21. THE PRESENT VICTORY
I
want to discuss the present victory that is available to Christians. This victory is a benefit of salvation and
could be listed in the format of the previous section, but such a presentation
would detract from the emphasis that this subject requires. For the victory that Christians have
available is directly related to the issues of suffering and negative pain and
hurt that is the central concern of this entire essay.
A. The Blessing of Abraham
The
first eleven chapters of Genesis are a depressing portrayal of the early
history of humanity. In the twelfth
chapter, the tenor of the book changes as the story of Abraham and his family
begins. God singled out Abraham and began to work in his life. In the midst of
the sin and heartache of the human race, God offered blessing to Abraham and
his family. There was no obvious reason
for God’s doing this other than His own gracious nature. However, though God’s grace and blessing are
evident, it is also evident that God blessed in order that Abraham might be the
instrument of blessing the whole world.
In God’s call to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3), God states that as a result
of His blessing on Abraham, “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:3b)
Thus,
as God reached into the world and poured His grace into Abraham’s life, He
began to bring a process of blessing the whole world. In the continuing story that is followed
through the rest of Genesis, again and again, we encounter individuals, the
descendants of Abraham in most cases, who have the hand of God on their lives
and who experience God’s grace and blessing.
At the same time, we see the nations that surround these individuals to
be caught in the general human condition of sin and death.
The
story of Genesis concludes with the story of Joseph. Joseph was one of the twelve sons of Jacob
(also known as Israel). He was also the
great-grandson of Abraham. Joseph had a
series of difficulties and setbacks, some of his own making. He was sold into slavery by his brothers,
ending up down in Egypt. He got in
trouble with his master and was put in prison.
Finally, because he was able to interpret dreams, he was favored by the
Egyptian Pharaoh and was made prime minister.
In this role, he was able to lead Egypt and the whole area through a
famine. He also rescued his own family
from famine and brought them to live in Egypt in a place of adequate food and
security. Hence, we see how the work of
God in Joseph’s life enabled him to become a savior for his people and even the
nations that surrounded them. He
embodied, in a limited way, the promise of God to Abraham: “all peoples on earth will be blessed through
you.”
B. God Rescues People
The
situation at the end of Genesis provides the background for the book of
Exodus. The action in Exodus took place
centuries after Joseph. By that time,
the Hebrews or Israelites were slaves.
Under the leadership of Moses, God powerfully rescued the Israelites
slaves by the dramatic Exodus through the Red Sea. Here, we observe the characteristics of God’s
intervention in human affairs: God moves
with power to rescue people from their predicament.
In
the remainder of the Old Testament period, God’s moved into the midst of the
human condition again and again. In most
cases God used human instruments—God-ordained leaders—to bring about his
purposes. In the early days, these
leaders were “charismatic.” That means
that they were raised up by God on an “ad hoc” basis to provide leadership and
to carry out God’s purposes. Men and
women like Moses, Joshua, Gideon, and Deborah were servants of God’s work in
the world.
In
the person of King David, especially, the purposes of God for the nation of
Israel were set in motion. He is the
third of the “big three” of the Old Testament—Abraham and Moses completed that
triad. Abraham was the patriarch by
which God established His people. Moses
was the instrument of God’s redemption of those people from slavery. Moses also was the leader at Mount Sinai
where these slaves were formed into a free people. Finally, David consolidated the people in the
land of Israel, providing the military leadership that was needed to overcome
their enemies and bring them to a period of rest and peace. His son Solomon would further consolidate and
build an empire and provide the Temple for worship.
C. Visions of the Kingdom of God
In
this brief history of Israel we see that God reached down in among the nations
of the earth and provided a hope for a solution to the human condition. In the cradle of civilization, the Middle East,
that chunk of land bridging Africa, Asia, and Europe, God planted a people as a
statement to the world. He gave them the
Mosaic Law as a vision for a Kingdom of God, an outline of human righteousness
and holiness. Again and again, He
demonstrated His willingness to rescue them, to protect them, to discipline
them, to nurture them as His very own.
Yet,
the history goes on. After Solomon, the kingdom broke in two. Each fragment then devolved into lower and
lower states of immorality and injustice.
It became evident that God relied less and less on the office of king as
an instrument of His Kingdom. Instead,
He used the prophets—men like Elijah and Isaiah. The prophets warned of disasters that were
coming because of the people’s sin.
