Doing and Blessing

“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” John 13:17

Jesus says this to His disciples the night He is betrayed.

What is He saying?

Is He saying, “Here are my commandments. Know them. Then, discipline yourself! Do them! Show that you have the ability and the gumption and the wherewithal to be My disciple! Once you have done that, I will bless you”?

Jesus has just acted like a menial servant, washing His disciples’ feet. He then says, “You also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you” (John 13:14b-15).

Taken by itself, this sounds as if Jesus is laying a burden on His disciples, assigning them a task to do. So is the interpretation above correct?

No. Indeed, later this evening Jesus will tell these same men, “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

In addition, John 13 itself shows that Jesus must be saying something different.

Consider His interaction with Peter, who protests, saying Jesus will never wash his feet. Our Lord replies: “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me” (John 13:8).

So once Jesus pays the penalty for Peter’s sins (as pictured by washing his feet), he has a share with Jesus! He is “completely clean” (John 13:10). He is already identified with Jesus! He is an insider!

Peter does not need to obey Jesus’ commands to earn His favor – He already has that favor! He needs to obey Jesus’ commands to display Jesus, to represent Jesus as one sent by Him, to proclaim the message entrusted to him. Then he is so identified with Jesus that the one who receives Peter receives Jesus (John 13:20).

But a question remains: What is the blessing Jesus speaks of in verse 17? If it is not His acceptance, His favor – what is it?

The blessing is being like Jesus! The blessing is displaying the image of God! The blessing is fulfilling the purpose of our creation, becoming what we were created to be!

Can we – sinners that we are, dead in those trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1) – become like Jesus through self-discipline? The answer should be obvious. The only way we can become like Jesus is through His working in us.

Our task then is to actively depend on Him, on His Spirit. Yes, we then obey Jesus’ commands. But we obey as beloved children who know their Daddy and depend on him, not as slaves trying to avoid a whipping from an evil master, nor as employees striving to earn a raise from a tough boss.

We must always remember: Obedience to a set of rules is not our objective. If it were, we rightly could think that we could reach that objective with a little more effort, a little more discipline, a little more practice, or a little more accountability.

Our objective is to be like Jesus, to display Jesus, to be conformed to His image (Romans 8:29). Jesus demands such conformity – and Scripture promises that God will bring it about (Philippians 1:6).

So if we are in Jesus, the work is as good as done. Saved by His grace, we can bask in His love and delight in His grace, knowing we are “completely clean” – even when we sin. But we hate that sin. We hate that lack of conformity to Jesus’ character. Knowing that our greatest joy comes from being like Him, we turn to Him once again in repentance, confessing the sin, knowing that Jesus is the propitiation for our sin (1 John 2:2). God thus continues as our loving Father, delighting in us, as he uses even such failures to complete the good work in us He has begun.

“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” Know Jesus commands. Know Jesus’ character. Know the grace and mercy and power of the Gospel. Then step out in confidence, in confession, in repentance, showing Jesus to those you love and to the wider world. This is the path of blessing. This is the path of joy.

Life in God’s Family: The Basis and Nature of the Ten Commandments

How would you describe an ideal family?

Is it a family in which the children always obey every rule the parents make?

We know that is not the case. Indeed, outward obedience to parents can co-exist with deep anger and resentment, as displayed by the older son in Luke 15.

Instead, love and trust characterize the ideal family. There is obedience to parents, yes – but that obedience flows out of love, out of trust, out of a feeling of security and acceptance.

Just so in the family of God. God’s family members surely obey – but not with the outward, formal obedience of the Pharisees. Their obedience instead is joyful and willing, flowing from confidence in the loving character of God.

Consider the Ten Commandments in this regard. These commandments summarize God’s torah, His instructions to His people. Many misunderstand both the nature and implications of these commandments. So let’s examine, first of all, the basis and nature of the Ten Commandments. From these we’ll draw out four implications for all the Commandments. In future devotions we’ll consider the Commandments one by one.

The Basis of the Ten Commandments: Relationship with God

The people of Israel do not come into a relationship with God by obeying the Ten Commandments; they are already in a relationship with Him when He speaks the Commandments.

  • When Moses first approaches Pharaoh, God says, “Israel is my firstborn son” (Exodus 4:22).
  • God told Moses at the burning bush that the people would worship Him at Sinai (Exodus 3:12).
  • God reiterates that plan multiple times in words spoken to Pharaoh (Exodus 4:23, 5:1, 5:3, 8:1, 8:20, 9:1, 9:13, 10:3).
  • When they first arrive at Sinai, God says, “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (Exodus 19:4, emphasis added).
  • Immediately prior to speaking the Commandments, God says, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2, emphasis added).

So the Israelites’ relationship with God precedes the giving of the Law. They enter into a relationship with God through His love, by His grace (Deuteronomy 7:6-8).

Furthermore, they do not remain in relationship with God through keeping the Law. In Exodus 32, they explicitly break the Commandments. God’s judgment falls on a small percentage, but He reveals Himself as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, … forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:6-7).

