Ephesians 3:14-21
Colossians 2:6-15
“I say, ‘What is It?’”
By: Rev. Ken Sauer, East Ridge united Methodist Church, Chattanooga, Tn eastridgeumc.org
What is “it”?
In any language, “it” is the most powerful expression of the most powerful emotion and experience in the world.
“It” is what everyone is looking for.
“It” is something everyone is starving for.
“It” is something many people have not yet experienced in this often dark and cruel world.
“It” is why Jesus came and died.
“It” is why there is a Christian Church and why Christianity has been spreading for the past 2,000 years!
“It,” of course, is “Love.”
An old song says: “You’re nobody till somebody loves you.”
And if that is true…then everybody is somebody because God loves us all!!!
But, as I said, not everyone knows about the love of God.
I was speaking with a colleague who had been ministering to a teenager who has all the talent and potential in the world, but keeps doing things to harm herself…
…due to a self-loathing.
Recently she tried to commit suicide.
My colleague told me that he went to have a heart to heart talk with her a few days later.
She is a young person who has never experienced unconditional love.
She has been abused and used all her life.
During their conversation, my colleague stood up, went into another room where a Cross was hanging, took that Cross off the wall and brought it over to the teenager.
“Look at this!” he told her.
“This is how much you are loved!
This is how deeply you are loved!
This is how important your life is!”
I think we all need to take a good look at the Cross…every day…and tell ourselves this very same thing!
“This proves your self-worth.
This is how much God loves you and everyone else!
Now, go about your day believing it, and ask God to help you in your unbelief!”
The love of God is what changes us.
The love of God is what gives us a hope and a future.
The love of God is what gives us self-worth.
The love of God is what allows us to love others!
Karl Menninger once said, “Love cures people—both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.”
Jesus opened our eyes to the true nature of love in Matthew Chapter 22: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
A commentator on television the other morning was saying that guilt from our past causes us to want to punish ourselves through drug and alcohol abuse, and other dangerous and self destructive activities.
And we aren’t even aware that this is why we are doing these things.
This is one reason why the passage I read from Colossians is so important to ingest and rejoice over!
“When you were dead in your trespasses and sins…God made you alive with Christ.
He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing to the cross.”
Forgive yourself; you can because Christ has forgiven you!!!
Of course, that is easier said than done.
But knowing you are forgiven and loved is the greatest starting place in the world!!!
It is also the greatest place to stay!!!
I think all of us should pin this Scripture to our bathroom mirror, so we can read it, be reminded about it every morning, every day and every time we look in the mirror!
Smile, rejoice, move on and live!!!
Christ has forgiven you!!!
I know I’ve told this story before, but…
Several years ago in a large city in the far West, rumors spread that a certain Catholic woman was having visions of Jesus.
The reports reached the archbishop.
He decided to check her out.
“Is it true, ma’am, that you have visions of Jesus?” asked the archbishop.
“Yes,” the woman replied simply.
“Well, the next time you have a vision, I want you to ask Jesus to tell you the sins I confessed in my last confession.”
The woman was stunned.
“Did I hear you right, Bishop? You actually want me to ask Jesus to tell you the sins of your past?”
“Exactly. Please call me if anything happens.”
Ten days later the woman notified her spiritual leader of a recent apparition.
“Please come,” she said.
Within the hour the archbishop arrived.
“You just told me on the phone that you actually had a vision of Jesus. Did you do what I asked?”
“Yes, Bishop, I asked Jesus to tell me the sins you confessed in your last confession.”
The bishop leaned forward with anticipation.
His eyes narrowed.
“What did Jesus say?”
She took his hand and gazed deep into his eyes.
“Bishop,” she said, “these are His exact words: ‘I can’t remember.’”
Unhealthy guilt holds us in bondage.
God’s grace sets us free to be who we were created to be!!!
When we embrace God’s forgiveness the focus of our lives shift from our badness to God’s goodness, and the question becomes not, “What have I done?” but “What can God do through me?”
In Colossians 2:6-8 Paul instructs, “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith…and overflowing with thankfulness.
See that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”
It has been said that being a Christian is like riding a bicycle; unless you go forward, you’ll fall off.
And going forward as a Christian means nothing more or less than going forward “in Christ.”
Our lives are to be rooted in Christ, like a tree in good soil.
We need to be built up in Him, like a solid house going up brick by brick on a firm foundation!
At every stage of our Christian journey, what we need is more of Christ and what Christ is all about!!!
If someone or something whispers in our ear that we are not good enough or that we need something more, stand firm and say, “Satan, the Lord rebuke you.”
Otherwise, we are in danger of being taken “captive”…of being drawn into something that is not of God.
And if that happens, we can be dragged down to the level we were on before we met Christ and accepted the fact that we are accepted!!!
That is what Paul was warning the Christians in the Colossian Church about.
Jewish Christian zealots were telling the new Gentile converts that in becoming Christians they had only gotten half of what they needed, and that what they now needed to do was to be circumcised and to keep the law of Moses.
And Paul is saying, “Don’t get drawn into it, it will be a form of captivity for you.”
As a matter of fact, the word Paul uses for “takes you captive” is very close to the word “synagogue.”
So Paul is warning the Colossians against being lured into the synagogue!!!
Why?
Because if you’ve already got Jesus as your Lord, you don’t need to be “completed” by any other system and you certainly don’t need to be circumcised!
In circumcision, you are “putting off” a small piece of physical flesh, but in baptism you are “putting off” an entire way of life, an entire sphere of existence.
For when you enter the Christian Community you are dying to the old world and coming alive to God’s new one!
How can people who have already done that ever suppose they need to go back and do something extra, something trivial by comparison?
Few of us are likely to face a pressure to convert to Judaism.
But what are the religious and philosophical attractions or deceptions in our world that are most likely to try and draw us away from the fulfillment which is found in Christ and Christ alone?
Who or what is telling you that you are not good enough?
Who or what is telling you that you need something more than Christ?
If someone tries to entice you into anything other than the single-minded devotion to Jesus, you need to take notice!
All we need is Christ the King.
Hold fast to Him and we’ll have all we need!!!
How about that for a big sigh of relief?
Looking back at Ephesians Chapter 3, Paul talks to us about “it.”
And the Ultimate “it” is the unconditional or agape Love of God!!!
Paul talks about the power of this love.
I like the way N.T. Wright translates this passage: “My prayer is this: that he will lay out all the riches of his glory to give you strength and power, through his spirit, in your inner being; that [Jesus] may make his home in your hearts, through faith; that love may be your root, your firm foundation; and that you may be strong enough (with all God’s holy ones) to grasp the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know [Jesus’] love—though actually it’s so deep that nobody can really know it! So may God fill you with all his fullness.”
Paul goes on to say, that God is “capable of doing far, far more than we can ask or imagine…”
Just try and wrap your minds around what God might do in us and through us—as a community of believers, and in you and I as individuals.
Now reflect on the fact that God is perfectly capable of doubling that, tripling that, going far beyond anything we can imagine or dream of!!!
And the more we come to know the power…and grasp how wide, long, high and deep the love of Christ is…
…well, the better and better it gets!!!
Amen.
