Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalms 16 & 17; Deuteronomy 31:7-13, 24-30; 32:1-4; Romans 10:1-13; Matthew 24:15-31
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6-11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)
The apostle Paul was acutely aware throughout his life that he and his fellow Jews were a people of privilege. They were “entrusted with the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2). They were to provide the bloodline through which God was going to redeem the world: “from them, according to the flesh, comes the Christ” (Romans 9:5). They had been bequeathed the pattern of worship that would bring glory and honor to the living God: “to them belong[s] … the worship” (Romans 9:4). It broke his heart to find his people rejecting Jesus of Nazareth as their Messiah and the world’s Savior. They were failing in that stewardship, just as he had done before the risen Christ came to him personally. Rhetorically at least, he would have given up his own share in the blessing if they could be included in his stead (Romans 9:1-3). Here in Romans 10, Paul comes around to what he actually—not merely rhetorically—wishes for his kin. Here is Paul’s heart for his fellow people of Jewish privilege: “that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1).
It’s fascinating to see how Paul unpacks his desire for his people—and, accordingly, how he has come to understand his own heritage because of, and in, Christ Jesus.
No righteousness on our own. Blessed with the revelation of just what God’s standard of righteousness is, Paul has come to see—and wants others to see—that it is impossible for any of us to establish a righteousness of our own. Paul would have us look at the perfect standard of righteousness that has now been made clear by the life of Jesus Christ, and confess that none of us could possibly measure up. Currently, we are afflicted with a pandemic of “judginess”—some coming from the left, and some coming from the right. This pandemic is as lethal to our common life as COVID-19 is to our public health. There is no “again” of greatness to which to restore America that was not stained by the flaws of its founders or its people. There is no safe haven of “anti-racism” that frees any of us from the reality that we all pre-judge people. “There is none righteous, no not one!” (Romans 3:10, quoting Psalm 14:1).
Righteousness as a gift from God through Christ. But that’s not where things end. When Paul says that “Christ is the end (Gk., telos = goal) of the law” (Romans 10:4) what he means is twofold. First, as we’ve just seen, the goal of the law was to make clear to us that none of us is righteous. But then, second, the goal of the law was to make us aware that there is one exception to the rule. It’s to this end, I think, that Paul quotes Leviticus 18:5’s “the person who does these things will live by them” (see Romans 10:5). I think that Paul is describing a particular Person. Jesus Christ “did these things,” and not only “lives by them,” but has won life for us by his obedience to them. None of us is righteous in ourselves, but there is One who was, and is, righteous for us.
In him, we are found in a righteousness that comes from God himself (see Philippians 3:9). There is a righteous that comes “from God” and is given to us “by faith.” “Faith” that is, in the first place, the faithfulness of the Son to the Father. And “faith” that is, in the second place, our believing response. Salvation, says Paul, is “from faith to faith” (Romans 1:17). It is from Christ’s faith in the Father’s promise to accept his obedience in place of ours (see Romans 5:12-21) to our receiving that gift with the open hands of receptive, obedient trust (the “obedience of faith”—see Romans 1:5; 16:26).
Christ is the goal of Israel’s story. Intriguingly, in this chapter, Paul appeals to Deuteronomy 30, where God threatens Israel with exile, but then promises rescue on the far side of exile. In Deuteronomy 30, knowing Israel will rebel against him after he leads them in conquest of the Promised Land, Yahweh lays out both near-term consequence and long-term promise. Exile will come, but it will be followed by rescue and return.
Even so, the language that Deuteronomy uses to describe the eventual return from exile looks far beyond anything that happened when Israel was brought back into the Promised Land after the Babylonian exile. The Lord told Israel that they wouldn’t have to “ascend into heaven” to bring rescue down (Deuteronomy 30:5). Paul extends the logic: nor would they have to “descend into the abyss” to bring rescue up. Paul wants his readers—and us—to know that as far back as Deuteronomy, the Lord had been pointing to his own plan to send Christ from heaven in the incarnation and to bring him up from the abyss in the resurrection, for the salvation of Israel and of the whole world. All this the Lord would do—and now has done—to secure for us the ultimate return from exile: return from the exile of sin and of death. All this is on his dime, not ours. All this is by his efforts, not ours. All this is by his own merit, not ours. All this is by his own righteousness and faithfulness, not by ours. All this is by his own commitment to keep covenant, not by ours.
