A triangle
is one of the strongest shapes to use in construction. Its three sides support
each other in a powerful way to bear the weight of other objects. A few weeks
ago as we talked about the subject of parenting, we looked at the what, how,
and why of our task as parents. We determined that we must also give our
children the what, how, and why of their responsibility to obey both us and the
Lord. We can think about these three parts—the what, how, and why—as three
sides of a triangle that will help our children bear the weight of the pressure
that the world places upon them to live an ungodly lifestyle.
The “what”
question, you may remember, is answered very simply by all of the commands in
the Bible—particularly for us, the commands of the New Testament. These
commands make up the standard for living that we are supposed to pass along to
our children.
Now, as I
stated a few weeks ago, I don’t think the “what” question is our greatest
challenge as parents. We know pretty well what God’s commands are. It’s the
“how” and “why” questions that really trip us up. Today, we are going to begin
to take a closer look at the “how” question—how can we successfully live out
the commands of Scripture? Once we can answer this question for ourselves, we
can then pass this lesson along little by little to our children. Today, I will
offer you a basic answer to this question, then we’ll take a closer look at how
the various authors of the New Testament build upon this answer.
How Can We Successfully Live Out
the Commands of Scripture?
The basic
answer to this question is “by constantly reminding ourselves about the message
of the Gospel.” This is the path to spiritual success for each one of us, so it
is the path on which we want to set our children as well. We want to
continually point them to the Gospel, then after they hopefully accept Christ
as their Savior, we want to keep pointing them back to the Gospel as well.
Now this focus
on the Gospel may seem a little odd because we often think of the Gospel as
being a message about our future. We think of the Gospel as being the good news
that by placing our faith in Jesus we can go to heaven rather than hell after
we die. That is certainly good news, but how does that help me in the here and
now? That’s kind of like Social Security—it’ll be a
nice benefit once I retire, but it doesn’t help me pay my bills right now!
What we
have to realize is that the Gospel is not just a message about our future—it is
a message about our past and our present as well. The Gospel is the good news
that I am no longer defined by my past, with all of its sinfulness and
dysfunction. Instead, I now have a vibrant relationship with God in the present
that will simply reach its fullness in the future when I live with Him in
heaven. When we think of the Gospel in all three tenses—past, present, and future—we
will begin to see the power that it gives us to have spiritual success today.
How do the
authors of the New Testament build upon this basic answer to the question about
successfully living out God’s commands? In the rest of our time today, we’ll
look at how the Apostle Paul expounded on this thought, and I have no doubt
that we will be encouraged by what we see.
According to the Apostle Paul,
How Can We Obey God’s Commands?
For Paul,
the path to spiritual success is all about recognizing the resources that we
have “in Christ.” I put that little phrase in quotation marks because it is one
of Paul’s favorite phrases. Paul wrote 13 books of the New Testament, and in
those 13 books he uses phrases like “in Christ” or “in Christ Jesus” around 170
times. He constantly wrote about the new identity we have in Christ and the new
power that we have in Christ. In many of his letters, he spent the first half
writing about all the theology of this “in Christ” idea, then he shifted gears
for the second half and said, “Now let me show you what this looks like in
daily life.” We can summarize what Paul had to say about our resources in
Christ by looking at them with respect to each of the three persons of the
Trinity.
1. We have a new relationship
with God the Father
First of
all, we are at peace with Him, according to Romans 5:1. We used to be enemies
of God—according to that same passage—because we were in rebellion against Him.
We were hostile to Him because we knew that He disapproved of our sinful
lifestyle. But now that we have confessed our sins to Him and accepted Christ
by faith, we are at peace with God. We have a peace treaty in Jesus Christ, and
now God is our ally rather than our enemy.
Along the
same line, we no longer face God’s condemnation, according to Romans 8:1. God
has rendered His verdict about us, and His ruling is that all the demands of
His law have been met by Jesus, and His innocence has been placed on our
account through faith. We have been sent out of God’s courtroom never to return
again! Our lives will be evaluated by God someday, but we won’t be like
defendants in a courtroom. We will be like a diver, or a gymnast, or a figure
skater—standing before the judges to see if we’ve won the prize. We may receive
a greater or lesser prize based on our obedience to God, but we won’t bear the
eternal penalty of our sins because that matter was settled when we accepted
Christ.
Third, we
are now God’s adopted children (Rom. 8:15; Eph. 1:5). God has committed Himself
to do all the things for us that a father is supposed to do—He provides for us,
protects us, loves us, and disciplines us. We no longer relate to God primarily
as our judge, but as our Father. There is intimacy and affection in our
relationship with Him.
