What Is Christ Doing Now?

Posted on June 22, 2017 by Editor

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John 17:1-11

Here’s a question for you: Jesus died, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven—then what happened?

Most of us know what happened to the apostles—they continued to teach others “to observe all that Christ had commanded” (Matthew 28:20)—but what happened to Jesus? What is he currently doing? Is he twiddling his thumbs in heaven while waiting for us to join him?

This is a difficult question, but we can find the answer in Romans 8:34-35:

Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

After Jesus ascended into heaven, he began to intercede for us. He began to pray on our behalf. It is interesting to note that Romans 8:34-35 says that Christ intercedes for us and not that he interceded for us. This means Jesus is continuing to pray for us. How often does he pray?

Let’s turn to Hebrews 7:25:

Therefore [Jesus] is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.

Continually. Jesus prays continually on our behalf. Can you imagine praying on someone’s behalf every day of your life? All day? Not once a month. Not whenever you happen to remember. Every day. All day.

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to be underwhelmed by this truth. Jesus prays for us. Great. That sounds like something Jesus would do. But think about it for a moment. The God who created the heavens and the earth is praying for you. Every day. In fact, 1 John 2:1 goes as far to say that Jesus is your advocate!

How amazing is that?

Would you like to know how Jesus intercedes for you? Turn to John 17:1-11.

At first, it doesn’t appear that this scripture has anything to do with us. After all, in John 17:9, Jesus says that he is praying “for those whom [God] has given [him].” Doesn’t this mean that Jesus is praying specifically for his disciples? Not quite. If we continue to read this passage, we find that Jesus adds, “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message” (John 17:20). Because the apostles were faithful to spread Christ’s message, we can share in this prayer. Jesus is praying for us!

What does he pray for us? First, in John 17:11, we can see that Jesus prays for our protection. “Holy Father,” Jesus prays, “protect them by the power of your name.” Protect us from what? John 17:15 shows us that Jesus is asking God to protect us from “the evil one.”

My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.

The world is a dangerous place for Jesus’ disciples. As Jesus once said, “If [the people of the world] persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20). The world is not a spa. It is a dangerous place in which only our suffering is promised.

Despite this, Jesus does not pray for God to remove us from it.

What trust this shows! If Jesus did not trust the Father, he would have begged God to remove us from all danger. However, he does not ask for our removal—he asks for our protection. Jesus trusts God to protect us from all hazards.

It is interesting to note that many of the early church fathers believed that the world would fall apart without God’s intervention. God, they thought, was the only force that held the world together. Whatever parts composed the world, God was considered the force that actively held these parts together. If this is the case, then our continued existence is a testimony to God having heard, and accomplished, his Son’s prayer.

Jesus also prays that God will sanctify us (John 17:17). Sanctify is a word with a two-part definition. First, sanctify means to “set apart.” What does this mean? It means that Jesus is asking God to designate you for a specific purpose. Still confused? Let’s look at a simpler example.

You may not know it, but our Pastor Tim is quite the soda connoisseur. Not only did he run a blog dedicated to reviewing various sodas, but he also made his own! These days, Pastor Tim does not drink soda much; however, in the past, Pastor Tim was quite particular about his soda.

You see, Pastor Tim couldn’t just use any glass when he drank soda—he had to use the glass. There was nothing special about this glass that would make it a soda glass—it was just like the rest of Pastor Tim’s glasses. However, Pastor Tim specifically chose that glass for his soda drinking purposes. He refused to drink soda from any other glass and he would not fill the glass with any other beverage. In other words, he set the glass apart from all other glasses.

We are the soda glass. Christ asks his Father to sanctify us—to set us apart—so that we might be used for a specific purpose. Just as Pastor Tim considers his soda glass to be different from all the other glasses (despite there being nothing otherwise unique about it), Christs considers us different from the rest of the world. On our own, we are “just another glass.” However, Christ specifically asks for us to be set apart. This is what makes us unique.

