Sunday, April 12, 2015

You Cannot Serve Two Masters

Some Musings on  Matthew 6:24

The idea of someone having a master is really politically incorrect and repugnant to our modern sensibilities.  Yet, the reality is that we cannot escape having one.  We all have a master or a lord.  The question is who or what is your master?   If the word master is unacceptable to us the word slave is even more so.  Yet we all are slaves to some particular master in that we are either in bondage or beholding to some ruling power or influence. 

Bondage is the condition of being under some kind authority that is abusive and of course oppressive and destructive.  Yet, we must not confuse the bondage of abusive or tyrannical authority with being under obligation to inherently righteous and infinitely good authority. 

Jesus teaches here that as his followers we must be sure that our wills come under the influence and shaping authority of the kingdom of God.  He makes it very clear that God is the ultimate and rightful authority.   This means that we are not to see God’s authority as abusive, harsh, unpleasant or oppressive.  Yet this is exactly how we tend to see it through the lens of our sinful hearts and minds.   The grace God offers you in Christ gives you the true understanding of God’s inherent kind and righteous sovereignty.  Jesus lays this before us in the previous two images he gives of the kingdom.  God with his kingdom is the superlative treasure.  When one comes to see this then his whole life is flooded with light. So the kind of service one renders to God is not coerced or the response to threats or based on fulfilling certain conditions.  Rather the kind of service one renders to God rises from a transformed grace-filled heart that treasures God and whose mind is illuminated by the value of the kingdom and focuses on it as the ultimate goal for one’s life. 

So let’s take a closer look at what Jesus teaches about the impossibility of you serving two masters.

First Jesus states emphatically the impossibility of you serving two masters.  Now why does he do this?  He wants to address all those professing Christians who either consciously or unconsciously try to do this.  We all have tried to do this.  We have made attempts to serve God and something else with the same degree of allegiance and loyalty.  It can’t be done.  It is psychologically, morally and spiritually impossible. 

Then Jesus tells us why: “for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”  You cannot serve two masters who call for equal loyalty and obedience.  You must decide, you must choose and you will.  Yet you will decide and you will chose the master that your heart treasures and on which your mind and thoughts are fixed.  You will willingly give yourself to that master that best reflects the true nature of your heart and mind.  You will give yourself to what you want the most and what you want the most will rule your heart.  There can be no neutrality here.  If you are pressed between two competing masters who call for equal loyalty then sooner or later you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to one and despise the other.  There are no half way measures here. 

It is important that you understand that you ought to serve God as your greatest treasure.  Yet you cannot and will not do this unless your entire nature is transformed.  In our sin we abandon our rightful master but we don’t become free.  In fact being under the sovereign, benevolent rule of the gracious Creator/Owner is exchanged in our rebellion for the bondage of sin and idolatry.  Though in our sin we rebel against the authority of God we come under the bondage to false gods – we come into the bondage of sinful desires and passions that rule over us and lead us toward ruin and death.  

Do not fool yourself.  If you profess faith in Jesus Christ does that faith come from a regenerated and renewed heart?  Have you been born from above and thus by the grace of the Holy Spirit been given a new nature, one that finds growing appreciation for the value and priorities of the Kingdom so that it is this relationship you now have with Christ that is your greatest treasure?   What Jesus stresses here is that it is one thing to say that you treasure the kingdom and that you have a single devotion and appreciation for the kingdom but what do you do with your life?  How do you spend your time and what preoccupies your thoughts?  What kind of choices, decisions and actions do you carry out?  Your choices are the product of your will and these choices shape your behavior and your behavior determines the way you actually live – your lifestyle or manner of life. 

Jesus then makes a particular application that in essence becomes a case study for all masters that would usurp the place of the kingdom in your heart and mind.  He says you cannot serve God and mammon.  Now mammon is material wealth, possessions, property and money.  How do you serve mammon?  By giving yourself to the pursuit of mammon and living in such a way as to guard and keep what you have.  It spawns such heart sins as covetousness, greed, selfishness, uncharitableness, worry and care.  You serve mammon by giving yourself to mammon and the security, comfort that material wealth and possessions afford.   Well how do you serve God?  You serve God by giving yourself to God through faith and obedience.  The focus is on obedience – you serve God by obeying him but the only obedience that God accepts is that which rises from saving faith in Jesus Christ.   So what master you serve will be the master/treasure that ultimately shapes your will – your choices, your behavior, habits and then way of life.  

So Jesus wants you to really consider what he is saying.  Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are really serving God when in reality you are trying to serve God and mammon or for that matter any other treasure that has sway over your affections, mind and will.  Sooner or later the master you really have affection for will become evident and you will hate and despise the other (if not to you then to others and always to God).  

Another point that needs to be made is that what these two masters want from you is contradictory.  They want different things yet both call for ultimate allegiance.

Serving any other master than the True and Living God is bondage that leads to death.  Yet such bondage produces deceit in the heart and many think that they are free when in fact they are in servile bondage to their passions and desires. 

Serving God places you before the One who has inherent creative rights over your heart and life and who is the caring, gracious, kind, righteous, holy sovereign Master.  We are certainly beholding to Him but never under bondage to him.  We submit to his rightful authority only when we come to see how gracious his authority and rule really are. 

Now I do not want any one who may read this to become discouraged and distraught.  You may say I struggle with this matter.  I know that there are times in my life when I have tried to serve God and other masters.  It grieves me that I have and still do.  Okay, listen.  Every true believer has this problem.  One of the marks that you are indeed a genuine believer is that you struggle with this.  It grieves your heart.  The hypocrite on the other hand deceives himself- he thinks he is serving God but in reality the overall landscape of his manner of life shows that he is taken up with other concerns.  He does not see and he is not troubled in the least.  Jesus wants this one to wake up and to see how truly deceived that one is.

This does not mean that you will be free from temptations from remaining and competing masters.  You may even at times experience great turmoil inside your heart and your mind over who you will serve.   Your renewed heart will press you to do what you ought, yet the remaining sin that abides within will press you to give your allegiance to other masters who lie to you and promise the passions and desires of your flesh fulfillment in a variety of ways. 

