Author: Ryan Hale

In 2016, my family and I moved to Italy to work with immigrants and refugees arriving from Africa, from the Middle East, from South Asia, and beyond. We arrived in Sicily and have lived here now for nearly nine years, sharing the Gospel and making disciples of Christ amongst these people throughout this time while also encouraging and helping to mobilize our Sicilian Christian brothers and sisters to do the same.

Moving into a new country brings a number of new experiences and new understandings of your relationship to other people. One word, one idea in particular that we have learned, especially moving to the southern part of Italy in Sicily with its strong culture is this:

We are “stranieri”.

Stranieri translates in English to “foreigners”, or maybe you could translate it to “strangers”. While we have learned a lot over the years, we are foreigners to the Sicilian land, the Sicilian culture, the language, and much more. We are foreigners… always have been and I’m pretty sure that, in the eyes of the Sicilian people, regardless of how well we might speak the language or the extent to which we learn the various parts of the culture, we always will be stranieri.

As Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus, he noted this same division that had previously been found between the Jewish people, who had been called God’s people through the covenant that God had made with them, and the Gentiles who were not under this same covenant. God had given the Jews a sign of their covenant. The men would be circumcised and this would show that they are under the covenant, a group of people for whom Yahweh would be their God and they would be his people.

The Gentiles did not have Yahweh as their God. They were not under this same covenant. They did not have the sign of circumcision to show that Yahweh was their God and they were his people. The Jews and the Gentiles, in that time, were two separate people. Not only did they come from different places… Not only did they have a different language… Not only did they have different cultures… They were different peoples as they stood before God.

So the Gentiles were foreigners to God. And what was more, they were foreigners to the people of God. They were outsiders. They did not belong. They had no part in a relationship with God as they Jews did. In fact, Paul says that the Gentiles had no hope. They were excluded. They were walking through this world without God.

And yet Paul says that God, in Christ, removed this barrier. God made these two groups of people one nation, one people. He unified them in Christ. He brought together the Gentiles and the Jews through the blood of Christ. He made peace. He removed the wall of hostility that existed between the Jews and Gentiles, not to mention the wall between God and the Gentiles. God offered the gift of grace and mercy to both the Jews and Gentiles through Jesus, making the two to instead be one.

So the Gentiles are now offered citizenship in the kingdom of God. They were made to no longer be foreigners, but instead, citizens with the full rights and privileges as the people of God:

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

Ephesians 2:19-20

The Gentiles are no longer on the outside, but instead are on the inside. They are part of God’s kingdom. They are, even better, part of his household. They belong because of Jesus. Jesus opened the door to all peoples to come in and he himself is the foundation, the chief cornerstone, of the people of God, of whom now both the Jews and all of the Gentiles belong, if they will come to him through Christ.

This continues to have implications for us even today! Christ died for Muslims. Christ died for atheists. Christ died for Buddhists, Hindus, and more. He did that so that they would be welcomed into the kingdom of God, into his household. And he has sent us to tell them that great news: They are no longers foreigners. They are citizens. They are no longer just servants. They are his children. They are now, if they will come in Christ, the people of God.

I find that one of the more challenging questions that I can ask when we have a meeting is the first one that, as a team, we nearly always ask:

What are you thankful for this week?

Very often, I can much more easily get responses to theological questions about a particular scriptural passage:

What do you learn about God from this passage?

Or, what do you learn about people from this story?

But unfortunately, I find that we aren’t always very good at giving praise to God or very good at offering thankfulness. We aren’t really very good at remembering the things that God has done for us.

Instead, often when I ask this first question, the response is… silence.

Why is that?

We could probably make a long list of reasons, but for today, I want to point to one possibility: As human beings, we tend to focus on the negative things in our daily lives. And even further, as followers of Christ, we do a good job at losing sight of what is really happening around us, the true nature of reality of that which God has done and is still doing all around us, even today.

We live in the wrong story. We see the world through the wrong lens. We look at the situation and the circumstances around us with regard to how we believe it affects us and the negative consequences, either perceived or real, directly upon us. We do an excellent job of making ourselves the center of our own stories, and therefore our own circumstances – which admittedly may not be, or may not seem, all that positive – become the primary driver of how we feel about our lives.

That can, of course, have several downstream consequences: emotional consequences, physical consequences, and much more, both upon us and even further, upon other people in our interactions with them. We can continue to be wrapped up in our own story and our own circumstances that we can therefore wrap ourselves into knots and create a life that is far from who we were made to be. We can end up far from that which is God’s plan for us.

