Easter

God created us to reflect Him.

Genesis 1:26-27- Then God said, ‘’Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

That's the account of creation in Genesis 1. Genesis chapter 2 zooms in to give a closer account of the creation of mankind.

Genesis 2:7- The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

All other life, including the animals, was formed by the spoken command of God and created according to its own kind. But here, God Himself gets personally and intimately involved in creation, forming man and breathing the breath of life into his nostrils. This is a differentiation that separates mankind from all of other created life; that we are not created in the mere image of our kind; rather, we are created in the image of the creator.

Psalm 139:13-14- For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

In the same way that God was personally involved with the creation of Adam, he was personally and intimately involved in our creation. We too were created as image bearers of God. And it is very important that, like the Psalmist, we know that full well- because I can’t think of another factor that will define you more than your understanding of your origin and your subsequent identity.

Anyway, in creation, mankind, both man and woman, fully alive, reflected fully, the glory of God, as we were intended to.

Then, we fell.

In the fall, both Adam and Eve, the mother and father of humanity, wilfully disobeyed God in eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the one tree that they were commanded to not eat from. In doing so, through their rebellion, sin entered into the world and it is sin that causes us to not fully reflect God as we should.

Romans 3:23 declares- ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’. In sin, and because of sin, we fall short of the glory of our intended creation and we do mirror God as we should.

Romans 6:23- For the wages of sin is death….

But there is one that has reflected God perfectly. His name is Jesus.

Perhaps the most well known verse of scripture in the world proclaims that the reason for Jesus was that ‘God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but would have eternal life’’ In that 'the wages of sin is death' and 'all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God', all of us found ourselves in need of a saviour. And Jesus came to be that saviour. Jesus came because without his intervention, we were on a pathway to perishing and because of His great love for us, He was compelled to come to our aid. This isn’t what we should remember at Easter- this is what we should remember every waking moment of our lives.

Romans 5:6-8- You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

God became flesh and was born.

Jesus.

He lived a life without fault; without sin, so that when he went to the cross, he was completely innocent, not carrying the weight of His own sin, so he could take the weight of our sin upon himself.

Jesus didn’t smile on the cross.

There wasn’t a chocolate bunny or hot cross bun in sight.

The cross was bloody, violent and painful for Jesus.

But the physical pain paled in comparison to the agony of the last moments of his life-as he hung on the cross, the Bible records that he cried out ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’

At that moment, Jesus experienced, for the first time in his life, the separation from God that comes as a result of Sin.

Not long after, He breathed his last breath- but death could not hold him down.

Three days later, Jesus rose from the dead.

If death was sin’s ultimate victory, than the resurrection was the ultimate evidence of the victory won for us by Jesus over Sin.

And now, on account of Him, we, though deserving of death on account of our sin, can live on account of his righteousness.

So what then?

Romans 8:29- For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.

So we, as Christians, are to seek in life, by God’s empowering grace, to become more and more like Jesus. As we become more like Jesus, we reflect God’s image more and more, as we originally were intended to when we were created. Ultimately, this takes place in death.

1 Corinthians 15:49- And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the man from heaven.

What that means is that in sin, we bear the image of Adam. But in Jesus, as we become more and more like Him, we are able to reflect God better and better. And eventually, we will die and we will rise and Jesus died and rose; and we will be restored to our intended state, perfect reflections of God’s image.

Fear God?

1 Peter 1:13-21-Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy." Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.

There are three interlinked commands in this passage of scripture.

• First, that we would live in the living hope- that we put our hope, our confident expectation, in Jesus and in his grace, for salvation.
• Secondly, that we would live in holiness- that by His grace, we would learn to ‘say no to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.

The third is this;

• that we would live in ‘reverent fear’.

What does Peter mean by this? What does it mean for the believer in Christ to live in ‘reverent fear’?

The whole idea of ‘fearing God’ is something of an ‘elephant in the room’- it is an important and obvious topic that we see in the Word of God that is hardly discussed, because the discussion can make us feel uncomfortable. But the Bible teaches us that God is to be feared; and so we need to wrestle with what it means for us as believers to reverently fear God in the way that this passage of scripture commands.

There is a difference between reverently fearing God and being afraid of God. God wants you to reverently fear Him; He does not want you to be afraid of Him.

Parents will understand the difference. You want your children to not be afraid of you; to know that you desire a close relationship with them; to know that you love them deeply. But you also what them to revere you enough to obey you; that when you say ‘don’t run out on the road’, they take heed of what you say. You do not want them to be afraid of you, but you want them to revere you and live with a healthy fear of the outcome of their disobedience of you. Not a fear that cripples, but a fear that protects and preserves- a fear that will keep them off the road.

So, Peter tells us to live out our lives as believers with a reverent fear. A reverent fear that will keep us off the broad road of sin that leads to our destruction. The evidence as to whether we are full of or lacking in this reverent fear of our Heavenly Father is best revealed to us by our obedience or disobedience in that moment of temptation- in the moment when we are faced with the choice to turn towards God and away from sin or turn away from God and towards sin.

This is how these 3 commandments of this passage of 1st Peter interlink. He wants us to reverently fear Him in a way that causes us to put our hope in Him and His grace and to abandon sin that we may draw nearer to Him, desiring to be with Him and to be as He is- holy. These three commandments are as one.

Peter gives us this reason to live in reverent fear in verse.18;

1 Peter 1:18-19- For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

To reverently fear God is to treat the blood of Christ and the grace it brings to us as being precious by choosing God over sin.