Glory be. What possible response could there be except the one Paul puts before us: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Noonday Prayer
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 18:1-20; Deuteronomy 3:18-28; Romans 9:19-33; Matthew 24:1-14
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)
Nobody should claim to have all the answers about the “end times.” All of the major New Testament passages are difficult, including Matthew 24 (the gospel readings for the next three days of the Daily Office). I offer here a paragraph I wrote for the chapter on Matthew in A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament: The Gospel Realized (Crossway, 2017). (This book is a one-volume commentary on the NT written by various professors of Reformed Theological Seminary. I contributed the chapter on Matthew). I think it provides perspective on Jesus’s teaching in this chapter:
Matthew 6 had dealt with the disciplines of religion: prayer, fasting, and trust. Matthew 24 deals with the housing of religion: for Jewish people, the Temple. In 24:1-26, 29-35 (where the language of “coming” [erchesthai] evokes the image of the Son of Man coming before the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7), Jesus explains the significance of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. The heavenly conferral of authority to Jesus by virtue of his baptism, death, and resurrection, will have earthly consequences for the old administration: the destruction of the Temple. The disciples will see this “coming” to his heavenly authority happening because it will take some development — the disciples will have opportunity to prepare (24:15-26). In other verses, Jesus uses the language of “presence” (parousia, which the ESV [and the NRSV] unfortunately also translate “coming” — 24:27, 36-41) to refer to his (still to us) future return at the consummation of the ages. His parousia, he asserts, nobody will see in advance (24:27). The job is simple — be ready (24:36-51).
Today’s gospel passage is an explanation of Jesus’s assertion that “not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down” (Matthew 24:2). The apostles were witness to an epic transformation here on earth: with the handing of the keys of the Kingdom to Peter there began a construction project for a new Temple, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, and the apostles and NT prophets being the foundation (see Ephesians 2:20).
That construction project left no room for the ongoing presence of the physical Temple that had once housed sacrifices. With Christ’s offering of “my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28), that Temple’s work was finished. That fact would be signaled in the rending of the veil in the Temple separating the Holy of Holies during Jesus’s crucifixion (Matthew 27:51). Not to put the point too finely, God himself would remove that Temple at the hands of the Roman army in AD 70. When, later in this chapter, Jesus says, “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place,” he is referring (I’m pretty sure) to the “coming” (erchesthai) of Jesus into the full authority of his identity as Daniel’s “Son of Man” when the earthly Temple is finally removed.
Jesus’s final “presence” (parousia) at the end of time we can’t predict—it will come suddenly (Matthew 24:27, 36-51). But the apostles could prepare themselves for life after the earthly Temple’s passing. Jesus will begin to build his church through their obeying his commission to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20).
And that’s where we live, between Christ’s “coming” into his full authority at his ascension and his “presence” when, at the end of this gospel age, he returns in full glory and majesty. During this “between” time, the most important thing we could possibly be doing is contributing to the present expression of Christ’s rule on earth: a healthy church. Of the four gospel writers, Matthew is the only one who records Jesus using the word “church.” And for Matthew, it’s a place where forgiveness can be seen and not just imagined, where sinners (like you and me) and tax collectors (like Matthew himself) are welcome. It’s a place where love that mirrors God’s own heart is on display. It’s a “city on a hill” that can’t be hidden, where “good works” manifest the character of a loving heavenly Father.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Midday Eucharist
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:1-24; Deuteronomy 1:1-18; Romans 9:1-18; Matthew 23:27-39
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1-3,11a,14c,18-19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92)
Jesus’s final woe. Jesus pronounces a seventh, and final, devastating woe against the religious leaders of his generation. These leaders might claim for themselves the blessing of those who identify with “the persecuted” (see Matthew 5:10). However, in reality, they are the culmination of a long line of rejecters. While they honorifically entomb past heroes of the faith (“the prophets” and “the righteous”—Matthew 23:29), in fact, their veneration, in Jesus’s view, is faint praise. Jesus sees Israel’s history as a sad series of rejecting—indeed, of murdering—the prophets and the righteous. It’s a string that runs from the beginning of God’s story (Cain’s murder of Abel in the first book of the Bible—Genesis 4:8-11) to the (at the time of Jesus) most recent chapter of God’s story (the stoning of Zechariah son of Jehoiada in the courtyard of the Temple—2 Chronicles 24:15-22 [2 Chronicles being the last book in the Hebrew canon of Scripture]). And it will culminate, Jesus knows, in their rejection of him.
