Called to be faithful witnesses
Commentary
Object:
Isaiah 49:1-7
The Servant's Mission (NRSV)
The Old Testament selection describes what it is to be called to be a prophet. Scholars refer to this author as Second Isaiah, the middle section, which begins with chapter 40. It was written during the exile, for the purpose of holding the Jewish captives in a community of faith, whereas the first part of Isaiah was an indictment and warning that Jerusalem would fall to Babylon if the nation continued in the path they had chosen. Our author goes by the same name as the originator of the work now known simply as "Isaiah," which may mean that the original prophet founded a school of prophets, much as John the Baptist did in the New Testament. His students carried on the tradition of the first Isaiah.
This passage starts by saying that the writer was called by God when he was still in his mother's womb. To say this does not mean that he was aware of his calling even as an infant, but that he had a destiny, that he was sent rather than chosen to be a prophet. In the New Testament, John the Baptist also was born to be a prophet to the people of Judea when they were in captivity to the Romans, even while they still lived in their own land. He too was called from before his birth to be the forerunner of Jesus the Messiah (see Luke 1). These prophets are set aside, consecrated for the exclusive use of God, are ordained by God even in the womb, and are required to call the wandering sheep of God back to the fold, in spite of whatever danger they face doing so.
Isaiah goes on to tell us: "[God] said to me, 'You are my servant, Israel in whom I will be glorified.' " In other words, the prophet stands for Israel in the face of God, hearing God's complaints against the nation; and then s/he has to convey that message to the people of his captive nation. They have lost everything -- their homes, their neighbors, the temple, the right to practice their religion and social customs, even the right to dress in their own ways. They have, we might suspect, lost heart, asking each other: "Where was God while all this was happening? Has God no power? Had he been defeated by Marduk (the primary god of the pantheon the Babylonians worshiped)? If so, was Adonai (the Lord) still alive in Judea, or had he been killed in the battles of the gods, as so many Jerusalemites had been?"
No wonder then that Second Isaiah says, "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing." Any pastor, prophet or not, knows how difficult it is to preach hope to people who are in misery. But we can take heart! We are not alone in thinking sometimes that our work is unappreciated and that we have nothing to show for how hard we have labored. (Especially in the space between Christmas and Lent, when so many people are seriously depressed, including pastors.) Might we comfort ourselves with the hope that God is on our right hand (in the backup or, in today's parlance, "wing man" position), strengthening us, so that we can be sure that we will be repaid for our efforts by God?
Today people will ask "How can that person be so sure?" In my city, there is a man who has covered every inch of his battered old station wagon with Bible verses and exhortations. If anyone asks him why, he is delighted to tell the questioner that God speaks to him. He is doing the work God wants him to do, confronting people with the truth of the Bible so they can be saved. So how can we tell the true prophet, the one who really is hearing from and serving God, from the crackpots? (And how do we know whether or not the guy with the car covered in Bible verses is actually hearing from God and acting out what God tells him, as several of the Old Testament prophets did?)
One seminary professor, asked this question, said, "Well, you don't, at least not until his warnings come true or fail. The prophets who appear in the Bible are there precisely because their messages proved to be timeless, succeeding in the true task of the prophet -- to call us back to God when we have strayed -- over and over in multiple crises." This is great advice, but not terribly helpful in the moment the prophet confronts us! Listen, don't listen. How should we know what to do? So many people have trusted so-called prophets, only to die or lose every good thing they had.
There may be at least two ways to know the true from the false prophet.
The first, of course, is to avoid those "religious leaders" who try to cut us off from all friends, family, social contacts, and even our jobs to follow the prophet, who claims to have the only way to God's favor.
Another way the spiritual seeker can judge whether this is a true prophet is to notice how defensive we feel when someone is telling us what God wants. How many excuses do we offer for ignoring his or her message? How irritating is the message? The more disturbing the prophet, the more likely it is that we have heard from God in this person.
All that said, God does call us to leave our sins, and that may mean losing many of our friends, even the eventual loss of some family, but those who want the best for us will not leave us because we are trying to live a life more acceptable to God.
In the case of Second Isaiah, he has come with a message of life and love from and for God. He is to strengthen the people of God even in their exile. He is bringing balm to the wounded and hope to the depressed. He is assuring those who are afraid that God may be dead (sound familiar?) that God is alive and does know. God has not only become his strength, but he has given Isaiah a new, higher position than he could have thought (v. 6):
It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved [people] of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.
