Ryan Hale

Walk through the old centre of almost any town in northern Italy and you will pass walls that have stood for centuries, built not from identical factory bricks but from stones of every shape and size. Look closely at a corner and you will often find one stone larger and squarer than the rest. Builders in the ancient world began there. Before a single wall went up, the master builder chose the cornerstone and set it carefully, true and level, because everything else would take its measure from that one stone. Every wall ran out from it. Every row was laid in line with it. If the cornerstone was off, the whole house would be off.

Then came the other stones, gathered from fields and riverbeds, rough and uneven. On their own, none of them looked like much. But one by one the builder turned each in his hands, found where it fit, and set it into place against the others, so that the weight of each was carried by its neighbours and, in the end, by the cornerstone. A stone by itself is just a stone. Set into the wall, it becomes part of a house.

That is the picture Peter has in mind:

As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says:

“See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame.”

Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,

“The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone,”

and,

“A stone that causes people to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall.”

They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

1 Peter 2:4–10

The living Stone

Everything Peter says about who we are begins with Jesus. Before we are anything, we come to him, the living Stone. He is the cornerstone God himself laid in Zion, the one from which everything else takes its measure. Our lives are straight or crooked depending on how they are aligned to him.

Peter is honest that not everyone sees this stone the same way. To those who believe, he is precious. To those who do not, he is a stone that causes people to stumble. The builders, the religious leaders who should have recognised him, examined Jesus and threw him aside. Jesus himself quoted Psalm 118 to them, warning that the stone they rejected was the very one God had chosen (Matthew 21:42). The same stone is either the foundation we build on or the obstacle we trip over. There is no third option. Coming to him in trust is where everything starts.

Living stones, built together

But having come to him, something happens to us. We also become living stones. We are not left lying in a pile in a field, each on our own. The builder picks us up, turns us in his hands, and sets us into place. We are built together into a spiritual house, each of us a piece of God’s overall plan.

No single stone is the whole building, and no stone holds itself up. Each one carries some of the weight of the others and is carried by them in turn. And every one of us rests on the same foundation, Christ. That means none of us can say we don’t need the others, and none of us can say we have no place in the wall.

A royal priesthood

Then Peter changes the picture. This house is also “a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices.” Each of us is made to be a priest. In verse 9 he says it again: we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.

We are royal because we belong to the King. Our dignity does not come from ourselves; it comes entirely from our association with Jesus. We are a priesthood because we serve him, bearing fruit and offering ourselves to God in love, because he first loved us. And we are a holy nation in two senses. Christ has made us holy by removing our sin, and we belong to his kingdom. We are not building a nation on the earth. We have been brought into the kingdom he has already established.

None of this is a new idea. It wasn’t invented during the Reformation, nor even in the New Testament. At Sinai, before God gave the law, he told Israel who they were to be: “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). The Levites served at the tabernacle and later the temple, but the identity of the whole people was priestly. They were all meant to represent God before the nations. And at the end of the story, the Lamb is praised because with his blood he purchased people from every tribe and nation and made them “a kingdom and priests to serve our God” (Revelation 5:10). From the beginning to the end, God’s intention has not changed.

Priests in every place and every moment

What has changed is where and when we serve. Paul told the Athenians that God does not live in temples built by human hands (Acts 17:24). He lives in us. “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). Because we are his temple, our priestly service is not confined to a building or to a Sunday morning. We serve him at the kitchen table, at work, in the neighbourhood, in every moment, because he is with us in every moment.

This also means there is no special class of person in the church. There are elders and deacons. There is real authority and there are real gifts. But none of these cancels anyone’s calling as a priest. Jesus told us to make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything he commanded (Matthew 28:19–20). That is not a job description for a few professionals. It is the calling of every disciple. We want to be “100% disciples,” obeying all of Jesus’ commands, not some of them while leaving the rest to the leaders.

The role of leaders, then, is not to do the priestly work on behalf of everyone else. It is “to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up” (Ephesians 4:12). A healthy church is not measured by how many people sit and watch, but by how many are living as priests. We were never meant to be spectators or consumers in the Body of Christ.

What are the spiritual sacrifices?

If we are priests, what do we offer? First, what we do not offer: sacrifices for sin. “By one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Hebrews 10:14). That work is finished. Our sacrifices are responses of gratitude, which is why Peter says they are acceptable only “through Jesus Christ.” They are welcome because the atoning work is already done.

