Part 3 Why Christians Ask Why
Why Christians Ask Why Part 3
Tuesday June 11, 2024
The Unique Christian Frustration
This frustration can be understood from three different lenses.
1. Being and Status
2. Expectations and Behavior
3. Outcomes/destiny, both temporal and eternal.
2 Peter 2:8 (ESV) (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard);
BEING AND STATUS
Who we are in Christ.
As Christians, we are a different people. We look , think and sound different from everybody else. We are at the same time citizens, and immigrants.
Philippians 3:20 NLT
But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior.
Ephesians 2:19 NLT
So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God's holy people. You are members of God's family.
1 Peter 2:11 KJ21
Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul,
1 Peter 2:11 CEB
Dear friends, since you are immigrants and strangers in the world, I urge that you avoid worldly desires that wage war against your lives.
When we were born again, we naturalized into a country where dual citizenship is not legal. Our old country, the world, does not mind dual-citizenship, but the Kingdom of heaven does not permit it.
Christians in the world are like fish in water.
For fishes, water is their external environment. They live in it. They are completely surrounded by it. They have to transact their lives in water… hunt for their food while trying to avoid becoming food themselves; they mate and have their children in the water. To say the water affects them is a gross understatement. For the fish to deny the effect of the water on it would be foolish naïveté.
Christian’s live in the world. Like fish in water, we are completely surrounded by the world. All the activities of our lives, our choices, work, our eating and drinking, dating and. marriage, mating and raising of children, are affected by the world. The world is our external environment and that is alright.
We cannot avoid the world.
John 17:14-16 (ESV) 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
The world tries to conform us to itself, in two ways.
By enticement 1 John 2:15-17 NLT
Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. [16] For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. [17] And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.
By persecution.
1 Peter 2:11 (NLT) Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls.
Though in the world, we are called to avoid worldliness.
To be a Christian in the world is to be a foreigner.
Philippians 3:20 LSB
For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
We are diplomats representing our government in a foreign land. We are citizens of heaven but lawful residents in the world. We carry diplomatic passports, so we can move around freely but we do not belong.
Godliness is the opposite of worldliness.
1 John 2:15 (NLT) Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you.
James 4:4 NLT
You adulterers! Don't you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God.
Philippians 3:18-19 (NLT) 18 For I have told you often before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes, that there are many whose conduct shows they are really enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 They are headed for destruction. Their god is their appetite, they brag about shameful things, and they think only about this life here on earth.
The problem begins when we allow the world to become our inner condition. Sadly, the world never leaves us alone. It does everything in its power to get into us. It wants to conform us to itself.
There is a constant battle with being a Christian. Christians are called to become more and more like Christ every day of our lives, but the world is dedicated to getting us to become like it.
Sadly, we lose this battle often.
We lose because we fail to see what is at stake. (Effective witness for Christ and the eternal destiny; saved just as through the fire.)
1 Corinthians 3:12-15 NLT
Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials-gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. [13] But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person's work has any value. [14] If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. [15] But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.
We lose because we fail to see how the battle is being waged. (Mental and emotional)
2 Corinthians 10:3-5 NLT
We are human, but we don't wage war as humans do. [4] We use God's mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. [5] We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.
We know we have enemies, but we misidentify the enemy and waste our vital resources fighting the wrong battles. (Not humans, but our flesh and worldly influences.)
The world wants us to be conformed to itself.
Romans 12:2 (NLT) Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