God is thus revealing himself as not only the tribal god of Israel, not just the god of his captive people, but as the universal God -- a claim not made by any of the gods of the Babylonians. So Isaiah now is sent to all humankind, to be a "light to the nations." This is the thought that John's gospel begins with as well: "What has come into being in [Jesus] was life, and the life was the light of all people" (NRSV). In Isaiah, the LORD finishes by saying: "Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the Lord, who is faithful, the holy one of Israel, who has chosen you."
This promise is reflected in the birth narrative of Jesus in Matthew. This is why he depicts wise men coming from the East to find the newborn king of Israel. And it may explain why many people refer to these men as "kings" rather than "magi." Jesus did not come only to the lost sheep of Israel (see Matthew 15:23-25), but for all of those who would come to the light throughout the world, to give us all the hope that Isaiah was given.
John 1:29-42
The Lamb of God
John's gospel stands apart from every other gospel. It is the last gospel to be published, and is of the finest Greek in the New Testament, indicating that it was written by an educated person. That eliminates the disciple John, a fisherman by trade and illiterate, and whose first language was surely Aramaic, with just enough koine Greek (street Greek or commoner Greek) to be able to buy and sell. John's presentation of the Christ is also outstanding from the rest of the New Testament. He lays a foundation of stories out of the life and teaching of Jesus with a theological explanation following.
Like Mark, John does not start with a birth narrative. Instead, he begins with the wonderful mystic poem about the word, the light of all people, and the prophet who came to announce his advent: "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."
We need to be clear about this title and role, because there is so much error in preaching and theology about what John has said. First, we need to understand that "the Lamb of God" has a very specific meaning to those who listened to John. This Lamb of God is not the average sacrificial lamb that one might buy at the temple to make up for serious sins. The term used here applies to the Passover Lamb, not the sin offering. The function of the Passover Lamb is to remind the people of God of their special relationship to God and one another. It must be without blemish of any kind and unlike the sacrificial lamb, "no bone of it may be broken" [compare this with John 19:31-37]. If a bone is broken during the slaughter and dressing of the Passover lamb, another lamb must be chosen and the process started all over. This is not true of the sacrificial lambs for the cleansing from sin.
Furthermore, unlike the sacrifices for sins that are offered in the Court of the Priests, viewed only by other Jewish men confessing their sins, Passover invites women, strangers, servants, and even Gentile friends of the family. The meal and accompanying ceremony at home is participated in by all family members.
Furthermore, John says the Lamb of God "takes away the sin of the world!" Singular. This is a more massive undertaking than simply forgiving the sins (plural) of a man or a family, as one does with the sacrificial lambs. This singular form carries enormous weight, because it is addressing the state of the world or the tone of a life rather than an enumeration of sinful acts. Sin in this sense is the alienation of the world from God. It asks us, as John Wesley put it, "Is your heart right with God?"
We need to consider, John is saying, the following questions: How does our society go up against the way of God? What social compacts, national policies, international laws do we live with that are not conducive to living in peace and security, regardless of social status? How can Christians live in a consumer society without being sucked into a consumer lifestyle? And how many church members cannot understand that there is a conflict between those things and what the gospel is about?
It is for these reasons that Christ came into the world. The world of his day was perhaps in every way worse than the world in which we are now living. The Romans owned the world, and they thought the people of Palestine were seriously lacking in every way. They treated people with a casual brutality such as we see on television. Rules, such as "no soldier may compel a Jew to carry his pack for more than one mile" were needed in order to avoid serious abuse of the Jewish men moving through the country on business.
So what does it mean that Jesus came to take away the sin (singular) of the world? It means that Jesus came to change the world. An emphasis on Jesus saving individuals from paying the consequences of their own actions is to deny the depth of the meaning of what John says. Jesus comes in the power of the Holy Spirit, which is to say he comes with the power to change things as they are to the things that might be if God's will were to be done.
And what does it mean to be baptized with the Holy Spirit? Different denominations have different understandings of this "second blessing," but we can be certain that, at the least, it means that Jesus has the power of God at his disposal, and that he has the ability to pass on that power to others.
John's gospel goes on to tell us what happens when John the Baptist points out Jesus to others. John is standing with two of his own disciples when he sees Jesus walk by and points him out to them again as the Lamb of God. He doesn't need to say anything more. His disciples walk away immediately and follow Jesus.
