Lecture to accompany Essentials: Week 3: Who am I?
Transcript:
Last week, in our discussion of who Jesus is, we focused on his role as our Mediator, and the three offices that make up that ongoing function: Prophet, Priest, and King. If you haven’t listened to that lecture yet, I encourage you to do that before you listen to this one, because this discussion of who we are will build on the ideas from last week.
A short recap: The Bible is a unified story, and Jesus was God’s plan for saving humanity from sin and separation from Himself before time existed. The need for a Prophet, Priest, and King was evident from the Garden of Eden. Across the Old Testament, people tried and failed to fulfill those offices, established by God to lead and tend to His people. From his birth, Jesus is presented as the Perfect Prophet, Perfect Priest, and Perfect King. He is the perfect Mediator who allows sinners to be reconciled to a Holy God.
This week, our study and discussion of Who Am I? covered the systematic theology of human beings, made in the image of God and imperfectly able to bear God’s image and reflect his glory due to our ongoing struggle with sin. God created all men in his image (Genesis 1:26), and Adam and Eve’s choice to sin did not change that (Gen. 9:6; Col. 3:10; James 3:9). But the fall broke our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others, and with all of creation (Chalmers). Jesus’s work of reconciliation as Mediator restores us, both in our salvation and in His ongoing efforts on our behalf. We are commissioned with offices in which we are to labor in obedience to the example of Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit. These offices do not burden us with additional work, rather they redeem the ways we already interact with the world so that we can bear the image of God with integrity.
TEMPLE, PRIEST, SACRIFICE
Jesus is the Great High Priest, who reconciles us to God and restores our relationship with Him as priests and temples. We are saved FROM our sins so that we can approach the Most Holy God. In the Old Testament, the temple was the dwelling place of God. In the New Jerusalem, Revelation 21:22-27 tells us that there will be no temple, because the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70, so where does the presence of God currently dwell? Corinthians tells us over and over that in the church age, believers are the holy temple of God, the dwelling place of his presence (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 tells us to glorify God with our bodies, which were bought with a price and now serve as temples of the Holy Spirit. The Old Testament order established by God for his people to relate to him still exists: the presence of God resides in the temple, then a building, now the body of believers.
2 Corinthians 6:16 asks, “What agreement does the temple of God have with idols?”, and we should take great care: Mark, Luke, and John all contain emotional accounts of Jesus clearing the temple (Mark 11; Luke 19; John 2). He cares about the transactions that take place there because he cares about the dwelling place of his Father. In reflecting on the command to “glorify God with your body”, what else might you glorify with your body besides the Lord? What associations do our bodies have with idols on a given day? The call to modesty is not just about avoiding promiscuous dress; it is a call to humility of comportment, how we carry ourselves. Do you use your body to flaunt your health? Do you use your body to flaunt your wealth? What is being glorified by your body?
In the Old Testament, the priests were anointed and consecrated to serve God (Ex. 40:13); the lips of the priests guard knowledge, give instruction, and deliver the messages of the Lord of Armies (Malachi 2:7); and the priests offered sacrifices on behalf of the people (Leviticus). Under the priestly order of Jesus, the Great High Priest (Hebrews), Jesus made us priests to our God (Revelation 5:9-10) through the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul reminds the Roman church to be ministers of Christ and priests to the Romans around them, so that these gentiles would be acceptable offerings, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. 1 Peter 2:5-9 describes believers as a royal priesthood, commanded to “offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus.” And where are we to get these sacrifices? Paul twice describes himself as “poured out as a drink offering” in sacrificial service of others (Phil. 2:7; 2 Tim. 4:6). Romans 12:1-2 tells us that as our spiritual act of worship, we are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices. Our lives are to burn as a pleasing aroma to the Lord.
As a royal priesthood, the sacrificial offering we make to God is our lives: our bodies and our spirits. It is also the people we bring with us, as Paul taught the Roman church. Just as Jesus is temple, priest, and atoning sacrifice, so believers are temple, priest, and sacrifice of worship, gratitude, and thanksgiving. Our sacrifice does not earn us anything; Jesus paid every debt we owe on the cross with his death. Our sacrifice only has meaning as a response to the grace we have received. Being a worthy dwelling place, a holy priest, and a pleasing sacrifice is only possible by the power of the Holy Spirit. How can you pray for help with this today?
SONS & SLAVES
As image-bearers, all men were created with “inherent worth and dignity”. Before we were reconciled to God through Christ, we were image-bearing enemies of God (Romans 5:10). Jesus’s sacrifice allows us to be reconciled to God and adopted as image-bearing sons and co-heirs with Christ. One of the terms of our adoption is that we are no longer slaves to sin. Another is that the Holy Spirit, whom God sent into our hearts, cries, “Abba, Father!”, assuring us of our sonship and helping us to walk in the freedom we have been given (Galatians 4:6-7).
However, sonship does not imply an entitled life of palace luxury. Like a good father, the Lord disciplines the one he loves (Hebrews 12:5), allowing us to grow through struggles to better reflect the character of our Good Father. We are no longer slaves to sin, but we are enslaved to God (Romans 6:22), slaves of that which we obey (Romans 6:14). Paul even sets a higher example, claiming to have made himself “a slave to everyone, in order to win more people” (1 Corinthians 9:19-21). If we belong to God, we must serve God, and we serve him through serving others.
How aware are you of your status as an adopted child of God? What kind of adopted son are you? Are you a grateful one or a lazy, entitled one? Do you hoard your inheritance or do you use it “in order to win more people” to Christ?