Originally,
Israel stood out among the nations of the world as the manifestation of the
Kingdom of God. Its story was
counter-cultural and against the general drift of human history. But, in its later years, Israel succumbed to
those tendencies and, as a result, it became a victim of the history of the
Middle East. Its northern fragment was
destroyed by the Assyrian Empire. The
southern fragment, called Judah, was defeated by the Babylonian Empire and
carried into captivity in 586 BC. In the
centuries that followed, David’s land enjoyed very little autonomy. It would be a vassal of Persia, Egypt, Syria,
and Rome.
Despite
their downhill history, in the midst of their horrific defeats, and in the
period of their anemic “comeback” after Babylonian exile, Hebrew prophets,
poets, and essayists continued to reveal a vision of the Kingdom of God. This was a people that had begun in the most
hopeless of circumstances as slaves in Egypt.
God could bring them back from captivity. God could rebuild the Temple. God could establish a reign of righteousness
and holiness. The hope of David’s reign
would remain as a standard of hope for these people.
D. Jesus Brings the Kingdom
What
I have just described is the history of the people to whom Jesus came. And when He came, He brought once again a
vision of the Kingdom of God. His first
recorded sermon was: “Repent for the
Kingdom of God is at hand.”[i] In
The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus prayed: “Thy
Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”[ii] So, the Kingdom comes when God’s will is done
on earth as it is in heaven. Or, the
Kingdom is the manifestation of the will of God on earth.
The
earth was intended to be the domain of the human race. In Genesis 1 and 2, God placed the
responsibility for and authority over the earth in the hands of humanity. The fall into sin, the power of the devil,
and the Law of Sin and Death have dethroned the human race. Instead of earth being a domain in which to
reign, it has become a place of frustration and disappointment. Those men who have had authority placed in
their hands have generally perverted it and showed themselves to be subjects of
the devil.
But,
when the Kingdom comes, people are set free from the Law of Sin and Death. They are released to joyful freedom and victorious
living.
In
Matthew 12, Jesus cast out a demon. His
enemies claimed that He exorcised the demon by the power of Satan. But Jesus contradicted them. His claim was that He cast the demon out by
the power of the Holy Spirit. And that
event was a sign that the Kingdom of God had come.[iii] In that same passage, Jesus explained that
His exorcism was an act against Satan, whom He called “the strong man.” And, He said, it was necessary to bind the
strong man in order to plunder his goods.
In other words, part of the mission of Jesus was to defeat the devil in
order to “plunder” him. Obviously, the
goods of Satan include the souls of people.
So, when the Kingdom of God comes through the power of the Holy Spirit,
Satan is defeated and people are set free.
You
can see evidence of the work of Satan in people’s lives everywhere. We could list all sorts of destructive
patterns that people fall into—drugs, alcohol, illicit and perverted sex,
abusive relationships, patterns of quitting jobs or marriages, poverty, poor
education. Generally, these patterns are
vicious cycles that people feel trapped within.
A man gets in trouble with the bottle.
That creates poor work habits.
So, he gets fired or is threatened at work. That pushes him to fight with his wife, who
threatens to leave him. That makes him
more depressed and he drinks more. This
prison that he is in will only be broken open by spiritual power. The Holy Spirit can reach down and grab this
man as he hears the word of God preached or witnessed to. The Spirit can catapult him over the walls of
his prison into a place of hope and freedom.
I know, because it happened to me.
E. The Holy Spirit Power of the
Kingdom
What
is the nature of this power of the Holy Spirit?
We can look at the Old Testament examples. The Exodus from Egypt is the greatest of
these. Those examples are helpful,
especially when we consider them holistically.
For example, the Exodus must be paired with the experience of the
Israelites at Mount Sinai. There God
formed them into a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” We then understand the Exodus to have
catapulted them into the Kingdom of God.
But
I think that to understand the power of the Spirit we should also observe the
most important event in all of human history, the Resurrection. And we should keep in mind that the
Resurrection of Jesus was the beginning of THE Resurrection. That is, Jesus’ Resurrection is the “first
fruits” of the great Resurrection of the future. First fruits were the earliest grain heads to
ripen. They were a welcome promise of
the harvest to follow. So, Jesus’
Resurrection is God’s great headline:
RESURRECTION COMING.
But,
there is a second foretaste of the coming Resurrection and coming of the
Kingdom of God, and that is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The Holy Spirit is referred as an “earnest”
or “guarantee” of our future in several places in the New Testament.[iv]
Paul
in several places refers to “hope.” It
seems obvious that he understands hope in a “technical” way. That is, he is not simply writing of ordinary
hope. He ranks hope as one of the “big
three” of the Christian experience.[v] This Biblical hope is the hope that the Holy
Spirit, God’s down payment on the future, brings to us. So, as the Holy Spirit dwells within us,
fills us, and works in us, He is preparing us for the future.
