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1 Corinthians 6:1-11
6:1 When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? 2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! 4 So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? 5 I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, 6 but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? 7 To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? 8 But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers!1
9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous2 will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,3 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
[1] 6:8
[2] 6:9
[3] 6:9
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Hey there. It's, I'm nervous. I'm sure it shows. This is a heavy text that we're going to look at tonight, but hearing this text is far and away the most important part of the entire message. I'm about to read it.
Speaker 1:Pay very close attention. Nothing I have to say compares with the word of the Lord. So hear these words from 1st Corinthians beginning in chapter 6 verse 1. When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world?
Speaker 1:And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more then matters pertaining to this life? So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame.
Speaker 1:Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers? But brother goes to law against brother and that before unbelievers. To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?
Speaker 1:But you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers. Pray with me. God, your words are true. They are what we need to hear tonight. Your gospel is in these words.
Speaker 1:It's on the surface and it's buried down deep too. I pray that as we study your word tonight, as we talk about it, as we share it in open conversation, that you would speak. I've got nothing to say tonight that is of any worth, but your words will stand for 10000 years after all of us are gone. We need to hear from you. I pray that as we look at your word that we will.
Speaker 1:I can't make that happen, God. We count on you for it. Be gracious to us as you have them in your son, Jesus Christ, and in his name we pray. Amen. Alright.
Speaker 1:This sermon is about the central question in this text that we just read. And to me, that question is, why not rather be wronged? We're gonna look at this question through 3 different lenses. 1st, we're gonna look about how it reveals to us the condition of our hearts. 2nd, I want to look in at what Paul has to say specifically to the Corinthians.
Speaker 1:Why is he writing this message to this church at this particular time? What was going on in in Corinth at that time? And then out of that understanding of what Paul had to say to the Corinthians, let's take a step back and maybe look at how it applies more to us and also how it reveals the truth of God's gospel and how radically he loves us and the various profound implications it has for the way that we live. So, let me start with how this question reveals what's going on in our hearts. We are a culture that is obsessed with rights.
Speaker 1:We have grievances about everything. Depending on who you are, it might be the way that wealth is distributed among classes of people. If you're like me, it might be about who obeys and disobeys certain traffic laws when I'm driving around. Now we are quick to feel wronged about important things and trivial ones too. And, we have a very hard time just letting things go.
Speaker 1:I imagine I'm more this way than than most of you. I get upset about something or if someone does something that I think is wrong to me or even to somebody else, it just bothers me. It sticks with me like a rock in my shoe and I can't just let it go. And one very helpful question to ask yourself when you feel that way, if you ever do, is why you can't just let it go? Why can't you just be wronged to whatever right it is that feels offended here?
Speaker 1:Think about this, perhaps the next time that someone lets their dog leave a present in your yard, or the next time someone comments on your parenting, the next time somebody takes credit for your work or blames you for their mistakes, next time you get ripped off or excluded from a social situation, second guest at work, or in your marriage. It's a minute to take for introspection. Why do you feel wounded? What about your identity has been questioned by whatever this wrong is that you perceive having happened? And I think as we kind of look into that question, we find out who we really think we are.
Speaker 1:How do we define our identity. What are the things about us that we think really matter, that when somebody else wrongs those things, we can't just let it go. I think that was Paul's point in writing to the Corinthians. So we're going to, we're gonna look at this letter of first Corinthian first Corinthians. We're gonna have to start pretty broadly before drilling down the first part of chapter 6.
Speaker 1:So what's up with Corinth? Corinth was a major city in Greece, in ancient Greece. Was a it's a very prosperous city. It sits on a narrow strip of land between 2 bigger strips of land, and it's got ocean close on both sides and so it was very prosperous with all these trade routes. It was a powerful city that got a little bit too big for its britches.
Speaker 1:It challenged the Roman Empire, led this league of cities and opposition to Rome, and Rome utterly destroyed Corinth. Basically killed all the men in the city, took the women and children as slaves, which is really bad. Left the city for the birds. About a 100 years after destroying the city, Rome founds a colony there. They send a bunch of retired soldiers and freed slaves, bunch of Roman citizens, and they said, hey, let's have a new city at Corinth.
