Sunday 27th July – Continue to live your lives in Him – Pastor Robert Voigt

The focus on Gal.5:1 as St. Petri’s home text this year has brought so many blessings.  “Set free to live free” is a wonderful theme.  The very heart of the gospel message is that God, through Jesus’ death on the cross, changed our judgment from ‘guilty’ to ‘innocent’.  We have been set free from the consequences of our sinful rebellion against God.  The truth, as Jesus said, has set us free.

But now what? What does it mean to “live free”?  If God is no longer my judge but my Creator, Saviour and Comforter, how am I meant to live in this world that appears to be “going to hell with speed and enthusiasm”?  The fact is that following Jesus is not the goal of the majority of people on the planet.  And while the rate of new Christians is growing fast, the rate of long-term Christians leaving the faith is also growing.  We regularly hear of well-known Christian leaders who failed to live with integrity.  Then the media are always happy to highlight the sins of anyone who claims to be a Christian.

But then, who am I to ‘cast stones’?  I know I’m far from perfect – I consider myself the chief of sinners because I should know better.  And yet, no matter how hard I try to be ‘good’, no matter how many times I tell myself I must do better, I still fall far short of what God and the law require of me.

Now we know that the law is all about perfect obedience.  And if we have been Christians for at least 5 minutes, we know that grace is all about God’s totally free, outrageously generous, completely undeserved and unearned love and forgiveness through faith in Jesus.  But there seems to be – no – there definitely is confusion among some Christians about what we are to be and do once we are saved.  It is so easy to slip into the temptation of thinking that, in order to please God now that we’re Christians, we must be more obedient.  There are laws for just about everything these days, including the 10 Commandments.  So we often think that if I can just do better, if I can just lift my game by 10%, God will be pleased with me.

If you’re old enough you will remember the cartoon character Popeye.  He became super strong when he ate spinach.  He didn’t pump iron or work out every day.  All he had to do was eat spinach and then he could always overcome Bluto the bully.  And I think that’s our attitude sometimes too.  All I need is a bit more law to give me a kick up the pants and I’ll do better.  We use the law to increase guilt, because guilt usually has the same short-term effect as caffeine – it gives us a bit of a boost for a short time and that’s enough to make us feel a bit more righteous.

But that doesn’t answer the question, “How do I please God?”  And the answer is: “We don’t need more law.  We need the Holy Spirit.”  It is the Spirit who gives us faith.  It is the Spirit who lives in us and works with us to help us live as committed followers of Jesus.

In our Epistle reading today the apostle Paul said:

Note that Paul did not say, now that you are Christians you need to get your act together.  Rather he said, “continue to live your lives in him”.  He wasn’t putting us on a guilt trip.  He was saying, Don’t stop!  Continue on your journey of faith with Jesus.

Did you ever ask a three year old to colour in a picture?  I remember doing that with our three kids.  Did they stay within the lines?  Did they use the right colours for the right objects?  Of course not.  And I remember when our kids came home from kindergarten or Grade 1 with drawings of our house and family.  Did the drawing look like your house?  Did the drawings of you look realistic?  Did you have a purple face and a green stick body?  And how did you respond?

‘Good grief kid!  Can’t you get anything right?  You’ve gone outside the lines.  You’ve painted the dog pink.  You’ve drawn our house without a garage and we don’t have a chimney!’  No, of course not.  You said, ‘Good job!  Wow, this is a masterpiece and it’s going straight “to the pool room” . . . er . . . I mean the fridge!’  What your child did wasn’t even close to perfect, but you saw their efforts through the eyes of love and you were pleased with the child.  You were filled with love for the joy you saw in your child’s eyes as they proudly presented their efforts to you.

Well, compared to our God, we are infants.  And so our merciful Father is pleased – no – I believe joyful when we attempt to do anything as his children.  We will always fall short of perfection – that’s a fact.  And anything short of perfection is sin – true?  So why can we believe that God is pleased with our poor imperfect efforts?  Because of GRACE!!  Because He sees us only through the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus.  He is pleased with us because we are his children.  He is pleased with us because his Spirit lives in us and helps us to grow disciples of Jesus.

Which is why Paul first said:

He knew that the Colossians were trying to live this new life in Jesus was faith and integrity, and that God’s grace accepted that through Jesus.  But Paul was clear that we are on a life-long journey with Jesus.  If we think that we can grow so far and that’s enough, then we will lose our way – and possibly our faith.  We need to

as the apostle Peter said.  Gradually we will get better at colouring inside the lines.  Gradually our drawings will become more life-like – well, unless you draw like me.  The point is that growing is a process that only ends at death.  Many of you read a devotion most days and listen to a sermon most weeks.  Some critics suggest that we are just getting a milk diet, that we never grow up enough to eat meat.  In other words, they say that once we have learned the ABC’s of the Christian Faith, we never go on to grow further and understand the “meatier” and deeper things of the faith.  But our faith is more than knowledge.  We need the clear reminder every day that we can’t please God without Jesus.  We can’t obey him perfectly.  We can’t stay in the lines of the law.  And, at the same time, we need the clear reminder that God’s grace is enough!  There is no point in trying to do what Jesus has already done.  Our motivation for seeking to please God is not to earn his approval, but to love and serve him because he already approves of us.  He is pleased with us because of what Jesus has done, not because we tried harder or did a bit better than yesterday.

So, because we are living as we should (God’s judgment not ours), Paul’s words really apply to us:

As a plant sends down its roots to get all it needs for life, so we rely on the Spirit to lead us into a personal relationship with our Saviour.  Our nourishment for growth and health come from the Spirit, who works in us the fruit that develops and grows from our certainty that we are “Set free to Live Free”.

Paul may have been thinking of Jesus’ parable about the houses built on sand and rock.  The foundation of our lives needs to be solid to withstand all that life throws at us, and that foundation must be Jesus and the Word of God.

One of the main reasons we read the Word of God, have devotions, come to worship each week, study the Bible, is so that we may know God’s truth.  There are so many people, teachers and weird ideas in the world that we need to know how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Gratitude, thanksgiving and joy always come when we are reminded of all that God has done for us through Jesus our Lord and Saviour.  Look, we know that gratitude and thankfulness have a lot to do with our mental and physical health.  They help us to see everything in the light of God’s love for us.  They also have a huge influence on how we treat other people.

And this is where we find an answer to the question, “What does it mean to live free?”  God never forces any Christian to do something they don’t want to do.  If it is true that God sets us free from sin, guilt, evil, and death, then it is also true that he sets us free to make choices.  As Christians we are free to choose to follow Jesus – or not.  We are free to love and serve others, following Jesus’ example of his sacrifice on the cross.  And we are free to try to obey God’s Word, even as we know that we can never do so perfectly.

And, further, we are free to respond to God’s Word in different ways.  For example, in Hebrews 10:24 the author wrote:

The author asks us to think about and decide on how we will spur one another on towards love and good deeds.  He doesn’t tell us how to do that – we are free to choose the way we do that.  He doesn’t explain what love is or what “good” deeds are.  We are free to make choices about how we do that.

Paul’s words to the Colossians are God’s words for you and me today, as we seek to discover his will for us.

Confident that we are accepted as children by grace through faith in Jesus, we can live each day in the knowledge that God is pleased with us.  He is pleased with us because Jesus fulfilled the law.  Jesus paid the price for our sin.  Jesus won the victory over death and the devil.

So as we live for the Lord, we …

LATEST BULLETIN

LIVE STREAMS

PASTOR’S SERMONS

WORSHIP TIMES