regard to righteousness” (v 20) – that is, they are free from life. All they get is what’s left over when life is taken out of the picture, which is a rotten deal.

Grace is God's gift of himself to sinners. When we see that sin keeps us from what’s best, and that we have been freed from sin so that we can have what’s best in the most profound, personal, intimate way possible, then the idea that we should sin to increase grace becomes self-contradictory. Sin keeps us from enjoying what grace gives us. The nature of sin is such that you cannot enjoy both God and sin at the same time. When we’re faced with temptation, we’re faced with a choice: the easy, temporary, God-excluding pleasure of death, or the difficult, eternal, death-excluding pleasure of life.

What shall we say then?

Hebrews 13:7-8: Looking Forward by Looking Back

Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

- Hebrews 13:7-8

When Scripture speaks of the faith that should motivate us to live for Christ, it speaks almost exclusively of a forward-looking faith. Backward-looking faith, including things like gratitude for past blessings, is important, as we will see. But when Scripture speaks of the kind of faith that should drive godly behavior, it almost always speaks of faith in what God has promised for the future. At the same time, Scripture speaks repeatedly about the importance of backward-looking faith, as it does even in this passage. And the connection between past-based faith, future-based faith and motivation is an important one. The only way we will live the kind of life God calls us to live is if we trust him for the future. And one of the most important ways to build trust in the future promises of God is by looking to the past. We look back for the purpose of looking forward.

In this case, the writer of Hebrews is urging us to look back on those who have benefited us spiritually by teaching the word of God to us. This can apply both to those who have taught us directly and to those who have handed the word of God down through past centuries. Whether we have known them personally or have been separated from them by many years, the lives of those who have faithfully taught the word of God have a powerful lesson to teach us.

But their lesson is not about them. Notice that we are not called specifically to imitate them, but to imitate their faith. Their conduct was a result of their faith, and we are to imitate that faith so that our conduct will be like their conduct, and will be used by the Lord to produce the same result. Look at what the writer says about them: their faith produced conduct which produced a result. We are supposed to consider the result, because when we see how valuable the result was, we will recognize the value of what produced it. The result was produced by a particular type of conduct, which was produced by a particular type of faith. And their faith is what we are supposed to imitate.

The question then becomes, what was so great about their faith? Was it, in some general way, their elevated ability to believe? Did they possess some kind of psychological or personal holistic superiority? Are they a particularly good example for us simply because they could rightly be described as people of eminent faith? To extend the question one step further, could we benefit in this way from the example of faith found in sincere Muslims or Hindus or atheists?

The simple answer is no, and the reason is simple. Faith has no value in and of itself. It is only as valuable as its object, and only as a way to take hold of its object. Faith could perhaps be described as a hand that takes hold of unseen things for us. If the unseen things of which it takes hold are valuable, then that faith is worthwhile. On the other hand, if it connects us to things that are either illusions or dangerous, then the faith itself is empty at best and destructive at worst. This is very important to keep in mind in a society where faith is treated as an unqualified virtue regardless of its object.

Perhaps a different example would be helpful. Imagine yourself using a metal detector on a beach, when all of a sudden the device begins responding to something. You begin to dig, and the beeping grows louder. Suddenly, two feet or so under the sand, you hit something solid. After some effort, you unearth a large, flat metal box, clasped tightly shut. You take it home, and as carefully as possible, you loosen the clasps. The box is shut in such a way as to be completely airtight, and when you finally open it, what you find amazes you. It is a large painting – a portrait – of a somber looking old man sitting in a straight-backed chair. At the bottom of the portrait is the signature – “Whistler”. Some eager phone calls to art galleries confirm that you have evidently unearthed a work long thought to have been lost: Whistler’s Father. The painting is perfectly preserved, and is virtually priceless. You are the first person to have seen it for at least a hundred years. (And as far as you know, you are the first person in history to have found something of significant value while searching a beach with a metal detector.)

What would you do? What would people think of you if you were to call an art gallery and offer to put yourself on display with your metal detector? A sufficiently avant-garde gallery might be interested for the sheer absurdity of it, but what would a normal gallery really be interested in? Not in you as the finder, or in your metal detector as the tool by which you found it, but in the treasure itself. And this is the way it works with faith. Like a metal detector, faith has the potential to connect us with great hidden treasure. And like a metal detector, faith is only valuable if it actually accomplishes this. The superiority of faith over a metal detector is a question of degree. The treasure to be apprehended by faith is infinitely more valuable than a priceless work of art.