Speaker 1:And they built there, as you might imagine, a very Roman city. It had Roman law and Roman government. It was full of Roman citizens. It had Roman social conventions, and that's kinda stands in contrast to the surrounding area in Greece. And so it's to this city that the gospel message comes, this new city, this Roman city, this city of new wealth and prosperity, given the trade routes and and everything around the area, they were all getting pretty rich pretty quick.
Speaker 1:It was it was a little microcosm of Rome right there on the on the the Greek peninsula. It's to this city that the gospel comes. We looked a little while back at Acts 18, which is the story of Paul coming to to Corinth and, spending 18 months there sharing the gospel. Paul spent a long time there. He he normally didn't stop, for that long in one place, but he stayed in Corinth a year and a half, stayed through the seasons more than once.
Speaker 1:He worked as a tent maker there. He had a really hard time planting a church at Corinth. He was opposed a lot, his message didn't really get in, God had to actually reassure him that God had many people in Corinth, because Paul was getting discouraged. Paul, who never got discouraged, got beat down by Corinth. He was he was very familiar with the social life of Corinth, the economic life of Corinth, the spiritual, the the political, you know, all the various facets of Corinthian life he had known intimately, because he had been a part of them for so long.
Speaker 1:Now one thing to notice if you go back and read acts 18 are all the Latin names that are in there, all of the people with whom Paul interacts in Corinth, they all sound like they're from Rome. Their names are like Pontus, Priscilla, Aquila, Claudius, Titius, Justus is my favorite, and Crispus. It's a Roman city. He's engaging with all these these Roman issues. If it sounds like I'm beating in this this notion of it being Roman, it's it's important as we move on.
Speaker 1:The church at Corinth did not flourish. It became a host to all manner of sin, and error, and division. And so as a result, 1st Corinthians is in parts a pretty brutal letter. It's full of stern correction and rhetorical fire. One of Paul's major points to the Corinthians is that they're finding their identity as Romans, and as people of position and of wealth, and not as sinners saved by grace.
Speaker 1:We should take heed of this. Many of us are young, and we're just getting established in our lives. We're starting to kind of climb the ladder a little bit. Maybe we've been out of school for a little while, maybe we're starting to buy, you know, we start to own homes, we're getting advanced degrees, we're starting to have make progress in our jobs. We are gaining position in the world.
Speaker 1:And you're certain that these people in Corinth took advantage of this Roman culture as it made them wealthy, and they were very grateful for the advances that it afforded them. But certainly they could not forget their history. I mean Corinth was built on the ruins of a city where everyone was killed by the Romans. So on the one hand they say, we have all of these benefits from being Roman and embracing Roman cultural norms. And on the other hand, they're afraid of rejecting them because they've seen what happens when you turn your back on Rome.
Speaker 1:And I mean, I have that fear at work. I worry that if I don't give my all to my job, that my job's gonna turn its back on me, that there's not I'm going to get fired, or I'm not going to do well, or I'm not going to make progress. And so if I were defining my identity by my job, I should be really concerned about what my job thinks about me. And you can kind of use Rome as that stand in for that thing in your life that you're defining your identity by. It's a temptation I think for all of us, and it certainly was for the Corinthians.
Speaker 1:On chapters 56 of first Corinthians, Paul gives 3 ways in which the Corinthians had adopted Roman customs and rejected their identity as children of God. In chapter 5, he accuses them of engaging in incestuous adultery and then boasting about it. Pretty easy to see why that one's bad. In the latter part of chapter 6 he gets on to him about being too willing to accept, kind of the philosophical underpinnings of Rome's acceptance of prostitution. Again, pretty easy to see why that could be divisive in a church and why that's kind of a bad identity to adopt.
Speaker 1:But in between those 2, kind of really obvious very sexual sins, there's this passage about law suits among believers. And it it stands out to me as being weird that Paul would put that in there. It doesn't really fit with what goes on either side, just looking at it from the context of behavior. But if you look at it through the lens of identity, I think it makes a lot more sense. So let's start to to break it down a little bit.
