Part 17 – To suffer (series continued)   

Another benefit God built into suffering is “character,” Romans 5:4. It’s the Greek word dokime, meaning proven by testing. 

Imagine a tire manufacturer wanting to prove their tires are tough enough to survive anything. So they do a video of a car with their tires on, and they drive that car over every possible road surface – blisteringly hot desert sand, swampy bogs, winter potholes, rock infested back roads, and even over nails and broken glass. Then after testing the tires in the real world, they take the tires off the car and use powerful machines to twist and stretch them, squeeze and pull them every which way, so that after all this testing they can hold a tire up and say, “What more could you ask of our tires? As you can see, they’re absolutely genuine.” And a sticker gets slapped on the tire, “Approved” – and rightfully so, because it’s been thoroughly proven by testing. That’s dokime.

So, what if God has that in mind for us too? After a lifetime of testing us in all sorts of situations, he can rightfully hold us up and with a flourish slap a sticker on us, “Approved. The genuine article. Proven by testing.”  

Well, it’s not only what he has in mind, it’s also what he wants us to realize too, that through testing WE know we’re the genuine article too. That’s why Peter could say in 1 Peter 1:6, “In this you greatly rejoice – that for now we suffer grief in all kinds of trials,” yes, but, verse 7, “these trials come so that the proven genuineness of your faith…may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.” 

We rejoice in that, because we know this is what we suffer for, to prove to us that we are genuine. Through all the harrowing trials and tests we’ve been through, we’re still here, aren’t we? We haven’t given up on God. So face the lovely truth, that we really must have faith after all. We probably didn’t think so at the time, because we remember getting awfully close to giving up and quitting perhaps, but we came through and somehow stronger too. 

Like those tires our faith is tested to its limits, but we know what’s coming to us, a sticker from God, “Approved. Genuine through and through. Proven by testing. And not only do I know it, so do they”…(more on this tomorrow) 

Part 16 – To suffer (continued)   

According to Peter, suffering is a “blessing,” because “the Spirit of glory and of God rests on us,” 1 Peter 4:14. And Paul says we can “rejoice in our sufferings,” Romans 5:3 – “rejoice” in Greek meaning brag and boast too. Suffering is that great. 

Fortunately, Paul goes on to say why it’s so great: it’s because “we know that suffering produces perseverance.” Paul uses the Greek word thlipsis for suffering, which means a crushing weight – something Paul himself experienced in 2 Corinthians 1:8, when he was “under such pressure it was beyond his ability to endure,” to the point he “despaired even of life.” It was like having a massive weight on his chest, and he couldn’t breathe.

And that’s a blessing? It was to Paul, because being squeezed to the point he could pop got the message through to him “not to rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” When the suffering is that bad, and you’re in a downward spiral you can’t pull out of, he learnt that God is more than ready to take over the controls and stop the death spin. And being rescued by God from these “deadly death spins” happened so often to Paul he could say with confidence that in the future “God will deliver us” too, verse 10. 

It was that knowledge, gained through personal experience time and time again, that produced in Paul a remarkable “perseverance.” The Greek word he used was hypomeneo, which combines hypo meaning “under” and meneo meaning “to abide.” It’s the ability to abide under a heavy weight and take it, rather than trying to get rid of it – Paul again being a great example, because faced with enormous pressure he didn’t try to get out from under it. And what that did for him was create an amazing fearless fortitude in him. 

Like the time in Lystra he was pummelled with rocks so badly he was dragged out of the city and left for dead. But “he got up and went back into the city,” and carried on (Acts 14:19-20). He’d learnt that with the Spirit of glory resting on him he could “abide under” anything the world threw at him. It only made him stronger, just like carrying a weight does. No wonder he considered it a blessing…(more on this tomorrow) 

Part 15 – To suffer    

Hardly a positive statement that “we’re saved to suffer,” is it? For Christians, however, suffering has a wonderful purpose and outcome. Just as it did for Jesus. 

Jesus, for instance, was “crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death,” Hebrew 2:9. He was also made “perfect through suffering” so he could become “the author of our salvation,” verse 10. So suffering not only had a wonderful purpose for Jesus, it also had a wonderful outcome for us, so that we too can be crowned with the same glory and honour that he has.

Should it come as a surprise, then, that as “co-heirs with Christ,” Romans 8:17, “we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory”? Peter answers in 1 Peter 4:12, “No, don’t be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange is happening to you.” Rather, verse 13, “rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.”  

