Every Christian is a Saint - Called By God

This morning as I begin a journey into study of 1 Corinthians, I was reminded of a wonderful truth of what it means to be in Christ. Paul wrote to the people of the church at Corinth, this letter, and in it, Paul addresses the many ways this church and its people, were trying to live with one foot still in the world.

The city of Corinth was a city known for its immorality. Like some call Las Vegas, Corinth could be said to be “sin city”. Fornication, which the Greek word used here is porneia from which we get the word pornography, idolatry, adultery, effeminacy, homosexuality, stealing, covetousness, drunkenness, reviling, which is abuse through speech, and swindling, are the basic sins Paul will speak of in this letter. Sound familiar? Our society has moved past having one or two cities such as Vegas, where sin runs free. Paul’s list of sins can now be found in every place in America.

But Paul wrote, not to the city, but to the church, because the church had drifted into a place where it was somewhat hard to tell the difference between the world around them and the Christians within. This, my friends, is also the case today in the church right here where we live.

Yes, I am saying that the church today is still struggling just as the church of Corinth did. Many are trying to tone down the preaching against many of these sins. The very divisiveness we see in America today is being played out in the area of sexuality and gender. Pornography, drunkenness, and drug addiction are three issues that a great many are battling in our congregations. And yes, not all the people who sit in a pew on Sunday are really Christians, but that does not preclude the fact that even us Christians, have fallen into addictions and sinful lifestyles that cause us to look much like the world. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians to the Christians. That is clear by the salutation he wrote.

1 Corinthians 1:2
 To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.

Honestly, this is good news, because we are all sinners and each of us are still wrestling with the old sin nature, even as we live out the Christian life. Paul didn’t write this letter to condemn the church; he wrote it to remind them of who they are, called ones from God, set apart and called saints. The word here for saint is hagios, which means holy one or set apart one. We have been set apart by God.

Paul also reminds us we have been sanctified in Christ Jesus. Though we typically use the word sanctification to speak of the ongoing work of us becoming like Christ in actual behavior, in the sense Paul uses it here, speaks of our position in Christ. When we are baptized into Christ, and in that I mean identified with Him through faith in Him, God imputes the very righteousness of Christ upon us. Thus, we are wearing His cloak of righteousness, we are declared by God as holy. We more often call this justification.

So, Paul wrote this letter to the church of Jesus, which includes us. And in this letter, we can find hope in Jesus for both joy here and in the eternal life, even if we are still struggling with our sins. The truth is, we are.

But we can rejoice in this; God has chosen us and declared us saints. He also chose the apostles to remind us who we are in Christ and how we should strive every day to live in the power of the Holy Spirit to grow more like Christ.

Paul also wrote this wonderful truth to us in Romans 8:1
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Open your Bible today and let it, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, lead to you a life of obedience that will culminate one day in being like Jesus. I leave you with Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians 1:3, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The Two Gates

“This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.” Hang around Facebook long enough and you will probably see a meme with John Wayne being credited with saying this. The quote is from a book titled, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, written by George V. Higgins. John Wayne never said it, but truth is, it’s an accurate statement.

Jesus said something similar about life also, and though He never used the word stupid, the implication should lead us to the same thought. Living this life without Jesus, well, it’s a bad idea, maybe one could say it’s even stupid to do so. The quote is from the greatest sermon ever, the sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 7:13-14
 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.  For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

Those two verses are jam-packed with information we need to understand. The first thing we must understand is that simply calling oneself a Christian, does not make one a Christian. Jesus makes it clear throughout scripture that the way to Him is a narrow one. He would tell the disciples that for a rich person to enter His Kingdom is tantamount to trying to get a camel through the eye of a needle. I have trouble getting thread through the eye of needle, much less a camel. This path to Jesus and salvation is a very, arduous thing.

Let’s pause here a moment and address something most of us don’t grasp. We live in a very prosperous time and in a very prosperous place. We are rich. Yes, I know there are poor people in America. I know where some of them live. But let’s be real here. If you are reading this it means you have some type of a computer, that most likely has more computing power than NASA had when we sent men to the moon in 1969. That phone in your hand is a symbol of the wealth you possess. When Jesus spoke those words some 2000 years ago, he was amongst a people who knew nothing of the easy life we live. We are abundantly wealthy in terms of our lifestyles.

