Orvieto, Italy

Yesterday and today marked the beginning of my six week trip through the Holy Lands.  It started with a twelve hour layover in Rome and, in order to make the most of it, we went to the town of Orvieto, about an hour and a half north of Rome.  It is an absolutely beautiful town located on the top of a hill and surrounded by steep cliffs.  We took a trolley up to the top, walked to a small restaurant and ate delicious homemade, Italian pasta and grilled chicken.  After eating and feeling exhausted from our ten hour flight we walked around the city and found something amazing.

The cathedral in Orvieto is a stunning building.  As you walk through the narrow Italian streets you can begin to see its towers over the roofs and are shocked that something so large is there.  The front is cover with fantastic, detailed mosaics of Jesus, Mary, and the saints.  Inside (they would not let us take pictures) is a single huge room with extraordinarily tall ceilings and thick pillars.  It is impossible to walk in and not feel small in comparison to the largeness of God to which the cathedral testifies.  The architects of this place successfully communicated the glory of God through their work.

After walking through the church we found an overlook from which we could see the valley below.  Beautiful does not begin to describe it.  Like the cathedral, the rolling Italian landscape exemplifies the glory of our great God.

But the sad thing is that in a land full of cathedrals and landscapes that powerfully communicate the wonder of God lives a group of people who are so far from Him.  Italy is less than 1% evangelical and nominal Catholicism runs wild.  Pray for this country.  Pray that people's eyes will be opened to the many ways God is showing Himself.  Pray that Italy will come to see the goodness and beauty of Christ.

The Gospel Part 4 - Relationship

(We are going through a series on the Gospel in order to try to truly understand the whole Gospel and see how it counters prevalent false Gospels.  See all the posts here.)

So far, we have seen the first three parts of the Gospel.  Part one, Royal, showed us how God is the King over all, infinite and eternal, holy, righteous, and deserving of all glory.  Part two, Rebel, showed us how we are sinners to the core who have made everything about us instead of giving God the glory due His name.  Part three, Reconcile, showed how God was gracious and sacrificed Himself so that we could be freed from the and power of sin.

What we have gone through so far is the story of the Gospel.  It is the story of a Holy God and a sinful people who have been brought together through the cross of Christ.  But our articulation of the Gospel has five words, so if we have gone through the Gospel story, what is left?  The Gospel response.  The Gospel is more than just history; it is a continuing story that we are called to join.  We can talk about the story of the Gospel all we want, but if we want it to do anything then we must respond.  Our first response is Relationship.  There are three very important things for us to learn about relationship in the Gospel.

"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." Phil 3:7-11

1.  A relationship with Jesus is to know and experience Him.
Paul makes it clear that above all else he wants a relationship with Jesus.  For him this means "know[ing] Christ...sharing in his sufferings [and] becoming like him in his death."  Any relationship in which we are currently involved we both know the person and we experience life with them.  And those we are closer to, we know more of them and we experience more life with them.  It's the same with Jesus.  To be in relationship with Him means to know Him deeply and intimately, to know what He is like and what He loves.  And it means to experience life with Him.  First, we experience part of His life, His death and resurrection, then, He walks with us through our new lives.

2.  We have been saved for this relationship.
Too often when we think about our salvation we think about action.  We have been saved to do good works, to glorify God, or to spread the Gospel.  These are all true; God did save us for a mission.  But we were primarily saved for relationship and we are involved in mission for the sake of increasing this relationship.  The ultimate downside to sin was that it broke the possibility of relationship with God and ultimate wonder of the cross is that it restores that relationship.

3.  Our highest value is this relationship.
Since we were saved for this relationship and since Christ is the incredibly glorious, we value this relationship above all else.  If we ever put anything above this relationship, even good things (seer Phil 3:4-6) then we are missing the point of our salvation.  And not only would we miss the point but we would miss the glory of our salvation since the ultimate reward and treasure of our salvation is God Himself.  So we strive to deepen this relationship by spending time with Him because that is our greatest desire.

How about you?  Are you working to deepen your relationship with Jesus?

Ambition vs. Affection

"If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ." Philippians 3:4-8

In high school I went on a  youth retreat where David Platt preached on this passage.  He discussed how Paul is describing the five treasures of a wasted life.  Five things that, if we treasure above all else, will lead to a wasted life.   

   1.  Family Heritage - circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel

    2.  Social status - of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews

     3.  Biblical Knowledge -  in regard to the law, a Pharisee

     4.  Religious Fervor - as for zeal, persecuting the church

     5.  Moral Lifestyle - as for legalistic righteousness, faultless

Platt’s point was that if we treasure any of these more than knowing Christ (v.7) then our lives will be wasted.  The one that really hit me was "Biblical Knowledge".  That is something that I too often pride myself on and find identity in.  I then realized that Biblical knowledge is only as good as it brings me closer to Christ.

I think many in my generation need to hear about "Religious Fervor".  That if all we do is work for God and the poor then our lives will be wasted.  All of the stuff we do is only good in so far as it leads us and others deeper into Jesus.

A friend of mine is fond of saying that we should never let our ambition for God become greater than our affection for God.

I am in a generation that desires so much to change the world.  But, what the world needs most isn’t another NGO or non-profit.  It needs people who are deeply in love and intimate with Jesus and willing to share it.

So, let’s make sure that we are always falling more in love with Jesus. May our ambition for God never become greater than our affection for God.

The Gospel Part 3 - Reconcile

(We are going through a series on the Gospel in order to try to truly understand the whole Gospel and see how it counters prevalent false Gospels.  See all the posts here.)