I was reminded of this when I read the first chapter of Ephesians today, remembering that Paul was in prison when he wrote this:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

Ephesians 1:3

Paul is looking at his life through an entirely different lens. He is clearly not focusing on his own circumstances. He is looking at everything – his life, the situation around him – entirely through the lens of what God is doing and the work that he has been given to do by God. Paul found the purpose of his life, not in his personal circumstances, but instead in God’s story.

Paul had been nearly beaten to death several times. He had been stoned. He had been put in prison several times. He was often without food. He was regularly threatened by thieves, threatened by cold, threatened by angry mobs.

If Paul was focused on himself, he should have given up long ago. But Paul didn’t consider his own circumstances, his own personal situation as the lens through which he saw his life. Instead, after all of these negative events above, he was also now being kept in prison in Rome and yet was able to give praise and thanks to God, even despite his circumstances.

Paul is an extreme example, but he is also a good one. He is an example of an ideal that helps us to see that we should not focus on ourselves because our story is not just our story. Our lives are not just about us. Our lives are to be lived for God’s glory. The story of our lives should be found within God’s story. This is the only way in which our lives make any sense. This is the only way in which our lives have meaning. Otherwise, we have no foundation for living a life of gratitude because everything depends on each of us and depends upon an accident of nature in which I do not have enough faith to believe.

Instead, we need to maintain a life of praise and thankfulness because God has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every kind of spiritual blessing. In this way, our lives have meaning and we can live for him. Praise God!

When I teach people about our ministry’s vision, I explain that we have adopted the vision to see no place remain, no place left where we can work.

That probably sounds crazy. It certainly seems that way to me. Can you imagine a scenario where we would, at the end of our work, find that there is no place that remains for us to continue doing our work?

Actually, we didn’t make this up on our own. In fact, that was Paul’s vision as well…and he accomplished it. We don’t see that he said that was his vision, but at the end of his work, he proclaims that he has finished his work in these regions. There is no place for him to work here where he has been working, so he wants to move on. Take a look at what he says here:

I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done— by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation. Rather, as it is written:

“Those who were not told about him will see,
and those who have not heard will understand.”

This is why I have often been hindered from coming to you.

But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I have been longing for many years to visit you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to see you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while.

Romans 15:18-24

Let’s understand what Paul is saying here. In verse 19, he says “from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum” is the area where he did his work. We can probably pretty easily understand where Jerusalem is on the map. But where in the world is Illyricum?

Check out this map:

The darkened area is Roman province of Illyricum.

So Paul is saying that, from Jerusalem all of the way around to Illyricum, which today would be Bosnia in the southern part and Slovenia in the northern part – or just to the east of Venice, Italy! – Paul no longer has any place left where he can work.

Hmmm… What does that mean?

Judging by today’s geography and political maps, Paul is, at the least, saying that he has covered all of Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, and more. Paul had done his work. There was nothing left for him to do. He was moving on…

Paul had spent approximately 15 years to start movements in at least three different regions within the areas described above.

In his first journey, he planted churches in at least four different cities in the area of Galatia and Phrygia that themselves went on to spread the word of God across the entire region.

In his second journey, Paul began training Timothy and others to do the work that he was doing, traveling into the areas of Macedonia and Achaia in the city of Corinth.

And finally, in his third journey, Paul once again visited the Galatian churches, but was able this time to head down to Ephesus so as to see amazing fruit from his ministry, teaching and training the disciples who, it seems, went themselves to share the Gospel and plant churches in nine different cities all across the province of Asia, or present-day western Turkey.

So, at the end all of all of this work, Paul now says that there is no place that remains for him to continue his work in these regions. Amazing!

Anytime that we develop a vision, that vision drives the direction in which we go and the form of what we intend to do will take. In Paul’s case, he was not satisfied with the idea that he would plant one church. Paul looked to glorify God with entire regions of people who would hear the Gospel, entire cities of people who would be part of the city church from house to house, who would go on to tell others as well.

In other words, Paul worked to saturate an entire area with the Gospel, and so as we learn from him, our desire is to do the same thing. Our team is focused on sending workers to start new work amongst people who do not know Christ, and then, from amongst the people with whom we have initially worked, we can work alongside the local team to strengthen and build up the local church, making disciples and teaching them to take ownership of their own walk with Christ, taking ownership in helping others walk with Christ, and teaching them to take ownership of their own church.

