Our Freedom From Sin

“Did the law, which is good, cause my death? Of course not! Sin used what was good to bring about my condemnation to death. So we can see how terrible sin really is. It uses God’s good commands for its own evil purposes.”  - Romans 7:13:

We are living in an increasing selfish and individualistic society. There are news reports of “profoundly ungrateful” billionaires running away from their tax obligations to their own home country. We are living in what Karl Menninger has described as a rampant triumphant epoch of technology. It is an era of inventions, innovations and gadgets. It is a time when “rugged individualism, acquisition, thrift, boldness and shrewdness” are acclaimed as national virtues.

However, the troubles of our current times should wake us up to the truth that something is very wrong. Karl Menniger rightly described our current situation as a time when “the new gods seem to have failed us, while the old God is said (by some) to be dead. Things are all wrong.”

We need to understand the truth and reality of sin in our lives. Sin is the evil part of our human nature that seek to draw us away from the agape love of God. Until we face and acknowledge the sinful nature in us, we are, in a sense, spiritually dead and separated from God.

But it is not easy to face the truth about ourselves. Ruth Haley Barton, in her book, Invitation to Solitude and Silence” makes the following perceptive observation:

“It does no good to try and fix what we see. It is useless to make excuses for what we see. It is cowardly to blame others for what we see. And denying what we see just puts us right back in the mess. The only thing we can do is to keep our whole selves turned toward God even as we endure the grief and unsettledness that the seeing brings.”

We can undergo the painful process of seeing ourselves as we are when we believe the good news that God “loves us as we are and yet loved us too much to let us stay as we are.”  God loves us not because we are good but because He is good. When we learn to accept and receive God’s love through faith in Jesus Christ we will be set free from our sinful self. Paul reminds us of the misery of a person struggling to obey letter of the law instead of living by the Spirit:

“I know that nothing good lives in me; that is, nothing good lives in my corrupt nature. Although I have the desire to do what is right, I don’t do it. I don’t do the good I want to do. Instead I do the evil that I don’t want to do. Now, when I do what I don’t want to do, I am no longer the one who is doing it. Sin that lives in me is doing it.” (Romans 7:18-20)

Paul discovered the truth that evil is present with him even when he wanted to do what God’s standards say is good. He took pleasure in God’s standards in his inner being. However, he saw a different standard at work throughout his body. (Romans 7:21-23)

Like Paul, we try so hard to obey the written word through our human spirit instead of seeking to obey the Living Word who is the Risen Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. On Sunday at Queenstown Lutheran Church, Mrs Persis Lim reminded us that we remain in Christ’s love by obeying God’s commandments. However, our obedience is not a the fearful obedience of a slave but the obedience of desire of a friend. 

As we seek to love God, His commandments become the desire of our hearts and not burdensome laws to curb our lifestyles. We will see and understand that God’s commandments are to set us free from our slavery to sin so that we will truly be able to enjoy the spiritual wealth of God’s Kingdom. We will be saved from being spiritually dead and become more fully alive in God through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Faith That Will Not Fail

In his sermon on Sunday, 6^th May 2012, Rev Lim Kim Hock, posed the question as to whether we can be sure of our faith in 5 years time or when we face adverse circumstances in life. I was reminded of a Christian patient who was struggling with cancer. She had shared with me the fear that she may lose her faith in God as her physical condition deteriorated each day. 

Rev Lim drew attention to a very important truth – our faith does not depend on our feelings or our circumstances. When we are truly abiding in Christ as the true vine, our faith is rooted in the truth that Christ is in us and we are in Christ. When we have such an abiding faith, we can be sure that we will not lose our faith in God.

A faith that is abiding in Christ will not be an empty faith. It will bear the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Bearing such fruit is impossible by our human efforts – it is only by the Holy Spirit in a life that is totally surrendered to Christ.

With such faith comes the power to serve our fellow human beings. The writer of the Upper Room devotional on Sunday 6^th May 2012 noted that “we live in a world where might is worshipped and weakness is despised.” Nations all over the world spend so much money on weapons of war instead of building up institutions of love.