This story reminds me of a comedian who thought it would be fun to bury metal objects on the beach with things like “you’re a loser” or “get a life” written on them. Faith is similar to a metal detector in that it has the potential to connect us with unseen treasures. On the same token, if a metal detector points us to a tin can with “you’re a loser” written on it, or perhaps to a land mine, such a device would be either worthless or hazardous. It is only worth what it gets for us. And it works the same way with faith.

And all this fits with exactly where this passage points us. The faith of those who taught us about Christ was great, but not because they were simply great people of faith. Their faith in Christ was great because Christ is great. Their faith in Christ produced service to Christ, which produced a result empowered by Christ. To phrase things as Jesus did, their abiding in him produced lasting fruit (John 15:4-16). This is abundantly clear from verse 8. The reason we are to look back on the lives of faithful believers and imitate their faith is that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever”. The Jesus who was faithful and sufficient and merciful and holy and wise and loving in the past for men like Abraham and Paul and William Tyndale and John Newton is the same Jesus who will be all those things for you and me today and tomorrow and forever. Consider the results of their conduct, and imitate their faith in him.

Enduring for the Elect

Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel, for which I suffer hardship even to imprisonment as a criminal; but the word of God is not imprisoned. For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.

- 2 Timothy 2:8-10

Paul, conscious that he is very near to the end of his earthly life, is writing to Timothy about what motivates him to endure his difficult circumstances. He is imprisoned as a criminal, which would have been frustrating at multiple levels. We don’t know exactly what form this imprisonment took – he could have been in a rat-infested dungeon, or he could simply have been chained to a soldier under house arrest. Either way, this is something we would prefer to have changed. But even more frustrating than his physical condition would have been the limitations his condition placed on his ability to advance the gospel. How much can you really do when you’re in chains?

Yet Paul understands that even though he is severely restricted by his imprisonment, the word of God is under no such restrictions. It will both go where the Lord wants it to go and do what the Lord wants it to do. It cannot be held captive. In fact, God had even used Paul’s imprisonment to advance the gospel (Phil. 1:12-14). And once God’s word is sent out, it has power to break through otherwise impenetrable walls to both reach and change peoples’ hearts. Hebrews 4:12 reminds us that “the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

The fact that God’s word is not imprisoned drives Paul to “endure all these things”. And he includes in this statement of endurance a paradoxical idea. He says he endures all these things “for the sake of those who are chosen”. It’s clear enough in Scripture that God has chosen some for salvation from before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4); but the problem is with the way we naturally respond to this. If God is so completely and unchangeably in control of this, why would we bother to exert any effort or make any sacrifice to be involved with the process? Why would we endure anything, if our lack of endurance won’t change either God’s plan or his ability to execute it?

But Paul doesn’t demand an answer that question. In fact, he is energized by the fact that he is privileged to participate in the infallible plan of God. He is not paralyzed by the mystery. Instead, he is energized by the opportunity.

God’s word cannot be kept inside stone walls or outside of them. It is not imprisoned. It has power that cannot be withstood by any force. And God has chosen that his word should reach the hearts of certain people. He has made an unalterable decree that people would be reached by an unstoppable power. And we get to be a part of that. We get to be on the winning team, and experience the power of the grace of God firsthand as we see it change lives. Let’s embrace both mystery and opportunity, and endure all these things for the sake of those who are chosen – whoever they may be.

Being content with what you have

Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, "I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you, " so that we confidently say, "The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What will man do to me? "

- Hebrews 13:5-6

The love of money is a dangerous thing. If we were to make a list of the sins we consider the most serious, love for money might easily be left off that list. Compared to the “big” sins, this one seems fairly mundane to us. Yet the love of money is insidious. Like carbon monoxide, it can kill you before you even recognize its presence. It can “plunge men into ruin and destruction” (1 Timothy 6:9). Judas serves as a graphic example of this reality.

