Blog

Human beings are not logical. We make bad, irrational, foolish decisions. Some of them are pretty funny. Many of them are harmful.

 

Some of the worst decisions that we make involve us doubling-down on sin. We find ourselves doing something that is foolish, that is ungodly, and that does not work. Instead of repenting, however, we seem to like to give it one more try just to see if what failed us before will work this next time.

 

Consider a sort of funny story from 1 Samuel. The Israelites had sinned against God, and the Lord allowed the Philistines to have victory over them. The Philistines, in an amazing encounter, go home with the ark of the covenant. (By the way, I have no idea how they carried off the ark without dying—God does not tell us.)

 

At one point, they set up the ark of the covenant in the temple of Dagon, a Philistine idol. What happens next is a perfect example of human foolishness.

 

1 Samuel 5:1-5 – 1 When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. 2 Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon. 3 And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. 4 But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold. Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him. 5 This is why the priests of Dagon and all who enter the house of Dagon do not tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.

 

Get the story. The Philistines put the sacred box belonging to God in their temple. The next day, they come into the temple, and the statue of the false god Dagon is face down on the ground in front of the ark. What would be a good response? I’d suggest that a good response would be to realize that Dagon is a false deity, and they ought not mess with the God of Israel. But that was not the Philistines’ response. They decide that the best move is to prop Dagon back up and see if things are better the next day.

 

Of course, the next day, they enter the temple to find Dagon on the ground again, this time with his head and hands broken off. Does this lead them to try to worship the Lord? Does this lead them to get under God’s grace if possible? Nope, it just leads them to come up with a plan to ship the ark of the covenant back so that they do not have to keep having Dagon broken. O, and they won’t step on the threshold of the door anymore since that is where Dagon’s head was knocked off.

 

We want to laugh. It is funny. But it is not funny when we do it. How often do we as a people see that something in our life is sin, failing and destructive, and yet we do not turn from it? How often do we keep going right to the place that hurts us? How often do we see a sin that crushes our parents or our families, and yet we decide to repeat it as soon as we get the chance?

 

Friends, we have a choice. WE can continue to prop up Dagon, to fall into the same sins that have never brought us life. We can set the idol back up on its pedestal, continuing to bow to things that only bring us death. Or we can change. We do not have to be the Philistines. WE can let the idol lie there in the dirt and turn our attention to the God who made us. He is willing to receive us in Christ and help us turn from our sin. He is willing to give us life and hope in a way that the Philistines never experienced. May we not prop up Dagon, but instead bow to the Lord Jesus in surrender for life.

Life is hard. Nobody who has lived a real life for any amount of time can honestly think that this world is an easy place to live. Consider the evils that we face:

• Natural Evil – disasters, disease, and death.
• Spiritual Evil – the devil and his army intending to do us harm.
• Physical Evil – Nasty folks out to hurt us and corrupt the world.
• Personal Evil – the evil in our own hearts that we battle to defeat.

Surrounded by all sorts of pains, we see that life is hard. We see that things are not what we want. Whether it is a sickness, a divorce, or a global strife, we know that the world is not what we want it to be.

 

What does God say to Christians about the pains that we face?

 

Romans 8:18-23 – 18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

 

Consider that passage in sort of a backward fashion. Creation groans. The universe, all of creation, has been subjected to futility ever since the fall of man. The very substance of the universe shakes and quakes and shows us that things are not right. From the moment that mankind first rebelled against the Lord, the universe has been tainted with the corruption of sin.

 

What was the impact of that corruption? Everything that hurts came about. Disease and natural disasters exist because the first humans turned away from the Lord. Adam and Eve brought death in all its forms to nature and to people. If Adam does not rebel, there is no such thing as a destructive tornado, a killer earthquake, a crocodile attack on  a river bank, a baby that does not breathe, or a cancer that cannot be stopped. Without Adam’s sin, no evil would have come.

 

So, even as we face the ugliness of the world around us, even as we face situations we hate, we ought to be reminded that these situations are reminders of the ugliness of sin. Hatred of the Creator has brought on us destruction. It is God giving humanity what we demanded to have from him, autonomy, that has brought on us the hardships of life. And every evil, from the biggest catastrophe to the annoyance of a sinus infection can trace its roots to a people telling God that we will not listen to him but we will have charge of ourselves.

