This is my least favorite time of year. I dread Tax Day with a passion, mostly because we are pathetic in our record keeping. So every year, I have to recreate the previous year’s financial activity so I can file my taxes. It’s painful, and causes no small amount of stress in our marriage. But… tetelestai … it is finished… paid in full (actually, I’m getting a refund :). But reflecting on these things, I offer the following.
Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
Matthew 22:19-21
I play computer games on-line (a LOT). One of the things I find appealing is the social aspect of working together as a team to accomplish a goal. When a group “clicks”, it’s very satisfying. And… I like to blow things up.
But there are the other people on-line. The folks who need to hear themselves talk to validate their self-worth. Mostly, I ignore them, but on occasion I feed the trolls and engage in… interesting… conversations.
One particular player I’m thinking of is a piece of work. He tries to validate himself by bragging about his sexual conquests, making lame, degrading jokes at other players’ expense, and similar middle-school fare. The only thing I can think about him is that he is playing the wrong game, by the wrong rules.
In the time of Jesus, the Jews were looking anxiously for a Messiah. Chafing under Roman rule, they longed for the glory days (at least the stories they had been told) of David and his kingdom, and Solomon, when Israel was a nation to be reckoned with. They were ready for the kingdom to be restored.
But Jesus didn’t quite fit their expectations, In fact, he threatened the status quo, and the leaders feared for their power. So they tried to set traps for him, to trick him into saying something that Rome would find offensive, so they could eliminate him and keep things the way that they were.
It was in this context that the experts in the law sought to trap Jesus by asking him if it was right to pay taxes to Caesar. Of course, someone who was trying to restore the kingdom of David would oppose the oppression of Rome. And someone who submitted to Rome would be rejected by the people. They had to be impressed by their cleverness.
But Jesus’ response, besides defeating their clever plans, exposed a whole other truth that they were not prepared to accept. They were playing the wrong game, by the wrong rules.
The kingdom of God is not of this world. Surely, God is sovereign, and his rule extends into this world. But the kingdom of Heaven that Jesus was proclaiming was not an earthly kingdom, and it is not measured by material things. People who chase after those things have missed the boat.
The kingdom of God is any place where God is honored, served, and worshiped as king and as lord. This earth, this world system, the power and authority structures, the wealth and all the things valued by men are all going to pass away. And those who chase after them are playing the wrong game. By the wrong rules.
Let Caesar have his due. It’s all going to burn anyway. But whoever lays up for himself treasures in heaven will not be disappointed.
Revelation 17 – 21 is where I've been camping with BSF lately and in another study, Solomon's lament and musings in Ecclesiastes. Vanity of vanities. Later, Jesus of Nazareth comes but like you said, after three years of turning the region upside down in his public ministry, he is not quite the Messiah they were hoping for and expecting. My group I lead has been chewing on Light, and Reflection, and Sanctification, and well, yeah. I read eclecticly. Historic Catholicism. Old Baptist sermons by W.W. Melton. Holiness Penticostal folks. In Sifted but Saved W.W. Melton does a whole sermon on the only got wet but nothing changed crowd or as my out there nurse IN my group prefers, scorched but IN. Luke 22 when Jesus predicts Peter's betrayal is a Scripture I had skimmed or missed and which your great grandfather focused on: (KJV) Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not and WHEN THOU ART CONVERTED, STRENGTHEN THY BRETHERN. (My emphasis) Later in that chapter, much later, Simon Peter does deny Christ three times before the cock crows. He weeps bitterly. Plenty of people are saved but never converted. Some sit on the back pew forever. Some never leave what they were saved from nor move toward what they were saved for…becoming more like Jesus day by day. Reflecting Him in a lost and dark world. Sifted but Saved. Saved but never Converted.
I would be very cautious about building doctrine based on a single word in an English translation. "When you come back" is probably a more natural modern translation of Luke 22:32.
So can one be saved and not converted? I think not, because the act of salvation is one of "conversion" (or as John puts it, "translation" from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light). Those who do not bear fruit in keeping with repentance have cause to question their salvation.
John 6:66 (hmmm) From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.