Ephesians, Part IV May 8, 2009
Posted by questcollegeministry in Bible, faith, following God, Quest.Tags: Bible, christian living, christianity, religion
add a comment
Over the last several weeks, we’ve been using the book of Ephesians as a way to look at the question. Here is some of what we talked about along those lines in our discussion of Ephesians 4:
- Unity is a major topic in this chapter. Paul stresses how the followers of Jesus all believe the same thing and we are all part of the same body. In fact, in verses 4-6 Paul uses the word “one” 7 times. We are all bound together by the things we have in common in Jesus Christ. Everyone who says that they follow Jesus should have these things in common. We are all on the same team.
- In the middle of this unity, there is a great deal of diversity. In Ephesians 4:11, Paul mentions 5 different types of people with different jobs within the Church – and these are just types of jobs that are designed to help equip followers of Jesus for the work of ministry. In other places in his letters, Paul lists still other jobs and gifts that God has given different people for their work in the Church and in the world. Different people have different interests, skills and abilities, so God gives them different jobs and gifts so that together the body of Christ can be as effective as possible at affecting the world for Jesus.
- Maintaining unity in the midst of diversity can be a difficult thing. It can be very easy to think “that person isn’t as good as me because they don’t have the same gifts and the same job as I do.” Or sometimes it can go the other way – “I’m not as good as that person because they have more gifts and a better job in the church than I do.” Either attitude can lead to rivalry, hurt feelings, and disunity. These kinds of feelings can make it difficult to remember that all followers of Jesus are on the same team and that we should always be working together.
- Paul addresses this potential problem in two ways. First, he urges us to walk “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing one another in love” (4:1). Paul knows that if we are humble, gentle and patient, and if we always have love as the primary way that we deal with others, disunity won’t be a problem. If we can do those things, we won’t be jealous of what we feel like other people have that we don’t, and we won’t be proud or arrogant about what we feel like we have that other people don’t. I really think that these four traits – humility, gentleness, patience, and love – go a long way to maintaining unity. The second thing that Paul does is that he compares the church to a physical body. Our bodies have lots of different parts, and each one has its own function. If any part doesn’t work well, the entire body suffers. And no part can go it alone without the other parts. Paul is saying that the church, which is the body of Christ, works the same way. There are lots of different parts, but they are all necessary. If we don’t all work together, then the entire body suffers. Paul knows that unity is crucial for the church to be as effective as possible in the world.
- If we are going to live like a follower or Jesus, we are going to need to live our lives differently than we did before we decided to follow Jesus. In the second half of this chapter, Paul talks again to the gentiles. In the first half of the book, Paul repeatedly talked about how the gentiles were on equal footing with God as the Jews. God doesn’t see the gentiles as being any different than the Jews. Both have the same access to God. But now, Paul tells the gentiles that, as followers of Jesus, they should no longer live as the gentiles do. Paul says that we need to “put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (4:22-24). Paul recognizes that in our lives without Jesus, we conform to the actions and ideas of our culture, but these things don’t line up with the desires of God. Paul lists some of the elements of everyday life, such as sensuality, greed, impurity and falsehood. These are things that we still see in the culture around us today. Paul reminds us that these things don’t match up with who Jesus is or what God wants. Therefore, we need to put these things aside. These are part of the “old self” that we should be putting away. Instead, we should be putting on the “new self,” which includes things like righteousness, holiness, truth, building each other up, giving grace to others, kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiving others. Paul makes it clear that following Jesus should have an impact how we live our lives. The things we do and the way we interact with others should be different because of our relationship with Jesus.
This should give you a good idea of what we talked about concerning Ephesians chapter 4. Look for a discussion of Ephesians chapters 5 and 6 in the next few days.
Ephesians, Part I May 1, 2009
Posted by questcollegeministry in Bible, christianity, faith, Quest, spirituality.Tags: Bible, christianity, religion, spirituality
add a comment
Over the last several weeks at Quest, we have been discussing what our lives will look like if we are truly following Jesus. We recognize that as we follow Jesus our lives and our character will begin to change. That change should affect us both internally and in how we interact with the world around us. We started looking at these ideas in the book of James. Last week, we moved out of the book of James and began discussing the book of Ephesians. Here is some of what we talked about concerning Ephesians 1.
