Greater Sin

People have long had the tendency to grade sins on a sliding scale, often with murder and a few other heinous behaviors at the sinister end of the continuum, and a litany of transgressions randomly placed along the way. Perceptions of heinousness tend to vary from person to person, from culture to culture, and era to era. There is nothing standard or particularly objective about them. To some degree, the Law of Moses, as a combined moral and civil code contributed to this understanding by making certain offenses capital ones and rendering others subject only to fines or chastening. Do we, under the New Testament, labor under the same kind of sliding scale?

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Slaves of Righteousness

Slavery was something with which first century Christians were very familiar. It was not necessarily the same kind of slavery that mars American history, but a form that defied race and often resulted from severe economic hardship. Still, from Jews' knowledge of the Law of Moses and the Gentiles' experience in their own economy, compulsory servitude and the forfeiture of personal freedoms were circumstances that were all too common. Christ's doctrine spelled the end of such enslavement, but the devil's goal has always been to bend people's will to his own, making them servants of their own doom.

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Counted Worthy

Except for the very proud, most of us probably feel rather unworthy of the gospel and a savior who not only lived perfectly, but also went to the cross for us. When we consider our own sinfulness, and even our meager attempts at righteous living since our conversion, it is probably easy to feel unworthy. To a certain degree, that overpowering humility is both logical and productive, but it is not the purpose of God that we should feel like failures and as if our doom is practically assured because we cannot manage to live sinlessly. There is another sense throughout the New Testament in which a worthy lifestyle is recommended to the believer, certainly making it at least a possibility.

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Though You Knew

The old saying about ignorance being bliss has been proven and disproven many times in different arenas. Sometimes, when there is no physical or spiritual harm, it is good to be ignorant, even as harmless and innocent as a dove. At other times, however, being ignorant of vital and essential, life-saving or soul-redeeming information is surely fatal. What of those times that seem to be a bit in between, the times when someone should have been aware of something, or really was but chose to feign ignorance to avoid accountability? There is no bliss there, either.

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Hard-Faced

It is not often that we refer to the book of Deuteronomy, the second giving of the Law of Moses before the great man's death. Moses warned the people of God that if they disobeyed the Law, they were going to be punished with, among other things, invasion and re-enslavement to a nation from afar. It is the character of this hypothetical, prophetic nation that interests us today.

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Original Confidence

Someone has observed that confidence is ninety percent preparation. There is much truth to that – whether you are stepping in to bat against a fireballing left-hander, climbing into the pulpit to preach, or sitting down to take the test of your life. Confidence in achieving success is built on many things, but they all diminish in comparison to pure preparation – hitting the batting cage, reading until your eyes ache, studying until your brain is full. In another sense, however, confidence, even when constructed on preparation, is ultimately futile if it belongs to the flesh rather than faith in God. The essence of our confidence about life’s greatest challenge is entirely attached to a trusting relationship with the one who made us, saves us, and will judge us.

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Jars of Clay

One of the themes of the Old Testament, including the Psalms, was the goal of believers to give glory to God. Immediately, our minds probably think about a worship service, perhaps especially a hymn or spiritual song. While that is definitely part of giving glory to the one who deserves it, there is more to it – many more and practical opportunities to shift glory away from self and onto the Lord.

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Great Calm

Updated on Sunday, April 15, 2012 at 8:08PM by Jeff Smith

What was Jesus trying to teach his disciples on this occasion? He had just told one that he would have to forsake all others and follow after him and now he uses the opportunity afforded by this storm on the lake to teach others about a trusting faith, even when a tempest puts that faith in peril.

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Sing Praises to God

One of the most distinctive things about churches of Christ is the music. When made by spirit-filled worshipers, its a Cappella quality resonates with meaning unimpeded by innovation and instrumentation. We must always be careful that the focus of our musical worship is not wholly shifted to the mechanics of eschewing the instrument, but is concentrated upon the words of the hymns and the work of giving our best to a worthy God.

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Do You Do Well to Be Angry?

Even the most mild-mannered people get angry. Even God gets angry – although the results are often more universal when he does it. There are times when a person should be angry and times when people are angry without cause. Regardless of the reasons, we have to learn to control our anger or watch passively as it starts to control us and alienate the people around – strangers, neighbors, and loved ones most of all. If allowed, anger will take control and become the reflexive response to even the slightest problems.

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By This We Know

Obedience and doctrinal conformity have a negative connotation among some in these freethinking days of religious liberation and denominational decline. Obedience appears to some people to be synonymous with legalism or an affront to the sacred creed, while doctrinal orthodoxy is likewise deemed too narrow and often confused with the imposition of personal opinion. In a religious world where so many would rather feel saved than experience any intellectual satisfaction about it, we should not be surprised that obedience becomes endangered and suspect. Obedience, however, is essential to the genuineness and endurance of real faith.

