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Bringing Life to the Dead
By Linda Rex
February 25, 2024, 2nd Sunday in Preparation for Easter or Lent—In my current studies with Grace Communion Seminary, one of my assignments was to read and write a reaction paper on the book Transformed by Truth by Joe Tkach. Having read this book years ago, it was interesting to see all the little nuances I had missed in the first reading, and to realize anew how profound the change has been in my life since the events of the 1990’s in my denomination.
So much of my early years were focused on trying to get everything exactly right so I could receive God’s blessing and his love. There was a realization that when I sinned (which seemed to be very often, especially with all the rules I thought I needed to keep) that I was under God’s wrath, due to be corrected, punished, or worse. Every little thing came under scrutiny—what I wore on Sabbath, what I did or did not do on Sabbath or holy days, what I ate or did not eat, what I read or didn’t read—to the point that I was crushed under the realization of how awful a person I was. I believed I was a failure and only worthy of rejection and condemnation.
I am so grateful that in God’s mercy, he brought me to grace, to the Lord Jesus Christ, into a saving relationship which has transformed and healed me and my life. I am still dealing with the consequences of so many years lived in a legalistic, life-draining environment, but now I have a closer walk with the Lord where every moment can be a life-giving conversation with him through the Spirit and an ongoing experience of love and grace.
In our New Testament reading for today, Romans 4:13–25, the apostle Paul explains that the law brings wrath. Due to having given ourselves over to sin and evil, we as human beings were returning to the nothingness out of which we had been created. Death was our future, but Jesus Christ brought us up into life. It is so essential for us to understand who God is as the One who spoke into nothingness and created all things. Apart from God’s merciful intervention in our circumstances through the incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, and his giving of his own Spirit, all God had created would have returned to the nothingness from which it came. This same God is the One who by his Son entered into this place, our death, and brought us eternal life. It is God who gives life, and this is a gift given to us, which we receive and participate in by faith in Christ.
The apostle Paul uses the story of Abraham and Sarah to illustrate this in another way. Abram and Sarai were well beyond the ability to have children. Abram’s body was as good as dead and Sarai’s womb was essentially dead and unable to bear children. There is no way, from a human standpoint, that conceiving and bearing a child was possible for them. But God came to them and said that he was changing Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah—both new names pointing to the reality that one day they would be the father and mother of nations and peoples. In the place that was dead, God spoke life. And thereafter, as they addressed each other by their new names, they spoke that promise to one another (see Mirror Bible).
It took time, and a failed attempt through human means (Hagar and Ishmael), for Abraham and Sarah’s faith to grow. In time, they did have a son named Isaac, through whose lineage the Messiah eventually came. And from our Lord Jesus Christ have come many children of God, for he laid down his life for all, not just for his own people.
And this was the point Paul was making. It was not the law or the keeping of the law which saved the ancient Jewish people. And it is not the law or the keeping of the law which saves us. It is the Messiah who saves. He, as a descendant of Abraham and Sarah, is a fulfillment of all of the promises made to Abraham and Sarah. And, as the Son of God, he is the only one who could, and did, bring all of humanity back home into right relationship with God. It is Jesus’ own right relationship with his Father in the Spirit that every human being participates in, and we do that by faith, not by lawkeeping or works. We trust in Jesus’ perfect work, not our own perfect work. We allow his Spirit to live in and through us, and we find that we begin living life the way we were meant to live it—in righteousness, in right relationship with God and one another. We do not trust in our own righteousness, but in Jesus’ perfect righteousness, in his death and resurrection, and in his gift of the Spirit. It is his life in us that is life-changing, transformational, and healing. And in the end, God gets all the glory. Amen and hallelujah!
Thank you, Father, for all you have done to make us right with you through your Son and in your Spirit. Grant us the grace to turn away from our own futile human efforts to earn your love and acceptance, and instead, to simply trust in your love, to trust in your Son Jesus Christ and in his work in our place on our behalf. Enable us then to live the life you created us to live in the way you have determined—through Jesus Christ our Lord and by your Spirit. Amen.
