Imitating Christ – Part 2. 1 Thess. 1:3-7
What
we need to do as pastors and teachers is give people some organizing
principles, some coat hangers, as it were, so that they can hang the ten
spiritual skills that they are developing in their Christian life.
We
have a flow chart here so that we can understand GodÕs plan for our life and
how He is moving us through our Christian life ultimately to the end game at
glorification. Remember there are three phases to the Christian life. Stage one
is called salvation or justification. It happens in a moment in time when we
trust in Jesus Christ as savior. We are free from the penalty of sin so that
our eternal destiny is secure—heaven with the Lord as a member of the
bride of Christ, the church. Then we enter into phase two. This is not a moment
of time; it is the whole process of our life in time. Phase one is an instant
when we trust in Christ, but in phase two we are working out our salvation,
working out the consequences of that new life in Christ, and we are learning to
walk by means of the Holy Spirit, learning to walk in the light, learning to
walk by means of truth, learning the Word of God so that it reshapes our
thinking. We call this phase two sanctification. We are being saved from the
power of sin on a day-to-day basis, learning to walk in light of our new
position in Christ and not in light of our old position as an unregenerate
slave of unrighteousness. Then at death or the Rapture we are absent from the
body and face to face with the Lord, we are saved from the presence of sin and
we spend eternity with God in heaven. At the judgment seat of Christ we will
receive rewards based upon how well we did in terms of walking by the Spirit.
These rewards have to do ultimately with our roles and responsibilities in the
millennial kingdom and on into eternity as members of the body of Christ. Those
who do not do well will, the Scripture says, suffer loss, but they will enter
the kingdom. They will enter the kingdom but they wonÕt have positions of
responsibility, they wonÕt be close to the Lord, they wonÕt be in a position of
intimate fellowship.
Phase
one salvation: We trust in Christ and at that instant we are justified. We
receive the imputation of ChristÕs righteousness, which means that God credits
to our account the righteousness of Christ so that when God looks at what was
formerly a bankrupt account what He sees is a note that says donÕt worry about
the bankruptcy of this account. Instead, redirect to this other account that
has untold millions in it, and that is the basis for the accreditation of this
former account that was bankrupt. It is depicted in Scripture as a robe of
righteousness. So even though we are still sinners, even though we are still
corrupt because of sin, we receive ChristÕs righteousness
which covers that. It is ChristÕs righteousness which
is the basis for our justification, not our righteousness.
Recently
I spoke with Jim Meyers. He was talking about a church that he has been
teaching in in Kiev. One lady came up to him after
about his third lesson when he was going through Romans chapter four and Said:
ÒI have been coming to this church for twenty years and I have never heard
about imputation.Ó How very sad, but how very common today in a world where
pastors frequently fail to explain and teach the Word of God. This is one of
the most glorious doctrines of Scripture. My standing before God isnÕt based on
who I am or what I do; it is based on who Jesus is and what He did at the
cross. Our salvation is dependent upon His righteousness, not what we do or
what we havenÕt done. That is phase one, our freedom from the penalty of sin.
Once
we are saved the question is: what do we do then? James chapter one talks about
tests—tests of faith. Actually that should be understood as testing and
evaluating the teaching that we have assimilated into our soul. We are going to
learn things from the Word of God and then God is going to take us into tests
day in and day out to see if we will apply what He has taught us and what He
has said. And se we have these tests of doctrine in James 1:2-4. ÒThe testing
of your faith produces enduranceÓ. We hit the test, it is unexpected, and we
have a choice to make. Are we going to apply the Word of God or are we going to
go our own way. Are we going to do it like we have always done it and use those
self-protective sinful strategies we have developed through most of our life,
functioning in arrogance, or are we going to trust the Word of God that is
sufficient for us and has given us everything that we need in order to have
real, genuine happiness and stability in life?
So
we have these tests of doctrine. The tests emphasize our personal
responsibility, our volition, and we can either be positive or negative. If we are
positive and we apply the Word of God then we go through a process. When we are
applying the Word then because that is energized by God the Holy Spirit,
empowered by God the Holy Spirit—1 Thessalonians 1:5 NASB Òfor our gospel did not
come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with
full conviction ÉÓ That is, by means of power and by means of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit provides the power and the ability to live the Christian
life—this produces divine good and it produces life, qualitative life,
the abundant life that Jesus promised that is ours right now if we live in
light of the Word of God. This is turn, according to Romans 12:2 produces
evidence: evidence that GodÕs plan is good and righteous and holy, and it produces
evidence before the angels in the angelic conflict, and evidence before all
mankind to the veracity of GodÕs Word, the goodness of God and His love for us.
