Psalm 100

This is one of the more familiar Psalms.  From childhood I remember Psa. 100 in every Thanksgiving service in our church.  We actually met on Thanksgiving Day, at 9:30 AM.  Just enough time to get the turkey in the oven and then off to church to rejoice in the blessing of living in America.  It was a perfect fit being a clear call to the very reason for our gathering: thanksgiving. 

Of course it’s the familiar ones, like Psalm 1 and 23 and 100, etc. that can lose their significance.  We can say them without thinking.  Just like some of our favorite hymns or worship songs.  So slow down today with Psalm 100.

·         It is, in fact, a Psalm for the nations, not just Israel.  Thus it was, and is, appropriate to use in the context of national thanksgiving, wherever we live.

·         It is a call for exuberance.  The items of note in this Psalm, as we will see, call for a joyful shout, gladness and singing.  Contrary to the old saint I remember, singing must be from the heart but by definition it must be audible. 

·         Make a joyful noise about the Creator.  This is the first theme.  The Lord (Heb. YHWH, the God of Israel, as opposed to all other supposed gods) He is God.  You must know this.  Not just knowledge from a book.  Knowledge with perception, knowledge involving a thorough acquaintance with the subject.  God has revealed Himself for this very purpose: that you might know Him!  You see Him in creation.  You see Him in your conscience (in case you didn’t know, a conscience is the Creator’s law written in your heart).  You see Him most clearly in His Son, Jesus Christ, in the pages of the Bible.

·         Once you know He made us, then you also know we are His.  That’s the way it always is: if you made it, it’s yours.  He made us so we are His.  And that’s not all bad because He has provided well for us.  We are the sheep of His pasture.  He made the world and put us in it so we would have what we need.

·         The second theme is also about the Lord.  He is good!  The pasture where we reside (i.e. planet earth) is unique in all the universe.  The temperature range is perfect for humans.  So is the tilt and rotation of the earth.  There’s plenty of water in all its forms.  He is a good Creator and Sustainer of all we enjoy.

·         But actually His goodness is better seen in His mercy and faithfulness.  His goodness in creation is amazing.  But His goodness to us, given our sin and rebellion against Him, is indescribably amazing.  He has been gracious to us by reconciling us to Himself.  In other words He has offered to reestablish us in fellowship with Him.  And He offers this without denying the fact that we deserve to be punished, eternally.  Both His mercy and truth have been satisfied by the fact that He has paid the price Himself for our sin.  He took our punishment on the cross of Christ. 

With all of this in mind, do we really need to be told to make a joyful shout to the Lord?  No, I didn’t think so.  If we will not give thanks and glorify God then, well let’s just say, we have no excuse (Rom. 1:18-21).

Rom. 6:1-14, With Christ in Baptism (3)

How do I live “under grace” rather than under law?  We have four words to consider in Romans 6.

KNOW.  First, this word appears several times.  Don’t you know (v3,16) and knowing (v6,9).  Second, none of these is a command.  None are in the Greek imperative mood.  It is assumed that you know these things, or at least you should know them.  Third, there are two types of knowledge bound up in two different words.  There is “knowledge by experience” in vs. 3 and 6.  Then there is knowledge that you just know to be true, whether it is your experience or not (v9,16). 

You could say, for example, that you know something to be true because the Bible says it is true.  In v6 we know that our “old man” (the person we were from birth until the new birth when we became a “new man”) was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be done away with (spiritual circumcision).  This is about us as believers in Christ.  We are learning this by experience from day to do.  But we first know this because, as Paul explains in v7-10, we see it in Christ.  He died and was then raised.  Death no more had dominion over Him.  That is the gospel, the good news proclaimed in the Bible.  Again, in v16, we know we are slaves to whomever we yield ourselves.  We know this because Jesus taught this (John 8:34).  What this means is that our knowledge begins with the Word of God, and then it becomes personal as we grow in Christ.

Thus, Paul reminds us in 6:1-10 of who we are as believers in Christ.  We have been spiritually baptized, joined with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection.  Related to the “know” words is the word “believe” in 6:8. We know what we know because we believe God; we take Him at His word.