“For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the Law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise is nullified; for the Law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, there also is no violation. For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, (as it is written, ‘a father of many nations have I made you’) in the presence of Him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. In hope against hope he believed, so that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken, ‘so shall your descendants be.’ Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform. Therefore ‘it was also credited to him as righteousness.’ Now not for his sake only was it written that it was credited to him, but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.” Romans 4:13–25 NASB
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Doing Family God’s Way
By Linda Rex
December 31, 2023, Holy Family | Christmas—During the Christmas season, which begins on Christmas Day and runs for twelve days, we ponder the extravagant gift of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and his incarnation as God in human flesh. Often, during Advent and Christmas, being with family is something that is very important to us. As we celebrate the first Sunday in the season of Christmas (this year it’s on New Year’s Eve), we honor Jesus and his human parents, Joseph and Mary, along with his heavenly Father.
On this Sunday, we read in Luke 2:22–40 about Jesus’ mother and father taking him as an infant to the temple to carefully observe the requirements of the Mosaic law regarding the birth of a firstborn son, including ritual cleansing for the birth mother. Also, Mary probably offered her son to God, like many centuries before Samuel was offered up by his mother Hannah in gratitude for God’s answer to her prayer (1 Sam. 1).
The apostle Paul, in Galatians 4:4–7, says that God sent his Son (Jesus is divine), who was born of a woman (Jesus is human) and born under the law (Jesus, as a human being, is born within the particular culture and religious structure of God’s covenant people, the ancient Jews, who were bound by the law). The purpose of God sending his Son was to redeem those bound by the law, whether Jew or non-Jew, so that all might be adopted as God’s children. To redeem something is to buy it back, which helps us to see that Jesus, in his finished work, moved humanity back to their original design as those who were created for and can participate in intimate, face-to-face relationship with God (Gen 1-2).
Then Paul says that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, making possible our personal participation in Jesus’ own face-to-face relationship with his Father in the Spirit. Because of Jesus’ redemption and the Spirit’s indwelling presence, we can experience within our hearts that relational closeness with our heavenly “Abba” (today, instead of “Abba” we would probably say “Daddy” or “Dad” or use a similar term of affectionate respect) or Father. What the Triune God has done and is doing moves our relationship with God away from one based on performance and trying to be good enough to be loved to a place of grace and love centered in Christ and not in our own selves. The Spirit enables us to have and know God’s indwelling presence, and to walk and talk with the Lord at any time. Jesus mediates our relationship with God, standing in our place, on our behalf, so that at any moment, we are at home in the Triune life and love.
As Paul points out, there is a profound difference between how a slave interacts with their master and how a beloved child interacts with their adored parent. There is meant to be a deep sense of trust, of affection, and of openness in a healthy family relationship. Too often, our human experience of parent-child relationships (and spousal relationships) isn’t anything like this, so it is a challenge for us to see and know God in healthy ways. But this is why God gives us his Spirit, so that we can begin to experience Christ’s own heart of affection and trust for his Father, and experience in a real way, that sense of affection and trust that the Father has for Christ within our own being. Through Jesus and by the Spirit, we commune with God and fellowship with one another, growing up in Christ as we respond to the Spirit’s work in us and with us.
The interrelations of our Triune God teach us how to live in loving relationships with one another. Recognizing that each of us is unique, yet we are all equal and are meant to live in union with God and one another, provides a great foundation for how we interact with one another, especially within a family. So often, our differences create friction in our relationships, especially between parents and children (and between spouses). We want to keep in mind that Jesus is our unity—he is the center of our family, and it is his Spirit who binds us together in love. Truth tempered with love is essential to healthy relationships. And grace is so essential, too, and as it is offered and received, our bonds of love grow stronger and tighter. So, when things get difficult and problems occur—we turn to Jesus. We sit at his feet, and grow together. We pray with and for one another. We allow God’s Spirit to flow into us and through us to one another, and rifts begin to heal, misunderstandings get resolved, and our relationships begin to look more like what they were intended to be—a living witness to the Holy Trinity.