Yet you cannot serve two masters.  You just cannot.  If you are truly born again by the Holy Spirit, while there remains a conflict and while you may have to do battle daily, you will not allow the masters of sinful desires to rule over your heart, mind and thus govern your will, priorities, choices and behavior.   In Christ you are not under the law any longer.  You are now under grace and Paul writes: For sin shall not have dominion over you for you are not under law but under grace. 

As believers in and followers of the Lord Jesus Christ we are also citizens of the Kingdom of God and as such that Kingdom and the way of life we should live as its citizens must take ultimate priority over our affections, our minds and our wills. 

Our affections are to be enamored with the Kingdom as our greatest treasure and this will be seen by storing up treasures in heaven and not on earth.

Our minds are to be illuminated by the reality of the Kingdom so that the darkness within us in minimized and the light is maximized.  

Our wills are to be increasingly shaped by the Kingdom.  We must see God as the kind, gracious and holy Master that he truly is.  So that through faith in Jesus Christ we see the true freedom that serving Him in obedience brings.  His authority is never bondage but a coming to terms with how we were created – to be under his kind, gracious, loving, righteous, holy and sovereign mastery.  It is only when we come to this mastery of the rightful creator and now redeemer that we really now freedom.  That is the paradox of the Kingdom!  To be free you must come under the gracious and holy authority of God, which is never bondage but a treasure worth possessing!

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/14558526@N03/6107919083">Choices</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">(license)</a>


Friday, April 10, 2015

Preserve This Peace


Conserva hanc pacem 
You who have this peace, peace above, peace within, labour to keep it: it is a precious jewel, do not lose it. It is sad to have the league of national peace broken, but it is worse to have the peace of conscience broken. Oh, preserve this peace! First, take heed of relapses. Has God spoken peace? Do not turn again to folly. Psalm 85:5. Besides ingratitude, there is folly in relapses. It was long ere God was reconciled and the breach made up, and will you again eclipse and forfeit your peace? Has God healed the wound of conscience, and will you tear it open again? Will you break another vein? Will you cut a new artery? This is returning indeed to folly. What madness is it to meddle again with that sin, which will breed the worm of conscience! Secondly, make up your spiritual accounts daily; see how matters stand between God and your souls. 'I commune with my own heart.' Psalm 77:7. Often reckonings keep God and conscience friends. Do with your hearts as you do with your watches, wind them up every morning by prayer, and at night examine whether your hearts have gone true all that day, whether the wheels of your affections have moved swiftly towards heaven. Oh, call yourselves often to account! Keep your reckonings even, for that is the way to keep your peace.

Thomas Watson

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Christ's Blood Gives Peace




Sanguis Christi Pacem Dat

Go to Christ's blood for peace. Some go to fetch their peace from their own righteousness, not Christ's: they go for peace to their holy life, not Christ's death. If conscience be troubled, they strive to quiet it with their duties. This is not the right way to peace. Duties must not be neglected, nor yet idolized. Look to the blood of sprinkling. Heb 12:24. That blood of Christ which pacified God, must pacify conscience. Christ's blood being sucked in by faith, gives peace. 'Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.' Rom 5:5: No balm to cure a wounded conscience, but the blood of Christ.

Thomas Watson

A New Creation That Is Permanently Justified

The Gospel is really very counter intuitive.  We are wired as Pharisees.  We have a hard time understanding the nature of grace.    Even though we confess that we believe God saves us by grace, we tend to operate in the arena of works.  We are basically performance driven.  We live on a treadmill of performance in how we conceive of God dealing with us.  We are treated by others this way and we treat others this way.   But God does not treat his born again and justified children in this way!!!

Now it is important to understand two realities about being a Christian and living as a Christian. 

First, a Christian is a new creation.  This means that God’s grace has worked and continues to work in the heart or inner life of every true disciple of Jesus Christ.  Paul emphasizes this inward work of grace in many verses in his letters.  It is summarized clearly in 2 Corinthians 5:17.  “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away, behold the new has come.”  Paul is saying that those who are really in Christ have become new creatures.  Here he is speaking of our being by the Holy Spirit united to Christ.  We are in relationship with Christ by the Holy Spirit and we have become new people.  It is also clear from the rest of the New Testament that while the old has passed away it has not done so completely and while the new has come it likewise has not come completely.   Yet, because as a believer you are joined to Christ you are new and God’s grace is at work within you.   In part this means that the Holy Spirit is working in you, giving you new affections, desires and will-power to live obediently, even though it is still a struggle.   It means that you have a whole new disposition toward sin – though you sin you cannot live with it – you are not at peace with your sin and with the Spirit’s help you will make it your aim to put it to death by not allowing it to come to expression in you. 

Second, a Christian is one for whom Christ offered his life upon the cross to atone for sin, so that those who trust in him might be accounted righteous in Christ.   Again, we find this in many, many places in the Bible.   In 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 21 we read. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”   What a wonderful verse this is!   If you are a believer in Jesus Christ you are included in the phrase “For our sake.”   Packed into this phrase is the infinite love and grace of God the Father for the ungodly.    What did the Father do for our sake?  The one who knew no sin, the one who had lived an obedient life, the one who loved God with all his heart, soul and mind and the one who loved his neighbor as himself, the Father made him sin.  This does not mean that the Father made him to be a sinner or made him to be inherently sinful.   What this verse does is not only get at the nature of Christ objective historic atoning work but also the nature of the believing sinner’s justification before God.  Rather here is an image or a figure of speech that basically says that the Father accounted this sinless one with our sin and this is why he died upon the cross.  There are echoes of Isaiah 53 here in this verse and we will look at that too.  Yet here are a few statements from that very important of prophetic Old Testament texts. 

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.” (Isa 53:4-5 ESV)

Here we see the willingness of the suffering servant to do what he did for our sakes.  He bore our sins, yet it was God who struck him and smote him and afflicted him.  It was God who wounded him for our transgressions, who crushed him for our iniquities, who placed the chastisement upon him that brought us peace and whose stripes at the Father’s hand is our healing.

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned--everyone--to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isa 53:6 ESV)

Like stupid yet unruly sheep we have stayed from our creator – turning from his rightful and good way to our own idolatrous self-serving paths.   Yet it was Yahweh who laid upon him our iniquity.  Here is what Paul means when he says that God made him who knew no sin to be sin for our sakes. 