In
one respect this is not a totally positive experience. Paul describes a “groaning” within us as we
yearn for God’s future.[vi] Part of that groaning may be manifested by a
certain discontentment with our present world.
We, and all creation, are not satisfied with This Present Order of
Existence or The Way Things Are. We know
there is something better. The Spirit of
God within us brings us hope for the future.
F. Three Manifestations of the
Spirit
At
the same time, we also experience the future in this present time. We experience the future Resurrection Kingdom
by the power of the Holy Spirit. I
believe the Holy Spirit is especially manifested in the lives of Christians in three
ways.
·
We experience the power of the Holy Spirit in
evangelism.
·
We experience the power of the Holy Spirit in
deliverance.
·
We experience the power of the Holy Spirit in
ministry.
The
most explicit of all promises of the power of the Holy Spirit is for
evangelism, which is found in the words
of Jesus in Acts 1:8, as follows.
But you will receive power when the
Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all
Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
The power of the Holy Spirit
enabled people to preach the gospel and witness one-on-one throughout the early
years of the church. The result was that
people were convinced and convicted of their need of a Savior and of the truth
of the gospel. That anointing of the evangelistic
work of the church continued throughout the history of the church so that the
gospel has spread around the world.
Accompanying
the work of salvation is the power of the Holy Spirit to deliver people from
the power of Satan and evil spirits. In
some cases, these people are held in “strongholds” that must be battered down
through spiritual power. Paul described
the kind of spiritual warfare that such deliverance involves in the following
passage:
The weapons we fight with are not
the weapons of the world [or of the flesh].
On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.
I
Corinthians 10:4
In many cases, deliverance directly
accompanies the salvation experience.
Often we focus much attention on this aspect of salvation because it is
so dramatic. Someone may be delivered
from alcoholism, drugs, illicit sex, lying, gambling, or hating. Sometimes people are delivered from a set of
acquaintances that have a corrupting influence.
In
some cases deliverance occurs in the lives of Christians who, though they have
accepted Christ, find that they are still caught in destructive patterns. Will power and instruction are not always
sufficient. These strongholds resist the
Kingdom of God and must be destroyed through prayer and the power of God.
I
had been serving the Lord for a number of years, but I continued to smoke. I had tried a number of times to quit. I had used devices that were supposed to help
me cut down. I had chewed a nicotine
gum. (This was before the era of the
products that are now available.) I was
unable to quit. One Sunday, the pastor
spoke on the anointing from God. He gave
a call to pray at the altar. I came down
and a man placed his hand on my back and prayed in tongues.[vii] I went home and waged a week-long battle with
cigarettes. I was surviving on three or
four a day. Sometimes I would raid the
butts in the ashtray of my car.
I
went back to church the following Sunday.
That evening I described what had happened to me. The pastor asked for others who had battled
cigarettes to gather around me and pray.
They did so. I did not feel
anything. However, from that moment on I
have never smoked another cigarette.
I
think that there are other forms of deliverance that may be more profound than
deliverance from bad habits. Again,
generally these accompany salvation or may occur quietly and gradually over a
period of deepening discipleship. In
other cases, there are crisis experiences, yet the exact nature of the deliverance
is not immediately visible. The final
results, however, are evident in the lives of those people who have been set
free. They are free from pettiness,
triviality, and constant bickering. They
are free from fear
and insecurity. In short, they are liberated from the very
things that dominate so many people’s lives.
The
third focus of the power of the Holy Spirit is ministry. Jesus described this work in a person’s life
as follows.
“If anyone is thirsty, let him come
to me and drink. Whoever believes in me,
as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within
him.” [John comments:] By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who
believed in him were later to receive.
John
7:37b-39a
Jesus describes the
Spirit-empowered ministry of the Christian as “streams of living water.” He had just said that the thirsty can come to
Him, Jesus, to drink, to quench their soul-thirst. But then He describes the believer as having
a stream of water gushing out of himself!
That is the Jesus Creek that can quench the soul-thirst of others. The water of that Jesus Creek is the Holy
Spirit, whose ministry is to administer Jesus to individual personalities and
situations in the here and now.[viii] But Jesus, in His grace, has made us instruments of this ministry of the Holy
Spirit to others. And our ministry is a
ministry of blessing, of refreshing, of encouragement and hope.