Jesus does not ignore them. He turns to them and asks another probing question: "What are you looking for?" He means "Are you spiritual seekers? What is important to you at this point? What do you hope for from me?" They don't really answer the question at that moment. Perhaps they want privacy for their questions, because they ask "Where are you staying?" The result of their time with Jesus is that Andrew goes to get his brother Simon and announces that they have found the Anointed One (the Christ, in Greek). Simon is interested, and accompanies his brother to meet Jesus. Little did he know what he was in for. The moment Jesus looks at Simon, he says, "I know you. I'm going to call you Rock" (Cephas in Aramaic, Peter in Greek).
Not only does Jesus know Simon intimately, but he thus announces that he sees the potential in him at a single glance. Did Simon Peter have any premonition about what he was getting into? Do we?
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Salutation
It is to the second-generation followers of Jesus that Paul addresses himself in our epistle lesson. The city of Corinth was a city that had seen tremendous growth as Rome had more and more newly freed people, moving away from Rome as that city became more and more crowded. Corinth was an attractive place for immigrants wanting to start a new life. Corinth needed workers, as it sat on the portage across the Peloponnesian isthmus. It had a large population involved in the commercial trades and needed artisans in clay and bronze particularly. The city was often mocked as having plenty of money but no culture, because of the number of immigrants there, and the residents had a callous attitude toward the poor (New Interpreter's Study Bible, p. 2035).
In light of the situation and reputation of Corinth, it is instructive to read this introduction to the letter. Paul has known these people for about three years, so he understands how they think and the temptations they are prone to. He also knows that they are a very mixed group of people, having both the poor (who were numerous in Corinth) and a few rich men with houses capable of holding the church meetings. And the congregants are largely, if not entirely, Gentile.
He begins by reminding the hearers that they are "sanctified in Christ Jesus" -- in other words, they have been made holy -- set aside for the use of God. They were baptized in water, as Jesus was. This was seen as the first step into the fellowship of the faith. Then hands were laid on believers to transmit the Holy Spirit.
Throughout the Old Testament, the Spirit of God was seen as a special gift given to the prophets, who were enabled by this gift to speak on behalf of God, sometimes to be able to heal the sick, and to have the courage to lead the people -- even people in power -- into a more faithful walk with God. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is the power that allowed Mary to bear Jesus; her cousin Elizabeth to know that Mary was bearing a child; enabled John to know that Jesus was the one; and gave Jesus and his disciples the power to heal the crowds that came to them in need. That Spirit gave the apostles the courage to preach openly that Jesus was the Messiah. And the expectation of those apostles was that every Christian had the right to expect that same gift of the Spirit but also the responsibility to carry out the work God gave them. Later in his correspondence with Corinth, Paul will enumerate the various gifts given by the Spirit, and what kinds of work Spirit-baptized Christians might do.
Here at the beginning of this letter, he reminds them that they are "called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." They are not alone. Paul goes on to tell them that he prays for them constantly (v. 4), which almost always makes a person glad. But even more, he reminds them that they have already given Spirit-inspired testimony (witness) to Christ, so he knows that they "are not lacking in any spiritual gift." This is probably as much a prod as a compliment. Mentors are like that -- "you are doing so well, I hope you're practicing...." And finally, he reminds them that whatever comes, the Lord Jesus Christ "will sustain you to the end," because "God is faithful." We need have no fear that we will lose what the Holy Spirit has given birth to in us, since we have been called, not just individually but to be a part of "the fellowship of [God's] Son" -- a community of believers.
We need to be certain, when we are inviting people to know Jesus, that we are following the lead of Paul. We can too easily ask people to know Jesus and skip over the part where we emphasize the need of the Spirit as well. Jesus does not work alone, as any pastor knows, but those we talk to don't automatically make the connection of the Trinity with the need to know the Spirit and God the Creator/Father as well.
Years ago, I knew an alcoholic who was seriously struggling with his addiction. He had been counseled by a pastor who spoke only of the need to give his life to Christ, which the man gladly did, hoping to get well. But the pastor had not talked about the need of fellowship to stay clean and the necessity of relying on the Holy Spirit to help him stay strong. The result was not good; the alcoholic became discouraged, because without a caring fellowship he longed for his drinking days, when there was always someone to talk to or dance with, and a place to go where he was known. Sadly, he died at age 45 from the effects of the alcohol.
The need for all of this -- salvation, sanctification, and fellowship -- are necessary for every Christian, not just addicts. Without the strength and assurance that the Spirit gives, most of us would fail as this man did. But God promises us that we need never be alone, discouraged, or dejected, if we stay connected through the Holy Spirit.