To do the opposite is the opposite.

Hebrews 10 picks this up;

Hebrews 10:26-29- If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?

There is a difference between reverently fearing God and being afraid of God. God wants you to reverently fear Him so that you would not have cause to be afraid of Him.

The story of the ‘fall of man’ in Genesis is a perfect example of this. God put Adam into the Garden of Eden, and commanded him, as we read in Genesis 2:16-

Genesis 2:16-17-You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

Evidently, Adam did not reverently fear God enough to keep His commands; he disobeyed and rebelled against God, eating from the fruit of the tree that God commanded Him not to eat from. It was at this point that Sin entered into the world. And as a consequence of this Sin, Adam became afraid of God. He heard the Lord God coming and he tried to hide from Him. We read from verse 9 of chapter 3;

Genesis 3:9-10- But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?" He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid…’’

When we disobey and rebel against God, which is what sin is; we demonstrate a lack of that healthy type of fear towards God that causes us to shun sin and unrighteousness.

The difference between one who reverently fears God and one who has cause to be afraid of God is the one who reverently fears God runs to Him, away from sin, and the one who has cause to be afraid runs from Him, towards sin.

John 3:19-20- This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

Fear God. Come into the light.

The Big Pile

What I aim to do in this blog is to help you to see in Scripture that if you are a Christian, to be anything other than a generous giver is unacceptable.

2 Corinthians 9:6-7- Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

When we first come to faith in Christ, we come in a state of opposition to him; meaning that we are quite the opposite of him.

When I first came to Jesus, one of the most attractive things about him to me was that he was so unlike me; he was so radically different to me, in so many ways. Then I found out that He had given up His life for me so that I could follow him ‘through a small gate and down a narrow road that led to life’.

So I began following Him and I made it my aspiration in life to become like Him. That’s what being a Christian is all about. I looked at Him and I looked at me, and I realized that if I wanted to be like him, I needed to change. And so I invited the Holy Spirit to speak to me and to work on me to help me to change and to be more like Christ in various ways. This is an ongoing work that takes place in the life of the Christian- it’s called ‘sanctification’.

• When I first met Jesus, I was really unkind. Then I discovered that Jesus was kind. So I set my sights on becoming kind, like he was, and he is kind. And by God’s grace, I am now kinder than I was, and I pray that He would continue to work on me to make me kinder.
• When I first met Jesus, I was really impatient. Then I discovered that Jesus was patient. So I set my sights on becoming patient, like he was, and he is patient. And by God’s grace, I am now more patient than I was, and I pray that He would continue to work on me to make me more patient.
• When I first met Jesus, I was really uncompassionate. Then I discovered that Jesus was compassionate. So I set my sights on becoming compassionate, like he was, and he is compassionate. And by God’s grace, I am now more compassionate than I was, and I pray that He would continue to work on me to make me more compassionate.

This is sanctification.We need to allow this process of sanctification to work on us and in us to become more like Jesus.

There are two types of people in the world; givers and takers. When I became a Christian and came into the church I was a taker. I was very selfish in the way that I used my money.

Then I discovered that Jesus is not a taker, he is a giver.

I discovered that Jesus is not selfish, he is selfless.

And so if Jesus was, and is, generous; and I am following Jesus, I wanted to become generous like him. So I set my sights on being generous. I began tithing and giving and practicing being generous any opportunity I got. And by God’s grace, I am now more of a giver than I was; I am now more selfless than I was; I am now more generous that I was; and I pray that He would continue to work on me to make me more generous. By God’s grace, He has made less of a taker and more of a giver- that’s sanctification.

So there are givers and takers in the world, but Paul isn’t writing to the world; he’s writing to the church.He doesn’t write to takers; he writes to givers. In his mind he could not reconcile that somebody would claim to be a follower of Jesus and not be a giver. The biggest point of this passage; 2 Corinthians 9; is not that you should give. It is that God gave; and God gives; and that we should be like God. And if you struggle to want to give, it’s probably because your image of God is wrong; you view Him as a taker and not as a giver.

Why should we give? Because God gave and God gives and God is a giver.

The question for us as Christians, and the one that reading Paul’s 2^nd letter to the Corinthians should have us asking ourselves as Christians, is not ‘should I give’? It is ‘how am I giving?’ Am I giving like Jesus gave? Am I following his example in my generosity?

So Paul talks about two types of giving; how to give and how not to give.He instructs us not to give sparingly and reluctantly, but instead to give generously and freely.

The one who gives sparingly and reluctantly is one who gives some, but withholds. They approach God with their money like this;

‘’God, I will give to you what I will give to you and I will hold the rest back for myself. What’s the least that I need to give to follow Christ? 10%, I heard? Deal. Lock me in on those terms. I will give you 10%. I will keep 90%. This small pile is yours. This big pile is mine.’’

What if God wants some from that big pile?

What if God wants all of the big pile?

The question that we are asked by scripture is this; who is the master of our lives- God, or the big pile? Either the big pile belongs to God, or the big pile is our God.

To not be ‘sparing’ and ‘reluctant’ in our giving is to not ‘withhold any of our pile’ from God, in the same way that He did not hold withhold or spare His son, but rather He gave Him completely over for us as a sacrificial offering, so that by His offering we could receive forgiveness of sin and liberty from death, not by our merit, but by His grace.

His pile/your pile?

What an insult!

What a spit in the face in our crucified king.

Tithing is great, but it is the bottom rung of New Testament generosity. Following Jesus begins with the total and complete surrender of your whole pile.