Chaplain’s
Corner
– October 12, 2011
Rev. Rich
Hines
Jesus
Our Life
This message is primarily for those who call on the name of
Jesus Christ as their own Lord and Savior from sin, and serve as a Chaplain or
a gospel minister in a jail, prison or a follow-up ministry such as a rescue
mission – in the
All
Scripture quotes are usually taken from the New King James Version (NKJV) of
the Bible, copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. When quoting a text, any
deviation from the NKJV text is placed within bracket signs [ ].
These usually occur as direct translations from the original languages, or as notes from the original setting to help
apply the text to today’s culture.
ALL
CAPITAL LETTERS are sometimes used to emphasize words in a text, or to make a
comment about a biblical text, or emphasize a statement.
Greetings
Christian Chaplains and volunteers in jail, prison and rescue mission gospel
ministry. As we move into the last
quarter of 2011, I want you to think about the fact that Jesus is our very
LIFE. You need to teach and explain this
to inmates and anybody God puts in your path that is seeking the truth.
Without Him no
one really has true life, they just exist in a godless experience. In the New Testament there are
three separate words that have been translated into our English word,
LIFE. Two of them are NEVER used in
connection with God’s nature. The first
word, “Bios,” speaks only of physical life and movement. It only refers to physical existence. Humans and animals have this kind of
life.
The second
word, “Psuche,” sometimes translated as “soul” refers
to a consciousness of existence and the experience of existing. Like bios, this word is applied only to
animals and humans.
But the third
and highest word for life, “Zoe,” is something God did not create. It is a part of His eternal nature. We could call it eternal spiritual life. In this month’s message text I will give the
English form of the original Greek words, in brackets [ ], in each Scripture passage mentioned. In every case they are forms of this word for
life, ”Zoe.”
Jesus came to
provide this life to all who would believe.
Without this life people are headed to a godless eternity and
experiencing a forever and ever eternal death.
This is a forever and ever conscious suffering in judgment for their
sins – without and apart from God, unto the age of the ages.
I want to
remind you that one of the reasons you have been given your gospel ministry
from God, is to warn against eternal death and bring the message of true
eternal life in Christ Jesus alone. To
true converted believers, Colossians 3:4 opens with these words:
“When Christ who is OUR LIFE [our - ‘zoe’] appears …”
Those few
words, in context, say a whole lot! The
near context - in the rest of the verse connected to the word “appears” is
talking about His glorious future coming.
BUT, before that coming Christ IS ALREADY the very life [zoe] in believers! Literally the words in Col. 3:4 say, “When Christ, the LIFE
OF YOU, is made known....”
For
Christians, Jesus IS THE VERY LIFE they now experience and have. One commentator on this verse said, Christ is
“the secret center of our lives.” Jesus
Himself, commenting on who HE WAS, in John 17:3 said:
“… this IS ETERNAL LIFE [zoe], that
they may know You, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ whom You
have sent.” So, said another way, He IS ETERNAL
LIFE.
The LIFE true
believers have in their union with Jesus is eternal life. Note what The Apostle John said in 1 John
5:11-12.
11And this is
the testimony: that God has given us eternal life [zoen],
and this life [zoe] is in
His Son.
12 He who has
the Son has life [zoen]; he who does not have the Son
of God does not have life [zoen] .
Jesus came
down from heaven to give this "zoe" kind of
life to whoever would truly believe Him.
In John 6, the Apostle records Jesus’ words. They are significant as they surround and
explain the very first of His great “I am” statements, “I am the bread of
life,” which we see in
John 6:35. Starting in
6:26 we read:
26 Jesus
answered them and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of
the loaves and were filled.
27 Do not
labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to
everlasting life [zoen], which the Son of Man will
give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”
28 Then they
said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”
29 Jesus
answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, THAT YOU BELIEVE in Him
whom He sent.”
30 Therefore
they said to Him, “What sign will You perform then,
that we may see it and believe You? What
work will You do?
31 Our fathers
ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
Here they were
suggesting IF Jesus WOULD MAKE IT RAIN BREAD DOWN OUT OF THE SKY, THEN THEY WOULD BELIEVE HIM. A few verses later in John 6:49, Jesus said
to these unbelieving Israelite questioners:
“Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead.”
32 Then Jesus
said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread
from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
33 For the
bread of God is He [note it – the
bread of God is a PERSON, ‘He’] who comes down from heaven and gives life [zoen] to the world.”
34 Then they
said to Him, “Lord, give us this bread always.”
35 And Jesus
said to them, “I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE" ...
The word
‘LIFE’ here again is a form of ‘zoe’ and note it - ‘the true bread from
heaven’ in v. 32, ‘the bread of God’, in v. 33 and ‘the bread of life’here in v. 35, are the SAME PERSON - Jesus.