- Paul wrote this letter to the people of the church of Ephesus, although it was likely intended to also circulate among the other churches in the region. The letter was for everyone in the church, so some of its readers would have been well established in their faith, while others would have been new to the church and just checking out this whole “Jesus thing.” It is important to remember that Paul is writing to people who are already part of the church. That means that he is assuming that they already understand who Jesus is and what the message of the Gospel says. You can see this assumption in how he quickly summarizes the story and importance of Jesus in about 3 verses (Eph. 1:19-21). He assumes that his readers already understand the stuff in the first couple hundred pages of the New Testament. He is trying to build on what they already know and believe. He is adding explanation and details to what they know, and he is trying to help them figure out how to put it into practice in their lives. When reading the epistles in the New Testament, we need to read them through the lens of the Gospels, because Paul is assuming that his readers already understand that part of the story.
- We’ve been adopted by God as sons. This is a big deal, for a couple of reasons. First, Paul is making it clear that God has accepted Gentiles on the same basis as the Jews. In the Old Testament, God belonged almost exclusively to the Jews. If someone from the outside wanted to worship God, they essentially needed to become culturally Jewish. If they didn’t become Jewish in every way, then they weren’t permitted to worship God. After Jesus, this is no longer the case. Everyone who is willing to follow Jesus has been adopted into the spiritual family of Abraham. Gentile believers in Jesus have the same inheritance as the Jewish believers in Jesus.
- The even more significant message here is something that is easy to miss for those of us with a 21st century, Western view on adoption. In our society, we generally adopt children as an alternative way of having a family. We adopt children, and then raise them into the family. This is not typically what adoption mean in the 1st Century Roman world. In that time, many women died in childbirth, and many people died early in life. Also, it was only the sons who inherited from the parents. (Women would be married, and so they would benefit from their husband’s inheritance.) It was not uncommon for an influential or wealthy man to have no son to inherit his property. Rather than having the property go to some other, more distant part of the family, these men would adopt someone, who would then become their heir. However, they did not adopt children. Instead, they would find someone who was already an adult, and whose character they admired. In adopting this person, they would essentially be saying “you are worthy enough to be my son.” That is what God does for us. In spite of the fact that we are sinful, in spite of the fact that we have damaged our relationship with God, because of the sacrifice of Jesus, God looks at the followers of Jesus and says “you are worthy to be my child.” What an amazing, powerful, humbling thing.
- In verse 18, Paul says that he prays that the eyes of our hearts will be enlightened so that we know the hope to which he has called us and that we will know how rich and glorious his blessings are. Right before Quest, I had been reading some of the stories about Elisha in 2 Kings. In one of the stories, the enemies of Israel sent an army to capture Elisha. As the enemy surrounded the city, Elisha’s servant became afraid. When he asked Elisha what they should do, Elisha prayed that God would open his servant’s eyes. When God did, the servant saw and army of chariots of fire surrounding the invaders. One of the lessons of this story is that God is always at work, and there is always more going on than we see or understand. Like Elisha prayed for his servant, Paul is praying for his readers that our eyes will truly be opened to the things that God is doing and that we will truly be able to see those things that God is doing around us.
- Paul also prays that God will give us a spirit of wisdom and understanding so that we will know him better. One of the things that this tells us is that we will never completely and fully know and understand God. In one sense, some people may find this discouraging because it tells us that we will never fully “arrive.” We will never get to the point that we completely know and understand everything about God. On the other hand, this can also be very refreshing. It tells us that our relationship with God should never get stale. There is always something more to learn about God. There are always going to be ways that we can get to know him better. In fact, we can spend all of eternity with God and still be learning more about him. That’s a very cool, very amazing thing.
This should give you a good idea of what we talked about concerning Ephesians chapter 1. We also recognized that chapter 1 is really a kind of preview and introduction to the rest of the book. Paul covers a number of topics quickly before diving into the meat of what he wants to say in his letter. Next week, we will begin to get into the meat of the letter in chapter 2.