The
New Testament refers to these ministries as “gifts.” They are referred to in three lists, found in
Romans 12:6-8, I Corinthians 12:7-11 (also called the “manifestations” of the
Spirit), and I Corinthians 12:28-31.
Another set of gifts of leadership are listed in Ephesians 4:11.
I
would make the following observations about these spiritual gifts:
·
Gifts are not natural talents, though they may
make use of such talents.
·
The lists of gifts are not exhaustive lists,
but, rather are suggestive lists. Other
gifts may be manifested.
·
Gifts are for blessing people. They fulfill the call of Abraham to be
blessed to be a blessing (see Genesis 12:3).
·
Exercising a gift (especially the more quiet
kinds of gifts) is remarkably easy to do and easy to receive. For example, I have observed people with an
administrative gift who could enable people to come together and get things done
with such grace and gentleness that people walked away from their task full of
joy.
G. The Church: Institution or Instrument of the Kingdom?
Jesus
predicted a new entity that would come into being after His earthly
ministry. This incident is described as
follows:
When Jesus came to the region of
Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man
is?”
They
replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others,
Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
“But
what about you?” he asked. “Who do you
say I am?”
Simon
Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus
replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you
by man, but by my Father in heaven. And
I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the
gates of Hades will not overcome it. I
will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth
will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in
heaven.” Then he warned his disciples
not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.
Matthew
16:13-20
In this brief statement about the
church, Jesus described it in powerful terms.
First,
the church came into being by revelation. Peter, I believe, spoke for the assembled
apostles, who were the foundation of the church. He spoke of the pivotal Person in all of
history and spoke the cornerstone of the teaching of the church, which is that
Jesus is the Son of God come in human flesh.
That cornerstone teaching was revealed to him from God.
Second,
the church was built on a rock. What is the rock? Is it Peter?
In one respect it is Peter. It
also can be said to be the apostles of whom Peter was spokesman. But, it seems obvious that the rock is also
the confession of Christ that Peter has just made. Jesus chose to announce the founding of the
church at the crucial moment of Peter’s confession. Numerous other incidents involving Peter are
mentioned in the gospels, but on none of those occasions did Jesus announce the
founding of the church. So, the church
is built on the Apostles, who had revealed to them the Person of Jesus, the Son
of God.
Third
the church storms the gates of hell and
breaks in. We receive the words of
Jesus in two ways. We can picture hell
(a more common term for Hades) attacking the church, or we can picture the
church as a battering ram against the gates of hell. Certainly, both images hold true in our
experience. At times, the church is a
safe haven where people can find rest and peace from the ravages of the world
that is dominated by Satan. At other
times, the church, through its ministries, invades the strongholds of Satan and
breaks down the doors and rescues the souls that are trapped there.
Fourth,
the church liberates captives and
captures the unruly. Jesus handed
over the keys of the Kingdom. Keys are
authority. Keys enable one to move from
building to building, to put some things off limits and to provide access to
other things. So, the church is able to
liberate subjugated people who have always believed that things must always be
THE WAY THINGS ARE and have never heard of The Law of the Spirit of Life. At the same time, the church can banish those
wicked behaviors and patterns of life that have been so destructive.
The
United Methodist Church aired a television commercial numerous times in recent
years. The brief scenario shows two boys
jumping a fence and slipping into a church.
The church is empty, and it is seems to be during a weekday or Saturday. In the basement there is a pool table, which
is the attraction for these kids. Then,
as ominous music plays, someone enters the room. The boys are scared spitless. Then, the camera closes in on the face of a
man wearing a clerical collar. The
pastor explains that, since they are trying harder to get in the church than
anyone else, he has something for them.
So, he gives one of the boys the
key to the church.
This
commercial was a real incident. That
incident was the beginning involvement in the church of the two brothers and
their family. One of those boys is a
prominent United Methodist pastor today.
He credits that key and the friendly work of that pastor to turning his
whole family around. What a great
example of using the keys of the Kingdom!
Just
as Jesus brought the Kingdom through His ministry, He established the church to
continue that ministry through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is liberating for Christians to understand
the church as an instrument of the Kingdom of God. When we recognize that our role is to be
channels of the Jesus Creek into the lives of others, we do not worry so much
about the church as an institution.
“Buildings and Grounds” committees become less important and Sunday
School and Vacation Bible School become more important. Who will be Chairman of the Board becomes
less important than who will deliver a pie to a bereaved couple.