Because in suffering two things are happening: first of all, that if we’re suffering as Christians (verse 16) “the Spirit of glory and of God rests on us,” verse 14. And secondly, verse 19, “”those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.” 

So, first of all, if we’re suffering as Christians, the Spirit makes sure it’s all turning into glory for us. And secondly, one of those “glories” the Spirit gives us is the ability to see our faithful Creator working out everything we’re going through to our eternal good, so we can relax and concentrate on doing what good we can now.  

And Peter obviously wants us to grasp this, because, verse 17, “it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God,” the big question being, “Do we believe Jesus is real, enough to trust him no matter what’s happening to us?” Can we, like Jesus, “commit our spirit” to God? 

Peter accepts it’s a hard thing to do (verse 18), because suffering in whatever form is the worst experience for us humans. But God built some things into suffering that have enormous benefit for us now too…(more on this tomorrow) 

Part 14 – To live a good life    

Since both steps in making us holy are our Saviour’s doing, is there any part we play in our being holy?  

No, there is no part we play. That job was given to Jesus. “HE saved us,” Titus 3:4-5. He’s the one “purifying” us (Titus 2:14). It is totally the “grace of God (therefore) that brings salvation,” Titus 2:11. And totally “NOT because of anything we’ve done.” It’s purely “because of his mercy,” Titus 3:5.

But what is the purpose of Jesus making us holy, in both redeeming us by his death and renewing us into people like himself through the Holy Spirit? Does the book of Titus cover that too? 

Yes, Titus 1:16, which speaks of people who “claim they know God, but by their actions they deny him,” which, unfortunately, makes then “unfit for doing anything good.” They’re basically worthless, no good at all.  

But the reason Jesus “gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify himself a people that are his very own,” Titus 2:14, is that we’d be “eager to do what is good.” The purpose for Jesus making us holy, therefore, is to enable us to become really good people. And it’s not out of some weird obligation or fear or feeling of superiority that we’re good. Instead, we find ourselves “eager to do good.” We can’t help it. 

And it’s wonderful. It makes “older men,” Titus 2:2, into wise, cool and calm, patient people, that makes them thoroughly worthy of respect. And “older women,” verses 3-5, just love making home a real home, so that young girls growing up see what’s possible and how wonderfully it all works. And “young men” too, verses 6-8, learn from their elders the value of self-control in speech and action, enabling them to keep their heads while all about them are losing theirs. 

Why? So that no matter how young or old we are, or what situations we find ourselves in, the good we do is so noticeably and obviously good “that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us,” verse 8. And what they see in us “makes the teaching about God our Saviour attractive,” verse 10…(continues tomorrow)

Part 13 – To be holy (series continued)    

The Sabbath rest God took in Genesis pictures God having everything figured out right from Creation, so well and so completely that we can rest too, in total confidence that everything in our lives is working out exactly as he planned. 

He even took into account that “At one time we’d be foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures,” Titus 3:3, and that we’d be malicious, jealous and hateful (verse 4). A real mess we would turn out to be, and for the most part totally powerless on our own strength to do anything about it too, personally and globally. 

But in his kindness and outrageous love for us God had also planned a Saviour too, and when God’s time came for him to appear, verse 4, “he saved us,” verse 5. And he saved us, note, “NOT because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy,” verse 5. It was all God’s doing – and already planned before we and our world even existed.

So he took all our bad choices into account (having also planned to give us the freedom to choose), and he included a rescue mission in his plan too. A rescue mission in two stages: redemption and renewal. 

To start the ball rolling, the “Saviour, Jesus Christ, would give himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify a people for himself that are his very own, eager to do what is good,” Titus 2:13-14. Because of Jesus’ death, therefore, we would stand in God’s presence “holy, blameless and without fault” (Colossians 1:22). His death, then, was the first step completed in making us holy.

But he also “saved us,” Titus 3:5-6, “through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour.” This would be the second step, as verse 7 goes on to explain, that “having been justified by his grace (first step), we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” Through this second step of renewal by the Holy Spirit the holiness we need for our eternal life is completed too. 

And both steps are God’s doing. Which has to raise the question: “But surely there has to be something we do, isn’t there?…(more on this tomorrow) 

Part 12 – To be holy (continued)    

Paul made it clear in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 that it is “the God of peace himself who makes us perfectly holy.” We don’t make ourselves holy; he does. 

