Daily Archives: January 21, 2015

Born Again

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BORN AGAIN

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each another, love one another deeply from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God (1 Peter 1: 22-23).

Being first-born or second-born in Hebrew culture has all sorts of implications. We have already examined the privileges and responsibilities of the firstborn in the family.

Perhaps the most serious of all the implications is that the firstborn son received judgment for the rest of the family’s misdemeanours while the second-born – and all the other siblings were classified as second-born – received mercy. In other words, the first-born had to take responsibility for his siblings’ wrongdoing while they got away with murder.

This has important implications for us when it comes to judgment and mercy for our sin in God’s eyes. In Adam we are all firstborn and, since the firstborn took the rap for the sins of the family (and, in God’s eyes, there are no second-borns in Adam), we are all responsible for our own sin.

What do we need in order to receive mercy? We need to be second-born. But how can we become second-born when we are the first-born in Adam? This is where the genius of God’s wisdom comes in. He did not violate His own word but fulfilled it through His own Son.

Since Jesus is God’s first-born, He took the judgment for our sin and died in our place.  Through faith in Him, we are in Him and therefore, as we all die in Adam, so we died ‘in Christ’.

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death? (Rom. 6: 3).

But, as the same time, Jesus was the ‘second Adam’, created in the likeness of Adam so that in Him we might receive mercy. How do we move from judgment to mercy? As Jesus explained to Nicodemus on the night he visited Him, ‘you must be born again.’ To move from judgment to mercy you must move from first-born in Adam to second-born in Christ. How does this happen? Through believing what Jesus said.

To Nicodemus He said, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh give birth to flesh but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.’ (John 3: 5-6).

A miracle takes place in the spirit when a person who is in Adam takes Jesus at His word, confesses that He is Lord, and believes in heart that God raised Him from the dead. He is moved from firstborn in Adam to second-born in Christ. Instead of judgment which he deserved in Adam, he receives mercy because of Jesus.

For the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! (Romans 5: 15).

Jesus is also the first-born from the dead. Since we are ‘in Him’ in His death, we are also ‘in Him’ in His resurrection and therefore guaranteed resurrection from the dead.

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. . . He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy (Col. 1: 15).

But Christ had indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Corinthians 15: 20-22).

It is, therefore, on the grounds of God’s faithfulness to His word that we have hope that we, too, will share in the resurrection of the dead, the perfection of our bodies and the blessing of eternal life.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Redeemed By The Blood

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REDEEMED BY THE BLOOD

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but revealed in these last time for your sake. Through Him you believe in God who raised Him from the dead and glorified Him and so your faith and hope are in God (1 Peter 1: 18-21).

Was Peter specifically addressing Jewish believers when he made this statement?

Every firstborn son and every firstborn of the flocks and herds belonged to God. In the old order, all firstborn sons were to be redeemed by the payment of five shekels of silver to the high priest. Firstborn of the flocks and herds were to be sacrificed to the Lord.

God chose the tribe of Levi to take the place of the firstborn when the children of Israel were delivered from Egypt.

The Lord also said to Moses, ‘I have taken the Levites from among the Israelites in place of the first male offspring of every Israelite woman. The Levites are mine, for all the firstborn are mine (Numbers 3:12)

God instructed Moses to count the Levites a month or more old and to take them in the place of the firstborn of all the tribes and the firstborn of their stock in place of the firstborn of the Israelites’ stock.

The Lord also said to Moses, ‘Take the Levites in place of all the firstborn of Israel, and the livestock of the Levites in place of their stock. The Levites are mine. I am the Lord (Numbers 3: 44-45).

When the Levites and the firstborn of Israel were counted, there were 273 more firstborn that Levites.

To redeem the 273 firstborn Israelites who exceed the number of the Levites, collect five shekels for each one, according to the sanctuary shekel, which weighs 20 gerahs. Give the money for the redemption of the additional Israelites to Aaron and his sons (Numbers 3: 46-48).