Now, He goes on to say He “will by no means leave the guilty unpunished” (Exodus 34:7 NIV) – He is the God of both grace and justice. We only understand fully how God’s grace and justice both hold when we see Jesus’ death on the cross.

But our point for today is this: Neither the Israelites nor we today enter into a relationship with God through obedience to the Law. Neither the Israelites nor we today remain in a relationship with God through obedience to the Law. We enter into a relationship with Him by grace through faith. We remain in that relationship by grace through faith.

 

The Nature of the Ten Commandments: Life in God’s Family

When we hear the word “law,” we normally think of some set of restrictions on our behavior. A sign on I-485 says that there is a law prohibiting you from driving faster than 70mph. If you see a police car in your rearview mirror, you will restrict your driving speed. You will not drive 80mph.

But God’s Law is not fundamentally a set of restrictions on our behavior. Instead, God’s Law fundamentally is a revelation of His character. Through the Law, He tells us what He loves and what He hates: “I the LORD love justice; I hate robbery and wrong” (Isaiah 61:8). God in His holy essence hates and despises sin, He despises evil; in His essence, he loves righteousness and justice.

 

Now, connect this with the idea of God’s people being His family. When we had six little children running around the house needing correction, we would sometimes say, “We’re Pinckneys – we don’t act that way.” We then explained how we behave.

That’s similar to what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

Thus, when God tells us to obey His Law, He is saying, “Become like Me! I have brought you to Myself! You are part of my intimate family! This is your identity; this is who you are. So act like it’s true! Act like Me!”

So God does not give us the Ten Commandments, saying, “Obey these and you will be in My family.” Nor does He say, “Obey these in order to remain in My family.” Instead, He says to the Israelites – and to us! – “You are in the family. And this is how those in my family live. This is how they reflect my character.”

 

Four Implications for Understanding the Ten Commandments

a) The Ten Commandments are positive, not only negative

We don’t become like God simply by avoiding certain actions – we must change positively!

For example, consider the seventh commandment: “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14). Many never commit the physical act of adultery, but lust after others. Jesus tells us these too break the commandment (Matthew 5:28). But we can’t just modify the commandment to include a prohibition of lust! Rather, the Commandment exhorts us to take on the character of God. We positively are to honor marriage, to build up own, to assist others to strengthen their marriages, all to the glory of God.

So, in general, each commandment forbids some attitudes and behaviors while commending others.

b) No one will succeed in fully taking on the character of God

Those at the moment outside God’s family are “dead in trespasses and sin” (Ephesians 2:1). God graciously brings the redeemed into His family, making us “alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5). He grants us His Spirit, enabling us to “put to death the deeds of the body” (Romans 8:13), providing a way of escape from temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13) and producing in us Christlike character (Galatians 5:22-23). Yet we all fail; “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).

The Day is coming after Jesus returns when He does away with sin forever. We will be like Him, seeing Him as He is (1 John 3:2). But until that Day, we will stumble and fall. However much we grow – and we should grow! – we will never be perfect as our heavenly Father.

c) Jesus fully displayed the character of God

Jesus said He came to fulfill the Law (Matthew 5:17) – and He did. He showed us what God is like: “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). He loved God with all His heart, soul, mind, and strength every minute of every day. He loved every person He encountered as He loved Himself.

d) How then can we be like God? Though union with Jesus!

When we come to God by grace through faith in Jesus, God not only saves us from our sins, wiping out the negatives from our accounts; He also credits us with the righteousness of Jesus – in Him we become “the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). His active obedience to the entirety of the Law is credited to us.

 

Thus, the Ten Commandments do not constitute a law code for ancient Israel (in our contemporary sense of law code). Rather they are a revelation of the character of God, so that those in His family might know Him better and become like Him by His grace. And that happens only via Jesus.

So salvation is not primarily about saving us from hell – it is that, but also much more. Salvation is primarily about being in God’s family, credited with Jesus’ righteousness, transformed to become like Him – partially in this life, completely in the next.

(This devotion is based on the first half of a sermon on Exodus 20:1-3 preached May 9, 2010, “Having Been Saved By Grace, Do You Put God First?” The audio is available here. An earlier blog post covering some of the same material is here.)

The Power of the Resurrection

[From D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God’s Ultimate Purpose: An Exposition of Ephesians 1 (Baker, 1978), excerpted from p. 399-422. These chapters are based on three sermons on Ephesians 1:19-20 preached in 1954; audio of those sermons is available online: first, second, third.]

[The resurrection] is the proof, beyond every other proof, of the fact that every obstacle and hindrance and enemy set in our path shall be overcome. The raising of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead is proof positive and absolute, that even the ‘last enemy’ has been conquered and defeated….