The Servant's Mission (NRSV)
The Old Testament selection describes what it is to be called to be a prophet. Scholars refer to this author as Second Isaiah, the middle section, which begins with chapter 40. It was written during the exile, for the purpose of holding the Jewish captives in a community of faith, whereas the first part of Isaiah was an indictment and warning that Jerusalem would fall to Babylon if the nation continued in the path they had chosen. Our author goes by the same name as the originator of the work now known simply as "Isaiah," which may mean that the original prophet founded a school of prophets, much as John the Baptist did in the New Testament. His students carried on the tradition of the first Isaiah.
This passage starts by saying that the writer was called by God when he was still in his mother's womb. To say this does not mean that he was aware of his calling even as an infant, but that he had a destiny, that he was sent rather than chosen to be a prophet. In the New Testament, John the Baptist also was born to be a prophet to the people of Judea when they were in captivity to the Romans, even while they still lived in their own land. He too was called from before his birth to be the forerunner of Jesus the Messiah (see Luke 1). These prophets are set aside, consecrated for the exclusive use of God, are ordained by God even in the womb, and are required to call the wandering sheep of God back to the fold, in spite of whatever danger they face doing so.
Isaiah goes on to tell us: "[God] said to me, 'You are my servant, Israel in whom I will be glorified.' " In other words, the prophet stands for Israel in the face of God, hearing God's complaints against the nation; and then s/he has to convey that message to the people of his captive nation. They have lost everything -- their homes, their neighbors, the temple, the right to practice their religion and social customs, even the right to dress in their own ways. They have, we might suspect, lost heart, asking each other: "Where was God while all this was happening? Has God no power? Had he been defeated by Marduk (the primary god of the pantheon the Babylonians worshiped)? If so, was Adonai (the Lord) still alive in Judea, or had he been killed in the battles of the gods, as so many Jerusalemites had been?"
No wonder then that Second Isaiah says, "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing." Any pastor, prophet or not, knows how difficult it is to preach hope to people who are in misery. But we can take heart! We are not alone in thinking sometimes that our work is unappreciated and that we have nothing to show for how hard we have labored. (Especially in the space between Christmas and Lent, when so many people are seriously depressed, including pastors.) Might we comfort ourselves with the hope that God is on our right hand (in the backup or, in today's parlance, "wing man" position), strengthening us, so that we can be sure that we will be repaid for our efforts by God?
Today people will ask "How can that person be so sure?" In my city, there is a man who has covered every inch of his battered old station wagon with Bible verses and exhortations. If anyone asks him why, he is delighted to tell the questioner that God speaks to him. He is doing the work God wants him to do, confronting people with the truth of the Bible so they can be saved. So how can we tell the true prophet, the one who really is hearing from and serving God, from the crackpots? (And how do we know whether or not the guy with the car covered in Bible verses is actually hearing from God and acting out what God tells him, as several of the Old Testament prophets did?)
One seminary professor, asked this question, said, "Well, you don't, at least not until his warnings come true or fail. The prophets who appear in the Bible are there precisely because their messages proved to be timeless, succeeding in the true task of the prophet -- to call us back to God when we have strayed -- over and over in multiple crises." This is great advice, but not terribly helpful in the moment the prophet confronts us! Listen, don't listen. How should we know what to do? So many people have trusted so-called prophets, only to die or lose every good thing they had.
There may be at least two ways to know the true from the false prophet.
The first, of course, is to avoid those "religious leaders" who try to cut us off from all friends, family, social contacts, and even our jobs to follow the prophet, who claims to have the only way to God's favor.
Another way the spiritual seeker can judge whether this is a true prophet is to notice how defensive we feel when someone is telling us what God wants. How many excuses do we offer for ignoring his or her message? How irritating is the message? The more disturbing the prophet, the more likely it is that we have heard from God in this person.
All that said, God does call us to leave our sins, and that may mean losing many of our friends, even the eventual loss of some family, but those who want the best for us will not leave us because we are trying to live a life more acceptable to God.
In the case of Second Isaiah, he has come with a message of life and love from and for God. He is to strengthen the people of God even in their exile. He is bringing balm to the wounded and hope to the depressed. He is assuring those who are afraid that God may be dead (sound familiar?) that God is alive and does know. God has not only become his strength, but he has given Isaiah a new, higher position than he could have thought (v. 6):
It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved [people] of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.
