Still Working On It

Romans 5

¹ Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. ³ Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵ And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

We keep looking at themes around discipleship.  Some might wonder when that ends.  Turns out, it continues into the foreseeable future, and beyond.  On the one part, there is always the need to be teaching others who come to faith and want to follow Jesus.  As Paul tells Timothy in his second Letter: ² And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Timothy 2.2) The constant cycle of helping others to learn to follow Jesus.  Fits with the cycle of what we heard in Matthew 28, at the Great Commission as Jesus ascended.

In another way we find that we never get everything together ourselves and we need to keep learning and growing in faith to the day we die.  Paul writes in Ephesians 4 about the need for people to lead us in faith: ¹¹ So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, ¹² to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ¹³ until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.  (Ephesians 4.11-13)

Or as one of the missionaries no longer with us, Case Persenaire, reminded us all, when he was in his 90’s...  “We never stop learning.  I keep learning new things of God’s grace and our faith everyday.”  We should never lament that we have not arrived at some near perfect state in our faith.  We should only fear that might quit learning and growing in faith.   Paul told us about this full maturity, but we don't arrive at this in the immediate future.  It comes with the place we will arrive later.  The place Paul shows in a later letter to the church in Corinth: ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Corinthians 13.12)

We keep moving forward in faith together.  Taking steps with those leading us and with others coming behind us.  To the day when we see Jesus' face to face and even then we might have some more to learn.