by Pastor Brian Phillips
Originally delivered as an exhortation during worship at Holy Trinity
In his book of essays called What’s Wrong with the World, G.K. Chesterton wrote that “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” In other words, people largely reject Christianity, not because it falls short of philosophical or logical analysis, but because it is hard and people don’t want to do what it requires of them.
The epistle reading and the Gospel readings for today share similar ideas. In Romans 12, the Apostle Paul calls us to “present our bodies as living sacrifices” to God, to lay ourselves down and die, to put our own will aside, be transformed in our minds so that we may discern and do the “will of God.” As Christians, we are to be living dead things – alive to God, dead to self, obedient to God’s will, dead to our own will. To fallen man, none of that makes sense.
In the Gospel reading, from Matthew 16, Jesus plainly tells the disciples that He was going to go to Jerusalem “and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (v. 21). Peter rebuked Jesus, saying, “’Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.’ But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.’”
The disciples couldn’t comprehend it because they were thinking like men. And in the rest of the Gospel reading, Jesus goes on to give even more examples of the vast difference between the thoughts and ways of man and the thoughts and ways of God. Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (vv. 24-25).
Christ calls us to a different way of living, a different way of thinking, a different set of priorities. As we confess our sins today, may the Holy Spirit show us those areas in which we have been thinking like mere men instead of new men.