There is, of course, deep mystery in the New Testament’s claim that God has offered his own Son “for sin.” There is deep irony as well in the fact that Jesus’s rejection by his own—those whose mission in the world was to be a holy nation and a “peculiar people” bringing light to the world—puts them in need of the same mercy as everybody else.
Thus, it’s significant that Jesus meets his contemporaries’ rejection of him not with anger, but with sadness: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem…! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing” (Matthew 23:38). He laments their bad choice, even while he knows its outcome will be good: the salvation of the world. And he looks to the day when the unfolding sadness will be turned to joy, when his countryfolk will confess: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 23:39).
God’s mysterious choice. Over the course of the first eight chapters of Romans, Paul has demonstrated how Jesus Christ magnificently brings together strands of Israel’s story. The disobedience of Adam is countered by the obedience of Christ (Romans 5). The justifying faith of Abraham is exactly the kind of faith that Christ both embodies in himself and calls forth from us (Romans 4). The trek from slavery to liberty that Moses led his people through in his day foreshadowed the journey from slavery unto sin to the glory of creation’s liberation from corruption that Christ is now conducting for those who trust him (Romans 6-8).
Having traced that pattern of thinking, Paul exults, in chapter 8, in God’s unconquerable love. But now, beginning in Romans 9, Paul pauses to reflect soberly on the fact that many—in fact, most—of his contemporary countryfolk are rejecting Jesus as the Christ. That fact prompts anguish in his soul. Note: anguish, not anger. A fact that one wishes had not been lost on 2,000 years of Western church history.
Paul wishes us to know three things in this passage:
First, when we witness others make the horrible choice of turning from God and from his provision of eternal life in Jesus Christ—especially when they enjoy every privilege that would seem to make a good choice a cinch (see Romans 9:4-5)—it is an invitation to deeper love and empathy for, not rejection of, them on our part: “I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people…” (Romans 9:3).
Second, the sobering—and at the same time, personhood-valuing—truth is that the kind of personal election that Paul exulted in a few verses earlier (“those whom God foreknew he also predestined”—Romans 8:29) was never identical with God’s national election of Israel to be his chosen vessel for bringing salvation to the world: “Not all (ethnic) Israelites truly belong to (spiritual) Israel” (Romans 9:6). God never accepts or rejects anyone just because they belong to a particular family or tribe or race or ethnicity.
Third, from beginning to end, we are dependent on God’s loving and persistently merciful resolve to overcome our resistance and the drag of sin. No one will get to heaven without confessing: “By your mercy alone, O Lord.” When we know as we are fully known, as Paul puts it (1 Corinthians 13:12), we will be so staggered at the realization that we have been so deeply loved despite what we will have come to realize about ourselves, that certain questions will just fade away: Why not mercy for everyone? Why are some “loved” (meaning “chosen”) and some “hated” (hyperbole for “not chosen”)? Why are these hearts hardened, and those not? All those questions—or so I strongly suspect—will give way to other questions: Given what we know about ourselves, why mercy for anyone—especially the likes of me? Why is anyone “loved”—especially me? Why is any heart softened—especially mine? Those are the questions we will ponder, for
When we’ve been there 10,000 years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’ve first begun.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Recommencement of In-Person Sunday Worship
Over the last four months, it has been a privilege to worship with you on Sundays in an online format. Nonetheless, online worship and in-person are not the same thing. Every single day, a name and a face cross my mind, and I ache to see and to worship with that person again! This Sunday (July 12), we are recommencing in-person worship—with our regularly scheduled services at 8:00 & 10:15 a.m., and 6:00 p.m.
This is going to sound odd, but I want you to know that it is perfectly OK for you not to return for in-person worship at this time. Conditions for worship may be restrictive enough to discourage you. You may simply feel uncomfortable with the health climate in Central Florida at this time. Or you may have determined that as far into the future as you can see, in-person worship will not be a safe place for you. Regardless, we will continue to offer online worship by live-streaming the 10:15 service and we will be grateful to have you continue to worship with us that way. You are an important part of the Cathedral family.
