Raise Your Standard: Week One

Bored With Church

Anyone like me growing up? Church was boring!

Reason: I didn’t really have a clear vision of why we were doing what we were doing.

Sing songs, recite creeds, hear long passages of Scripture, etc...

Then Sunday School, etc...

So, in my 20’s I started thinking maybe it was a style issue.

That’s OLD, and irrelevant to people today.

But then I got bored with that, too.

Over the course of my life, there has been a lot of boredom with church, and even the faith of the church.

We have all inherited different visions for the life of faith...

Moralistic and therapeutic.

Getting saved

Ecstatic spiritual experiences

Over the next several weeks I want to explore a Biblical vision that offers more.

Far from boring, it always moves us toward deeper connection with God, and people.

It gives us the option to live FULLY in the world.

Let’s start with a passage in John 17

One

John 17:22–23 ESV

The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

The vision of Jesus is that we would become one with God, and with one another,

ONE with God!

ONE with one another!

This narrative begins in Genesis...

Genesis 1:26–27 ESV

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Made in God’s image.

Think about just how profound it is for each one of us to be made in the image of God.

It means, that your very life bears the mark of God.

It means that every single person you encounter, bears the mark of God.

It’s easy to forget the breadth and depth of such reality.

Image of God

The implecations of being made in the image of God are profound.

In John 10, Jesus really makes some folks angry by telling them the fullness of what this means...

John 10:32–34 ESV

Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’?

An INTERESTING approach Jesus takes here.

Accused of making himself God.

Instead of recanting, Jesus doubles down.

“Is it not written in your Law, “I said, you are gods?”

E’imi Theos - any one of many different supernatural beings regarded as having authority or control over some aspect of the universe or human activity—‘god.

Did God not give humans dominion in Genesis? He did.

This view is validated by the earliest Christians who were writing in the first 500 years of the church.

Irenaeus of Lyons(130-200 AD) - The Word of God [Jesus] became man, that man might become god. - "Against Heresies"

Clement of Alexandria (150-215)

Justin Martyr (100-165)

Athanasius of Alexandria - "...for as the Lord, putting on the body, became man, so we men are deified by the Word as being taken to Him through His flesh."

Maybe by this point you’re thinking, but we FIXED that! Nobody actually believes that anymore.

More Modern Examples: C.S. Lewis, Jakob Spener, John Wesley, the Eastern Orthodox Church

It never fully went away, but it has certainly been minimized.

What This Does Not Mean

Does not mean that you are equal to the one, true God

Does not mean that you can even exist without the grace of the one, true God

Does not mean that you can replace God

Does not mean you get swallowed up in God

It Does Mean...

God’s divinity in you is your identity.

Jesus showed us how to live as humans in the way that God Himself would live.

We are not the substance of the one, true God.

We are the image of God in humanity.

We are therefore FULLY God-human when we fully love God and our neighbor

John 13:35 ESV

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Jesus fully embodied the unity of love by creating community, dying for that community, the church, and dying for the individuals within the community…YOU!

Through his life, death, resurrection, and example, he shows you what it means to be FULLY human!

Conclusion

Our Standard: Become through grace what Jesus is by nature.

If you can begin to imagine it, this week explore the question...

If you can embrace this image of being made back into the fully human god you were designed to be...

How would that change your walk with God and neighbor?

Endlessly exciting

C.S. Lewis - Morality is indispensable: but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up. We are to be remade. . . . we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy.

Through the grace of the Holy Spirit, live as the god that God created you to be.