The New Testament names several of them. The first is ourselves. Paul urges us to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” (Romans 12:1). Not just our religious activity, but our whole embodied life.

Then there is praise. “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name” (Hebrews 13:15). The very next verse adds generosity: “do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.” Paul called the Philippians’ financial gift “a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God” (Philippians 4:18).

There is prayer. In Revelation, the elders hold “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people” (Revelation 5:8). Every prayer we pray rises before God like the incense in the temple.

There is costly service. Paul described himself as being “poured out like a drink offering” for the sake of the believers he served (Philippians 2:17).

And there is mission itself. Paul said God gave him “the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God” (Romans 15:16). The people who come to faith through our witness are themselves an offering to God. Making disciples is priestly work. When we go to the nations, when we share the gospel with a neighbour, when we teach a new believer to obey Jesus and to teach others, we are serving as priests.

Bearing fruit

What is the point of all of this? Fruit. In the parable of the sower, the good soil is not simply the soil where the seed sprouts. It is the soil that produces a crop, thirty, sixty, or a hundred times what was sown. Our sacrifices bear fruit for the Lord and bring glory to him, as we “declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

Peter ends with a reminder of where we started. “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” We were rough stones lying in a field. God picked us up, shaped us, and set us into his house on the foundation of his Son. The only fitting response is to live as the priests he has made us to be.

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Photo by Claudio Carrozzo on Unsplash

Hebrews 7 asks a question that would have startled its first readers. If the priesthood God gave Israel through Aaron could have brought people to perfection, why would anyone need another priest? Yet God, speaking through David in Psalm 110, had already announced one: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”

A system built on a priesthood

For centuries, Israel’s worship ran through the tribe of Levi. The law given to Moses appointed Aaron and his sons as priests, and those priests in turn served the law. They offered sacrifices, made atonement, and stood between a holy God and a sinful people.

But the author of Hebrews notices something deeper. The people received the law on the basis of that priesthood (7:11). The whole Sinai covenant depended on priests to make it work. Take away the foundation, and the building has to change: “For when the priesthood is changed, the law must be changed also” (7:12).

That is exactly what has happened. Jesus is now our high priest, yet he came from Judah, a tribe Moses never connected with the altar. His arrival means God is doing something new.

What “perfection” really means

When Hebrews speaks of perfection, it does not mean moral flawlessness. It means bringing worshippers all the way into God’s presence, with consciences truly cleansed (9:9; 10:14). The Levitical system, for all its beauty, could never do that. Its sacrifices were repeated year after year, a constant reminder that the way to God was not yet fully open.

A different kind of priest

Jesus belongs to the “order” of Melchizedek. That word does not describe a family line; it describes a kind of priesthood. Scripture records no genealogy for Melchizedek at all. To be a Levite was to be a priest by birth, because your ancestry assigned your role. Not so with Melchizedek, and not so with Christ.

Melchizedek was also both priest and king, and so is Jesus. He serves on our behalf, and he reigns over all.

Most importantly, Jesus became a priest “not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life” (7:16). This is the resurrection. Every Levitical priest eventually died and had to be replaced. Jesus has passed through death and lives forever, which is why “he always lives to intercede” for those who come to God through him (7:25).

A law written on the heart

If the priesthood has changed, what is the new law? Hebrews answers by quoting Jeremiah’s promise of a new covenant: “I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts” (8:10).

Here is the difference. Any law that imposes rules on people from the outside in, even the good and holy law of Moses, ends up exposing our trespasses. And trespass against God’s law brings a punishment we cannot bear. But our high priest serves a covenant that changes a person from the inside out, something no human law could ever accomplish.

And unlike the priests of old, he does not offer sacrifices over and over. He offered himself, once for all. He is both the priest and the sacrifice.

A priest and king who requires a response

A priest like this cannot be ignored. We must face him directly, grasp what it means that he offered himself for us, and respond. He is worth nothing less than the whole of our lives.

And as king, he deserves to be lifted up, made known, and glorified. This is the singular purpose of our lives: that the One for whom, through whom, and to whom are all things would be made famous.

Prayer

Lord, thank you for showing us through your word who you truly are. Thank you that you gave yourself so that we could once again be with you, and that you call us to live for you. May you be glorified through our lives. Amen.