In Deuteronomy 17:14-17, we read of God’s warnings to the future kings of Israel not to acquire many horses or many wives – the trappings associated with wealth. Sadly, we see David and Solomon failing to take heed of these warnings to the detriment of the people of God. Richard Foster lamented that likewise many contemporary leaders who take office with good intentions had their service compromised by money. When we are connected to the false vine of Mammon we will bear the fruit of pride, greed, lust, envy and all the other manifestations of our corrupt human nature.

It is therefore so important to cultivate a faith that is abiding in Christ, the true vine. When we do so, we will be able to discern God’s hand in removing the dead branches of faith in our lives as well as pruning the leafy branches so that we will be more fruitful. Only then can we face the storms in our lives with great joy as we see such times as opportunities for our lives to bear more fruit and bring glory to God.

To abide in Christ is to put our love and energies to living a life that is focused on God rather than the pursuit of material goods or social status. The good news is that all we need to do is simply to trust in the resurrection power of Jesus:

“Yes, ‘tis sweet to trust in Jesus,

Just from sin and self to cease;

Just from Jesus simply taking

Life and rest, and joy and peace.

Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him!

How I’ve proved him o’er and o’er!

Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus!

O for grace to trust him more!”

When we are abiding in Christ, we will have the assurance that we have a faith that will not fail.

The Wonder Of God's Faithfulness

Last Sunday, pastor Jim Lee in his message at Queenstown Lutheran Church touched on a very important truth of Easter – that God always fulfill His promises. The Resurrection of Christ gives us the assurance of the faithfulness of God’s love for us. Indeed it is the Resurrection of Christ that marks the turning point of human history.

I was reminded that the Christian faith is not about us but it is all about God. It is an adventure of learning what it really means to love God – not for what He can bless us with – but for what Christ has done for us through His death on the cross.

It is a journey of learning to rest in God – not submitting out of fear – but to abandon ourselves in trust to the love of God. It had been a challenging week for me but it was an opportunity to experience the wonder of God’s faithfulness and amazing grace.

It was a time when I experienced the truth that when we face an impossible situation and see no way out we can trust that God will show us His way in His time and by His power. I was reminded of the story of King Jehoshaphat of Judah who faced a great horde of enemy forces.  He chose to worship God and kept His eyes on God. As he did so, he received God’s promise:

“Do not be afraid nor dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours but God’s. ……..Position yourselves, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, who is with you. ” (2 Chronicles 20:3-17)

I was further encouraged this morning by God’s word in Hebrews 4:2-3:

“For this good news – that God has prepared this rest – has been announced to us just as it was to them. But it did them no good because they didn’t share the faith of those who listened to God. For only we who believe can enter his rest.”

The following observation of Kelly James Clark gave me much food for thought:

“Genuine faith involves the entire character of a person. Faith is a lifelong process of development that involves the complete transformation of the whole person. Fundamentally, it involves a terrifying and total denial of self.”

The total denial of self is terrifying just like the great hordes facing King Jehoshaphat. And so we need to turn our eyes to the cross and to see ourselves as being crucified with Christ. As we do so, we can trust that the Holy Spirit will transform us from inside out until it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us.

To Have A Life Of Recreation Or To Be God's Re-creation

We are living, in the words of Charles Dickens, “the best of times and the worst of times.” Greg Laurie noted that despite all the technological advances we’ve made in recent years, we have regressed morally. In many ways, we are living in spiritual darkness. Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema in their book, “Listening to the Language of the Bible,” paints a graphic picture of the consequences of our “modern culture that emphasizes our individuality and independence to the point of amazing self-centredness":

“Pornography feeds the desire to use others’ bodies for our own pleasure; materialism that uses underpaid foreign labour encourages us to enjoy luxury while others work hard for little pay; and violence in the media enables us to watch the suffering of others for entertainment, desensitizing us to others’ pain.”

We are in danger of living for our recreation instead of living as God’s re-creations to shine as stars in our dark world. We need to take great heed of the following warning of St. Paul to the Ephesian church:

“Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.” (Ephesian 5:15-17)

The good news of Easter is that Christ died and rose from the dead to empower us to live as a child of God who knows and is able to do the will of God. I was encouraged by the following thought in yesterday's (14th April 2012) Upper Room devotion by Dan Nelson:

“All of us come into the world with promise, imprinted with God’s desire that we live fully. No matter what we do that can ruin our lives or how much abuse others inflict on us, that child still lives somewhere deep inside us. God can re-create any of us from within, restoring us and giving us new life. And that restoration can begin on any day we offer ourselves to God.”