We know that in order for harmful desires to be defeated, they cannot simply be suppressed. They need to be replaced by something superior. In this passage, the replacement for the love of money is “being content with what you have”. And we have a lot. Even with all of the financial stresses that most of us deal with, God has supplied us materially with far more than we actually need to survive. He has provided us with many good things to enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17).

But is that what is meant here by “what you have”? Is he giving us the same talk that we give our kids about how thankful the starving kids in Liberia would be to have a fraction of what we’ve got? If he is, we’re left with a serious problem. The problem lies in the fact that all that stuff can be taken from us, and that if it is taken from us, the instruction to be content with what we have still stands.

So do we have a foundation for contentment that will remain in place even if our material possessions are stripped from us? We do, and the writer of Hebrews makes it clear what he’s intending: we are to be content with what we have, “for He Himself has said, ‘I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you’”. In other words, what we’re called to be content with is God. And not only is God infinitely superior to every earthly blessing we have, but He has also promised that He will never be taken from us.

When we take hold of the fact that our one infinitely superior Treasure can never be taken from us, contentment will be established and fear will be destroyed. For if God is for us, what can anyone else do to us? They can take away many things from us, but only those things which will soon be taken from us anyway. They can take our money but not our treasure, our house but not our home, our head but not our life. They cannot separate us from the love and grace of God, which He will put on display by showing kindness to us in Christ forever (Ephesians 2:7).

You are grass... but here is your God!

A voice says, "Call out."
Then he answered, "What shall I call out?"
All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
When the breath of the LORD blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.
Get yourself up on a high mountain,
O Zion, bearer of good news,
Lift up your voice mightily,
O Jerusalem, bearer of good news;
Lift it up, do not fear.
Say to the cities of Judah,
"Here is your God!"
- Isaiah 40:6-9

Woven through Isaiah 40 are the corresponding themes of man’s frailty and God’s sufficiency. Verse 8, which we so often see on pretty little plaques in people’s hallways, takes on much greater significance when we recognize what is being referred to by the statement “the grass withers, the flower fades”. It’s not talking about grass and flowers; it’s talking about us! “All flesh is grass” (v 6); “Surely the people are grass” (v 7); even the greatest figures in humanity are scarcely able to take root in the ground before “He merely blows on them, and they wither” (v 24).

This is not good news for those looking for the typical kind of self-esteem. But there is better news available to us – namely, that God offers His sufficiency to us. We see this in verse 9 with the proclamation that was to be proclaimed from the top of a mountain: “Here is your God!” This is the answer to all our problems, the provision for all our needs; and yet how reluctant we often are to accept this as our solution. I want to look to myself for the answer. I want to be self-sufficient, because that will allow me to be self-governing. But grass is not self-governing, no matter how much it would like to be.

When we find ourselves attempting to practice self-dependence, and God puts us in a situation that’s beyond our personal capacity to handle, it’s easy to assume that God is not being fair. If God expects me to handle a given situation in a way that’s pleasing to Him, and I can’t see how it’s possible for me to do that (either because I can’t figure out the proper method or because I lack the strength to do it), I can easily develop the sense that God is calling me to do something that is impossible – which would, of course, be unreasonable. But what I need to recognize is that it’s only impossible in one sense, and that it’s altogether possible in another sense. I simply need to be humble enough to take hold of that other sense, by taking hold of the supply that God offers me.

Those who “grow weary and tired” and who “stumble badly” (v 30) are called to wait for the Lord. The question is, how long? Sometimes the answer is, until your point of absolute need. God often doesn’t supply our need until we actually need it, lest we continue to operate under the mistaken assumption that we devised a way to have our needs met. It is only when we have walked through a situation with the conscious knowledge that we are personally insufficient to handle it, that we are maximally free to recognize God’s sufficiency in our weakness, and to reflect the glory to Him.

Our tendency is to either see ourselves as tireless, strong and immortal, or to become despondent when we experience our own frailty – to say either “I can do it”, or “I can’t do it”. Neither of these statements is sufficient in itself. Each, left on its own, will dishonor God.

Our hope is not in man, who is grass. But there is hope for man in God. We are frail, weak and temporary. But God’s strength can make us into something useful. Our hope is in God’s transfer of His tirelessness to us.