This Christmas season is an opportunity to receive anew and participate more fully in Christ’s own union and communion with his Father in the Spirit. This is a gift from God which we receive by faith, as we trust in all Jesus has done, is doing, and will do as we respond to his Spirit and seek to do his Father’s will. Throughout this new year, may your families and friendships find healing and wholeness in Christ by the Spirit. Happy New Year!
Dear heavenly Abba, we are so grateful you sent your Son and your Spirit to redeem us and enable us to be adopted as your very own children. Immerse our families and marriages anew in your very own oneness, you who live as three unique equal Persons in one Being, so we will shine with your glory and goodness, through Jesus Christ your Son and by your Spirit. Amen.
“But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.” Galatians 4:4–7 NASB
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Leading with Love
by Linda Rex
One of the difficulties of life as a single parent is the need to do things for your children which are normally done by both parents. It’s really difficult to play the role of father and mother for a child. There are some things only a mother does well, and some things only a father is really good at. We do the best we can as single parents, but there are some things we just can’t do.
It was easy for me to see early on as a single mom, I could never provide for my son or daughter the feeling which comes when a dad recognizes, values and affirms his children. I could recognize the hunger for this affirmation and attachment, but I still could not fill those needs.
A father has the capacity to destroy his children’s self-worth and crush their belief in themselves and in their ability to succeed simply with a glare or condemning word or by indifferent neglect. But he also has the ability to teach a child to take on challenges and to believe he or she can do the impossible. He can teach them what it means to be loved and valued as a human being. It’s all in how a parent leads.
I was raised in a family which valued authority because of what they believed about who God was. In the early years, dad was in charge and nothing happened without his approval and direction. We feared him and did our best to be good kids so as not to upset him.
As an older adult, I realize now my dad repented of this way of leading the family, and began to mellow over the years and eventually learned and used the power of love and understanding to bring about change in his children in place of authoritarian control. As a teen, I experienced his grace and understanding in many ways. He understood in his later years that leading in love is much more effective than leading by control and coercion.
Control and coercion are external motivators. Motivators like shame, guilt, fear and anger are also external motivators. Dictators, controlling and dominating people, and terrorists like to use motivators such as these to force people to agree to their expectations and terms in an effort to create a society in which everyone does the same thing. These external motivators may create a form of unity, but it is a unity that is merely in form, not necessarily in content. In other words—you may have a person’s compliance, but you don’t necessarily have their wholehearted obedience.
The most powerful thing a parent, and especially a dad, can do, is to love, truly love, their children. This is the kind of love which sets healthy boundaries for a child and enforces them, not punitively, but with grace. This is the kind of love which values each child as a unique person, and so finds their bent and helps grow them to be that person God created them to be.
When a parent has a strong, healthy relationship with a child in which they really see that child for who he or she is, and value their child as a gift from God, and are deeply involved in their child’s life, this creates a bond of love between the child and the parent. This bond can be highly motivating for the child, causing them to make healthy choices when they are being influenced to make unhealthy ones.
Granted, life happens, and every person is different. Some children just go the wrong way, no matter how well loved they are. But this does not negate the reality, that when our family participates in and reflects the divine perichoresis, and is filled with love and grace, there is a strong bond of love which binds everyone together in love. There is a tolerance and respect which would not otherwise be there. Children find themselves motivated, for the most part, to do the right thing from a place inside. Love is an internal motivator which supersedes any other external motivator in its ability to create genuine unity.
I believe this is why the apostle Paul stressed the need for a husband to love his wife, and for parents to love their children. Paul’s culture taught men to rule their wives and to insist that women and children submit to their leadership. Authoritarian rulership and coercion in a family may create external obedience temporarily, but they often crush the hearts of children, foment rebellion in teens, and can eventually destroy people. I have seen and experienced the tragedy that results in such leadership. The broken hearts and minds it creates are a testimony to its ineffectiveness and destructiveness in the long run.