2. We have a new identity as
Christ
This is a
life-changing idea when you understand it. I said we have a new identity as Christ for a reason—according to
Paul, when we accept Christ, on a spiritual level His history becomes our
history. We are united to Him spiritually so that we become part of His story
and actually share in His destiny. This spiritual unity
is so complete that Paul wrote in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with
Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Notice
all the details of Christ’s history that have now become our spiritual history:
·
We were crucified with Him (Galatians 2:20)
·
We died with Him (Romans 6:3-7)
·
We were buried with Him (Romans 6:3-7)
·
We were resurrected with Him (Romans 6:3-7)
·
We have been seated with Him in heaven
(Ephesians 2:4-6; Colossians 3:1-4)
·
We will be with Him in His future glory
(Colossians 3:1-4)
·
We will reign with Him in His earthly kingdom (1
Corinthians 6:2; 2 Timothy 2:12)
When we
placed our faith in Christ, we were placed into His story, so that we are now
literally living out the life of Jesus. Let me offer a couple of illustrations
to help you understand this idea. You may be
familiar with the witness protection program, which relocates people who
serve as witnesses in a trial who may be in danger because of their testimony.
When a person enters that program, they go through a complete and radical
change of identity. They receive a new name and a new background and are moved
to a totally new location. Their old identity just sort of dies out, and
everything they do is now done under their new identity.
This
illustration gives us a very helpful way to think about our new identity in
Christ. Spiritually, my identity as Tim Erickson has died out! As Paul said, “I
have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who
lives in me.”
Here’s another helpful illustration—some of you will
remember the old TV show “Quantum Leap.” In that show, Scott Bakula’s character,
Sam Beckett, would leap around through time and space into the body of a
different person for each episode. While he was in that person’s body, he was
living out their life, and normally he would solve some kind of problem for
them. His own identity as Sam Beckett faded into the background every time he
leapt into a new person, and that person’s identity became the focus.
If you want
to think of your relationship with Christ that way, that’s fine too! We have
leapt into the story of Christ, so that we are now supposed to live out His
life in this world. We are so closely identified
with Jesus that Paul says we are now His ambassadors (2 Cor. 5:20). An
ambassador is someone who is authorized to speak for another person with that
person’s same authority.
Ambassadors
in Paul’s time had a more important role than they do today. Today, if
President Obama wants to speak to a world leader, he can just pick up the phone
and talk to him. Back then, communication was obviously more difficult, so when
an ambassador was sent to a far-off country, he was given the authority to
speak as if the king himself were right there doing all the talking! The
ambassador literally stood in the place of the king.
My friends,
this is the role that you and I occupy today for Jesus! Jesus is not physically
here in the world right now; He is in heaven, but He has sent us out as His
ambassadors, to speak for Him and share His message with others. This is an
amazing concept, and it gives such meaning and purpose to our lives. We are
living out the life of Christ!
But we don’t have
to just muster up our own power to live His life!
3. We have a new power through
the Holy Spirit (Romans 8)
In Romans
8:1-4, Paul writes about the new power that we have through the Holy Spirit to
obey God [READ Rom. 8:1-4; in v. 2 when Paul mentions
“the law,” he is talking about a power inside of us; in vv. 3-4 he is talking
about the Old Testament Law].
In essence,
Paul is saying that the Holy Spirit, who now lives in us, gives us a power to
obey God’s commands that we did not have in our sinful state. Before we
accepted Christ, we did not have the power to obey God on our own. We were in
bondage to the influence of sin, and it had the power to boss us around. But
now, we have been set free from sin’s influence by the power of the Holy
Spirit.
One of my professors in seminary explained it this way.
He had been in the military as a young man, and he would tell us that if his
old drill sergeant marched into the room and started barking out orders, he
just might obey him because he had been so thoroughly conditioned to respond to
that voice. But in reality, he could stop himself and say, “Wait a minute! I’m
a civilian now. I’m not under your authority. You don’t have the power to boss
me around anymore!”
That’s what
our relationship to sin is like. Sin used to have the power to boss us around,
and we were helpless against it. But sin doesn’t have the power to boss us
around anymore! We don’t have to sin “yes” to our sinful desires ever again!
Now those desires are still appealing to us because sin is like that old,
familiar voice that calls us to come back to old habits; sin is like that old
drill sergeant who we were conditioned to obey.
But now,
the Holy Spirit lives within us and His power is available to us! Sin is no
longer our master—Jesus is! And the Holy Spirit will empower us to obey Jesus
when we make the choice to do so.
These ideas
from Paul are part of the answer to the question of how to live an obedient
life. These are ideas that we must first embrace ourselves, and then as our
kids grow we can plant them in their hearts as well. Remember the pattern from
Deuteronomy 6—first of all, love God yourself and internalize His truth, then
just teach your kids to do the same thing.
Obviously,
when our kids are young, they won’t fully grasp these concepts, but we can
start to introduce them on a simple level from a very young age. Kids like to play make-believe, right? We can tell
them how God has a very special role for them to play—that they are actually
playing the part of Jesus in this world.
Kids like to daydream about having super-powers.
We can tell them that they have a super-power in their heart—the power to do
what’s right. We can explain that this may not seem like an impressive
super-power at first, but this is when we emphasize the “why” of obedience,
like the possibility of avoiding bad consequences and receiving a blessing
instead.
So this is
the gist of the “how” question—point your kids to the gospel, then after they
hopefully receive it, keep pointing them back to it all the time!
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