If you wish to attend one of this Sunday’s services, here are some guidelines you need to be aware of:
For the service you wish to attend, you must make a reservation for yourself and for any household member accompanying you. Seating capacity is limited to 100 people for each service. For that reason—and for the sake of our being able to do contact tracing should the need arise—we ask you to reserve a spot for the service you wish to attend. Please download the Church Center App from the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store, or visit the website: https://stlukesorlando.churchcenter.com/home. Alternatively, you may contact the church office during business hours.
You must practice social distancing the entire time you are in the Cathedral—touchless greetings and passing of the peace; seating every other row; honoring the 6 foot markers for individuals or households on the pews.
You will need to wear a mask throughout the service.
Communion in the form of a pre-intincted host will be brought to you at your pew. After the clergy has dropped the host into your hand, you may remove your mask long enough to partake.
Prayer books and Bibles have been removed from the pews; bulletins with the full text of the service will be provided.
Congregational singing will be restricted to at most a closing hymn at 10:15 & 6:00. There will be no congregational singing at 8:00.
At the close of the service, exit row by row from the rear, and please do not congregate in the narthex or Great Hall.
Restrooms will be available in the Great Hall area—however, we encourage, um, sparing use thereof.
There will be no reception/coffee hour before or after services in the Great Hall.
There will be no in-person children’s church or nursery. Children’s bulletin and coloring sheets will be available in the narthex. For those worshiping from home, Children’s Zoom Church will continue at 9:30 on Sunday mornings.
An offertory receptacle will be available in the narthex as offering plates will not be passed. Of course, you may continue to take advantage of online giving (the Church Center App makes that very simple).
These are challenging times. As a congregation, you have been fabulously patient and faithful beyond anything anyone could expect in adapting to the way we have had to conduct worship—and faithful beyond what anyone could ask for in continuing to support your Cathedral’s ministry. I am deeply grateful.
Needless to say, we will be monitoring the overall health situation in Central Florida and in our congregation. We will communicate with you as quickly as we can if our plans have to change. Meanwhile, know that I pray that you stay safe and healthy, and that this unusual season finds you growing in your love for the Lord.
Blessings, in Christ,
Reggie Kidd, Dean
Midday Eucharist
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalms 5 & 6; Numbers 35:1-3, 9-15, 30-34; Romans 8:31-39; Matthew 23:13-26
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)
Matthew & conformity to the image of the Son (continued).
Each of the negative woes in Matthew 23 has its counterpart in the Beatitudes of Matthew 5. It’s as though in the Beatitudes, Jesus says, “Breathe in the breath of God,” and in Matthew 23, he says, “Breathe out the smoke of hell.”
For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. — Matthew 23:13. The whole earth is the inheritance of the meek, those who, in Abraham-like fashion, bless the nations by submitting to and taking God’s story to them (see Matthew 5:5). There are only woes for those who brazenly purport to represent God, but in reality stand only for themselves, and export their own egos and biases—they “go across the sea to make proselytes twice as fit for hell as you are!”
You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? — Matthew 23: 17. There will be deep, eternal satisfaction for those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:6). But there are only woes for those who slothfully equivocate and deliberately deceive when it comes to seeking holiness. Jesus directs their attention—and ours—to the ridiculously pathetic gestures of the offerings and the gold the Pharisees require for oaths. The greater, terrible reality is the One represented by the altar and the Temple on which the oaths are based.
For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. — Matthew 23:23. Mercy will come to those who give mercifully (in Jewish thinking “mercy” is about providing poor-relief—the word “mercy” can often be translated “alms” or “almsgiving”—Matthew 5:7). But there are only woes for those who scrupulously pay God their ten-percent as some sort of tax on religion, despite being consumed by avarice. They practice injustice, show lack of compassion for the poor, and demonstrate untrustworthiness in relationships.
You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup… — Matthew 23:26. There is a certain clarity of spiritual sight that comes from purity of heart (Matthew 5:8). But when the inner heart is corrupted by out-of-control desires—here, greediness or rapacity and general self-indulgence—there’s a haze that is cast over everything and everybody. The lens of self-interest keeps you from seeing others as precious image-bearers of God. People are but tools to be utilized only for what they can do for you.