In this way, our desire is to one day say, just as Paul says here in Romans 15, that we have no place that remains for us to continue to do our work. Instead, we can call people into service of our king, making disciples and planting churches amongst those who do not know him!

As Jesus taught, he said many things that, I am sure, shocked the people who were listening to him. Possibly most shocking amongst those things were his teachings on love: To whom we should show love. How we are to love others. Those teachings were shocking because that which he taught was completely different, completely upside-down and contrary to how our world typically works. Here are a few examples:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Matthew 5:38-42

Jesus says that if someone comes against you, even an evil person, even in violence, slapping you or hitting you, don’t resist them.

In fact, turn the other cheek to them so that they can easily hit that one too.

If they come against you, wanting to sue you… To take your shirt… To take your coat, give it to them.

Wow.

Or we could also look at the teaching that immediately followed:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

Matthew 5:43-47

Don’t just love your neighbor. No, love your enemy as well.

And who is the person who is your enemy? He is the one that we just spoke about, the one who is standing there slapping you. Or the one who is suing you.

Love him!

How many times have I failed in carrying out Jesus’s teaching? How many times have I, instead of loving my enemy, sought to bring retribution on them?

So I see a reminder again in the book of Romans:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Romans 12:14-21

This is very similar to Jesus’s teaching. Paul says that we should bless those that persecute us. Bless our enemies.

So, we should ask ourselves: Why? Why do good to our enemies instead of repaying them with what they have given to us?

The reason is that this is precisely what God did for us through Jesus. While we were God’s enemies, Jesus came and gave himself for us. It wasn’t that we were worthy of him dying. It wasn’t that Jesus thought that everything was going to work out between us and him. It wasn’t that he just couldn’t exist without us.

No, we were his enemies, and not only did he bless us, not only did he feed us, but he died for us. For his enemies Jesus died.

I believe that this is one of the ways that we can really know if someone understands the weight, the importance, the value and worth of the gift that they have been given in Jesus. Are they willing to be harmed by their enemies as Jesus taught? Are they willing to bless their enemies? To me, this is a tell-tale sign that someone not only understands the value of the death and resurrection of Christ for their life, but is truly living it out: If they are willing to follow Jesus’s teaching in this way, we can truly see the fruit of the Gospel coming through their lives.

So I can look back at my own life and ask: Did I understand? Did I place the appropriate value of the Gospel upon my life? I suspect that I didn’t at that time, but my desire is to continue to grow, not only in my understanding from the perspective of my head knowledge, but primarily in my practice on a daily basis as I walk with Christ.

Through the Old Testament and in the person of Jesus, there was a great mystery that was being revealed: That the hearts of the Israelites would be hardened, the hearts of God’s own people, the ones that he had specifically chosen through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so as to allow the Gentiles to come in to his kingdom and be his people.

This went against everything that that Israelites thought that they had understood about God since the beginning of their relationship with the Lord. They were supposed to separate themselves from the Gentiles. They were supposed to “come out” from amongst the Gentiles. They were even supposed to rid the land of the Gentiles, of the Canaanites, as they entered the Promised Land that God had given them.

And now, had this all changed? Now, are you telling us that God, our God, has accepted these godless people?

Yes, in fact, that is the mystery that the people of Israel finally understood from God. Paul explains it to the Romans:

I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written:

“The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
And this is my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.”

Romans 11:25-27

The Israelites’ hearts were hard toward God. They rejected him. They did not follow him. They were interested in the benefits of God, but they were not interested in God himself. They would not repent. They would not leave their old way of life, continuing on and on to even worship other gods on the high places.

The Israelites would only continue on the path that they were on. They killed the prophets that God had sent to them, those who had called them to repentance. They wouldn’t heed the warnings that the Messiah was coming.

So God announced a new covenant. The old covenant had been broken. The Israelites had not obeyed God. They were not interested in being God’s people, so God opened the doors to the Gentiles, to anyone who would believe, through Jesus. No longer are the people of God those that have received the law. No longer will his people just be the people of Israel. Instead, it will be those people upon whom God has written his law upon their hearts. Instead of a written law that must be obeyed to the letter, it is a spiritual law that is obeyed by loving God, walking by the Spirit of the Lord, and naturally doing that which the law requires, and more.