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Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash

A reflection on 1 Peter 1:17–21

“Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.” (1 Peter 1:17–21)

A Father without favorites

Peter begins by reminding us that we call on a Father who judges impartially. God does not play favorites. He is not a tribalist. Our race, our nationality and our political affiliations carry no weight in how He sees us. The only thing that matters is the fruit we bear in Christ.

That is both humbling and freeing. Humbling, because none of the labels we lean on to feel secure count for anything before Him. Freeing, because no label can shut anyone out of His family either.

What it means to live as a foreigner

Peter tells us to live out our time here “as foreigners.” What does that look like?

It means living as people in a culture but not of it. Our family knows something of this. We are Americans living in Italy. We still think and live, in many ways, as Americans do, while surrounded by an Italian culture that thinks and lives quite differently. We participate in daily life here, love our neighbors here and learn the language here, but we carry another way of seeing the world with us.

In the same way, followers of Jesus are citizens of another kingdom. We must think and live as people who come from the culture of the kingdom of God. We live fully within the culture of this world, but with the mindset of the kingdom. Our values, our priorities and our hope come from somewhere else.

The most precious thing in the universe

Peter then reminds us what it cost to bring us into that kingdom. We were not redeemed with silver or gold, things that rust, fade and run out. We were redeemed with the most precious thing in the universe: the blood of Christ.

Jesus was the sacrificial lamb, truly without blemish or defect. It was the life coursing through Him, poured out for us, that paid for our redemption from the empty way of life we inherited.

And this was no afterthought. Jesus existed before the creation of the world and was chosen even then to be the lamb for our sake. Before there was a single sunrise, God had already considered us, knowing that we would fall away from Him, and had already provided the remedy.

One God, one way

Finally, Peter says that through Christ we believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and glorified Him. Our faith and hope rest in God because of what He has done in Jesus.

This means we can only truly know God if we know Christ. There is one God and one gospel. There are not several roads that lead to Him; there is one way, through Jesus Christ. This is the message we have been given to speak, not with arrogance, but with the urgency of people who know what it cost.

It is in His love, His mercy, His sacrifice and His victory over death that Jesus is glorified, and in His glory, the Father is glorified.

Our role

So what does this mean for us? Our role is to live as people who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. We are called to be fruitful for the sake of God’s glory, so that all may see and know Him because of Christ and through Christ: the only way, the only truth and the only life. There is no other.

We live as foreigners here, not because we have withdrawn from the world, but because we belong to a kingdom that is coming, and we want everyone around us to belong to it too.

A prayer

Thank you, Lord, that you saw and anticipated all of our needs. We needed to be redeemed, and you have provided everything that was needed. May you be lifted up. May you be known among all people everywhere, and may you use me to make you known. Amen.

Teachers by Now

The writer of Hebrews pauses his teaching on Christ’s priesthood with a hard word: “though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again” (Hebrews 5:12). He had more to say about Melchizedek, but his readers weren’t ready to hear it.

The rebuke assumes something we easily forget. Growth in Christ is expected to go somewhere. There is a season to be a student, and then a point when we should be able to pass on what we have received. These believers had walked with Christ long enough to be teaching others, yet they still needed milk. Time alone hadn’t moved them forward. So what does?

Not Just Receiving, but Using

The answer comes in verse 14: solid food is for the mature, “who by constant use have trained themselves.” The key word is use. Maturity doesn’t come from how much of the Word we take in, but from how much of it we put to work.

This is a sobering truth for people who love Scripture. We can read faithfully, attend good teaching, and fill notebooks with insights, and still remain spiritual infants. Receiving the Word is necessary, but it is only half of the process. The other half is obeying it: forgiving when the Word says forgive, giving when it says give, speaking when it says speak. James puts it plainly: be doers of the word, and not hearers only (James 1:22).

The Greek behind “trained” is the word from which we get gymnasium. Spiritual maturity is built the way muscle is built, through repetition under load.

Trained to Discern

What does that training produce? The ability “to distinguish good from evil.” Receiving and using the Word together form a kind of spiritual instinct. The mature believer can tell what pleases God in situations no verse directly addresses, because obedience has shaped their senses.

That discernment is what moves a person from milk to meat. The infant isn’t unwelcome at the table; he simply can’t digest what is served there. In the same way, deeper truths about Christ are not withheld because God is stingy. They are withheld because we aren’t ready to carry them.

