My Dear Shepherds,
I’ve written before about a quirky article I read years ago describing a kind of pep rally for Chicago sewer workers where their new boss tried to boost morale. The headline said, “City tries to pump up its crews down under.” It was a rather apt picture of pastoral work each Sunday.
Our people generally have to navigate this dark world in ways that we as pastors do not. Some offices are filthier than sewers. Some schools are darker than subterranean tunnels. Our calling is to help God’s saints wear the white linen of their priesthood despite the sludge all around us.
Some churches and ministries identify themselves with the robust name, Overcomers. Good for them. I don’t suppose someone driving by their building and seeing their sign can imagine just all that name implies, thinking only of addictions maybe, or dark pasts. A passerby would never guess what the Bible extravagantly promises all believers in Christ:
This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. (1 John 5:4b-5)
According to D. A. Carson, John always speaks of “the world” not in terms of its bigness but its badness. 1 John speaks of the lusts of the world (flesh, eyes, pride of life), the world’s hatred for us and our Lord, and its incessant antichrist lies. That is the world we and our flock have overcome through our faith in Christ!
Our calling as pastors is to fortify the overcomers. We arm them with grace and truth. We assure them that “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” We counsel them to abstain from sinful desires, which war against their souls and to live unimpeachably good lives among the pagans. We pray for them when they fall into sin or when their faith falters.
Now back up to verses 3-4a:
In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world.
It might come as a surprise to some of God’s people that “his commands are not burdensome” because, delivered by the wrong hands, God’s commands are as heavy as stone tablets. Some pastors, like Pharisees before them, “tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders” so that they lose both heart and faith. Other pastors, ministerial lightweights, seem to know nothing of God’s command, “Be holy, because I am holy.”
Pastors are a strange breed of moralists. We do call people to obey God’s laws, to be sure. Jesus himself laid it on heavy when he said, “If you love me, keep my commands.” And the command he emphasized more than any other was, “Love one another.” Keeping that one command alone would be harder by far than all the legalistic minutia of the ancient rabbis were it not for the wondrous work of Jesus Christ! We preach a holy moralism that is possible; in fact, it’s not even burdensome. The little finger of our faith in Jesus is enough to defeat all the lusts, lies, and hatred of the world.
John can say, “Everyone born of God overcomes the world,” because through new birth we escape the dark gravitational pull of the world. Neither we nor our people bear the weight of the world on our shoulders any longer. So, dear shepherds, whatever the name appears on your church sign, perhaps you could add a shingle below it reading, “Home of the Overcomers.”
Be ye glad!
Lee Eclov
