Tag: A Word for Wednesday

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He Is Our King

Most of this blog’s earliest readers were friends and relatives I’d known well for some time. Occasionally some would respond, whether directly or by email or text, “Thank you for today’s post,” or “I really needed to hear this,” or “This was so helpful to me,” or simply “Amen.” Knowing these readers as I did, what struck me was the fact that, politically, they were quite diverse, residing all along the ideological spectrum from the radical left to the extreme right, and often at the others’ digital throats via social media. Still today, whether we shout “No kings” or cleverly counter “No jesters,” our differences run deep. Yet Biblical truth reaches deeper and raises us all to oneness in an eternal Kingdom that exceeds all earthly rule and wisdom. He who unites us is stronger than that which separates us. I’ve seen it in your replies.

A thousand years before Jesus’ incarnation, and through the prophet Nathan, God promised David an everlasting Messiah-king to come from his lineage. “I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. . . I will be his father, and he will be my son. . . Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me.”1 This throne would be occupied forever after by One who existed from forever prior — a ruler “whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”2 Moreover, this Kingship would be one of Sonship. Isaiah foretold this turning point in history: “to us a child is born, to us a son is given,”3 a Son who would “reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom . . . from that time on and forever.”4

Yet when Jesus came as promised, “His own people did not accept Him”5 as foretold.

Caesar’s proxy, Pilate, presenting Jesus to the Jews: “Behold your King!”6
The chief priests, in reply: “We have no king but Caesar.”7

Ponder the irony.

But Jesus was their King, and He is our King. “My kingdom is not of this world,”8 He has said, yet He reigns in this world — He reigns in and through the hearts and souls of believers “from sea to sea and . . . to the ends of the earth.”9 He unites us in Himself, and as His word resonates in our hearts, our swords of separation drop harmlessly from unclenching hands and onto the ground beneath our feet. Yes, we are closer than we think. You’ve shown me this.

“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” — Revelation 11:15 ESV

Jesus, you reign “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.”10 Be my King, now and forever. Amen.

1 2 Samuel 7:12-16 NIV
2 Micah 5:2 NIV
3 Isaiah 9:6 NIV (see also Psalm 2:7)
4 Isaiah 9:7 NIV
5 John 1:11 ESV
6 John 19:14 ESV
7 John 19:16 ESV
8 John 18:36 ESV (emphasis added)
9 Zechariah 9:10 NIV
10 Ephesians 1:21 NIV

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We Know We Are Free

“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives.” — Ephesians 4:8 ESV

Published in 1955, Milton Mayer’s nonfiction, They Thought They Were Free, explores how people in WWII-era Germany did not recognize fascism’s increasingly erosive impact on their own freedoms. His interviews with 10 working class residents exposed their tendency to compromise their own value systems and to consider themselves “free,” as long as their own personal needs were being met. History, however, shows they were not free.

Speaking to a crowd one day, Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”1 They had been a “friendly” crowd to this point — “the Jews who had believed him”2 — but now the people took offense at Jesus. They replied, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”3 They, too, thought they were free. And they, too, were not.

For Jesus spoke not of a political freedom, but a spiritual one. Centuries prior, Isaiah foresaw Him and foretold His mission: “to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.”4 And indeed Jesus has. Teaching in Antioch’s synagogue, Paul declared, “Let it be known to you . . . that through this man [Jesus] forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.”5

Then from what shackles are we now free? What prison doors swing meaninglessly in the wind? What sentence is expunged? “We were held captive under the law,” writes Paul, “imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.6 The apostle continues, “The law was our guardian until Christ came . . . But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.”7 Moreover, we live in Christ and He lives in us, so His death becomes our death and His resurrection is our own. “Our old self was crucified with him,” writes Paul, “so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.”8 In all of this, Jesus “delivers us from the wrath to come.”9

We know we are free. Then what do we do? First, stay that way! Paul, to the Galatians: “Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.”10 Then return to servanthood, but this time in the release of forgiveness, the joy of liberty, and the assurance of love.

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. — John 8:36 ESV

Father, Thank You for freeing us from sin and making us Your own. We savor this. Send Your Spirit to lead us in “the obedience that comes from faith.”11 In Christ we pray. Amen.

1 John 8:31-32 ESV
2 John 8:31 ESV
3 John 8:33 ESV
4 Isaiah 61:1 ESV
5 Acts 13:38-39 ESV
6 Galatians 3:23 ESV
7 Galatians 3:24-25 ESV
8 Romans 6:6-7 ESV
9 1 Thessalonians 1:10 ESV
10 Galatians 5:1 NLT
11 Romans 1:5

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The Family of Faith: Brothers and Sisters in Christ

“Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon?” — Mark 6:3 NIV

One group stands out. I gather weekly with believers at Sunday morning church and in mid-week Bible studies, yet there is another group with which I have become especially close: my Kairos Prison Ministry brothers. We have repeatedly entered one mission field in particular: men held in incarceration. Weeks before a Kairos Weekend inside the prison, the team prepares and gels as one, and when it is time to enter, each man executes his assigned role, relying on all the others to do the same. It is a unity forged not only out of shared conviction of Biblical truth, but also the action toward which faith and freedom compel us. Then through this unified brotherhood, God’s light shines in a very dark place. And lives change.

Jesus was teaching as a houseguest one day, when some around him said, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.”1 They spoke of Mary, of course, and also His natural brothers who did not believe in Him at the time.2 Perhaps Jesus recalled this lyric from a messianic psalm: “I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother’s sons.”3 Regardless, Jesus turned the occasion into a teaching opportunity: “And he answered them, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.’”4

Was Jesus being disrespectful or dismissive of His earthly family? No, He was pointing His hearers to a closer, grander kinship — our eternal oneness with God through His Messiah. For through the sufferings of Jesus the Son, God the Father brought “many sons and daughters to glory,”5 which is to say He made us His children. In Hebrews we read, “Both the one who makes people holy [Jesus] and those who are made holy [us] are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call [us] brothers and sisters”6

Jesus came to the world as God’s only Son,7 then “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”8 Christ is our brother, and in Him we who were alienated from God are now His sons and daughters — “children of light, children of the day.”9 Then together as Jesus’ brothers and sisters, may we daily shine His light into very dark places. Lives will change.

Father, thank You for making us Your children through Jesus — Your Son, our brother. Shine through us, each as called, into dark places, that lives will change and Your Kingdom expand. In Christ we pray. Amen.

1 Mark 3:32 ESV
2 John 7:53
3 Psalm 69:8 ESV
4 Mark 3:33-35 ESV
5 Hebrews 2:10 NIV (emphasis added)
6 Hebrews 2:11 NIV
7 John 3:16
8 John 1:12 ESV (emphasis added)
9 1 Thessalonians 5:5 ESV