The implication is uncomfortable but clear. If I am not putting the Word into practice, I will remain an infant, no matter how many years I have been a Christian or how much I know. There may be more for me to learn, but I won’t be ready for it until I have obeyed what I have already learned.

Doing the Word

So the path to maturity is simple, though not easy. I cannot merely know the Word; I need to do the Word if it is to be effective in my life. Each time I read Scripture, the better question is not “What did I learn?” but “What will I obey?”

But obedience doesn’t stop with our own lives. Jesus told us to make disciples (Matthew 28:19–20), and part of being a disciple is learning to make disciples who will do the same. This is where the student truly becomes the teacher. And something surprising happens along the way: teaching others to obey pushes us to learn more, grow more, and put the Word into practice even more ourselves. We can’t lead someone where we aren’t willing to go. Leading others becomes one of God’s most important tools for our own maturing.

Lord, I do not want to remain an infant; I want to be fully mature. Help me to do your Word, not only to hear it, but to do what it says. Help me not only to distinguish good from evil, but to live out the good, and to teach others to do the same. Amen.

As a team, our goal is to reach four generations of disciples within multiple streams of work that, they themselves will go on to make disciples and churches that will make disciples and start new churches. Our work focuses on several different groups of people whether they be African or Asian immigrants into Europe, by mobilizing native Europeans to do this same work, or by sharing the Gospel and mobilizing others in further locations, back in the countries from where many of the people that we reach here in Europe have come.

The plan to make four generations of disciples isn’t simply based on an arbitrary plan to reach this number. Instead, we see this number of generations as Paul writes to Timothy in his second letter to encourage him to continue in his faith, making disciples of people who will go on to teach others.

Similarly, as believers and followers of Christ, we believe that the role that Christ has left us with until he returns is to live out the life of the new creation that Christ has given to us, producing the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and then going on to teach others to do the same.

But there is an additional important lesson that we learn from Paul as we read his letter to Timothy. We shouldn’t only teach others to do the same, but instead Paul says that Timothy must teach others to teach others.

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.

2 Timothy 2:2

So how can we describe the chain of disciples that we see in this case? We can understand it in this way:

Paul has already taught Timothy in the presence of many people.

Timothy should now go on to teach others, the “reliable” people.

And those reliable people will be taught to such an extent that they can go on to teach others.

So in all, we see four generations of disciples in this example:

1. Paul
2. Timothy and witnesses
3. Reliable people
4. Others

This generational disciple-making is really no different than what we see in other places in Jesus’s teachings as well. For example, as Jesus was praying for his disciples just before going to the cross, he said:

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message

John 17:20

Jesus is referring to his disciples, but he says he isn’t just praying for them. He is also praying for those who will come after them, those who will believe through their message. It was important that Jesus demonstrated through his teaching how the disciples should also teach others, and teach others to teach others!

Or we could even also look at the Great Commission:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

Matthew 28:19-20

Jesus tells his disciples to go and make disciples, but then he says that they are to teach those disciples everything he has commanded his disciples to do.

And what had he just commanded his disciples to do? To make disciples! So the disciples are not only to make a disciple, but they are to make disciples who are to make disciples. They must not only be disciple makers and make disciples, but they are to make makers of disciple-makers.

Why this emphasis?

We should ask ourselves… why do we see such an emphasis on this pattern of making disciples who will make disciples? Why do both Jesus and Paul make a point of doing this and teaching this as they perform their ministries?

I believe that there are three main reasons:

First, our desire is that the movement toward Christ and the growth of the kingdom of God will continue to spread even if persecution comes and someone, even the primary leader, is killed or somehow taken out of action in the work of the kingdom. By making disciples who can make disciples, it becomes impossible to stop the work because it is decentralized. There is no primary person, no primary focus except for the worship of Jesus himself.

This is why the work of the kingdom continued after Jesus returned to heaven to be with the Father. The kingdom didn’t stop growing. No, in fact, it was only at that point that it had begun.

In a similar way, as Paul is put in chains, the work of the early church continued to expand. We see that other people continued in sharing the Gospel, making disciples and starting new churches even when Paul was not there. They had learned what to do and now they carried on the work even when Paul was no longer in their midst.