Speaker 1:Through this this passage that I read you see that Paul's using a series of rhetorical questions to scold the Corinthians. In Greek, the first word of the first verse is dare. It comes at the end here in the English, but in Greek it comes first. Paul leads off with, how dare you do these things? It's like he's scolding a child or something.
Speaker 1:I think that's exactly what he's trying to do. He's trying to say, you I cannot believe that you would do this. The tone of the passage is indignation. As he says in verse 5 explicitly, he's trying to shame the Corinthians. But these questions aren't just about shame.
Speaker 1:What they what Paul's trying to do is to reveal the distance between what the Corinthians thinks really matters in life, and what God thinks really matters in life. And by using these questions, he's showing the size of that distance, that great gulf between the way they're acting and the way that they should be acting as children of God. Paul's main point underlying all of this is that the Corinthians are acting as if the gospel doesn't matter, it doesn't have the power to change them, and that God is weaker than Rome. And he shows that by setting up 3 dichotomies that kind of run through this passage. First, is he contrasts the saints versus the unjust judges.
Speaker 1:2nd, he contrasts the present time and eternity, and then third, he contrasts perceived injuries versus real injuries, perceived wrongs versus real wrongs. So let's walk through the text and see these three things. 1st, the saints and the unrighteous judges. We have had a little bit more background about Rome again. Sorry.
Speaker 1:Lawsuits back then are different than lawsuits now. You don't go to court to get justice in ancient Rome. You go to find out who's richer and more powerful. Judges routinely accepted bribes, and so a rich person could take a poor person to court and win every time, more or less. In in fact, people would use this for kind of institutionalized theft.
Speaker 1:If a poor person had a vineyard that a rich person wanted, he could just go sue for it, bribe the judge, and lo and behold, he got his vineyard. So it was a means of oppression of the poor going to going to court. And second, you know, if people were both rich on on both sides of the of the case, then it turned into a kind of social competition. Who was more powerful in society? Who's star was rising versus who was kind of past their prime on the decline or hadn't really arrived yet?
Speaker 1:You took people to court to determine social standing, not just kinda who was actually right determined on some objective theory of law, like we like the courts decide today. And so you can see why Paul's point is that one believer should not take another believer before an unjust judge. That is another way of one brother oppressing another. The judges are unrighteous because they showed favoritism, and they decided cases based on social standing. The church was embracing the social conventions of Rome and using them to harm one another.
Speaker 1:That's bad. People who claim Christ should be working for the good of their neighbors, not suing their neighbors for personal gain, and bribing a judge to get it. So that's the unjust judge. On the other hand, he Paul talks about the saints. The saints are, as Paul says, they're going to decide these matters based on wisdom, forgiveness, or what Paul calls in 2nd Corinthians, the ministry of reconciliation.
Speaker 1:A brother should try to heal a relationship and do what's right, instead of just trying to keep as much money as possible. Paul says again in 2nd Corinthians, we should regard no one according to the flesh. Okay. So that's the first dichotomy. Difference between the way that the world looks at these problems unjustly through corruption, and the way that a believer looks at it through reconciliation.
Speaker 1:The second dichotomy is looking at the present versus the the eternal perspective. The Corinthians would not be Corinthians forever. They bear the promise of eternal salvation with a glorious future reigning with Christ, even going so far as Paul says, to exercise dominion over the angels or judging angels. If you were wanting me to explain to you what that means, you're going to have to come back later having the foggiest idea, what it means to judge angels or why they've done anything worth judging. But, let's take Paul on faith that he knows what he's talking about.
Speaker 1:I don't. But that at his point isn't how we're gonna judge the angels, the point is that as believers we are heirs of the promise of God and the kingdom of God. And that that promise includes reigning forever with Christ, with dominion over the entire world. If that's true of you, why would you ever take some trivial problem before a corrupt judge, in some lowly court, in some fleeting empire, and have that be what decides your problems? That just doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Now we might think that the Roman empire was a really big deal, and it may have lasted for a 1000 years. To God it was a breath. It's a little pile of dust that blows away and is gone. If you really have have grasped the the eternity of God, then you one believer should not drag another believer before some court that can only decide things on earth. God promised his disciples saying, whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven.