God is thus revealing himself as not only the tribal god of Israel, not just the god of his captive people, but as the universal God -- a claim not made by any of the gods of the Babylonians. So Isaiah now is sent to all humankind, to be a "light to the nations." This is the thought that John's gospel begins with as well: "What has come into being in [Jesus] was life, and the life was the light of all people" (NRSV). In Isaiah, the LORD finishes by saying: "Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the Lord, who is faithful, the holy one of Israel, who has chosen you."
This promise is reflected in the birth narrative of Jesus in Matthew. This is why he depicts wise men coming from the East to find the newborn king of Israel. And it may explain why many people refer to these men as "kings" rather than "magi." Jesus did not come only to the lost sheep of Israel (see Matthew 15:23-25), but for all of those who would come to the light throughout the world, to give us all the hope that Isaiah was given.
John 1:29-42
The Lamb of God
John's gospel stands apart from every other gospel. It is the last gospel to be published, and is of the finest Greek in the New Testament, indicating that it was written by an educated person. That eliminates the disciple John, a fisherman by trade and illiterate, and whose first language was surely Aramaic, with just enough koine Greek (street Greek or commoner Greek) to be able to buy and sell. John's presentation of the Christ is also outstanding from the rest of the New Testament. He lays a foundation of stories out of the life and teaching of Jesus with a theological explanation following.
Like Mark, John does not start with a birth narrative. Instead, he begins with the wonderful mystic poem about the word, the light of all people, and the prophet who came to announce his advent: "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."
We need to be clear about this title and role, because there is so much error in preaching and theology about what John has said. First, we need to understand that "the Lamb of God" has a very specific meaning to those who listened to John. This Lamb of God is not the average sacrificial lamb that one might buy at the temple to make up for serious sins. The term used here applies to the Passover Lamb, not the sin offering. The function of the Passover Lamb is to remind the people of God of their special relationship to God and one another. It must be without blemish of any kind and unlike the sacrificial lamb, "no bone of it may be broken" [compare this with John 19:31-37]. If a bone is broken during the slaughter and dressing of the Passover lamb, another lamb must be chosen and the process started all over. This is not true of the sacrificial lambs for the cleansing from sin.
Furthermore, unlike the sacrifices for sins that are offered in the Court of the Priests, viewed only by other Jewish men confessing their sins, Passover invites women, strangers, servants, and even Gentile friends of the family. The meal and accompanying ceremony at home is participated in by all family members.
Furthermore, John says the Lamb of God "takes away the sin of the world!" Singular. This is a more massive undertaking than simply forgiving the sins (plural) of a man or a family, as one does with the sacrificial lambs. This singular form carries enormous weight, because it is addressing the state of the world or the tone of a life rather than an enumeration of sinful acts. Sin in this sense is the alienation of the world from God. It asks us, as John Wesley put it, "Is your heart right with God?"
We need to consider, John is saying, the following questions: How does our society go up against the way of God? What social compacts, national policies, international laws do we live with that are not conducive to living in peace and security, regardless of social status? How can Christians live in a consumer society without being sucked into a consumer lifestyle? And how many church members cannot understand that there is a conflict between those things and what the gospel is about?
It is for these reasons that Christ came into the world. The world of his day was perhaps in every way worse than the world in which we are now living. The Romans owned the world, and they thought the people of Palestine were seriously lacking in every way. They treated people with a casual brutality such as we see on television. Rules, such as "no soldier may compel a Jew to carry his pack for more than one mile" were needed in order to avoid serious abuse of the Jewish men moving through the country on business.
So what does it mean that Jesus came to take away the sin (singular) of the world? It means that Jesus came to change the world. An emphasis on Jesus saving individuals from paying the consequences of their own actions is to deny the depth of the meaning of what John says. Jesus comes in the power of the Holy Spirit, which is to say he comes with the power to change things as they are to the things that might be if God's will were to be done.
And what does it mean to be baptized with the Holy Spirit? Different denominations have different understandings of this "second blessing," but we can be certain that, at the least, it means that Jesus has the power of God at his disposal, and that he has the ability to pass on that power to others.
John's gospel goes on to tell us what happens when John the Baptist points out Jesus to others. John is standing with two of his own disciples when he sees Jesus walk by and points him out to them again as the Lamb of God. He doesn't need to say anything more. His disciples walk away immediately and follow Jesus.
