CommonChristianity: Acts 3:19

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Spirituality Column #720

September 1, 2020

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Honorable Mention, Part 2

By Bob Walters

“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” – Apostle Peter, Acts 3:19

Our topic is honor: honor in the Lord, honor in our lives, and honor in our thoughts and actions. And the sneaky truth is, hardly anything is as eternally uplifting and truly refreshing as honor.

No, not the honor we get. What’s uplifting and refreshing is the honor we give.

It’s crazy … the hardest and most rewarding things we do in this life require the acknowledgement and expenditure of our own honor; not the acquisition of it. I’m thinking of things like doing a job, keeping a promise, sacrificing for others, repenting of our sins, swallowing our pride so that we can take pride in honoring something else, remaining faithful amid fears and trials, and trusting God no matter what.

It kind of sounds like humility, too, which is OK. Humility isn’t the opposite of honor; it is a requirement for honor. Honor vs. humility is a dynamic the world mostly has backwards; Jesus Christ teaches us about getting it forwards. How honor actually works is one of Jesus’s – and the Bible’s – most surprising lessons. It’s not about me.

If we look at all that Jesus Christ came into the world to do, in sum total Jesus is showing us how to honor God. Wholly inadequate modern Christian doctrine and frequent teaching predominantly has the work of Jesus focused on “us”: forgiving our sin and getting us into heaven. That’s fine, but what good is that unless there is some ultimately honorable, final, and glorious truth, reality, and purpose? Such as: God’s love.

Jesus came to show us how all that works. Worldly honor and Christ’s honor are two very different things. Everything about the Old Testament points to Jesus; everything about the New Testament – with Jesus leading the way – points to God.

Why did Jesus come into the world? To initiate God’s Kingdom on earth: not to take us to heaven, but to bring heaven to us, ibid, “thy Kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10) How did Jesus honor God? With obedience, even unto death. What did Jesus say He was? “The way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) to find God’s kingdom. God’s glory was Jesus’s sole purpose.

Are you glad to be forgiven and have a relationship with God through Christ? Sure, why not? But knowing the truth of God, the purpose of Christ, the presence of the Holy Spirit, and what is supposed to be the loving fellowship of all believers … that is the final teaching of Jesus to his disciples on the way to the cross. Jesus talked not of forgiveness and heaven, but of perseverance, truth, trust, love, and obedience.

Oh … and God’s glory, plus the glory that would be Jesus’s in fulfilling His mission, and the Godly glory the disciples would share to the ends of the earth.

Jesus is the most honored human being of all time because He is the truth, and also the most reviled because Satan so hates the truth. What the Bible truly teaches about honor is nearly the same as it teaches about love: that both reside in God and that to express them deeply to God’s glory, they must be given away to others.

That is the refreshment of repentance: sins gone, Jesus with us, God glorified.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes the scene in the movie mini-series The Chosen where the healed leper says to Jesus, “You do not seek your own honor?” No, He doesn’t.

719 - Honorable Mention, Part 1

5:00 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column #719

August 25, 2020

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Honorable Mention, Part 1

By Bob Walters

“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” – Apostle Peter, Acts 3:19

Does everybody understand that we repent not to be focused on and shackled to our sins, but to free ourselves from worldly shame and enter into the honor of Christ?

That is how things will go best for us, when we honor God and others.

“Me” is the wrong thing to honor.

Honor. Who in the current worldly culture talks about honor? Almost nobody, because worldly culture is doing its utmost to remove God in general and Jesus Christ in particular from the controlling conversation of civil society. We hear a lot about shame, because you can control people with their shame and/or their fear of being “found out” or accused of some shameful infraction of worldly protocol.

It’s fine, however, if in the conceited cause of human control, one dishonors God.

Freedom comes when we repent of our sins before God, honor others, and know, trust, and believe that in their own God-inspired humility, others honor and respect us. We depend on that in a free society. We need it and cherish it. It’s what “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12) actually means.

Most of human history – including nearly 1800 years of the Christian era – did not get that right. Humanity continued to make the same mistake of the ancient Israelites, demanding earthly kings rather than embracing the absolute Lordship of God of the old covenant, and the saving grace and Lordship of Jesus Christ – God – in the new.

How ironic that it was the non-devout, anti-church but not entirely atheistic philosophical Enlightenment era of the 17^th-19^th centuries – an era that mostly sought to dethrone, define-down, and “modernize” God – that led one society to fully embrace the Godly rights of man. An ethical and Godly people – endowed with and, importantly, recognizing their rights from God – could honor each other with their labors, creativity, justice, opportunity, aspirations, government, and equality before God. Hello, USA.

The trick to maintaining freedom and honor would be in remaining a “Godly people.” I think that meant that however one viewed the authority of Jesus, the Bible, church, God, or Holy Spirit, it was nonetheless foundationally critical to honor the notion of a Creator who created humanity in His own image: a Creator who loves us, gives us purpose, watches us, is with us, and judges us. He is watching how we treat each other.

That’s a Christian nation, whether one chooses to call it that or not. When we repent of our sins before man, freedom is not necessarily the prize. But it is when we repent sincerely in the name of Jesus Christ. Honor Him, and divine freedom follows.

Honor is hard to find today because along with original sin, never-ending guilt is front-loaded into the secular, social justice “gospel” so very ascendant in the divisive identity politics of our time. Jesus isn’t honored; His grace isn’t considered. Today’s earthly, Pharisaical accusers cynically target the destruction of God-honoring order.

Things work best when we humbly listen to each other. God is listening, too. “Sinners repent!” sounds like a cry to focus on sin. No, it is a cry to focus on Jesus, to refresh our love for one another, and to honor God. He is the only place honor exists.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) will discuss the Bible’s view of honor next week.

720 - Honorable Mention, Part 2

719 - Honorable Mention, Part 1

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