Assurance and Perseverance

Romans 8.14-17: For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Romans 8.28-39: What, then, shall we say in response to these things? 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 will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 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 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 the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Galatians 4.1-7: What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.

1 John 5.6-12: For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. [The Christian doctrine of assurance or “inward witness” means that Christians can know that they are loved of God and have life, abundant and eternal. There are three testimonies that we are God’s beloved children: the Spirit, the blood of Christ, and the water of baptism. All three agree and assure us.]

2 Timothy 1.12: “I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him.”

Luke 6.46-59: As for everyone who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice, I will show you what they are like. They are like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built.

Romans 5.1-5: Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

1 Corinthians 1.8-11: We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.

Hebrews 6.4-6: It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.

2 Corinthians 4.7-10, 16-18: But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. … Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Hebrews 12.1-3: Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

James 1.2-4: Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

1 Timothy 1.18-20: Timothy, my son, I am giving you this command in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by recalling them you may fight the battle well, holding on to faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and so have suffered shipwreck with regard to the faith. Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme.

Promises of Jesus from the Gospel of John

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

“Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”

“If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.

My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Teaching: The Assurance of Salvation

1736, Friday, 6 February—About eight in the morning, we first set foot on American ground. It was a small uninhabited island, over against Tybee. Mr. Oglethorpe led us to a rising ground where we all kneeled down to give thanks. He then took boat for Savannah. When the rest of the people were come on shore, we called our little flock together to prayers.

1736 Saturday, 7 February—Mr. Oglethorpe returned from Savannah with Mr. Spangenberg, one of the pastors of the Germans. I soon found what spirit he was of and asked his advice with regard to my own conduct. He said, ‘My brother, I must first ask you one or two questions. Have you the witness within yourself? Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit that you are a child of God?’ I was surprised, and knew not what to answer. He observed it and asked, ‘Do you know Jesus Christ?’ I paused and said, ‘I know He is the Saviour of the world.’ ‘True,’ replied he; ‘but do you know He has saved you?’ I answered, ‘I hope He has died to save me.’ He only added, ‘Do you know yourself?’ I said, ‘I do.’ But I fear they were vain words.

1738 Sunday, 29 January, It is now two years and almost four months since I left my native country in order to teach the Georgian Indians the nature of Christianity. But what have I learned myself in the meantime? Why (what I the least of all suspected), that I who went to America to convert others was never myself converted to God. If it be said that I have faith, I answer, so have the devils – a sort of faith; but the faith I want is ‘a sure trust and confidence in God, that, through the merits of Christ, my sins are forgiven, and I reconciled to the favor of God.’ I want that faith which none can have without knowing that he hath it (though many imagine they have it who have it not); for whosoever hath it, is ‘freed from sin,’ and he is freed from doubt, ‘having the love of God shed abroad in his heart, through the Holy Ghost which is given unto him;’ which ‘Spirit itself bears witness with his spirit that he is a child of God. 1738 Wednesday, 24 May, In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

Until he felt his heart “strangely warmed,” Wesley was uncertain about his salvation. He lacked the witness of the Spirit that he was an adopted son of God. The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8 the double basis of assurance. We have assurance based upon our ability to call God “Abba/Father” and based upon the witness of the Holy Spirit. In the Roman world an adopted son was in no way inferior to a natural born son, and having been deliberately chosen by his adoptive Father, the adopted son often enjoyed the Father's affection more fully and reproduced the Father’s character more closely. We are God’s adopted children, not by creation but by God’s own choice and our assent to that choice.

Two witnesses were sufficient to establish the truthfulness of an assertion in the courts of law. In the case of our assurance of salvation, we are one of the witnesses and the Holy Spirit is the other witness. In what way do we testify on our own behalf? By the fact that we can address God as “Abba/Father.” This demonstrates our own state of being in regard to our relationship with God our Father. Let’s put ourselves on the stand for examination.

1- How do we view ourselves? Do we think of ourselves as God’s children and the sibling/friend of Jesus or is our identity found entirely elsewhere. Who do we think we belong to?

2-What is our prayer attitude? Do we address God as Father with intimacy and child-like trust, confident in our Father’s care and protection? Do we enjoy the privilege of knowing and being known by our Father?

3-What is our faith history? Have we experienced confession, repentance, forgiveness and pardon? Have we turned our lives toward the waiting Father, felt his love demonstrated in Jesus, accepted his gift of grace, and sought to do his will?

4-Can we recognize any of our Father’s character in ourselves? Have our lives been informed and formed by what we know of our Father’s way and will? Do we love other Christians as sisters and brothers? Do we recoil at sin and embrace truth and beauty?

5-Do we share our Father’s perspective and concerns? Are we living for today only or for eternity? Do we look forward to sharing our lives even more fully with the Father and the Son? Are we experiencing now the blessings of a close relationship with the Father and anticipating an ever greater blessedness to come?

Altogether, this is what might be called the testimony of our own spirits. This honest but grace- filled discernment process should lead us to testifying for ourselves: “Yes, I am an adopted child of the Father.” But in addition to our own witness, there is one who testifies on our behalf: the Holy Spirit. This is, in Wesley’s words, “an inward impression of the soul, a self-evident inward proof, a conviction manifested to our hearts beyond all reasonable doubt.” This is the Spirit saying to us “This isn’t just what you say but what the Father says about you. The Father says, ‘This is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.’” [Invite some to share the circumstances in which they experienced this Spirit-confirmation.]

The enemy would like to deceive us and disturb us with fleeting thoughts that border on doubt “Am I really God’s beloved?” But we can counter those thoughts with the strong testimony of the two witnesses. And I will tell you of another way to banish any doubtful thinking. Say to yourself and to the enemy “I am baptized.”

A little boy in Sunday School was asked what baptism means, and he said “Baptism is when God puts a cross on your forehead, and nobody sees it, but God sees it.” Baptism is the outward sign that the Father has adopted you. When He looks at you, He sees the sign of the cross and claims you as his own. In your baptism the Father said to you the same words that he said at the baptism of his Son Jesus: “You are my beloved child. With you I am well pleased.”

I cannot imagine that any of you, having reached this point in our journey together could be harboring any such doubts. If, however, your own spirit is testifying against you and you have never, even once, felt the inward conviction that you are indeed the precious child of the Father, than please tell me so that we can remedy this situation. You need not carry the burden of uncertainty. God loves you and wants you to be assured that you are his now and forever.

Teaching: “Once Saved, Always Saved?”

There is a teaching in Calvinist theology called “perseverance of the saints.” These days it is more often called “eternal security” or more popularly “once saved always saved.” What it means is that once a person has been led by God’s grace to confession and repentance and has then received though God’s grace justification and reconciliation to God, that person is then placed by God in a salvation status that cannot ever be lost.

The justified sinner will necessarily abide in the state of grace until final sanctification in glory. This is and has been a very controversial point in historic Christianity. As would be expected, the debate on this question parallels the Calvinist/Arminian debate over predestination. If God allows a certain measure of freedom for a person to choose to enter into the state of salvation, then it follows that God would also allow a certain measure of freedom to that same person to choose to withdraw from the state of grace.

As in that previously discussed debate, the issue has not been resolved because there are ample scriptural texts supportive of both perspectives. Advocates of eternal security point to Philippians 1.6 where Paul asserts that God will perfect the good work He has begun in the believer, to passages which speak of the Holy Spirit as a seal and an earnest of salvation, to Romans 8.39: “Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God,” and to the fourth gospel’s doctrine of salvation in which we have already passed from death to eternal life. On the other hand, there are numerous warnings in scripture that suggest that Christians can fall from the grace of God, such as 1 Corinthians 10.12, 1Timothy 1.19-20, Hebrews 6.4-6, and Revelation 3.16. There would seem to be little point in warning the believer against something that cannot happen. Both perspectives have something valuable to say to us. Truly, if it were up to us alone, depending on our own resources, it would be likely that very few could persevere to the end without falling, and we would have a very shaky sense of security. We need God’s help and God’s grace in this regard. Therefore, we cling to the promises of God and to God’s faithfulness. We are safe on God’s hands; he will persevere even if we falter. Therefore, we should quit worrying about it and trust in God.

On the other hand, as Jesus said in the parable of the Sower, there are some who make a good start but fail to complete the journey. We are probably all familiar with someone who fell out of faith, not just to the extent of committing sin or becoming spiritually lazy, but to the extent of discarding faith in Jesus Christ, turning away from or even against the body of Christ, and living as if he were wholly sufficient in himself. Advocates of eternal security will no doubt say that such a person was never “in Christ” to start with and was never truly concerned with salvation.

While granting that this may be the case, I would testify that I have confirmed many twelve and thirteen-year old believers who made a public profession of faith and who, in private interview, seemed altogether sincere to me, and yet a few years later disappeared from church life. After serving five years in one of my appointments, I calculated that I had confirmed over 50 young people. At the confirmation service in the fifth year, I asked all the previously confirmed teenagers to stand. Only 11 were present at that service. And all but one of those eleven were seated with parents who were active members of the congregation. I share this example simply to point out that faith in Christ is not a one-time profession but a life-long journey. Some continue to grow in faith, some remain infants in faith, and some lose the little bit they might have had at first.

And so, dear friends, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” and also trust that “he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.”

Teaching: “Press On”

I don’t know much about competitive running. The last time I ran hard I broke a bone in my left foot. But I do know what kind of race I would least want to be a part of. It’s that race where you run a long distance and along the way you have to jump over fences and holes and water hazards and other kinds of obstacles. I don’t know what it’s called but I know I don’t want to do it. And yet, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing my whole life long. Life is a marathon with periods of intense difficulty. The author of Hebrews and the Apostle Paul both compare the life of faith to such a race.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. (Hebrews 12.1-2)

For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. (2 Timothy 4.6-8) Using analogies in teaching and preaching is a risky technique and ought to be used carefully, but I think we can fruitfully pursue this race analogy a bit farther in the way that the scripture does. There is a raceway marked out for each of us. My path is not the same as yours. It is my path. But the starting point is the same and the finish line is the same. It starts with the awareness that we are recipients of God’s grace and with our acceptance of that grace. It ends with the completion of God’s work in us.

Keep Going: It is a difficult and hazardous race, requiring energy and perseverance. There are obstacles on the course that stop you in your tracks. But don’t quit.