Christ’s request for us is a little different from Pastor Tim’s glass, however—we don’t say that Pastor Tim “sanctified” this soda glass. This is because the definition of “sanctified” has another part to it.

Sanctify also means “to purify.” An object that is sanctified is both set apart and purified. What does it mean to be purified? For us Christians it means that we become increasingly like Christ. Christ’s prayer, then, is for God to set us apart from the world so that we might be filled with the Holy Spirit and become more like our Lord.

Finally, Jesus asks God for something curious.

Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one (John 17:11).

Last week, we marveled that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are so united that they constantly choose to lift one another—instead of themselves—up. They do this without complaint. Even in this passage, we find examples of this unity. In John 17:5, Jesus reveals that he once possessed great glory, but that he relinquished this glory to be born as a man. John 17:10 shows us that the Father and the Son share all they have. This is an amazing unity—and Christ asks his Father that we might participate in it.

Part of engaging in this unity, as John 17:17 showed us, is to become more like Jesus. We must learn how to lower ourselves and intercede for others. Paul echoes this instruction in 1 Timothy 2:1, saying, “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people.”

This is astounding.

Not only are we called to pray for ourselves (or for those who we love and admire), but we are called to pray for all people. This means that we must pray for the politician that we hate, the teachers that we consider to be above ourselves, and the enemy that hurt us. Why? Because Christ has asked that we be set apart to become more like him; a man who prays for those who persecute him—constantly.

Not only does Christ pray for us, but the Nicene Creed reminds us of the scriptural promise that, “He will return again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” The one who prays for us constantly is the one who will return and bring us to himself, so we can be where he is (John 14:3).  His intercession will give way to his presence, and our imperfection to his perfection.

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Life as Sagyeonghoe: An Excerpt from Living in the Underground Church

Posted on June 20, 2017 by Pastor Foley

(Tonight I finished writing the introduction to Living in the Underground Church, the third volume of our Underground Church series. The book is due out in November, but I’m eager to share this excerpt with you. You can find Volume 1 of the series, Preparing for the Underground Church, and Volume 2, Planting the Underground Church, on Amazon or directly through VOMK. But for now, Volume 3 exists only on my computer and in this excerpt!)

 

In many ways it could be said that for Christianity to continue to survive and advance into the next, more hostile and restrictive generation in Korea, it must return to the practices of the very first generation of Korean Christians. Here I am not referring to the generation of Korean Christians who emerged from the Great Pyongyang Revival of 1907. Instead, I am referring to that generation of Korean Christians from whom the Great Pyongyang Revival emerged: The Korean Christians of 1873 through 1906.[1]

Much is known about this first generation of Korean Christians by historians, but little of it is taught to ordinary Korean Christians today, and, grievously, almost none of it is held up for emulation by Korean churches, missionaries, or Christians. Yet the life and practice of this first generation of Korean Christians were so transformative, so unprecedented in modern Christian history, that they were the focus of books and articles and study in America and Europe well before the Pyongyang Revival ever happened.

This book is not the history of this pioneer generation, though it contains some of their stories in order to help us reclaim and recover that original form of Korean Christianity—a Christianity without ordained pastors or pulpits or church buildings or denominations or money or legal standing or government permission or public acceptance.

Instead, the focus of this book is what was the focus of their Christianity: The Bible.

So focused were the first generation of Korean Christians on the Bible that their religion was described by the newly-arrived foreign missionaries as “bible Christianity”.[2] The first Korean Christians were not the converts of those foreign missionaries. Instead, they had been converted by the Bibles they read and the Korean colporteurs who smuggled them in—colporteurs who were new converts to Christianity themselves.