 

  But then return to the beginning of the passage. Paul opened with hope, not pessimism. He wrote, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18). What is he saying? The ugliest of the ugly in this life does not compare with what is to come. The pain of the present cannot compare to the joy of the future. Here, and in other places in Paul’s writings (c. f. 2 Cor 4:16-18), Paul shows us that the Lord will more than make up for the sorrow and the hardships we face in the here and now. If you are a child of God, you must understand that you have awaiting you in eternity a weight of glory, a repayment of joyful kindness, a return on your sorrow that will so far outshine the hardships that you have faced as to make them look small. Remember, this is the God who made you and thus knows how to fulfill you in ways you do not even grasp. This is the God who created the universe and who knows what perfection is all about. This is the God who loves in a pure way that you have never loved or been loved. He will give us more than we have ever lost. He will fill us with joy far more deeply than we have ever sorrowed. He will grant us life and peace that will make all the death and pain we have ever seen look tiny. In eternity, the weight of God’s glory will obliterate all the pain we have ever felt as we finally see the reason we exist and we receive the reward of his holy glory.

 

In those words, I’m not at all belittling your pain or mine. We experience things in the here and now that hurt us deeply. The losses we face are gut-wrenching and significant. But the truth of Scripture is that those losses are evidence of the groaning of creation under sin. But when the curse of sin is removed, the groaning is gone. When the glory of God is fully known, our pain will no longer define us. Instead, our pain will be the shadow of a shadow of a memory that only serves to highlight for us the greatness of the joy of the love and the kindness of God that we live under for eternity because of the finished work of Christ.

 

Do you want to know a good reason to come to Jesus for salvation? There is a reason that is easily as great as to avoid the punishment we deserve for our sin. The best reason to come to Jesus is to have as an eternal hope, the promise of a forever life that will far exceed any pain that any human has ever experienced at any time in human history. We want to be on the side of those who are given peace and relief from the groaning of this age. That can only come for those who are under the grace of Christ, freely forgiven and joyfully promised eternal life.

It is funny how easily we turn ourselves to rules and regulations. We always claim not to like extra rules. Yet, when we think about our lives, rules are the things we turn to when we consider Christian character.

 

But looking at the New testament’s handling of the concept of the law, we find that rules occupy a very strange place. The law of God convicts us of sin. The rules of the Old Testament serve to demonstrate for us that we are not able, on our own, to live out the perfect righteousness of God.

 

But then came Jesus. The Savior fulfilled the law for us. And, the Scripture is clear that we are now free from the law.

 

Romans 7:4-6 – 4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

 

We have died to the law. We are released from the law. In Christ, we are not subject to the demands of law.

 

Of course that leads to the commonly asked question: Since we are free from the law, are we now free to sin? Of course we are not. God does not free us from law to allow us to turn to sin without consequence. God does not save us in order that we might then rebel against him and his ways.

 

What then do we do with law since we know we are free?

 

Romans 6:15-18 – 15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

 

We are made free from the law, but not to be free to sin. Instead, the call is for us, in our freedom, to refuse to present ourselves as slaves to sin. You see, when we sin, when we disobey the clear commands of god, we become slaves to sin. But God did not free us from the law so that we can become enslaved to sin. Instead, God freed us from the law by fulfilling its requirements on our behalf. However, we now actually are to live in obedience to the law, but in a totally different way. Now we obey because we are free.

 

Consider this illustration. It is a law that we must eat. If we do not eat, we die. We are under that law. Now, pretend that you have been freed from that law. Consider that your body was given a miraculous ability to survive and keep functioning without food. Would you then choose never to eat? Or might you still choose to eat, not because it is required, but for the pleasure of food and fellowship? I think we would continue to have meals together for the joy of it all, even though we are freed from the very requirement that calls us to eat.

 

In the same way, we are freed from the law. We do not have obligation to the Lord to fulfill. Jesus did all that for us. But we will not find our lives to be full and pleasing to the Lord if we intentionally turn away from the Lord and toward that which dishonors the Lord. God has called us family members. He has adopted us. Why then would we declare a freedom to insult him and act hatefully toward him?

 

God has freed us, but in a special way. We are freed from the law, but not to reject the ways of God. We are freed from the requirements of the law so that we can freely obey the very principles that the law demonstrated. We are free—free to obey. And when we obey out of freedom, God gives us joyful fellowship with him.

One of the key results of the Protestant reformation is our modern understanding of the concept of imputation. Yes, that’s one of those theological terms that some have heard often and others ignore right away. So, let me try to make it simple, because it is a term you need to understand in order to understand the gospel.

