From Head to Heart

In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence (Ephesians 3:12 NKJV).

The Bible makes a very interesting but subtle distinction in this area of Scripture.  Paul is telling us that we are able to approach God with freedom and confidence based on two conditions, which at first glance seem synonymous, but are not.  Our ability to approach God is based certainly upon our faith in Christ, but not that alone.  It is based equally upon our position in Christ.  There are many people who believe in Jesus, but are not in Jesus.  I was one of them for many years.  I believed in who Jesus was in the same way I believed in who Abraham Lincoln was.  It was completely a head knowledge that had no impact whatsoever on my life.  Not until I transferred that information from my head to my heart did I find myself “in Christ.”

Our faith in Christ must go beyond the intellectual understanding of the facts about Jesus.  Yes He is the Son of God, lived on planet earth for 33 years, was crucified, buried, and rose from the dead, and His life and legacy was to rid the earth of sin.  That information is critical to the story of redemption, but the facts alone do not redeem.  When those facts become pertinent to me personally is when transformation happens.  When I have the “aha” moment to realize that Jesus didn’t die just for the “sins of the world,” but for “my sins” specifically, it begins to become personal.  And when it dawns on me that He didn’t just raise from the dead and go sit down on the right hand of God, but is alive and looking straight in my eyes for a response to these facts, that’s when the knowledge goes from my head to my heart and I am no longer able to have a mere distant respect for the Son of God, but am able to be embraced by the passionate love of a Savior who gave His life for ME!

There are many people who call themselves Christians today because they have given a mental assent to the facts of the Gospel, but they are no more positioned to approach God than someone who does not believe at all.  That’s why you see this distinction between our position in Christ and our faith in Christ in other areas of Paul’s writings as well:

For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation (Romans 10:10 NKJV).

To be positioned “in Christ” requires an interaction with the heart.  Anyone can say they believe in Jesus, but a heart touched by God will say it without words.  A changed life is the outcome of being confronted by a personal realization of how much God’s intimate sacrifice cost in order to allow me personally to be “in Christ.”

Lord, I am grateful for the facts of the Gospel, but I am overwhelmed and engulfed in the reality of their implication in my life.  Help me live “in Christ” today in a way that adequately expresses the radical change that transition brings.

Wisdom of God

God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places (Ephesians 3:10 NLT)

Paul is writing to the Ephesians from a dark and nasty cell in Rome where he is imprisoned for the sake of the Gospel.  Yet, as he pens this amazing letter, he states that “all this,” and the all includes his imprisonment, is to display the wisdom of God. 

The average Christian has to stop here and ask the question, “Really?  God, did you really think it was smart to stick Paul in a deplorable Roman prison, devoid of the basic necessities of life, cold, lonely, and – worst of all – out of circulation for spreading the Gospel?” 

That’s when the words of Isaiah, the prophet, come rushing to mind,

 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:9 NKJV).

In deed, God’s thoughts and wisdom are higher than ours because ours are all wrapped up, for the most part, in this life and staying within our comfort zones.  The thought of being “on fire” for Jesus really only goes so far as we passionately tell a few folks about Him.  It never includes being sawn in two, like the man through whom God penned those words about His thoughts.

Paul understood, like not many men in this world, that his external circumstances had nothing at all to do with his mission in this life.  As he stated in another book, he had learned how to abase and abound, which meant he was oblivious to his surroundings and was completely focused on the task at hand – which was to present the Gospel.  So, from the dark and miserable Roman prison, Paul writes one of the brightest and most exhilarating letters of his career.  And chances are, had he been out and about, he might not have found the time to pen most of the New Testament, which was written in these times of being “out of circulation.” 

So, in God’s wisdom, He chooses to use the foolish things to confound the wise, the low things for the high calling, the servant to be master, and death to be the doorway to life.  And as the drama of the human race plays out on the theater of planet earth, the Heavenly hosts stand in awe of the wisdom of God.

Lord, grant me your wisdom today to play my part in your holy script.

Faith Displayed Through Love

Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God’s people everywhere . . . (Ephesians 1:15 NLT)

This is an interesting combination of thoughts that Paul uses again with the Colossians: since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints; (Colossians 1:4)

Strong faith in Jesus and love for God’s people usually go hand in hand.  So, it is always suspect when someone says that they love God but don’t really care of their brothers and sisters in Christ.  The Bible tells us that the love of Christ will compel us (2 Corinthians 5:14) and in 1 John 4:20, we read:

If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?

So, we can easily see that the love of God will ultimately produce a love for His people.  It is probably safe to say, then, that when that love for God’s people is absent, then there is probably a diminished amount of love of God going on as well.  If we take this as a barometer for our lives, it becomes a good measure of how we are really doing in our walk with the Lord.  If I am connecting to Jesus in an unfettered way, then I should be abounding with the love of God towards others.  When my love towards others is waning, then it is time to seriously consider the connection of my heart to Christ’s.

It is so easy to convince myself that I am good with God; that I love Him and really want to live for Him.  Yet, this love for others will always be the card that calls the bluff.  Talk is cheap and good intentions don’t get me one iota down the road I want to go.  In the same way I may want to stay at my desired weight with all my heart, if I keep eating out of control, I literally have a fat chance of doing so.  But until my desire to be thin outweighs (pun intended) my desire to eat, I will be locked into the battle of competing commitments and losing the war at the end of the day.  So, as much as I may want to impact the world for Christ, if my behavior does not reflect first and foremost a love for people, then I don’t have a prayer of doing so.  Until my desire to make that impact grows stronger than my desire to have the last word, get the upper hand, be right – and all those other ungodly and unloving selfish ambitions, then I will always fall far short of the glorious goal of God’s plan for my life.

Yet again another attribute of faith that makes it crystal clear why faith is so important to God and why without it we cannot please Him.  It is by faith that I am able to love the world in a way that leaves a lasting impact.   The more faith I have in Christ, the more I will see the world through His eyes and not my own.

Lord, increase my faith, please.  It is obvious to me now that my love falls far short of yours.  My own earthly understanding of love must decrease and your Heavenly perspective of love must increase.  Please give me the faith I need to impact my world today.