On the cross God was imputing to Christ the sin of all who would believe upon him, the sin of his people, the sin of the ungodly.   Jesus did not become sinful, he became a sin offering by substituting himself for our sakes in taking the punishment due us for our sins and making full payment thus satisfying the just wrath of God. 

Now the benefit of what Christ did by becoming sin for us becomes ours by faith.  This is captured in the next clause, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”   This does not mean that we become personally righteous in the same way that Jesus did not become personally sinful.  Here is a figurative expression that captures the grace of justification.  This righteousness of God is conveyed to us in the Gospel and it is the gift-righteousness of God.    

Jesus suffered greatly yet he also triumphed.  Part of his victory was his seeing the benefits of his suffering.  He was satisfied by this.  It was worth it all.   The particular benefit that Isaiah describes is how by his knowledge – that is his personal experience of suffering and particularly his obedience proving that he was the righteous one – he makes many to be accounted righteous.   This verse describes both the active obedience of Jesus “by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many accounted righteous” and the passive obedience of Jesus by freely laying down his life in keeping with the Father’s will and bearing our iniquities secured our salvation.  

If you are in Christ – joined to him by faith (really a Christian and not a pretend one) then you are both a new creation and a justified child of God.   This is the Gospel and this is what you are to rehearse or preach to yourself every day.  Here is what is true about you.  You are joined to Jesus Christ on your good days and your bad days.   What this means is that by being united or joined to Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit you have His life working in you and his righteousness working for you.   It is this reality that gives you grace to live obediently before Father and it is this reality that gives you comfort and assurance when you sin and repent.   You are joined to Christ as new and justified people!  

Rev. William Still provides some encouraging insights into how the Gospel is about your being in Christ.

“I had been ‘going at it’ one Sunday evening about living your whole life in Christ and for Christ, and one chap, because he thought that I must live my life on my knees, came to me, wringing his hands, because he was not being as holy as he thought he ought to be.  I said to him, ‘You foolish boy, do you think this means winding yourself up into a kind of robot existence, forever clicking your heels before a ruthless sergeant-major Christ?  You have got it all wrong.  Christ is a world of being, not a set of rules.  You live your life in him, you are naughty in him, alas, as well as good in him.  You have fun there as well as seriousness.  You must learn that Christ is no mere censor, but a Savior who saves us by gaining our trust and confidence more and more, and letting us live our total life in him.  He is much more concerned about where we are going than about how far on we have got.'”  

This means that even when you sin you have not lost God’s love if indeed you are in Christ.  If you persist in your sin God in love will chastise and correct you.  What good father would not?  Yet your sin as a believer does not mean that you lose God’s favor, or the Holy Spirit who works within you or your status of being credited with Christ’s righteousness.  This very fact itself when rehearsed daily will give you the motivation and power not to sin!   Milton Vincent puts it well in his Gospel Poem from his book "A Gospel Primer for Christians." 

So now God relates to me only with grace
The former wrath banished without any trace
And each day I’m made a bit more as I should
His grace using all things to render me good.
Yes, even in trials God’s grace abounds too
And does me the good He assigns it to do

And when I am sinning God’s grace does abound
Ensuring my justified status is sound
No wrath is awakened in God at my sin,
Because Christ appeased it (to say it again).
God’s heart pulses only with passionate grace,
Which jealously wants me back in His embrace.

God does not require even that I confess
Before He desires His forgiveness to press
Forgiveness has been in His heart all along:
And when I approach Him to make right my wrong,
He runs up to greet me and draws to me near,
Embracing and kissing and ready to clear.

God does see my sins and He grieve at them so,
For when I am sinning, His love I don’t know.
He even will send me some heart-rending pain,
So I’ll learn new ways and His holiness gain.
His disciplines always are with love imbued,
A love that seeks ever my ultimate good. 

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/100899678@N06/16496581610">Caspersen beach</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(license)</a>

Monday, April 6, 2015

Augustine on the Kenosis

But because, on account of the incarnation of the Word of God for the working out of our salvation, that the man Christ Jesus might be the Mediator between God and men, many things are so said in the sacred books as to signify, or even most expressly declare, the Father to be greater than the Son; men have erred through a want of careful examination or consideration of the whole tenor of the Scriptures, and have endeavored to transfer those things which are said of Jesus Christ according to the flesh, to that substance of His which was eternal before the incarnation, and is eternal. 

They say, for instance, that the Son is less than the Father, because it is written that the Lord Himself said, “My Father is greater than I.” But the truth shows that after the same sense the Son is less also than Himself; for how was He not made less also than Himself, who “emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant?” For He did not so take the form of a servant as that He should lose the form of God, in which He was equal to the Father. If, then, the form of a servant was so taken that the form of God was not lost, since both in the form of a servant and in the form of God He Himself is the same only-begotten Son of God the Father, in the form of God equal to the Father, in the form of a servant the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; is there any one who cannot perceive that He Himself in the form of God is also greater than Himself, but yet likewise in the form of a servant less than Himself? 

And not, therefore, without cause the Scripture says both the one and the other, both that the Son is equal to the Father, and that the Father is greater than the Son. For there is no confusion when the former is understood as on account of the form of God, and the latter as on account of the form of a servant. And, in truth, this rule for clearing the question through all the sacred Scriptures is set forth in one chapter of an epistle of the Apostle Paul, where this distinction is commended to us plainly enough. For he says, “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and was found in fashion as a man.” 

The Son of God, then, is equal to God the Father in nature, but less in “fashion.” For in the form of a servant which He took He is less than the Father; but in the form of God, in which also He was before He took the form of a servant, He is equal to the Father. In the form of God He is the Word, “by whom all things are made;” but in the form of a servant He was “made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.” 

In like manner, in the form of God He made man; in the form of a servant He was made man. For if the Father alone had made man without the Son, it would not have been written, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Therefore, because the form of God took the form of a servant, both is God and both is man; but both God, on account of God who takes; and both man, on account of man who is taken. For neither by that taking is the one of them turned and changed into the other: the Divinity is not changed into the creature, so as to cease to be Divinity; nor the creature into Divinity, so as to cease to be creature.