In Adam we are all firstborn sons of God. As His firstborn, we belong to Him. To save us from being sacrificed as was the fate of the livestock, Jesus paid the price for our redemption by taking our place as the sacrifice.

Every firstborn son had privileges and responsibilities in the family. He represented his father in the family. He was heir to a double portion of his father’s estate but he was also responsible to be the mediator in family disputes, take care of any deceased brother’s widow and family, and to take the rap for a brother’s sins. He got the judgment while the second-born got mercy.

Peter used this aspect of God’s Law to show his readers that, as the firstborn of the human race in Adam, they all needed redemption, but not the redemption prescribed in the Torah. This was a picture of the redemption which Messiah would bring, not only the redemption from being sacrificed by the payment of a sum of money, but redemption from the problem of sin itself that was the cause of death.

Jesus’s death on the cross paid the price for sin, once and for all, and did away with the necessity for believers in Him to die. By dying, he conquered sin and death. He took away the penalty of death and bought us for God for all time and eternity.

Jesus said to her (Martha), ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ (John 11: 25-26).

Now we have every right to have the hope of being raised again from the dead, even though we will die, because Jesus is the firstborn from the dead and we are alive in Him.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Be Holy

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BE HOLY

But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written, ‘Be holy because I am holy.’ Since you call on a Father who judges each work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear (1 Peter 1: 15-17).

‘Holiness, reverence and fear’ are not very popular words among believers in Jesus today. We prefer words like ‘relationship, friendship, family’ which are all true but we need to put them in their right perspective.

Before Peter had anything to say about relating to God as our Father, he put it into the context of a correct attitude towards Him – reverential fear. In this generation, the pendulum has swung from legalistic fear and distance from God to the kind of closeness that lowers the standards He requires until we treat God as our buddy and forget that He is still a holy God.

The very word ‘father’ is intended to include honour, respect and obedience. Take Jesus, for example. He came to earth as the Son of God. Was He not always, from before His incarnation, the Son of God? Not according to the Scriptures. Psalm 2 makes it quite clear that there was a specific moment when Jesus became the Son of God.

I will proclaim the Lord’s decree: He said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father.’ (Psalm 2:7).

God chose the father/son relationship to model the relationship He wanted between Himself and those who come to faith in Him through the Son. Jesus emptied Himself of every right and privilege as God in order to become a reverent and obedient Son. It had to be so that He could live as a perfect son in the place of the rebellious human race that had opted out of sonship to become renegades instead of rulers. He had to do this in order to die in our place. He also modelled and taught us how to be sons.

In order to become true fathers to their own offspring, sons have to learn to be servants. According to the Bible, a son’s role is to serve his father until he is mature enough to have his own sons and daughters who will, in turn, serve him – and so on down the generations.

‘. . . Have the same mind set as Christ Jesus who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness (Phil. 2: 5b-7).

Jesus’s call to His disciples, ‘Follow me,’ included the call to be a son like Himself. What are the qualities He modelled and taught?

The first requirement is holiness. That’s enough to scare us, isn’t it? What is holiness? We tend to think of holiness as something mysterious; God is so holy that we dare not whisper or even breathe in His presence let alone approach Him. In the Old Testament era the people were not permitted anywhere near His visible presence in the Holy of Holies, only the High Priest, once a year and then after he followed strict rules and approached God with the blood of an animal sacrifice.

How can we approach God now? We come through Jesus, the perfect son who became the perfect sacrifice to take away our sin. In God’s eyes we are already holy because He sees us through Jesus. But that also means that, just as Jesus has removed our sin and blotted it out, it is now up to us to remove ourselves from sin and be set apart to God and for God.

Reverential fear is the second requirement. God is not our buddy. He is our God and our Father. He is our life source and our authority. The fear of the Lord is based on two fundamentals; who He is and what He does. He is the almighty, all knowing and ever present God. He sees and knows everything. Solomon put it like this:

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil (Eccles. 12: 13-14).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.