Chapter 4
I was watching an interesting programme on BBC3 recently. A musical director wanted to get two extremes of the musical spectrum together. He got in touch with a Christian rock band from Coventry and an extreme Punk rock group. The idea was to expose each group to the other for a week and for them to live together for that week and write and perform a joint song at the end of the week. The Punk group were sexually very explicit in their lifestyle and performance. The group of four Christian lads were very committed both to their faith and their music. The end result was very interesting – the Christian lads made it clear what they believed and what Jesus meant to their lives. They never uttered a harsh word of condemnation and by the end of the week had won the respect of most of the Punk group – to the extent that one girl left the group believing that what she saw in these young guys is what she was searching for. The point? Like Jesus, they were in there among people, with a very clear message, building real relationships, having to face real temptations while at the same time not judging or condemning anyone they encountered. They made an impact. Why? Because they did it the way Jesus would have done it!
One of the great difficulties for many, if not most, Christians is the feeling of powerlessness in the face a seemingly secure, materialistic and humanist environment. Indeed it is one of the great lies of our enemy, Satan, to make us feel that sense of powerlessness. He implies that we have no potential influence and that the power of unbelief that stands before us in society is too great for us to handle. Bottom line? We are intimidated.
At this moment in time I am looking at the most recent statistics, which quite clearly indicate that there has been a move, even away from a nominal adherence to the Church in Scotland. In the face of such unbelief how are we to confidently proclaim the Gospel and overcome this fear that we have of rejection.?. Two issues here:
The non-Christian world is not as secure as we would imagine it to be. Two events in the last few years point to that. The death of Princess Diana clearly showed that the vast majority of the nation was lost in their ability to come to terms with her death. 9/11 also had a devastating effect on people on both sides of the Atlantic. It showed how fragile our lives are when they are measured by money and power. The sum of these two events show that people are nowhere near as secure in their unbelief as we might think. As a parish minister, taking over 2,000 funerals over the last 25 years, I always see the fragility of lives without faith when they are faced with life’s ultimate reality.
We are right to feel apprehensive if our core belief is that we have got to get out there and preach Jesus to people. That may be the gift that God gives to some, but to the vast majority we are to earn the right to share our faith through the developing of meaningful relationships with our non-Christian neighbour. Too many people after they become Christians retire from the world and escape into their churches – to a safe place of sanctuary. In essence we are called to be out more and more in the essence of life living a Christian life, showing compassion and love when appropriate. After all was that not Jesus? He followed the will of his Father and it took him to people and it was with and among people that he made the difference.
We have already experienced power in Christ and we are told that we are to look to the place where Christ sits at God’s right hand. This metaphor always indicates the place of power. The Lord does not ask us to rely on our own resources but for us every day to draw on his limitless resources of power. If we feel weak and inadequate for the task, that is not a bad thing: it simply means that we are learning to lean more and more on the power that Christ makes available to us – even for the seemingly smallest acts of faith.
Relating our lives to heaven is not some form of escapism, but is rather us living our lives according to the pattern of life that Jesus set for his life. Even with all the power that was potentially at his disposal, he related his whole life to the will of his Father.
The problem with many Christians is twofold – they are either too worldly or too religious! Here is what I mean by this:
Too worldly in that we have given in to the temptation to just be like everyone else in the false belief that simply because we say we believe in Jesus that will be enough to be relevant. The Christian is called to live actively in the world but with a whole lot of different core values. We are asked by Jesus to live counter-culturally. We are asked by Jesus to question our use of money, our time and our moral values. We are asked to step back and examine our values and to ask the Lord whether we are living in a way that is patterned according to this world and its values. We are called to be distinctive and only the Lord can show us what that means.
We are also called to forsake religion! Religion can be a trap that holds people captive to rules and traditions and does not speak meaningfully of Christ. The Church can be a great thing but as an organized religion, individual churches and denominations have to be asking the question of whether they are actively following the path of religious tradition or are seeking to follow Jesus. Many people can join churches or associate themselves with religious traditions as a means of escapism from the bad world outside them. There can sometimes be no difference between the person who escapes into drugs and alcohol, and the person who escapes into and upholds a religious tradition. Both are forms of denial by refusing to face the realities of life.
Paul then goes on to suggest that we let “heaven fill our thoughts.” One can imagine that some people will think of this as some kind of ethereal experience that is to be sought by the believer. Listen to the wisdom of the most wise person who ever lived:
“Don’t store up treasures here on earth where they can be eaten by moths and get rusty and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where they will never become moth-eaten or rusty and where they will be safe from thieves. Where your treasure is, there your heart and thoughts will also be” Matthew 6:19-21
From this Jesus says -
If you think this world, you will think darkness and you will have to be the slave of what makes this world tick – money.