That goes on to produce, as we see in Romans chapter five, steadfast endurance.
The more we practice perseverance the easier it becomes.
But it is never going to be really
easy, is it? Sometimes it is just hard. Sometimes we want to just give up. We
feel like the burden on us is so heavy. But we have to learn that promise: God
will not temp us beyond what we are able (1 Corinthians 10:13). He will make a
way to escape that so that we may be able to endure it. God is faithful and
will not allow us to be tested beyond our ability. He is in control. So
whenever we go through a test and things seem to be too heavy for us, too hard
for us, and we just want to give up and quit the race, God has given us a vote
of confidence by putting us under that circumstance and in that situation. He
knows that we can handle it because we have the Word of God to do it. The issue
is: are we willing to just do what God says to do? Are we willing to apply the
truth?
So that produces steadfast endurance
and over time and leads to spiritual maturity and spiritual adulthood. In
contrast, if we reject GodÕs Word and try to handle the problem on our own,
then this either produces sin or it produces human good. The Bible says that
either way it is temporal death. We are living like an unbeliever, like a
spiritually dead person. It is not producing anything of eternal value, anything
of eternal consequence, or that glorifies God. And it leads eventually to
spiritual weakness and instability in our lives, what James calls a two-souled person: somebody who just waffles back and forth and
their life is characterized by emotional instability because they donÕt have
the Word of God. Eventually, continuing down that path, continuing to walk
according to the sin nature, this will lead to spiritual regression. That
person will begin to lose ground spiritually and reversing course, and this will
lead to a hardened heart. So the issue is: which cycle do we want to spend most
of our time in? The upper cycle, walking by the Spirit, or the lower cycle?
If we are walking in the lower cycle
the way to go up is to first of all confess our sin. That is the first
spiritual skill. The second spiritual skill is walking by means of the Holy
Spirit. The way to walk by the Spirit is to utilize the faith-rest drill, grace
orientation and doctrinal orientation, as well as the other spiritual skills.
At the end of life we die. Some, in the
Rapture generation, will be taken instantly in the blink of an eye to be face
to face with the Lord in heaven. At which point we end up at the judgment seat
of Christ. All of our works are going to be evaluated, and for those that are
produced out of a walk by the Spirit there is going to be rewards and
inheritance—that which lasts eternally, that which impacts our eternal
position both in the millennial kingdom and in eternity as members of the body
of Christ and the bride of Christ. For some, all their works will be burned up
because they are wood, hay and straw, according to 1 Corinthians 3:11ff, and
the result is going to be temporary shame at the judgment seat of Christ.
1 Thessalonians 1:3 NASB
Òconstantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and
steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and
Father.Ó
That helps us to understand what Paul
is saying in terms of faith, hope and love. Work of faith: the faith-rest drill,
grace orientation and doctrinal orientation. Those three all work together.
Faith always has an object, which is the Word of God. Grace orientation always
helps us understand the motivation for learning the Word and the right
attitude, which is humility. Patience or endurance of hope focuses on the
second level of growth (adolescence); our confident expectation: living today
in light of eternity, and labor of love indicates our work in serving God from
our personal love for God the Father. All of this is Òin our Lord Jesus ChristÓ
because we are in Him as believers in Christ. ÒIn the presence of God the
FatherÓ, who is omniscient and omnipresent and continuously observing what we
are doing, how we are living, how we learning, how we are loving
in the Christian life, and how we are growing.
1 Thessalonians 1:4 NASB
Òknowing, brethren beloved by God, {His} choice of you.Ó This is one of those
verses taken out of context, which seems to support a somewhat determinative
view of history. Several different views of people have been put forth. One has
to do with impersonal determination; another says that everything is pure, raw,
random chance.
The Bible splits the difference. In
some ways one is true and in other ways the other is true. God in His
sovereignty is so powerful and so capable under His omnipotence that He is able
to guide and direct history and the details of history according to His plan
without violating individual human responsibility. That means that as free
agents, even though that freedom is affected by sin, it is not destroyed. We do
not become automatized; we are not robots. God is not
running the universe according to some arbitrary mechanistic plan, but it is
governed by His love and by His omniscience.
The ÒknowingÓ in v. 4 is a causative
participle. He is saying, ÒBecause we knowÓ. That is what he is saying to the
Thessalonians: you and I are brethren in Christ and you know something because
I have taught you; Òyour election (His choice of
you)Ó. Election is a word that indicates choice or selection and, in this case,
by God. It is easy to read a false theology into this without doing our
homework on what the Bible teaches about election. Election has to be a choice.
