Children of God/Mission

Last Sunday the pastor preached from 1 John 3. He brought out that Christians are children of God.

Not children in the physical sense but in a spiritual sense? Isn't that a strange thought? We are God's spirit children? Huh? 1 John is a letter written by John to a church. In this letter he keeps using the "birth" metaphor to describe this shift in reality that we experience when we encounter God. Is it real to you that we are God's kids? Does that fit inside of your view of what can exist? If you remember the pastor was talking about an "ontological" shift. That crazy long word is just talking about our perception of reality. The pastor was saying that being "born again" is a shift from the physical reality that is widely accepted by most people, to the spiritual reality that God calls us into.

Well that is the mind bending part of it but the comforting part is that God is our daddy. And he is the most loving, caring dad of all time. And we are his kids. He will take care of us and protect us with a fierce love. We can have an intimate relationship with the creator of the universe. God is not some far away voice in the sky. We can know God like we know our dads.

Also, as children of God, we have all the benefits of being the kid of the richest person in the universe. We have been adopted by God. We are adopted children, not biological children of God, because we were born into sin. That is a sermon all in its own so I won't go any further with that. God, in his deep love, adopted us so that we could have a good home.

Sin = actions against God that cause spiritual death and that separate us from God.

The pastor also talked about sin and Jesus' role in destroying sin by his death on the cross. He used a big term - "double imputation". Even though that sounds like some kind of surgery, its really just talking about the 2 things that happened on the cross. #1 Jesus took on all of us. #2 We took on all of Jesus. So even though its true that we were born into sin and that we still sin, Jesus paid the bill that we owe. This starts to get a little overwhelming but you have to go back to the Old Testament (especially the first 5 books of the Bible) when they killed animals for their sins. The Jewish people were told by God that their sins had to be paid for in some way. God allowed them to transfer their sins on an animal. When that animal was killed, God accepted that as a substitution on the person's behalf.

This helps to explain why Jesus had to die on the cross and why his death paid for our sins. I guess in a way, Jesus was that animal sacrifice that took our place. He is even called "The Lamb of God". The book of Hebrews in the New Testament teaches that Jesus was the final sacrifice. In other words, we don't have to kill animals anymore to pay for our sins. Jesus once and for all took on all the sins of the world when he was killed on the cross. So now all sins have been paid for. That is why the New Testament uses the word "victory" when talking about what Jesus did. Jesus defeated sin. He did everything necessary in God's eyes to make people be able to be the children of God.

The pastor directly tied this in to what Christians are to be working on every day. Also called our "mission". Christ has already defeated sin and death, so our mission is not to defeat sin. No need for that. Our mission is many things (that we will talk about in the future) but in this "context" (the specific set of Bible verses that we are basing this discussion on) mission is talking about the Christian's response to sin in the world. Just because Jesus paid for all sins, doesn't mean everybody just stopped sinning. It doesn't say Jesus stopped sin, just that he paid for it. Sin is a reality in every person's life. The Bible says that everybody sins and falls short of what God requires. The verse that the pastor talked about says that we are all dead in our sins. It means "spiritually" dead. You obviously don't drop over and die when you sin. What does it mean to be spiritually dead? For one thing it means we need Jesus to save us. We can't save ourselves. We are not just a little bit sick, we are dead.

This is where the application for our mission comes from. The Church is not a self help group. Our purpose is not to give people 7 steps to a healthier and happier you. Our message is that without God, you are dead. That's an attractive message that people want to be a part of right? Yes, we are about hope, love, mercy and joy. Christ gives the most abundant life possible. However, there is a subtle lie floating around out there that Jesus is just one of the many ways to fine peace and harmony in life. The Bible teaches that Jesus is the only way to save us from our ugly, messed up lives. People are dead without Jesus. They are not just slightly ill, needing only that secret recipe for success. I think the warning here is that we are in danger sometimes of saying that there are things other than the death of Jesus that can save people. We can't let our mission turn into a self help support group. We are on a mission that is a matter of life and death for people.