What should we do? Part III March 24, 2009
Posted by questcollegeministry in Bible, christianity, faith, following God, Quest, spirituality.Tags: Bible, christian living, christianity, following Jesus, religion, spirituality
add a comment
At Quest, we have been continuing to discuss the question of what we should be doing if we are really going to be followers of Jesus. We’ve been using the book of James to help us explore the answer to that question. As we have looked at this question, we have noticed that there really is both an internal and and external response to this question. The internal response to following Jesus is a spiritual response that affects the development of our character and our relationship with God. The external response relates to the world around us and affects our relationship with others and the actions we take in our life. In Part III of our discussion, we looked at James chapter 3. Here is some of what we discussed:
* The first part of the chapter talks a lot about the tongue and what we say. It compares the tongue to the rudder of a ship or the bit in the mouth of a horse. A rudder is small compared to the size of the ship. The bit is small compared to the size of the horse. However, both are used for control and steering. It is rudder that guides the ship to where the captain wants it to go. If you can control the rudder, you can control the ship. However, if the rudder is broken, it becomes impossible to make the ship go where you want it to. Similarly, our tongues can help us get to where we want to go in life.
* We could all think of times when we said things that caused damage to ourselves or our relationships with others. Sometimes, it’s because we intentionally decide to say hurtful things. Other times it’s because we were just talking, and something came out. In those cases, there was no hurt intended, but hurt certainly happened. Unfortunately, once you say something, you can’t un-say it. It’s out there. No matter how hard you reach or grab, you can’t get it back. When we don’t watch what we say, we can hurt people, and when followers of Jesus hurt people, it can drive them away from Jesus.
* So part of our response to following Jesus is going to be controlling what we say externally. This fits in with James’ instruction in 1:10 that we should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger. If we can consistently do those things, we should be able to watch what we say. However, this is more difficult than you might think. In fact, James tells us that “If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.” (James 3:2). This is because, as Jesus said, it is “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” (Matthew 12:34). As we come closer to Jesus, we should see a change in our character. As our heart changes, what comes out of our mouth should change as well.
* In the second half of the chapter, James talks about wisdom. He reminds us that the wisdom from heaven is pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial, and sincere. (James 3:17). When we are truly following Jesus, we should see these characteristics showing up in our lives. These should be replacing the wisdom of the world, which is based in bitter envy and selfish ambition. (v. 13-16) This envy and selfish ambition lead to disorder and every evil practice.
* As we truly follow after Jesus, we should see our character change. As our character changes, we should see the things that we say and the things that we do start to change, because those things spring from our character.
That should give you a good feel for our conversation about James 3. Next time, we’ll take a look at James chapter 4.
What should we do? Part II March 22, 2009
Posted by questcollegeministry in Bible, christianity, faith, following God, Quest, spirituality.Tags: Bible, christian living, church, religion, spirituality
1 comment so far
At Quest, we have been looking at the question of “what should we do?” If we are really going to be followers of Jesus, what should we be doing? As we have looked at this question, we have noticed that there are two different aspects to the answer. There is a spiritual response to following Jesus that is largely internal and that affects the development of our character and our relationship with God. There is also an aspect of the answer that relates to the world around us. This is largely an external response that will affect our relationship with others and the actions we take in our life. We’ve started looking at these answers to the question “what should we do?” by looking at the book of James. Recently at Quest, we looked at James chapter 2. Here is some of what we talked about:
* In some ways, James 2 is a very easy chapter. It is very straightforward, which means that it doesn’t really invite much discussion. What James is saying is very clear. The hard part about James 2 (and much of the book of James, really) is the challenge of putting into practice. It is easy to internally respond with “yeah, but…” The key is to actually put it into practice.
* One of the two major topics of the chapter is sin. Sin comes down to one of two things: either doing things that we shouldn’t or not doing things that we should. A message that comes through loud and clear is that God doesn’t rank sins. People have the tendency to say that some things are worse than others. Murder is considered a “worse” sin than lying. Some sins seem to even become acceptable in churches. Gossip is a good example of this. While most Christians would tell you that gossip is wrong, it is still prevalent in the church because “it’s not that bad.” But while sins like these are tolerated, other sins are not. Some sins are considered to be so bad that someone who committed that sin would not be welcome in the church. James tells us that this type of thinking is flawed. James 2:10 makes it clear that a sin is a sin. Whoever breaks only one part of God’s law is guilty of breaking every part of God’s law. God sees every sin is the same. To him gossip is the same as lying, and they are both the same as murder.