H. The Big Picture and God’s
Present Victory
The
theme of this book is that God has won a great victory in Jesus Christ. We are no longer defeated by The Law of Sin
and Death. Rather, we have entered into
the resurrection victory of Jesus.
Someday, that resurrection victory will be fully manifested. Sin and sickness and sorrow and death will
all be gone. That is The Big Picture. It is bigger than our little-picture
scenarios of life as we hope it will be.
Our little picture may be disrupted by sickness, disappointment,
financial reversal, or death. We may
want God to fix our little picture. But
God wants us to accept His solution, to enter into His Big Picture.
When
we commit ourselves to The Big Picture, we accept God’s great future in The
Resurrection. We also accept GOD’S GREAT
PRESENT through the Holy Spirit. We join
the A Team and become channels of the Jesus Creek into people’s lives. We understand that the work of the Holy
Spirit through us is continuous with God’s great future. The Holy Spirit is bringing resurrection
victory into our lives and into the lives of others through us.
There
is a constant temptation for Christians to get sucked back into little
pictures. I think this is especially
true in the midst of prosperity. We need
to renew from time to time our commitment to the Lord and recognize when our
priorities are not in correct order.
Another
challenge to our commitment to The Big Picture is trouble, especially profound
loss. We hear expressions such as “My
whole world was shattered” or “My world fell apart.” In the context of this section, we need to
understand the following about the God and His Kingdom in the midst of trouble:
·
God loves us.
He has sent Jesus to die for our sins and bring us to Himself.
·
God feels deeply our loss and the pain that loss
brings to us.
·
God, in fact, felt that pain from the very
beginning of time.
·
God sent Jesus into the world to bring an end to
human suffering, include the pain that trouble and loss bring.
·
The great redemptive plan of God comes against
the suffering of this world.
·
The Holy Spirit is able to bring comfort and
ultimate victory over suffering.
I. Alienation from the Way
Things Are
We
are passing through a strange land. In
Hebrews 11, Abraham is said to have “made his home in the promised land like a
stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents…For he was looking forward to
the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”[ix] He was in the promised land, but he was a stranger. He was in this present order of
existence, The Way Things Are, but he also knew, by faith, that someday
this would all be different. He lived in a tent, but someday God would
build him a city.
As
we live in the world, but are not of the world, we understand Abraham’s heart.[x] We know things are not right with the
world. Our lifestyles are not dictated
by cultural trends, for we are called to be holy people. So, we live counter-culturally, as we are
committed to God’s Big Picture. We are
members of the A Team, as we called to minister to others.
With
this kind of perspective, trouble and suffering become streams to cross and not
swamps to get bogged down in. We
certainly feel the pain. We grieve at
the loss of a loved one. We are hurt by
financial reversal or by strains in relationships. However, in our suffering, we maintain a
sense that we are going somewhere.
Suffering is something we eventually get over because the trajectory of
our lives is toward God’s great future.
22. THE BIG PICTURE
I
remind you of the illustration that I used very early in this essay, the
illustration of the collage. My
illustration was that we might see one part of a collage that does not seem to
fit. We would be tempted to remove that
one part. But we might be too hasty in
making that judgment. This haste would
result from not seeing the complete collage.
We would not understand the collage until we saw it completely. We needed to see the big picture.
I
began all of this discussion with what a friend of mine calls “the
negatives.” Generally, he means the
suffering of this world, but he would include some things that may be more in
the realm of disappointment or frustration than in the realm of suffering. From there I moved to a discussion of the
Biblical understanding of sin as the underlying cause of all those
“negatives.” I have tried to develop an
understanding of this present order of existence. This present order has two causes: God’s creative action and The Law of Sin and
Death. The result is a mixture of
blessing and pain.
In
the midst of this present order of existence, or The Way Things Are, we
experience, from time to time, pronounced pain and suffering. The horror of the terrorist attacks of
9/11/01 is one example. These occasions
bring us to question God and wonder why He allows such a thing to happen.
My
contention has been that the Christian answer to that question is that God has
done something about all such occasions.
God has provided the answer to The Law of Sin and Death. That answer is The Law of the Spirit of Life
in Christ Jesus. That new principle is
that God provides a COMPLETE, RADICAL, ETERNAL ANSWER TO ALL SUFFERING. That answer is the resurrection. That answer is a complete answer, not a
piecemeal, partial answer. It is not a
bandaid that stops the hurt momentarily but that cannot solve human
mortality.