RECKON.  “Reckon yourselves to be …!”  This, like “know,” is a “mind” or “thought” term.  It means to take what we “know” in v1-10 and consider it to be true of us.  Who we are in Christ must be very personal.  We must embrace it.  We must see this as real and not merely as doctrine. 

Lest we forget, we are taking considerable time to explain Col. 2:9-23, and the sufficiency of the cross.  Verses 9-10 tell us Jesus is the fullness of God, which means that those who have received Christ by faith are themselves complete!  What Paul was trying to get the Colossian believers to do was to “reckon” themselves to be who the Bible says they are, in Christ!  So, yes!  This word is an IMPERATIVE. 

YIELD.  This is the point when our renewed minds change our hearts.  Given who we are in Christ, the only sensible thing to do is to submit to Him, to take these bodies and every part of them (tongue, hands, feet, faces, everything) and give them to Him.  In other words, in light of His grace which has raised us to new life, we give ourselves to Him to use for His will (Rom. 6:12-14; 12:1).  Yes!  This is a command!

Rom. 5:14-21, With Christ in Baptism (2)

From Rom. 6:1-4 at the end of the previous post we see that our baptism “into Christ Jesus” is critical to the new life we live day by day.  Because of this baptism we can see that continuing in sin makes no sense.  Because of this baptism we see that our lives will be different than our old lives. 

Rom. 6:1-14 is explained by four words: know – reckon – yield – obey.  But before we look at those words there is a “big picture” we need to have.  The question is, who reigns or rules in our lives?  Another way to state it is, who is our Lord?  In the end, that is the one we will obey.

There are two “ruling” terms.  First is the one that means to “reign as a king.”  Death ruled as king from Adam to Moses (Rom. 5:11) because of Adam’s sin that was passed down.  By one man’s offense, death reigned (5:17a).  But if that is the case, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ (5:17b).  As sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (5:21).  Do you see the “options?”  Rom. 5 tells us as sin and death ruled as king in our lives before we received Christ, it is also possible that Christ in His grace can reign abundantly for those who have received Him by faith.  Thus, in Rom. 6:12, those believers are commanded: do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 

The other “ruling” term is the one that means to “rule as a lord.”  That is certainly similar to “reigning as a king.”  But I am letting you know the different terms because I always believe God’s words are very specific.  In Rom. 6:9 we see that once Christ was raised from the dead, death no longer had “dominion” over Him.  He was subject to death, having become a Man (Heb. 2:9).  But God raised Him from the dead: it was not possible that He should b e held by it (Acts 2:24). 

In Rom. 6:14 we see that we believers in Christ can also be free from the dominion (lordship) of sin, because we are not under law but under grace.  Remember in a previous post how we saw that the law arouses sin because of our sinful passions.  If we seek to live by the law, meaning by our best attempts to keep the law, sin will actually become stronger in us and will be our lord.  But we are free from that dominion when grace reigns in us (again, Rom. 5:21).  This is restated in Rom. 7.  In 7:1, the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives.  In 7:4: my brethren (i.e. this is true of Christians), you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another – to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.  Living an abundant, fruitful life depends on our living under grace and not the law.  All this leads to the question: how do I live under grace?  The answer is in those four words we gave you at the start of this post.

Col. 2:12; Rom. 8:9-17, With Christ in Baptism (1)

Before we move on from “spiritual circumcision” I want to note something in Colossians.  This work of Christ is “putting off” the body of the flesh.  It does not say “destroying” the body.  The Greek term means just what the English says; it is like putting off clothing.  The verb form is used in v15: “having disarmed” principalities and powers.  He did not destroy them but removed their weapons and armor.  The only other use of this word is in 3:9: Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds.  These other uses might help us to understand this work of Christ.  Moses had called on the people to circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer (Dt. 10:16), something they were unable to do and that awaited the day when this work would be done under the New Covenant.