Aurelius Augustine, "De Trinitate" - On the Trinity

Saturday, April 4, 2015

The Gospel Changes One's Relation to the Law

But while it is clear that the law is not changed, and cannot be changed either in itself or in its claims, it is as clear that our relation to the law, and the law’s relation to us, is altered upon our believing on Him who is “the end by fulfilling of the law, for righteousness to every one that believeth.” If, indeed, the effect of Christ’s death had been to make what is called “evangelical obedience to a milder law,” our justifying righteousness, then there would be a change in the law itself, though not in our relation to it, which would in that case remain the same, only operating on a lower scale of duty.  But if the end of Christ’s life and death be to substitute His obedience for ours entirely, in the matter of justification, so that His doings meet every thing in law that our doings should have met, then the relationship between us and law is altered; we are placed upon a new footing in regard to it, while it remains unchanged and unrelaxed.

So long, then, as the old relationship continued between us and law; or, in the apostle’s words, so long as we were “under law,” there was nothing but condemnation and an evil conscience, and the fearful looking for of judgment. But with the change of relationship there came pardon and liberty and gladness. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Gal 3: 13); and so we are no longer under law, but under grace. The law is the same law, but it has lost its hold of us, its power over us. It cannot cease to challenge perfect obedience from every being under heaven, but to us  its threat and terror are gone. It can still say “Obey,” but it cannot now say, “Disobey and perish.” Our new relationship to the law is that of Christ Himself to it. It is that of men who have met all its claims, exhausted its penalties, satisfied its demands, magnified it, and made it honorable. For our faith in God’s testimony to Christ’s surety obedience has made us one with Him. The relation of the law to Him is its relation to us who believe in His name. His feelings toward the law ought to be our feelings. The law looks on us as it looks on Him; we look on the law as He looks on it. And does not He say. “I delight to do thy will, 0 my God; yea thy law is within my heart” (Psa 40: 8)?


Horatius Bonar, "God’s Way of Holiness"

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/7511136@N03/1150245323">PA200096</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a ref="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(license)</a>

Thursday, April 2, 2015

The Best of Humanity and the Crucifixion of The Son of Man

www.flickr.com/commons/usage
The prediction of Jesus' passion conceals a great irony, for the suffering and death of the Son of Man will not come, as we would expect, at the hands of godless and wicked people.  The suffering of the Son of Man comes rather at the hands of "the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law."  It is not humanity at its worst that will crucify the Son of God but humanity at its absolute best.  The death of Jesus will not be the result of a momentary lapse or aberration of human nature, but rather the result of careful deliberations from respected religious leaders who will justify their actions by the highest standards of law and morality, even believing them to render service to God (John 16:2).   Jesus will not be lynched by an enraged mob or beaten to death in a criminal act.  He will be arrested with official warrants, and tried and executed by the world's envy or jurisprudence - the Jewish Sanhedrin and the principia juris Romanorum.    

James R Edwards from the Pillar New Testament Commentary Series - The Gospel According to Mark.




Monday, March 30, 2015

Faith Bathes The Heart for Repentance

“When faith hath bathed a man’s heart in the blood of Christ, it is so mollified that it quickly dissolves into tears of godly sorrow; so that if Christ but turn and look upon him, oh, then with Peter he goes out and weeps bitterly. And this is true gospel mourning; this is right evangelical repenting”

(Edward Fisher’s Marrow of Modern Divinity).

Quoted by Horatius Bonar in God's Way of Holiness


Thursday, March 26, 2015

Law and Gospel



As you read the New Testament there are times when it seems that the Law is viewed negatively and there are times when it seems to be viewed positively. 

We can use Paul’s letter to the Romans to make this point.  He sees the law as something under which the unbeliever is in bondage.  Those who come to faith in Christ are not under law but under grace (Romans 4:14, 7:6).  So in some sense the law is something from which we need to be delivered or set free.

However, Paul declares that the Law is holy, just and good (Romans 7:12, 16).  It is after all God’s law. 

Being from God the Law is indeed good.  The culprit in the problem of the law is not the law but sin.  Sin uses the law to its advantage.  

In Romans sin is presented as a kind of reigning monarch or at least a kingdom or dominion to which all who come from Adam are enslaved.  Sin’s representative within each of us is what Paul calls “the flesh.”   Sin is a larger reality than each one’s personal sinfulness.  Sin exerts it rule over human beings through death.  Death is a broad category that encompasses our spiritual deadness and separation from God, physical decay and bodily death and the death of eternal judgment.   Sin holds all its subjects under its tight and firm rule. 

When the holy, just and good law of God offers life to those who obey, sin will have none of it.  Its presence might lie almost dead like within the human breast but when the law is heard, sin springs into action and produces rebellious responses from within the heart of every unbeliever who hears the law.   Yet sin is so much a part of the soul and mind fabric of Adam’s descendants it is nevertheless the individual who rebels.  Adam’s descendants are slaves to sin and on one level want it that way. 

Yet in another way this was in part God’s design in giving first to the Jews the written law and from them passing it on to other people.   Sin is happy to remain undetected.  Many who are under its control do not see themselves as sinful, many others even deny that they are sinners.   Yet the Law also works on sin.  The law stirs sin up, agitates its activity and in this sense the law is a real mercy from God to expose sin’s ugly and death producing presence. 

Nevertheless, the law can also be a hard task master.  We need a little Bible history at this point, along with an understanding of the Bible’s teaching on a covenant.   Old Testament scholars give different definitions for the Bible’s teaching on how God uses covenants in the history of redemption.  For the most part what is clear is that even from the creation of humanity God has related to his image bearers in terms of a covenant. 

God establishes how he will relate to us based on a covenant.  It is an arrangement sovereignly administered by God that contains commands, promises and at times warnings.  There are basically two overarching covenants.  The first that God established with Adam was what some have called the covenant of works.  God created Adam and Eve, placed them in paradise under a kind of probation.  If they obeyed the Lord and were faithful to his commands, especially not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would continue in God’s presence forever.  Thus, it would be by their works that they would secure this relationship with God for themselves and for their posterity.  When Adam sinned death entered into human existence, yet with death came the reign of sin. 