* James also address the sin of partiality. In the first part of the chapter, James addresses an issue that had become a problem for his readers. They were treating some people who came to their gatherings as better than others. They were showing special favoritism to the rich and important people who came, and they were treating newcomers who were poor badly. While the specific issue was one of treating the rich better than the poor, the general rule James lays down applies in any situation where there are different types of people. James tells us that when we show partiality towards people, we are violating the command to “love our neighbor as our self,” and when we do that, we sin. (James 2:8-9). If we treat one group of people better than another group, we are not demonstrating to the group we are treating poorly. We are not loving them as we love ourselves.
* What we see is that one of our responses to having a relationship with Jesus is that we will love our neighbors as ourselves. When you think about it, most of the things that the Bible talks about as sins are violations of love toward God or people. In other words, the things that are sinful are the things where we demonstrate that we love ourselves more than God or more than others. If I am showing love toward someone, I won’t kill them or steal their things. If I am demonstrating love toward Cheryl, I won’t commit adultery. If we can get to the point where we are consistently showing love to everyone, the problem with sin should take care of itself. We won’t be committing sin because we won’t be violating the love we have toward people and God.
* The second major topic in this chapter is the balance between faith and works. James addresses the question of whether or not it is possible to have faith without works. This can be a tricky subject. Too much emphasis on works, or the things we do, leads to the place where we start thinking that we earn our relationship with God. This doesn’t match what we see in the Bible about our relationship coming through grace, which is a gift that can’t be earned. So the extreme response against the idea of a works-based relationship with God is to rely solely on faith, with no works at all. But James tells us that this kind of faith without works is dead. He says that the way show that we have faith is by the works that we do, or the actions we take.
* Faith and belief in God should result in action. We should live out the principles that we learn from Jesus. If we live them out, it should have an effect on the actions we take as we go around in the world we live in. We should be working to make the principles that Jesus taught come to life in the people and the situations around us. If we do that, we will demonstrate to others that our faith is alive, and that should help them to see Jesus.
That sould give you a feel for what we talked about in our discussion of James 2. In the next part of “What should we do?” we will take a look at James 3.
What should we do? Part I March 19, 2009
Posted by questcollegeministry in Bible, christianity, faith, following God, Quest, spirituality.Tags: Bible, christian living, christianity, religion, spirituality
add a comment
At Quest, we recently started a series on the book of James. As we began the series, we started with the question of what we should be doing if we are really going to be followers of Jesus. There really are two aspects to this the answer to this question. There is an internal spiritual respons to following Jesus that will affect our character and our relationship with God. There is also an external response that will affect our relationships with others and actions we take in our lives.
In James chapter 1, we can begin to see both types of responses that should take place when we have a relationship with Jesus. James address both the internal spiritual response and the actions we should begin to take among others in the world around us. Here are some of the things that we discussed:
• We see the spiritual actions we should be taking when James says things like in verse 21, when he tells us that we should but away all filthiness and rampant wickedness. In verse 27 he tells us to remain unstained by the world. These are internal changes. Before we come to know Jesus, filthiness and wickedness are often parts of our lives. This is because the culture of the world teaches us to put ourselves first, and if doing things that make ourselves happy bothers or causes problems for other people, well that’s just too bad for them. These attitudes of the world have the tendency to stain us and to affect us, even if we are trying to be a good person. Once we decide to follow Jesus, we should have a change of character and attitude. We should put aside this selfishness and the filthy and wicked attitudes that culture teaches us are normal.
• We see the external actions we should be taking when James says things like in verse 27 when he says that “Religion that is undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit the widows and the orphans in their affliction. . .” Doing things for others, even when it is not in our best interests, is part of what it means to follow Jesus. In the society of the 1st Century, the man of the house was the principle (and usually the only) bread winner. If something happened to him, the family was left without a way to support itself until a son was able to provide for the rest of the family. This means that the “widow and the orphans” where people who were essentially helpless. James is telling us that, as followers of Jesus, we should be taking care of the people who are helpless. It is when we do this that we have a “religion that is undefiled before God.”