It’s what God got across to the Israelites too, in telling them to observe the seventh day each week as a day of rest. “You must observe my Sabbaths,” he told them through Moses in Exodus 31:13, “as a sign between me and you for the generations to come, that I am the Lord who makes you holy.” 

That’s why they set aside the Sabbath each week, to remind them that God was committed to making them holy. And having them do nothing but rest on the Sabbath got the point across that HE was the one doing it, not them. They had nothing to do with it, just like they had nothing to do on the Sabbath, but rest. 

And how important was it to God that they got that point? Verse 14: “Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you.” And so holy was the Sabbath day to God that “anyone who violates it must be put to death, and anyone caught working on that day (and not resting) must be cut off from his people.” So if they didn’t get the point of the Sabbath rest they were banished, expelled, thrown out, and even put to death (verse 15), because they didn’t belong with God’s people. 

That’s because God’s people are those who grasp the importance of verse 17, that “the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he abstained from work and rested.” They get the point as to why he rested. It was because “his work was finished,” Hebrews 4:3. It was done. He had everything figured out. And his Sabbath rest pictured that. 

And it still does. That’s why “There remains a Sabbath-rest for the people of God,” verse 9, because it gets the same point across to us that God got across by the Sabbath-rest he told Israel to observe, that this life of ours is not our doing, it’s his. He’s the one making us holy, not us. 

The Sabbath rest HE took at the beginning of creation is still a reminder, therefore – to us, just as it was to the Israelites – that “I am the Lord who makes you holy.” We don’t make ourselves holy, he does…(more on this tomorrow) 

Part 11 – To be holy (series continued)    

So how can we be holy like God is holy, when we “were alienated from him and were enemies in our minds because of our rotten behaviour,” Colossians 1:21?

Well, it was God who got the ball rolling because “he reconciled us to himself through the death of Jesus’ physical body, so we can stand in his presence holy, blameless and without a single fault,” verse 22. It was “the power of God,” therefore, 2 Timothy 1:8, “that saved us and called us to a holy life,” verse 9, and “not because of anything we have done.” We had nothing to do with it. It happened purely “because of his own purpose and grace – grace given to us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.” 

So here was God, before we even existed, already setting in stone what his goal for us humans was. He would set us humans apart from the rest of his creation to make us as holy as his Son (Romans 8:29), so that his human creations could share the same glory his Son has (John 17:24, Hebrews 2:6-11). And he made absolutely sure his plan would work out “in accordance with his will and good pleasure” (Ephesians 1:5,9,11) by handing over the reins to his Son (9), and not leaving anything up to us.  

And rightly so, because we humans would have a nasty habit of either losing sight of his purpose for us, or resisting it – starting with Adam and Eve, continuing with Israel, and also in what we ourselves were like “not so long ago,” Titus 3:3, when we too “were stupid and stubborn, dupes of sin, ordered every which way by our glands, going around with a chip on our shoulder, being hated and hating back.” Anything but being holy, in other words.  

But fortunately, verse 4, thanks to “the kindness and love of God, our Saviour stepped in and saved us from all that” by “giving his life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us, and to make us his very own people, totally committed to doing good deeds,” Titus 2:14. 

Our calling to be holy, then, is the commitment God made to us. Being holy is what he called us to be, and “He who calls you is faithful. He will do it,” 1 Thessalonians 5:24…(more on this tomorrow) 

Part 10 – To be holy     

Paul wrote that we were “called to be holy” (or ‘saints’ – same Greek word hagios) in 1 Corinthians 1:2. And to Timothy he writes the same thing, that “God saved us and called us to a holy (hagios) life,” 2 Timothy 1:8-9. And in Ephesians 1:4, the Father “chose us before the creation of the world to be holy (hagios) and blameless in his sight.” So we were chosen, called, and saved to be (hagios) holy. 

To give us a clue what (hagios) holy means, the Holy Spirit is the hagios Spirit of God. So it really means holy. Which puts the pressure on a bit, because in 1 Peter 1:15-16 Peter writes: “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’ (Leviticus 20:7).”  

Which seems like an impossible task, because how on earth are we going to be as holy as God? And especially when God told Isaiah, “for I am God, and there is no other; I am God and there is none like me,” Isaiah 46:9. 