If your heart is in heaven then you will not be a person consumed with anxiety and worry.
What you wear and how you appear will not be the most important issue that governs your life. Your image will not govern your happiness.
Money and the things it can purchase will not be your driving concern – people will matter more than anything else.
The Kingdom of God should be our most pressing concern.
However there is also an emotional aspect to filling our thoughts with heaven and in part it is motivational. Paul often speaks of the hope, prize, inheritance that awaits the believer at the departure from this world. We are to fill our thought with the anticipation of what is to come when we leave this existence. Again there is much for us to look forward to and so to meditate on these things is no bad thing:
We will lose our earthly body, but we will be clothed in a new, dynamic, perfect body at the final resurrection. The bodies we will be given will never die, be full of glory, full of power and spiritual. The losing of our present shell ought to be something that we look forward to and anticipate with hope this new, resurrection body.
We are told that there will be an absence of certain crucial things when we move beyond this life. There will be no more death, sorrow, crying or pain. All of this will be abolished forever.
We are told that Jesus is preparing a special place for his people and that he will come back and take us to be with himself. We know that we will be part of a vast number of people that no-one can number, but will retain our individual identity. There will be great reunions in God’s eternal Kingdom. And there is another aspect – it is eternal – forever.
We are told that there will be complete healing in that place of glory that God is preparing for his people and that nothing evil or sinful will have a place of influence there for that will have been destroyed forever.
We are told that we will see the glory of God and Jesus and feel no shame or devastation.
Heaven or the New Earth or how we describe it, will be far better than we can ever imagine. There will be personal completeness and activity there. God is preparing for all of his people something that is wonderful beyond description. Here is the great incentive and motivation for the people of God. It is not worth our time building up our earthly collateral for none of it can last or indeed even compare to the glory that awaits us.
John Ortberg in his book, “When the Game is over, it all goes back in the Box” puts what is permanent in one column and what is going back in the box in another. It is a very startling and effective way of getting life into perspective:
Remaining Forever Going back in the Box
God Possessions
Other People My resume
My Soul My Body
Deeds of love Money
Pleasures
Other people’s opinion of me
Security
Titles and positions
Youth
Power
Physical attractiveness
Health
Recently I had an independent financial advisor speaking to me about my need to build upon my equity for retirement. What was the point – retire at the age 65 or 70 and be left with very few years to live; possibly physically restricted years to enjoy this extra money? We are all caught up in this need for something that at the end of the day eludes us. Better to invest in the real and lasting Eternal Assurance Company!
There is a place that we all call home. When I was young I had a great attachment to the Island of Lewis. It was my mother’s home and we used to travel up from Glasgow at the beginning of every summer holiday and remain there for the full seven weeks. I lived in Glasgow, but I always considered going to Lewis as going home – that, if you like was my emotional home. To leave Lewis and come back to Glasgow was like a bereavement and it took a long time to readjust to life back in the city. I lived in Glasgow, and much as I loved it, it was not considered as home.
When we become a Christian we become aware of a new life. A death takes place within us, whereby we begin to see that : “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through..” This new perspective on this present life we lead is like a death which has taken place and a new life has opened up to us. It is something that we feel and is very real to us, but is not immediately apparent to most people around us in the world. Paul explains this when he says, “You died when Christ died.” But we are alive, in what sense have we died?
What happened when Christ died?
He was fulfilling the will of the Father. We have now died to doing our own thing and living lives purely for our own happiness and personal fulfiment. In dying with Christ we have come alive to a new way to live: To do the will of our heavenly Father. We will never do that perfectly, but that is why we are so closely linked to Jesus, because he was able to do for us what we were never able to perfectly do ourselves. His death completes what in us will always be incomplete.
The Cross opened up to us the most amazing reality – the inextinguishable love of God. When we die with Christ, we die to trusting in even the best that this world can offer us in terms of love. No human love can ever come near to the “love of a different kind” as Bill Hybels, so often reminds us. We no longer live to find a love in this world that will fulfil all of our spiritual and emotional needs – that can only be found in relationship to our heavenly Father.
When Jesus was crucified, it was by the people who esteemed the prestige of this world as more important to them that the will of God. We no longer are concerned with what the world considers important – we are dead to that. We want to be governed by what our Father wants for us. We do not make our ambitions the same as those of the world around us – the pursuit of personal pleasure as an end in itself is no more our concern, but we want to lay down our lives with Christ.