• This leads to some tension, however. In our culture there are widows and orphans and others who are helpless. At the same time, there are also people who aren’t helpless, but are lazy and are looking for others to take care of themselves. While James clearly says that we have the responsibility to take care of others, it is also clear from the New Testament that people do have a personal responsibility to try to avoid being a burden on others. This causes some tension because it leads to the question of how we help without enabling the lazy or the people who just want to take advantage of others. This is a particularly difficult line to draw in our culture where we don’t have the same time of easily identifiable classes that are literally helpless. This is a difficult area with no easy answers.
• James reminds us that we should be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. Far too often followers of Jesus have the reputation for doing this exactly backwards. We have the reputation of being slow to hear, quick to speak, and quick to anger, especially when it comes to people who don’t know Jesus. A week ago we talked about how the earliest followers of Jesus had the favor of all of the people. When you do these things, it is easy to see how this is the case. When you are quick to listen and slow to speak, you are going to develop relationships with people. Once those relationships develop, people will be willing to listen to what you have to say, even if they initially disagree. Far too often, followers of Jesus simply tell people what they should do or think, rather than building the kind of relationships that will make people truly listen to and care about what we have to say.
• James also tells us that we need to be doers of the word, not just hearers. In fact, he compares people who only hear the message of Jesus but don’t put it into action to a person who looks in the mirror then immediately forgets what they looked like. The words and actions of Jesus and the contents of the Bible should be a mirror. They show us what we look like (or at least what we should look like) when we choose to follow Jesus. They give the picture of how we should live and what our relationships with God and others should look like. However, if we only listen, even if we say we believe it, but don’t actually put it into action, then it is as if we forgot who we are. We have forgotten what a follower of Jesus should look like and what they should do. The fact that we have heard the message of Jesus, and even the fact that we have believed it, become meaningless if we don’t put it into action.
Being saved from our sins August 7, 2008
Posted by questcollegeministry in Bible, books, faith, following God, spirituality.Tags: Bible, books, christianity, following Jesus, religion, spirituality
add a comment
Lessons from Abraham’s servant April 6, 2008
Posted by questcollegeministry in Bible, christianity, faith, following God, Quest, spirituality.Tags: Bible, christianity, faith, religion, spirituality
3 comments
At Quest, we have spent the last couple of weeks using the stories of Abraham to get a picture of what God wants the relationship between God and people to look like. This time, we moved on to the story in Genesis 24 about Abraham sending his servant to find a wife for Isaac. To summarize the story, Abraham’s servant goes back to land Abraham originally came. When he gets there, he prays that God will bring the person God intends him to choose to the well and that the young woman will offer to give him and his camels water. The first young woman he talks is Rachel, and she does exactly what he prayed for, and she “just happens” to be from the family of Abraham’s uncle. Rachel’s family acknowledges that this is something from God, and they send her with the servant to be Isaac’s wife. Again, there are a number of lessons that we can learn here:
· God listens to us when we talk to him, even if we aren’t anyone who is “important.” One of the things that we see here is that God doesn’t only listen to Abraham. It isn’t Abraham who prays that God will work in finding the right woman. It is the servant. And God hears and answers this prayer, even though he is only a servant. You don’t have to be important for God to be interested in you or to listen to you. He will respond to anyone who wants a relationship with him.
· At least sometimes, God begins to work to answer our prayers even before we ask. In this case, Rachel was there even before the servant finished praying. (Genesis 24:15) This means that God had set events in motion to answer that prayer well before the servant actually started praying it.
· The servant recognized the work of God. Once he knew that his prayer had been answered, the first thing he did, even before he explained who he was to Rachel, was to bow down and worship God and to thank God for answering his prayer. I think this gives us a good model for how we should respond when God answers our prayers.
· We also see the importance of relationships with God in our interactions with others. While it is unstated, it seems fairly certain that at least one of Abraham’s motivations for looking for a wife for Isaac among his family is that he didn’t want Isaac to marry a Canaanite woman, who would follow the Canaanite gods and who would teach her children to do the same. Abraham’s family seems to have at least some understanding of who God is, and they recognize that the hand of God is at work in the situation. Because of this, they do not hesitate to send Rachel to be Isaac’s wife. It is much easier for people who have at least some relationship with God to recognize and understand when God is working in situations.
Those are the highlights of our discussions over the last couple of weeks. In both of these stories we see that God cares about people and will provide for the people who follow him. Next week we will continued looking at stories from Genesis and what they can teach us about the relationship between God and people.
