Purified for a Purpose (Friday Devotional)

“Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.”

- 1 Peter 1:22

At my wife’s insistence, all the drinking water in our household runs through a Brita filter before it gets poured into a glass. Brita’s claim is that by doing this, we are removing 99% of the chlorine and heavy metals found in tap water, delivering a purified version of the water comes out of the faucet. I just know Lindsey thinks it tastes better.

What I didn’t know was how many things that purified water can then be used for, things for which tap water is unsuitable. For example, technical specifications for laboratory testing requires that all water be purified; the potential for chemical interference from tap water is deemed an unacceptable risk. Purified water is used in the production of pharmaceutical products, both as an ingredient and a solvent; impurities render this an impossibility for tap water. Even in aquariums (which would surely love the cheaper option of using water straight from the tap), freshwater tanks are filled with purified water to reduce the likelihood of infecting the aquatic life inside. This much seems clear: when you purify ‘dirty’ water, it is suddenly able to do a lot of things it was previously incapable of.

This is equally true of spiritual purification. Much of the focus on spiritual purity rests on what is wrong with you apart from Christ (sin) and how that impurity is removed (by the grace of God through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ). Unfortunately, that’s usually where the conversation stops—you are cleansed of all unrighteousness by the blood of Christ, and now you can go on your merry way, washed in the blood of the Lamb.

But 1 Peter 1:22 points out that, just like water can do new things once it is purified, so too can Christians. When faith in Christ and obedience to the truth have purified your soul, the apostle says, you are now able to practice “genuine mutual love”, to “love one another deeply from the heart.” In Christ, you are able to understand and practice love in a new way, to engage people with his compassion and grace and to live out the truth of the cross in your daily life.

The only question is whether you will take advantage of this new power your purification offers you. The water Lindsey and I put through our Brita filter doesn’t do anything tap water couldn’t, and for too many believers, that’s true of their lives, lives which God has purified by the blood of His Son but which are devoted to the same pursuits as when sin ruled them. May you not fall prey to this kind of spiritual apathy, but instead seize the new opportunity to reach out to others with the deep, overflowing love of Jesus.

The Whole Truth (Friday Devotional)

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

- Romans 6:3-5

Made like him like him we rise, alleluia!

Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, alleluia!

Every Easter, millions of Christians joyfully sing those words, the conclusion to the fourth verse of Charles Wesley’s classic hymn “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” Those words so ably summarize the promise and the hope of the resurrection—that because Christ is risen, so too will his followers rise at the last day, transformed into the image of Christ and united with God. On Easter, with songs like these, we rightly claim the resurrection as our story, not only as a past event for one man but as a sign of what will come for all who abide with him. “Ours the [empty] grave, ours the skies, alleluia!”

But in gleefully claiming the hope of the resurrection, there is a danger of clinging to the promised joy of the future and neglecting the promised responsibility of the present. Ours is the empty tomb and the glory of the heavens, the resurrection and the ascension—but ours is also the cross.

In Romans 6, Paul speaks of the newness of life that Christ brings to every believer, saying we are “united with him in a resurrection like his.” But first we must be “united with him in a death like his,”; we must be “buried with him by baptism into death.” Being imitators of Christ means identifying not only with his glory, but his humility; it means not only standing beside him in victory, but recognizing and emulating how that victory was won. When you walk with Christ, you are marching to victory, but before you claim your glittering crown you should expect to first bear a crown of thorns.

The call of every believer is to be an imitator of Christ, to claim his story as your own—but it does you a disservice to only claim the happy ending without the beauty of what came before. Without Good Friday there would be no Easter Sunday, and just so, without being united with Christ in death you cannot be united with him in resurrection. So may your life be equally marked by the joy of the empty tomb and the sacrifice of the cross, by the freedom of salvation and the weight of its cost—so that when people see you, they may see the fullness of Christ in you.

Joseph of Arimathea (Holy Week Devotional)

“Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph, who, though a member of the council, had not agreed to their plan and action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea, and he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid. It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning.”

- Luke 23:50-54

The crowd had dispersed. The Roman soldiers had been assigned to new posts. The religious leaders had returned to the temple. For the first time all morning, the air was still at Golgotha. Three bloodstained crosses lay flat on the hillside, stripped of the bodies they had once held aloft. Those discarded crosses testified to the same truth as the silence: the crucifixion was over. Jesus of Nazareth was dead.

For a follower of Jesus, Friday afternoon was surely a day of soul searching. Some had lost faith the moment they heard Jesus had been arrested. Others had been holding out hope that even from the cross there would be some miraculous escape, some angelic intervention, that at the last second Jesus would come down from the cross in glory and claim his kingdom. But by Friday afternoon, all hope was gone. Jesus was dead, and with him so were all their expectations of God’s kingdom coming to earth. Friday was a day for mourning—mourning not only the death of their Lord, but of their hope.