These people will be God’s people. And these are the people for whom God will be their God.

So everything that the Israelites thought that they knew changed, and this is the mystery that was being fulfilled in God. Those whom it seemed were the godless, who always had the finger pointed at them as the “dogs”, or the wrong people for God… these are the people who will now be God’s people.

It is a true mystery, indeed. It doesn’t seem to make sense. Those who are not God’s people suddenly… are.

This is because Jesus made all of the difference. He changed everything. God stepped into the world and called the people who were not his people now, suddenly, to be his people. It wasn’t because he just accepted them, including the way that they were acting. They couldn’t just continue living as they had lived before. No, they still had to repent and follow Christ, leaving their old life behind and living in the way that Christ called us to live. But it could be anyone. Anyone!

And even still today, anyone can follow Christ. The mystery is still intact. Anyone can be part of God’s people. Anyone can know him. A Muslim. A Buddhist. An atheist. Gay. Straight. Whether they call themselves a Christian or not. Whether they grew up in a Christian nation or not. Everyone can come. They can all come.

However, we must come to him on his terms. Not ours. We are the people and he is our God, if we will repent. If we will leave behind our sins and follow the ways of God. He will be our God and we will be his people, if we come to him through Christ who pays for our sins and allows us to enter his kingdom. This is the mystery, that God is not just the God of the Hebrews, the God of the Israelites. He is our God if we will come to him through Jesus. He will write his laws on our hearts. He will change our hearts from stone to flesh. He will make us come alive again and we will be his people, living for him, glorifying him as the people within his kingdom. Forever.

Thank God that he called those who were not his people his people! We, ourselves, are the Gentiles that God called to come into his kingdom to be his people. All people are invited! But we must come through Jesus Christ.

Throughout Romans 9, Paul makes the point that God made a sovereign choice. He starts with God’s choice that Isaac was chosen as the son of Abraham through whom the promise would be given. Then he continues with Jacob and Esau, showing that God chose Jacob over Esau and through him, the covenant would be passed to his children. He even makes the case with Pharaoh that God chose to show his power and his wrath known, while at the same time making those that he saved the objects of his mercy instead of his wrath.

Paul is making the point and concluding it that he has chosen whom he has chosen. God decided, at least for a time, to reject Israel, and instead bring into the kingdom those that he had chosen from amongst the Gentiles.

What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory — even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As he says in Hosea:

“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;
and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,”

and,

“In the very place where it was said to them,
‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”

Romans 9:22-26

So we see, both here in Romans 9 as well as in many other parts of the Bible, that God makes a choice. He calls his people to himself. He chooses them. He makes his people the objects of his love and mercy so that he will make his glory known and receive the glory due to him.

But of course this is one side of a famous theological argument:

You are saying that God chooses me instead of me choosing him?

Well, yeah, I’m quoting what Paul says here in Romans 9.

On the other hand, Romans 10 is the chapter that we are scheduled to read tomorrow and in that chapter it reads more like the person places their faith in Christ and that is how they are saved.

So, is it true that God makes a sovereign choice about who will receive mercy from him? It certainly seems that way, and I definitely would not want to deny that God is sovereign, that he is not able to make a determination about what will happen within his creation.

On the other hand, is it true that we make a choice and either place our faith in Christ or not? Yes, it certainly also seems that way and I wouldn’t want to be in the place of denying the scriptures that tell us that we must repent and believe!

So, I have three quick thoughts to share about this:

First, the most important thing is that we should be grateful to God for the gift to know him, to be reconciled to him, through Christ. Much more than trying to prove our theological point and win a debate, we should live with gratitude for the gift of life lived eternally with God.

Second, a friend of mine showed me a video recently of John McArthur essentially saying “I don’t know” when he was asked to reconcile these two different points of view. I think that probably sums up my perspective as well. I would say that I have to agree that my human mind isn’t sophisticated enough to understand all of the interworkings of God’s mind to understand exactly how the interplay of God’s choice and my choice work together.

And finally, I continue to ask myself the same question: In the end, with regard to the way that we do our work, what difference does my perspective here ultimately make? If I believe that God makes a sovereign choice, do I know who the people are that God has chosen? No, of course not. So what should I do? I need to share the good news of the Gospel with them! On the other hand, if I believe that each person chooses God, how can they choose unless someone tells them? So what do I need to do? I need to share the good news of the Gospel with them!

