13 Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, 14 knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. 15 For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. 16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 1 For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
Over the past few weeks I have thought a great deal about what our purpose as believers is in the world today. I introduced the more eastern concept of being your brother’s keeper, and highlighted that that is what we are to do. I discussed the western philosophical concept espoused by Plato and how that philosophy can be found in the writings of Paul. I mentioned how Paul would often take the philosophical ideas of one place and merge them with the more eastern or Hebraic mind.
I do not know if anyone followed my train of thought. But I think it is important to notice when Paul does this because it should give us some insight in how we should interact with our present world. Paul used the words and philosophies of the Gentile world to help him explain the deeper things of faith. Often we do not recognize it. He is using those concepts as illustrations and we often assume that he equates these concepts with spiritual authority. Which leads some to believe that there are two churches in the ancient world: the first being the Church of Jesus and the second being that of Paul, or even the Church of John and that of Paul because one follows the teaching found in john’s Gospel and epistles more closely and the other follows the writing of Paul.
We can see this in the pages of our scripture. Paul is often quoted when dealing with moral regulation and John is often quoted when expressing moral liberty. Paul often appears to be the moral legalist, and John the the gracious liberal. We get these ideas not because Paul is the moral legalist, but because of who Paul is writing too and taking those writings out of context.
Context is important. We learn to use context early in our education, especially when we encounter a word we do not fully understand. We use the words surrounding that unknown word to give us clues as to what that word might mean. But context goes beyond the surrounding words. Context also includes paragraphs, books, society, and cultures. When we look at the news context is important. When we look at history, context is important. When we look at philosophical thought, context is important. When we read scripture this broader understanding of context is just as important.
These words. These inspired words were not dropped into the minds of humanity and written down on paper without thought. God instead through the inspiration of the Spirit used the knowledge of an individual within their own context to convey a message. We can look at the words and say that they are inspired, God breathed, and that they bear authority. But if we want a fuller understanding as to what God was whispering into the hearts of the authors we need to study context. We need to broaden our understanding as much as possible, learning how the people of those ancient cultures and days thought. We need to see how they viewed the world in their own context so we can understand what the Spirit of God is saying.
Taking scripture out of context can hinder faith. I would venture to say that the vast majority of the problems we face within the church is due to taking scripture out of context. I would venture to say that the vast majority of the challenges we face when people outside the church make claims that scripture contradicts itself is because scripture is taken out of context. I would venture to say that each of us are guilty, and that I myself am probably the worst.
We do this constantly because we want scripture to speak to us in the moment. We want it to help us as we make our way through the struggles of life. There is nothing wrong with that. When I read through the pages of scripture while facing a struggle and a verse seems to speak to my soul’s condition, it is inspiring and comforting. It helps me in that moment and it guides my next step through the journey of life. But when I say that my understanding in that moment is what the author meant when they wrote those words down, I have taken that passage out of context and may be hindering a broader understand as to what God is teaching us.
Paul is probably the greatest victim of contextual mishaps. Largely because his approach is so progressive. Yes, his approach is progressive. When he says that he becomes all things to all people, when he speaks to the Jews as a Jew or when he speaks to a Gentile as if he were a Gentile, that is just what he is, progressive. He is speaking to those people within that particular community, using their own language and understanding as a guide for his conversation. And Platonism or Stoicism were the closest philosophy to Hebraic understanding he found.
This does not mean that this line of thinking is the deeper meaning or message that Paul is speaking of. We need to remember that Paul is of the Hebrew mind. It is Western thought that speaks of law and commandments, where Hebrews speak of teachings. We from our western mindset look at the ten commandments and see them as the rules God established, this is a Hellenistic understanding. This is often how we approach scripture as a whole. We see rules, where God was instead calling us into a conversation.
Why do I again bring this all up? Because there is Platonic language within today’s passage. Corinth was a remarkable city. It sits on an isthmus or a relatively thin span of land between two bodies of water. To the south east of Corinth is Athens and to the north west is Delphi. These are two very important parts of Ancient Greece. Delphi was the home of a great oracle. Within this cult women would enter a chamber to breath the vapor. As they breathed this vapor, they would then enter into a trance and utter prophecies that many ancient rulers would then take as omens pointing to the future success or failure in their endeavors.
Athens is often regarded as the capital or center of the Hellenistic culture. Plato and Socrates lived in this city. Athens became the birthplace of philosophy and in turn the birthplace of western civilization. But Paul is not speaking to the people of Athens or Delphi, he is writing to Corinth.
Because of the importance of the cult at Delphi and Athens, many people would want to travel between the two. To go by land would mean traveling through mountains. Mountains in ancient times were impassable, so they found a different route through the seas. Ancient Greece was not like nations we know today but was instead a conglomeration of various city states. These cities would often go to war with each other. Athens was one of the primary city states another was Sparta. For someone to travel from Athens to obtain a prophecy from Delphi, you must travel a great distance through treacherous waters controlled by Sparta, they would travel around a third of Greece to reach a narrow waterway that opens into the Gulf of Corinth, about a mile and a half wide. Many made this journey, and they passed by this narrow stretch of land, the Isthmus of Corinth. Somewhere along the course of history people decided that it was safer to unload the ships, and carry the ship and the cargo across this narrow strip of land. So Corinth became this port city where sailors, religious practitioners, philosophers and tradesmen all met as they waited for their ships to be carried back to the water.
