The Lamp Of The Body - Part 6 - The Glory Of The Lord

Luke 11:33 Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be just as full of light as when a lamp shines its light on you.”

In the last part of this series on The Lamp of the Body we will look at this last verse in the passage. When I read this two things immediately come to mind. First, as Christians, God’s glory shining on us and us reflecting his Glory in our lives because our focus is on Him, and second, the everlasting light of God’s Glory in Heaven, where there is no sun or moon and no darkness because the Glory of the Lord is what gives light to all of creation.

Isaiah 60:1-2 “Arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

As our focus is on the Lord, His Glory appears over us as this scripture says, and that is what is reflected in our lives! Ladies and Gentlemen this story of the Gospel, forgiveness, salvation, and redemption, is about more than just an “insurance policy faith” to guarantee what happens when we die, but it is also about experiencing the abundant life now, the unsearchable riches of the Kingdom of God waiting to be discovered, to which God has given us full access and privilege.

I don’t pretend to know all of the details of Heaven and eternity, only One holds the insight to that, but scripture provides us glimpses of this amazing future that awaits when we pass from this earth and experience the fullness of the Kingdom of God in its entirety. As Christians, how do we know that we will go to Heaven and not Hell when we die? On that day, since we have one who speaks on our behalf, Jesus Christ (My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.), we will be welcomed into Heaven, with our Saviour saying, “job well done good and faithful servant, come share in your master’s happiness.” It will be a place of unending joy with no pain, or hunger, or suffering. We will see the Glory of the Lord in His entirety, The True Light that will shine for all of eternity. The end of this passage of The Lamp of the Body sums up well the amazing beginning of eternity, where the Glory of the Lord will be our everlasting light!

Isaiah 60:19-20

The sun will no more be your light by day,

   nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you,

for the Lord will be your everlasting light,

   and your God will be your glory.

20 Your sun will never set again,

   and your moon will wane no more;

the Lord will be your everlasting light,

   and your days of sorrow will end.

Heaven will seem like it always was. There will be no more pain or sorrow, only true pure abundant life in the most euphoric place imaginable. All past memories will be able to be seen through the lens of the Kingdom of God. To quote C.S. Lewis making a speculation on Heaven in his book The Great Divorce, “For those in Heaven, it will work its way backward through time and seem as though it always was. “

May the light of God’s glory continue to be reflected in your life, as you are His children, and every day may we show the love of Christ in a way that Lives a Legacy for Him.

Proverbs 13:22 “A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children...”

The Lamp Of The Body - Part 5 - Righteousness is the New Law

Luke 11:36 Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be completely lighted, as when the light of a lamp shines on you.

If I were to take all of the clean clothes in my closet and spend the entire day washing them, knowing full well that they are clean, people might think I was a little odd. Now if I were to spend each day doing this for the rest of my life people would come to the conclusion that I have completely lost it. I would imagine many of the comments would be similar to this, “What is he doing, those clothes are clean?” or “What a waste of time. He just finished washing those only hours earlier and now he is washing them again!” or “Doesn’t he understand that he doesn’t need to wash his clothes since they are already clean?”

This hypothetical scenario seems far fetched and maybe a little ridiculous, but we aren’t far off from that when we have asked for forgiveness and repented from our sins, received the gift of salvation, and we continue to live under the premonition that we are sinful, broken, and not pure. I would imagine that if I stood in front of a large body of Christians from all different denominations and asked people to raise their hands if they are righteous that I would get a smaller number of people with hands in the air than I would hope for.

When Jesus spoke these words “if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be completely lighted,” He was speaking to the fact that when His Grace and Love invade your life they take over and consume you. There is no room for darkness, and the sacrifice of Jesus’ life on the cross is what made it possible because His life was the atonement for all sins, and the ransom payment for our lives. When the focus shifts from a perception of “I am a sinner who is going to Heaven when I die,” to “I am righteous because I have accepted salvation, and I will spend eternity in Heaven.” The focus is on the promise we have accepted, and not the sin. The focus is on the truth of our identity. That is why in Ephesians 2:6-7 says “it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparably great riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” We are a new creation, and that is why it says that God raised us up with Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone and the new has come.) We died to our old self, and we were raised with Christ as a new creation.