From that time to this all human beings are born with original sin.  We are both guilty of sin and corrupted by our sinfulness.  We are mortal.  We do not have the capacity to love God.  We are totally unable to obey God.  We are under the curse, enslaved to sin and subject to death.  There is no way we can rectify this condition.  Sin will even blind us to this reality.  

God did not leave rebellious Adam and Eve in their sinful covenant bond to the devil. God then promised a new covenant.  It would be from the seed of the woman that a champion redeemer would come to destroy the devil and to remove the curse.   It would be by death that sin and death would be vanquished.   It was the Lord God that took life by shedding blood and hence clothed Adam and Eve of their nakedness before him.  This was God’s grace.

The covenant of Grace was further established with Abraham.  It was to be by faith in the promise of God’s deliverance that sinners would receive justification before God.  This covenant is what the Gospel is all about.  It promises life to all those who believe the promise.  This is underscored again by Paul.  He says in Romans and Galatians that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.   So it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham – who come to participate in the covenant of grace.  For God had planned that it would be through the Gospel that he preached to Abraham that he would also justify the Gentiles (Galatians 3:6-8). 

The Law of Moses as a covenant was a reaffirmation of the covenant of works.  In this sense the Law promised life to those who would keep it perfectly.  The Law offers a kind of righteousness that is secured by those who obey it.  The problem is that sin makes the doing of the law as a covenant of works impossible and thus all one can secure by trying to keep the law is its curse.  “Cursed is everyone who does not who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law to do them” (Galatians 3:10; Deuteronomy 27:26).   

To see the Law as what you do to secure your own righteousness with God is to come under bondage to the law and to its curse and condemnation.  Many in Paul’s day and even today think that they can secure such a law based righteousness.   To have this mindset means that one is ignorant of the righteousness of God.  It is to pursue one’s own righteousness rather than submitting to the righteousness of God that Jesus Christ by his obedience to the law secured for us and we receive only by faith.  (Romans 10:1-13).  

In this sense the Law gives us commands without the power to obey them.  We are powerless due to our sin to keep the law.  Our bondage is only intensified if we foolishly think that we can even forge if not a perfect obedience, a well-intended and sincere effort at obedience.   If you try to keep the law to secure acceptance with God you remain estranged from God and under bondage to both sin, the commands of the law without any help from the law to keep it and the curse and condemnation of the law. 

As we remain connected with Adam and under the rule of sin we have no real motivation or power to keep the law for the glory of God.   We are under both the guilt and corruption of sin and the powerlessness of the law that only condemns us.  From both we need to be delivered.   Yet, the law is not the problem and in God’s designed mercy the law will wail upon us so as to awaken a sense of true conviction and set us on course to become open for our need of God’s mercy. 

The Gospel (or the covenant of grace) is what sets us free from the reign of sin and the condemnation and weakness of the law due to sin. 

Christ’s established the covenant of grace (ratified it securely into operative existence) by obeying perfectly the covenant of works.  He obeyed where Adam disobeyed and he obeyed all the Law of Moses perfectly securing a righteous record and then he bore the curse of the Law by suffering and dying upon the cross.  You become a participant in the New Covenant (the Covenant of Grace) by faith in Jesus Christ and his obedient life, penal death and glorious resurrection. 

So what Christ does away with regarding the Law is the law as a covenant of works.  He does away with this covenant of works by fulfilling it completely.   You are delivered by Christ once and for all from any need to keep the law sincerely or perfectly to secured saving righteousness before God.   Every effort you made to do what the law commanded apart from being joined to Jesus and his saving work, only brought greater judgment.  

Granted some people think that they are keeping the law, while others know they are not but are under the burden of believing they must to secure acceptance before God.   Both are under the rule and reign of sin.  Only, those who cease from doing the works of the law to secure acceptance with God and flee to Christ and find security in his law keeping and judgment bearing death will be set free from the treadmill of law keeping works-righteousness. 

The problem with law keeping to secure righteousness is that it is all about you and that is what sin loves to promote.  You are striving to trust in you, in what you can do to secure acceptance with God.  As long as you remain with this mindset you are under the bondage of sin and of the law.  

Even for believers who have been delivered from the realm of sin and the law covenant of works, an ally of sin’s rule remains operative in our hearts.  As mentioned above this ally is called the flesh.  As a believer you have been given the Holy Spirit and the Law of God remains in place not as a covenant of works but as the Westminster Confession of Faith puts it as a rule of life informing us of the will of God and our duty to obey Him who in Christ is now our loving heavenly Father within whose peace and favor we have come to stand. 

The Gospel has so changed you that even though the flesh remains as a foe against whom you must be on your guard and put to death, you in your inner man delight in God’s law.   Now, when you sin, in one sense it is not the real you who sins but it is the flesh that dwells in you.   The Gospel will use the law to expose the operation of indwelling sin (the flesh) but it is by faith in the Gospel that you will be given the power (however not without conflict and resistance from the flesh) to have the desire and power to obey God by keeping the law.  Yet you no longer will pursue law keeping as the basis of your acceptance with God but because you have been accepted in Christ.  It is from the standing of gracious acceptance in Christ (justification) and the presence of the Holy Spirit that you pursue obedience to the Lord.  

The Westminster Confession of Faith 19:6 gives this helpful assessment of the relationship that the believer in Christ now sustains with the Law.

Although true believers be not under the law as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified or condemned; yet is it of great use to them, as well as to others; in that, as a rule of life, informing them of the will of God and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly; discovering also the sinful pollutions of their nature, hearts, and lives; so as, examining themselves thereby, they may come to further conviction of, humiliation for, and hatred against sin; together with a clearer sight of the need they have of Christ, and the perfection of His obedience. It is likewise of use to the regenerate, to restrain their corruptions, in that it forbids sin; and the threatenings of it serve to show what even their sins deserve, and what afflictions in this life they may expect for them, although freed from the curse thereof threatened in the law. The promises of it, in like manner, show them God's approbation of obedience, and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof, although not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works: so as a man's doing good, and refraining from evil because the law encourageth to the one, and deterreth from the other, is no evidence of his being under the law, and not under grace.

Nothing, either great or small—
Nothing, sinner, no;
Jesus died and paid it all,
Long, long ago.

When He, from His lofty throne,
Stooped to do and die,
Ev’rything was fully done;
Hearken to His cry!

