WHILE IT IS TODAY

Remember the day

Fellowshipping with my comrades-in-discipleship this past President’s day weekend provided an important lesson to me. It was to remember the day. I remember the day I walked arm-in-arm with the likes of Joseph Ebuen, Nate Bowers, Rabi Singh, Jamie Fisher, Wally Wallenfelz, Andrew Stroud and others whose faces have aged far less than mine. I remember the day I peeked over at their studies and wondered if my answers were as enlightened. Or the days I shook the hands of the guys they discipled wondering if my friends had the same potential. I remember the day I said, “Goodbye,” and went my separate way knowing always there’d be the day we’d reunite and the same questions would be asked.

“Watch out brothers, so that there won’t be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart that departs from the living God. But encourage each other daily, while it is still called today, so that none of you is hardened by sin’s deception. For we have become companions of the Messiah if we hold firmly until the end the reality that we had at the start” (Hebrews 3.12-14). That day I met my friends again was the day I was encouraged to NOT depart from our living God. It’s easy to think you are alone in a world out to “get you,” and to think that quitting is far easier than living. But knowing that I would see my old friends again and that I would give them an account of what I’ve studied and of those I’ve helped kept me going until the day I saw them peek at my study and shake my new friends’ hands.

Today is the day you prepare for tomorrow; yesterday is just history.

Hardened by Sin’s Deception
“Watch out brothers, so that there won’t be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart that departs from the living God. But encourage each other daily, while it is still called today, so that none of you is hardened by sin’s deception. For we have become companions of the Messiah if we hold firmly until the end the reality that we had at the start” (Hebrews 3.12-14). Notice that we do not become hardened by sin itself, but rather by the deception it brings along with it. We are prideful creatures who will often think that our way is better than theirs or that their way is better than mine. The sin is not in the thought, but in the hardening that accompanies such thoughts. Thinking that those who don’t follow Jesus my way are sinners is as deceiving as believing that everyone who names Christ as Lord is His disciple. How do we abstain from such hardening?

At one point in Jesus’ ministry, He tells His disciples, “Whoever is not against you is for you,” but later says, “Anyone who is not with Me is against Me, and anyone who does not gather with me scatters” (Luke 9.50, 11.23). We must be careful not to let sin deceive us by ensuring that we are companions of the Messiah as we hold firmly to the end the reality we had at the beginning. You see, Jesus says that if they aren’t against Mike Warren, then they are for Mike Warren. However, if they are against Jesus because they do not gather to His Name but rather their own, then they are against Jesus. How are we to know if those who are for us are also for Jesus or that those who are against us aren’t doing so because we aren’t for our Lord?

“God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden” (Rom 9.18). If I am among those on whom God shows mercy, then following Jesus His way will be my way. If I am among the hardened, then my way will always lead back to me.

The Reality
“Watch out brothers, so that there won’t be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart that departs from the living God. But encourage each other daily, while it is still called today, so that none of you is hardened by sin’s deception. For we have become companions of the Messiah if we hold firmly until the end the reality that we had at the start” (Hebrews 3.12-14). How do you hold on to “reality?” Hupostasis (reality) is often translated as assurance, confidence, or nature and is used two other times in Hebrews. The first is to prove that Jesus is “the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature,” while the second provides the definition of faith in Jesus: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 1.3; 11.1). We hold firmly to hupostasis through the assurance that comes from a life companioned with our Messiah’s.

The “reality” is that my brother or sister represents Jesus Himself. As I love him or her so I love God, our Jesus (1John 4.20.21). But the sinner’s nature living in us all reminds me that our fellowship is flawed by a shared desire to be better than each other. Reality says to compare my Bible studies to my friends’, my friends to theirs, their flaws to mine, me to them. Surely, they are not following Jesus if their reality does not match my own. The reality is that my relationship with my brothers correlates to my relationship with God.

More than likely most of us came to know Jesus because someone made Him real to us. We knew Him because they knew Him. And they knew Jesus better as they made Him known to us.
We are companions in Christ when we hold to the reality we grasped since the beginning: we cannot follow God alone but God alone must be followed.