God makes elective choices in history for different reasons, not all of which
are soteriological. In fact, He doesnÕt choose who
will go to heaven and who will go to hell; that is a fatalistic deterministic
doctrine that came out of Augustinian theology. The more I read and discover
Augustine the more I realize that he was affected more by pagan philosophy than
he was the Word of God. That was resurrected during the Protestant Reformation.
Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk before he was saved and before he left
the Roman Catholic Church. These doctrines were also picked up
by John Calvin and his followers during the Reformation period.
Later on there were challenges to that
and the major battle in Reformation history in the early 1600s. In 1614 there
was the Synod of Dort where the Arminians who held
the one view challenged the Calvinists. The Arminians
selected a purely random viewpoint of history. There was true freedom in all of
history so that a person could even be saved and then lose his salvation.
Everything was ultimately based on human determination. In high Calvinism
everything is determined by God—everything. I donÕt believe that either
are true or that either reflect the Word of God.
God, of course, is sovereign.
Ultimately God oversees everything in history. But the question is: do we have
a small God who oversees history by causing people to either believe or not
believe. That is a very small God. A greater God is one that can still
accomplish His purposes but without determining the choices of human
individuals.
1 Peter 1:2 gives us a little help with
this. NASB Òaccording to the foreknowledge of God the Father ÉÓ
According to a standard, and that standard is the foreknowledge of God.
Foreknowledge is an interesting term because among Calvinists foreknowledge has
been redefined as knowledge ahead of time, or prescience, but that
foreknowledge is that which is part of GodÕs knowledge which
determines what will actually happen. In high Calvinism God canÕt know anything
until He first foreknows it. In high Calvinism God does not know the
alternatives; God does not know the hypotheticals;
God does not know the ifs of history. It is clear from
Jesus that He knows exactly the what-ifs of history, for He told Capernaum and
other cities that rejected Him that if Sodom and Gomorrah had seen what they
had seen they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. He knows
what would have happened under a different set of circumstances. This means
that GodÕs knowledge is not determinative and that GodÕs omniscience is not
based on His foreknowledge, but foreknowledge comes out of His omniscience.
A sub-category of knowing all the
knowable is knowing what will happen in contrast to
what might happen, what could have happened, what should have happened under
different circumstances. And so foreknowledge is GodÕs knowledge ahead of time.
In the Calvinist-Arminian debate over election the
issue is: on what basis does God choose who will be saved and who will not be
saved? Is this simply a random arbitrary selection process that God makes apart
from knowledge some time in eternity past. In the
Calvinist view God cannot know what will happen until He first determines what
will happen, and so God determines that X number of people will be saved and He
identifies those individuals. Because He has identified them, then in history
they will believe in Christ and will show evidence of that. That leads
logically to lordship salvation. It is a perverse teaching that violates the
standards of Scripture and imposes a human system upon the Bible. It is just
fallacious.
Foreknowledge still doesnÕt tell us
what the criterion is that God uses to makes those
elections. What we know is that that the gospel states that whosoever will is saved. That puts the ultimate responsibility for
salvation on the individual. Just because there is no clear statement of a
criterion doesnÕt mean there is no criterion. Absence of evidence is not
evidence of absence. God chooses on the basis of something in His knowledge.
There are two choices. Logically He chooses on the basis of knowledge or He
chooses apart from knowledge. If it is apart from knowledge then it is
arbitrary and it is irrational. If it is on the basis of knowledge then there
is information that God takes into account as He makes this selection. Whereas
we donÕt have a specific statement of Scripture as to what that is we have
enough information in Scripture where we can come to a pretty good conclusion
that that basis is GodÕs understanding of what an individual does at the point
of gospel hearing; that when a person believes in Jesus Christ he enters into
Christ, and because he is in Christ, the elect one, he is then elect himself by
virtue of his position in Christ. This is all understood and known in the
foreknowledge of God in eternity past. So we are elect according to the
foreknowledge of God, not according to random arbitrary choices made by a God
who is irrational. That is ultimately where Calvinism goes although they will
deny it with their dying breath.
So verse 4 states that we know that we are
selected by God. That also guarantees our eternal salvation and eternal
security.
Then Paul explains this a little
further in terms of how he has been praying for the Thessalonians. 1
Thessalonians 1:5 NASB Òfor our gospel did not come to you in word
only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just
as you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.Ó
The word ÒgospelÓ is the
Greek word euangelion, which means
good news. The English word ÒgospelÓ comes from old English—god
(pronounced goad), meaning good; and spel, meaning news. So it is an
accurate translation of old English of the meaning of the Greek word. The eu at the beginning of the Greek word
means something that is good or pleasant; angelion
relates to an announcement or news.