Second, as a corollary to the first reason is that having a primary person around whom you are building an organization or a movement will likely create division. Despite being Christians and redeemed in Christ, there are still many situations where competition enters the picture, whether because someone desires to take the place of another as the leader of a movement, or those who are following begin to name their preferred leader. This selection of a leader creates division where there should be no division, but instead unity.

This is the type of situation that we saw in Corinth where some people in the church said that they followed Paul, some said that they followed Apollos, others Peter, and still others, Jesus himself.

Jesus taught his disciples that they should not vie for authority or power, seeking position over one another. Instead, he taught them that there should be love and submission to one another, all under the authority and headship of just one who is the creator, savior, and lord of all: Jesus, and him alone.

Third, as we think about the expansion of the Gospel, Jesus and Paul both taught the relatively slow, yet deep and thorough process of making a disciple. The multiplication effect of making disciples who can make disciples provides the possibility that more people, more quickly, can hear the Gospel and can follow Christ. The kingdom of God also becomes geographically unbound and unleashed as the Gospel runs along relational lines instead of being connected to a geographical location as we see in many of our churches today. In short, while making disciples in a particular moment can appear to be a very slow process, and in reality it is a slow process, the multiplicative effect of making disciples who can make disciples can move faster and go farther than any megachurch across the face of the earth when viewed over a period of time.

How does this happen?

Making several generations of disciples is the pattern that we see both in Jesus’s teachings as well as that of Paul, so we should ask ourselves: How does that happen?

This only happens by making disciples in a way that is Biblical and reproducible.

We must follow the teaching of the Bible. The examples that we see in the Bible are both what we must teach as well as a pattern that we should follow. We should seek out both the message as well as the method of teaching. At the very least, we should take principles from the method so that we can do the same. We not only should seek the theology from the scriptures but also understand the practice.

As a good friend of mine says, should I believe that the theology that I can learn in the Bible is inspired by God, but not believe that the practice is also inspired by God?

Our disciple-making practice must also be reproducible. The teaching that I give must be able to be done, and done simply, by the person that I am teaching. They must be able to do what I have done in a way that the next person can reproduce that same practice with yet another person, teaching them to do the same.

In these ways, ways that are Biblical and reproducible, we can see disciples of Jesus that are made from one person to the next, from generation to generation for the expansion of the kingdom of God, for his glory alone.

“Yet this is no cause for shame, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.”

2 Timothy 1:12

Paul was in chains when he wrote these words. He was near the end of his life, many of his companions had left him, and his ministry looked to the world like a failure. Still, what he wrote to Timothy doesn’t sound defeated or afraid. It sounds sure: I know whom I have believed.

Where does that kind of confidence come from? And could we have it too?

Grace we didn’t earn

Paul begins by reminding Timothy where all of this comes from: God “has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace”.

We did nothing to earn our salvation. We didn’t earn God’s favor, and we can’t pay back the debt. God saved us because he chose to and because his grace rests on us. Paul says this grace was “given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.” Before we had done anything good or bad, God had already planned to rescue us.

This grace is found only in Jesus. It isn’t a general kindness spread vaguely across the universe. It has a name and a face. And it has now been “revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel”.

That is the good news, the Gospel. Jesus died as the sacrifice for our sins, and he rose to life and defeated death. Because of that, he offers us eternal life in him. Death, the one enemy none of us can escape, has been beaten.

Worth suffering

This is the message Paul was appointed to announce as “a herald and an apostle and a teacher”. This is also why he suffered. He doesn’t pretend otherwise: “That is why I am suffering as I am.”

Paul had counted the cost and decided the gospel was worth it. Prison, beatings, and rejection were real losses, but they were small next to the eternal life he had been given and was offering to others.

What held him steady wasn’t grit or stubbornness. It was his real relationship with Christ: “I know whom I have believed.” Paul didn’t only know about Jesus. He knew Jesus, he trusted him, and so he was convinced that Christ was holding his life and would keep holding it “until that day.”

What would you risk?

This is where the passage stops being only about Paul.

If we know Christ, we can trust him with everything. That includes our salvation, and it also includes our finances, our health, our children, our future, and our reputation. The same Jesus who defeated death can take care of whatever we hand over to him.

That frees us to take risks for the gospel. A lot of our caution comes down to self-protection. We don’t bring up Jesus with a neighbor because it might be awkward. We don’t give generously because we might need that money later. We don’t go where God is calling because it feels unsafe, uncertain, or too costly for our families. But if Christ really holds our lives in his hands, then the worst that could happen to us has already been dealt with. Our lives are “guarded” by someone who cannot fail.