 

Sometimes the concept of imputation is shown to us in our translations with the word “counted.” Here I do not mean counting, 1-2-3-4-. Instead, I mean counting as in crediting something to your account.

 

Think of these lines from the Old Testament.

 

Genesis 15:6 – And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

 

Psalm 32:2 – Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

 

Notice how the word counted is used. In Genesis 15:6, Abraham simply believed God, and God counted that belief as if it were righteousness. In Psalm 32:2, David exults in the concept of God not counting iniquity against him. These are two sides of the same coin. In Abraham’s case, God credits or counts to Abraham a righteousness that he had never lived. In David’s case, God does not count against him the sin that he had actually committed.

 

The concept of imputation is this counting that we see here. Imagine your life on a balance sheet, positive and negative acts and thoughts all laid out in columns. In order to please the Lord, you must have all positives and no negatives. Not only must you have no negatives, but the positives have to add up to a perfection that equals that of the holy God of the universe. Thus, left to ourselves, we are hopeless. WE cannot get rid of our negatives, and our positives do not add up to infinite perfection.

 

Thus, we need God to impute to us a perfection that is actually foreign to our existence. We need our sin to be forgiven, and we need the righteousness that will please God to be credited to our accounts, even though we cannot possibly live that righteousness on our own.

 

One of the major issues at stake during the reformation is this issue of counting, of imputation. Does God credit us with righteousness by his grace through faith alone, even if we have never been able to live that righteousness? Or does God forgive our sins, but then require us to live out a certain level of goodness through participation in sacraments in order to actually walk into the righteousness that will please him? Is salvation a gift that is by grace alone through faith alone, or must the good works of ourselves and others be added to faith to bring us into heaven?

 

Interestingly, Paul uses the two Old testament passages that we read earlier to help us know the answer to this question. The apostle was particularly talking about the question of whether or not a gentile must be circumcised to be saved. But the ultimate question at hand is whether or not our doing good works has anything to do with our justification.

 

 

Romans 4:1-8 – 1 What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” 4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: 7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; 8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

 

Romans 4:23-25 – 23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

 

Notice the point that Paul makes at some length. Our salvation is not about works. Works would earn something, earn a payment. But having righteousness credited to us shows us that it is a gift from God apart from works.

 

Thus, salvation is a gift. When God brings us to a point where we believe in Christ for salvation, God credits us with a gift. He erases our negative side of the ledger because of the sacrificial death of Jesus. He also fills the positive side of our ledger with perfection, crediting us with the perfect life that Jesus lived. But you and I have never lived that perfection. The crediting is imputation, and it is a beautiful and marvelous thing.

 

2 Corinthians 5:21 – For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

 

God treated Jesus as if he had committed our sin. He treats us as if we lived Jesus’ perfection. This is biblical Christianity. This is cause for worship. This is a God worth loving.

The Book of Judges is a book full of stories of how the people of God rebelled against the word of God to do that which they found right in their own eyes. Of course, it is also a reminder to us that, if we are not careful to follow the word of God, we will be just like these folks. It is a natural human tendency to turn away from the revealed truth of God and to call good that which God calls evil.

 

Judges 17:1-3- 1 There was a man of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Micah. 2 And he said to his mother, “The 1,100 pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse, and also spoke it in my ears, behold, the silver is with me; I took it.” And his mother said, “Blessed be my son by the Lord.” 3 And he restored the 1,100 pieces of silver to his mother. And his mother said, “I dedicate the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son, to make a carved image and a metal image. Now therefore I will restore it to you.”

 

Here we meet a man named Micah. He confesses that he stole money from his mother. His mom blesses him in the name of God, I suppose for his honesty in owning up to what he has done. So far, so good.

 

Then mom decides to give Micah back the money. But she has a plan for what he will do with the silver. She declares that the money is now dedicated to God. So, Micah is to use that money to fashion an idol.

 

Just let that sit there for a moment.

 

Because the mom wants to honor god, she is commanding her son to intentionally, specifically, completely violate the command of God never to fashion an idol.

 

What we should grasp from this is just how warped we will get if God leaves us to ourselves. Romans 1:18-ff shows us what happens when God gives people over to their own desires. In each instance, when God takes his hand of restraint off of people, they come up with more unbiblical, more self-destructive, more God-dishonoring ways to live. We are just naturally good at doing the very opposite thing of what we should.