How does this “circumcision without hands” impact our lives as Christians?  We still live in the body.  Rom. 8:10-11 tells us that our bodies are “dead because of sin.”  But “in Christ” we have been given the Holy Spirit to dwell in us, in our flesh-and-bone bodies!  While we are “dead” the Holy Spirit “is life because of righteousness.”  When we, by faith, received Christ, we received the One who became “sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).  This is our new life, the life of Christ (Gal. 2:20), and we have this life because we have His Spirit (Rom. 8:9).  Listen to God’s amazing promise in 8:11: If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.  We who were dead in sin (Eph. 1:1) have now come to be alive in Christ by the Holy Spirit.

So we have died to sin, been buried and raised to new life.  The picture of all this is “baptism.”  Obviously this is where “immersion” or “dipping,” the literal meaning of “baptize,” needs to be visualized.  Again, remember that “circumcision” and “baptism” in Col. 2 are spiritual events.  Spiritually we have been immersed in the Christ of the gospel.  As He died, was buried, and three days later was raised from the dead, so “in Christ” we have been joined with Him.  Immersion or baptism with water depicts this death-burial-resurrection as the new believer is immersed in the water (“buried with Him”) and then brought out of the water (“raised with Him). 

Let me close this post with the clear statements of Rom. 6:1-4, and then, Lord willing, in the next post we will seek to uncover some of its spiritual treasures.

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? ² Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? ³ Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? ⁴ Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Rom. 8:1-11, Circumcision Made Without Hands (2)

Paul spoke of trying to live his life “under the law.”  “With my mind,” he says, I “serve the law of God.”  But when the law came it aroused the sinful passions of the flesh.  So Paul was defeated.  “I don’t do what, in my mind, I want to do; yet I do the things that in my mind I don’t want to do.”  The problem he said was, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me (7:20).  The problem is that rule #1 (come on Paul, do evil) is strengthened or aroused by the law that Paul longs to obey.

What is the answer? The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death (8:2).  There is another law that comes into the one who is “in Christ Jesus,” who has learned to walk according to the Spirit rather than the flesh (8:1).  This law is the life of Christ.  I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me (Gal. 2:20a).  In Rom. 8:9a Paul says it like this: But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.  Christ lives in the believer by His Holy Spirit who indwelt the one who has put his faith in Christ.  We know this has happened because, if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ he is not His (8:9b).  The Holy Spirit, when we are born again, makes us alive in Christ.  If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you (8:11). This is the “eternal life” promised in the gospel (John 3:16).  This is what it means to be a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17).

But still, what does this rule #4 do?  First, it does what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh (8:3a).  Second, it condemns sin in the flesh (8:3b). That is, it takes away the power of the first law.  But again, what is the power of the first law?  It is the second law, the law of God.  What Christ did was remove the law of God by fulfilling it, by fully satisfying the righteous demands of God’s law.  Remember that Jesus promised this: I did not come to destroy but to fulfill … one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled (Matt. 5:17-18).  This fulfillment came to an end with His death on the cross.  When He said, “It is finished,” He had fulfilled the law. 

The way Paul said this in Colossians was this: having wiped out the hand-writing of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us.  And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross (2:14).  The “hand-writing of ordinances” is not a list of your sins; it is the righteous requirements of the law!  And that, my brothers and sisters, is the circumcision made without hands.  And now you can understand why, after Moses told Israel the LORD has not yet given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear, to this very day (Dt. 29:4) that He then promised that the day would come when the LORD your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live (Dt. 30:6).

Rom. 7:13-24, Circumcision Made Without Hands (1)

What Colossians says in 5 verses (2:11-15) Romans says in 3 chapters (6-8).  Spiritual “baptism” is explained in Rom. 6:1-14.  Circumcision made without hands is in Rom. 6:15-8:17. That term is not used in Romans. However both Col. 2:11 (“putting off the body of the sins of the flesh”) and Romans (7:24, “this body of death;” 8:10: “the body is dead because of sin;” 8:13: “put to death the deeds of the body”) speak of the same problem.  How are we to live our lives as Christians, given we still exist in the body we have used for sin all our lives?  The body is dead spiritually.  Yet, it is still our bodily home on this earth.  This is the problem.  Let’s study this out, beginning by identifying “four laws” in Romans 7:21-8:4.