When he was seven years old, his family was forced out of their home on a legal technicality and he had to go to work to help support them. At age nine, his mother died. At 22, he lost his job as a store clerk. He wanted to go to law school but his education wasn’t good enough. At 23, he went into debt to become a partner in a small store. At 26, his business partner died, leaving him a huge debt that took years to repay. At 28, after courting a girl for four years, he asked her to marry him and she said ‘No.’ At 37, on his third try, he was elected to Congress but two years later failed to be reelected. At 41 his four-year old son died. At 45, he ran for Senate and lost. At 47 he failed as the Vice-Presidential candidate. At 49, he ran for the Senate again and lost. At 51, he was elected President of the United States. His name was Abraham Lincoln. Some people get all the luck.

On Adriane’s North Carolina mission trip, she met a woman whose house, whose father’s house, and whose father and brother had all been swept away by a tornado. There was nothing left but a flat field and an unyielding faith. Death, illness, betrayal, loss and unemployment are but some of the obstacles that lie in wait for us. Trouble is inevitable. And so we will seek to strengthen our faith while we may. The faithful listed in Hebrews 11 fall into two groups: those who won great victories and those who were killed. All were commended for their faith.

Pouring out – taking in: Running drains us of energy. Paul says that his life has been poured out for the gospel. At some point we will grow weary. Marathon runners hit the wall at about 20 miles out. It’s the time when the champion demonstrates the greater level of will and determination. Some drop out, some slow down, some press on. In bike racing, the peloton slows down in the feeding zone. Everyone consumes energy bars and beverages so that they don’t burn out near the finish. [They also stop to pee!] In the spiritual life, we can’t pour out continually. We need to slow down and replenish our energy stores. Bob Schneider asked me for a three-year sabbatical from church work. I gladly helped him develop a spiritual renewal plan. Today he is ordained clergy.

Here are a few winning strategies that we can employ:

Look to the witnesses: They are watching us, not to judge or criticize but to cheer us on. There are no boo-birds in that crowd. Every one of them has run the race and every one was a finisher. They are shouting “I did it and so can you.” They are the home crowd, our loving family, and our most rabid fans. When we make a winning play they cheer. When we falter, they say “Oh.” When we cross the finish line they high five and hug each other and weep tears of joy and praise God. Look to them and be encouraged. Throwing off everything that hinders and sin that entangles: “Lay aside every weight.” In other words, strip down for the race. Did you ever see a runner in a suit and tie and wing tips carrying a brief case or in a wedding dress and satin pumps carrying a bouquet? I didn’t think so. There’s nothing wrong with those outfits; they’re just not running clothes. The extra weight and encumbrance would slow you down and wear you out. It’s hard to throw off those time-wasting, energy-absorbing secondary pursuits and commitments. It’s even harder to throw off the sins that cling to us so tenaciously. But we have to do it. They impede our forward movement so much that they threaten to prevent us from finishing. They take us off the track and into the woods and remove us so far from where we need to be that we sometimes cannot find our way back.

Fixing our eyes on Jesus, pioneer and perfecter: Jesus is the destination we are running toward and the one who waits for us there. He is the husband and the coach. He is the pioneer, the one who has gone before us and the one who has opened up the way of faith and faithfulness. He has set the course. His journey is the pattern for ours. He called it “the way of the cross.” He’s the perfecter, the one who knows how to run the race and the one who is beside us all the way. He is the source of our strength and the joy that is set before us. When we come to the end of our own strength and resources, our faith will be revealed in what we do next. That is the time to pray “Show me more of yourself, Lord.”

There is a finish line and a reward for finishing: Mamo Wolde of Ethiopia won the Olympic Marathon in 1968. As the stadium was emptying, a lone runner entered the gate. John Akhwari of Tanzania had fallen and injured his leg. As he hobbled around the track, the remaining spectators cheered for him. Someone asked him later, why he didn’t quit since he had no chance at a medal. His reply: “My country didn’t send me 7000 miles to start the race; they sent me to finish it.”

At this point I cannot pass up the opportunity to challenge those of you who are, like me, in the last quadrant of life. Yes, I mean you “golden oldies.” I can’t say much with authority about the retirement years because there is nothing in the Bible about retirement. Scripture says “You who are faithful to the end shall receive the crown of life.” Now I don’t want to offend anyone, and this is just me speaking, but my impression is that for many people, retirement includes a great deal of wasted time. I believe that the closer we get to the finish line, the more motivated we should be to run with strength. When the Olympic marathon runners leave the streets and enter the stadium to run the final laps, you can actually see in their faces a deepened resolve.

When Winston Churchill returned to the office of Prime Minister for the second time in 1951, there were some who thought he was too old to serve at the age of 78. After he had been serving for a year, a reporter asked if he would be retiring soon. Churchill replied, “Not until I’m a great deal worse or the kingdom is a great deal better.” Of course, at some point, we will become a great deal worse. But until then, we run. We are to be the John McKissicks of Bethany, serving God continuously to the extent of our abilities, whatever they may be. Indeed, in America today, young retirees have been given an amazing opportunity to enter an entirely new life-phase of service and witness if they are willing to take advantage of it.

It was not until John Wesley was 87 years old that he began to slow down. Even then, he continued to preach, and though his sight was failing, his mind was as eager and active as ever. When he preached for the last time, he had to be supported by two people on either side, but the worshippers said that to see his radiant face was a sermon in itself. As his strength began to fail, his friends gathered at his bedside. At the last hour he surprised the tearful group by bursting out in song “I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath; and when my voice is lost in death, praise shall employ my nobler powers.” He then waved his hand and whispered “The best of all is God is with us.” And with a final “Farewell” he passed into the presence of the Lord he had loved and served so well.

This is how we would like to die: strong in faith and active in service to the very end. But most of us will experience a time, short or long, of diminished capacity, loss of beloved friends and companions, and illness. Our final challenge will be to keep Christ as our highest good and goal and to continue to live in a way that brings glory to God despite our losses and failing health. Part of what dying in Christ means is to accept with grace the dying that Christ gives us, to remain connected to the body of Christ, and to be satisfied with nothing more than Christ himself as we anticipate with joy the coming reign of Christ. It would be a good idea to memorize a hymn so that you can sing it with your final breath like Wesley did. I’ve memorized “Amazing Grace.”

In the race of faith, there are no medalists, just finishers. Jesus is at God’s right hand praying for us. And as he prays, we already experience the final outcome. Finishing the race in faith is our victory – not strictly ours but his.

A promising young man thought that God was calling him to the mission field. He wrestled with the call for some time and finally committed himself to that task without reservation. He wrote in the back of his Bible. “No reservations.” As he was studying and preparing for the work, he was offered a well-paying position in his field. He considered it briefly but turned it down. In the back of his Bible he wrote “No retreats.” Finally he made his way to the mission field, but after what most would consider a very short time, he was stricken with a fatal disease. After he died, someone happened to turn to the back of his Bible and discovered the last words written there: “No regrets.” When we stand before our Lord and hear him say “Well done,” we will be able to celebrate the life that we and he created together with no reservations, no retreats and no regrets.

Additional Thoughts

Adversity is inevitable. … Toughness is shown in how you respond to adversity. We don’t always get a happy ending, and sometimes the middle isn’t so happy either. You never really know how tough people are until they encounter the rough spots. The truly tough man is the one who stays grounded in his values and focused on his goals when things are challenging.” An oak tree is a little nut that stood his ground. Tony Dungy, Playbook for an Uncommon Life, Tyndale, 70

What oppresses us in the hour of death is not the life that has been lived and loved but rather the life that has not been lived and that has neglected its possibilities. … Only the passion of love makes a person alive right down to the very fingertips. At the same time it makes a person able and ready to die. Jurgen Moltmann. The Passion for Life, Fortress

“Do not cast me off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength is spent. … till I proclaim thy might to all the generations to come.” Psalm 71.9,18b The gift of life is not to be honored, affirmed and handed on to the coming generation. The aim should be to accept the reality of aging and of death, but to ameliorate the diseases, disabilities and suffering associated with old age so as to add life to years, but not necessarily years to life. The downside of our remarkable medical progress is that for many, added years have resulted in a devaluation of the quality of life – the national nursing home scenario. The universal desire to “love a little longer” cannot be granted by extending years if the added years do not include the capacity to love. Whenever someone asks me if I feel old, I reply “I feel like a vigorous child of God, free to live, but with certain temporary limitations.” Gilbert Meilaender, Should We Live Forever,? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging, Eerdmans

Videos

Faith Hill “There Will Come a Day” [queensouchi31] Selah “Press On” [robert28r or misslilleke] Natalie Grant “Our Hope Endures” [valandro23] Steven Curtis Chapman “Not Home Yet” [emimusic]

Prepared for The Return of Christ and the Final Judgment

Luke 12.35-40: “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks, they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

Romans 13.11-14: And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.

1 Thessalonians 5.1-11: Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

2 Peter 3.3-4. 8-13: In the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.

Teaching: “Readiness is All”

God’s promise is invincible. Jesus is coming again. God is Alpha and Omega – the beginning and the end. The one whose word brought creation into being is the one whose coming will inaugurate the new creation. Although we are uncertain regarding the “when,” we are utterly convinced and convicted regarding the “what.” The element of temporal uncertainty is part of God’s design so as to create a particular response in us: hopeful expectancy and constant preparedness. It aims to create in us a dynamic state in which we are always awake and active, or to use the Biblical phase, in which we are continually keeping watch. Jesus will return when we least expect it – when we are living our typical day and engaged in our normal activities. Jesus description of the signs of the end times is generic: it depicts what is normal and routine in every generation. Wars and natural disasters do not offer a specific timetable; they are part of the usual pattern of crises. The primary focus and point of Jesus’ teaching is readiness.