We have some passages
where we have a narrow use of ÒgospelÓ which refers only to that aspect of
Christian teaching that tells us what we need to do in order to have eternal
life. But then we also have a broader use of Òthe gospelÓ. For
example, in Romans 1:16 where Paul says, ÒFor I am not ashamed of the gospel,
for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes ÉÓ The gospel
is related to power which we might translate ÒabilityÓ. It is not like a
mystical or metaphysical power, it is an ability that God has. Salvation here
is not justification. This word group based on the verb sozo (here it is the noun soterion)
never refers to phase one salvation or justification in Romans. It is not a
synonym for justification in Romans, it refers to the entire process (all three
phases): phase one, justification; phase two, sanctification; phase three,
glorification. So this word isnÕt just restricting the gospel to just what a
person needs to be saved, to believe in order to be justified.
In 1 Corinthians 15:1
Paul says, NASB ÒNow I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which
I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, [2] by
which also you are saved ÉÓ Notice the present tense there. It is an ongoing
reality of the spiritual life. ÒÉ if you hold fast the
word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.Ó Holding fast
doesnÕt have to do with justification but with the ongoing spiritual life.
[3] ÒFor I
delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died
for our sins according to the Scriptures, [4] and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the
third day according to the Scriptures ÉÓ And then the sentence goes on. Some
people believe that this defines the gospel content. But if this defines the
gospel content, that I not only have to believe that Jesus died, not only have
to believe He was buried, not only have to believe He rose on the third day,
but I also have to believe that He appeared to Cephas
and to James and to the 500. And if I donÕt believe all of that then I am not
justified. But I donÕt know too many people who want to include the appearance
of Jesus to Peter and James as part of their gospel presentation. This is a
broad use of the word gospel; it means the Christian teaching. All of Christian
doctrine is good news.
Sometimes we just talk
about the foundational element, which is phase one. Here in 1 Thessalonians 1:5
he is using good news in its broad sense: our gospel, our message, good news,
teaching about the entirety of the Christian life from new birth to face to
face with the Lord in 1 Thessalonians 4:17. Paul says this was their message,
and it didnÕt come just by word. They saw manifestations of GodÕs ability as
people who responded in transformed lives. We are not told about miracles that
Paul may have performed there. That is not out of the question. As an apostle
in the first century he clearly had the ability as a sign of his apostleship to
perform certain signs and wonders.
Paul says, their gospel didnÕt come to
the Thessalonians simply as a message but they also understood its power, the
power of changed lives. It was by means of the Holy Spirit who is the change
agent in the Christian life. He is the one who convicts when people hear the
gospel and makes clear to them the issues of the gospel so that they
understood. Ò É and with full
convictionÓ. The Greek word plerophoria
means confidence. So they understood with confidence the message of the gospel.
Second, he says that this was also evidence in our life: you knew what kind of
men we were among you. As a result É
1 Thessalonians 1:6 NASB
ÒYou also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in
much tribulation with the joy of the Holy SpiritÓ. It wasnÕt that they wanted
to be like Paul, it is that they wanted to imitate
Jesus Christ. Paul and his followers were imitating Christ as they walked by
the Spirit. Receiving the Word in much tribulation is the role of coming under
opposition, under adversity and pressure, and in their case coming under
persecution. They had joy in the Spirit. They are already pushing on in terms
of James 1:2 NASB ÒConsider it all joy, my brethren, when you
encounter various trials, [3] knowing that the testing of your faith produces
enduranceÓ. As a result of that: 1 Thessalonians 1:7 NASB Òso that
you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.Ó
That is true for us. As
God the Holy Spirit works in our lives we become examples for other people to
see how we live. We donÕt react the same way unbelievers do. They see a
difference—or they should see a difference in our lives.
1 Thessalonians 1:8 NASB
ÒFor the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and
Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that
we have no need to say anything.Ó
This tells us how they
became examples. Their reputation went every place. People heard about what
happened to those believers in Thessalonica. This was high praise from Paul.
They hadnÕt been saved that long but the transformation was so profound that it
had built a reputation that was going far and wide because of what the Lord
Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit was doing in their lives. That should be true
of every believer.
Reaching
a certain level of spiritual adolescence or spiritual maturity is not a
life-long process. It can be achieved very rapidly. Paul castigated the
Corinthians because they werenÕt mature within just a couple of years. Too
often people think it takes a lifetime of Bible study. Well it takes a lifetime
of study to understand the fullness of the Bible but it doesnÕt take long to
figure out a lot of basic principles of the Christian life and to at least reach
a level of spiritual maturity so that a person can start being really and truly
used by God and serving Him.