Treasures of a Single Word

The plan for fishing today got rained out, so I made a cup of Bohemian chocolate coffee and sat down by the picture window to read. I’ve been giving some attention to First Corinthians lately, so I picked up my Bible from the coffee table and turned to page 1266. The problem with reading the Bible, for me, is that often I don’t get past a word or two. It’s not that I’ve gotten so old I fall asleep or so jaded I get bored. I get caught up in the possibilities of words.

Today, for instance, I actually got to verse eight of the first chapter. I have to confess I barely made it past verse four, where Paul thanks God for the Corinthian Christians not because of how wonderful or obedient or faithful or generous they were, or for anything about them at all. Paul thanks God for these Christians because God has given them his grace in Christ Jesus. Paul always starts and ends with God and sees in God the reason to give God thanks for anything of worth or value in the Christian experience. For Paul, the life of faith and all its benefits and manifestations in Christians is about God and who he is and what he does in Christ. That a human being gets to experience the outworking of God’s will is a testimony to God’s greatest, not their’s.

I could have spent a few more hours just giving thought to the preeminence of Jesus Christ in the life of a Christian and the will of God, but decided to press on. Then I got to verse eight. And I stopped. In fact, I stopped in the New International Version of 1 Corinthians 1:8 at the third word: “keep.” The entire verse reads, “He [God] will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God will keep you strong. God who gives us grace in Christ Jesus— the grace that saves us, the grace that reconciles us to himself, the grace that forgives our sins and justifies us before God, the grace that transforms our hearts and lives—the God who gives that grace “keeps” the ones he graced strong until the end.

He “keeps” us. What does that mean, that he “keeps” us? It’s so easy to simply accept the fact and move on, but I had to stop and think, to toss around the question in my heart for a while. What does it mean from God’s perspective that he “keeps” us?

First, God keeps us by an act of his choice. He chooses us. Whether you believe that God elects people to faith and makes his choice before they choose him or after they choose him is not the issue here. The issue is that God chooses to save you and me from our sins and the death sentence those sins impose upon the soul. He keeps us strong and blameless in preparation for Jesus’ return by choosing us. Jesus said, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” God chooses, and his “keeping” begins in his choosing.

But there has to be more than just his choosing. There is a sliver tone Chevy truck with the Z71 off road package sitting in the lot at Grand Marais Motors. It’s not the four door one. It’s the two door extended cab parked next to it, under the sign in the left hand corner of the lot as you face the front door of the dealership. That’s the truck I’ve chosen. The red one is nice, and newer, and has fewer miles. The four door four by four is more powerful and practically oozes testosterone. But, as we were driving by the other day, I said to my wife, “See that one. That’s the one I choose.”

She just rolled her eyes because she knows there’s no way we can afford to replace the truck we lost in an accident several years ago. She knows that my choice of that truck, or any truck, is meaningless because there is no transaction forthcoming that will make the truck mine.

God, when he chose us, extended his choice by an act of will. He paid the price to complete the transaction to make us his. God sent Jesus to die on the cross as the perfectly adequate sacrifice to pay the penalty for human sin. The death of Christ is infinitely as effective for forgiveness as sin is infinitely deadly and deserving punishment. God keeps us not only by choosing us, but by acting to make us his.

But that is not enough to describe how God keeps us. I’ve chosen my replacement truck. It is conceivable that someday God could provide a way for me to own the truck of my choosing. But choosing it and owning it without working to allow it to meet its full potential would be meaningless for me. I need to get in it and drive it and work it and maintain it in prime working condition.

God keeps us by choosing us. God keeps us by making us his own. God keeps us by filling us with his Spirit who empowers our potential to fully experience his joy and fulfill his will. God gets in us and maintains us by his Spirit present within us. He strengthens us by his might. He directs us by his will. He guides us by his wisdom. He enables us by his power. He transforms us by his mercy. He keeps us by his will.

God does all this and we are the happy recipients of his keeping. And the result of his keeping is a blameless life in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God chooses us, makes us his own, maintains us. He keeps us strong and blameless so that we can enjoy the eternal glory of Jesus Christ at his coming.

Now you know how I get hijacked by words. You know why I can spend a week reading 1 Corinthians and not have gotten past the third word of the eighth verse of the first chapter. May you discover the infinite depth of God’s word for you today!