But for one man, Joseph of Arimathea, there was still work to do. Like many others, he had seen something in Jesus that inspired him, something that made him think the arrival of God’s kingdom was imminent. Despite his position on the council, he had not backed the religious leaders’ scheme to have Jesus killed, believing that far from being a blasphemer, Jesus might actually be the anointed one the prophets had foretold. Like the rest of Jesus’s followers, the crucifixion had dashed his hopes. But even in his disappointment and grief, he felt he owed something to Jesus. This man, Messiah or not, deserved more dignity than he had been given. Maybe he had not brought the kingdom like he’d promised, but he at least deserved a decent burial.

So, mustering up his courage, Joseph had the gall to approach Pilate, who’d had more than enough of the Jews and their demands for one day, to request the body of Jesus. Sabbath was about to begin, he explained, and the body would need to be tended to immediately. Could Pilate grant this last accommodation and give him custody of it? Pilate, whether from a place of graciousness or simple convenience, acquiesced.

Accompanied only by Nicodemus and the women who had witnessed the crucifixion, Joseph placed the body of Jesus in an unused rock tomb, wrapped it in linen cloth, and sealed the tomb shut. With this last act, perhaps he could finally move on from the Jesus who had so captivated him. With the stone rolled in front of the tomb door, with Friday turning to Saturday and the Sabbath now in full effect, perhaps he could use the day to reflect, for the last time, on all he had seen Jesus do and heard him say. With the body now out of sight and his memory of the crucifixion already beginning to fade in the cool light of a new morning, maybe now he could transition from disappointment back to expectantly waiting on God. After all, the crucifixion had been a piercing blow, but he still had faith—someday God’s kingdom would come.

“Who knows?” he thought. “It could even come tomorrow.”

The Two Crucified Criminals (Holy Week Devotional)

“One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.””

- Luke 23:39-43

Jesus’s companions in crucifixion, one on his left and another on his right, can be described in several different ways. Matthew and Mark call them “thieves,” an indicator of the crimes that earned them their crosses. Luke prefers the more general term “criminals,” perhaps unwilling to limit the extent of their sins. And John seems unconcerned with their back stories, thinking only of them as “two others” who shared an execution date with the Lord. I suggest another way of thinking about them, based upon their interactions with Jesus in Luke 23:39-43—they are our representatives; living, breathing examples of how all people respond to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

The first criminal speaks to Jesus with derision, mockery, and perhaps a hint of desperation: “If you were the Messiah, you’d save the three of us!” He looks at the broken body and the spilled blood of Jesus and sees an imposter finally paying the piper—Jesus may have had some pretty words and some fancy tricks up his sleeve, but when all is said and done, he bleeds the same as any common criminal.

His response to Jesus, simply put, is rejection. He cannot see past the evil of the world and the darkness of his own circumstances; he cannot imagine that there may be purpose to the pain or hope from the horror. His only answer to agony is anger, and so all he can think to do in his final moments is hurl insults at God’s anointed. A Christ whose response to the world’s evil is meek submission will never be his king.

The second criminal behaves differently, scolding the first man for his irreverence and pointing out that, while Jesus is suffering the same punishment as they are, he is not guilty of the same crimes. He looks at the body and blood of Jesus and sees something different than his fellow thief does—he sees a king willing to suffer for his people, a Lord who is answering injustice with grace.

His response, in other words, is acceptance. So, facing is own death, he turns to Jesus with an earnest plea: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He knows that, with all his sins, he does not deserve the attention of Christ, but he prays that there is enough grace in the bosom of God to afford him some small legacy in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus gives him more than what he asks for: the man—no longer a sinner, but now a saint—will not only be remembered in the kingdom of God, he will be part of it.

Easy as it is to give the two men on either side of Jesus ostracizing labels—thieves, criminals, sinners—they are not so different from you. Just like them, you stand justly condemned in your sinfulness, incapable of saving yourself. Just like them, you face a punishment that is as unendurable as it is deserved. And just like them, Jesus is with you in your suffering, an abiding Lord to the end. When he turns to you for a response, what will you say?

Mary (Holy Week Devotional)

“Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.”

- John 19:25b

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Mary had rapturously sung those words more than thirty years ago. The angel Gabriel had come to her with greetings and joyous news—she, an unwed virgin of humble means, would conceive and bear a son. Not just any son, in fact, but the Son of the Most High, the descendant of David whom the prophets had foretold, the one who would reign over the house of Israel and whose kingdom would know no end.

As that son had grown into a man, there had been days when Mary had known without a shadow of a doubt that the angel had spoken truth. There was the day when magi from the east had come to her family’s humble home guided only by a star, bearing gifts fit for a king. There was the time when she, her husband, and her son had traveled to Jerusalem, and she and Joseph had found the boy sitting among the teachers of the law, astonishing them with his insight. And of course, there had been that first miracle at Cana just a few years ago, when, with her gentle prodding, her son had turned water into wine. Whenever her child’s early life began to seem typical or mundane—the tantrums of infancy, the bruises and scrapes of boyhood, the awkwardness of adolescence—those astounding memories served as reminders of the angelic promise: one day her son would reign as king.