Jesus does not ignore them. He turns to them and asks another probing question: "What are you looking for?" He means "Are you spiritual seekers? What is important to you at this point? What do you hope for from me?" They don't really answer the question at that moment. Perhaps they want privacy for their questions, because they ask "Where are you staying?" The result of their time with Jesus is that Andrew goes to get his brother Simon and announces that they have found the Anointed One (the Christ, in Greek). Simon is interested, and accompanies his brother to meet Jesus. Little did he know what he was in for. The moment Jesus looks at Simon, he says, "I know you. I'm going to call you Rock" (Cephas in Aramaic, Peter in Greek).
Not only does Jesus know Simon intimately, but he thus announces that he sees the potential in him at a single glance. Did Simon Peter have any premonition about what he was getting into? Do we?
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Salutation
It is to the second-generation followers of Jesus that Paul addresses himself in our epistle lesson. The city of Corinth was a city that had seen tremendous growth as Rome had more and more newly freed people, moving away from Rome as that city became more and more crowded. Corinth was an attractive place for immigrants wanting to start a new life. Corinth needed workers, as it sat on the portage across the Peloponnesian isthmus. It had a large population involved in the commercial trades and needed artisans in clay and bronze particularly. The city was often mocked as having plenty of money but no culture, because of the number of immigrants there, and the residents had a callous attitude toward the poor (New Interpreter's Study Bible, p. 2035).
In light of the situation and reputation of Corinth, it is instructive to read this introduction to the letter. Paul has known these people for about three years, so he understands how they think and the temptations they are prone to. He also knows that they are a very mixed group of people, having both the poor (who were numerous in Corinth) and a few rich men with houses capable of holding the church meetings. And the congregants are largely, if not entirely, Gentile.
He begins by reminding the hearers that they are "sanctified in Christ Jesus" -- in other words, they have been made holy -- set aside for the use of God. They were baptized in water, as Jesus was. This was seen as the first step into the fellowship of the faith. Then hands were laid on believers to transmit the Holy Spirit.
Throughout the Old Testament, the Spirit of God was seen as a special gift given to the prophets, who were enabled by this gift to speak on behalf of God, sometimes to be able to heal the sick, and to have the courage to lead the people -- even people in power -- into a more faithful walk with God. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is the power that allowed Mary to bear Jesus; her cousin Elizabeth to know that Mary was bearing a child; enabled John to know that Jesus was the one; and gave Jesus and his disciples the power to heal the crowds that came to them in need. That Spirit gave the apostles the courage to preach openly that Jesus was the Messiah. And the expectation of those apostles was that every Christian had the right to expect that same gift of the Spirit but also the responsibility to carry out the work God gave them. Later in his correspondence with Corinth, Paul will enumerate the various gifts given by the Spirit, and what kinds of work Spirit-baptized Christians might do.
Here at the beginning of this letter, he reminds them that they are "called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." They are not alone. Paul goes on to tell them that he prays for them constantly (v. 4), which almost always makes a person glad. But even more, he reminds them that they have already given Spirit-inspired testimony (witness) to Christ, so he knows that they "are not lacking in any spiritual gift." This is probably as much a prod as a compliment. Mentors are like that -- "you are doing so well, I hope you're practicing...." And finally, he reminds them that whatever comes, the Lord Jesus Christ "will sustain you to the end," because "God is faithful." We need have no fear that we will lose what the Holy Spirit has given birth to in us, since we have been called, not just individually but to be a part of "the fellowship of [God's] Son" -- a community of believers.
We need to be certain, when we are inviting people to know Jesus, that we are following the lead of Paul. We can too easily ask people to know Jesus and skip over the part where we emphasize the need of the Spirit as well. Jesus does not work alone, as any pastor knows, but those we talk to don't automatically make the connection of the Trinity with the need to know the Spirit and God the Creator/Father as well.
Years ago, I knew an alcoholic who was seriously struggling with his addiction. He had been counseled by a pastor who spoke only of the need to give his life to Christ, which the man gladly did, hoping to get well. But the pastor had not talked about the need of fellowship to stay clean and the necessity of relying on the Holy Spirit to help him stay strong. The result was not good; the alcoholic became discouraged, because without a caring fellowship he longed for his drinking days, when there was always someone to talk to or dance with, and a place to go where he was known. Sadly, he died at age 45 from the effects of the alcohol.
The need for all of this -- salvation, sanctification, and fellowship -- are necessary for every Christian, not just addicts. Without the strength and assurance that the Spirit gives, most of us would fail as this man did. But God promises us that we need never be alone, discouraged, or dejected, if we stay connected through the Holy Spirit.
