One of the best known Christian hymns is Amazing Grace by John Newton. He wrote it after he converted to Christianity after having previously been the captain of a slave ship. Perhaps the best- known words of his hymn are these, “I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.”
But today some question if anyone is lost, and if no one is lost, then what does “found” mean?
Perhaps the best known verse in the New Testament is John 3:16 : “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
But today some question if anyone is perishing, and if no one is perishing then why did Christ come and what can “saved” possibly mean?
At the end of Mark’s gospel Jesus said, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16 : 15-16)
Today some say, “How could Jesus be so narrow-minded?” Surely people who do not believe are not condemned!
In his book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, Birmingham Alabama pastor David Platt says that many people assume that if people have not heard about Jesus, then they will be OK. But then why, he asks, did Jesus say it was a matter of such urgency for his followers to tell everyone the good news about God’s salvation-- given by sheer grace and received through simple faith in Christ? For that matter, if people aren’t perishing without Christ, or if there is some other way of salvation besides through him, why in the world did God send His Son to die on a cross? If there were some other way for people to be saved, surely God would have preferred that way to the death of His Son!
David Platt writes, "If people will go to heaven precisely because they never had the opportunity to hear about Jesus, then the worst thing we could do for their eternal state would be to go to them and tell them about Jesus. That would only increase their chances of going to hell! . . . Imagine encountering an international student newly arrived on a college campus in the United States. You ask her if she has ever heard of Jesus, and with a puzzled look on her face, she responds, 'No.' Now, if this girl is headed to heaven precisely because she has never heard about Jesus, then the best thing you could say to her for the sake of her eternity is, ‘If anyone tries to tell you about Jesus, just put your hands on your ears, start yelling very loudly, and run away.’
But obviously Jesus said, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation,” and “go and make disciples of all peoples.” So was Jesus just confused?
Maybe we should go back and look at the two verses which follow that famous verse, John 3:16 . Jesus says; “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.” John 3 : 17-18.
As you read this, maybe you begin to understand why Jesus was crucified. Maybe you understand why some people today still reject him and would crucify him all over again if they could.
If no one is lost, it makes no sense that Jesus gave up his life on the cross to save a lost world. If no one is lost, it makes no sense that so many of his followers have given up their lives to spread his good news to the ends of the earth.
But people are lost. And he is the Savior of the lost.
Winfield Casey Jones is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Pearland
Last time we talked about how to obey Jesus’s command to love God with our whole hearts. I promised that this time we’d discuss how to fulfill his second command, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Some people believe not only that human beings are merely “evolved animals,” but also that over millions of years only those of our ancestors who were the most brutal and competitive survived. According to this theory, in a “dog eat dog” world, the most loving humans wouldn’t have survived long.
But the Bible tells us that God is love and that God made us in his own image, to resemble him, to be loving. It is true that through sin, human beings fell way from God’s plan, but He has not abandoned his plan. In Jesus his plan is to restore us to the way He always intended us to be.
Romans 8:29 tells us God’s people were “ predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son. “ In simple words, that means that God has a plan for his children, and his plan is that his children, by grace, gradually become like His son, Jesus.
But, remember, God is pure love. The Bible teaches that “We love because he first loved us,” and, “This is what real love is: It is not our love for God; it is God's love for us in sending his Son to be the way to take away our sins.” (I John 4 : 19 and 10)
So if God made us to be loving, but instead we human beings fell away from his love, then the Bible is the story of his bringing us back to what his plan always was. He did that through the cross. God’s plan and intention and destiny for us is that we become loving like Jesus. But how does that happen?
Let me list three ways:
As I said last time, by his Spirit he gives us a new nature. He is the Creator, and he is able to recreate us through Jesus, changing us from fallen human beings into people with new hearts.
Also Jesus comes to live in us. If he, who is love, lives in us and fills us by his Spirit, then it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us. He is now living in us and loving through us. (Galatians 2:20 and Philippians 4:13 )
Finally we begin to love others not because they deserve it, but because Jesus died for them. It is when we realize that we ourselves didn’t deserve God’s love (it is completely un-merited) that we can begin to love others, regardless of whether we feel they deserve our love or not.
The really odd thing is that, as we discussed last time, when we love God with all that is in us, we suddenly begin to have so much more love for others than if we hadn’t put God first. As C.S. Lewis put it “because we love something else more than this world, we love even this world better than those who know no other.”
Winfield Casey Jones is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Pearland. This article first appeared in the Pearland Reporter News as a column.
Many people know that Jesus gave two great commandments. He said that these two commandments were foundational to all of the Ten Commandments which God had given earlier.
Jesus said, “ 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Matthew 22:37-40 NIV
But here’s the question: How in the world do you or I begin to love God with all that is in us, and how in the world do we begin to love others as we love ourselves? The truth is many people believe Jesus’ commands are impossible. But I don’t believe God is playing games with us, and I don’t believe Jesus gave us commands that could not be fulfilled.
So let’s take these questions in order. This week we will ask, “How can we love God with all that is in us?” In two weeks we will ask, “How can we love our neighbor s ourselves?”
