Shema
CF Ambassador
An Emoji Devotional for Thursday, March 9 2023
Topic: How can I come to spiritual maturity and be ready to enter the kingdom of God?
By Pastor Hans Wenger
Growth takes time, but the good news is that the moment you got saved by the grace of God, you became a citizen of the kingdom of God and you will be admitted to this glorious but still invisible land, if only you remain a true disciple of Christ.
The big danger we are facing is the problem of back-sliding. We read the gospel and we are touched by God’s grace. We read the Sermon on the Mount and we tremble over the seriousness of God’s demand for a holy life. We realize that none of us can remain clean before God and that everybody is totally dependent on God’s grace and mercy. Considering what Jesus adds to the law of old, it is very clear that we all are haughty, hypocritical and corrupt, we all are murderers, adulterers, perjurers, revenge seekers and evil judges of others. In contrast to this Jesus demands: “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? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5, 44 – 48)
Even teachers of the Holy Scripture have succumbed to the theory that the Sermon of the Mount is an unreachable ideal, nobody can live out and therefore it would not make any sense to aspire toward it. Men and women found many interpretations to circumvent the Sermon of the Mount and other parts of the biblical teaching.
Did Scripture not tell us, that we only have to confess to Jesus our transgressions and that he would forgive and cleanse us? With that people are encouraged to live as they please and it is enough to repent once in a while and demand forgiveness. This is exactly what Bonhoeffer called cheap grace. He illustrated that with a short story. The children did not want to go to bed in the evening. Then the father entered their room and commanded: “Children, you have to go to bed now. I do not want you to be tired in the morning. You need your sleep.” The father left the room and the children gathered together and praised the goodness of the father, who does not want them tired. “But”, they said, “Because we can relax by playing as well as we could by sleeping, our good father really meant, that we should continue with our play.” Which earthly father would tolerate that? Why should or heavenly Father be content with it? There is no cheap grace. Hebrew 12:14 tells us: “Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no-one will see the Lord.”
God wants us to aspire towards a holy and perfect life. Scripture encourages us time and again to lay down the works of our flesh and to put on the newness of life. “Liberalism has awakened a tendency to adapt scripture to a fleshly pagan lifestyle, whereas scripture tells us: “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:22 – 24; compare, Ephesians 5:1 – 20; Philippians 2:1 – 16:3, 13 – 21; Colossians 3:1 – 17; 1. Corinthians 6:1 – 20; Galatians 5:13 – 26 and many more)
Flee liberalism and the ideas of the falsely so called enlightenment, which teaches that man has to free himself from moral and religious boundaries. He has to exit out of his self-inflicted immaturity by setting his own logical law and rule.
God’s rules, standards and laws are not needed anymore. Through his own reasoning, man has outgrown his dependence or a law, given by a higher authority. The present chaos and lawlessness among people shows us, especially in the western world, what such a theory leads to. John 1 makes us clear that God’s word is Jesus in written form and the same word has created everything and is the way, the truth and the life. Therefore stay close to the word of God and submerse yourself into it and follow it in obedience!
On the same token flee legalism, because it destroys love and relationship. Often times, legalism is a counter reaction to liberalism, but it divides and paralyzes the body of Christ. The body of Christ has many members and many tasks. Before anything else, we are called to love and appreciate each other in high esteem; even if we may differ here and there in our understanding of scripture. If we are born-again and can wholeheartedly agree to the Apostolic confession of faith, we are brothers and sisters and should do our best to love each other with the love Christ has commanded us in John 13, 34 – 35; 14, 23; 15, 9 – 16 and in many other references trough out the bible, especially in the Epistels of the apostle John.
Knowledge of God’s word connected with the love of Christ Jesus is the only real way for spiritual maturity and spiritual maturity means intimate knowledge of God. In John 17, 3 Jesus tells us: “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.“
In Hosea, Chapter 4 the Lord laments: “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land dries up, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea are swept away.” It is very interesting what the Lord says here, especially, if we take verse 6 with it. “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. ‘Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children“. Just think for a moment what this could mean concerning our daily complaints about the climate change and the dangers of it?
Our faith needs to be rooted in the word of God for being deep and stable.
The question in that stage is not any more whether we will enter the kingdom of God or not. We are already living in the kingdom of God because we have it in us. Remember, Father and Son entered our heart and made a dwelling within us and we became a temple of the Holy Spirit. The more we trust and live with the Christ in us, the more we are already living in the kingdom of God and we only wait that our life, Christ, gets revealed and we with him in glory.
We are never to forget, what 1. John 4, 4 – 6 tell us: „You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.”
In Ephesians 4, 11 – 16 Paul tells us the aim of growth: “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed to and fro by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus let me be a faithful student of your word and reveal your knowledge and your wonders to me. Let me grow to a perfectly functioning member of your body, guided by you as the loving and caring head of the body. Amen