Whatever may be true of our experience, whatever may be true of the world and its darkness, whatever may be true of the seeds of decay and of illness and of death that are in our bodies, and howsoever great is the power of the last enemy, we can be certain and confident of this, that nothing can prevent the carrying out of God’s purpose with respect to us. There is no power that can withstand Him; there is no might or influence that can match Him, there is no possible antagonist that can equal Him. The mightiest foes, the devil, death and hell have already been vanquished, and the resurrection of Christ is the proof of it….

Do you realize the exceeding greatness of His power in you? Do you realize the energy of the strength of His might that is already working in you? And do you realize that because it has begun it will continue, and continue until you will find yourself ‘faultless and blameless, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing’ in the presence of God?…

It is most important that we should realize that the Apostle is praying here, not that the Ephesians may have more power, but that they may come to know the greatness of the power of God that is already working in them…. We are not Christians and cannot be Christians apart from this mighty working of the power of God…..

The most urgent practical question for every Christian is this: Are we aware of the fact that the almighty power of God is working in us? Do we realize that we are what we are solely and entirely by the grace and the power of God? Do we realize in our own personal lives and experiences that it is this exceeding great power of God that accounts for everything in the Christian life? I press these questions again because I am convinced that the main trouble with most of us is our failure to realize the greatness of the salvation into which we have been brought, and which we enjoy together.…

Somehow or another we do not grasp the idea of this mighty working of God in salvation. Far too often we think of it solely in terms of forgiveness. We think of the Christian life as just a matter of knowing that we are forgiven, and then our living the Christian life as best we can…. When we come to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, do we realize that it was the greatest manifestation of the energy of the strength of God’s might that the world has ever known. According to the Scriptures nothing but the almighty power of God could have raised Him again from the dead, and exalted Him to the high position where He is at this moment at the right hand of God. We forget that He was ‘declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead’” [Romans 1:4]….

Nothing but the power of God can make us believers. But it is also by this selfsame power that we continue in the Christian life. It takes the same power which enabled us to believe to enable us to continue at all in the Christian life. We would not be able to stand for a single hour in the Christian life were it not for this power of God that is working in us….

If you have the life of God in you, if He has started ‘a good work’ in you, He will not give it up, He will bring it to perfection. If you will not be led by Him, you will be driven; if you refuse to be enticed and attracted, you will be chastised. God wills our perfecting, and he will stop at nothing less. The work will go on, the power of God will continue to be exercised in us until we are faultless…. He wills that we should be holy and without blemish in His presence.

Is there anything more important for us than to know all this? We are in the hands of God, and He is working in us. He has given us the power to believe, He is working in us now, fashioning us, molding us, bringing us to perfection. We cannot escape it, we are in His hands and He will go on with the work. Blessed be his name!

Oh that we might know this more and more, and realize the high privilege of our calling, the marvel, the miracle of this new life which is all from God, and which is all by God. My comfort, my consolation, my strength, my assurance, is to know that God is working in me; and that He will never cease to work in me until I stand before Him in glory.

Perfection and Discouragement

Jesus says, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

Perfect? Like God? In this life, I’ll never be perfect. So what does that statement mean?

In Matthew 5 Jesus builds up to that statement:

  • “You are the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13).
  • “You are the light of the world…. let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:14,16).
  • “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).

Our Lord then gives several examples of ways the scribes and Pharisees fall short of the true meaning of the law by redefining it to be achievable by their own efforts. He then concludes with the statement about perfection. We are to be “sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:45), taking on His family resemblance, showing what He is like. This is the purpose of both our creation (Isaiah 43:7) and our redemption (Ephesians 1:13-14).

But how do we live this out? How do we hold to a standard of perfection, of Christlikeness, without despairing of our ability to attain it?

The Apostle Paul helps us do this through what he writes to the believers in Thessalonica:

Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more (1 Thessalonians 4:9-10).

Paul commends them for their love – they are exhibiting the type of love that all Christians should have for one another. Yet, in instructing them to “do this more and more,” he implies that their love is not yet perfect.

We can learn how to live as imperfect people called to perfection by distinguishing among our goal, our practice, and our standing.

  • Our goal: Perfection, complete Christlikeness, loving with His love.
  • Our practice: Increasing in Christlikeness, loving more and more.
  • Our standing: Loved in Christ Jesus, accepted in Christ Jesus, forgiven in Christ Jesus.

The goal is clear: Conformity to Christ, complete sinlessness, shining with the glory of God. God promises to complete that good work in us after Jesus returns.

In the meantime, we aim for that goal, and are not satisfied with anything less. We hate the sin that obscures God’s image in us. But we praise God for ways that we are more closely taking on Jesus’ character, and strive to grow in those ways.

All the while, God accepts us fully because of the work of Jesus. He did not bring us into His family because of our works, and He does not keep us in His family because of our striving.

So do not get discouraged as you see how far short of perfection you fall. And do not redefine “perfection” to make it achievable. Instead, confident in your standing before God because of Jesus, strive for more and more love, for more and more Christlikeness, thanking Him for whatever ways you improve, asking for forgiveness through Jesus for the ways you fall short, and holding firmly to His promise that He will complete that good work in you.