Today is the second Sunday of Easter. Rev. Lim Kim Hock drew attention to three important truths of the resurrection power of Christ in his sermon at Queenstown Lutheran Church. Firstly, it was after the resurrection of Jesus Christ that the believers were able to have unity of heart and mind in Christ. Rev Lim shared some thoughts from the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the book, Life Together. The following insights of Bonhoeffer encouraged me and gave me a deeper understanding of true Christian community:

“He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”

“If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry…..then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow.”

Rev. Lim reminded us that true Christian community is not our dream of community but the divine reality of the life of the Risen Christ among us. We will experience the shock of disillusionment when we love our dream of community instead of seeking God's will to be the Body of Christ. We will be tempted to become the “accuser of our brethren” instead of being thankful participants of the community that God has placed us in.

Secondly, we need to experience the power of Jesus’ name. In Acts 3:6, we read of how Peter and John healed the cripple in Jesus’ name. Peter told the cripple:

“Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”

Our modern churches are blessed with so much ‘silver and gold’ as well as doctors that we have lost the ministry of health and healing in Jesus’ name. Imagine the impact our churches will make on our society if they are centers of health and healing. We need to see our churches as hospitals for sinners and be careful that we do not turn them into museums for saints.

Thirdly, we are in dire need for the grace in community manifested by the spirit of caring and sharing which we read in Acts 4:32-34:

“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them.”

Our modern world is struggling with the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. God has created a world of abundance but it is human greed that is the root cause of much human suffering. The love of money leads only to untold suffering. Furthermore, it is foolish to put one’s trust in material wealth. It has been reported that the 20 richest men in the world lost S$13.4 billion in the past week when the stock market fell. A devotional in the Life Application Study Bible gives us the following wise advice:

“If you work hard at getting what you want you might eventually get a “pleasurable” life, but in the end you will find it hollow and empty. Are you willing to make the pursuit of God more important than the selfish pursuit of pleasure? Follow Jesus, and you will know what it means to live abundantly life now and to have eternal life as well.”

John Wesley once said, “Give me a hundred men who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I do not care if they be clergymen or laymen. Such men alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.”

Let us encourage one another to fear nothing but sin and to desire nothing but God. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to descend upon our hearts and fill them with one holy passion. May our hearts be an altar to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice so that we may be filled with the flame of God's love and live as God's Re-creations.

“Teach me to love Thee as thine angels love,

One holy passion filling all my frame;

The kindling of the heaven descended Dove

My heart an altar, and thy love the flame.”

Believing To See

Our lives are surrounded by television, movies and the internet in our modern world and we seek to see before we will believe. Unfortunately, what we see can also lead us to believe in the wrong things. We are bombarded by so many things in this world that we miss seeing important truths that comes only when we first believe.

In the gospel of John, Jesus expressed his frustration that the people will only believe when they see miraculous signs and wonders when a government official asked him to heal his dying son. In response, Jesus told him to go back home and that his son will live. The official believed Jesus and experienced the healing of his son.

The good news of Easter is that Jesus died on the cross but rose from the dead. Easter is the celebration of Christ’s victory over death. It is only when we believe in the resurrection of Christ that we can find hope when we face the trials of life and death. All of us will face “deaths of many kinds” but the good news is that through such deaths we can become new creations in Christ.

Christ has conquered death to set us free from the fear of death. We need not be afraid to die our “little deaths” and we can learn to befriend death. When we believe in the resurrection power of Christ our eyes will be open to the stars shining in the dark nights of our soul.

We can see that everything works for good to those who love God only when we believe that Christ is for us and in us and with us. Our responsibility is simply to live in the awareness that Christ is with us always. Unfortunately, our human nature gets in the way as the words of the song, I Thank You Lord For The Trials, tells us:

“But it goes against the way I am to put my human nature down

And let Your Spirit take control of all I do

For when those trials come my human nature shouts the things to do

And God’s soft prompting can be easily ignored.”