My contention is that we need to fight for unity, fight to remain as one body in Christ instead of fighting so that we are right. Yes, we must dig in the scriptures to find what God wants, but there are some answers that are actually not answers that we can fully resolve, and I believe that this is one of them. Let us, therefore, find unity and not division as we come before God in Christ.

There is an old saying that goes:

There are two things in life that are inevitable for everyone: Death and taxes.

While I can’t say that I’m a big fan of taxes, I’ll set that conversation aside for now and instead, based on my reading of Romans 6 this morning, I want to think and share some thoughts specifically about death.

Or more to the point, specifically about what comes next after death.

Some people believe that is the end. Once you die your physical death, that’s it. Nothing more. Fade to black and that is the end.

But we believe that there is more. Much more. In fact, that is certainly not the end, but just a beginning of an eternal life that we have already started. Yes, we will die a physical death, just as that old saying tells us. No one can avoid it.

In reality, our eternal life in Christ doesn’t actually start at the point of death. Instead, Paul says that we are baptized into Jesus’s death and raised to life in him. What does he mean by that?

It means that eternal life, a life lived to God, before God, for God and his glory, begins now. At the point that we are baptized and raised again from the water. At the point that we receive the Holy Spirit. That is the point at which eternal life begins, and we are raised to an eternal life, a life that will have no end.

Therefore, there is no need to imagine that we must wait for our physical death to begin our eternal life. There is no need because our eternal life has already begun. Yes, there will come a point at which we will pass from the physical to the spiritual, but the spiritual has already begun. We are alive in Christ already!

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

Romans 6:8-10

So in a similar way that Christ resurrected from the dead, God has also made our spirits alive by giving us the Holy Spirit. By giving us the Holy Spirit, we experience a resurrection, a new life in Christ. So, just as death no longer has mastery over Christ, death no longer has mastery over us.

And so there are all sorts of implications for this truth, this new reality that we are living.

What would we do if we lived as though we did not fear death? What would we give up now so that not only would we live forever, but also that many others would live forever? How would I live if I was no longer a slave to the consequences of death? What would change?

It is hard for us to truly understand the answers to these questions. Death is a physical reality in our world that, aside from God and his intervention in our lives, creates dramatic effects in how we live our lives.

But it is God who has given us life and the life that he gives is also a reality for those who place their faith in Christ. That reality should also have a dramatic effect on how we live. Will those effects truly become a reality in our lives? Or will we continue to simply live by sight, considering only the physical life and death that we live today?

Nobody wants to suffer. No one likes to experience pain. No one wants to hurt or have difficulty, and in fact, we frequently build our lives in such a way as to avoid suffering in any way that we can.

We seek a good paying, stable job. We have insurance for our houses, for our cars, for our health, for our lives, for the possibility that we get hurt, for the possibility that we lose our job…and so much more. Why pay all of the money for all of this insurance? It is so that we can avoid the suffering that would come if we were to have a problem in any of these areas.

Going further, we hear a similar attitude to avoid suffering even in the church:

It isn’t God’s will for you to suffer.

It isn’t God’s will that you would be sick.

It isn’t God’s will that you would go through this difficult time.

And yet Paul says that our suffering can actually produce immeasurable good within us:

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.

Romans 5:3-5

Paul believed, in the first place, that a disciple of Christ’s hope is to be placed in the glory of God. This is what he was referring to when he said “Not only so…” in the quote above. Their boast, or in other words, that new reality upon which they have placed their hope, was in God’s glory. God receives glory through the salvation of many as a result of his love, his mercy, and his grace toward his people because he sent Jesus to be the perfect sacrifice as a payment for our sins, redeeming us out of the kingdom of darkness so that we can enter the kingdom of God. Therefore, our hope is in the glory of God. God saved us for his glory, so that is the only thing in which we can boast.

But Paul says that they also, beyond having hope in the glory of God, glory in their sufferings.

Wait, what?

Paul says that we glory in our sufferings because of what it does within us. When we suffer, we learn to persevere. We learn to walk through the suffering toward the goal of finishing the race, finishing the life’s work that God has for us. We can either suffer and subsequently walk away from what God sent us to do, or we can suffer and walk forward in perseverance.

This is the key that I now tell people that is required to learn if we are to live in another culture, in another country, learning the language, learning their way of life for the sake of the Gospel. It is all about perseverance. Either you prepare to suffer and embrace the pain that is about to come, or you leave. One or the other. Embrace the suffering or leave it behind.