 

Christians, does this not make you see just how desperate you must be for the word of God? If you do not have the Scriptures and the Spirit of god, you will do stuff like this. If you do not submit to the authority of Scripture, you will turn away from God just as easily. If you do not see that the word of God is your authority, you will make human opinion your authority. And the moment you let human opinion be your authority, you will start walking toward blessing something God calls pure evil.

 

One of the key principles of the Protestant Reformation is sola Scriptura. This principle states that the final authority for life and doctrine for Christians is the word of God. Scripture alone is our authority. This is not to discount solid teaching or valuable traditions. But, at the end of the day, every human teacher is flawed. But the word of god is perfect (cf. Psa. 19:7).

 

If you know that, on your own, you will bless evil if not informed by the word, how should that impact your life? This should make you study the word regularly and seriously. It should make you see that the most important way for you to evaluate your church is whether or not the word of God is central, faithfully taught, and intentionally obeyed. It should cause you to evaluate every modern, hot topic issue, every moral and ethical dilemma, by the simple standard of Scripture alone rather than your best guess.

 

And this passage should make you look at every life decision through the lens of Scripture. Does god say that what I want to do is good and right? Does god command against it? The word outranks your opinion. The word outranks your personal experience. God will never, not ever, lead you to disobey Scripture. God will not call us to call good that which God calls evil.

OK, just to be up front, I don’t intend to be nice here. No, I’m not going to try to be extra mean either. I just have a little story to tell from years ago about one of the worst handlings of Scripture that I can ever recall. It involves an Old testament passage and a teacher reading into the passage something that is completely, ridiculously, absolutely not the message intended by the author of the passage.

 

Funny thing is, if you know me, you know I could be telling you one of many stories here. This one comes from a devotional book that I owned in college (so if you were hoping for me to call out some teacher you know of, I’m not going there). As a simple aside, I generally dislike devotional books, and this one could be the reason why. Quite often, these little books take biblical passages, ignore the context, disregard authorial intent, overlook proper interpretive method, and abuse the Bible by making the little story into a self-help prosperity grab. And, in case you think I’m picking on one bad thought in a book, understand that the story I’m going to tell you is from the lead devotional in a book, the title of which encapsulates the error: Don’t Quit Until You Taste the Honey. (For grins and giggles I looked this up on Amazon and discovered that this was published by the Baptist Sunday School Board, now Lifeway, in 1993.)

 

The story goes like this. Samson, soon to be a judge over Israel, is a very selfish and sinful man. He determines that he wants to marry a Philistine woman—obviously something against the commands of God. Samson even defies his parents’ wish that he would choose a nice Israelite girl. Samson wants this Philistine woman, because she looks good to him, she is right in his eyes. Of course, every man doing what is right in his own eyes is the theme of Judges and the reminder of the godlessness and lawlessness that marked rebellious Israel in the days of the judges.

 

So, on the way to see if the marriage alliance is possible, Samson kills a lion that leaps out at him. Perhaps this should have reminded him that he is under the protection of God and should hope to avoid God’s judgment. On the second trip, this time to pick up his wife, Samson sees the carcass of the dead lion on the side of the road.

 

Now, before reading what Samson did, remember the biblical laws given to Israel. You were not supposed to touch a dead body. You were not supposed to eat unclean food. There was a holiness code to live by. And, Samson was under a Nazarite vow, so he had even higher standards of purity to obey. And Israelites were not supposed to mix marriages with the Philistines, which Samson was in process of doing and thus rebelling against the law of God.

 

Judges 14:8-10 – 8 After some days he returned to take her. And he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion, and behold, there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey. 9 He scraped it out into his hands and went on, eating as he went. And he came to his father and mother and gave some to them, and they ate. But he did not tell them that he had scraped the honey from the carcass of the lion.

  

Samson scrapes honey out of the rotting carcass of a dead animal, eats it, and gives it to his unsuspecting parents. He makes himself unclean and spreads that impurity to others. Samson dishonors the Lord, disobeys the law, and drags others down with him.

 

Now, there is certainly a good personal thought here. When we sin, we often lead others astray with us. We can infect the lives of others with our impurity if we are not careful. Sin does not just hurt us.

 

There is a nice biblical picture here of what was happening in the nation. Samson was not doing right. Though he brought benefit to the nation by rescuing them from the Philistine’s in years to come, he also brought sinful uncleanness everywhere he went. He was used by God. He was a man who had a kind of faith in the power of God. But Samson was also spreading unholiness.