Following God like Abraham March 5, 2008
Posted by questcollegeministry in christianity, faith, following God, Quest.Tags: Bible, christian living, christianity, religion, spirituality
add a comment
At Quest, we’ve been talking about what God intended for the relationship between God and people to look like in the aftermath of sin entering the picture. When Adam and Eve chose to sin, they broke the relationship between themselves and God. But God was not content to leave the relationship broken. So we’ve started looking at some of the interactions between God and people in Genesis.
Recently, we started looking at Abraham. The life of Abraham, and his interactions with God can tell us a lot about what God wanted the relationship with people to look like. A full quarter of the book of Genesis is about Abraham, which tells us how significant he really is. This week, we started by looking at our very first introduction to Abraham, when he is still called Abram. In Genesis 11:27-12:9 we see the story of God calling Abraham to leave his country and go to a place God would show him. Here are some of the things we discussed when talking about the story.
· As has been the case throughout Genesis, we see a God who is interested in personally interacting with people. God comes and actually talks with Abram. Additionally, this interaction is much more like the interaction between friends rather than someone commanding another person to do something. You can see it in Genesis 12:2-3, where God lets Abram in on his plan. God gives Abram a glimpse of what the future will look like if he makes the trip. This kind of sharing of future plans is the kind of things that happens among friends.
· We also still see that God wants to be our first priority. God asks Abram to leave his country, his people, and his father’s household. (Genesis 12:1). Essentially, he is asking Abram, which is more important, your family and friends and comfort, or me? When God asks us that question, he wants us to answer that God is the most important thing.
· Following God requires faith. Abram had to demonstrate faith in God to do what God was asking. We also talked about how in modern Christianity, faith has been equated with belief. We often think that a person has faith in God if they believe in him. But that’s not the picture we see here, or in other places in the Bible. What we see here is that faith requires action, not just belief. We also see it in the “faith chapter” of Hebrews 11, where it discusses the faith of many people from the Old Testament. In almost every case in Hebrews 11, the people who had faith did something. The lesson is that we don’t really need faith in something if we aren’t going to take any action.
· God loves us and wants us to love him. If you look at 1 Corinthians 13:13, it tells us that “now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” That seems to be telling us that faith and love are really the same kind of thing. So, like faith, love really requires action. It’s not just an emotion. We can say that we love some one, but if it is really true, there will always be action to demonstrate that love. In the case of this story, the action demonstrating love that God is looking for is for Abram to go like God asked. God then demonstrates his love for Abram by blessing him, making him a great nation, and giving him the land he went to.
· Often, God gives us freedom to how we act out his wishes. I’ve always found it interesting that God didn’t tell Abram where to go. He just said “go,” and that he would let Abram know when Abram got to the right place. Where exactly Abram went, and how he got there were up to Abram.
Those are the highlights of our discussion about God’s call of Abram and about what this tells us concerning God’s desire for his relationship with people. Over the next couple of weeks, we are going to continue looking at Abraham and seeing what God’s relationship with Abraham can tell us.
Who are we February 6, 2008
Posted by questcollegeministry in Bible, christianity, faith, following God, Quest, spirituality.Tags: Bible, christianity, faith, following God, religion, spirituality
1 comment so far
At Quest last week, after spending a couple of weeks talking about who God is, we moved on discussing who people are. If God is the creator of the universe and everything in it, then where do men and women fit into the equation?
On one level of thinking, people are just another part of God’s creation. We share characteristics with other creatures that God created. We breathe air; we have skeletons; we have children. But our position in the world and with God doesn’t stop there. Here are some of the other things we talked about.
- Genesis 2:7 tells us that God made Adam from the dust of the ground. So we started off as nothing. There is nothing special about what people were made from. Without the actions of God, there is nothing significant about us or our place in the world. We would just live our lives, then return to the dust we were made from.
- But God didn’t stop there. He breathed his spirit into us. As we talked about last week, when God breathed the breath of life into us, he breathed his very essence into us. This makes us different from other parts of creation. We actually carry part of the creator inside of us.