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If You Continue

The Christians in Colossae was not thinking about quitting the church or beginning to have doubts about the existence of God. They were not flirting with a denomination or falling prey to a heightened desire for carnal immorality. When Paul wrote them with special encouragement toward steadfast faithfulness, his concern was that they were vulnerable to false teachers’ promises of deeper insight and knowledge, which actually amounted to erudite error and apostasy. Our own perseverance is likewise conditional upon our resistance of worldly wisdom and the false appearance of religion.

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We Have Left Everything

Updated on Sunday, December 4, 2011 at 12:15PM by Jeff Smith

The idea that half of all marriages will end in divorce is a clever bit of statistical fiction, based on numbers that indicate, for instance, that in a certain year, there were 2.4 million marriages and 1.2 million divorces; while that sounds like a fifty percent divorce rate, it ignores the fact that the two figures are almost entirely independent of each other. In other words, of the 1.2 million couples divorcing that year, very few were also among the 2.4 million that got married the same year. The 1.2 million divorcing couples were drawn from many different years of marriages. A statistical judgment on the likelihood of marital failure is difficult to ascertain, but an anecdotal observation of the number of divorces among our relatives, neighbors, friends, and even brethren is alarming enough to compel us to take the subject seriously.

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Mercy Not Sacrifice

Updated on Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 8:35PM by Jeff Smith

Ritual has always played a role in religion, but sometimes the ritual literally takes over the religion and becomes its purpose, definition, and goal. When that happens, the heart of religion has been broken by externals, and shallowness and corruption are the result. It is not that the rituals are necessarily wrong, but that, over time, they can be allowed to obscure the spirit of faith sufficiently that they replace any motivation toward the truer exercise of the teaching of Christ, which goes deeper and far beyond ritual. What we must do, then, is learn what Jesus means by desiring mercy ahead of sacrifice.

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Taxed

With the exception of years like this one in which April 15 falls outside of the five-day work week, the ides of April is Tax Day, the deadline to file one’s tax return and pay up. The history of taxation follows the history of civilization and naturally finds its way into the histories of Israel and the church. While no one seems to be overjoyed to pay taxes, the will of God regarding them restrain his people from ignoring the edict of the state. And so we pay … and pay … and pay.

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Go to Siloam and Wash

Updated on Sunday, March 25, 2012 at 4:22PM by Jeff Smith

The miracles of Jesus were amazing and their authenticity was difficult to deny, even for his enemies who were devoted to his destruction in spite of them. Although the signs and wonders he worked were great, many people insisted upon rejecting his teaching and his authority, just as they do today. Our attitude should always be a rather simple one when we are confronted with the person of Christ in Scripture – we ought to be ready to comply with his instruction, knowing it is in our best interest, even if it compels us to crucify our pride, to risk becoming a spectacle, or to subject ourselves to overwhelming personal change.

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Peace on Earth

Updated on Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at 10:12PM by Jeff Smith

In a hymn that is really fitting for any time of the year, we sing about “Peace on earth and mercy mild,” a subject that has special appeal to the rest of the world around Christmastime when Hark! The Herald Angels Sing gets most of its attention. Knowing that Christmas is likely not the birthday of Jesus and that the Bible commands no observance of his nativity is useful information, but it still leaves us curious about the savior’s potential to bring peace on Earth.

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Welcome To Providence

Updated on Sunday, April 29, 2012 at 8:02PM by Jeff Smith

The providence of God is one of those Bible subjects that is monumentally important, but perceived to be so mysterious that Christians might be better off ignoring it, lest we be thought like the charismatics. When we study the providence of God, however, miracles play only a small role in the subject, and in fact, we provoke God’s providence every time we pray anyway. It is not only safe to discuss providence, it is necessary to keep us from falling into deism, a belief system that basically portrays God as apathetic and powerless since the morning after creation. In today’s lesson, we shall study about providence and the way that it affected certain Bible characters. We hope that we will come away with a better appreciation for how God answers prayer today, in the wisest way.

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My Church

Updated on Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 1:02PM by Jeff Smith

When you plan to visit an unfamiliar community, or even just when you are passing through somewhere, it is common to look at the places of worship and identify them according to the way they identify themselves. Many are designated as outposts of some well-known Protestant denomination, while others are clearly Roman Catholic or evidence of a modern form of interdenominationalism. Truly, however, the identity of a religious house cannot be fully known simply by looking at the words on the outside wall, but those words do give some indication of what the people inside would aspire to be. What is the identity of the church that belongs to Christ?

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Talking Like a Madman

Chances are, because of your faith, you have either been accused to the face or behind your back of being a little crazy. The convictions of members of churches of Christ are just that distinctive and enough in conflict with the acceptable creeds of Protestantism that we seem like madmen and rabble rousers to those in the mainstream of Christendom and among agnostics and atheists. Such accusations are examples of usually mild persecution and put us in good company with the likes of Christ and the apostle Paul who were likewise accused of madness.

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