We see in this passage the picture of an incomprehensibly powerful, conquering sovereign who merely blows on the rulers of the earth and they wither like grass, and who counts the nations as nothing in comparison with Himself; and interwoven with these descriptions of absolute sovereignty are promises that He will direct that power wholeheartedly toward the benefit of His people.

It scares me, on the one hand, to consider what the next impossible-for-me situation might be. When will the next tragic death happen? When will I next be faced with a counseling situation that’s out of my league? When will my wife reveal to me something in my life that needs to change? When will the pressures of family, ministry, education, and the details of life next pile so high that my calendar simply won’t fit them all? When will one of these items slip, and create major problems?

Life is intimidating, and I am insufficient in myself to handle it. And yet I do not ultimately lack access to the sufficiency, because God promises to provide it for me. Maybe not when I want, or by the means I want, but when I really need it, and by means which will reflect most effectively the source of the supply.

Scripture is full of examples of individuals called on to do things for which they felt personally ill-equipped. Jeremiah’s response to God’s call on His life was “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” God’s response to Jeremiah was that his personal capacity was not the issue. God directed his life, and God would supply what he needed. An even more profound example is found in Moses’ call to return to Egypt. Moses objected and/or excused himself from this call at least four times in the course of his conversation with God. And his constant objection had to do with himself. God never corrected Moses’ sense of personal inadequacy; rather, He promised over and over to be adequate for him. On the one hand, I can’t imagine arguing with a miracle-working burning bush; on the other hand, I’m sure I do similar things all the time, and on the same basis that Moses used. With him, I am called to look away from myself to the One who is sufficient to supply the otherwise impossible.

That They Might Live for Him

For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.

- 2 Corinthians 5:14-15

Who are you living for? Or to rephrase it for English teachers, for whom are you living? Either way, when you make decisions about how you’re going to spend the next twenty minutes or the next twenty years, whose priorities drive those decisions? Do you make those decisions with a conscious awareness of the fact that you belong to someone other than yourself?

In our culture, possibly more than in any other, we bristle at the idea of being owned by someone. We’re not used to absolute authority. In our world of at-will employment and no-fault divorce, we're unaccustomed to permanent relationships that require us to serve another without condition. But Scripture makes it clear that we are in just such a relationship. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 describes this by telling us that we are not our own, because we have been bought with a price.

Much could be said about the fact that we are owned by Christ. But for now, it is worth simply considering the fundamental fact that we belong to Him and not to ourselves. We are not volunteers or independent contractors or employees. In the happiest imaginable way, we are His property. Therefore, His will takes absolute precedence over our own.

This passage makes it clear that this relationship has been brought about by Christ’s death and resurrection on our behalf. Christ’s work for us should result in our living for Him, and it’s important to understand just how these two things are connected. Our motivation to live for Him is not simply a matter of gratitude, but of ownership. It’s one thing to serve someone who has paid your debts. It’s another thing to serve someone who has purchased you.

It is also important to remember that while Christ’s will is the ruling principle in our lives, we are still called to make real decisions. We don’t have every required step of our lives listed out for us. But we are to make those decisions in light of the priorities of the One to whom we belong, and to whom we will each give an account.

And what is the central priority of that One? It is love – first to God, and then to man. So this living for the One who died for us is another way of describing the idea of being controlled by the love of Christ. Christ died and rose again for us, so that we might be united to His death and resurrection, and might as a result live a life that is subject to His universal rule. In other words, a life controlled by the love of Christ.

May we prayerfully pursue this life together by the power of His Spirit and His Word.

They Who Live

For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.

- 2 Corinthians 5:14-15

Paul writes in this passage that those who are controlled by the love of Christ are that way because they have “concluded this”. Now we are taking the time to consider just what “this” is in all its implications, that we might conclude the same things, and be controlled by the love of Christ as well.

We have given some thought to the realities that Christ died for us, and that we have joined him in his death. The next reality we must consider is the fact that we, having been joined to Christ, have been joined not only to His death but also to His resurrection. This is implied by the term “they who live”, and is echoed throughout the New Testament, most notably in Romans 6:1-13.

Death matters because of the separation it causes, and life matters because of the connection it accomplishes. So to say that you are alive to God and dead to sin means that at the most fundamental level, you are now connected to God and separated from sin, whereas the opposite used to be true of you.