Keeping watch doesn’t mean living a privileged and withdrawn existence waiting for our own personal heaven while the world goes to hell. To the contrary, keeping watch means doing the tasks we’ve been assigned by our Lord energetically and faithfully in anticipation for his imminent return. Keeping watch is a counterpoint to despairing or not noticing or being preoccupied or being indifferent or feeling helpless in relation to the evil and injustice around us. In the midst of chaos and suffering, we bear witness to the truth: the one who created us and redeemed us is still working in this world and inviting us to join the work. Our response to the anticipated end is to be constantly at work conducting the master’s business, fulfilling our assigned tasks, and investing our gifts for the master’s glory.1

Christians carry the attitude of the soldier at his sentry post, the ICU team, the air traffic controller or the parent of a newborn. We are alert, attentive and expectant. We live like there is

1 “A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. … It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, MacMillan, 1958, 104

no tomorrow, not in the sense that tomorrow is absent, empty or without promise, but in the sense that each day stands at the brink of eternity and tomorrow may be the great transition day. We refuse to become so caught up in the everydayness of life that we fail to recognize the glimpses of eternity which penetrate the everyday. We realize that the things that preoccupy us – buying and selling, driving in traffic, talking on the phone, eating and drinking, working and resting, and all the rest – these things are secondary to that which will be carried with us into the kingdom of God. And so we live as if every day were our last day.

A man had a vivid dream that he was going to die. Vaguely connected with the dream was the number seven. When he awoke, he was convinced that he would die in seven – but seven what? Could it be seven minutes? He confessed his sins, asked God to forgive him, reaffirmed his faith and trust in God’s grace, and waited. When seven minutes passed, he concluded it must be seven hours, so he ate breakfast, studied scripture, went to church, prayed at the altar, went home and paid his outstanding bills. For the next seven days he sought every opportunity to serve God and others and on through seven weeks, seven months and seven years. He lived the life of a committed disciple. Only after seven years had passed did he conclude that his interpretation of the dream was mistaken. Eventually, of course, he did die. But he was so much in the habit after seven years of living the Christian life, that whenever the day arrived, he was ready.

What would we do if this were our last day upon the earth?

1- Make sure that we have made our peace with God 2- Get our lives in order. There is a place in Death Valley known as Dante’s view. From that location you can look down 200 feet to the lowest spot in the continental United States (a place called “Black Water”) or you can look up to the 14,500 foot summit of Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the continental US. Is there anything in your way of life that could go higher? 3- Get right with others. Reclaim them, be reconciled to them, and treasure them. 4- Invite someone to follow after us. The first thing Jesus did was to gather a crew. And the first question on our final examination will be “Who is coming after you? 5- Do something good for somebody. Accomplish some work of justice or mercy. Offer care and compassion to the one who needs it.

[Mary Ann Bird was born with a cleft palate and endured years of scorn and teasing from her classmates. She did, however, have a second-grade teacher, Mrs. Leonard, whom she and all the other children adored. One day, Mrs. Leonard, conducted a hearing test of the students by having them stand with their ear against the classroom door while she whispered something from the other side. Mary Ann testified that she stood there listening intently for the words which God must have placed into Mrs. Leonard’s heart, those seven words which changed her life. Mrs. Leonard whispered “I wish you were my little girl.”]

The whole point of contemplating a “last day on earth scenario” is to see it as a frame of reference for every day on earth. The challenge of Christian discipleship is to move from the everydayness of everyday to the eternal significance of every day so that we live as if we are standing on the brink of eternity. This is a time of tremendous urgency for each of us; it is our time to do the Master’s will. While we wait, we are to remain faithful and ready. We are to teach, pray, witness, and serve the coming Lord. Jesus tells us about a servant who was found by his Master to be faithfully attending to his duty. He was not idle, lazy or unaware of his responsibilities. Neither was he frantic, compulsive or fearful. He was simply living under orders and as if every moment could be the time of account- giving. For this servant the Master completes a full reversal of roles: the Master dresses himself to serve, seats the servant at the table, and waits on him. This, of course, is what our Master and Lord Jesus has done and continues to do for us every time we come to his table. And it is exactly what we can anticipate as our blessed reward in his coming kingdom.

“Can we hear it now, the knocking, the driving, the struggling forward? Can we feel something in us that wants to leap up, to free itself and open up to the coming of Christ? So we sense that we are not just talking in images here, but that something is really happening, that human souls are being raised up, shaken, broken open, and healed? That heaven is bending near the earth, that the earth is trembling and people are desperate with fear and apprehension and hope and joy? That God is bending down to humankind, coming to us where we live? … Can we do anything, amid whatever is happening, other than to stop and listen, to tremble and reach out to him? (The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Isabel Best, Editor, Fortress, 2012, p. 114)

Yearning for the coming kingdom: “We sense a blissful homesickness, without hardness without grimness. And something in us yearns outward, farther than past years, farther than our childhood home, indeed, outward to our home beyond the clouds, to the eternal house of our Father. (The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Isabel Best, Editor, Fortress, 2012, p. 9)

“I am thoroughly convinced that God will let everyone into heaven who, in his considered opinion, can stand it. But ‘standing it’ may prove to be a more difficult matter than those who take their view of heaven from popular movies or popular preaching may think. The fires in heaven may be hotter than those in the other place. It might prove helpful to think occasionally of how, exactly, I would be glad to be in heaven should I ‘make it.’” “Hell is not an ‘oops!’ or a slip. One does not miss heaven by a hair but by constant effort to avoid and escape God.” By being the kind of person for whom away-from-God is the only place they want to be or for which they are suited. (Dallas Willard)

Teaching: “Before the Great White Throne”

We are saved by faith in Christ; and yet the Biblical descriptions of the judgment speak almost exclusively of the deeds a person has done. The stakes are high: eternal life or death seems out of proportion to the summary of deeds done or not done during our short and apparently insignificant time on earth. In Jesus’ parable of the talents, the judgment focuses on what has been done for good with the possibilities entrusted to us. The Master’s pleasure derives not from the size of the investment return but from the willingness of the worker to use what was given and to produce a benefit.

The unwillingness to make good use of what was given is cowardice and faithlessness. The consequence for the worthless servant is loss and deep sadness. Do Jesus’ words contradict our understanding of salvation by faith through grace and not by works? Here we see one of the paradoxes of Christianity: the atoning work of Christ is sufficient and our righteousness is a gift of grace, and yet good works are expected and required with the aid of the Spirit and give evidence of the transformed life.

Paul gives expression to this paradox when he declares “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2.12-13). He suggests that the purpose of the judgment of believers may be to reveal and clarify the quality of their works: Our work will be shown for what it is, for the Day (of Judgment) will disclose it. The fire will test the quality of work each has done; if the fire burns it up, the worker will grieve even though he will be saved (1 Corinthians 3.13-15). Judgment reveals who we are and the path we have chosen. Wesley said that all will be in evidence, everything will be revealed, and all testimony against us will be heard from men, angels and conscience. Niebuhr said “When the historical confronts the eternal, it is judged by its own ideal possibility and not by the contrast between the finite and the eternal character of God. The judgment is upon sin and not finiteness.” The person whose work survives the fire will be rewarded with praise, with the satisfaction of a job well done, with sharing the joy of his Lord, and possibly with additional responsibilities in the kingdom.

The story is told of a preacher who was vacationing in a remote mountain cabin with his family and was invited by the small church in the community to be their guest preacher. On the Sunday he preached his young son went with him. After the service, the lay leader thanked him for a lovely sermon but apologized for not offering an honorarium, citing the poverty of the congregation. The preacher hadn’t expected any compensation and said “Think nothing of it.” On the way out he noticed an offering plate in the narthex and thought to himself “If this church is so poor, perhaps I can help out a little bit.” And he dropped a $20 in the plate. As he was getting into his car the lay leader caught up to him and said, “Preacher, we can’t let you go without giving you something, so please accept this $20 as a toke of our appreciation.” The preacher couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow, but wanting to be courteous he said, “Thank you very much.” As he drove away he turned to his son and said “What lesson have you learned from what you just witnessed?” The boy replied, “Dad, if you had put more in you would have got more out.” That story pretty much sums up what I believe about judgment and reward.

Christians do not fear judgment because we know that Christ is our judge. He who died for us and rose for us and intercedes for us is our merciful judge. We who live in Christ live under grace. Our love for Christ motivates our every thought, word and deed. But the fact of final judgment constantly reminds us of the gravity and the sublime wonder of being human. Our lives are profoundly and eternally significant. Judgment is not intended to frighten us but to teach us the decisive importance of living as those who love God and neighbor.

Do we really need to be prodded by judgment-dread to become active in the Lord’s service? Faith without works is truly dead; in fact, how can there be true faith without some outward expression of it in the service of God and of neighbor. Isn’t giving the Lord pleasure something we all want to do? He delights and rejoices in our acts of service. He provides us what we need to be fruitful, he trusts us with everything he had, he taught us that whoever loses his life for the Lord’s sake will gain it, and he gives us opportunities of every kind to share his mission. What could possibly keep us from being useful to him? Fear that he will judge us harshly. The unfaithful servant says “I knew you were a hard man so I was afraid.” The only conclusion to draw from the story is that those who think our Lord is a hard man will be judged as if he were. Thanks be to God, we know better. How blest we are to know that the one who holds us accountable is the one who died for us. We don’t need to fear his judgment or to buy his favor; we can do good in his strength and for his sake. Tigyne belonged to the Wallamo tribe in interior Ethiopia. In the years preceding WWII, missionaries carried the message of Christ to this Satan-worshipping tribe. One of the early converts was Tigyne. Raymond Davis was the missionary who knew him and freed him. Tigyne was a slave. His decision to follow Christ displeased his master who refused to allow him to attend Bible studies or worship. He frequently beat Tigyne and humiliated him for his faith. But it was a price the young believer was willing to pay. There was another price, though, that he could not afford. He couldn’t purchase his freedom. For only twelve dollars his master would release him, but for a slave it might as well have been a million. When the missionaries learned that his freedom could be purchased, they talked it over, pooled their resources, and bought him from slavery.

Soon thereafter, missionaries were expelled from Ethiopia and 24 years passed before Raymond Davis returned to Wallamo. When Tigyne heard that Davis was coming, he went to the mission station to wait. Days went by until finally Davis arrived, riding in a car driven by a fellow missionary. When Tigyne saw the vehicle, he reached into the open window, took Davis hand, and began to kiss it again and again. Finally, the car stopped and Tigyne cried out, “Behold! One of those who redeemed me has returned.” He then dropped to his knees and put his arms around Davis’ legs. Davis reached down to lift him up and they embraced one another with tears.

So it was and is and so it shall be.

Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of the Kingdom, Fortress Press, 1996

God’s future is already with us in the transformation of persons and communities in Kairos or “fulfilled” time. Work-time and machine-time are linear in direction only, but Christian time is rhythmic in that Sabbath interrupts the flow for healing and rest and points to the future world coming at the end of time. “The simultaneity, however fragmentary in kind, of past and future in the present is a relative eternity, for simultaneity is one of the attributes of eternity. Universal simultaneity would be absolute eternity as the ‘fulness of the time’. …Eternity in time is perceived not only in relative simultaneity, but also in the depth-experience of the moment. Beyond the present as Kairos, as ‘the proper time’, ‘the favorable time’, ‘the unique chance’, there is the experience of present as moment, a mystical depth-dimension of time. …As an atom of eternity, the fulfilled moment drops out of the sequence of time, interrupts time’s flow, abolishes the distinction of the time of past and future, is an ecstasy that translates out of this temporal life into the life that is eternal. …Because in historical time we experience fulfilled life only in the form of moment-like eternity, we develop a hunger for a wholly and completely unclouded fullness of life, and therefore for the life that is eternal. … Separation from God, the wellspring of life, leads us through our isolation to experience temporality as transience, and to see death as its universal end. The experience of temporal life is different once an exit from time in the fulfilled moment is experienced as an entry of eternity. Then eternal life already begins here and now in the midst of the life that is transitory, and makes of earthly life a prelude to itself. 287, 290-2 “The temporal creation will become an eternal creation, because all created beings will participate in God’s eternity. The spatial creation will become an omnipresent creation, because all created beings will participate in God’s omnipresence. Creation’s departure from time into the aeon of glory comes about through the annihilation of death and the raising of the dead. … Since the raising of the dead comprehends all the dead diachronically, from the first human being to the last, there is then a reversion of the time that is here irreversible. In ‘the restoration of all thing’, all times will return and -- transformed and transfigured – will be take up into the aeon of the new creation.” 294 “The whole creation becomes the house of God, the temple in which God can dwell, the home country in which God can rest. All created beings participate directly and without mediation in his indwelling glory, and in it are themselves glorified. They participate in his divine life, and in it live eternally. Once God finds his dwelling place in creation, creation loses its space outside God and attains to its place in God.” 307

Gold City: “The Midnight Cry” [mgw1988] Steve Fee: “Glorious One” [ziyulu; ckurgo] “While I’m Waiting” [destinychurchmedia] Casting Crowns “Glorious Day”

General Resurrection and the New World

Isaiah 43.18-19, 65.17-25: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. …For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord— and their descendants as well. Before they call, I will answer, while they are yet speaking, I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

Mark 12.18-27: Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. Finally, the woman died too. Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?” Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. In Jesus’ only direct teaching about resurrection, he declines to give us a detailed description of the resurrected life. He deemed it sufficient to indicate that it is not simply the continuation of life as we know it but a transformation so radical that most of our questions will be beside the point. Resurrection involves the transformation of the body (the whole person) into a new spiritual (immortal, imperishable, glorified, Christ-like) form that is both the same and not the same. Resurrection is an act of new creation by God, not a natural process. Resurrection is a group not an individual experience (the righteous: Luke 14.13-14; the martyrs: Rev 20.4-6; and/or all the dead: Rev. 20.11-15).

Calling Christ’s resurrection the “first fruits of those who have died” is Paul’s way of clinging to the conviction that resurrection pertains to all believers and also to one individual, namely Jesus himself. The two are unbreakably connected. If Christ has been raised, then the resurrection of the rest is assured. They cannot be split apart though separated in time. The patriarchs are not dead but alive; God is the God of the living.

John 14.1-3: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

John 11.21-27 Jesus and Martha discuss resurrection in which the two concepts of resurrection stand side by side as they do also in John 5.24-25. If believers receive a life that is eternal, why is also a resurrection promised? Both are essential because alone each is incomplete: By itself, the traditional Jewish hope of future life after resurrection does not take enough account of the new kind of life that comes to those who believe in Jesus (a life that is qualitatively different and free from the power of death). And by itself, the eternal life experienced in the present does not take seriously enough the fact of Jesus own resurrection as a pledge of future glorification of the community of faith and of all creation. The two concepts complete each other.

Romans 8.18-25: I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children 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 freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

1 Corinthians 15.12-58: But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them? And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? I face death every day—yes, just as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord. If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame.

But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.

I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Christ has been raised, the first fruits, then when he comes, those who belong to him, then the end: destruction of dominions, authorities and powers and of death, then the kingdom: God is all in all. The resurrection body: sown perishable and raised imperishable; sown in dishonor and raised in glory; sown in weakness and raised in power; natural becomes spiritual; of earth becomes of heaven. Victory: your labor is not in vain. 2 Corinthians 5.1-10: For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. or we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

1 Thessalonians 4.13-18: Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Phil 3.20-21: But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body

Revelation 21: Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. The angel measured the wall using human measurement, and it was 144 cubits thick. The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth ruby, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth turquoise, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

The Holy City is the Bride of Christ. God and the people dwell together. No more death or crying or pain. The city is beautiful, immense and symbolic. God and the Lamb are the temple and the light. The kings of earth bring their splendor into it.

Revelation 22.1-5: Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. “Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.” The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

O what their joy and their glory must be, those endless sabbaths the blessed ones see; Crown for the valiant, to weary ones rest; God shall be all, and in all ever blest.

Truly, "Jerusalem" name we that shore, city of peace that brings joy evermore; Wish and fulfillment are not severed there, nor do things prayed for come short of the prayer.

There, where no troubles distraction can bring, we the sweet anthems of Zion shall sing; While for thy grace, Lord, their voices of praise thy blessed people eternally raise.

Now, in the meanwhile, with hearts raised on high, we for that country must yearn and must sigh; Seeking Jerusalem, dear native land, through our long exile on Babylon's strand.

Low before him with our praises we fall, of whom, and in whom, and through whom are all; Of whom, the Father; and in whom, the Son, through whom, the Spirit, with them ever One.

Peter Abelard

Arise, shine out, your light has come, unfolding city of our dreams. On distant hills a glory gleams: the new creation has begun.

Above earth's valleys, thick with night, high on your walls the dawn appears, And history shall dry its tears, as nations stream towards your light. From walls surpassing time and space unnumbered gates, like open hands, Shall gather gifts from all the lands and welcome all the human race.

The sounds of violence shall cease as dwellings of salvation rise To sparkle in eternal skies from avenues of praise and peace.

The dancing air shall glow with light, and sun and moon give up their place, When love shines out of every face, our good, our glory, and delight. Brian Wren

One morning when time is done, bright heaven will be our refuge, the city of God most high. I long for that holy day. This longing -- sometimes it captures my heart and carries me far away. Beyond the sky, beyond all telling, our Father himself will be our light. His arms will hold us and with his hands He'll wipe away the tears that stain our eyes. When darkness falls over me this promise is like a fire inside burning the dark away. Fernando Ortega “Beyond the Sky”

O holy city, seen of John, where Christ the Lamb, does reign, Within whose foursquare walls shall come no night, nor need, nor pain, And where the tears are wiped from eyes that shall not weep again.

O shame to us who rest content while lust and greed for gain In street and shop and tenement wring gold from human pain, And bitter lips in blind despair cry “Christ has died in vain!”

Give us, O God, the strength to build the city that hath stood Too long a dream, whose laws are love, whose ways are servanthood, And where the sun that shines becomes God’s grace for human good.

Already in the mind of God that city rises fair: Lo, how its splendor challenges the souls that greatly dare; And bids us seize the whole of life and build its glory there. Walter Russell Bowie

When Narnia comes to an end and the children and Narnians pass through the stable door into Aslan’s own country, Jewel the Unicorn makes this declaration: ‘This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it until now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.’ “They say of some temporal suffering “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.” C. S. Lewis

Sing with all the saints in glory, sing the resurrection song! Death and sorrow, earth's dark story, to the former days belong. All around the clouds are breaking, soon the storms of time shall cease; In God's likeness we, awaking, know the everlasting peace.

O what glory, far exceeding all that eye has yet perceived! Holiest hearts, for ages pleading, never that full joy conceived. God has promised, Christ prepares it, there on high our welcome waits. Every humble spirit shares it; Christ has passed th'eternal gates.

Life eternal! Heaven rejoices; Jesus lives, who once was dead. Join we now the deathless voices; child of God, lift up your head! Patriarchs from the distant ages, saints all longing for their heaven, Prophets, psalmists, seers, and sages, all await the glory given.

Life eternal! O what wonders crowd on faith; what joy unknown! When, amidst earth's closing thunders, saints shall stand before the throne! O to enter that bright portal, see that glowing firmament; Know, with thee, O God Immortal, Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

Teaching: “The Resurrection of the Body”

Crucified, dead and buried. So we say and so it was. Jesus was dead, deleted, crossed out. The disciples did not deceive themselves with soothing platitudes: He will live on in our memories, the good he did will continue after him, his message will never be forgotten, his soul is a droplet fallen into an eternal sea, his spirit is aloft in an ethereal sky, his biography will be a best seller, his name will be carved on a college dorm, we will always have a warm feeling for him in our hearts. No! None of this! They were crushed, defeated and hopeless. Because he was crucified, dead and buried.

But … the resurrection!! In the darkness of the night while they were tossing and turning in fear and despair, God raised Jesus from the dead. And Jesus appeared to them no formless ghost, no oblong blur, but Jesus, himself, an embodied person, changed, to be sure, unimpeded by the limits of materiality, but recognizable, eating dinner then vanishing, inviting others to touch him but not to hold on to him, no longer flesh and blood, but the same person imperishable.

We too shall die. Death will have its day and we shall be no more. As the Psalmist said, “Our days are like grass; they flourish like a flower in the field; for the wind passes over it and it is gone and its place knows it no more.” (Psalm 103.15-16) In his poem “Adjusting to the Light,” Miller Williams explores the awkwardness among Lazarus’ friends just after Jesus has resuscitated him:

“Lazarus, listen we have things to tell you. We killed the sheep you meant to take to market. We couldn’t keep the old dog, either, He minded you. The rest of us he barked at. Rebecca, who cried two days, has given her hand to the sandal-maker’s son. Please understand – we didn’t know that Jesus could do this. We’re glad you’re back but give us time to think. Imagine our surprise … We want to say we’re sorry for all that. And one thing more. We threw away the lyre. But listen, we’ll pay whatever the sheep was worth. The dog, too. And put you’re room the way it was before.”