Love, however, creates a familial bond of unity, which motivates those involved to treat one another with respect and concern. Discipline—and here I mean training, not punishment—given in love and tempered with grace, enables children to learn to live within healthy boundaries, while giving them room to grow. In this type of environment there is freedom—freedom to be the people God created us to be, and freedom to treat each other with love and respect. Freedom goes both ways because it is bound up within God’s love.
I was speaking with Doug Johannsen yesterday, and he reminded me that a father, and a husband, is meant by God to be the source (read “head” in most translations) of this love within a family. He is to be the one who pours this love so abundantly over his wife and children they cannot help but love him back and love one another. He is to be the source of this love which binds the family together in unity. Why is this true?
Because this is how our heavenly Father so loves his Son in the Spirit. He loved him so much he gave him all of this which he made. And the Son, and the Father, so loved us, they created us and gave us everlasting life through Jesus in the Spirit, so we can live in the midst of this superabundant love both now and forever.
It is this love, poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which is to be the basis on which our families are built. This love which he receives from the Holy Spirit enables a father and husband to love his wife and family with the same love which caused Jesus to lay down his life for humanity. And this love creates an environment in the home in which a family can live together in real unity.
This is the same love which we as single parents must draw upon to enable us to love our children and care for them when we are unable to fill the role of the missing parent. This love of God shed abroad in our hearts is the source of unity, love and grace in our family. And we can trust God to do in and through us what we cannot do on our own to care for, love and minister grace to our loved ones.
Loving Father, thank you for the great love you shower upon your Son in the Spirit, and that we participate in this, your superabundant love, through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension, and in the gift of your Spirit. Grant us the grace to live in loving communion with one another in our families, churches, and communities, in the same way in which you live in loving fellowship with your Son, and with us through Jesus and by your Spirit. Amen.
“Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.” Eph 4:1–6 NASB
“Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity (lit. the uniting bond of perfection).” Col 3:14 NASB
My Next of Kin
By Linda Rex
When I was growing up, I believed I had very few relatives. I vaguely remember meeting my grandparents when I was little and a couple aunts and uncles and cousins on occasion, but the first time I recall meeting any significant number of my relations was when I was thirteen. Even then, I had no grasp of what it meant to be a part of an extended family with all the relational dynamics that go with it.
It wasn’t until I began dating my husband to be and I married into his family that I began to experience what it is like to be a part of an extended family who lived within the confines of a small community. I remember on drives around the local area, they would point out a significant number of relations of theirs, whether near relations or shirt-tail relations, and they would tell me a little about each of these relatives’ particular story. I was amazed to see who was related to whom and found myself quite nervous about possibly saying the wrong thing to the wrong person and creating a relational and community disaster in the process.
This type of community and family situation is much like the one Jesus grew up in. In Nazareth, no doubt, everyone knew everyone else, and their relationships were all intertwined as children grew up together, married and had children who repeated the process. In his day the family and continuation of the family line were of paramount importance. As the elder son he had responsibilities to his family which he was expected to fulfill, and part of those involved having a sense of loyalty to his family and a commitment to their goals and expectations.
However, early on, beginning with his experience at the temple when he was twelve, we see Jesus beginning to differentiate between his relationship with his parents and his family, and his relationship with his heavenly Father in the Spirit. He may have helped his mother with the wine supply issue at a local wedding, but he did so in such a way that reminded her and others of who he was as the Messiah. It must have been very hard for Mary to have her dear son draw this kind of a line in her relationship with him, but we see from early church history that eventually she understood and accepted the reality of who he really was.
Jesus’ family was not always supportive of his ministry. In fact, at one point they tried to force him to come with them and said, in effect, “You are out of your mind!” Then there was the time when Jesus was speaking to the crowds and his family came to see him. Someone told him they were outside waiting to speak with him and he replied, “Who is my mother and who are my brothers?” Talk about a slap in the face!
