Faith Applied
Hebrews 13 is the close of this book. As such, it contains a long list of directions
that we should pursue in life. Show
brotherly love to one another. Continue
to be hospitable. Remember those who are
imprisoned for their faith. Take
marriage seriously in an honorable and undefiled manner. Be content with what you have so you can be
free from the love of money. After all,
the Lord provides for our needs. Do not
neglect doing good. Share what you have. Pray for others that they might have a clear
conscience and desire to do what is right.
That’s a great list. That
is a list that if we all followed we would be far more likely to be where we
need to be in life. We’d spend more time
in community and less time focused on ourselves. We’d spend more time following God and less
time running from God while we chase after the lusts of our own heart.
Submission
You may have been reading the list above and realized that I
skipped over a pretty significant portion of this chapter. I did that intentionally. You see, I don’t think that it is an accident
that the author of Hebrews mentions spiritual leadership twice among the things
that I spoke about earlier. The author
of Hebrews mentions them in verse 7 and then again in verse 17.
We are to remember our leaders.
We are to consider their life and imitate the expression of their
faith. We are to obey our leaders. We are to submit to them.
This is one that I’ve been paying special attention to
lately. How do I model submission in my
life? To whom do I submit? Sure, I submit to God; but the author of
Hebrews tells us that we need to submit to our spiritual leaders as well. So I’ve been wrestling with to whom I submit.
For if I don’t submit to anyone, why
would anyone in their right mind submit to my spiritual leadership?
But I think it runs deeper than that. I need someone watching over my life. I need someone paying attention to my
decisions and my pursuit of God. I NEED
that. So I need to submit. If I need that, then I should do it willingly.
I should also do it in such a manner that makes it joyful for my
spiritual leader. I need to learn to
submit in such a way that it makes it a joy to watch over my life. The life of my spiritual mentor is going to
be tough enough because of the persecution that they will receive from the
world. They don’t need me making their
life any more difficult because of stress between them and me.
But here’s the cool part. I
haven’t even gotten to the neatness of this passage. Do you notice what lies in between each of
these references to our spiritual leaders?
The verses in the middle are about Christ. Christ is at the core of our submission to
our spiritual leaders. Our submission to
our spiritual leaders brings us in to Christ.
We have a great altar to which we have been invited by Christ to
come. We have a great high priest who
suffered outside the gate and was rejected by the world. We have a Lord who was not welcomed into this
world but instead welcomes us into the world to come.
You see, the call to remember our spiritual leaders bookends an
incredible passage about Christ. The
author of Hebrews is saying that Christ should be at the core of our spiritual
leaders. Therefore, we can submit and
remember our leaders because they are submitting to Christ as we submit to
Christ. It is Christ that is the center
of everything we do.
Benediction
Having now seen our response as centered in Christ, we turn to the
benediction. I join with the author of
Hebrews on this point. May the God who through
Jesus Christ brought us forth out of death equip us to do His work. May we go about our life with the perspective
of God. May we go about our life seeking
to bring praise and glory to Him and His name.
May it be about Him and not us.
<><
No comments:
Post a Comment