More than conquerors. What then are we to say about these things? — Romans 8:31. At the end of Romans 7, Paul had stared full in the face at the wretchedness within himself and within all of us (“I know that nothing good dwells within me! … Wretched creature that I am, who is there to rescue me from this state of death?”—Romans 7:18, 24 REB. And who among us doesn’t feel at least some of the sting of the indictments of Matthew 23 that we have just considered?) However, because of his confidence in who Christ is and what Christ has done for him (and us), Paul cannot help but respond: “But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25). Chapter 8 has been the unfolding of the reason for that outbreak of thanks. Now, in this final paragraph, Paul’s thanks reach their highpoint.
Beginning at Romans 8:31, Paul invites us to list every challenge we face this morning—among which might be the hardship of living with a deadly and persistent pandemic, the distress of sensing the unraveling of our social fabric, the persecution of having considerations of faith banished from the public square, the famine or nakedness of deprivation of goods or separation from loved ones, the peril of lawless violence in the streets, or the sword of misused power by those entrusted to preserve and protect. So many worrisome things for all of us. And each of us with our own issues as well.
Paul wants us to take them all in—and then to weigh them against all that God has done and is doing to make us “more than conquerors” and to assure us that “nothing will be able to separate us” from his love. So, Paul would have us create a countervailing list:
God stands for us, and nothing can prevail against him—so nothing can prevail against us.
He gave his precious Son—won’t he provide everything else we might really need?
God has chosen and justified his children. At his right hand, his Son stands and pleads for us. Could anything possibly separate us from that ongoing, active, certain love?
There’s no guarantee that we will not walk through the valley of the shadow of death (which is the spirit of Paul’s quote of Psalm 43 in the middle of this paragraph). Even there—especially there—“we are more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37). And so Paul invites us to consider the challenge of death itself—we don’t have to die in despair or die filled with regret, uncertain of his love. He invites us to consider life—on the far side of any challenge we overcome in this life, we will surely face more; and perhaps we will face even more demanding challenges. Dying or living, we can face them, confident of his love.
Paul says we can reckon with powers from “beyond” (angels … rulers—and even if pre-Enlightenment people may have been preoccupied with the angelic and the demonic, that possibility doesn’t warrant post-Enlightenment people’s dismissal of that realm). Whatever those powers may be, they are powerless to part him from us.
We can deal with what’s going on now in the present, where there may be myriads of factors we cannot control. We can deal with what is to come, where there may be myriads of contingencies we could never even anticipate, much less control. There are no factors, no contingencies, no failures, no helplessness—there is nothing—that could cause him to turn his back on us.
Nothing above us in the height (I write this the day after watching one of our family’s July 4th traditions, the movie Independence Day, about an imagined attack on planet earth by aliens) will threaten God’s love for us. Nothing beneath us in the depth (hell’s accusing voice was silenced at the cross and resurrection) can part us from his love. The love of God in Christ Jesus for us will not be blocked by any obstacle, threat, or anything, anywhere.
Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
That’s what Paul wants you and me to know today.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Noonday Prayer
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalms 1, 2, & 3; Numbers 32:1-6, 16-27; Romans 8:26-30; Matthew 23:1-12
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2-6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)
This week’s readings in the Old Testament are transitional. The Israelites are on the cusp of their campaign to cross the River Jordan and begin the conquest of the Promised Land—a campaign that will take place after Moses’s death. In today’s reading, Moses secures the Reubenites’ and the Gadites’ promise to participate in the upcoming military campaign despite their decision to settle east of the Jordan. In subsequent readings this week:
Moses assigns towns for the Levites (who will have no inheritance of land, but will be disbursed among the tribes), as well as cities of refuge (Tuesday),
Moses reminds the Israelites of the structure of leadership under “judges” that he had established and which he expects them to continue in the Promised Land (Wednesday),
Moses transfers leadership from himself to Joshua (Thursday),
Moses offers his valedictory (Friday), and departs this life at age 120 (Saturday).