So how betrayed she must have felt as she stared up at Jesus—the Son of God, but also the son of Mary—dying a criminal’s death on a Roman cross. The sign over his head mockingly naming him “King of the Jews” served as a cruel reminder to her of the angel’s promise so many years ago. Having once felt assured that he would reign forever, she now watched through tears as the color drained from his face, life slowly slipping away from his body. This was not the way she had imagined God’s plan unfolding—in that moment, as her son gasped out his final breaths, it must have been hard to believe there even was a plan.

You are unlikely to ever encounter the same kind of stinging doubt Mary must have felt on that Friday morning at Golgotha—her circumstances are unique, her pain more so. But there will unquestionably be moments in your walk with the Lord when you become disenchanted with the unfolding of God’s will, when you dislike the direction He is taking you. You may wonder if you were foolish to have ever magnified a Lord who would allow you to suffer like this. In those moments of despair, remember the lesson only Easter could adequately teach Mary: God’s promises are not always fulfilled on our timetable, but not even death can make Him break them.

Simon of Cyrene (Holy Week Devotional)

“As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus.”

- Luke 23:26

I wonder how Simon thought the day was going to go when he entered Jerusalem early Friday morning. He was probably there to celebrate Passover—it was customary for local Jews to make a pilgrimage to the holy city at that time of year. But that early in the morning, only an hour or two after dawn, no feasts were yet underway—so maybe he was sightseeing, or looking for a place to buy breakfast, or seeing if he could do some business before the Sabbath began.

Whatever his plans were for that day, they never came to pass. Instead, his quiet morning in Jerusalem was interrupted by the sudden commotion of a local criminal’s march to the gallows. Wave after wave of Roman soldiers, Jewish mockers, and curious bystanders filled the street, each shouting something different but all pointing at the same wretched man in the center, a wooden cross laid across his back. Drawing closer, Simon got a good look at the man—bruised, bloody, and crowned with thorns, this man was the picture of Rome’s cruel justice.

Suddenly the man stumbled in the dirt right at Simon’s feet, his body crashing to the ground and his cross with it. Simon looked down at him in pity and bewilderment, only to feel a hard shove in his own back. Turning to face his assailant, his eyes met those of a stony Roman centurion. “You’re a Jew, aren’t you?” spat the soldier. “Help your king! Carry his cross.” And so, whether Simon was afraid of the soldiers, sympathetic to Jesus’s plight, or some mixture of the two, he picked up Jesus’s heavy cross and followed behind him as they made their way to Golgotha.

Simon’s morning may have started like any other, but without warning he found himself thrown into the battle between God Almighty and the forces of darkness and was called to play his part. He didn’t get to pick his moment or wait until he was ready—he was pushed into the fray at a time not of his choosing.

This is often the case in the Christian life. Given our druthers, we’d all like to take our sweet time growing in faith, but more often that maturity comes through the fits and starts of unexpected trials. It is not usually the Bible study that teaches you about perseverance, but the bad diagnosis; it is seldom the sermon that propels you to renewed faithfulness, but the exhaustion and depression of hitting rock bottom. As nice as it would be to learn about Jesus at your own pace, sometimes he just falls at your feet. In those moments, do you walk away or pick up the cross?

Pontius Pilate (Holy Week Devotional)

“So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified.”

- Mark 15:15

The annals of history tell us Pontius Pilate was a vindictive, cruel, and corrupt Roman prefect, less interested in governing the Jews of Judea than terrorizing them. His willingness to continually disregard and disrespect Jewish customs earned him enmity, and the fury with which he put down rebellions earned him fear.

Yet the gospels show us a different Pilate than the monster that historians like Josephus describe. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John describe a man motivated not by cruelty, but cowardice, a governor whose chief concern was avoiding a mob. The Pilate they describe didn’t condemn Jesus to death because of any personal malice against him or because he wanted to see an innocent man suffer. Rather, Pilate placed our Lord’s fate in the hands of the mob, offering to grant freedom to either Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews, or Jesus Barabbas, a notorious murderer. “The choice is yours,” he said. Pilate’s was not a sin of malevolence, but of passivity—he simply gave the people what they wanted.

That Friday morning, Pilate learned something that is still true today: people rarely want Jesus. Sure, they want parts of him—his healing miracles, his compassion, his power, his forgiveness. But when the full picture comes into view, they get uneasy. Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor? Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you? Take up your cross and follow? No thanks. Given the choice between a Barabbas—a bad choice, but a familiar one—and the unyielding holiness of Christ, it is only the leading of the Holy Spirit that allows us to even consider choosing Jesus.

So, with the crowd rejecting Jesus, Pilate had the unique opportunity to be part of something bigger than himself, bigger than Rome even, to stand for what was right and say, “I will not doom someone unworthy of condemnation.” But instead he took the easy, convenient route and gave the people what they wanted. Every day you face a similar test: to act on Jesus’s behalf or sit back and hope for the best, to bear witness to his saving power or leave that duty to the preacher, to serve the Lord or serve yourself. Pilate made his choice, and is remembered for it still today. In your life, will you give the people what they want or will you give God what He deserves?