Miller has it right. Death is the end of us. The world moves on.

All over the country, street signs which say “Dead End” are being replaced with signs that say “No Outlet.” “Dead End” is just too harsh and unpleasant for our modern sensibilities. Our Christian ancestors practiced the spiritual discipline of contemplation mordis, the contemplation of death. The monks publically displayed the skulls of the deceased members of their communities. We would consider this morbid and distasteful. In his final interview on 60 Minutes, 92-year old Andy Rooney was asked, “Do you think about death?” “I do,” he replied, “I don’t like it.” Well, we may not like it, but we cannot soften it: death is the dead end at the last moment of life’s journey – the dead end of our personalities, our careers, our relationships and our goodness. All is lost … unless … Unless resurrection!! Unless we shall be raised as Jesus was raised.2 And so we shall be. For his resurrection was the beginning of a great harvest. His resurrection is a sign of great hope for every believer. We shall be like him. We shall continue to be ourselves yet radically transformed. Just as today we are the same persons as the infants delivered from our mother’s wombs, though our sub-atomic particles and cells have all been replaced, just as the caterpillar is the same as the butterfly, and the acorn is the same as the oak tree and yet remarkably changed, so shall we be “a transformed continuity cloaked in mystery.” Like putting on a new set of clothes, our mortal bodies will not be annihilated but encompassed and taken up into the new life. The you that is you, the you that God sees, your spiritual fingerprint, your unique, personal particularity continues. But yours will be a new and glorious body, free from weakness, decay and fleshly desire.3

Joni Eareckson Tada, paralyzed from the neck down, says that she has been thinking about her heavenly body for years. She has written about an exhilarating dream she had in Stavanger, Norway.

That night, as the cold Norwegian wind rattled my bedroom window, I snuggled down and slipped into the most amazing dream. I saw myself standing in a bright yellow bathing suit at the edge of a pool. This was astonishing since I rarely dream about being on my feet. Usually I can’t see or feel my body from the shoulders down; my torso and legs are always hazy and unfinished, like the half-completed edges of a painting. But not in this dream. I stretched my arms over my head, arched my back, and gracefully dove into the water. When I came up and slicked my hair with my hands, I was stunned to see them glow, all rose-red wet and honey- ivory, bathed in life, beauty, and well-being. I pressed my palms to my nose. They smelled wild and sweet. Some might have mistaken me for an angel, but I never felt more human, more a woman. I cocked my head and admired my outstretched arms and then looked around. This is hard to describe, but the water and air were brilliant, ablaze in light, like pure gold, as transparent as glass. Each breath was piercing my lungs, but with a sweet sting that made me want to breathe deeper. I looked down to see the pool water shimmering like diamonds. You know how we say the “water sparkles”? In my dream it was doing exactly that. The air was sparkling too. Everything was flashing, clear and golden. I saw a friend sitting poolside, relaxing in a chair under a white cabana and watching me. Oddly, he looked awash in light too. He seemed more real, more a man than ever before. He was my old friend but a thousand times more himself, and when our eyes met, youth infused my heart. I wondered if he felt the same. I smiled, waved, and then began swimming, smoothly parting the water with long, powerful strokes. The ripples felt cool and slick. More like satin than water. After a while, my friend dove in. He touched my shoulder and it burned but in a painless way. There was no need to talk; our smiles said that we were friends for the first time again. We swam together stoke-for stroke. And the longer we swam, the stronger we grew. Not weaker, but stronger. It was the most remarkable dream I’ve ever had. When I woke up, I had no doubt it was a

2 “Resurrection, not progress, not evolution, not enlightenment, but what the word means, namely, a call from heaven to us: ‘Rise up! You are dead, but I will give you life.’ This is what is proclaimed here, and it is the only way that the world can be saved. Take away this summons, and make something else of it, something smaller, less than the absolute whole, less than the absolute ultimate, or less than the absolutely powerful, and you have taken away all, the unique, the last hope there is for us on earth.” Karl Barth 3 We do not know what will be the discernable form of the baby that dies in the first days of life or of the one whose body is broken and misshapen by age or disease. We will recognize one another and the saints of history according to the heightened sensibility of our newly perfected state. dream about heaven. I was convinced “pure gold like transparent glass” existed. It wasn’t a gawky image. I saw it with the eyes of my heart.

Note that Joni’s vision includes water, air, gendered identity, historical human connection, and a chair under a white cabana. Transformed people will live in a transformed world. Our God intends not only to resurrect our fallen, flawed bodies but also this fallen, flawed creation. God loves the mountains and the rivers, the oceans and the deserts, the cities and the parks and the monuments and the skyscrapers. God loves the nations and the peoples and the churches and the cultures. God loves the stars and the trees and the lilies of the field and the chair under the white cabana. Nothing shall be lost. All that is good shall be gathered up and glorified.

Now you may say “I cannot understand this resurrection teaching. I have no experience of it and I have no proof of it.” Hear me now: Resurrection is a truth for which there is no rational certainty, no prior experience, and no adequate preparation. The question isn’t whether you can grasp it but whether you can find the faith and freedom in yourself to receive it as God’s gift to you – whether you can exhale the breath you are holding on to and breathe in the life that is given to you in God’s holy word. Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. This is the good news which we have received and which was handed to us by the apostles and the teachers and the preachers and which, having received it, gives us enduring hope. Yes, it is true, we shall be like him.

Will we see the dead again? Will we be reunited with our loved ones? This is a dangerous question. It is often asked with a kind of selfish longing that desires to use Jesus to guarantee our connection to the departed. Like the 5000 that Jesus fed but whose only interest was in satisfying their hunger.

Because they had no interest in Jesus himself, he slipped away from them. When we think of joyful reunions, is God even in the picture?4 Yet apart from God, there is no connection with them because they rest in God’s arms and no longer belong to us. We can seek them only as we seek those arms. But when we seek those arms and love the Lord our God with all that we are and follow our Lord Jesus wherever he leads and allow the Spirit to set us free from this world and its cares, we discover that our good God gives us not only himself but also those who rest in him. As we draw nearer to him, we draw nearer to them.5

4 If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever say, and all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ were not there? John Piper, God is the Gospel, p.15

5 “In heaven there sill be no anguish and no duty of turning away from our earthly Beloveds. First, because we shall have turned already; from the portraits to the Original, from the rivulets to the Fountain, from the creatures he made

One more question: If we are to be raised at the end when Jesus returns, where shall we be in the meantime? This is a puzzling question for us because we live in a world in which time binds us and burdens us. Scripture gives this answer: “We are with the Lord.” This is an intermediate state that is not yet in final embodied perfection, but is in safety and blessedness. Some texts describe this as a “soul sleep” condition in which the souls of the redeemed rest in God (“coemeteria” = sleeping chambers), conscious of their blessedness in the presence of Christ but unaware of the passing of time. Other texts see it as a state of waking activity in which the saints already participate in the praise of God and in intercession for the living. In either case, we need have no concern for the departed; they are inseparably enclosed in the love of God.6 We who remain continue to treasure them in memory and find our solace and peace in God. We anticipate that we too will be kept safe until the final trumpet sounds and all of us will meet the Lord face to face in the new creation. He may call us from the grave or the ocean depths, he may call us from our resting place in his bosom, or he may call us out from the saint-filled choirs. He will find us and call us by name.

Whether he calls me like Lazarus: “Richard, come forth,” or like Jairus’ daughter: “Little lamb, arise,” or like the repentant thief “Today you will be with me” or like the faithful investor “Enter the joy of your master” – I don’t know the exact words or way, but I will recognize the voice and I will be ready. My Lord is preparing for me a glorified body and making ready for me a home in glory, and not for me only but for all who eagerly wait to hear the sound of his voice.

Teaching: “Behold, I Make All Things New”

The common phrase, “the end of the world,” is usually understood negatively. But to believers “end” refers more to goal and purpose than to cessation. In God’s revelation to John, no one is found worthy to break the seals or to open the scrolls which reveal the meaning, purpose and outcome of history. “Heaven only knows.” But then the Lamb of God steps forward to break the seals and to open the scroll. The saints and the angels join together in giving praise to the Lamb. Jesus sets in motion the consummation and transformation of creation. By his hand, the world as we know it becomes compost for the world that he has been bringing to us all along. Let it come, Lord Jesus. Bring it on.

lovable to Love Himself. But secondly, because we shall find them all in Him. By loving Him more than them we shall love them more than we now do.” C. S. Lewis

6 “If the dead are no longer in the time of the living but in God’s time, then they exist in his eternal present. So how long is it from a person’s death in time to the End-time raising of the dead? The answer is: just an instant! And if we ask: where are the dead ‘now’, in terms of our time? – the answer has to be “they are already in the new world of the resurrection and God’s eternal life. Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of the Kingdom, Fortress Press, 1996, 102

Non-believers are also yearning for this new world, though they do not know whose hand will bring it. At the movies they are thrilled to see the Jedi knights triumph over the Imperial storm troopers, to see Lt. Ripley triumph over the alien queen, to see King Aragorn triumph over the evil forces of Mordor and to see the Lion Aslan triumph over the White Witch. These narratives of human imagination point to King Jesus whose final victory is history’s goal and completion. The consummation of the creation will be a reflection of the character of the Creator. Our faithful, gracious God will never give up on what He has created.

Jesus spoke of the kingdom of heaven as that place where God’s will is done. He taught us to pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” He believed that the kingdom of heaven was already breaking into this world in his ministry and in the world’s response to him. And he looked forward to the day when this world would fully become God’s kingdom, when, as scripture says, “The kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of our God and of his Messiah.” John, Jesus’ beloved disciple, was given the privilege of seeing a mighty vision of that day. The end is the first day of the new creation and a new beginning for the lives of believing individuals and the believing community – not liberation from this life but the redemption of this life. God’s future is coming toward us and is transforming our understanding and experience of the present.

