On Christian Responsibility
On October 21, 1805, one of the vital well-known sea battles in fashionable warfare occurred: On the Battle of Trafalgar, the British troops soundly defeated the French and Spanish fleets.
Although most of the battle’s particulars are misplaced to historical past, two details are largely uncontested. First, the flagship carrying the British admiral was named the Victory. Second, the message despatched from Admiral Nelson aboard the Victory to the remaining twenty-six ships learn, “England expects that each man will do his responsibility.” Whereas serving their king and their nation was a privilege, the Victory’s message that day reminded the fleet that it was additionally an obligation.
In an analogous approach, the Bible teaches us that the privilege of understanding Jesus brings with it the calls for of responsibility. These calls for, listed in Hebrews 13:15–17, discover their foundation within the verses that precede them. Verses 13–14 describe how Christ achieved victory by means of struggling, granting us the privilege of entry into the heavenly metropolis. However with this reward come obligations, which the writer of Hebrews identifies and expounds within the following verses.
There are three features of Christian responsibility that the author clarifies for us on this passage: our non secular responsibility, with respect to God; our ethical responsibility, with respect to males; and our ecclesiastical responsibility, with respect to Christian management.
The privilege of understanding Jesus brings with it the calls for of responsibility.
Our Non secular Responsibility
The primary dimension of Christian responsibility is non secular: We’re to “provide up a sacrifice of reward to God” (Heb. 13:15). The Jews studying the letter had been conscious of the character of sacrifice. Certainly, the writer of Hebrews revisits the theme many times, exhibiting how the Previous Testomony order was fulfilled in Jesus’ personal sacrifice. By His once-for-all loss of life, Christ atoned for His folks’s sins (Heb. 10:12).
Whereas the sacrifice for sins featured prominently within the Previous Testomony, we all know there have been additionally varied dedicatory sacrifices, meant to specific thanksgiving to God. The worshipper would deliver an animal for sacrifice, saying, “God, I’m grateful to You, and I acknowledge the marvel of what You could have carried out in forgiving my sin.”
It’s this sacrifice of gratitude that’s in view in verse 15. Christians are certain by obligations—sturdy ones, tender ones—to current a thank providing to God. Importantly, although, our providing is neither an ox nor a sheep; it’s ourselves. Our reward to God, each by means of phrases and deeds, is “the fruit of lips that acknowledge his title.” The Christian’s responsibility to God, then, is to deliver his life as a day by day providing to God, expressing a grateful coronary heart for the marvel of what He has carried out.
The purpose of emphasis on this verse is within the opening phrases, “Via him…” The place Previous Testomony sacrifice was performed by means of a priest in service to God, New Testomony worship is obtainable by means of (and to) the Nice Excessive Priest, the Lord Jesus. In line with the fabric main as much as chapter 13, the writer stresses that our non secular responsibility is carried out solely by means of Jesus. To hunt entry to God the Father by every other route is to disclaim the distinctive, enough sacrifice of Christ.
Christians are certain by obligations—sturdy ones, tender ones—to current a thank providing to God.
And this sacrifice, provided by means of religion in Jesus, is a continuous providing. We don’t relegate worship to at least one hour every week, as if we had been solely imagined to method God particularly locations and at appointed instances. The image right here is of the Christian’s life interwoven with God.
Our Ethical Responsibility
Christianity carries obligations each to God, as verse 15 clarifies, after which to others. The subsequent verse defines our responsibility to man. As Matthew Henry quaintly places it, “Thanksgiving is sweet, however thanks-living is best.” In different phrases, our sacrifice of reward is expressed not solely in how we confess Christ but in addition in how we deal with others.
The Jewish folks understood this precept, understanding that the blessings they skilled had been to be handed on to the strangers of their midst. Deuteronomy 14 explains the requirement:
On the finish of each three years you shall deliver out all of the tithe of your produce in the identical 12 months and lay it up inside your cities. And the Levite, as a result of he has no portion or inheritance with you, and the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, who’re inside your cities, shall come and eat and be stuffed, that the LORD your God could bless you in all of the work of your arms that you just do. (Deut. 14:28–29)
The theme runs all all through Scripture: God offers that we would give to others. In his letter to Titus, for instance, Paul reminds Christians that they had been redeemed in order that they may do good (2:14; 3:8).
The applying for us is evident. The ceremonial choices that had been half and parcel of Judaism are not pleasing to God. The previous order has come to an finish; the sacrifices of oxen and sacrificial lambs have handed away. However the sacrifice of real care, sensible assist, and selfless love—these expressions of God’s grace in our lives—proceed immediately. These are the issues that please the Lord.
To have the approval of women and men is pleasant. However to have the “Properly carried out!” of God is the very best recompense we are able to ever know (Matt. 25:21, 23; Luke 19:17). Make no mistake: God is happy when He appears to be like on His folks, gathered in His title, and finds them exercising their non secular and ethical duties.
Our Ecclesiastical Responsibility
The third side of our responsibility comes within the seventeenth verse, involving our submission to and respect for Christian leaders:
Obey your leaders and undergo them, for they’re conserving watch over your souls, as those that should give an account. Allow them to do that with pleasure and never with groaning, for that will be of no benefit to you. (Heb. 13:17)
To have the “Properly carried out!” of God is the very best recompense we are able to ever know .
This verse describes the pastor, who fulfills the function of shepherd in his take care of the flock of God. The phrase for “conserving watch” can confer with a watchman on town partitions, his activity involving searching for enemies on the surface and potential hazards on the within.
Crucially, a pastor’s duty for his flock comes underneath God’s authority. He’s accountable not lastly to the folks however to God Himself for how he cares for the folks. It’s solely inside this framework that the command for Christians to “obey” their leaders emerges. Christians obey their leaders insofar as their leaders are like these in Hebrews 13:7, talking the Phrase of God to their folks.
A Command from Heaven’s Captain
On the Battle of Trafalgar, the flag raised on the Victory learn, “England expects that each man will do his responsibility.” That’s to say, responsibility entails a component of volition—of willingness. In a single fell swoop, Admiral Nelson reminded his fleet of each the privilege and the responsibility that was earlier than them that day.
Equally, the captain of our salvation appears to be like down from the ramparts of heaven and into the corporate of the redeemed, instructing us, “Heaven expects that each Christian will do his responsibility”—spiritually, to God; morally, to at least one one other; and ecclesiastically, to church leaders. Believers in all ages would do nicely to ask, on the premise of Scripture, “Are we doing our responsibility?”
This text was tailored from the sermon “A Abstract of Christian Responsibility” by Alistair Begg.