Speaker 1:That's a big deal. And some piddling corrupt magistrate just can't hold a candle to it. It reminds me of passage out of Isaiah that's that's worth reading. It's chapter 40. Isaiah uses the same construct of rhetorical questions.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna start in verse 15, just kinda jump around a bit. Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales. Behold, God takes up the coastlands like fine dust. And I'm gonna skip down to verse 21. Do you not know?
Speaker 1:Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he, the lord, who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. He who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in, who brings princes to nothing and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.
Speaker 1:The nations, even the great ones are like dust on the scales. So why would someone who's been made an heir of the kingdom of God go to a Roman to fix a problem? That seems to violate, at least in my mind, Jesus' commandment to render to Caesar that which is Caesar's, but to render to God's that which is God's. A dispute between 2 people in the church isn't the kind of thing that you should be dragging out to the civil courts, but rather that's a problem that should be handled inside the church. I have to make a quick distinction, the new testament is very clear that we are to live in submission to authorities.
Speaker 1:And so in saying that you shouldn't take your disputes to the courts, that's not a way of saying that we can just ignore, the laws that we live under. But there's a difference between, submitting to an authority and then voluntarily subjecting yourself over and beyond that submission. It's one thing to obey the law, but it's one thing it's another thing altogether to go sue someone and make them go obey the law. You are exercising a degree of personal sub subjugation. You're subjecting yourself to law in a very different way by suing somebody, so you're not submitting, you're going far beyond that.
Speaker 1:Important to make that distinction. That really brings us back, I think, to the 3rd dichotomy, which is the most important, in in Paul's rhetorical structure here. That the dichotomy between perceived wrongs and real wrongs, between perceived injury and real injury. Look at verse 7, to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. I'm a lawyer as my day job, and I know that nobody ever goes to court unless they expect to win.
Speaker 1:So you always start out on this lawsuit thinking all the ways that you're going to defeat the other guy. You're always sure you're gonna win, otherwise you would never go. I'm sure that it was the same back then, I imagine lawyers have always been about like we are now. But the if they even had lawyers back then. I wonder if they did.
Speaker 1:But the, the point is that that that Paul is trying to make, is that now you're you're thinking about it all wrong. There is no victory for you in court. Whether you win or you lose, you've already lost just by stepping inside the door. And that really carries on to this question, why not rather be wrong? He is saying, you should just rather suffer the wrong, than go to court.
Speaker 1:It is better for you just to lose and let it go, than to go to court and try to defend your rights. And for the life of me, I have the hardest time figuring out why that is true. Why is it better just to be wronged? Why is it better why why should we just let it go? What's what's the reason for that?
Speaker 1:To get that answer, I think we have to look on into verse 11. I'm gonna skip over some of the the verses in the middle, but Paul basically catalogs a bunch of various sins that the Corinthians had previously engaged in. And then he says, and such were some of you, But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by the spirit of our God. But you were you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified. Paul puts the conjunction but before each of those words in the Greek, and so he's just emphasizing the the change that's taking place.
Speaker 1:You've you've changed from what you were, so now you can accept a wrong. Whatever however things used to be with you, they're different now because this happened. So why does why does this salvation, why does this washing by God change us so that we can accept wrongs? I think to to answer that question, it takes us back to the heart of the gospel. The first way that we see the gospel here is that by accepting Christ's righteousness as our own, we can accept bad things that happened to us unjustly, and let go of our own righteousness.
Speaker 1:The message of the gospel is that salvation comes by grace through faith and not by works, so that none of us can boast. God has, in effect, offered us a choice whether we want to be judged by our own merits or judged by the merits of Jesus Christ. If you want to be judged on your own merits, by all means, go ahead. You can have them, and you will bear the consequences for them. God would give you that choice.
Speaker 1:If you want your righteousness, you can have it. Or if you want Christ, just as freely you can have him, and have his righteousness counted to you on your behalf. But I don't think that you can have both. You either cling to Christ and claim his righteousness, or you can cling to your own and claim that. But it doesn't make much sense to me to say, no, I claim Christ's righteousness as my own, and that's what I will be defined by.