- Related to that, Genesis 1:26 tells us that God created us in his image. We spent a long time discussing what all that entails. Certainly one aspect of that is that God is spirit, and so when he made us in his image, he gave us a spirit as well. There is more to people than just a physical body. That is one of the things that make us different than the other creatures God created. God is an emotional being. Just about every emotion that humans express, we can also see God expressing at some point in the Bible. God also is creative. You don’t have to look very hard to see evidence of that aspect of God. Similarly, he made us creative. We people do creative things, they are displaying part of the nature of God.
- God created people to be in charge of creation. Genesis 1:26 says about people, “let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” God intended for people to charge over the earth. But that also means that we should be taking good care of creation. God gave us control, but we should be exercising that control in a way that would be pleasing to him.
- We were created to have a relationship with God – to be loved by him. God could have created us in a way that he could just command us to do what he wanted, but he didn’t. He wanted us to be able to love him back. He wants us to follow him, but he wants it to be because we have chosen to do so. It always means more when someone does what you ask because they want to rather than because they have to.
This discussion served as a good way to introduce the idea of the relationship between God and people. We will pick up this thread next week when we talk about “Plan A.” When God created the earth, before Adam and Eve sinned, what was God’s plan? What did he intend the relationship between God and people to look like? That’s where we are headed in the next couple of weeks.
Who is God January 24, 2008
Posted by questcollegeministry in Bible, christianity, faith, following God, Quest, spirituality.Tags: Bible, christian living, christianity, religion, spirituality
add a comment
A week ago at Quest, we continued our new series exploring who God is, what that means to us, and how we go about living a life as a Christ follower. We are trying to add details and fill in the blank spots on the map of our faith.
We started by looking at the relatively simple, but essential, question of why is God important or significant. If we accept the fact that God is significant, then it becomes important to know who he is. So that is the question we discussed last week: Who is God?
Immediately, we realized that there are a couple of ways to answer that question. You can answer that question with a physical description of who the person is and what they have done. For example, you could say Cheryl is the woman with the long, brown hair sitting in the chair over there. Or you can answer with a description of the attributes and character of the person. For example, you could say Cheryl is a kind, caring person who pours her life out into the lives of the little kids at church. Both of those are legitimate ways to answer the question of who a person is. And really, you probably need both to get a complete picture of who a person is.
The same is true for God. We can give a physical description of him, although we have to focus on the where is he and what he has done part of that description, since we don’t know what he looks like. We can also describe his attributes and character. We also realized pretty quickly that it would be impossible to completely describe who God is. There are just too many facets of his character to completely discuss in one evening (or maybe even in one lifetime). Additionally, we are human, and God isn’t. So we can’t even fully understand and describe every aspect of God. There are some things that we just simply won’t understand this side of heaven. With that in mind, here are some of the things we discussed.
• God is the creator of the universe. He made everything we see, everything we haven’t seen yet, and every person who has lived or will ever live. When he made people, he made us in his own image.
• God is everywhere. There is no place where we can go to get away from him. While that can lead to the “cop around the corner” view of God, it really should be a comfort to us. Wherever we go, God is available to us. We can’t be separated from him. And it can serve as a method for withstanding temptation because it can serve as a reminder that God will see what we are doing. The thought “if I do that, God will see” can keep us away from a lot of sins.
• These same two stories also show that God cares about the people who follow him. Abraham was concerned for the safety of Lot and his family. Although God didn’t spare Sodom, he did do what Abraham really wanted, which was for him to save Lot. When Hezekiah, who trusted in God so completely that is say “there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him” (2 Kings 18:5), and that would include King David, asked God to spare his life, God did so.
• God is love. He loved us enough to die for us.
• God is holy. He is perfect and demands perfection from us. When Jesus said “be perfect, therefore, as y our heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48), he meant it literally.
• God shows grace. He created a way for us to come to him when there was no way for us to do it on our own. Jesus died for us while we were still sinners, before we had done anything to deserve it. And he forgives us for falling short of his standard.
• God is full of paradox. Some of these things seem to be opposites of each other. How can God be both holy, demanding perfection, and full of grace, forgiving the times we fall short of that perfection? It doesn’t seem possible for those both to be true at the same time, yet they are. That is part of the mystery and wonder of God.
We also talked some about the names of God and the importance of naming, particularly in the Old Testament. We are going to go more deeply in that direction next week. I understand that these ideas only scratch the surface of who God is. I encourage you to spend some time contemplating who all God is during this next week.
Quest 