Understanding the Present Time

[HKHaugan]

Understanding the Present Time

 That’s part of vs.11 serving as a context for us to look at authority and Paul’s take in Romans 13. There are three authorities we have been given: God’s, man’s and self. The last obviously, is the most important because it opens the door to what God is building in our minds and hearts through the self-sacrifice of obedience. When the self puts God first, then the source of authority becomes real. When the source becomes real, obedience is the method God has prescribed for us to grow and be witnesses in the world. That’s what it means to be a light to let His light shine in the darkness.

 For sure, you might be checking that thought spiritually when it is said that self is the most important. Understood. However, due to our being born in sin, all we know from the beginning of our personal existence is that we operate from a self-centered position. Until that is faced, broken through and repented for, we are slaves to ourselves. The fact we have to accept is that it is within our body that all the processing of life takes place. This means that we have to be honest with ourselves and admit we are imperfect. We need an outside source we can trust. No one can enter unless we let them. Pride and fear block looking at the fact of our imperfection which is what sin directs. It is the heart of the individual that has two options and two options only. You live either by faith in God or by faith in fear. Fear feeds fatalism. Self-dependent, we assume by fear we can be right in all we do knowing full well we can’t. We act as though we are perfect. Alone, we are prideful, afraid and always on guard. Without faith in God personal survival is our every next moment goal.

 This aloneness points to our primary spiritual condition, sin. Sin breeds regret, remorse, resentment, resistance, retaliation and revenge and their subtleties become a lifestyle of negative responses that end in descending desperation, despondency, despair and death. All Jesus’ teachings and miracles speak to this condition. That’s how personal He is. Note a very important factor in Jesus’ mission which should speak directly to each of us. He went from person to person, place to place and situation to situation as a person, an individual, relationally empathizing and revealing who and what He was without reservation. He was totally absorbed in faith in His Father.

 Therefore, the real issue for Jesus was the heart in each person He met. Because He wasn’t absorbed by fear for Himself, He became totally conscious of everything in everybody He met with. And everybody He saw. If the world of people was to change it would happen one by one. His mission was you and me personally. So, if this was the way He was with everyone, what does that say to us about how we deal with everyone we come in contact with?

 That’s the difference between trying to live life by our own authority as opposed to letting Him be in our heart meeting others through us. When people interacted with Jesus they were interacting with the Father and the Spirit as well. Jesus made that clear when He said, “When you have seen me you have seen the Father (John 14:9).” That’s how the early Christians lived after the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. People saw the reflection of Jesus in them. That’s what we try to convey. John the Baptizer, realizing the depth of his own ego, said “He must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30).”

 That self-centered isolation within all people is why Jesus came. Taking on Him a human body, He was the exact image of God in the flesh with all its limitations. Yet, He came without a self-centered ego’s pride and fear. He believed, trusted and moved confidently by faith in His Father through every moment. He experienced our aloneness in the extreme, but never gave in to it. He went to the Cross, died, but rose to show the kind of lifestyle that an image of God can be. That lifestyle was always looking forward focused by faith in His Father, being spiritual, relational and personal wherever He went and with whomever He encountered. His miracles, His teachings and His unique presence showed He was God in the flesh.

 So, authority is built into the whole process. Why? Because it’s Him, His mind, His Heart and His Spirit, that assures us of the kind of authority that touches us deep within. He draws you in to Him. You can’t help but sense you just have to follow Him and what He says.