Weary, working, burdened one,
Wherefore toil you so?
Cease your doing; all was done
Long, long ago.

Till to Jesus’ work you cling
By a simple faith,
“Doing” is a deadly thing—
“Doing” ends in death.

Cast your deadly “doing” down—
Down at Jesus’ feet;
Stand in Him, in Him alone,
Gloriously complete.

It is finished!” yes, indeed,
Finished, ev’ry jot;
Sinner, this is all you need,
Tell me, is it not?

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Talking to Mr. Law

To be dead to the Law means to be free of the Law. What right, then, has the Law to accuse me, or to hold anything against me? When you see a person squirming in the clutches of the Law, say to him: "Brother, get things straight. You let the Law talk to your conscience. Make it talk to your flesh. Wake up, and believe in Jesus Christ, the Conqueror of Law and sin. Faith in Christ will lift you high above the Law into the heaven of grace. Though Law and sin remain, they no longer concern you, because you are dead to the Law and dead to sin." Blessed is the person who knows how to use this truth in times of distress. He can talk. He can say: "Mr. Law, go ahead and accuse me as much as you like. I know I have committed many sins, and I continue to sin daily. But that does not bother me. You have got to shout louder, Mr. Law. I am deaf, you know. Talk as much as you like, I am dead to you. If you want to talk to me about my sins, go and talk to my flesh. Belabor that, but don't talk to my conscience. My conscience is a lady and a queen, and has nothing to do with the likes of you, because my conscience lives to Christ under another law, a new and better law, the law of grace."

Martin Luther

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

The Preciousness of Faith


Fides egregia est...

Wherein lies the preciousness of faith?  In its being the chief gospel-grace, the head of the graces. As gold among the metals, so is faith among the graces.  Clement of Alexandria calls the other graces the daughters of faith. In heaven, love will be the chief grace; but, while we are here, love must give place to faith. Love takes possession of glory, but faith gives a title to it. Love is the crowning grace in heaven, but faith is the conquering grace upon earth. 'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.' I John 5:5.     Thomas Watson


The Gospel: Dealing with The Pharisee's Carcass

Keeping the Gospel in front of you daily is even more important than making sure you eat three square meals a day.   Continually reminding yourself of your standing before God in Christ is essential if you are going to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ in such a way as to render loving obedience to Him.   All our striving to live according to the Law of God apart from a functional faith in the Gospel is both frustrating and fruitless.  

Yet a functional faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a reliance upon having faith.   A functional faith is a joyful reliance upon Jesus Christ and the benefits we received from him that secure our standing under grace before a holy God.  Don’t take any comfort from having faith.  Don’t assure your soul that because you have faith everything is okay with you.   Confidence before God in your possessing faith is to turn faith into the grounds of your salvation.  This can be a form of pride!  Rather faith boasts in the cross of Jesus Christ.  Faith looks outside of itself to its saving object Jesus Christ.   Drawing a sense of spiritual well being from having faith is like praising yourself for eating a lavish meal rather than praising the superb quality of the food and the one who cooked the meal.  

Faith certainly serves an important function in the Christian life.  You can’t be a Christian without faith, just like you cannot be healthy without eating and drinking.   Yet the nutrients from the food and the water or milk are what bring health to your body.  Likewise it is Jesus Christ who sustains you spiritually.   Faith is not the power of salvation, the Gospel is.  Faith is simply the empty hands that are opened to receive Christ.   However, just like eating and drinking we must continue to look to the Gospel in faith.   The Gospel is as necessary for us to live out the Christian life as it is to begin the Christian life.   The Gospel not only justifies us and reconciles us to God and is what guarantees eternal life, the Gospel is necessary if we are to mature and grow daily.   The Gospel is the good news we need to hear daily so we might be encouraged, lifted up and strengthened to resist temptation and to press through with obedience to the Father.  This is why we need to proclaim it to ourselves daily.

Do you know how to preach the Gospel to yourself?   Do you know why this is so important?    Many of us theoretically believe that by trusting in Christ we have been forgiven and justified before God.  Yet, most of us as Christians still carry the carcass of the Pharisee around in our hearts.   A Pharisee basically is one who functionally believes that it is by his or her performance that God’s favor and love are secured and maintained.   Some Pharisees actually believe (like the believer who trusts in his or her faith) that they perform well.  They comfort their hearts before God by looking at how well they live their lives (or think they are living their lives).  Their boast to themselves and others and even to God is found in their performance.  Christian Pharisees give a kind of lip service to justification.   “Oh, yes Jesus saved me and I am forgiven and accepted before God by what He has done.”  Yet underneath, in their heart their reliance is really upon themselves.   The problem with the self-confident Christian Pharisee is they really do not see themselves in light of the Law of God.   This in part is due to the fact that they look merely to the letter of the Law and not to the spirit.  This was the problem with the rich young ruler who declared to Jesus after he listed the commandments, “All of these I have kept from my youth.”  

You see, the Gospel really does not go deep enough into one’s heart and mind unless it is preceded by a robust and thorough understanding of the doctrine of sin, particularly the Bible’s teaching on total depravity and total inability due to original sin.   Without an understanding of sin then all one gets is “gospel light” at best and no Gospel in the worst case.   The Pharisees of Jesus day diminished the full scope of the law and hence failed to see just how sinful and needy they were.  Sadly, many professing Christians do the same thing.

On the other end of the spectrum is the defeated Pharisee.   This is the guy or gal who still believe that when push comes to shove, it is their performance that will either secure God’s favor or lose God’s favor.   They confess faith in Christ but at the end of the day they remain looking at how well or how poorly they have performed.   There may be a few days when they see their commitment to the Lord as working well.  During these brief episodes they may have some comfort, some assurance that God really loves them.  Yet sooner or later, they will mess up and they dive into despair and fear for certainly they have lost God’s love.  How could God love them after what they did and did again for the umpteenth time?   They are still Pharisees, just defeated ones who still hope (but they lose a bit more of it every time they sin) that they can one day perform well and consistent enough for God to love them.