BODY PARTS & AMBASSADORS
Through our reconciliation, Jesus makes a way for us to enjoy renewed relationships with others, both believers and non-believers. With other believers, we are part of the body of Christ and are given gifts by the Holy Spirit that we are to use to build one another up. With non-believers, we are commissioned as ambassadors for Christ, sent to tell the whole earth the gospel. In right relationship with other believers, we operate in unity. In Christ, we are being built together for God’s dwelling in the spirit (Ephesians 2:19-22). Each member of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27) has been given a gift from God (1 Corinthians 7:7) for the purpose of building up the body as a whole. We depend on each other as the hand and the brain can’t really accomplish much apart from the other. One believer’s lack of spiritual health impacts the rest of the body of Christ, and we have a responsibility to each other to remain in humble and active submission to the Holy Spirit, allowing him to sanctify us. Consider the impact on your own physical body when certain parts stop playing nice with each other or stop functioning altogether. How is your spiritual health? Do you struggle with issues of disunity or unresolved conflict with another believer? Have you surrendered to apathy in any areas of your life?
In the beginning, God commanded mankind to “be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). At the Tower of Babel, the people declared, ‘let us “build ourselves a city…otherwise we will be scattered throughout the earth”’ (Gen. 11:4). In response to their disobedience, “the Lord scattered them throughout the earth, and they stopped building the city” (Gen. 11:8). The Great Commission echoes the command from Genesis: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you,” Matthew 28:19-20. “You will receive my power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth,” Acts 1:8. Believers have been commissioned as ambassadors, to go into all the earth to preach the good news, to be fruitful and multiply. We are to use the language of love, reverence, and servanthood as ambassadors in chains (Ephesians 6:20) as we move about with strangers and witness to a foreign world (John 13:34-35; 1 Peter 1:17).
Remembering back to last week’s lecture, Old Testament Prophets carried messages from God. As ambassadors to the whole earth, we are to carry the message of the good news of the gospel, fruitfully multiplying and making disciples. Mirroring the Perfect Prophet, the Word made Flesh, we are commissioned to go as prophet-ambassadors to a world that does not know him with the Law written on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33), enabled, as always, by the Holy Spirit.
Let’s consider the personal consequences of resisting this commissioning. The city of Babel was scattered to the ends of the earth when they did not spread out themselves. The prophet Jonah attempted to evade his mission and the Lord graciously set him straight by way of being eaten and then vomited up by a fish. Let’s not evade our mission. Let’s give to missions, yes, but let’s also be personally involved in the mission of making disciples, in our town, in our state, in our country, and to the ends of the earth.
STEWARD & CITIZEN
We are to imitate Jesus as priests, we are to follow him as prophets, but there is only one throne, only one King. Enemies of the king attempt to seize control and take the throne, crowning themselves instead. However, by the finished work of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, rather than attempt a deadly mutiny, we get to surrender the Kingship to Jesus and enjoy the office of caretaker and citizen of Jesus’s upside down kingdom (Ephesians 2:19). As caretakers or stewards, we cultivate and tend to the kingdom (Genesis 2:15). We care for the orphan and the widow in their distress (James 1:27). We were once not a people, but now we are God’s people (1 Peter 2:10), and as citizens of heaven, we are to live worthy of the gospel (Philippians 1:27). In Jesus’s upside down kingdom, the last is first, and the first is last. In his kingdom, the downcast are blessed, the poor have an inheritance, the hungry and thirsty consume their fill, and we rejoice when we are victimized on behalf of Jesus (Matthew 5:3-12). In Jesus’s upside down kingdom, we take pleasure in weaknesses, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties for the sake of Christ; we find strength in our weaknesses (2 Corinthians 12:10). Jesus’s upside down kingdom is lunacy to the world, but it is the (omnipotent) power of God for those of us who are being saved, those of us who are citizens in it (1 Corinthians 1:18).
Whether you find me vying for the throne or submitting to the King, joyfully serving as citizen and caretaker, really depends on the day. Sometimes it changes moment-by-moment, depending on my mood and the current situation. Sometimes I don’t even realize that I have plopped myself on the throne until things start to fall apart around me. May we be quick to realize when we’ve committed mutiny and quick to surrender the throne to the rightful King.
CONCLUSION
Priest, temple, sacrifice, sons, slaves, body parts, ambassadors, prophets, citizens, stewards. Goodness, that’s a lot of jobs and a long to-do list before I can be the person God wants me to be. Let’s pause that perfectly logical but exhausting train of thought and focus on the main character in the question of who I am: Jesus! The finished work of Jesus supernaturally alters how I relate to God, to myself, to others, and to all of creation. And it supernaturally alters who I am! These offices are not a heavy burden, a ladder of achievement, a yoke of suffering. His yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matthew 11:30)! I relate to the world around me no matter what. But instead of being an outcast, enemy of God, slave to sin, overlord, and abuser who is spiritually lost and spiritually blind, I have been redeemed. Therefore, I have been commissioned as an image-bearer to join the redemptive work of God in the world by following the example of Jesus, fully dependent on the work of the Holy Spirit.
In reflecting on these offices, are any of them out of balance for you? Do you easily identify as a child of God while neglecting your office as ambassador? Are you an active member of the body of Christ while neglecting your physical or spiritual body? As we finish, spend some time praying about the offices you have been called to and how the Holy Spirit might be calling you to respond to them.
Trying to white-knuckle perfection in these offices is as productive as taping fruit on a tree branch and declaring myself an apple farmer. But I can walk in complete dependence on the Holy Spirit, knowing who I am. I am free, bearing no guilt from my sins; I have been adopted as a son, commissioned to serve the body and evangelize the world, a steward and naturalized citizen of Jesus’s upside down kingdom. We have nothing to earn and everything to give.
Kathryn Entrekin 