Jesus came to fulfill the law because we were unable to on our own (Matthew 5:17 “I have not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them). Before Jesus came we were under the Old Law, having to try to be good enough, uphold all of the rules, and be righteous on our own. But since Jesus died on the cross, the New Law that we live under is Righteousness. Contrary to what many think, Christianity isn’t about upholding a bunch of rules and commandments. In John 6:28 the disciples ask Jesus what works God requires, and this is his response “Then they asked him, ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’ Jesus answered,’The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

Jesus continues with this in verse 36 “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.”  Jesus continues to drive the point home with that response.  In this analogy, Jesus is speaking of spiritual hunger and thirst. He says we will never go unsatisfied and unfulfilled when we believe in the one God has sent, Jesus! He doesn’t reply that we must keep all of the commandments and all of the lists of law of the Old Covenant, or volunteer and give more time than anyone else at church, because Righteousness is the New Law, not works. All of this is because it is by grace we have been saved, through faith, and not by anything we have done to deserve it on our own but because it is a gift that we have accepted from God, and there is no amount of works that will make that gift more or less ours because it is not a result of our good deeds, it is a result of Jesus paying the ransom for our sin, and making us righteous in the eyes of God (Ephesians 2:8-9).

So when people say that Christians are hypocrites, they are missing the point of it all. We understand that we are by nature not perfect and have led sinful lives, and that is why all the more we need the gift of forgiveness and salvation that Jesus offers because we cannot uphold righteousness on our own. This is the vital point of Christianity.

It is and never will be about upholding a bunch of rules and regulations on our own. It is about accepting the gift of salvation, repenting of our sins and being forgiven, and living under the New Law of Righteousness by the power of God. There is a process that has to take place of uncovering who God has already made us to be, which naturally happens as we seek him. We chip away at the scales of our old self to uncover the new creation that God has made us. Will there be perfection? No. Will there be poor decisions that are made? Yes. And that is all the more reason why we need the Grace of God, because apart from Him we can’t be righteous and completely perfect on our own, apart from Him we can do nothing (John 15:5).

This is what Jesus referred to when He said “Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark...” because that is what it looks like when we do the work of God, as it is laid out in John 6:29, to believe the one he has sent, Jesus. All good things of generosity, outreach, understanding and application of the Word of God, compassion, love, grace, things of Phillipians 4:8-9, and many more, come from doing the work of God, which is believing in Jesus. This is also affirmed in Matthew 6:33 where Jesus tells us to “Seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Believing in Jesus, the one God has sent, seeking Him first, having a relationship with Him, meeting with Him daily, and knowing Him through the Word and prayer should be our first concern.

If you have repented and accepted forgiveness for your sins and accepted the gift of salvation, you are righteous in the eyes of God! Righteousness is the new law!

                                                       Proverbs 13:22 “A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children...”

The Lamp of The Body - Part 4 - See To It That The Light Within You Is Not Darkness

There is nothing more frustrating than during a power outage, roadside repair, or emergency situation going to get the flashlight, and clicking the power button to find your surroundings are still dark as a result of the flashlight not working. Without batteries or a working bulb, the flashlight is more useful as a hammer than it is emitting light.

Continuing into part four of the Lamp of the Body series, we are going to look at Luke 11:35... See to it that the light that is in you is not darkness.

At face value this verse seems like an odd statement. How can light be darkness? It seems like an oxymoron. Once again, Jesus’ teachings give us understanding into this verse and how it should be applied to our lives. We will briefly look at three different teachings of Jesus that will provide this insight.

One way that the light within us can be darkness is when we try to do good things, the right things, to try and validate ourselves as Christians or feel more righteous. We are doing these things to be more righteous and have the fruit to show for being a really good person. But when we try to emulate those things without Jesus, our deeds will be fruitless, just like a branch not being able to produce fruit or live apart from the vine, so we cannot produce fruit and live abundantly apart from God. John 15:4 Jesus said “Remain in me and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.” Our actions and words must be to only please the Father. If our motive is anything other, we are missing the whole picture. We are trying to produce the fruit of righteousness by our own accord, letting our light become darkness. When we seek Him first, the product of our ministry comes out of an overflow. When that is the case it is contagious and ignites fire and life in others. When our fruit is truly from the vine (John 15:5) and is a bi-product of delight rather than duty, it is life giving because it is the result of a relationship, and not our own efforts to create feelings, experiences, and change. It is here we experience his hope, rest, and provision.

Jesus warned about the Pharisees of the time who were living a life of religion for the honor among men, high seats at the banquets, and to be considered more holy than others.

Luke 20:45 While all the people were listening, Jesus said to his disciples, “Beware of the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.

Our deeds can sometimes be done with wrong intentions, not for God’s Glory, but rather to try and impress other people. Continual investment in this makes our light darkness because it is no longer the light of Christ shining through us, it is us trying to emulate that light by means of our own effort.

What Jesus is saying here is see to it that your good deeds are not for men, see to it that your giving is not for your own glory, see to it that your devotion is not just religion, see to it that your desire is not money or anything other than Him, because it is here (Matthew 6:33)  that we will find true freedom, fulfillment in life, unending joy, and a light that radiates like a lamp on a stand, a city on a hill, and shines so bright that it dispels all darkness.

Join me next time for the final installment of the Lamp of The Body Series on God's glory and the glimpse into eternity that Scripture gives us.

                               Proverbs 13:22 “A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children...”