The Gospel really, really, really humbles you.  You cannot truly believe the Gospel and think for a moment that you perform well enough to either secure God’s favor on your own or buttress the work of Christ, so at least in part, God’s accepts you for what you have done.   No, the Gospel pulls the foundation of all self-confidence and self-righteousness out from under our feet.   The Gospel tells us that unless we stand on Christ alone we do not stand at all before God.   Yet, the Gospel really, really, really comforts and encourages you.  It proclaims that having been justified by faith you have peace with God through Jesus Christ through whom we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand (Romans 5:1-2).   It is not your performance even after coming to Christ that secures you this standing in grace but it is Christ’s performance.  

Jesus Christ propitiated the wrath of God by his perfect life sacrificed upon the Cross.  The infinite benefit of him doing this becomes yours through the gift of justification.  Once you rest in Christ by faith God’s wrath is forever removed from you.  There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.   This is true even when you sin!   For the believer God is indeed no longer angry because the believer in Jesus Christ has become a justified, restored and adopted child of God who is dearly and forever loved by the Father. 

Now holding to this Gospel by preaching it to yourself daily has as its aim your personal holiness.  It is actually by believing the Gospel that you will find motivation and power not to sin but to live a life of love for God that moves in the trajectory of obedience.   This does not mean that you will not sin but it means that even when you do and feel sorry for it and confess your sin, you have not lost God’s love by your sin, nor have your restored God’s love by your repentance.   It is just that amazing.   The more you see this the more of the Pharisee's carcass you lose - good riddance!  



 



Monday, March 23, 2015

Believing in the Risen Christ Upon the Testimony of Reliable Witnesses: Musings on John 20:24-31

The witness of the New Testament is clear.  The central person of the twenty seven books is Jesus the Messiah.   All the New Testament is based on eye witness testimony about the person and work of Jesus Christ including his resurrection from the dead.   In addition all the particular works of the New Testament: Gospels, Acts, the letters and Revelation were completed before the end of the first century and all were written by the Apostles or by men who were under the oversight or direction of the Apostles.   

Those who wrote the texts that form the New Testament claim to be reporting the truth or the facts about the person of Jesus of Nazareth.   In other words what they claimed was open to scrutiny and investigation.   This is true of all that concerned Jesus Christ: his birth, life, ministry, death and especially his resurrection from the dead.    For example it is clear that the Gospels and Acts purport to be historical accounts (no doubt materials were chosen and edited to fit the purpose of the particular writer) of the origins of Jesus and his life, work, death and resurrection.   They contain summaries of his teaching and narratives of his miracles and interaction with his disciples and opponents.  All of them give similar accounts (but no doubt from different eye-witness perspectives) of his death and resurrection.   The point is that the New Testament will not allow us to pick and choose what we find in its pages concerning Jesus.   Paul goes so far as to say that if the accounts of Christ's resurrection were merely fabricated myths then nothing of Christianity or the Gospel can stand or is worth affirming (1 Corinthians 15).    For example, you can't hold to Jesus' teaching and deny his miracles, including his resurrection and still have the Jesus of the New Testament.   For the writers of the New Testament it is all of Jesus or none of Jesus and those who are honest will at least admit this.   Christianity is not worth holding onto or affirming if the BIG CLAIMS about Jesus are tossed aside and such big claims and affirmations are woven into the fabric of the New Testament texts - they comprise the fabric of the New Testament!

The post resurrection accounts of Jesus found in the Gospels, Acts and the Letters report both the fact of Christ's resurrection and also the theological assessment of its meaning and importance.   These accounts are based on eye-witness testimony.   Of course these are not accounts where those who include them are cool and detached from what is being reported.   The purpose of the Gospels (indeed the entire New Testament) is summed up well by John who gives his readers the reason that he took certain eye-witness accounts and brought them together to support his opening declaration that "The Word was God and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us filled with grace and truth so that all who receive him, who believe in his name he gives the right to become children of God" (John 1:1, 12, 14).    At the end of his account John says: "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:30-31).

The purpose of John writing his Gospel based on the selected signs (works, deeds and teachings) that Jesus did in the presence of his disciples (who are the reliable witnesses) was so that those who read might come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and by believing have life in his name.   John certainly is not a neutral observer but neither is he a deluded observer and this is the case of all those whose witness he included in his Gospel.   The New Testament indeed has an agenda and that is to hold fourth the good news about Jesus Christ.  Nevertheless this good news according to the New Testament is historical to the core.   The New Testament is not calling people to believe without evidence but to believe because of the evidence.  

The object of belief is Jesus Christ.   The New Testament eye witness accounts give you the historical Jesus Christ and call you to respond to him by faith.    Such faith in Christ begins with belief that all the New Testament presents about him is historically true - even his resurrection from the dead.  Yet, this is not enough for such belief in the historical validity of Christ and his resurrection leads to trust in the risen Lord Jesus Christ.  

Thomas upon hearing that his fellow disciples had seen Jesus and that this meant that Jesus was raised from the dead was more than incredulous; he was adamant that he would not be convinced unless he could see and probe his wounds.   Now what John wants his readers to understand is that this narrative of Jesus appearing to Thomas before the other disciples is an historical event.   Yes, it is thoroughly supernatural for it is the risen Christ who appears to them but it is nonetheless a true account - if you had been there you would have seen the same thing that John now records as testimony to Christ's resurrection.  

Jesus calls Thomas to carry out his desired investigation by showing him and the others his wounds.   In doing this he urges Thomas to stop doubting and believe.   He is doing more than urging him to believe in the fact of the resurrection but he is urging him to entrust his life to the Risen one who bears these scars.   It is not enough to believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead or to give assent to this fact.  This will make no difference in one's life.   Jesus died for a reason and his resurrection made that reason valid.  Paul put it this way: He was delivered over for our trespasses and he was raised for our justification (Romans 4:25).   Thomas' response shows that his belief went further than the laying aside of his skepticism - "okay, I see that I was wrong - wow you really rose from the dead - imagine that."   Rather his response was an intensely intimate and personal confession of faith in the sovereign Lordship and Deity of Jesus Christ:  My Lord and My God!

