Saved to Serve

…there are many whose conduct shows they are really enemies of the cross of Christ.
(Philippians 3:18 – NLT)

Paul had earlier spoken of the legalists (3:2-3), now he speaks about the libertines. You are to forget the legalist path, the “make your own way” types of the past, but you are not to swing the pendulum too far. Your obedience is not the root of your justification, as the legalists would say, but it is the fruit of your justification, as the libertines wouldn’t say. Good works does not save you, but you are saved unto good works. Grace is a teacher – Titus 1:15-16, 2:11-14. Some are not walking the walk (Galatians 5:25), and they talk a different talk. It is all about what they are allowed to do, they use liberty as license, and they are deceived.

Be aware of this fact: it is not those who don’t even claim the name of Christ that Paul is talking about in this passage, it is those who remain self-indulgent, who don’t press on to maturity, but who keep feeding their old man, and then try and justify it by saying that they are allowed, or even that it is somehow right. They are ripe for deception, and are already deceived. It is not those who are trapped in sin, even, that Paul is discussing and warning about, it is those who defiantly state that they are of Christ but who won’t take their self-indulgent old man to the Cross. This is why Paul says to be following him and those who walk right because there are many who don’t, and they are dangerous.

When you are saved, you are saved to serve, and that means others, not serving yourself, like the people Paul warns about here. When you won’t go to church, what are you doing? Think about it. In order to get your food, you must always do what? Serve yourself, and you never serve others, do you? And you prevent others from serving you.

Paul says beware because these types tend to try and gain converts to appease their conscience. Other biblical writers warn us also. Jude 1:3-5 – obedience is believing, acting in accordance with what you believe (that sin is bad and that Christ has delivered us from its bondage). Look at 2 Peter 2:2, 10, 14, 18-20. 2 (sensual), 10 (despise authority, i.e. they won’t learn in community they won’t follow patterns they must make their own), 14 (they try and recruit others who don’t know better), 18 (they appeal to the flesh of those who are still struggling with it), 19 (they talk of freedom but they are slaves to sin and self), 20 (they are unfruitful in their knowledge – Hosea 4:6-10 / 2 Peter 1:8).

Their end is destruction, whose god is their belly, or their own appetites; they live for the pleasures of the body, mind, and soul. Romans 16:18 – and they try and win others to this view, which is why they are doubly dangerous, it spreads because it is an easy way. Their feelings, emotions, and passions rule them, meaning they do what they want to do; their god is their own self-ish desires, with its self-indulgent agenda. They are proud of their liberty, thinking they are more enlightened than those whom they see as more narrow-minded, and they are constantly trying to defend their “right” to import this or that practice from the world. They are worldly, they thought they could be whatever they wanted to be, worship however they wanted to, and approach a holy God anyway they saw fit, and still keep Jesus too.

They wouldn’t let anyone correct them, they wouldn’t accept rebuke or be admonished, and they thought that they knew better. They are not broken by their sin and instead of falling on Christ, He will fall on them to their peril (Matthew 21:44). They wouldn’t suffer the death of the flesh; they are enemies of the Cross of Christ.

In this way are they enemies of the Cross: they may have thought they believed in it for Jesus, and indeed that is all it takes to be saved, believing Jesus died on the Cross for your sins is a saving knowledge of Christ. However, the bible clearly teaches that this knowledge if held in truth will cause a believer to also follow Jesus to the Cross. Godliness teaches us to become more and more repentant, our lives will progressively become more and more unlike the world, not like the world.

The degree of effectiveness in an individuals life is not the question, the resolve to do it at all or to deny the need to is the matter at hand (1 Corinthians 5), the desire to become sanctified in practice, rather than defiantly avoiding the possibility of going to the Cross for the gradual death of the self life, that is the question. In essence, they deny this saving knowledge in practice, if not in doctrine, by not believing in and following Jesus to the Cross in their own life. They became progressively more and more deceived, their faith was proven not to be real, and they are damned.

Those that won’t go to church wind up serving themselves and that isn’t why we are saved.

See To It

And say to Archippus, "See that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord."

(Colossians 4:17 – ESV)

Your understanding of the supposed size and scope of your role doesn’t determine the level of involvement by God in your life, work, and ministry. It matters to Him. It is all one and the same to Him, and He can be fully engaged with you as well as everyone else on the planet for every single second you and they are alive, all at the same time. He is God after all, that’s what He does. He is fully involved in your personal situation. He will see to it that He holds up His end; He exhorts all of us to see to it that we fulfill our assignments.

Paul showed that God has concern for your individual assignment. See to it means it never really ends; it is an ongoing commitment and process. Our lives are to be a living fulfillment of the gospel of Jesus Christ. To fulfill it means you are to keep making it full (2 Timothy 4:5). He is fully involved with you; He wants you to be fully involved with Him. Whatever it is, God will see you through it, and you will see God through it.

We see here that the people in the church at Colossae were to help Archippus. The church is to help each of its people fulfill their ministry in the Lord. Ministry isn’t simply full time preaching or teaching, or missionary work. The scriptures are not just for the so-called clergy but for the laymen as well. We are all ministers and missionaries of the gospel, full time, with our lives; whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Christ is worth knowing to the fullest extent possible, and may we always be striving to learn and love Him more, even as we come to understand His love for us all the more.

Wherever you are and whatever God has called you to, see to it.

Discipleship

At our Tuesday night study (mentioned in previous post), we wrapped up the study of the book of Matthew. In the question book, it was asked of the participants, “Why do you think Jesus told his disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (28:19) rather than “converts” of all nations? A good question.
Since I don’t have the study book, having only recently (December) joined this church, I was kind of wingin’ it in the question-and-answer period, but that’s always good fun.
When I asked something to the effect that “doesn’t Jesus discuss the challenges unique to disciples” somewhere in the gospels, our pastor (who facilitates the discussion) countered me, saying that ALL Christians are called to be disciples.
So fingering quickly through my concordance, I found the verses in Luke wherein the cost of discipleship is examined.
Luke 14:25-32 states:
“Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them,
‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.
So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
"Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?
It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
I read this (in part) to the group, but the pastor continually affirmed, “We are all called to be his disciples.”
In a mixed group, I didn’t want to press a discussion about it since there was yet more ground to cover in the question-and-answer group, but I pondered these things, and I wonder, are all Christians disciples? I don’t think so.
Are true believers disciples? Certainly some are, but all?
Is there not a distinction between Christ’s disciples and others, even if saved?
What thinkest thou with respect to why Jesus told his disciples to “make disciples” (as opposed to “converts”) of all nations?