The Book of Revelation, in beautiful and graphic images, says that God will dwell with us and we will be God’s people. God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and death will be no more. Mourning and crying and pain will be no more. And the first things will have passed away. (Rev. 21.3-4) Sin and its effects, guilt, corruption and death, will be no more. Satan and all the forces of evil will have been defeated. The spiritual corruption of humanity will be cleansed and holiness will be universal. Nature will be restored to its created role of glorifying God and of being at peace in all its parts. In other words, the entire universe is cleansed of sin and its effects and transformed in such a way that eternal existence in harmony with God and one another is made possible and realized.

The New Jerusalem will be the urban center of the New Creation and the dwelling place of the saints. The city walls will be inscribed with the names of the twelve apostles and the city gates with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. They will open in all four directions to receive the saints from north, south, east and west. The glory of God will light the city and there will be nothing to fear ever again. The city is immense, 1500 miles square and high, with room for all. The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the Temple. The leaves of the tree of life will bring healing to the nations. The saints will drink the pure, cool water of life flowing from the throne of God.

The precise shape of the new creation is blurred. The vision given to John is metaphorical not literal. It is an imaginative description of that place where we will be wholly in God’s presence and where we will behold God face to face. To be in heaven is to be so fully conformed to God that we are entirely at home with him. The psalmist wrote “What have I in heaven but Thee?” (Psalm 73.25) Jesus said, “Where I am you may be also.” (John 14.3) To be in heaven is to be in the presence of God forever. That is the first and perhaps the only thing we need to know about it. But there is more, much more. I believe that God allows us to use our own spirit-guided imagination to amplify the vision of John. And so I would say that “the New Jerusalem is the most beautiful place the mind of God could conceive and the hand of God could create.” It is a city resplendent and liberated from all strife and decay, safe, lovely, and luxuriant -- even fragrant. The most splendid accomplishments of all the nations and the cultural and linguistic contributions of every people group will be gathered and brought in. Each and all will respect and welcome the other; the bonds of friendship and family will be strengthened and celebrated. All will consent to be governed by the Lamb upon the throne, and his deputies will be true servants of the people.

The good which was done, the beauty created, and the truth discovered in this world will be marvelously incorporated into the life of the holy city in the new world. What we have valued and worked for here will be honored and glorified there: The gardens we planted; the churches we built; the communities we served; the streets we traveled; the schools we supported; the books we have written and read; the mission work accomplished; and the friendships and kinships we nurtured. Whatever has encouraged and inspired us here will continue to bless us there. Yes, the good we have done will live on.

In addition, whatever was broken will be fixed. A prayer: “Lord, I don’t travel much anymore. Went to the Columbia ice fields last year, but most of the scenes I view now are inside my head. Some are vivid like seeing that dirty trench near St. Lo, the red blood spurting from my leg, and that German boy’s face – before I blew it away. I never talk to anyone about this, except you, Lord. Maybe I’ll meet that boy in heaven. That would be OK. We’ll recognize and forgive each other, and maybe you will give us constructive work to do together somewhere in the cosmos. Yeah, I’d like that.” -- Prayers at Twilight

There is so much brokenness in you and in me and in all of us.7 There are so many things we cannot fix. Only God can fix them and God will fix them.

In addition, what was lost will be restored. The symphonies and anthems which the deaf ears have not heard and the sweet faces and the grand vistas which the blind eyes have not seen will be restored. The freedom lost through tyranny and plunder and the blessed feasts and family fellowship lost through famine and injustice will be restored. The life cut short will have time and space to develop and grow to completion. The good results which our own foolish mistakes cheated us of and the love that was lost and wept for on a thousand pillows will be restored. The blessings sacrificed here for Jesus and the gospel will be restored and multiplied. Jesus said, “No one who has left home or family for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and in the age to come, eternal life.” What was good will continue, what was broken will be fixed, and what was lost will be restored.

7 “I need to believe in heaven. I’m still a little bit agnostic. Going to Harvard makes you skeptical. But I long to believe in heaven now. It seems unbearable to think that there won’t be something wonderful for these children after they die, because the lives we give them in the slums just aren’t enough to justify existence.” Jonathan Kozol, “Grace in the Ghetto” I would guess that the two most frequently asked questions about heaven are What will we be like? And What will we do?

What will we be like? We will be like Jesus. We will be ourselves, recognizable and known, not disembodied ghosts. We will be persons in human form without threat of decay, disintegration, or injury. We will be whole and holy, without blemish or defect. We will be ourselves but changed from perishable to imperishable, from weakness to power, from material to spiritual, and from the seed to the flower. We will retain our unique gifts, personalities and characters. We will still bear the scars of righteous witness and martyrdom. We will still be dependent upon God, inspired by God and empowered by God. We will still be limited within boundaries of individuality and creatureliness (not omnipotent, omnipresent or timeless), but we will be set free from sin and its effects. Our life experiences and memories will be woven into a redemption story uniquely our own that will become the foundation of our personal future.

“Hymn writer Fanny Crosby gave us more than 6000 gospel songs. Although blinded by an illness at the age of six weeks, she never became bitter. Once a sympathetic preacher remarked, ‘I think it is a great pity that the Master did not give you sight when he showered so many other gifts upon you.’ She quickly replied, ‘If at birth I had been allowed to ask God for one thing it would have been to be born blind.’ ‘Why?’ asked the surprised clergyman. ‘Because when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior!’”

I myself have a dance defect. I’d love to be (and here I’m definitely dating myself) John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever! Back in the 70’s I took dance lessons for a while but discovered that I wasn’t willing to make the effort it would take to reconstruct my body (and maybe my mind as well) in order to become a dancer. So for the time being, my words will have to do my dancing for me. But in the kingdom Richard will dance! After I dance with Elizabeth for a few ages, I‘ll ask Emilie to dance and then my Mom and then maybe some of you. It may be a long time until I’m ready to sit down.

In the kingdom we will experience an increase of personal capacity in every respect: not only will we be able to move and to travel with increased grace and stamina, but we will also be able to think more clearly and comprehensively, to love more deeply and widely, to create more freely and expressively, to sense more acutely and vividly and to remember in greater detail and scope.

What will be do there? There will be much activity in the holy city. It will be a place vibrant with ministry and industry. Every moment will be an adventure in discovery. We will serve God and one another, each contributing out of our own uniqueness and history, no longer in competition but in harmony. New and better songs will be written and sung. New and better art will be created and performed. New and better science and humanities will be taught and learned. New and better feasts will be prepared and hosted. Neighborhoods and regions will be rightly administered and governed. A civilization of unimaginable complexity and glory will emerge. The lines between working and playing and learning and creating will be blurred. Rest will be totally restorative and activity will be fully engaging.

We will love one another. There will be no deceit or unfaithfulness. There will be no loneliness or celebrity. All will be beautiful and all will be loved. In a grand family reunion we shall embrace once again all the saints we have known and we shall meet and fall in love for the first time with all the saints yet to be known.

God’s love for us will find its completion in us as we love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and as we love all our neighbors as ourselves. The brief and transitory moments of pure, joyous love that we now experience from time to time and which seem so foreign and out of place in this world will become the norm.

Worship shall be unimaginably beautiful, grand and rich. Without interruption we will enjoy the beauty of God and contemplate the nature of God. Without distraction we will know God and love God and rest in God and abide with God. We will each in our own way and together with each other worship God in spirit and in truth. We will at last give God the glory that is God’s due.

And so today we stand “on Jordan’s stormy banks and cast a wistful eye to Caanan’s fair and happy land where our possessions lie.” God will be our one and only true possession but in God we shall also possess a world rich beyond measure: A world where we want to do what is right and pleasing to God and that is exactly what we do, always. A world where we feel that life can’t get any better than it is and it does, always. A world where we belong to God and to others in such perfect intimacy that we exclaim “I could never love any deeper than this,” but we do, always. A world where the blessedness of each person contributes to and is fulfilled in the blessedness of all.

This is what heaven will be like. Or maybe not. The map is not the territory. “No eye has seen, no ear heard, nor the human heart conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2.9). But I am sure that any error I have made is most likely on the side of underestimating and understating the magnificent glory of what is coming. And I am sure that it will be as good as God is good. It will be as full of love as God is love. It will be blessing to us as surely as God is blessing to us. It will be a home for us as surely as my Lord Jesus is home to us.

There was a woman who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and had been given three months to live. So as she was getting her things in order, she contacted her Pastor and asked him to visit her to discuss her wishes for her funeral service. She told him the hymns she wished to be sung and the scriptures she wished to be read and she presented him with her favorite Bible which she wanted to be laid at her side in the casket. Then she told him that she wanted to be buried with a fork in her right hand. This was an unusual request, of course, and when he asked for an explanation, she said, “Throughout the years, whenever I attended a church social or suppers, the people who cleared the dishes from the table would say, ‘Keep your fork.’ I loved that because it meant that something good was coming, like chocolate cake or apple pie. Something wonderful.

So I want people to see me there in the casket with a fork in my hand and I want them to wonder, ‘What’s with the fork?’ and I want you to tell them ‘She knew the best was yet to come.’” And when she died, he did as she asked, and as she predicted the people said ‘what’s with the fork?’ and over and over he got to tell them “She knew that the best is yet to come.” Now there are bound to be some folks in this world who would say “So what if she’s holding a fork. She’s dead all the same. She’s lying in the grave and she’s certainly no better off than she was.” But I choose not to be discouraged by the prophets of despair in this world. I reject and resist the nihilists and materialists and skeptics and nay-sayers who’d rather swim in the mud than soar with the stars. I reject and resist the media mavens and so-called experts who think they know better than the witness of the scriptures, the traditions of the church and the reasoned hope of the faithful. I refuse to listen even to the negativity in my own heart and the grumbling doubts that trouble me when the day turns dark and the storm times come.

I choose to trust the thief who said “Jesus remember me,” the centurion who said “Surely this man is the Son of God,” the no longer doubting disciple who said “My Lord and My God,” and the lady with the fork. I choose to trust Peter and Mary and John and Cleopas and Paul and the 500 others who saw what they saw and heard what they heard. I choose to trust the countless men and women who left this world with a word of testimony on their lips: John Wesley who said, “The best is, God is with us,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said, “This is the end, but for me the beginning of life,” and John Donne who said, “Our last day is our first day; our Saturday is our Sunday; our eve is our holy day; our sun-setting is our morning; the day of our death is the first day of our eternal life.” I choose to trust the millions upon millions who have stood up in Church and said with conviction “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” I choose to trust my Jesus who died for my sins and rose for my salvation and God Almighty who raised him up and promises to raise us up also.