So it’s worth stopping to ask honestly:

• Where am I holding back from obeying because I’m trying to protect something God has already promised to protect?
• Who in my life hasn’t heard the good news because I’ve been afraid of what it might cost me?
• What decision am I facing right now, for myself or my family, that I’ve been making by looking at the risks instead of looking at Christ?

When we line up our lives with God’s will and give ourselves to the gospel, we also become heralds for the Gospel. Paul’s calling was unique, but his message wasn’t. Every follower of Jesus can point others to the eternal life he offers. We may never write letters from a prison cell, but we can be faithful in our own streets, workplaces, and homes, confident that the One we have believed will guard what we entrust to him.

A prayer

Lord, help me to fix my eyes upon you. Help me to think of you and only of you as I make decisions for myself and for my family. Help me to live and move and work based on the promises that you have given for us. My desire is that you would be glorified and lifted up. You have given me eternal life. Now may you be known everywhere for what you have done for me and for each of us! Amen.

It would be shocking, overwhelming in fact, to have stood before Jesus and hear him say something like this:

If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.

John 14:7

Can you imagine? I think everyone would say that one of the most challenging things about believing in God is that we can’t see him. God is spirit, not a physical man…except when he was here on earth having come into the earth as a physical man.

The disciples had come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. They believed that he had been sent by God.

Peter even completed his confession back to Jesus in saying that they, the disciples, believed that he was the Son of God.

Jesus, though, now goes on to tell the disciples that if they have seen him, they have seen the Father. As the disciples look at Jesus, they are looking into the face of God. As the disciples hear the words that Jesus is speaking, they are hearing words that are coming directly from God. They aren’t hearing a prophet. They aren’t hearing someone who is speaking for God. They are hearing God, and him directly.

Philip goes on to push the question further though. Neither he nor the rest of the disciples can really even begin to understand what Jesus is telling them, so Jesus answers him as clearly as he possibly can:

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

John 14:8-10

Jesus even seems to chide Philip to a certain extent. “How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?'”, he responds to Philip. “Don’t you believe?”

I think that Jesus asks us the same question even today:

Don’t you believe?

Belief, though, isn’t just the religious label that we place upon ourselves. It isn’t a group with whom we align ourselves. To say that we believe isn’t like alignment with a political party, signaling to the world our leanings to the left or to the right. No, to believe means that we are hearing what God himself is saying to us and everything changes based on those words.

Today, we can hear God through his word, the Bible, and we can hear God through his Spirit, the Holy Spirit that Christ gives to us as we believe and follow him. He desires to speak, and even moreso, he desires that we listen and do what he has called us to do.

Jesus showed himself physically to his disciples. He was a real person who walked the earth, and yet his primary identity, who he really was, was God the Father who had come in the person of Jesus Christ. God showed himself to the people of that time, but he continues to show himself to us even today. But he will only be known if we will listen. He will only be known if we will change to do what he has called us to do. We can know God. We can see him, if we will look, listen, and believe.

Jesus had one primary, overriding concern: Glorifying God. He stood there with his disciples, looking into the face of death, knowing that he would very soon be going to the cross. Within a few hours, Jesus would be crucified, and rightly so, Jesus’s soul was disturbed.

However, he would not be deterred. Jesus would not be turned to the right or left away from his mission. He would not be dissuaded from the plan that had been planned over an eternity, he would not take a detour. No, there was only one way to complete the work that he came to do, and that way was to the cross.

“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

John 12:27-28

Jesus was primarily interested in glorifying the name of God, so much so that he would be willing to endure beatings, suffering, and even death. He would endure separation from the Father. He would endure the punishment of a criminal.

And he would endure all of the pain and suffering because it would bring glory to God and his name.

But why? Why would God receive glory from Jesus going to the cross? Isn’t that just senseless killing? Useless death, like many of the other killings of the prophets by the Jews, or like many of the other killings of other dissidents by the Romans?

No, this death was much different. Jesus would take the punishment for many others so that they would be ransomed – purchased with his blood – away from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God. The sins of people would be paid for by one who did not deserve to be punished. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice, the perfect “lamb” that would take away the sins of the world.