These first generation Korean Christians did not simply read the Bible as one of many Christian activities in their life. Reading the Bible was their life. For them, sagyeonghoe (bible examination meeting) was not a special annual event led by a pastor or distinguished guest speaker. It was a daily event engaged in by each Korean Christian as they attempted to make their way through this “strange new world of the Bible” they had entered. As Korean church historians Sebastian Kim and Kirsteen Kim explain,

Once Korean Christians accepted the Bible as their sacred text, it was reverenced as the authority above others. Students read it in the Confucian manner; aloud, memorizing texts and reciting them, and then following its teaching literally in daily ethics, moral conduct, and matters of socio-political principle. People accepted the texts as authoritative, without critical evaluation or consideration of their validity in the context of Korea.[3]

What does it mean to be a Christian living in the underground church? It means that life becomes sagyeonghoe. It means that as we read the Bible in the place we currently live, among the people we currently know, we awake from our sleep like Jacob and say with him, “Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.”[4] It means that we read aloud, memorizing the Bible texts and reciting them, and then following their teaching literally in daily ethics, moral conduct, and matters of socio-political principle. It means that we accept the texts as authoritative, without critical evaluation or consideration of their validity in the context of Korea. It means that we undertake this single task as the length and breadth of our Christian life, with the same intensity, focus, abandonment, and allegiance to God as did the earliest Korean Christians.

The purpose of this book is to provide a simple method for living that life, which, as we will see, always leads one perpendicular to the world and thus, inevitably, underground. The method laid out here is not one especially drawn from the first generation of Korean Christians or even from underground Christians. In fact, Bible reading methods that are particular to a time or a place or a people or a pastor are rightly suspect. A Bible reading method should do nothing more or less than place us in the proper relation to the text and its Triune God. From that point, as Karl Barth says, “There is a river…”

There is a spirit in the Bible that allows us to stop awhile and play among secondary things as is our wont – but presently it begins to press us on; and however we may object that we are only weak, imperfect, and most average folk, it presses us on to the primary fact, whether we will or no. There is a river in the Bible that carries us away, once we have entrusted our destiny to it—away from ourselves to the sea.[5]

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Action Step

What can I do today to put into practice serving and learning from our persecuted brothers and sisters?

For the earliest Korean Christians, the Bible was not only theologically central to their faith, but practically central to their lives. Spend time to read your Bible every day and, when you read, think about how you can adapt your everyday life to the “strange new world of the Bible.”

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[1] 1873 is the year Missionary John Ross began to sell Chinese language Christian books at the Corea Gate. See J. Ross, Mission Methods in Manchuria. London: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1903, p. 17.

[2] BFBS (British and Foreign Bible Society), The Leaves of the Tree: A Popular Illustrated Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society for the Year, 1906-1907. London: Bible House, 1907, p. 70.

[3] S.C.H. Kim and K. Kim, A History of Korean Christianity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 87-88.

[4] Genesis 28:16, KJV.

[5] K. Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith Publisher, Inc., 1978, p. 34.

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Why Does God Seem Distant?

Posted on June 16, 2017 by Editor

To watch other Voice of the Martyrs videos, visit the Voice of the Martyrs Video Page!

John 14:15-21

Think about someone who you know very well.

You know this person’s favorite foods, their birthday, and their personality. But you also know their mood or opinion without asking. You know their hopes, their dreams, and—sometimes—you even know things about them of which they are unaware!

Think about that person.

Now, think about why you know them so well.

Most likely, you know them well because you spent time with them. You laughed with them, became furious with them, and cried on their shoulder. Through everything, you each became a part of one another.

Our relationship with God is very similar.

If we wish to develop our relationship with God, we must pay attention to Him. When we read scripture, we must ask ourselves “What is the character of God?” By doing this, we can begin to build a relationship with our heavenly Father.

What better scripture to start with than John 14:15-21? This passage is full of descriptions of God’s character! For example, in John 16, Jesus mentions that God is sending us an advocate (the Holy Spirit) that will be with us forever. God is eternal—he will always exist and will be with us forever.

In John 14:17, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of Truth,” meaning that God is Truth. Human beings are, at best, “mostly truthful.” Even when we try our best to be completely honest, deception is still in us. We can even deceive ourselves! God, however, is completely truthful—there is no deception in him. Truth is an essential component of his nature.