35 ... He who
comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in
Me shall never thirst.
36 But I said
to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe.
Then, in John
6:50-51, Jesus explained the reality of the BREAD that He was - and what
accepting that Bread by faith would mean.
50 This is the
bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat
of it AND NOT DIE.
51 I am the
living [zon] bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, HE WILL LIVE [zesei] FOREVER; and the bread that I shall
give is My flesh, which I SHALL GIVE [note – the future tense here pointed to the cross] for
the life [zoes] of the world.”
Eating the
Bread who is Jesus, means BELIEVING in Him and in what His flesh, that is His
physical body, accomplished when it died on the cross.
But the truth
that Jesus gives believers life – even eternal life, is not just for when their
physical body dies. It is for their
whole present existence while still living in a physical body on earth.
The man that
was born as Saul of Tarsus grew up as a devoted religious observer of the
traditions of his forefathers. By God’s
grace he found out that for all his efforts he was spiritually DEAD. Sin made him dead to God. He wrote about this discovery in Romans
7:7-11, where he said:
7 … I would
not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known
covetousness unless the law had said, “You
shall not covet.
8 But sin,
taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil
desire. For apart from the law sin was dead.
9 I was alive [ezon] once without the law,
The meaning
here is that Saul of Tarsus THOUGHT he had this life of God at one time -
9
... BUT when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.
10 And the
commandment, which was to bring life [zoen],
I found to bring death.
Again he meant, the commandments which I thought would bring me this life
of God, turned out to show me I was spiritually DEAD!
11 For sin,
taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.
In this Romans
passage, the Apostle was writing about his experience as a religious man
without Christ. But, after he was
converted and made a believer - and was saved he wrote in Phil. 1:21a,
“For to me, TO
LIVE [zen] IS CHRIST,”
He wrote that
- because that was his whole experience as a Christian. Christians are those that are truly alive in
Christ. They have His life, and they
live this life in a world where the majority of the people around them, are
dead to God.
You need to
challenge your inmates and residents that claim to be Christians. If their conscious existence has received
eternal life – the spiritual life found only in Jesus Christ, THEY HAVE TO HAVE
SOMETHING VASTLY GREATER AND BETTER THAN ANYTHING THEY HAD BEFORE.
A person
cannot truly have Christ, have His life, and NOT BE CHANGED. They must have a whole NEW KIND of life that
centers on a real relationship with God.
In the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the Apostle John wrote in chapter
21:5-8,
5 Then He who
sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”
He who sat on
the throne is God, the Father, and the word for “NEW” here in verse 5, means
“new in quality.” It is something “new
like there never was before.” The
passage continues in verses 5b-6 and describes what God gives that is this kind
of “NEW.”
5 … And He
said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.”
6 And He said
to me, “It is done I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the
End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life [zoes] freely to him who thirsts.
God gives His
life, eternal life – and it is a new kind of life, that nothing else can
compare to. The end of verse 6 and the
beginning of verse 7 tell us WHO God gives this life [zoes] to.
6 I will give
… to HIM WHO THIRSTS.
7 HE WHO
OVERCOMES shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son.
He gives it to
those that thirst and those that overcome.
Those that thirst are those that desperately want it. And those that overcome are defined by the
Holy Spirit through the same Apostle as those that “BELIEVE” that Jesus is God,
the Son – see 1 John 5:4-5.
Earlier in
this message I said, “Without this life people are headed to a godless eternity
and experiencing a forever and ever eternal death. A forever and ever
conscious suffering in judgment for their sins – without and apart from God,
unto the age of the ages.”
The very next
verse in Rev. 21, bears that out. In contrast to thirsty, seeking, believers
verse 8 says:
8 But the
cowardly [those who fear men more than God], unbelieving, abominable,
murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers [drug users], idolaters, and all liars
shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is
the second death.”
That awful
death is what they missed on earth – the life of God - offered to them in
Christ Jesus alone, carried on forever and ever in the conscious experience of
the judgment their sins deserve. It is
eternal spiritual death. It is called
the SECOND death because their first loss of life was when they existed on
earth without God and His life, but this SECOND DEATH is to be without God’s
life - not temporarily, BUT FOREVER.
So tell people
if they do not have Jesus Christ they do not have the life God intended for
them and they are dead in their sin and separation from God. But also tell them they CAN REPENT and
BELIEVE THE GOSPEL, before they die physically, and so be saved from eternal
death - the second death. And best of
all, then they can experience the LIFE of Jesus - the life of God, even here
and now!
Rich Hines,
Minister to
Chaplains - Chaplain Help Ministry