The Gospel part 1 showed us how amazing the Royal God of the universe is.  Part 2 made it clear that it would be impossible for us to be in relationship with that God.  If the Gospel ended there, it would be a depressing story (and would not be gospel at all).  But, thankfully, the story keeps going.

The third, and central, part of the Gospel is reconcile.  Our rebellion caused hostility between us and God.  We were essentially enemies.  Colossians 1:21 states that once we were "alienated from God and were enemies in [our] minds because of [our] evil behavior."  After all, a Royal King cannot be with rebellious subjects; the president cannot hang out with those who have committed treason.  But the wonderful and glorious truth of reconcile is that even though we were enemies with God, "He has reconciled [us] by Christ's physical body through death" (Col 1:22).  How did this happen?  There are two ways...

Jesus' work on the cross reconciles us to God by freeing us from the penalty of sin. Our rebellion and sin against God earned us the death penalty (Rom 3:23) in the same way that one who commits treason can be executed (18 U.S.C. § 2381).  But what Jesus did on the cross was He took the punishment that we deserved.  He stood in our place and, by the mercy of God, He went through what we should have suffered (1 Pet 2:24).  

This incredible act of grace benefitted us in two amazing ways.  First, it paid our debt.  Our sins wrote a check that we could never cash.  The law demands a perfect sacrifice for sin (Lev 1:3; 1:10; 3:1; 3:6; etc.) and endless sacrifices of bulls and goats would never cut it (Heb 10:4).  Only the sacrifice of a perfect life could pay our debt, and Jesus paid that Himself. 

Second, it satisfied God's wrath.  God, because He is good, hates sin and evil with all of Himself.  Every bit of who He is reels at our rebellion, and it incites Him to great anger.  When Jesus died on the cross God was able to pour out all of His wrath on the perfect God-Man who was the only one able to handle it.  "God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood - to be received by faith.  He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished - he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus." (Rom 3:25-26)  This means that we no longer have to sit under the judgement of God wrath but instead can enjoy the riches of His kindness.

Jesus' work on the cross reconciles us to God by freeing us from the power of sin.  But not only did the work of Christ save us from the punishment of our rebellion but it saves us from the rebellion itself.  I think the church has often missed this part of our reconciliation.  If Jesus takes our punishment and then we continue to sin what good is it (Heb 10:26)?  (But do not misunderstand this - when Jesus took our punishment He took it for all of our sins - past, present and future.)  Jesus' work on the cross actually changes who were are down to the very core so that the essence of who we are has changed.  We are no longer slaves to sin but we have been set free so that we do not have to live in constant rebellion against God. (I've written more about this idea here.)

Praise God that He has reconciled us to Himself.  This reconciliation will lead us to the next part of the Gospel - being in relationship with God Himself.

The Gospel Part 2 - Rebel

(We are going through a series on the Gospel in order to try to truly understand the whole Gospel and see how it counters prevalent false Gospels.  See all the posts here.)

 Last time we talked about the Gospel we learned that it is a story that begins with God.  The first part of the Gospel taught us that God is the royal, holy, perfect King over all the universe who deserves all of the glory.  Part 1 of the Gospel teaches us about God and part 2 teaches us about ourselves.  So, the first two parts of the Gospel simply teach us about who God is and who we are.  As John Calvin said, "Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. "  The Gospel teaches us three main truths about ourselves.

1.  We were created to reflect the image and glory of God.  In Genesis 1 when God created humans He set them apart as distinct from the rest of creation by making them in His own image.  "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness...So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them." (Gen 1:26-27)  There is a lot of speculation about what it means to be made in the image of God.  Does it mean that we are conscience of our existence, rational, emotional, or relational?  Those may be part of it, but at the center of the idea of being in God's image is displaying His glory.  In the context of the ancient near east there were many different gods and many temples to those different gods.  At the heart of each temple was an image or idol of that god.  That image was meant to be a display of the glory of that god and was intended to point people to worship that god.  In the same way, humans were made in the image of the true God to reflect His image and glory so that people who be always turned to worship God.  But, the second truth the Gospel teaches us about ourselves shows that things did not always work out this way.

2.  We rebel against the royal God by trying to exalt our own image and glory.  But humans proved to be not very good at reflecting the image and glory of God.  In Genesis 3 the first rebellion against God happened.  Adam and Eve decided that instead of reflecting God's glory they would try to be like God and make decisions for themselves (Gen 3:5).  Instead of glorifying the royal King, they tried to make themselves gods.  This rebellion is sin.  Whenever we sin we are making ourselves little gods over our own lives instead of submitting to the true King.

But the Gospel tells us that this rebellion was more than just an act Adam and Eve committed in the garden.  It is a disease that has infected all of humanity.  Paul says that "sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned." (Rom 5:12)  And also that "there is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God." (Rom 1:10-11)  This rebellion is something that every human has participated in.  We have all tried to usurp God and make it all about us when it should be all about Him.  And there is nothing we can do about this.  We are sick and we cannot heal ourselves.  Down to our very core, to the deepest parts of us, we are in constant rebellion against God.  And this presents a huge problem, which is truth number three.

3.  Our rebellion makes it impossible to be in relationship with the royal God.  This rebellion we have all joined has many negative consequences: sickness, poverty, natural disasters, anger, violence, greed and the like.  But the worst result is the separation it creates between us and God.  God is royal and we are rebels.  God is holy and we are sinners.  God is good and we are evil.  Because of these essential differences no relationship is possible.  This is part of the ultimate goodness of God, that He cannot put up with what is not good.  This should break our hearts, that this rebellion has made it impossible for us to be with God and should drive us to repent.

(But, it does not stop there.  This is part 2 but there is a part 3 coming.  As Paul says, "Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?  Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Rom 7:24-25))