So what are the implications of your new life in Christ? There are many, and one of the most glorious is the fact that you win. God the Father raised Christ from the dead as a sign of Christ’s victory over sin. And the fact that we share in His resurrection means that we get to share in His victory. This is true both in terms of our position before God and in terms of our day-to-day life. Sin has been conquered for us, so now we can conquer sin. The victory Christ accomplished means that we can now both live before God and live for God.

This new life not only connects us to God, but it also empowers us to live for Him. This must have been part of what Paul was thinking about when he wrote that it was his ambition to know Christ “and the power of His resurrection” (Phil. 3:10).

You have been given a fresh start, and that freshness never goes away. You will always have new life in Christ. Even when the feelings of newness go away, even when you have fallen back into the old failures of your previous life (or better said, your previous death), you are always just as newly-alive in Christ as you were when you first trusted Him.

These realities are not merely things that have been proclaimed about us in some judicial sense. In some mysterious way they have actually happened to us. They have really changed us on the inside. And as a result, they should change us on the outside. Living a new life is a natural extension of having a new life. That is what Paul mentions next, and that is what we will plan to explore in a later post.

Therefore All Died

For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.

- 2 Corinthians 5:14-15

We have been working through this passage together over the past few posts, motivated by the principle that if we are able to come to the same conclusions that Paul had come to, we will be controlled by the love of Christ like he was. We are doing this slowly, one concept at a time, because it takes time to process these things in such a way that they actually affect they way we think.

Therefore all died. Assuming you are a believer in Christ, this means that you died. You may not feel like any such thing has happened to you, but it has. Scripture is, in fact, full of references to the death of believers who, by all external accounts, are very much alive. Colossians 3:3 describes this by saying that “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Romans 6:1-11 describes this reality in detail, and concludes with this charge: “consider yourselves to be dead to sin.” We are told to believe a reality that we cannot see, and that we often don’t seem to experience, but is a reality nonetheless.

In Paul’s description of this principle in Romans 6, he makes it clear that the reason for our death is the fact that we have been joined to Christ. And having been joined to Christ, everything that belongs to Him now belongs to us, including His death for our sin. The fact that you have been joined to the death of Christ means that His death serves both to forgive you for your sin and to free you from it.

And this wasn’t just a judicial or symbolic transaction. You are not just dead to sin positionally. Your participation in the death of Christ has brought about such a change in your essential nature that it forms the basis for Paul’s emphatic question, “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:2) The question is whether we are going to view ourselves according to the flesh, or according to the word of God (2 Cor. 5:16-17).

If we are dead to sin because of the death that Christ died for sin on our behalf, how should this affect our view of sin? How should it affect our approach to dealing with sin? Does it leave any room for complacency, or for toying with temptation? If we understand it properly, it leaves room for nothing but the love of Christ to control us.

The even greater news is that because of our union with Christ, we participate not only in His death but in His resurrection. We are joined to His life. That is the reality we will plan to explore next month.

One Died for All

For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.

- 2 Corinthians 5:14-15

In the last post we considered the idea that if we were to conclude the same things Paul had concluded – that is, if we were to take hold of these realities for what they really are – then we, too, could experience what it means to be controlled by the love of Christ. To that end, we will be stopping to consider each of the things that Paul had concluded, so that they might find their way into our minds and hearts.

One died for all. That one, of course, is Jesus. And the fact that He died for all means He died for you and for me. We were guilty and needed to be cleaned, and Jesus came to offer Himself as a guilt offering (Isaiah 53). We could not clean ourselves, either by the law or by our own sincere efforts or by any other means.

Sin is so serious that it requires death as its punishment. It is a capital offense. That is what the sacrificial system in the Old Testament was designed to communicate. As Hebrews 9:22 puts it, “without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” But we also know from Hebrews 10:4 that “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins”. God graciously allowed the sacrifices in the Old Testament, when they were combined with faith in the hearts of the ones offering them, to cover sin. But ultimately, covering sin is not sufficient. Sin must be taken away. And that is the difference between what animal sacrifices could do for us, and what the sacrifice of Jesus does for us. His sacrifice – the blood he shed in dying for us – takes away our sin.