Speaker 1:My only hope is in his sacrifice on my behalf, but I'm still gonna get mad about petty wrongs that are done to me. I'm still gonna be worried about defending my own righteousness against my neighbors. You're you're you're trying to live in 2 worlds at the same time, and I don't think you can do it. I don't think that makes any sense. Part of accepting the sacrificial death and resurrection of Christ is giving up any claim to your own righteousness.
Speaker 1:I don't wanna be judged by my own merits in the last day, so I should probably not so strongly defend my rights in the meantime. I should go ahead and get ready for how I would like to be treated when everything is over. And that means, I don't want to be judged on my own merits. I want to be judged by Christ. So I can let my own rights go, because my rights aren't what matter to me.
Speaker 1:Now I gotta make an another kind of exception clear to what I'm saying. I still think that rights are important. To have a healthy society we need to have law. Rights come from the law, and Christ did not come to abolish the law. There's still a place for rights.
Speaker 1:And I'm very thankful that we live in a country where rights are enforced and protected. So don't hear me to say that God wants everybody to roll over and abandon all your rights all the time no matter what. But I am saying there are sometimes that God will do that. God will want you to just abandon your rights and let it go even if it cost you. And if you truly treasure Christ and his work for you on your behalf, that treasuring should express itself by you letting yourself be wrong sometimes.
Speaker 1:And I think this points us again to the gospel in a different way. Instead of just shrugging off wrongs that are done to us, and just passively letting them go, we can do more than that. We can actually we are free in the gospel to offer ourselves sacrificially to the world. Paul makes this very point a few chapters over in 1st Corinthians, where he talks about giving up his rights as an apostle so that he can lead people to Christ. He says, I'll become like any group of people.
Speaker 1:I won't have to have acted like myself. I don't have to get all the rights that I'm afforded as a Roman citizen, or as a Jew, or as an apostle. I will give all of that up and become like anybody if I can communicate the gospel to them. He's doing more than just passively letting wrongs come to him. He's putting himself in the situations where he knows he will be wronged, because he thinks that he can spread the gospel that way.
Speaker 1:He is actively giving up his rights. But Paul isn't making this up, he is following the example of Jesus. I gotta make this part clear, what I'm about to say isn't in the Bible. This is a kind of a thought experiment, and I don't wanna take out from this that this is what really happened. But I do think that it's helpful to to contemplate what I'm about to say in the manner I'm about to say it to help bring one aspect of the gospel into focus.
Speaker 1:So imagine Jesus Christ sitting in heaven and considering the problem of man's sin. As the author of the law, he knows that the law is good, that it's just, and as because he sees us living, he knows that we have broken it flagrantly, repeatedly, everyday. We have completely broken the law, and can't be reconciled to it. More than that, he knows he knows that the wages of sin is death, and that the righteous judgement for breaking the law is going to require someone to die. But there is no one who can die for the others, for all have sinned and fallen all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Speaker 1:So he's faced with a problem. He radically loves the world, but the world is hopelessly lost, and there is no just result. He cannot look within the law and find a solution. There is no right way out. Just going if everyone gets what they deserve, then all of humanity is just going to have to go to hell, and God's not going to get what he wants, which is to save his people.
Speaker 1:And so Christ asked himself the question, why not rather be wronged? Why don't I put myself on the receiving end of the punishment? Even though there is no compulsion that I do so, why don't I submit myself? And look what he submits himself to. He submits himself to poverty in a culture where the rich rule over the poor.
Speaker 1:He submits himself to be judged by a corrupt Roman court, and not just over property, but he put his very life on the line and gave it away. All saying, I will give up my rights, that I might be wrong, and that in my suffering and in my death, I might be able to give justification and righteousness to people who aren't just, who aren't righteous, who deserve to suffer, but who I don't want to suffer. The way that He brought reconciliation was was by accepting pain onto himself. We can follow this pattern, and I think that Paul tells us that we should, and seeing why takes a quick Greek grammar lesson. Ancient Greek, like English, has active and passive voices.
