Evaluating 40 Days of Community

[*NOTE: Quotes from the 40 Days of Community Workbook are blockquoted.]

"We're Connected to Grow Together...By Giving Preference to Each other"

Placing the needs of others before our own and giving preference to others is a topic that needs to be spoken about. It is very easy to be self-serving even while giving to others. How can someone given everything they have to the poor and not have love? How could someone give their own lives up, even their bodies to be burned, and not have love? The Bible says that it is so in 1 Cor 13:3. So how then can we get beyond ourselves and truly love others? The Bible tells us to understand and remember where we came from and what Jesus did for us, and how He had patience with us. Jesus died for us while we were yet helpless and dead in our sins. Even if we are perfect from this day forward according to God's standards (which is not possible -- Jesus said that we must be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, Matt 5:48) we would still be condemned because of our past sin. God found nothing good in us, yet despite this and the fact that God is just and must punish sin, He is also compassionate and desires to show and demonstrate His love to all who respond to it. Therefore, He took our sins upon Himself, willingly accepting our punishment inflicted by the Father on the cross in our place in order to both satisfy His perfect justice and also demonstrate the full extent of His infinite love for us whom He has saved. This is mind-boggling! Is there anything else that we can do but to become His bondslaves? As such, we no longer belong to ourselves, but are living for another out of love. Our first desire should be to do only what the Father shows us to bring the most glory and honor to His name as Jesus did.

Rick presents a number of good "how-to" pointers in this day's study. However, there is one thing in particular that I must point out, as is in dangerous contradiction with the Word of God:

"Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self" (Matt 16:25, MSG).

This reading dangerously twists the meaning of this text. Consider that this passage was spoken by Jesus right after rebuking Peter for saying that Jesus should not be killed. Peter showed concern for Jesus' life, and since He believed that Jesus was the Son of God, it was unconscionable that Jesus should be whipped and killed at the hands of the Gentiles. But despite his concern, Jesus rebuked him strongly because he was thinking of himself: "Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's" (Matt 16:23, NASB). It is after this that we read the verses we wish to discuss (Matt 16:24-26, NASB):

24. Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.
25. "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
26. "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?"

Jesus doesn't say, "If anyone wishes to find his true self..." -- there is nothing of this kind of language contained here. Whether its the old self or the true self, the emphasis of The Message is still on self. We are to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus, yet we don't find Jesus trying to find His true self: (Phil 2:5-8, NASB)

5. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,
6. who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
7. but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
8. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

If Jesus was trying to find "his true self," He would not have taken on the form of man to become the servant of all, and He certainly wouldn't have gone to the cross to become the scapegoat and sin offering for the wickedness of a sinful people. This is why He rebukes Peter in Matt 16:23 -- because it is a strong temptation for Him to not carry out His Father's will to the death. He is innocent! He never deserved death!

Jesus' words to us in Matt 16 are clear: the person who tries to save his life and looks to self-interest and appeasement will lose his life -- and He is speaking here of eternal life. The Apostle Paul said "for I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come" (2 Tim 4:6). How then could he be looking for his true self in this? Is he longing for the abundant life that the word of faith teachers are promising? No, he is losing his life for the sake of Christ. Yet, someone can perform even the most self-sacrificial acts and still be self-serving. We know this from 1 Cor 13:3 (NASB): "And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing." God is love, we can only love as we ought if His spirit is resident in us. Jesus did nothing of Himself. This is a really hard concept for us to grasp. We believe Him to be God, the very creator of all things. However, as a man He was fully dependent upon His Father for everything that He said and did. He is our role model, and we should be striving to completely empty ourselves as well and live to obey the Father in everything we say, think and do. That is the goal, not to find our selves. Our true self, in fact is dead in sin. Everything we are in Christ has been given to us -- it is not of ourselves! We do not then have the right to go and do as we please -- even if it is in His name, but we are to empty ourselves and to seek the will of the Father and what pleases Him.