Yes! God has promised us not just a room but a home, not just an afterlife but eternal life, not just salvation of our souls but salvation of all that we are, and not just salvation of all that we are but salvation of all that is. Jesus said “Behold, I make all things new.” He has the power. He has the will. He knows the way. And he will do it. Alleluia.

Videos

Jeremy Camp “There Will Be a Day” [musicforhismission] Randy Travis “If You only knew” Steve Green “Safely Home” The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir “I Bowed My Knees and Sang Holy” Chris Tomlin “I Will Rise” [theword]

Eternal Life in the Presence of God

Foxes have holes and birds have nests but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. (Luke 9.58) At one level this was so true; Jesus had no permanent residence in this world. But there were times when he did have a place to lay his head, for instance in the house of Mary and Martha and Lazarus – in Bethany. On at least two occasions we know that he was there. Once when Mary listened at Jesus feet while Martha worked in the kitchen and then again when Mary anointed Jesus for burial with precious oils. Most likely there were many other times as well. Jesus loved them! Except for John the beloved, the scripture says this about no one else. They were Jesus’ best friends. Do you have a best friend? I do. He would help me if I needed help. You can count on your best friend – sometime more than family. So when Lazarus became ill, these best friends of Jesus called on him for help. They knew they could count on him.

But … he didn’t come and Lazarus died. How puzzling, distressing, and upsetting! Why? Why didn’t he come? Why didn’t he heal his friend? Didn’t he care? Wasn’t he able? These are questions we ask when we lose someone we love. Does God care? Can God help us? In addition to their grief, Mary and Martha must have been disappointed in Jesus. When he finally shows up, Mary stays in the house; she is too upset to face him.

He has to ask Martha to fetch her. And when she does come out, she falls at his feet weeping: “If only you had been here!” If only. And what did Jesus do? He cried. Here we catch a rare glimpse of the emotional life of Jesus: he laughed with those who laughed and wept with those who wept. He cried for Mary. He was bereft; he felt more than sympathy. He was disturbed, angry, provoked, indignant, insulted. He was confronting the power of death and he was furious. Picture it and never forget the picture.

Death was no friend of Jesus and death is no friend of mine. Death took my father and my mother and my brother and I’m deeply upset about it. My father and brother died too soon and my mother’s dying was too hard. As Martha said, “Death stinks.” When loved ones die we protest: “Why? We did they have to die?” “Why O grasping death did you not spare them?”8

But is this is not the end of the story. The atheist says “Death is the end. There is nothing more.” The existentialist says “Face it in silence with courage.” But our Lord Jesus says “There is more, much more.” There are three things more to be said; three blessed words of comfort and hope. And then a magnificent demonstration of power confirming these words.

First word: “Whoever believes in me shall live even though he dies.” This is something Martha knows: he will rise again on the last day. Yes, good old pots and pans, busy in the kitchen Martha -- she knows what we confess every Sunday as the final word of the creed:

I believe in the resurrection of the body. Although this account is sometimes called the resurrection of Lazarus, that is misleading. Lazarus was resuscitated or revived but not resurrected. When he came forth from the grave, he was in the same material form – the same body –as previously. He would eventually die again. A strange interlude it must have been between having died and dying again. He like us is waiting for the bodily resurrection in the last day. But Jesus revived him to give us hope and to show us a glimpse of what will someday be. On that glorious day, Jesus will again call out the name of Lazarus, and this time Lazarus will

8 Death is not simply an event in life; it is the life-defining event. Those who live in the awareness of life’s limit live life deeply and passionately. They live in reference not to themselves but in reference to that which endures; they live in the awareness of their own temporality; and they live in remembrance of their beloved dead. rise up to receive a spiritual body -- imperishable, incorruptible, never to die again. His resurrected form will be like that of Jesus and he will dwell with Jesus in the new heaven and the new earth. On that day Jesus will call out my name and yours – Richard … and we too shall rise. What Jesus did once before as a sign He will do again as a completed work. We wait for it and take comfort from it. We believe in the resurrection of the body.

This is all glorious and wonderful, but also strangely inadequate. When we stand at the graveside of our beloved parent or husband or child, we want to know not only that they will rise again but that they are still alive somehow. We are still joined to them and we still yearn to be near them and we seek the comfort of knowing where they are! We can hardly bear the thought that they are dead in the grave until some future day. And so Jesus gives us an additional word of assurance: “Whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” He gives us a double promise: not only the resurrection of the body but the life everlasting. Those who die in Christ do not perish. We live on in the keeping of God.

Our identities, our unique personhood, our essential being, that which we call the soul, the combination of our personalities, gifts, stories, relationships, intentions, and achievements, all that makes us who we are now purified of sin and the limitations of the flesh, this life of ours continues until that day. We shall never die.9 Scripture and Christian tradition have consistently affirmed that a human being is both a material and a spiritual being (dichrotomism). The words used to describe this two-fold reality have usually been “body and soul.”

Body refers to our material being. I am a 68 year old balding male with flat feet, a grey beard, poor hearing and eyesight, a pot belly, and a peculiar posture and gait due to chronic vertigo. Biologists, micro-biologists, anatomists and neurophysicists would be able to add to that description based on their perspectives. Some scientists who are also materialists will say that this is all that I am. Or as the alien life-form said to Captain Kirk, “Greetings, mostly bag of water.” Scripture and tradition are aware, of course, of our materiality. On Ash Wednesday, we are reminded that we are “dust and to dust we shall return.” But if you have any interest in knowing me, your interest extends beyond my subatomic structure. You want to know my spiritual being.

Soul refers to our spiritual being. The Biblical word soul (psyche in Greek) represents the living person, the whole person, the person in entirety, vitality and authenticity. The life that is soul is the life that lives beyond death. And what is the soul? I take my clue from Jesus and the great commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.”

9 Nothing will be lost, not our unique identities and not our web of relationships. In addition to the question of whether or not we continue to exit, there is the question of whether or not love endures – the love we received and the love we gave which has made us who we are. Knowing that death does not cancel love allows us to live deeply now in relationship to God and to one another and to experience the blessedness of the present. When the story of our lives come to their end, we know that it remains in the Mind of God and will continue in coming of the Kingdom. God knows and raises up the whole person who lived and lives in relationship with God. The heart is the seat of passion, desires and feelings, thought and understanding, will and intention, and the source of religious observance and morality. In Mark, the word “mind” is added to the commandment from Deuteronomy. The word should probably be translated “understanding” rather than mind because the Greek is dianoius, “through the mind,” and certainly refers to the theological and moral understanding that is sought and given to one who loves God. Strength or ability (ischys) suggests that our actions are also part of our identities: the things we do and accomplish demonstrate our love of God.

The requirement to love the neighbor reminds us that we are also identified by our relationships. “Soul” and “Spirit” are virtually interchangeable in scriptural usage though some might seek to make a distinction. “Soul” might be seen as the organizing, integrating reality of all that makes a person a distinct individual. And “Spirit” is the animating principle, life itself. Some have considered “Spirit” to be the capacity to be aware of God and in relationship with God.

I think it is important not to over-reach in trying to dissect and differentiate these aspects of soul. To me “Soul” is simply who we are: the combination of our character (priorities, values, passions, attributes, commitments), relationships (son, father, husband, friend, student, pastor), actions (deeds and accomplishments), and deepest feelings, truest understandings, and best intentions. You will notice that I have emphasized the positive in this description. I trust that final sanctification (perfection by grace) will purge away the deficiencies of character, the brokenness of relationships, the harmful results of actions, the selfish feelings, false understandings and faulty intentions and leave for eternity my truest self.

And so we are spiritual beings. And also material beings. Or to say it another way, we are embodied souls or embodied spirits. We are not and never will be disembodied souls. The body is the structure upon which the soul depends and through which the soul functions. In the world to come we will be embodied souls. Our bodies will be spiritual bodies and not material ones, but we will be embodied and formed in a way that is recognizable.

This is who we are. Scripture doesn’t focus very intensively or systematically on the issue of identity. Jesus never gave a lecture on it. The identity issue has been of such paramount importance to us moderns because we are so very interested in ourselves. According to scripture and tradition, our relationship with God is of greater importance.

You may recall from the session on “Image of God” the poem of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Who Am I?” Bonhoeffer admitted that not even he himself was capable of knowing who he was. His answer to the identity question was this: “Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine!” Jesus’ terrifying word of condemnation was this: “Depart from me you evil doers, I never knew you. If I could be allowed to turn this around into a word of salvation, it might be this: “Come to me you doers of good, I know who you are.” As Christian persons, the most important question for us to answer is not “Who am I?” but “Does Jesus know me and love me?”

The discussion so far is a bit abstract but it has practical and profound implications. It was very important to me as a faced a more personal question: “What about Mom?” The physical and mental deterioration of my mother in her last 18 months of life was extremely distressing to me. She changed. A generous and thoughtful person, she became an indiscriminate giver. A gracious and sweet-spirited person, she became frustrated and angry. A grateful and appreciative person, she became demanding and distrustful. A loving friend and mother, she became increasingly distant and detached. An independent and resourceful person, she became self-centered and resistant to assistance. Her body was broken in many places, and her soul became diminished in its capacity to reason, to remember, and to love. The challenge I regularly faced was to hold on to her as she had been and to patiently accept these changes as the uncontrollable result of her physical deterioration. If materialists are reluctant to acknowledge the importance of spiritual realities, we spiritual persons have a tendency to undervalue the importance of material realities. The diminishment and disintegration of the body affects the capacities of the soul. As we draw toward death and our material body breaks down, there are pronounced spiritual effects. The soul begins to look toward spiritual embodiment. And relationships are tried, tested and gradually released. For me the on-going puzzle was to understand the relationship between the person my mother had been and the person she seemed to have become. It seemed to me that I had already lost my mother. But if so, who was this person entrusted to my care? And an equally troubling question for me: “Will I also loose myself some day? Because we are embodied souls, it is very difficult for us to distinguish between the spiritual reality of a person and the physical reality that we see before us.