Why? Because it hurts. It makes a mess of your life. It is expensive and will cost you all that you have.

You will suffer, and you will either embrace it and learn perseverance, or you will move on.

But as you learn perseverance, Paul says that you will build the character that God wants from you. And the character that is built within you will, in turn, produce hope.

It is difficult to explain this to people outside of the experience of having gone through suffering so as to learn perseverance, so as to build our character, and ultimately to develop the hope that Christ has placed within us. If we have ever gone through any difficult time and found that we have been made stronger as a result, we know that what Paul is saying is true. However, if our lives, and especially if our lives lived out as Christians, revolve around the avoidance of suffering instead of embracing the risk that is inherent in the need for the world to hear the Gospel, we also avoid the opportunity to learn perseverance, and the opportunity to build character beyond that which we have ever known, and we miss the opportunity to build our hope in Christ.

To be clear, I don’t look for opportunities to suffer, and I don’t believe that we should go looking for those opportunities. Far from it. But to be sure, if we are risking for the sake of the Gospel, suffering will find us, and we should embrace that suffering because of how God will use it to teach us perseverance, character, and a great hope in Christ.

I love that statement:

God calls into being the things that were not.

Of course I know that is true. God created the world and the entire universe by his word. He spoke and that which in one instant was not… became. And was real.

On Friday, I met with an Iranian friend of mine who had decided to follow Christ. He fixed me a wonderful lunch of Iranian food and we sat outside and continued in our reading and discussion of the story of Abraham together. As he has become a follower of Christ, he is now looking for the purpose for his life, trying to decide what God wants him to do with the life that he was given. I explained that the best thing to do is to know the story of God so that we can then decide where our story fits into God’s story. He agreed and so we have been working through that together.

You see, in his life, God called into being something that was not. He gave my friend a desire to leave his old life, one shallowly connected to Islam as a result of the hypocrisy that he saw all around him, led him to leave any spiritual practice even while still knowing that God existed, to ultimately finding satisfaction in Christ. He came to faith in Jesus shortly before I knew him, but now he is beginning to grow.

My friend was dead in his faith, but our God called into being a new life within him. He called into being something that was not.

Our discussion in this last Friday was important because we were discussing Abraham and the fact that God had promised him that his descendents would be like the stars in the sky, but there was a big problem. Abraham had no children.

How would it be possible that Abraham could have descendents like the stars in the sky when he has no children?

That was the main question in the beginning of God’s relationship with Abraham. God had promised Abraham these descedents. He had promised him the land of Canaan, but for 25 years, nothing had changed. The only thing that had happened was that Sarah and Abraham had decided to have Abraham sleep with Hagar so as to have Ishmael and try to fulfill God’s plan themselves.

But that was not God’s plan. No, despite Sarah now being 90 years old and Abraham having just turned 100, God intended to do a miracle once again: He called into being that which was not. God gave Abraham and Sarah their son Isaac. And God told Abraham that while he would bless Ishmael, he would keep his covenant – that God would be his God and they would be his people – only with Isaac, not with Ishmael.

God started with one man, Abraham, and from him, he made a people. He called into being things that were not.

But even that is not the end of the story. God promised Abraham that he would bless all nations through the blessing that he had given to Abraham. Through the covenant that God made with Abraham, through Isaac, and through Jacob, would ultimately come Jesus. God made a covenant that he would be their God and they would be their people, but now Jesus would make a new covenant. There would be a new people, made up not only of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles, of all people.

God would truly call into being the things that were not. God would do that which was unthinkable to the Jews. The Gentiles? Those other people who do not have the law? Who are not circumcised? They will be part of your plan? They will be your people?

Through Jesus, God gives a clear answer: Yes, they are part of my plan. Through Jesus, they are all my people.

Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.

Romans 4:16-17

That same covenant that God had originally made with Abraham would now be passed down to all who have faith. God extends his grace to everyone who is willing to to place their faith in him. Just as he did for me. Just as he did for Abraham. Just has he did for my Iranian friend. God made Abraham the father of many nations, but it isn’t just by blood line. It is by faith. Through faith in Christ, God calls into being the things that were not. And now, they are.

The Jews were a special people. God had made his covenant with them, that they were his people. That was the covenant: If they obeyed his commandments, God would be their God and they would be his people.

So God gave them his commandments, but the Israelites both forgot about God and didn’t obey his commandments.