 

In a smaller picture, this shows us the wrongness of Samson’s marriage. Honey is good. Marriage is good. But when a person of God marries against the command of God and unites with someone who hates God, it is against the command of god. It’s like the honey in the lion carcass.

 

Any of those might have been fair thoughts for the devotional to use. But the title of the book says it all. The author used the honey story as a self-motivational exercise. He wanted us to learn from this story that Samson didn’t quit, no matter how hard things got. He stuck to his guns, he pressed on, and he was rewarded in the end with the sweet taste of honey. So, don’t quit until you taste the honey. Don’t give up on your dreams until you get there. That is what the author of the devotional book took from this passage.

Friends, that is bad biblical interpretation. And, before you think I’m just a horrible meanie, please know that I can look back over some of the stuff I’ve taught in my past and see that I used to be just as bad. Even now, if I get anything right, it is because of the grace of God and the good teachers I have been privileged to learn from; it is not of my own making.

 

But with that said, can we please, for the love of all things right, stop allowing ourselves to read little pithy devotionals that do not handle Scripture in context? Can we please not allow ourselves to rip a verse out of its original meaning and make it encouraging for the here and now? If you want to be encouraged for today, preach the gospel to yourself. Remind yourself that you are a sinner who needed grace to avoid the wrath of God. Remind yourself that Jesus lived perfection and then died as a sacrifice to pay for your sins. Remember that Jesus rose from the grave and grants everlasting life to us when we believe in him and yield our lives to him. Remember that, because Jesus is alive, because he grants us forgiveness, because he promises to return, because he is sanctifying us, because he promises us eternal perfection, we have hope for the here and now. Our lives have meaning because of Jesus and his perfection.

 

IN fact, you can then go back to the ugly Samson story and let it be what it is. We are the kind of sinners who would eat honey from a carcass, because we are the kind of people who will grossly dishonor God for our pleasures. But thanks be to God, in Christ, we can know that there is forgiveness for our ugliest sins. So we need not scrape honey from a rotten corpse. Instead, we can find life and eternal joy in obeying the Lord and looking forward to his glory forever. That is way better than maggot-infested sweets in the here and now.

Don’t you hate it when somebody tells you that you were wrong? It’s only natural that we would not like it. After all, we want people to think we are smart, strong, solid in our faith. Besides, we think that we think better than others. We honestly believe that, all things being equal, we as individuals have a pretty good view of the world.

 

But Scripture is smarter than us. The word of God has a wise challenge for us. The wise grow from correction. Only the fool bristles every time he or she is corrected.

 

Proverbs 9:7-9

 

7 Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse,

and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury.

8 Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you;

reprove a wise man, and he will love you.

9 Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser;

teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning.

 

This passage is hard for me. Of course it depends on who rebukes or corrects me, but it is hard. It’s funny, the more I love the person correcting me, the less well I personally tend to receive that correction. So, when I get an anonymous note about something, I can usually let that slide off pretty easily. But when my wife wants to tell me where I’m blowing it, I really don’t like it.

 

So, for me, this passage has a lot to offer. I need to learn that a wise man is teachable. A wise man grows wiser still when reproved. Only a scoffer, only a foolish, ungodly man lashes out or refuses to hear when approached with a problem. Similarly, only a fool gets grumpy or sullen when corrected.

 

How about you? How are you when corrected? Do you hear it? Do you receive it well and evaluate it fairly? Are people around you willing to correct you, or are they tip-toeing around your tender feelings and not willing to share with you the truths that would help you because you cannot hear them? May we all learn to be wise people who grow wiser still as we listen to one another and grow together in Christ.

I cannot think of a topic more often discussed, disagreed upon, or even argued about in the church more than the topic of spiritual gifts. We have our continuationist and cessationist debates. We have our spiritual gift inventory folks and our folks who hate those little tests with a passion. We have significant scholarly disagreement on how to define the new testament understanding of the gift of prophecy.

 

In the midst of such a discussion, it is interesting when we actually see things written in Scripture about spiritual gifts. So very often, what is written in the Bible is so much less fantastic than some would like to make the gifts of God. And I found such a passage in Romans 1. In the midst of Paul’s greeting the Roman church and telling the Christians there about his desire to visit, he mentions spiritual gifts and then says what he means by them.

 

Romans 1:11-12 – 11 For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you— 12 that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.