The death of Christ paid for all the sins that you and I have committed; and if He had not died, we would have had no way to remove those sins from ourselves. We would have stood before God covered with the filth and shame of our own choices; we would have had no remedy for it, and no escape from His righteous anger.

The only one who could have died for you did just that. Do you have fifteen minutes this week to stop and consider this one reality? If we don’t chew our food, we don’t digest it properly, and we don’t get the nourishment from it that we could. It works the same way with spiritual truth. If we don’t slow down enough to consider it carefully, we will never absorb it in the life-changing way Paul describes here.

Let’s make time to integrate Christ’s death for us into our understanding of everything, that the love of Christ might control us.

Meditations on 2 Corinthians 5:14-15

For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.

- 2 Corinthians 5:14-15

Sometimes we need to be reminded of the most basic principles of the faith, and reminded in such a way that those realities grip us as they should. We can be so inoculated to Bible language that concepts often don’t get past the words used to communicate them. And that’s not because there’s a problem with the words. Rather, at least part of the problem is caused by the fact that we have habitually not lived the concepts communicated by the words, which eventually leads to dullness of ears and hearts.

Does the love of Christ control you? When you really stop and think about it, do you find that the love of Christ finds a place – any place – in the decisions you make? What do you really want out of life? What you really look forward to, either this evening or in twenty years? How much does Christ have to do with those desires?

Some of you, I hope, will find that Christ is very much at the center of all these things in your life. You are a much-needed example to the rest of us. Some of you, on the other hand, are more like me. When you and I are honest about what goes on in our hearts – and what doesn’t – it becomes difficult to describe ourselves as people who are controlled by the love of Christ. That’s not to say that there is none of this quality in us; just not nearly enough.

So if you find that the love of Christ does not control you as it should, what do you do about it? In this passage, being controlled by the love of Christ is shown to be caused by having reached a certain conclusion. If we can conclude the same things – really conclude them, and own them for ourselves – then that truth can have the same impact on us. Concluding this, though, does not come passively. It takes time, mental effort and dependence on God to work in our hearts.

Over the next few posts, I would like to meditate with you on the various aspects of the conclusion that Paul describes here. If internalizing these conclusions can lead to a life compelled by the love of Christ, it will be more than worth the effort. I invite you to join me in that quest, and in prayer that God will make His truth effective in our hearts.

Are we troubled with him?

"Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. " (Matthew 2:1-3)

I’ve wondered at times what is meant by the last statement in this passage – “and all Jerusalem with him.” It’s easy enough to understand why Herod would have been troubled by this news. Herod had a clue, however faint, of the threat this “King of the Jews” represented to his authority.

But why was “all Jerusalem” disturbed with him? We’re talking about the Jews, who were looking eagerly for the appearance of their Messiah. Why would the fulfillment of their greatest hope have been troubling to them? It’s particularly ironic that Jerusalem joined Herod in being troubled, since he stood as the most prominent representation of the bondage from which they awaited deliverance. Perhaps, even though they were ruled over by Rome, their preference at the time was to endure whatever hardships that involved in order to maintain some sense of peace; whereas the arrival of a new King might create too great a shift for that peace to survive.

I wonder also if this sense of trouble had something to do with the way the news was announced. The magis’ statement was not, “Where’s that cute little baby with the glowing head? For we saw his picture on a card, and have come to gaze serenely at him.” The Magi had come looking for a King – someone who not only posed a threat to the authority of a Gentile king, but who would claim absolute authority over the Jews, thereby disturbing whatever remnant of peace they were currently clinging on to.

The question then becomes, what about us? Do we find ourselves troubled by the entrance of a king into our lives? Do we fear that it will shake things up too much, or inconvenience us in a way we’re not prepared for? Do we prefer Baby Jesus over King Jesus? I fear that often, we would rather constrain the role of Jesus to a nice little Christmas gift from God, who brings us seasonal cheer but doesn’t claim the absolute right to rule our lives.

This Christmas season, even as we consider the wonder of all that God did in sending His Son for us, let’s carefully avoid any attempt to take Jesus off His throne and put Him back in the manger. Let’s trust Him to rule our lives, and even to shake them up as He sees fit, for our good and His glory.