How Shall We Live?

Lesson #193

As I sit here in front of my computer screen looking at the prayer I wrote at the end of the last lesson I think of all we have witnessed Jesus say and do and with such authority and extraordinary power. We have watched the God/man live among people with many emotions felt about him; from those who loved him and worshiped him to those who hated him and are making plans to kill him. It is clear that Father sent his Son as Jesus, not to live for himself, but to live to die a sacrificial death for you and me. I am thinking about you and me and about what he accomplished for us on the cross. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8 – 10 ESV). My salvation is not my doing; it is totally a gift God gives to those he in his sovereignty chooses. But the thing that grips me as I sit here and think, is that Father had work for Jesus to do and sent him to earth to accomplish it on our behalf. Likewise, Father has work prepared beforehand for you and me and prepared us as new creatures in Christ to do that work. We are flesh, but we have God living in us. Should our lives not stand out as being different than the unsaved; should the lives we live not reflect that we children of God with a heavenly citizenship and should the lives we live not divide the people we live among into two groups like those who knew Jesus? Are we as committed as Jesus to live to die, if necessary, to complete the work we have been assigned to do? Have you really thought about what that work might be and how effective you are in doing it? With these heavy thoughts before us, let us return to our text and continue with our lesson.

The disciples obtain the requested donkey and Jesus rides into Jerusalem, surrounded by a large celebrating crowd over the arrival of their long awaited Messiah and deliverer. The disciples watch this and maybe recall Jesus saying that he must go to Jerusalem and die. What must they be thinking? “His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him” (John 12:16 ESV). Jesus spoke of this many times about his pending death and resurrection, but they just could not understand because they had nothing in their experience to relate to and they were not yet spiritually prepared to understand. This was true for the people that Jesus was among and it is true for people today. Without being spiritually alive one is not able to understand spiritual things. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, when he met with them they began to understand much more clearly and then at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came to indwell them, understanding was enforced with power and now God had a people that would multiply and carry out his plan to form the body of Christ.

There is a mild break point in our text, so we will stop here and continue in our next lesson.

Prayer

Father, as I reflect on this lesson, a passage from 1 Peter comes to mind: “[Beloved], I urge you as foreigners and exiles to keep away from fleshly desires that do battle against the soul, and maintain good conduct among the non-Christians, so that though they now malign you as wrongdoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God when he appears” (1 Peter 2:11 – 12 NET). Father, it is clear that we are to be a people set apart by our lifestyle and by the work we do we will incite some to malign us, to persecute us, but others may see our good deeds and be drawn to Jesus Christ to salvation. Father, through your grace have mercy on us and encourage us to live as set apart from the world, doing your assigned work.