Tag Archives: finished work

Did You Know (5)?

Apologetics, , ,

DID YOU KNOW (5)

…That Jesus offers us rest, not religion.

People, and especially ignorant people, often speak of Christianity as one of the world’s great religions. That is simply not true. Christianity is not a religion; it is a restoration of God’s estranged sons and daughters to fellowship with Himself.

If Jesus came to set up a new religion, then what He did would be nothing more than a figment of His imagination. He would be the world’s worst liar since He would be no more than another human being perpetrating deception on the human race. The entire history of the Christian church would be based on a hoax and millions of adherents would have put their faith in someone who died like everyone else.

Firstly, was Jesus a real person? Did He live on earth or was He a make-believe character of fiction to satisfy the craving of some highly imaginative person? Are the Biblical narratives true?

Jesus not only exists as a historical figure in secular writings outside of the Bible but His resurrection has never been disproved, even by the finest legal minds. He lived, died and rose again in Israel just over 2000 years ago.

But what of His message and His promises? His words could have been misleading even though He was a real person. The truth of His words rests on one indisputable fact; He said He would die and rise again on the third day and He did. If it is impossible for a human being to bring himself back to life, this would have been an empty promise and a lie if God had not raised Him from the dead. God would not have confirmed the words of a liar or a dreamer by raising Him from the dead if He were not telling the truth.

Let’s settle this. If Jesus told the truth about His death and resurrection, then we can be confident that everything else He said was also true. He said that the Father sent Him. For what purpose? To reveal the Father to His people. For what reason? Their religious teachers had obscured the nature of God by their innumerable additions to God’s word. They saw Him, not as a Father who loved them and desired to have fellowship with them but the strict disciplinarian God who punished every deviation from His commandments.

Jesus was the face of the Father to His people. He used every opportunity to show the compassion and mercy of His Father and the religious leaders hated Him for it. They killed Him because He showed them the true nature of God. Blasphemy was their charge and guilty their verdict without looking at the evidence. He proved to them beyond a reasonable doubt that He was the Son of God but they found Him guilty before He was tried and condemned Him to death, innocent though He was, because of prejudice.

Religion can offer no more than a set of rules and rituals to appease a god whose demands are never satisfied. Why? Religion is based on a god or gods who are the product of human minds. No one can conceive of a being higher of greater than himself. Gods represent the worst of human characteristics, holding those who believe in them by fear of failure. Those who worship them are locked into an endless round of doing whatever they can to ensure that they do not offend their god.

God called the children of Israel into fellowship with Him as His sons and daughters but, instead of loving Him as their Father and obeying Him out of reverence, they turned their relationship with Him into a religion.

It was Jesus’ mission to reveal the truth about His Father, to deal once-for-all with the sin that separated His people from God and to call them back into God’s family as His beloved sons and daughters. The Holy Spirit would come and live within them, God residing once again in the His true temple, their bodies so that they could have freedom and rest in fellowship with Him.

Jesus knew what religion did to people. Practising religion was trying to satisfy the never-ending demands of an unpredictable god without ever knowing when enough was enough. It was all self-effort with no guarantee that they would eventually be acceptable to their God. Religion has no goal except what the creator of that religion envisages.

The greatest tragedy of all is that the people who have opted for religion over rest would rather work for their salvation regardless of the futility of trying to live up to God’s standards than trust Jesus and enjoy His rest.

If Jesus is real and His words are true, His offer still stands and whoever believes Him and receives what He has promised, experiences the most amazing supernatural peace, the outcome of the forgiveness of their sin and reconciliation with the Father.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened (from trying to please God by keeping rules), and I will give you rest. Take my yoke and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light (Matt.11: 28-30).

There remains, therefore, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his works just as God did from His (Heb. 4:9).

The rest Jesus offers us is rest from working to please God to trusting the words of Jesus; that He pleased God for us, died in our place to pay the debt for our sin and gives us, as a free gift, His perfect righteousness. We are now complete in Him – nothing more to do than to believe and receive what He did for us. When He cried out, “It is finished,” He ended the rule of law and ushered in the time of grace.

We have been fully accepted in Jesus and can rest in what He did.

God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them… (2 Cor. 5: 19a).

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3: 1).

Yes, my dear brothers and sisters, we are no longer slaves but sons and daughters of God, free to love Him and live in fellowship with Him as our Father. No religion! No rules! No fear!

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

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Do you like this post? Then buy your own copy of my book, Learning to be a Disciple, which is also available from www.amazon.com or www.takealot.com in South Africa. You can also order a copy directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com

My latest book, The Heartbeat of Holiness, is now available on www.amazon.com or www.takealot.com or from me at luella@efc.org.za at R130,00 including p and p.

Stick With Jesus

Christian Life, , ,

STICK WITH JESUS

“It wasn’t long before some Jews showed up from Judea insisting that everyone be circumcised.’If you’re not circumcised in the Mosaic fashion, you can’t be saved.’ Paul and Barnabas were up on their feet at once in fierce protest. The church decided to resolve the matter by sending Paul and Barnabas, and a few others, to put it before the apostles and leaders in Jerusalem.” Acts 15:1-2 (The Message).

Why the fuss? Such an insignificant matter! Who cares whether men are circumcised or not? What difference does a small surgical procedure make to their salvation?

A small matter but a very a big issue! It was big enough for Paul to write a letter to the Galatian believers to deliver a heated protest against a teaching which would undermine the very foundation of their salvation. It was serious enough for the church leaders to take action immediately, to nip in the bud a practice that would undo the finished work of Jesus for those who submitted to circumcision, and take them back into self-effort, slavery and failure.

A whole world of meaning was packed into Jesus’ final words on the cross: ‘It is finished.’ His death and resurrection put an end to all the demands of the Law as a way of being acceptable to God. Even if we obeyed God perfectly in every detail of what He expects of us from now on, (which is impossible anyway), we still have the problem of our past and the guilt we have incurred by disobeying God.

Jesus offered Himself up to God as an atoning sacrifice and His offering was accepted as the morally perfect Lamb who took our place because He had no sin of His own to die for. What He did was enough and complete, and we cannot and must not try to improve on it by adding anything to what He has done.

These Jews, who were insisting that Gentiles adopt the old covenant given to His people at Mount Sinai by being circumcised, were saying, in effect, that the sacrifice of Jesus was insufficient to satisfy God’s justice. To make His work effective, we have to add to what Jesus did by trying to keep the Law.

Whatever we add to Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross nullifies His work and puts us back under obligation to fulfil all the requirements of the old covenant. We cannot pick and choose what we will do and what we won’t do. The agreement God entered into with His people at Mount Sinai was a package deal and demands perfect obedience to every detail.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who has let himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.” Galatians 5:1-3 (NIV).

What is your “circumcision” that you have added to Jesus’ complete work on the cross, to make His salvation effective for you? Do you have to carry out rituals, obey dietary laws, observe special days or seasons, “work for Jesus”, or do anything to get God’s attention or to win His approval instead of just being His son or daughter?

If you do, you are outside the reach of God’s grace. “You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.” Galatians 5:4 (NIV).

What is the real issue here? It’s the attitude of our hearts. Are we slaves or sons? Slaves have to work hard to please their master. Sons are free just to be sons. “Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father’. So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.” Galatians 4:6-7 (NIV).