But he wasn’t trying to be insulting. Instead, he was making a point about the centrality of relationships to the gospel—that we are all related to the Father through him in the Spirit. He is the Son of the heavenly Father, and those who live in the same perichoretic, mutually submissive, harmonic manner in which the Father and Son live in the Spirit, are his close relatives—his next of kin.
There are benefits to being Jesus’ next of kin, you know. One of the significant reasons this is a good thing is because Jesus, being our next of kin due to sharing in our humanity, has the right of redemption.
The people of Israel understood what it meant to be a close kinsman with the right of redemption. That meant that when a person lost property due to debt or lack of heirs, the kinsman could and often would buy it back for them—it was not supposed to be allowed to go into anyone else’s permanent possession—it was supposed to stay in the family. The story of Ruth gives a good description of what it was like to have a near relative redeem your land which you lost due to not having heirs to give it to.
God created you and me to bear the image of the Father, Son and Spirit. We chose instead to define our own image of God, and to follow our own way of being instead of reflecting the Being of the living God. In many ways we did, have and still do damage to our inheritance as God’s children, and have incurred tremendous physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual consequences we seem to only be making worse as time goes along. Our debts to God are impossible to pay, both collectively and individually, especially since we refuse to quit incurring them.
It is instructive that God’s way of entering into our impossible situation was to join us with himself by taking on our humanity. He became as closely related to us as he could possibly be. He became our nearest relative by sharing with us in our human existence—joining with his creation as a creature in human flesh (John 1:14; Heb. 2:11, 14-15, 17). He even did this to the extent that God “made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf” (2 Cor. 5:12). Now that is taking his kinship to us seriously!
Being fully human as we are human does not in any way diminish Jesus’ divinity. Rather, it is the tension of the two—that Jesus is both fully human and divine—that enables Jesus to do for us what we could not do for ourselves.
As your closest kinsman and mine, Jesus bought back our inheritance as God’s adopted children. Running out to meet us as his prodigal children, in Jesus the Father welcomes us home and is throwing us a great celebration. All that he has is ours in the gift of the Spirit—the indwelling Christ lives the life in us by the Spirit we were created to live as we respond to him in faith.
Some of us were not blessed with big happy families to include us and to surround us with love. For many of us being a part of our family of origin has not been a blessing or a joyful experience. The miracle of God’s grace to us in Christ is that we are all included in God’s family.
And God meant for those who believe to live together in such a way that they reflect the divine life and love, and become a family of love and grace who embraces the lost, lonely, broken and needy people who are looking for a home. If God can embrace and welcome broken, sinful humanity into his family by sharing in our broken, sinful flesh, and living and dying for us, how can we do any less for others?
Perhaps it is time that we stop the “us and them” way of thinking, and start practicing the reality formed in Christ that we are all “members of one another” (Eph. 4:25) We are all brothers, sisters and mothers in Christ, children of the Father, bound together in the Spirit. We are all kinfolk. Perhaps if we believed and behaved according to the truth of who we really are as God’s beloved, adopted and redeemed children, we might find the world becoming an entirely different place in which to live.
Heavenly Father, thank you that you have given us your Son to share in our humanity and to redeem us and bring us back into the right relationship with you which you foreordained for us to have before time began. Forgive us that too often we ignore and hide ourselves away from you and from each other. Grant us the grace to live according to the truth that we are your beloved, redeemed children made to reflect your image, and that we are all joined to one another in Jesus Christ. May we love others as you have loved us, through Christ and in your Spirit. Amen.
“While He was still speaking to the crowds, behold, His mother and brothers were standing outside, seeking to speak to Him. Someone said to Him, ‘Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak to You.’ But Jesus answered the one who was telling Him and said, ‘Who is My mother and who are My brothers?’ And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, ‘Behold My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother.’” Matthew 12:46–50 NASB
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