Easter reminds us that our old self has been crucified with Christ on the cross. So let us encourage one another to walk by the Spirit each day that we may delight in God’s will and be transformed into His new creations.

Being A Donkey For Christ

Today is Palm Sunday and it is also April Fool’s Day. In his sermon for Palm Sunday, at Queenstown Lutheran Church, Rev Lim Kim Hock spoke on the significance of Palm Sunday. He drew our attention to Jesus riding on a donkey as a symbol to bring peace rather than to conquer. I was reminded of how easy it is to forget that we are only the donkeys that Christ is riding on. As it is April Fool’s Day, it also occurred to me that it is better to be a fool in God’s eyes rather than to be wise in the eyes of the world.

By God’s grace, my brother agreed to go to the service at New Creation Church in the evening. The pastor, Lawrence Lim, made the point that we are new creations in Christ. Indeed, God is always at work in our lives. Unfortunately, in good times we take His blessings for granted and become self absorbed and fearful of losing our blessings. In bad times we struggle to find answers in our pain and suffering.

We seek to obey the "Great Commission" and we try hard to "sell" the gospel and to "win” others for God. But as we do so, we forget our calling to work out our salvation with fear and trembling and to remember that God is working in us to fulfill His will. We can be His witnesses of love or be the poor examples of a people with hardened hearts, with ears that cannot hear and eyes that cannot see.

I was also encouraged as I read the following words in Ron Dunn’s book, “When Heaven Is Silent”:

“You may never be as good a parent as you desire, but if it is in your heart, do your best and trust God with the rest. You may never accomplish great things for God, as the world counts greatness but is it in your heart?”

The good news, which the writer of the Upper Room devotional for today shares with us, is that “it may seem that we are anonymous in the world’s eyes, but Jesus knows who and where we are. He may also need our willingness to serve Him selflessly without public praise or acknowledgement.”

So what is most important is whether God’s love is in our hearts. Our lives make sense only in the context of God’s love for the world. Our stories are but HiStory of Grace in our lives. Let us remember that we are only the donkeys carrying the Saviour of the world. May our lives lead those around us to shout “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna” in response to the story of our lives of triumph as well as sacrifice.

Let us make the following prayer of Ignatius Loyola real in our lives:

"Give me only a love for You and the gift of Your grace; then I am rich enough, and ask for nothing more."

Imperfectly Perfect

All of us want to be good and perfect or to be seen by others to be so. Unfortunately, the moment we are successful in doing good, we fail as pride creeps in and the good we do become the enemy of the best that God wants for us. This is the result of our sinful human nature which has been well documented by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans:

"The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don't really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead I do what I hate."

The harder we try to be perfect, the more imperfect we become. I was reminded by Rev Jenni Ho-Huan in the daily devotion for Lent today that "we must confess that not only are we disappointed with others; we have often disappointed others too. When we look at our lives and our churches, sometimes we can get disheartened."

But the good news is that we are imperfectly perfect when we are in Jesus Christ. Each one of us is unique and special in the eyes of our Heavenly Father. Our problems stem from our tendency to compare ourselves or loved one's with others.

Shauna Niequist perceptively noted that we compare ourselves to another person, we always lose, and the other person also loses at the same time. She drew attention to the truth that "each of us has been created by the hands of a holy God. Our stories and the twists and turns of our lives, the things that are hard for us and the things that come naturally are as unique to us as our own fingerprints."

And so the surest way to have a miserable life is to measure our lives by the lives of others instead of giving thanks for the blessings in our lives. We fill our minds with resentment when we complain instead of seeking to be part of the solution rather than being part of the problem. We fill our hearts with hatred when we condemn instead of being the channels of love by trying to understand one another. We waste our time criticizing others instead of spending time examining ourselves. We compound the problems in society when we condone wrongdoing instead of speaking the truth in love.

Jesus came to set us free from our sinful nature so that we can live as the imperfectly perfect children of God with our hearts filled with His love by the Holy Spirit. The opening song of the movie, Joyful Noises, makes the point that "there's not enough love in our hearts." It is therefore so important to keep our hearts in tune with God so that the melody of God's love will be the song of our lives.