With so many transitions going on around us in our own day, it’s worth taking note of Moses’s end. As a consequence of disobedience, Moses eventually understood that he would not be allowed to enter the Promised Land. But he was allowed to view the goal toward which he had, as friend of God, been leading the people—a gifted he accepted with grace. Entrusting himself to the Lord of his redemption, he worked to make the transition for the next generation of leadership as smooth as possible.
Romans 8:26-30. Here are five of the richest verses Paul ever pens. Paul has just been contemplating how we are caught in the tension between an adoption that is “now” and “not yet.” We know that new life in Christ means sin and death no longer reign in us, but we also know full well the drag of the old life. We joyfully call God “Abba! Father!” But out of the feeling that we are not quite home, we also groan in concert with a creation that longs for release from corruption.
That tension would be incapacitating were it not for our champion, the Holy Spirit. In fact, says Paul, we would not even know how to pray were it not for the Holy Spirit. But by means of the Spirit, Christ himself dwells deep within us. The Holy Spirit explores those deep cavities of our hearts, and enables “sighs too deep for words”—rather like an escape valve that keeps us from exploding from the pent up anxiety and pain within.
Deeper than that is the fact the Holy Spirit has been poured out into our hearts enabling us to love God (Romans 5:5). And when we, by the enabling of God’s own Spirit, love God, we can have a confidence that no matter what comes our way—good or bad—our loving Heavenly Father uses it for our good. That is the point of Romans 8:28, and I rather like the force of the variant from the Vulgate that the Jerusalem Bible notes: “We know that for those who love God everything conspires for good….” Everything.conspires.for.good. Everything. Lord, give us grace to hold on to that truth!
And this short paragraph climaxes with a string of lovely statements about what God the Father has done to secure our relationship with him:
He foreknew us—that is, he has loved us (this is “know” in the biblical sense, as in “Adam knew Eve,” the result of which was a child) from the foundation of the world (see Gen 4:1; see Gen 18:19; Jer 1:5; Amos 3:2; Gal 4:9 [cf. Mt 7:23]; 1Co 8:3).
He predestined us—yes, that means he chose us before we chose him. In fact, if he hadn’t done so, we never would have made the good choice. But he did, so we did.
He called us—he gave us ears to hear. Elsewhere, Paul says we were dead in our trespasses and sins until God made us alive together with Christ (Ephesians 2:1-4). The capacity to say “Yes!” to God comes entirely from that inner call which God and God alone enables us to hear.
He justified us—he cleared us of every charge against us—every charge from the law, every charge from our enemy the devil, every charge from anyone who doesn’t like us, every charge from our own conscience.
He glorified us—so sure is our future destiny of resurrection, that Paul can (rhetorically) put it in the past tense: it’s a done deal.
There’s a lifetime of praise to be offered from the contemplation of these five verses alone!
One matter I failed to note just now is that God’s predestining love has a goal—and that goal is not that we become some sort of “frozen chosen,” but live and love as though profoundly loved (which we are)! The Father’s goal for us is that we become “conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Romans 8:29 NRSV edited).
Matthew & conformity to the image of the Son. The beauty of Matthew’s gospel is that Jesus lays out very clearly what conformity to his image looks like. He has put it more positively in the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7), and now with elegant symmetry, more negatively in the Final Discourses of Matthew 23-25. Just so, in the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:1-12, Jesus has sketched the life he has come to inculcate (rather like the blessings of Mt. Gerizim in Deuteronomy 27:12; 28:1-14); while in the Woes of Matthew 23, Jesus now outlines the life he has come to deliver us from (rather like the curses of Mt. Ebal in Deuteronomy 27:13-26; 28:15-68). Lord, have mercy.
All who exalt themselves will be humbled. — Matthew 23:12. While the blessedness of the Kingdom comes to those who are “poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3), the Kingdom is far from those who take pride in titles and practice their religiosity in order to be seen by others. Christ, have mercy.
They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others… — Matthew 23:4. While comfort will come to those who empathize with and mourn over the troubles of others (Matthew 5:4), there will be no joy for those who show no compassion for, no tenderness towards, their fellows who are burdened by life’s hardships or the weightiness of the law. Lord, have mercy.
I pray you live in the blessedness of the Kingdom—of the ongoing work of the Father to conform you, by the Spirit, into the image of his beloved Son.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+