Tag Archives: cover-up

Free, Yet Slaves

Bible Study, , ,

FREE, YET SLAVES

Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect for everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honour the emperor. (1 Peter 2: 16-17)

How could Peter’s readers be both slaves and free?

Slavery in his day was universal and, for the most part, harsh and cruel. Slave-owners were the wealthy elite, and slaves their possessions to do with as they pleased according to their whims and moods. Many slaves bore the scars of severe whippings, often for no legitimate reason. Every slave longed to be free, especially those who were badly treated. Even the thought of slavery was abhorrent to them.

Yet Peter urged his readers to live as slaves of God. Even slaves who believed in Jesus experienced a new freedom in their hearts in spite of their circumstances which they treasured. Why would they want to surrender that freedom to anyone, even to God?  They knew what it felt like to be free from guilt, shame and fear. Their hearts had been freed from these inner slave-drivers through the forgiveness bought by Jesus. Slaves though they were, they would have shuddered at the thought of going back into any kind of inward bondage.

Slave-owners, on the other hand, revelled in their right to treat other human beings just as they chose with no fear of reprisals. They could be kind or cruel as they liked.  Slaves were worth nothing more than any of their other possessions. They had paid good money for them and could squeeze as much work out of them as they could before their strength finally gave out.

But this was not to be the attitude of the believer, both master and slave. That way of doing things belonged to the old life. In fact, living like that was worse slavery than the slavery of the slaves who served them. It was all a matter of the heart. To be a slave to sin was to be dead already even though they still lived. To be free meant to be released from the power of the selfish and self-destructive lives they once lived.

Real freedom does not mean living without boundaries. To the Hebrew, that would be hell. True freedom means living within God’s boundaries. Boundaries are intended to protect, not to restrict. You would not leave your garden gate open and allow your toddler to wander into a busy street. Within minutes, that child’s life would be destroyed.

We humans have the inborn capacity to destroy ourselves because we came into the world with a natural bent towards sin. Self rules from the day of our birth. Selfishness destroys because it enslaves us and drives us to take care of ourselves at the expense of others. Sin always leads to death. Selfishness is at the heart of all sin. Every time we choose ourselves above others, we sin and we drive another nail into our coffins.

What is the solution? ‘Simple,’ said Peter, ‘be God’s slave.’ You have been given the freedom to make different choices now that you have been released from the power of your old nature and given the nature of God. Your old boundaries shut God out and restricted you to self-destructive living. You could not choose to live under God’s truth because you were His enemy. You hated Him and everything He stands for. His very commandments were like a red rag to a bull.

For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. (Romans 7: 7b-8)

Through God’s mercy and the working of His Holy Spirit, you have been set free from your old nature. You have a new Master, Jesus Christ. His life in you has set you free from sin and death. But you have to put it into practice to make it effective. What does that mean? It means that you have to choose to become who you are, a slave of Jesus.

Slavery to Jesus is voluntary. You are free to choose to live your old way, but if you do, you will be enslaved by sin all over again.

Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey – whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? (Romans 6: 16)

Slavery to God is our escape route from slavery to sin and death. The amazing thing is that slavery to God is the only true freedom!

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.

 

Stupid Pharisees!

Christian Life, , , ,

STUPID PHARISEES

“When He had finished this talk, a Pharisee asked Him to dinner. He entered the house and sat down at the table. The Pharisee was shocked and somewhat offended when he saw that Jesus didn’t wash up before dinner. But the Master said to him, ‘I know you Pharisees burnish the surface of your cups and plates so that they sparkle in the sun, but I also know your insides are maggoty with greed and secret evil. Stupid Pharisees! Didn’t the One who made the outside also make the inside? Turn both your pockets and your hearts inside out and give generously to the poor, then your lives will be clean, not just your dishes and your hands,'” Luke 11:37-41 (The Message).

Every religion has a standard of right and wrong. The religion of the Pharisees was no different. Although they believed that they were worshipping and serving the God of Israel, there had been a slow and subtle change in their understanding of who He was and what He wanted.

