"If the World Hates You..."

John 14-16 is a continual feast for the soul.  John 15.18-19 stood out today...

If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you.  If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.

There is an enmity and antithesis with the world.  So often I can be lulled into thinking that living for Christ means everything is going to be nice and everybody is going to appreciate that and respond with kindness. Jesus here talks of a hatred that can and does come from the world.  This is a hatred because of Christ.  Our allegiance to Jesus brings us into a realm of those who hate that allegiance.  Jesus points us to his own experience.  He knows the hatred of the world.  Its hatred put him to death.  This we know and this knowledge should wake us up to the fact that we too as his followers can expect the same treatment.  As the antithesis in our culture becomes more pronounced and explicit we can expect to see more and more overt hatred for the things of Christ and those who claim him as their Lord and Savior.  As the vestiges of Christendom (or what Francis Schaeffer called the "Christian consensus") are dismantled in our country there will be less and less resistance to impede direct hatred for Christ and his people.  The words of our Lord may take on renewed significance for us in such a context.

Victory Over Death--Jesus Wins Again!

I came across this today.  It was powerful and moving.  A boy with cancer, alone in the hospital is brought into a Christian family by adoption.  He comes to Jesus and fights the rest of his short life with faith and joy.  The second video is Pastor John Piper's sermon about young Victor's life and faith. (If you watch the first video be sure to have some tissue nearby.)

Pastor Piper wrote this about Victor:

 It was one of the great privileges of my life to speak the word of God at the memorial service for 14-year-old Victor Manuel Watters on September 11, 2011. Sober, painful, and joyful — that’s how I would describe this unexpected way to mark 9/11.

Victor died of cancer — Ewing’s Sarcoma. At the age of nine he was in the hospital alone. His birth family was unable to care for him. Mike and Deb Watters were often on the same unit because of a similar cancer in their daughter. To make a spectacular story of grace short, they adopted Victor, cared for him, led him to Jesus, and surrounded him with overflowing love as he died on September 7, 2011.

God's Pursuit of Justice--Through Us!

Gary A. Haugen has written a book that is a combination of theological insight, moving stories, and creative solutions regarding the issue of injustice in the world.  Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World (IVP, 1999) is well worth reading on this issue.  One poignant section deals with how God brings justice to those who need it.

"If God seeks justice for the oppressed, how exactly does he do that?  If, as Psalm 10 says, Gods helps the fatherless, defends the oppressed, 'breaks the arm' of evil people and calls them to account for their wickedness--how does he do this?...

"A fair question.  Do we have an answer?  I think we do, and it has everything to do with you and me.

"Unless the work of seeking justice is a category of endeavor that is completely different from every other activity on earth that is important to God, the answer to the how question has something to do with what God's people do or don't do.  If you think about it, two truths apply to everything that God wants accomplished on earth: (1) he could accomplish it on his own through supernatural power; but instead, (2) he chooses for the most part to limit himself to accomplishing that which he can achieve through the obedience of his people."  (pp. 96-97)

So even as we cry out for justice we should also be praying and searching to see in what manner we might be the answer to that cry for justice.

 

Birth Pains of Hope

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.  Romans 8.20-22

The created order suffers from a judicial decree from God that renders it a place of suffering.  God did this with a view toward "hope"--the eschatological hope that the creation will be set free from its corruption.  Paul sees the convulsing contractions of futility in the created order as birth pains leading toward a birth of a new world.  Consider theses thoughts by Ted Hamilton from his essay, "The Prototokos Paradigm":

If you are in a hospital, and you hear groaning, it makes a big difference whether you are in the burn unit or in the labor and delivery unit.  The groaning in the labor and delivery room signals a good outcome.  There will be a birth.  It will happen, one way or another.  So it is with God's creation.  It groans now--in labor, but because of the power unleashed by the death and resurrection of Jesus, the creation that is now groaning (all of it) will be liberated and brought into glory.  On Global Wizardry edited by Peter Jones (Main Entry Editions, 2010), pp. 256-257.

This image of the labor and delivery unit versus the burn unit made sense and brought hope.  Pain is not purposeless.  The waves of turmoil and pain are moving toward a goal in Christ.  There will be glory.  There will be the "summing up of all things in Christ" (Ephesians 1.10).