I
have observed that many people, INCLUDING MANY CHRISTIANS, just are not
impressed with all of this that I have just said. I am convinced that what I have outlined in
the previous pages is an accurate statement of the Biblical understanding of
God’s solution to the human condition. I
can understand that people who do not embrace the Christian viewpoint would be
unimpressed. But I am distressed that
many Christians do not draw comfort and consolation from the very gospel that
they believe saves them. Instead, they
grasp at various fads and false versions of wisdom that—guess what?--fail to
look at The Big Picture.
First,
I want to re-emphasize the thesis that I have been hammering at. My point is this: THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST IS GOD’S ANSWER TO
ALL HUMAN SUFFERING, THEREFORE, OUR SOLACE AT ALL TIMES RESTS IN OUR BELIEF AND
TRUST IN JESUS CHRIST. There are some
consequences to this thesis, including the following:
1.
God’s solution is a radical solution that is nothing short
of a change in the whole order of existence.
He is not content to make minor changes in our present order of
existence.
2.
This means that we, as individuals, must want such a change
in the order of existence. We must “let
goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; the body they may kill; God’s
truth abideth still; his kingdom is forever.”[xi]
3.
This says that we must desire a very radical new approach to
life, that we no longer will be tied so tightly to this present order of
existence that we cannot think in eternal terms.
4.
Such a new way of thinking requires repentance of us. We must repent of always looking for
short-term gains. There are three evil
categories that are destroying American society today: sensuality, materialism, and substance abuse. These are all attempts to grasp at short-term
gain. To embrace God’s plan of salvation
is to reject such evil.
5.
Finally, we must recognize that God calls us into a
partnership with Him in His work. That
is, God is calling us to be on the gospel team.
As we embrace The Big Picture, we are called to bring others into a
saving knowledge of Christ and to minister to one another as we continue our
pilgrimage to God’s great future.
Another
way of saying all of this is that GOD IS CALLING US TO BE PART OF SOMETHING
BIGGER THAN OURSELVES. I am convinced
that this is a basic human need. Totalitarian
regimes, cults, and any number of other destructive human
organizations have taken advantage of
this. When we enter into God’s
salvation, we become part of God’s great activity in human history that will
one day bring us into a new order of existence.
When
we experience pain, reversal, sadness, and devastating loss, we, as Christians,
must deal with the question: “Has God
failed, and, if that is so, has all that I have believed in and hoped for been
put in jeopardy?” I have tried to
develop the point that no “little picture,” no matter how awful it may be, can
render invalid The Big Picture that I am a part of. It may make me sad or anger me or disappoint
me temporarily, but it does not change the fact that God has won the victory.
I
want to quote two positive affirmations of these ideas. First, I quote from the famous hymn, “It Is
Well with My Soul,” by Horatio G. Spafford:
When peace, like a river, attendeth my
way,
when sorrows like sea billows roll;
whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to
say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
Though Satan should buffet, though
trials should come,
let this blest assurance control,
that Christ has regarded my helpless
estate,
and hath shed his own blood for my
soul.[xii]
Second, I quote extensively from Romans
8:
I consider that our present sufferings are not
worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for
the sons of God to be revealed. For the
creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will
of the one who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be liberated
from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children
of God…And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love
him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to
be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among
many brothers. And those he predestined,
he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also
glorified. What, then, shall we say in
response to this? If God is for us, who
can be against us? He who did not spare
his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him,
graciously give us all things? …Who
shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or
danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day
long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all of these things we are more than
conquerors through him who loved us. For
I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither
present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor any thing
else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans
8:18-39, in part
I
believe that the deep faith that is expressed in these two affirmations is the
faith of people who have been through a few things. They are not new converts. They have seen “sorrows like sea billows
roll.” But they are convinced that God
has done something so profoundly in Christ that enables them to live in this
present order of existence without succumbing to it.
[i]
Matthew 4:17
[ii]
Matthew 6:10
[iii]
Matthew 12:28
[iv]
II Corinthians 1:22, 5:5, Ephesians
1:19-14
[v] I
Corinthians 13:13
[vi]
Romans 8:18-27
[vii]
Speaking or praying in “tongues” means to use a language unknown to the speaker
under the power of the Spirit.
[viii]
See the work of the Spirit that is described in John 14-16.
[ix]
Hebrews 11:9-10
[x]
John 17:15-19
[xi] Martin
Luther. “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”
as found in The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1989)
#110.
[xii] Horatio
G. Spafford, “It Is Well with My Soul” in United
Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: The
United Methodist Publishing House, 1989) #377.
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