When we died with Christ we died to the personal ambitions of the world – money, education, power. We are dead to these things as a means of determining our significance. What determines our significance is who we now are as the children of God. We might use wealth, education and power as tools, under God to be used for his purposes in our lives and not as an end themselves.
When we died with Christ we learned the meaning of his expansive mercy. We witness the wonderful grace of God as it touches the life of a sinner. We witness personally the enduring forgiveness of God, being worked out through his Son as he dies. There is nothing in this world that matches the forgiveness, mercy and grace of God. It is only in our dying with Christ that we see this. As he descends to the depths of Hell for us, he takes us with him and shows us that there is no depth of sin or depravity in our lives that he cannot forgive.
When we die with Christ, we became aware that death cannot hold us as it could not hold Him. We are now people of the resurrection, as he is the resurrection and the life. The place of death now becomes inevitably the place of life and hope. We become the recipients of eternal life through the life in him that will not die.
This work of grace in us is comprehensive in us from the moment we believed. The moment we believed we knew that something new was happening. It is only as we move on that we realize the full extent and significance of what has happened. Paul then moves on to distinguish between two different forms of life – our life here on earth and our real live that is hidden with Christ in God [verse 3]. Let us look at what he means by that.
Our life here on earth is very real to us. It can be a life of great pleasure and joy, as it should be, and we should not despise, or in any way reject that reality. However, it is always an incomplete life for the believer. The believer is someone who is never fully at home in this world and this causes a certain tension and frustration to exist in his or her life. In some ways we are as complete as we can ever be. God cannot forgive or love us more than he does at this moment in time. We have received the righteousness of Christ in that there is no stain in our lives from God’s perspective – he sees in us the accomplishments of the perfect work of Christ in our lives. But there is a difference between the reality as God sees it, and as we see and feel or experience it. We will remain incomplete people until we finally go “home.” In the believer, there is a growing sense of “home” in our lives that makes us aware that to leave this world is to gain all the things that we most long for – perfect peace of mind, freedom from sin, perfect love, and the list could go on.
In this sense our “real life” as Paul puts it, is hidden with Christ in God. It is already hidden in our hearts. In a sense we do not fully understand fully what or who we are. Christ knows and will one day fully reveal it to us and in us. Who we are is never fully revealed to our world either. The world cannot fully understand, nor can we ever adequately explain, what it means to have Christ in us and for us to be in Christ. Suppose a person who is not married comes up to us and asks, “what does it mean to be married and in love?” We would find words to describe this very difficult. For every explanation we might give, there would be so many other possible ways of adding to it, yet we could not fully make known what is hidden in our heart. That is why there is more than one love song written. Every love song among the millions that have been written is an attempt to describe what cannot be fully described.
Once again Paul takes us to the perspective of heaven. We are constantly being drawn back to the place that we will one day call our home forever; to the place where we truly belong. For the Christian to have no such perspective is for us to have lost sight of our one true home. It is for us to have become too attached to this world and not to be sufficiently attached to the real life that is ours. Our life here is not an unreal existence and certainly not without its joys and accomplishments, but it is, and always will be incomplete. Our real home is heaven where we shall experience endless days of glory and in that sense this is where our real life belongs. Paul resolves this dilemma when he speaks in 2Corinthians 5. He tells us that it is his desire to be at home with the Lord and therefore he would in every sense complete; however, he remains here on earth because there is work to be done in order that the Kingdom of God might benefit in some positive way.
Paul’s image of a life hidden with Christ in God should have a tremendous impact upon our lives:
We should be comforted as to where our security lies. Our destiny is protected by Christ himself. When children play hide and seek, they look for a hidden place where they cannot be found. The security of our soul is in a place where Satan has no access. The security of our soul is in the place where death has no longer any power. Indeed there is a sign outside that says “No Access.” Even our sin has no place there to accuse or condemn us!
We should be encouraged to labour for Christ knowing that the time here on earth is short and that there are opportunities to make a difference and thus draw people into the Kingdom. As a church here on earth we are under the protection and direction of Jesus. We operate from a safe place and though there will be enemy fire it will never be sufficient to destroy us.
We should realize where we now are as believers. We are in a place that should radically alter how we think, act and feel. This is a precious place where the Lord is present and we should constantly live with a sensitivity to Him. Not to do so is to disregard him and to live carelessly and thoughtlessly to the presence of the One who protects us and guarantees our future.
It is a precious place because it guarantees our accessibility to the wisdom and knowledge of God. We are in a place that is an inexhaustible fountain of wisdom to us that we can constantly call upon. It is also a strong place that will empower us in our daily lives. When we feel weak, we need only turn towards Jesus, who is immediately there and ask for his strength to tackle temptation, adversity and opportunity.