How can we love God with all that is in us? The short answer is, by ourselves we can’t. We need help. As fallen human beings, part of our sinfulness is a selfishness that causes us to turn inwards and to put ourselves first. In Alcoholics Anonymous, participants have to admit, “I was powerless over my addiction…. I had to turn to my higher power.” Similarly, according to the Bible, all people have to get to the point where we can say, “I was powerless over the sin and addiction of self-centeredness in my life. I could only become God-centered and love God with my whole being through God’s Spirit.”
Here is a scripture that demonstrates this: “The fruit of the Spirit is love….” Galatians 5:22 . In other words to have the love that Jesus commanded us to have, we need God’s Spirit. Another way of saying the same thing is that unless God changes our hearts, we cannot love as Jesus commanded us. An Old Testament prophet, Ezekiel, talks about this. Through this prophet God tells how the change in us that makes love possible can happen: “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 and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Ezekiel 36:26-27 NIV.
So in order to fulfill the first of Jesus’s two commandments (Loving God with all that is in us) we need to ask Him, by His Spirit, to change our hearts. Let me close with the words of a song by Eddie Espinosa which express this very well:
“Change My Heart O God
Make it Ever True
Change My Heart O God
May I be Like You
You are the Potter I am the clay
Make me and mold me
This is what I pray
Change My Heart O God
Make it Ever True
Change My Heart O God
May I be Like You. “
Winfield Casey Jones is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Pearland
When local residents wake up on Sunday, November 7, they will discover that they have been given an extra hour due to the annual shift away from daylight savings time. People have many options for using that hour, but Pastor Casey Jones and First Presbyterian Church of Pearland invite those who may not be in the habit of attending church regularly to take this opportunity to begin to seek God by attending a local church. First Presbyterian of Pearland will be having a special “visitor Sunday” November 7 and invites all people to attend its 9:15 A.M. service where the message will be entitled, “Seeking God Together.”
According to Pastor Jones, “My message will focus on three truths in the Bible: 1. God definitely promises to reward those who are consistent in seeking Him; 2. Not even one seeker of God alive today has arrived or has been made perfect; 3. Seeking God works much better for us when we discover we do not have to do it alone but that we are all in the same boat and can pull together and help each other on the journey to God.”
Following worship, people are invited to a time of food and fellowship called “Perk up With Jesus Time” and, if they wish, to remain for Sunday school for children and adults at 11 A.M. The church is located at 2930 E. Broadway in Pearland, just north of Vic Coppinger YMCA, next to Discount Tire, and across from Kelley’s Restaurant. For more information on First Presbyterian Church of Pearland, visit the newly re-designed website at www.pearlandpres.org.
Today as I am writing this I had an experience that got my attention. It would be an understatement to say that it caused me to pause and think. Early today, I was on the way to the post office to mail two letters. I stopped at a four-way stop and then started to go through the intersection. Just as I was starting to accelerate, I saw to my left a car which was not slowing down for the stop sign. As I put my foot on the brake again, I saw this car speed through the intersection at about thirty miles an hour. I was driving a small car, and I hesitate to think about what this slightly larger car, going at that speed, would have done to me had it impacted the driver’s side door next to me.
A few minutes later, on the exercise bike at the YMCA, I thought in a new way about a scripture which I have been reflecting on lately. Psalm 127 : 1 says “Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stay awake in vain.” It is very clear to me that the Lord was watching over me today. I believe that after looking both ways, he caused me to glance again to my left and see the car coming. As I read Psalm 127:1 , it says that I can be as vigilant and careful as I like, but unless God watches over me, all my care and vigilance are in vain.
Of course, the point of this verse is not that cities do not need watchmen or that we do not need to be careful. The point is simply that our human efforts, in and of themselves, are not nearly enough. We must have God watching over us or our vigilance and our own self-care are in vain. Lately I have been trying to be vigilant and to take “care of myself.” I try to exercise daily, I have lost a little weight, and I go the doctor regularly. But Psalm 127:1 says that unless God watches over me, all my own watching over myself is for nothing!
Psalm 91 : 11 and 12 gives us this promise: “For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
2 Kings 6:15-17 says: “ When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. ‘Oh, my lord, what shall we do?’ the servant asked. ‘Don't be afraid,’ the prophet answered. ‘Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’ And Elisha prayed, ‘O Lord, open his eyes so he may see.’ Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”
Psalm 34:7 says: “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.”
1 Samuel 2:9 says, “He will guard the feet of his saints….It is not by strength that one prevails.”
One historical figure I admire for his faith is the Confederate General, Stonewall Jackson. Jackson was a fellow Presbyterian , but much more importantly he was a devout Christian. When asked about his fearlessness in battle he once said, “My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me." He added…"That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave." On another occasion after coming through a battle, Jackson said, “Our God was my shield. His protecting care is an additional cause for gratitude.”
I thank God for all the ways He cares for and protects you and me, many of which we take for granted, and about some of which we are even unaware. I want always to try to be vigilant and careful, but I also give God glory that He cares for you and me and He has sustained us all though life up until this very hour. Truly we are in His hands.
(this article first appeared in the Pearland-Reporter News, used by permission)