From the earliest time of their history, God had revealed to them the nature of His righteousness – doing what is right because of who He is. He is ‘gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and full of love and faithfulness’ – Exodus 34:6. His laws reflected His nature. He expected them to treat each other the way He treated them.

Because of their refusal to obey His laws, over time they were punished again and again for their idolatry and injustice by war and exile. They came to believe that God was only pleased when they obeyed the many petty and trivial laws that were formulated to ‘protect’ His Law. The heart of their religion became legalistic and God was reduced to the level of ‘rule-keeping’ as the standard of righteousness.

Jesus came to reveal the heart of the Father and hence He clashed with religious leaders because, like all religions, its devotees were ruled by fear. ‘Break the rules and you fall foul of the god whom you are supposed to be appeasing by keeping them.’

Does it really matter to God whether we wash our hands before meals? For hygienic reasons, yes, but it makes no difference to the state of our hearts. What is it that really exposes what is in our hearts? Strangely enough, according to Jesus, it’s what we do with our money. Since money is the power that drives the world, who owns our money and our attitude to it reveals what is really in our hearts.

Jesus insisted that we cannot serve two masters. It is either God or money that is in the control centre of our lives. The love of money drives our selfish and greedy attitude to other people. If money is our master, we will go to whatever lengths necessary to get it even at the cost of lives. If Jesus is our Master, money will be one of the currencies we use to make other people’s lives better.

Isn’t rule-keeping often a cover-up for wickedness in our hearts? Just like the Pharisee, we meticulously observe rules and rituals to appear ‘righteous’ but inside the ‘cup’ is the filth of greed we cannot hide from God. How do we break its power? Jesus said, ‘Be a giver, and you’ll become generous, like your heavenly Father.’ Generosity will not save us, but it will go a long way to setting us free from the ‘evil eye’ that rules the world.

Religious Frauds!

Christian Life, , , ,

RELIGIOUS FRAUDS

“‘I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing every nickel and dime you get, but manage to find loopholes for getting around basic matters of justice and God’s love. Careful bookkeeping is commendable but basics are required.'” Luke 11:42 (The Message).

Jesus’ perspective on what is important to God is very different from ours. Every man-made religion considers what we do more important than what we are. The gods of human imagination always require rule-keeping and rituals as the way to gain the god’s favour and get what we want.

Does it really matter who or what we worship as long as we worship something? It is in the basic nature of humans to worship and to pray. We are incomplete without allegiance to a higher power. To many people, sincerity is the most important ingredient in our worship. “It doesn’t matter who you worship, as long as you are sincere.” they say.

This is flawed thinking because every action in life has consequences. It does matter who or what we worship because we become like the thing we worship. What we embrace as the source of our life we embrace as what we value and where we end.

The tragedy about the gods of human imagination is that they inevitably reflect the worst of human nature; cruel, heartless, demanding, unpredictable and unstable. Worst of all is that they do not exist but are the deception of demons to entice us to worship Satan.

Whether people bow down to idols of wood or stone or some invisible ‘god’ some human being told them to worship, the outcome is the same – behaviour that says one thing but hearts that are still rotten to the core.

What is God’s remedy for this terrible dead end? A heart transplant. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you…” Ezekiel 36:26,27a (NIV). Can God make good on His word? Yes! The evidence of a changed heart is a changed disposition.

Jesus’ quarrel with the Pharisees was that their religion was a cover-up for greed and wickedness and the people thought they were ‘holy’! They lived double lives, hypocrites playing to the crowd, but underneath they were worse than the tax-collectors, prostitutes and ‘sinners’ whom they despised.

Jesus was more comfortable with the outcasts because they had no reason to pretend. God cannot do anything for ‘holy’ people, those whose religious cloak keeps Him out. He is near to those who know they cannot pretend with Him. He can change the hearts of those who know their need but He can do nothing for those who think they are okay. No matter what the barrier is between us and the only true God, only one thing will give us access to Him – to admit that we were deceived and to believe what He says.