On Being Number One

[HKHaugan]

On Being Number One

When you watch almost any sports game and the winner emerges you'll see a vast display of fans with their hands reaching up with the index finger extended to signify they are number one because the team won that for them. But what does it really mean to be number one? For few moments a team made us feel that we were backing a winner which made us more right than those who were backing a loser. Perhaps it was representing a town, school or region we identified as ours. For a few moments we felt jubilant that we could talk about something that made us more significant, more one up on the world, more justified because we backed a winner.

When we were in a coastal suburb of Seattle last Summer a cottage across the bay from us had an upside down American flag flying on the front lawn. That usually signals national distress. For that owner the Seahawks' Super Bowl loss was that distress. That owner's justification came from being a diehard fan. This brings to mind the question of what other things are the source of human justification apart from God? Hold that thought.

As we move into Chapter 6 we need to keep in mind the theme of Chapter 5 which is justification by faith through the blood of Jesus, His sacrificial death on the Cross. Now on to Chapter 6. If we scan all its verses we will find that grace is the theme. The importance of this is the magnitude of grace. No matter how prevalent death seems to be in the world, grace overrides it at every turn. Grace is the cover that ultimately nullifies sin, evil and death. Watch Paul's direction here in vs. 1-4. “Shall we go on sinning so that grace increases?' he asks and then answers by saying “We died to sin, how can we live in it any longer?” From there he gets us to see that baptism was two events, our entry into the death of Jesus and our being raised to His resurrected life. Let's investigate them.

Vs.1-3 “Shall we go on sinning so that grace increases?...We died to sin...Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” If you want to get down to the reality of sin, which is why Jesus died, then all we have to do is observe our internal conflict. That's what sin is, a conflict that has no answer until we hear God's answer in Jesus. We can feel it in our unfulfilled intellect, emotions and spirits. It has to do with being right within. What is there about us that needs to be right, to be put right, to look right, to talk right to act right, to fit in to the right around us? We spend most of our lives trying to justify ourselves, to explain the why we think and act the way we do. It's an endless treadmill until we see that this process only leads us into an isolating path of fear, excuse, blame, rationalization, pride, aloneness and finally death. This is where Adam and Eve found themselves after their attempt at thinking and acting apart from God. Every human being, that is everyone, each one of us, has been born into this condition. Again, this is the burden that Jesus carried to the Cross for each of us---our need to be right, to be justified in all we do, with all the people we come in contact with and in our deepest inner struggle. We want to have that sense we are right about who we are, how we identify ourselves, the goals we set for ourselves, the destiny to which which we give ourselves, the way we go about accomplishing life. That's it, isn't it?

Now we can read vs.4. Here is precisely where Paul speaks in such contemporary fashion to our personal present day internal self evaluation. He wants us to really look at Jesus whom he found to have the life he had previously thought came by obeying the Law. Jesus moved him to realize that would never work. Jesus showed him perfection in being right was a matter of faith; having a relationship with Jesus by faith and living by that faith. Jesus was all about total belief, trust and faith in His Father and His will. For Paul, the Lord was the essence of being right. It had everything to do with how Jesus was the only right person, the One who had it together in everything He did because of that faith. Jesus was the right man for the right job at the right time in the right place with the right purpose, the right Spirit and the right relationship with His right God and Father following His right Word, will and way, with the right attitude and the right object for his faith. Jesus was the real answer to Paul's lonely struggle for right within and right without. Jesus was the promised Messiah, the faith Messiah, the Messiah bringing right into the world. Right is looking forward and acting in faith knowing that you are fulfilling God's will by letting His Word be your guide in every next moment. That moment is the unexpected, the unknown and the unknowable and to respond through faith is being right. This is what Jesus did every moment of His life on earth. He lived for His Father not really knowing but trusting His Father as He walked and talked. He was perfect at it. This is what it means to die to self, to press the fear button with faith and know Jesus' presence as you go. This is the new life of vs.4.

The risen Jesus confronted Paul personally and what Paul found in Him was someone who touched his heart where he was most vulnerable---his struggle to be right. That was his bottom line inner conflict, his true self as a sinner who could never deal with his imperfections. That is exactly what we will see in Chapter 7. Jesus is who Paul found was his opposite but also the Person he longed to be like. The Jesus he had been fighting, persecuting and denying, met him on a lonely road not unlike the one Joshua walked when planning to take Jericho. There too Jesus, who as yet was not incarnate as the human Messiah, came to show Joshua a new way to be a right believer. At that moment Joshua learned to listen first to the Lord who would point the way to Jericho. Then, as a trusting servant, he would faithfully fill the Lord's purpose for both Joshua, His people, Jericho and for us as well.

So there is a different attitude when it comes to being number one. Being number one with the Lord makes us number one period but not with fingers pointing to proudly justify ourselves. Rather being number one with the Lord speaks to His covering us with the Spirit of humility and love thus our hands reaching out ready to help those in need. If we show how right Jesus is then He becomes the focal point. When ever it shifts to us it means it's time to back off and point to Him again.

Back aways I said 'Hold that thought' to which we now turn. What do we use to justify ourselves apart from God? Take your identity for instance. Are we trying to be number one where we are? Do we look for a job to identify us? Maybe it's joining a team or a club or being a patriot or being a soldier or searching your ancestry or being political or getting a degree. Whatever it is it gives us meaning and purpose. That is who and what we are and want the world to see us as. It's our justifying identity and behavior. But is it lasting? Is it worth dying for? Does it really give us personal, relational and lasting satisfaction or do we look for something else when what we thought was new wears off?

Now here's the final countdown. Are the things we use to justify us, to be number one personally, relationally and spiritually lasting beyond death? I'm not just talking about friends, memberships, professions, possessions and locations but the source of all that. Death is not just a physical thing. It's emotional, relational, personal in things like achievement, rejection, acceptance, self fulfillment, love, certainty, security, balance and stability. In each of those there are insecurities, broken relationships, failures, dead ends, disillusionment, discouragement, broken promises, disappointment, misunderstanding, setbacks, depression, all of which are pieces of death in a dying world. In them you feel temporary, alone and wondering if life is worth all the struggle.

Into this kind of dying Jesus came to give Himself for our justification. Having faith in the risen Lord is not only what justifies us personally and restores our real identity as images of God but it gives us a way to live, a truth to order our reality, a spiritual life for our relationships and a hope for our every next moment. And all of it is bathed in the grace that is the atmosphere we breathe for the process of rising from death to life in our every next moment. “If we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His Resurrection, for we know that our old self was crucified with Him so the the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin because anyone who has died has been freed from sin (vs.5-7).” Once we take this stand it is ongoing from day to day and year to year. Paul goes on, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over Him. The death He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God. In the same way count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus (vs.5-11).” That is the truth of grace through faith, our justifying reality, identity and life.

So what about all those things in this world we mentioned before that we use to justify ourselves like teams, clubs, professions and so on? They are the platforms on which we stand to live our spiritually justified lives, places to be a witness and reconcile them to Him, their source so that the people in them see the Lord and accept Him. This is being number one in the Lord, for the Lord and by the Lord. He gets the glory and we get the blessing. Justification by faith is the service we give to the Lord. What the world calls justification is serving self satisfaction.

“What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (vs.15-23).”
Faith in Jesus gives life, sin brings death. Faith gives reason and justification for living. Jesus is the number one who makes us each a number one through faith. Sin is dying little by little through fear, blame, excuse and self satisfaction in trying to a number one. As Joshua said to his people, “Choose this day whom you shall serve...as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord (Jos.24:15).” Now, that's being number one.