Whether we have a big bank account or not, the majority of us live the easy life. We get cold, we dial up a thermostat. We get hot, we dial it down. We get hungry, we open a refrigerator that keeps our food readily available. Or we drive our car to a place that has a little box we speak into and then someone hands us warm food. We get a little pain; we take a pill. If it’s a serious problem, we go to a doctor who can put us in a hospital where even our clogged arteries, (clogged from going to that little box and getting food), can be cleaned out or even replaced. We live the easy life, for the most part.

It is this easy life that makes understanding the true Christian life, hard to grasp. so, we have made church into a place where we tone down the truth of God’s Word. We tell people Jesus loves them and if they will just say a little prayer, we can baptize them into Him, and all will be ok. Yes, there is some truth in all that, but the problem is that there is by omission, a lot of untruth.

Jesus said, “the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

One of the problems we have in this age is that we simply have it too easy. We live in the “instant gratification” age. Because we are so blessed, we have begun to expect that everything has to be easy. We expect everything can and should be fixed. This is contradictory of what the Bible tells us happened in the very beginnings of man’s existence. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden, that changed the world. That brought a curse upon us and upon the entire creation. If you have never really studied the “fall”, then you need to get yourself under some good teaching of the Book of Genesis. Because of the sinful, rebellion of Adam and Eve, there is a curse upon the earth that will not be lifted until the return of Jesus as spoken of in Revelation 21:1-8. Until that time, we are living on an earth where decay and death are everywhere. Life will be a struggle, and there will be pain, sorrow, and suffering.

Yet, man tries to defeat God and the curse He placed upon us. The greatest example is lawn care. In 2015 Americans spent 29.1 billion dollars on lawn care. 29.1 billion dollars to eliminate weeds. Yet the battle to eliminate weeds, never ends. Weeds pop up everywhere. They find cracks in concrete and push through. They grow on top of the weed barriers we place in our rock gardens. They even grow on roofs sometimes. No one plants them there. Well, technically God does. The Bible is clear in Genesis 3:17-18, “Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.  "Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you.” This is a picture of life.

Our pursuit of health is another example. Everywhere we look, we see people afflicted with cancers of all types. Billions are spent each year on cancer care and cancer research. There are campaigns to eradicate cancer. I get it. Yes, we all hate cancer, but truth be known it is all part of the curse. God was clear in His warning. Genesis 2:16-17 tell us “The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;  but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die." Yet, we spend billions and take all kind of pills in the hope we might defeat sickness, extend our lives, and even try and defeat death.

I have bad news; we won’t. I am not saying it is inherently wrong to seek to alleviate suffering. But scripture is clear, our hope is not in ourselves it is in Jesus. This is why Jesus said we must enter in by the narrow gate. Our only true hope is in Him. He did not stutter, He said that “the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

The Christian life is a hard one. It requires sacrifice. It will involve suffering. There will be pain. But to the one who lives by faith, who dies to self, who refuses to allow his own self-will to control his desires to decide what is right and what is wrong, to Him comes peace in Christ. It is a peace that transcends understanding.

I could on and on with scriptural words that explain what this Christian life demands of us. Each of us must do the work and open our Bibles daily to see who God is and what He desires we do. I simply feel called to remind each and everyone of us that the gate is narrow. The way is hard that leads to life. The answer to how to live it is through complete surrender of self.

We must take the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction.

The Bible has this amazing way of appearing almost contradictory. The same Jesus who just told us the way is hard that leads to life also said this in Matthew 11:29-30, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” There is no contradiction here. Jesus is simply saying the Christian life is a hard one, but when you let go of self, and cling to him, the hard way is easy to walk through.

Amazing. Turn to Jesus and He will shepherd you through the narrow gate. He will lead you to life, life eternal. But we must avoid the wide gate for it will lead us to destruction.