But the “none like me” bit gives us a clue what being holy means. It means being stand alone different, nothing like anything in this world. Which ties in with Romans 12:1-2 when Paul writes, “offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.” How? By “not conforming any longer to the pattern of this world.” Or as Jesus said, when describing his disciples, “they are not of the world any more that I am of the world,” John 17:14,16. To be a (hagios) saint, therefore, means being ‘stand alone different’ to anything in this world. Just like the Holy Spirit is stand alone different to all other spirits. That’s what being holy means. 

But how long does it take to become that holy – if, that is, we ever can? Not that long, it seems, because the author of Hebrews 3:1 calls the people he’s writing to, “holy brothers.” So they were already classed as “holy” – despite some of them being in danger of “drifting away” too (2:1). So they weren’t classed as holy for their top marks in behaviour.

What made them holy instead, was Jesus “making people holy through his own blood,” Hebrews 13:12. So, in asking myself, “How on earth can I be holy like God is holy?” – the starting point isn’t what God expects us to do to be holy; it’s what he’s already done for us in his Son…(more on this tomorrow)

Part 9 – To rest in him     

In Galatians 2:20, Paul made the startling statement that “I no longer live.” But he had to be alive to be able to write that, so what was he getting at? 

Well, he followed it up with another startling statement, that “Christ lives in me,” by which he meant, “The life I’m living in this earthly body is based purely on trust in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” His entire life, in other words, was Christ’s doing. And that’s what he rested in and relied on every day.

He explained how it had been made possible in several other startling statements he made in Colossians 3, that we’ve already been “raised with Christ,” verse 1, our lives “are now hidden with Christ,” verse 3, and amazingly, that “Christ is our life,” verse 4. So while we’re alive in these earthly bodies of ours, Jesus has our lives totally in his hands, directing and shaping us for his grand appearance in verse 4 when he reveals to the world what he’s been doing with us. 

So (in one author’s response to this), “Do you see what this does to life? It turns it into an adventure, doesn’t it? You never know what any situation is going to result in. A creative God, beginning to work in the most ordinary circumstances, can suddenly make them break wide open, and you have something on your hands which staggers you, which you never dreamed could happen, and which even alarms you, so vast are its possibilities. This is the kind of God we have, that we can expect him to do this – and therefore we can rest in him, and not be anxious about what’s happening to us.” 

Because this is what he saved us for, so rather than struggling to be a Christian we have this picture from Paul of us sitting with Christ in his world and he’s doing the work of shaping us. So, when Paul writes in Philippians 2:12, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” he doesn’t mean “get anxious about how we’re doing,” he meant get excited about what we’ve got, “for,” verse 13, “God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.”

That’s why “God called us into fellowship with his Son,” 1 Corinthians 1:9, because “He will keep you strong to the end and blameless on the day he appears,” verse 8. Good reason to rest in him…(continues tomorrow)

Part 8 – To show off the new human     

So what is this new human we’ve been saved to be? According to Paul in Colossians 1:26 it’s been a “mystery kept hidden for ages and generations” – but – “is now disclosed to the saints.” So the saints have been given hidden knowledge.

But hidden knowledge about what? Well, it’s to the saints, verse 27, that “God has chosen to make known the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” 

This “hope of glory” Paul speaks of was Jesus’ hope too, that we join him in the glory he’d always experienced with his Father (John 17:24). It was the same glory he looked forward to returning to after his human death too (verse 5). And now it’s the glory we seek and receive as well (Romans 2:7,10). 

And there’s no mystery anymore as to how that glory is made possible for us: it’s “Christ in you.” Well, that makes sense because “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in a human body,” Colossians 2:9. To have Christ in us, therefore, means we have the fullness of Christ in his human form living in us – the exact point Paul makes in verse 10, that we’ve “been given fullness in Christ.”  

Which makes sense of 2 Corinthians 5:17 too, then, that “anyone in Christ is a new creation,” because what else could we be but a “new creation” with Christ’s fullness in his human form living in us? 

But for what purpose do all these new creations and new Christ-like humans exist? According to Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:10, “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus (that put to death our old self), so that the life of Jesus (now living the fullness of his life in us) may also be revealed in our body.” 

So it’s not just for our sakes that Jesus is making us into “new humans,” it’s to show off his handiwork to others. Because in us he’s unfolding “the mystery kept hidden for ages,” of the glory that’s coming to us humans. And if people don’t know it’s happening right under their noses right now, they will when Christ appears and those transformed by the Holy Spirit into his likeness “appear with him in glory,” Colossians 3:4…(continues tomorrow)