·       In 7:21 Paul saw a law “that evil is present with me.”  The previous verses, where he describes the struggle (“I want to do good but I do evil”) is what he is talking about.  Sin is present, always.  That is “rule” #1 if you will.

·       In 7:23 Paul saw “another law in my members” (i.e. in his body).  That verse tells us this “rule” is about bringing Paul into captivity to sin.  Paul has a “mind” to do God’s law (7:22).  Yet there is something that is making this impossible for him.  What is that “something?”  Consider this carefully.  This “other” law is the law of God, whether the Mosaic law or the law of the conscience.  Don’t be aghast at this.  Paul makes this very clear.  For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death (7:5).  In 6:14 we read, For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.  The clear implication is that if we are “under law” we are being lorded over by sin.  This is the thing that the law “could not do” in 8:3.  In 8:7-8 we get the clear picture: the law of God is good because it points out my sin to me, enables me to know that my “covetousness” is sin.  But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produces all manner of evil desire.  For apart from the law sin was dead.  So “rule” #2 is: “keeping the law of God” will not produce holiness but will increase my struggles with sin.  Defeat is guaranteed!

·       In 7:23, the “law of my mind” is the third law.  In Paul’s mind he delights in the law of God (v22).  In Paul’s mind he longs to do good.  This ruled Paul’s life, even when he was living in Judaism before Christ.  So the first law says “do evil.”  The third law says “do good.”  The second law, the law of God, comes along and instead of empowering the third law it arouses the first law.  O wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death? (7:24).  Paul’s short answer to this wretchedness is, I thank God – through Jesus Christ our Lord (7:25a).  His conclusion to this point, however, in in 7:25b: So then, with my mind I myself serve (douleuō, as a bondslave) the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

·       We will continue this in the next post, but for now let me say that the fourth law is the one mentioned in 8:2: the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

Col. 2:6-13, The Sufficiency of the Cross (5)

The Savior is complete.  His work is complete.  The question now is, how does/did this work come to have the effect on those who believe in Christ that they are complete?  In other words, how do we come to be “in Christ”?

Before we speak of what Christ does, we need to see that the key for those who are “complete in Him” is their faith.  In Col. 1:22-23 we see that God will present us holy, blameless and above reproach in His sight if you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven.  Paul has already acknowledged that these people in Colossae are believers in Christ (1:4-8).  But as he says it in 2:6-7, As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith.  Some of them were tempted to add something to the work of Christ.  Paul is saying “no!”  You need to continue, growing, becoming more and more solid in your faith in Christ.  To grow in faith is not adding something to Christ or His work; faith is not a good work but an empty hand receiving.  To grow in faith is to see that faith in the all-preeminent Christ applied to more and more of your life.  If we buy into the idea that Christ did His work and now my work must be added to it, we are no longer living by faith. 

I hope you are seeing this clearly, because it is one of the greatest, liberating truths for Christians.  The same Christ of the gospel who saved us the day we first believed, is the Christ of the gospel in which we walk day by day. 

Christ’s work IN the believer, Col. 2:11-13.

Christ’s work “in” the believer is given to us with two pictures: circumcision and baptism.  Clearly, these are spiritual works.  The circumcision is “made without hands.” The baptism is a picture of our death, burial and resurrection with Christ.  We were not on the cross, in the tomb, and raised with Christ around 30AD while we were visiting Jerusalem.  Even The Twelve could not say that and they were really there.  No, our baptism is real and spiritual. 

Just as the foreskin is cut away in physical circumcision, so in spiritual circumcision there is a putting off the body of the sins of the flesh (NKJV; I realize the NU omits “of the sins.”)  From birth our physical body carried the sinful nature.  Throughout our lives our body was used to carry out the sinful passions that come from that nature.  God called on Israel to circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer (Dt. 10:16).  Stephen preached to the Jews, You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you (Ac. 7:51).  This spiritual circumcision has to do with cutting away sin.  But under the law Israel could never do this.  So God promised, the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live (Deut. 30:6).  In Christ this promise was fulfilled.