Yet some of the people, some of the Jewish religious leaders, looked back to God’s commandments and determined that they were the special people. They had received the commandments, they had received the commandments directly from God, so they determined that they, clearly, were God’s people.

Never mind the fact that they had broken the covenant in that they hadn’t actually obeyed the commandments.

Never mind the fact that they had rejected God and refused to live under his rule, in the way that God had originally intended their relationship to be.

So in the second chapter in his letter to the Romans, Paul points out that Jews have been judging the Gentiles, meaning that the Jews had been deeming the Gentiles to not be worthy to be God’s people. The Gentiles didn’t have the law, so clearly they couldn’t be God’s people! The Gentiles didn’t have the sign of circumcision, so clearly they couldn’t be God’s people!

Only the Jews…or so the Jews thought.

But Paul points out that it isn’t the fact that they had the law that makes them God’s people. It wasn’t the fact that they were circumcised that made them God’s people. No, it was obedience to God’s law and living as the people who were under the covenant that was demonstrated through circumcision that makes someone a person within God’s kingdom:

Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. So then, if those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker.

A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.

Romans 2:25-29

As we teach people to follow Christ, we emphasize obedience to Christ.

But this can rub people the wrong way at times. I’ve heard various questions like these:

Aren’t you just teaching people legalism?

Aren’t you just teaching people empty obedience?

Isn’t that just the same as the Muslims or the Catholics or any other religion that is based on works?

No, it is not the same. Far from it.

In a legalistic religious system, we do good works so that we can make God happy, and as a result, he will allow us to go to heaven. For example, the Muslims pray five times a day so that they can build up their good works. Then, if their good works outweigh their bad works, God should then allow them to go to paradise.

And that is how most people think about religion. They want to be a good person and they think that if they are judged to be a good person after they die, they get to go to heaven.

Except that isn’t God’s story. There isn’t any who is “good”. Everyone is a sinner and their sin – any sin, even one sin – prevents them from being with God, a good and holy God who is without sin.

So this is why Jesus had to be the sacrifice for each of us. Every one of us needs a Savior. Every one of us needs a perfect sacrifice of perfect blood so that we can be clean before God.

The point is this: God did it all. Jesus paid for my sins and every person’s sins, if they will receive his grace and mercy by faith.

That is very different from being a prideful person following a religious system, essentially saying instead: I can do this. I will be good enough. Then, God will owe me. Then, once I have proven to him that I am good enough, he will – he must! – allow me to come into heaven.

But there is one more step to consider yet. Once we have received the grace and mercy and love of God, do we just move on and continue to live as we always have? Can we just assume that God has saved us, be baptized, and move on?

No, Christ bought us at a precious price. His own blood bought us so as to take us from the kingdom of darkness and redeem us – or we could use the words “ransomed us” – into the kingdom of God. My natural response should be that of thankfulness, gratitude, and love for God, both for who he is, but also for what he has done for me. I sinned and rebelled and went away from him, but Christ came to ransom me out of the state in which I had put myself. I was in the kingdom of darkness, but he came to purchase me with his blood to enter into the kingdom of God.

So my response must be thankfulness. My response must be love. But what does that look like? What does it look like to love a God that I can’t see? That I can’t touch? How can I love a God with whom I can’t even have a face-to-face conversation?

Jesus was clear and gave a simple answer to this question:

If you love me, keep my commands.

John 14:15

Do you love Jesus? You must do what he says.

How can I show Jesus that I love him? I keep his commands.

And so this is why we teach that to be a disciple is to obey Christ. Not because we want to create a bunch of religious robots, but because the sign of true change is obedience to Christ. We show him and the entire world that we love him by obeying him. It isn’t that we say that we must do this. Instead, we do this because he says that we must do this.

This was the problem with the Israelites that led them to stray away from God, breaking the covenant. They didn’t love him and so they didn’t obey him. God’s covenant required that the Israelites obey his commands and then he would be their God and they would be his people. But they didn’t do that. Instead, they preferred to focus on themselves and the fact that they were the people who were given the law. They were the people that were given the sign of circumcision.

But they didn’t love God, and therefore they didn’t keep the covenant and obey him.

We don’t want to make the same mistake. We want to be sure that we are a people that are in love with God through his Messiah, through Jesus Christ, and therefore we want to be a people who keep Jesus’s commands and teach others to do the same. Loving Jesus by obeying him, just as he told us to do.