Speaker 1:It's one thing to say, the vase, I broke the vase, that's active voice. You could say, on the other hand, the vase was broken or mistakes were made as that often gets phrased, active and passive, you know, your English teacher always tells you use the active voice, don't use the passive. Well, Greek has got a third option. It has what's called the middle voice, which isn't a very descriptive term because we don't have a good way of describing the middle voice in English. It's it's kinda in the middle, it's half way between active and passive.
Speaker 1:The verb wronged in the sentence, why not rather be wronged, is in that middle voice. That's why the ESV translates that verb, why not rather suffer wrong. That word suffer isn't it's not really there, that's the translators way of trying to transpose the middle voice into English. There's an active component to being wronged or suffering wrong. You're not just sitting there and letting bad things come to you.
Speaker 1:There's a time that you're going to have to step forward and do something. Like, Jesus gave us an example of this talking about his death. You know, it's easy to picture Jesus as being dragged, you know, just kind of dragged along to his own death or like that Michael w Smith song. It says like a like a rose trampled on the ground. I hate that song.
Speaker 1:I hate that song because that's not at all what happened. Right? Jesus says in John 10, he says, my life is my own, and nobody can take it from me. I lay it down because I have authority to lay it down, and I take it up again because I have authority to take it up again. That is the charge given me by my father.
Speaker 1:Jesus was not just kind of letting himself suffer wrong. At every step of the way, he was actively submitting to it. He, even if he was dragged through his trial a bit, no one made the man come to earth. He was sitting in heaven in perfection and actively submitted. I love how Paul puts it actively in Philippians.
Speaker 1:He emptied himself with his divinity. He's doing something. That's the call that comes to us. Do something. Actively submit to the world around you even when it costs you your rights.
Speaker 1:And it could take a lot of different shapes. Sometimes it's as simple as taking a bigger share of the blame or the cost than you have to. Because Christ is enough for you, it's okay if you lose a little bit of money, or even a lot of money. It's okay if your career takes a step back, because you're bearing the brunt of somebody else's mistake. And if it's not, where's your identity?
Speaker 1:How are you defining yourself? If you can preserve a relationship by taking on a cost that you don't have to bear, take it. If you can advance the gospel with someone by opening yourself up to being defrauded, do it. It's worth it. We can find an example of this in the we book of Philemon that none of us ever read.
Speaker 1:It's right after Titus, right before Hebrews. Philemon had a slave and the slave escaped, and maybe the slave stole some stuff when he left. It's not exactly clear. Paul and this slave meet up. Paul and Philemon know each other.
Speaker 1:Paul writes a letter to Philemon and says, I'm gonna send your slave back to you, but I want you to accept him, not as a slave, not as your property, but as a brother. He knows the Lord, and he's been saved by the same grace that you've been saved by. So now, accept him back, give up your claim on his person, and you should do this not because I'm Paul and I'm telling you to, but because you recognize that you've been saved by grace, that you have not gotten what you deserve. And so even if you think that this man does deserve to be your slave, because of the gospel, don't hold him that way anymore. I think that's a good example for us.
Speaker 1:That's a great little book to read. It's less than a page. It would take you no time at all. I'm wrapping up now, and finish with 3 more little points. Most of the good that we do in the world, the ordinary way that we should do good is through avoiding wrongs, and doing right.
Speaker 1:That's the normal pattern. But maybe at the deepest level, if we want to be able to do ultimate good, if we want to be able to do the work of the kingdom of God in the world, we have to be willing to take on wrong, at least sometimes. We would all be lost if Christ had decided to leave us to our rights. We count not on a massive not on the world being just at the very core, but on a grave injustice happening on the the godly suffering for the ungodly of Christ who knew no sin, becoming sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God. That's not right that that should happen, and yet God is the only one who could have submitted himself to it, and He did, and He did it for us.
Speaker 1:We do not rest ultimately on our rights, but on God's love for us. What clearer way can we testify to the change that the gospel works in our life than by us doing the same, by laying down our own benefits and our own rights for the good of those around us. Think about all that Christ gives to us. The assurance that he had the assurance that he has totally overcome the world, and that He holds us in His hand forever. We are completely secure, and we'll have all that we need, no matter what, even as we lay dying.