My conclusion is this: “God knows and only God knows who she is and who I am.” I don’t have to discover it. On Thanksgiving Day, 2010, Mom prayed “Lord, Jesus, take me home.” And now he has spoken: “Come to me you doer of good; I know who you are.” This is all I know and all I need to know. “Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine!” Whether we die suddenly with body and soul relatively intact (holding together) or die gradually with observable disintegration of body and soul (falling apart), we still must depend upon the power of the Almighty to carry us through the interim and over the transition. God must continue either to hold us together or to reintegrate us until we are made whole and holy in the coming kingdom.

Yes, we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Both require trust in our life creating and sustaining God who calls into being that which is not and who sustains in being that which is no more. Belief in Christ and in the resurrection belong inseparably together. (Romans 10.9).

But wait. There is one thing more. In addition to the dual promise: the resurrection of the body and the undying soul, there is this: Martha’s great confession of faith: “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.” We believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only son, our Lord. We take comfort not only in the promises but also in the presence and power of the living Christ. We believe in the living water who causes us to thirst no more. We believe in the bread of life who causes us to hunger no more. We believe in the good shepherd who causes us to be safe and secure in his fold. We believe in the light of the world who gives us purpose and direction and meaning. We believe in the Great I Am: the one who is the resurrection and the life.

We are free in him from the power of death. Here and now, even in the midst of this broken and fallen world, we know that death does not have the last word. In the words of John Donne

“Death be not proud though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful for thou art not so For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me … One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.” John Donne

We don’t have to walk around like dead men wrapped up tight in dead man clothes. Jesus has taken away our grave clothes and set us free. We grieve but not as those who have no hope. We know who we belong to, what we are here for and where we are headed. We know that life endures and death shall be no more.

Beloved, I believe that when I come to the last, there will be more left of me than a mound of ashes and a few wilting flowers: more even than the love I’ve experienced and the good I’ve done. I believe that I myself am known of God and claimed by God. The same Jesus who is life to me now will be life to me then. Jesus did not die into nothingness and oblivion; he died into God and was taken up by God. And when I reach that absolutely final point, I expect to hear God say, “Richard arise, and enter the Kingdom prepared for you and for many from the foundation of the world.”

If you should ever disinter my bones and should find my skull, do not speak to me as Hamlet spoke to the court jester, Yorik “Alas, poor Richard, I knew him well. Where are your sermons, your prayers, and your theologies now?” Instead, listen to my skull which will be preaching still:

I have no eyes and yet I see him I have no brain and yet I comprehend him I have no lips and yet I kiss him I have no tongue and yet I praise him I am a hard skull and yet I melt and soften in his love I lie here today in God’s good earth and yet tomorrow I will be with him in paradise

“God So Loved” John 3.16

Cleopatra’s Needle stands out like the foreigner she is in London. Her engravings speak of a different era and employ an ancient language. Workers constructed the obelisk 3500 years ago as a gift for an Egyptian pharaoh. But on September 12, 1878, the British government planted it in English soil and assigned it vigil over the Thames River with a time capsule in its base. Someday, city officials reasoned, when Britain goes the way of ancient Egypt, excavators will open the capsule to discover a representation of 19th Century England: a set of coins, some children’s toys, a city directory, photographs of 12 beautiful women, a razor, and in 215 languages a verse from the Bible: John 3.16.

Whether the discovery happens two or ten thousand years from now, that one sentence will still be the most profound, the most important, the most truthful, powerful and attractive sentence ever spoken or written in any language. Martin Luther called it the “gospel in miniature” and so it is. In our day it is surely the most well-known and beloved verse in scripture and well it should be. For here we are given a glimpse of the glory and mystery of God and a statement of that which is most essential to know of God. The one who spoke and created the heavens and the earth, the one who led the Hebrews out of Egypt, through the wilderness and to the land of promise, the one who established the line of David forever, the one whom Isaiah saw high and lifted up, this one, this same almighty God is the God who loves. Of all the things that could be said of God, this is the one thing that must be said. All else is secondary. God loves and God is love. God is not defined by what we think love is. Love is defined by what God has revealed to us of who God is. It was out of God’s infinite and unimaginable capacity to love that God created us to be the recipients of his love, that God cares for us continually in the blessings of common grace, and that God has redeemed us and will save us finally in justifying, sanctifying and glorifying grace. Unbounded love poured out beyond measure, grace upon grace – this is the God who is love.

God loves us all – the good, the bad and the ugly, the creative and the destructive, the complex and the simple, the famous, wealthy and successful and the obscure, poor and failing. God loves Joe Flacco and Colin Kaepernick and the last two bench-sitters on the Green Wave practice squad, the mansion dweller and the homeless addict, the face known to all and the one known to God alone. All who lived before us and all who will come after us, every one and each one, you and me and all the others – God’s love encompasses us all. The love of God contradicts every attempt to narrow the scope of redeeming love by virtue of some arbitrary category. Every race, every nationality, every age, every sex, every class, every condition of life is included.

Some years ago while waiting for a red light to change, I saw the ugliest car I’d ever seen. This car wasn’t just ugly, it was ugleeee. It had a large gash that ran along the entire passenger side of the car. The door was kept closed by wire wrapped around the window post. The muffler was loose and as it passed it scraped the pavement leaving a trail of sparks. It was hard to tell the original color for all the rust and dents, and two replacement fenders were two different odd colors. None of the hub caps matched and the cloth top was ripped. I couldn’t help but stare as it passed through the intersection, and I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw the large lettered sign that had been wired to the back bumper. It said “This is not an abandoned car.”

My beloved, our world is a wreck. Everywhere we look we see the scars of sin, the dents of violence and the rust of human misery. And when we honestly examine our own lives, we recognize numerous faults and deficiencies. On some days it seems that our lives are being just barely held together with duct tape. But God has not abandoned us. The best news in the world is God loves us. He wants us to be with him, to dwell together, to travel together, to laugh together, to live together and to work together. He wants us to be his bride, beloved and cherished for as long as we live and forever.

Gypsy Rose Lee cynically said “God is love but get it in writing.” We have it in writing. God sent us an indelible love letter. In his great love God has given that gift which is the most precious of all: his only begotten Son. The greatest love in the universe has been demonstrated by the giving of the greatest gift ever conceived, offered or accepted. The Father has given to us the only Son – the one and only Son – the only one who knows the Father perfectly and perfectly reveals the Father. And we affirm that in the marvelous mystery of the Trinity, the Father who sent the Son in love was also the Son who gladly came in love; both Father and Son were willing to bear the pain of separation and death for our sakes. The Father sent the Son through the Spirit and gave him up to death for us. The Son came from the Father in the power of the Spirit and willingly gave himself up for us. And the Spirit united the Father and the Son in that mutual sacrifice and the Spirit draws us into the Triune fellowship. And this greatest sacrifice was made not for unknowing and innocent strangers but for those who rejected Him and refused His friendship, yes even for them. Even for us.

Chuck Colson tells of visiting a prison in the city of Sao Jose do Campos, one that was turned over to two Christians twenty years ago: They called it Humanita, and their plan was to run it on Christian principles. The prison has only two full time staff; the rest of the work is done by inmates. Every prisoner is assigned another inmate to whom he is accountable. In addition, every prisoner is assigned a volunteer family from the outside that works with him during his term and after his release. Every prisoner joins a chapel program, or else takes a course in character formation. Colson said “When I visited Humanita, I found the inmates smiling – particularly the murderer who held the keys, opened the gates and let me in. Wherever I walked I saw men at peace. I saw clean living areas, people working industriously. The walls were decorated with biblical sayings from Psalms and Proverbs. Humanita has an astonishing record. Its recidivism rate is 4 percent compare to 75 percent in the rest of Brazil and the U.S. How is all this possible? I saw the answer when my guide escorted me to the notorious punishment cell once used for torture. Today, he told me that it houses only a single inmate. As we reached the end of a long concrete corridor and he put the key into the lock, he paused and asked, “Are you sure you want to go in?” “Yes,” I replied impatiently. Slowly he swung open the massive door, and I saw the prisoner in that punishment cell: a crucifix, beautifully carved by the Humanita inmates – the prisoner Jesus hanging on the cross. “He’s doing time for all the rest of us,” my guide said softly.10

Here then the testimony of Harry Farra: “How well I remember that Sunday morning when, with John 3.16 ringing in my ears, I walked the aisle of First Baptist Church of Huntington Park, California. I was a junior in high school and a friend kept inviting me to go to church with him. But I had no use for church. I finally make a bargain with my friend. I would go to church with him one time if he would never ask me again. After a short hesitation, he agreed. So, I borrowed a suit from my uncle and a tie from my brother and headed off to the largest church I had ever been in. That morning I heard the most remarkable story I had ever heard: Christ loved me and Christ died for me. I went back another Sunday and another and another. Finally the pastor spoke those simple words of John 3.16 and I walked down that long aisle to the front of the church to indicate my desire to accept Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord. Later, the pastor invited me to his office where he explained to me that salvation was a free gift of God. Then he offered me a dramatic, visual parable. He cupped his hands as if holding a priceless gift and pushed his hands out towards me. Like a child, I reached out and took the gift.”11

The gift of God’s love is given to all, that is, to “whosoever.” But this word “whosoever” that describes the universal reach of the invitation is attached to a qualifying word: “whosoever believes.” The gift becomes effective only when it is received. We all know, do we not, what’s

10 Theology Today, November 8, 1993, 33 11 Biblical Preaching Journal, Spring 2000 inside the gift when we unwrap it: Life everlasting – the end of death and the beginning of life, the end of living in separation from God and the beginning of living forever in communion with God, the end of living under the power of sin and the beginning of living in the power of the Spirit. Life is not only what we are given, it is also what gets into us. It enters through our hearing and lodges in our souls and so permeates everything that we are that it becomes our present as well as our future. “Christ in me, the hope of glory.” And then it begins to spread beyond you into your world – your family, your workplace, your neighborhood and “Praise God” even your church. And in God’s good time, it will cover the face of the earth completely and the Son will then claim his own and together we will endlessly dwell in his love.

Now substitute your name for “the world” and for “whosoever believeth in him” and say John 3.16 with me: “For God so loved Richard that he gave his only begotten son that Richard should not perish but have everlasting life.”

God loves. God gave. We believe. We live.

Videos

Mercy Me “I Can Only Imagine” [jesuskvinne w/London Symphony]

Mercy Me: “Finally Home”, [mercyme VEVO]

Jaci Valesquez “God so loved the world”