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The Eternal Moment

Posted by Nathanael Szobody on

There arguably exists only two aspects of time. One is the moment, the other is eternity.

There exists no future for it hasn’t come; there is only the hope of the future, which finds its being in the moment. There exists no past, only its effects, its ramifications, its signature, and all these are observed and experienced in the moment.

The eternal truly exists and in it is all that is of God. All wisdom, insight, knowledge and, most importantly, relationships, are in eternity.

So we live according to eternity for in it is all that is good. But we live it in the moment. We cannot, even if we desired it, live in anything but the moment. So enjoy it; let it be a fragrant sacrifice unto God. For these three remain, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest is love, because the faith is in the existence of eternity and God’s plan in Christ, hope is looking forward its consumation, and love is for this moment in which both of the others find their realization.

In this we see that the moment is, in fact, eternal. For in eternity there is God and his holiness, and in the moment there is God, and his holiness in us. Does the moment end? No, it is always with us. What we do in this moment ostensibly defines what we are in eternity.

Idolatry of Complacency

Posted by Nathanael Szobody on

“At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are complacent, those who say in their hearts, ‘he LORD will not do good, nor will he do ill.'”

How subtle is the human heart. “I am no idolater” it says, “I serve the one true God, I believe in Jesus Christ, I have faith.”

Oh so confident in your theology, in your practice. You fulfill all the criteria, know all the right things, you even read your Bibles and pray and serve the church. How upright you think you are. And in addition you are reasonable; you are not like the radical church down the street that preaches a health and wealth gospel, or the one that has an exagerated application of spiritual gifts, or the crazy Christians who yell their heads off down-town as they street preach. Surely such Christians give Christ a bad name by their emotionalism. You are more balanced; you live quiet lives as good Christians, not expecting too much or being too dissappointed that your church doesn’t grow. After all, God is sovereign, this is where he wants you, so you’ll just stay put.

What a fine line it is between contentment and complacency! Or perhaps not. To be content is to be always filled with the knowledge of God’s grace. To be complacent is to ignore that God’s grace even exists. Do you believe? Are you one of Christs? Well Christ works mighty things! God is a just God who move on behalf of his people for the sake of his name. Is it any better to say “The LORD will not do good, nor will he do ill” than to say that God does not exist at all? For the latter condemns himself and lets it be known, but the former insults God. For he claims the name of Christ and recieves the gift of God’s Spirit in the gospel which is the power of God for all who believe, and yet in their complacency they deny it all again to the world. They make God out to be a liar and make a mockery of the cross.

You have relational problems, so Christ died to make us one in his sacrificial love. So you struggle with temptation; Jesus did too and won, and now he gives you the power to do the same. These aren’t nice thoughts or right statements to be assented to; they are a life to be lived! This is the redeemed life: to live God’s gifts.

There is a power which softens hearts, which opens blind eyes, which releases from bondage, and this power is real! Believing in the cross and life of Jesus is to live the cross and life of Jesus, suffering without hesitation for your neighbor, living in a joy that is only eternal life welling up in you. Belief is an experience, faith is an experience, not just some rational assent. It is a transformed life by the power of believing that God does work in this world and that he does so for the good of his people.

So don’t wait for God to search you out with a lamp, you who do not expect anything from God. Get on your knees before him. The arrogance of complacency is the lie of self-sufficiency. Humble yourself before him and pray the words that he gave you, and know that God is at work in you, through you, for you, for his glory.

Jesus in All Time

Posted by Nathanael Szobody on

We are told in the New Testament of all the prophecies which Christ fulfilled, and pastors rightly teach us God’s revelation in the Old Testament with the understanding that Christ fulfills the covenant made with Abraham and at Sinai.

However we need not play time gymnastics reading Jesus into the Old Testament, nor is it necessary to see in every Old Testament passage a cryptic reference to Jesus or the New Covenant. Rather According to Ephesians 1 and Colossians 1 Christ is God’s plan for the fulness of time to unite all things in himself through the cross.

Taking these passages in conjunction with John 1 where we are explained that the essence of Christ is God’s creating and communicative Word even before he took on flesh as the man Jesus, we see that there is not always a need to start at the cross and work back in time. Rather, wherever God’s Word is spoken, wherever we see God calling a people for himself and uniting them, wherever we see God creating or communicating, or forgiving, or interacting in any way with people, there is the Christ working to accomplish his plan for all time.

This is not to say that the cross loses any of its significance; it is the mystery of God’s plan! And it would be foolish to talk of shadows and pictures without teaching the reality that they look forward to. All these things are looking forward to the time when Jesus Christ will die and be raised, but the plan and the working out of it is always there in all time. Jesus Christ the Word is indeed all we know of God, and all that has ever been known of God.

What I propose is not that we somehow are trying to force Christ into passages where he is not, but rather that to approach Old Testament passages with the aim of finding the person of Jesus or reference to sacraments or other particular New Testament themes is to have to narrow an understanding of Jesus in not first recognizing the timeless and eternal plan of God begun in creation and continuing in all eternity to have a relationship with his people–all people–through his personal Word.