Speaker 1:Because of that, we can suffer wrongs without the need to protect ourselves. We don't have to worry about what we justly deserve, because we know that we justly deserve a judgment that we will never receive. Why worry about losing something that you may have earned when you've been given more than you could ever earn? Why worry about it's like standing in the in the middle of an ocean, or a massive lake of fresh water and worry about someone taking your water bottle. You have everything.
Speaker 1:You are an heir of the kingdom of God, and it's time that you live like it. Live like that's your identity, and not that you are scrambling for every dollar that you can get. That's the world that everyone in the world can see that. All of us try to protect ourselves by accumulating money, and security, and friends, and position. If the gospel matters to us, we can lay that stuff down.
Speaker 1:We can be wronged in our money, we can be wronged in our position, we can be wronged by our friends because that's not what we are ultimately resting on. That stuff is sand, and it will wash away. Last note is this, psychology, there's been a lot of studies recently done by these psychologists, and I just take it on faith. Mostly economists. And they say that we hate losing something a lot more than we enjoy getting something.
Speaker 1:We feel lost more keenly than we enjoy gain. We feel cost more than we feel benefit. We remember an insult longer and more intensely than we remember a compliment. So that is to say this is difficult work. Letting a wrong go is not just a a passive process.
Speaker 1:It's you don't just get to say, Oh, I would rather be wrong than it's just kinda gonna fall off like water off a duck's back or something. It's hard work. That's another reason why I think there's an active component to letting yourself be wronged. I don't want to send you out saying, be fired up and let people do wrong by you. It's it's hard.
Speaker 1:And I think the way that we can do it successfully isn't by just letting ourselves get exhausted by giving things away, but treasure Christ, think about his perfection, meditate on the gospel, on the substitution of Christ's righteousness for your lack of righteousness. Remember what you've gained, so that when presented with that circumstance, with that out of the ordinary circumstance, where you're going to have to bear a cost that isn't yours to bear, but the gospel cries out for it. That you will have so ingrained the gospel in your life, that you will have so grounded your life on the hard rock of Jesus Christ, that you will be able to do so, that your identity will be secure without it. It isn't going to happen when you walk out the door. We're going to have to encourage each other to do it, and hold up in our church as examples, times that that happens.
Speaker 1:Radical, radical love that's sacrificial on behalf of a perishing world, is a great way to testify to the truth of the gospel. And I long to see us do that. I long when my time comes to do it, that I would do it. And I'm afraid that I won't, because I found my identity on too many things. So help me, and I want to help you.
Speaker 1:We can all help each other, not to hold the world too tightly, not to hold up as our treasures, those things which are fleeting, and the things that don't matter. And maybe by God's grace when the day comes, we'll do it right. Please pray with me. God, forevermore, for all of eternity, after the sun is burned out, we will think on the glory of your cross and your resurrection. That is the central reality in all of history, the central event.
Speaker 1:It defines everything else. Because of that, we have assurance that we're accepted into your family. Because of that, we have assurance that you are stronger than death. The darkest fear that we have. Now do you you prepare a table before us in the presence of our enemies and our cup overflows.
Speaker 1:We know that because of your cross. It's very tempting for us to worry about the world that we live in, to worry about our position in it, to try to to be a slightly taller blade of grass than those that are all around us. And yet all the grass is gathered up and burned in the fire, and none of it's gonna last. It withers and it fades and your words stands forever. And we've found our identity strongly on you so that we can give sacrificially not out of our excess and our wealth, but out of yours, out of what you have freely given to us.
Speaker 1:That we might not hold our rights because they are trivial in comparison to what you have given us. That we may know that no one can take from us that which you have given. That no we we have a treasure that no thief can steal, no moth destroy, rust can never reach. And you have saved our hearts, and we ask that you would use us to preserve and to benefit our community, our city, our homes, our workplaces, our neighborhoods, everywhere that we find ourselves. May we be sacrificial agents, for the kingdom of god.
Speaker 1:Might we advance your gospel, at our own detriment if need be. Be willing to do so and prepared and encourage one another. God, help us to do these things not by our strength, by your abundant grace working in us, the grace that saves us, changes us, and carries us forward, to into ultimate victory. We know that you've accomplished all these things through your son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.