And because many would enter the kingdom of God, and because Jesus would open the kingdom to people all throughout the world, it would fulfill God’s mission and plan to have a people for himself, those who would be part of the kingdom of God, those who would live to glorify him, all across the world, amongst every group of people. God’s image would finally be spread all across the face of the earth, and God’s glory would shine everywhere. Everywhere that there was a group of people, everywhere that there was a language, a nation, or a tribe, there would be those who truly represented God’s image as disciples of Christ.

This would truly bring glory to God. This would open the door such that God’s glory would fill the earth, as the waters cover the sea, just as Habakkuk had said.

As as the Father replied, he has glorified his name, and he will do it again. And again. And again. God is jealous for his glory. He will not share his glory with anyone. For any other being to receive God’s glory, or for God to share his glory with another would be idolatry. Instead, God’s name was glorified through Christ and through each believer that would come to know the Father through Christ.

Now we must do the same. As the people that have been saved we must follow Jesus’s example. We must live to glorify God and not for ourselves so that his name will be glorified once again, even through each of us.

Jesus’s words and works caused division amongst the people. Not necessarily a division based on anger against the other person or the other side, but division based on whether a person believed what they were hearing and seeing from Jesus, or not. The division was primarily centered around whether or not the person believed that Jesus was the Messiah sent from God or they did not.

We see a particularly poignant example of this after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. John tells us that there were some who believed and others, particularly those who were the religious rulers over the Jews at that time, who did not.

Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.

“What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”

John 11:45-48

Jesus came to fulfill the promises that God had made to the patriarchs, Paul would later write. These promises started in the time of Abraham as God told Abraham that he would bless Abraham so that he would be a blessing to all nations. In other words, through this people, through those that God would choose and call his people, the Israelites, he would accomplish his plan such that they would be the people through whom God would come into the world, make himself known to all people, and die for all people, so that his kingdom would be established and those who would put their faith in him would be ransomed, purchased out of the kingdom of darkness, allowing all that believe to come into the kingdom of God.

Yet the Jewish leaders had power. They were in control, at least in their own minds, over the future of the Jewish people. They were the spiritual leaders of the nation of Israel, even if the Romans were the conquering force of their time. In reality, they had very little power or influence, but the little that they had, they wanted to hold onto and not lose.

Jesus, however, had come to earth as God in the flesh, and he was working to fulfill God’s plan, the plan that God had announced to Abraham centuries before. He was doing a new work, at least a new work from the perspective of the Jewish leaders. From God’s perspective, Jesus was simply completing the plan that God had announced many time centuries before.

The Jewish leaders believed that they themselves were the chosen people, the only chosen people, God’s people, and they were the leaders of this people. So, because they believed that they were the chosen people and because they believed that they were leading, they focused on their own plan instead of God’s plan. What was their plan? To make their own plan. To go their own way. To do their own thing.

They could plainly see, and even said so amongst themselves, that Jesus was performing miracles that only God could do. They saw that he was performing signs and wonders as God demonstrated his power and authority on the earth. Jesus had authority over sin. He had authority over death. And yet, these leaders remained in their unbelief because they had their own plan. They did not understand God’s larger plan and they did not care because they were simply working according to their own plan.

This leads us, of course, to a question that we must ask ourselves: Am I living according to the greater plan of God? Do I understand what he is doing and have I found my place within his plan? Or am I denying his plan and substituting my own in place of what God is doing?

For so many years, I asked God what he wanted me to do with my life. “How can I serve you?”, I asked, but instead of understanding the story that God is telling, I sought answers from my own self, from my own mind and heart. I listened to the voices that said that we can find the answers from within, that we should do those things about which we are passionate. I was lured by the message of living by my own perspective, while at the same time asking God what he wanted me to do.

I learned that those two perspectives are incompatible. God has his plan and I have mine, and they are not the same. One brings glory to God and the other brings glory to me, so I learned that I cannot ask God what he wants me to do and really only listen to myself.

I believe that is what the Jewish leaders were doing, and that is the same perspective that we often take today as we live out our lives.

So we must choose. Will I live my life based on God’s perspective, based on his plan? His mission? Or will I live for my own? Will I seek to understand what God is doing and place myself in the midst of his plan and his will, or will I prefer instead to listen to myself and desire those things that I want? These are critical questions for our lives and lead us to specific actions related to the answers that we give to these questions. In the end, this is the difference, regardless of whether you call yourself a Christian, a believer, or otherwise, between belief and unbelief.