We also learn in John 14:17 that God is knowable. “The world cannot accept [the Spirit of Truth] because it neither sees nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:17). God is the author of creation, an entity higher than being, itself. But we can know him. Most of us are unable to meet (much less know) the leader of a country (or even the mayor of a city.) But we can know God!

God is eternal, true, and knowable—but he is so much more!

“If you love me, keep my commandments,” Jesus says in John 14:15. His disciples would immediately connect Jesus’ words with the Shema, an important prayer composed from the words of Deuteronomy 6:4-9. The Shema is one of two prayers that the Jewish people are directly commanded to pray and is an essential declaration of the Jewish faith. In ancient times, the Jewish people had to recite this prayer twice a day—once at sunrise, once at sunset—so the disciples would have known the Shema better than the back of their own hands.

Why the Shema? The Shema begins with the words, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The Lord is one. Jesus is reminding his disciples that there is ONE God. He then reveals that this God is of three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

A holy trinity.

The concept is so simple, yet so complex. Something our brothers and sisters in the twelfth century knew full well.

This is called “the Shield of the Trinity.” It’s a diagram of God’s nature created by Christians from twelfth century Europe who were seeking to create a visual interpretation of the trinity. As you can see here, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of the same substance, but they cannot be reduced to one another (the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father and etc.) How can this be?

Perhaps we should introduce the trinity by examining what it isn’t.

The Trinity is not:

  • One God in three forms When explaining the trinity, many Christians like to use the analogy of water, ice, and steam. But this is a faulty analogy. If steam cools or if ice is heated, it becomes water. But The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit never change forms. Furthermore, different states of water do not exist in relationship to one another; they are simply different states of one form. God is not like this.
  • A hierarchy One of the most common modern heresies is the idea that the Father is superior to the Son and Holy Spirit—or that the Holy Spirit isn’t a person at all. As we have discussed in previous blogs, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not only equal persons, but they are constantly serving one another.
  • Three distinct gods Christians have always believed in ONE God in three persons—you can find proof for this all throughout the Old and New Testaments (as well as the creeds from the church throughout history).

Today’s scripture is filled with references to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In verse 16, for example, we see every member of the Trinity: the Son asks the Father for the Holy Spirit to rest on his disciples. Then in verse 21 we see that the Father loves us because we receive the commands of Christ. The Holy Spirit helps us to remember these commands (John 14:26).

Later in John 14, Jesus tells us that he does exactly what he sees his Father doing. If we think about it, this is a difficult thing to wrap out head around. Why would Jesus mindlessly follow his Father? Unlike us, Jesus doesn’t worry about being “authentic” or “independent.” Instead, he concerns himself with following his Father; knowing that his Father has his best interests at heart.

All three members of the Trinity are fully God and worthy of worship and praise. However, we do not see them dominating one another; we see them serving and following one another. We see them giving glory to and caring for one another.

What a difficult form of love! This love requires sacrifice and devotion. It requires giving up glory and allowing others to be right. Jesus gave up his life on the cross, but he never once asked for praise. He never asked for glory. Instead, he simply continued to listen to his Father—and his Father lifted him up.

If we really want to know God, we cannot insist on saying, “I love you, but I won’t listen to you.” Think about it in another way: a husband completely ignores his wife for several months. When she breaks down and asks him about it, he replies, “I love you, but I don’t want to listen to you.” Does he really love her? It’s the same way with our relationship to God. The feeling of love is not real love.

We cannot do works to earn favor, but if we really love someone, we will act in a certain way toward them. We will listen to them, we will spend time with them, and we will learn all of the little things about them that makes them who they are. To love God then, we must listen to Him through the scripture, to spend time with him through prayer, and to learn all of the little things about Him that makes Him who he is.

It is then that Jesus will reveal himself to us.

“Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching,” Jesus says in John 14:23. “The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them”

God doesn’t live in buildings. He chooses to live in us, his Church. The Bible describes us as being the home of God. When we obey Christ’s commands, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit come to live in us—the Creator comes to live in the Created—and we become to know Him better than we ever knew ourselves.

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