 

When Paul spoke of imparting a spiritual gift to the roman church, he was not talking about some mystical power source. He was not telling the church anything about empowering them to heal, speak in tongues, or prophesy. Instead, Paul immediately defines what he meant here by saying that he wanted the spiritual blessing of mutual encouragement.

 

There is a major point here that is often missed by both sides of the continuationist cessationist debate. Regardless of what you believe about the modern existence of revelatory sign gifts once the canon of Scripture was closed, the purpose for spiritual gifts is what we so often ignore. The gifts that God has blessed his church with are for the building up of the body. This is not so that people would feel that they had any sort of superior abilities to other Christians or so that people could be enamored by the mystical. Instead, the point of the gifts that Paul wanted to impart in Rome was so that the local church might grow together in their love of Christ. It was not about show. It was not about sensuality. It was about loving each other as brothers and sisters in Christ just as the Lord Jesus called us to do.

 

John 13:34-35 – 34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

 

Think about the less glamorous spiritual gifts—the ones that we pay little attention to: serving, hospitality, mercy, encouraging, teaching, leading, etc. Such gifts are not the ones people are arguing about. But the point of these gifts is what Paul is talking about. As we come together as a family in Christ, God has gifted and shaped every last one of us to matter in the body. God has designed us to encourage each other, to build one another up. And God has done this in a supernatural way, a Holy Spirit filled way, so that we need one another to be built up as the church is supposed to be.

 

So, do you want to experience spiritual gifts? Join a church and jump in. Share your life with other believers. Open the word of God together. Pray together. Be committed to one another. Care for each other in times of pain. Work together for the growth of the church. Walk with each other through the sorrows and joys of life. And as you build each other up in the faith, you will be experiencing the genuine, never-ending spiritual gifts and their genuine purposes.

 

Go the other direction with this thought. What happens if you are not committed to a local church? What happens if you refuse to really connect with the church? You are taking from yourself the ability to have the spiritual gifts Paul was referring to in Romans 1. You are also failing to help others who need you in their church body to experience the kind of mutually encouraging gifting that God commands.

Many scholars understand that the Gospel According to Mark is strongly influenced by the life testimony of the apostle Peter. Just as Luke was a companion of Paul, so Mark had a great deal of time with Peter to record for us his accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus.

 

The connection to Peter in Mark gives us a beautiful story of the grace of Christ. In Mark 14, we saw the well-known story of Peter denying that he ever knew Jesus. At the last supper, Peter swore that he would never, ever leave Jesus, no matter what happened. When faced with the prospect of being exposed as a follower of Jesus, however, Peter denied ever knowing him, even to the point of cursing himself as a proof.

 

How bitterly must Peter have regretted his failure? How many times, when Peter would hear a rooster crow, did he feel again the guilt for looking a servant girl in the eye and swearing never to have followed Jesus? How deeply must this all have hurt?

 

So, it is beautiful to see what Mark records to us that the Lord had the angel say to the women at the empty tomb after the resurrection of Jesus.

 

Mark 16:6-7 – 6 And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” 

 

The angel tells the women that Jesus is alive. That, of course, is eternity-changing. The angel sends the women back to tell the disciples which makes sense. But notice that the angel specifically tells the ladies to communicate the resurrection to Peter. The very same disciple who denied ever knowing Jesus is singled out to get the news of the resurrection.

 

Why? Why would Peter be mentioned here? I believe it is a lovely picture of grace. Peter had gone as low as he could go. He knew he had failed. And right here, the angel lets us know that God has not written him off. Why tell Peter? Peter needs to know that Jesus is alive. Peter needs to know that Jesus finished the work. Peter needs to know that Jesus has grace, even for a sinner like him.

 

Can you imagine what it must have been like for Peter, now older and a leader in the church, to have told Mark this story? How must Peter’s eyes have filled with tears of regret as he talked about his flat denial of the Savior? How must his voice have sounded when he told Mark, “and Peter, the angel said that the message was for me too?”

 

How much of your past do you live under? How many past failures still eat at your soul? If you are under the grace of God in Christ, you might want to see how wonderfully free was the grace God gave Peter. Peter denied Jesus , and yet the Lord sent him a personal note about his resurrection. If God can forgive and use Peter, God can forgive and use us. Yes, we must repent and believe. No, we cannot stay in our sin. But we must take heart and rejoice that grace can cover our pasts so that we can be useful to the Savior.