Now all those first witness came to believe that Jesus had indeed been raised from the dead in the same way - personal investigation.  So we must not be too hard on Thomas.  Since that time all who have come to believe that Jesus indeed was raised from the dead and that his resurrection affirms all that the New Testament claims about him come to such faith on the basis of credible and reliable testimonies of witnesses - like Thomas.    Of course coming to such faith is also a work of God's grace and the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit.   Thomas, by God's grace, came to believe not only in the resurrection of Christ but in the risen Christ by means of Christ's historical encounter with him.   Now all those who believe do so by God's grace in the witness accounts of the New Testament.  


In other words the New Testament never calls you to believe in what is impossible apart from evidence - but it does call you to believe in what is true (what is possible only for God) apart from sight.  Yet it is a call to believe both in the facts concerning the person of Jesus Christ including his resurrection and in the significance of who he is.   It calls you to trust Christ and to abandon the control of your life over to him.   This is why Jesus showed his wounds to Thomas.   The New Testament claims that Jesus Christ laid down his life for sinners and his resurrection secured the benefits of his death.   To trust in Christ is to receive forgiveness and life (spiritual life now and eternal life to come).    So what about you?  Have you investigated the testimony of the New Testament witnesses concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the Risen Christ?  You are urged like Thomas to stop doubting and believe - for Blessed are those who have not seen but have believed - but have believed on the evidence of the testimony of these witnesses.  

The Status of Indwelling Sin Within The Justified



Peccatum furit sed non regnat

A justified person is redeemed a dominio, (from the master) from the power and regency of sin, though not from the presence. Sin may furere, (to rage) but not regnare (to reign); it may rage in a child of God, but not reign. Lust raged in David, and fear in Peter, but it did not reign; they recovered themselves by repentance. 'Sin shall not have dominion over you.' Rom 6:14. Sin lives in a child of God, but is deposed from the throne; it lives not as a king, but a captive.  

Thomas Watson 

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Is Jesus Enough?


Jesus had just miraculously fed over five thousand people from a boy's lunch of five barley loaves and two cooked fish.  This along with his miracles of healing John calls, in his Gospel, "signs."  They were signs of the presence of God's Kingdom coming into the world in the person of the Jesus Christ.  As such they were pointers to his deity and to his work as God's appointed Messiah.  

That work was to establish in fallen and rebellious humanity the Gospel of God's grace of salvation.  This salvation is salvation from the just and holy wrath of God due to human sin and rebellion against God.  To be under the wrath of God due to our sinful guilt means that we are also estranged from God and cut off from the source of life, hence we are spiritually dead, we will experience physical death and we will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction.   Jesus came to save us from this and restore us under God's rightful reign so that we would by the Holy Spirit be given the grace to live as obedient citizens of His kingdom. 

The miraculous signs that Jesus did pointed to Him as God's appointed Deliverer and King.  Yet his Kingdom was not of this world.   After the crowd had eaten and was thoroughly satisfied they respond to the sign by declaring that Jesus was indeed the Prophet who was to come into the world.  Yet, they completely misunderstood what this Prophet (expected Messiah) was to do in the world.  They had a completely earthly, temporal and this-life-agenda through which they interpreted the sign.   They were indeed enamored with Jesus.  They really liked what he had done for them.  Yet, they did not see beyond their stomachs.  The party ended when Jesus perceiving that they were going to "take him by force to make him king" sent his disciples back to Capernaum by boat and withdrew to the mountain by himself.  

The next day when the crowd awoke and did not find Jesus (he had walked on the Sea of Galilee, catching up with his disciples who had rowed in the storm three to four miles and they all arrived in Capernaum) they hurried to find Him.   The text states that they were seeking Jesus (6:24).   They were really interested in Him, more particularly they were really interested in what they believed he could do for them.   Upon finding Him Jesus says something that seems to contradict what John stated in 6:14: "when the people saw the sign (feeding over five thousand people from a few loaves of bread and some fish) that he had done."   In 6:26 Jesus is recorded as saying to them: "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw the sign."  So which is it?   Did they see the sign or did they not see it?  Yes and no.   They saw it on one level yet on another level they were completely blind to the design of the sign.  It was as though they got stuck on looking at the sign and failed to see where it pointed them.   They were seeing the sign only with their stomachs and not with hearts of faith.   The reason they did not really seeing the sign was this: "You are seeking me not because you saw the sign but because you ate your fill of the loaves." 

It is so important that you really come to understand what Jesus is teaching in John chapter six.  You need to be clear on what exactly it is that Jesus has come to do and what he offers you based on his work.   The bread with which He miraculously fed the five thousand was real bread, it was earthly, tangible, filling-one's-empty-stomach bread.  Jesus was moved due to their physical hunger to perform this miracle and to sustain them but in doing this He was also pointing them to a more necessary kind of bread, what he calls the true bread.   They got all preoccupied with the sign that they did not see where the sign pointed them.  Not one of them was so overwhelmed by the miraculous provision that they became more drawn to Jesus than to the bread.   They liked what Jesus did for them so much that they completely missed who Jesus is!   That is the point.   That is the danger we all face even today. 

Jesus will go on in the chapter to teach about the nature of the true bread which he is and how only those who by faith feed on him will experience real life in this age and the age to come.   In this way Jesus sets up a contrast for us between the bread of this life (earthly necessities and niceties, both things we need and things we want) and Himself as the true bread.   Jesus is stressing that He must have the priority over our heart's desires.  He is the one who, as our sovereign Lord, provides us with what we need to live in this age, yet these gifts must not become our reasons for looking to him.  Jesus alone must be the end our faith and not the means to the bread of this life.

What Jesus is calling you to do is to continue to feed on Him (6:54-58) by believing the Gospel.  That is believing who he is for you (Savior and Lord) and what he has done for you (saved your from the wrath of God, secured your justification and reconciliation with God) supplies you with the true sustenance you need.  These realities feed your soul and give you joy, encouragement, life, hope and peace.   You are not seeking Jesus for earthly bread: money, prosperity, health, good self-esteem or even "your best life now."   You are seeking Jesus for Jesus - he is enough!  Then you are taking steps to respond to your circumstances (good or bad, hard or easy) and to the people in your life in a righteous, loving and God-glorifying way.  Feasting on the Bread that is Jesus enables you to live as a disciple of Jesus by calling him Lord and then doing what he says, while trusting that your heavenly Father does in fact know your earthly and daily needs.