Corinth, because it was halfway between Sparta and Athens, and an important port opening toward the prophetic Oracle of Delphi, became a city great importance. It was a often seen as a neutral city and even became one of the sites of the Panhellenic games, what our modern Olympic Games were modeled after.
Paul speaks to the people of Corinth using the language of these multifaceted population. He mixes the east and west. The political and the common. The secular and sacred, and as he writes he gives us direction to how we can speak to our eclectic cultures today.
Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence.
This is continuing what we spoke about last week. We have a treasure in jars of clay. The treasure is the knowledge or the wisdom of Christ. And the jar of clay is our bodies. This light, this wisdom of God is within us. In the platonic view the spirit resides in the body, but the body is corrupt and can harm the spirit. When the body dies the spirit is released into the the spiritual realm. Many Christians would say this is the view that we have as well. But it is not a Hebraic view.
We believe, Paul says, we believe knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. This is the difference between the Hellenistic and Hebraic views. In the Platonic view the body is just a shell encasing the spirit, only the spirit maters. That is not the faith that Paul teaches. He teaches that we will rise, just as Jesus rose.
We will rise. Our spirits will not just go to heaven, but our bodies will be restored. And we will physically and spiritually be reunited with God. Once again becoming fully alive as God intended.
Paul is telling us, that we are more. What we do in this world matters. Our actions affect both our bodies and our spirits, as well as the lives of those around us.
What you do matters. What you say. How you act toward the person next to you is important. It is important not just because it can harm your spirit, but because it can distract us from what we were created to be.
I speak in this manner. I mention how the philosophies of western civilization are used within scripture because it should encourage us to think more holistically. Today we have many competing ideas. Some say one idea is more Christian than another, but the reality is that all are a mixture of religious and secular philosophies. These ideas have become so ingrained within us that it can become difficult to distinguish the origin. This leaves us wondering how we should proceed as the culture seems to be at war with what we believe. What should we stand firm to defend?
Paul speaks from a Platonic perspective because it has some common ground with the message the Messiah presented. We are more than body. But we are also more than spirit. Our bodies will eventually fail us. They will eventually return to the dust from which they were created, but something does remain. “Our inner self is being renewed day by day.” Paul tells us. “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
How are we reacting as the culture seems to press in on us? What is our response to various social constructs being overturned? This is what Paul is speaking to. We get caught up in arguing the theological implications of spirit and the body and how they seem to differ between Paul and John, but we fail to see that Paul is using common language to speak of a deeper reality. Both Plato and the Christian agree that the body will die and return to dust and the spirit will live on. But this is not the argument Paul is leading us to, that is merely place where philosophy and religion meet. How are we going to respond when the philosophies of the world go one way and the church goes another?
This is where we find ourselves today. We are in the final battles of a culture war that was started generations ago and is coming to an end before us. How do we respond? This light momentary affliction, which is what it really is, a light momentary affliction, is preparing us for something. How are we responding? Are we responding according to the teachings of Christ or are we responding as the world would respond? Are the things we are showing to the world what we truly believe?
“For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
This community, this city, state and nation will rise and fall. This is inevitable according to the cycles of history. But something will remain. Something that God created and God will restore. The land and it’s people. Those are the things that God is most concerned with and those are the things that God will restore on the day of judgment. Your business will rise and fall. Our government will rise and fall. Do not get me wrong I believe that we live in the greatest nation on earth but this nation is only great because the people within have found a way to adapt, we have a system of government that can and should adapt. It should adapt because it is not God breathed. It was formed by imperfect people living in a cultural context that is foreign to us today. But the only way that we will survive is if we look beyond this current situation and look to something beyond. The same power that raised Jesus from the grave is available to us. The same power that inspired the apostles to boldly go and teach through out an empire is still available to us. What we once knew might be coming to a close, but that does not mean it is the end. The previous generations have taught us something.
A man named Daniel Dietrich wrote a song a few years ago that I feel sums up my feelings. The Song is called Hymn for the 81%. it says:
I grew up in your churches, Sunday morning and evening service, knelt in tears at the foot of the rugged cross. You taught me every life is sacred, feed the hungry, clothe the naked. I learned from you the highest law is love.
And I believed you when you said that I should trust the words in red to guide my steps through a wicked world. I assumed you’d do the same so imagine my dismay when I watched you lead the sheep to the wolves.
You said to love the lost, so I’m loving you now. You said to speak the truth, I’m calling you out. Why don’t you live the words, that you put in my mouth, my love overcome and justice roll down.
Where is our focus?
For Paul, he used the things of this world to preach the gospel of hope. He used the imperfect philosophies of a broken world, to point to something greater. To point to the one that could overcome the brokenness and provide hope. But where is our focus?
Are we seeking the things seen or unseen? Are we seeking power or hope? Are we willing to suffer for the moment to show a confused nation that there is a greater hope beyond this fleeting moment? Very early in my ministry we had the WWJD fad going through the church. What Would Jesus Do? What would Jesus do in our community today? Where would his focus be if he was standing among us right here at this moment? This is what Paul is getting at with his philosophical discussion. The world’s philosophies point one way but the teaching of Jesus point another. One is seen the other unseen. One was build by human hands and the other by the eternal hands of heaven. One excludes the ones outside itself where the other focuses on bringing the outside in. Where is our focus? What would Jesus do?
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church May 10, 2026 Click here to Join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 3:13–22 (ESV) 13 Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? 14 But even if you should suffer for…
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church May 03, 2026 Click here to Join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 2:2–10 (ESV) 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have…
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 26, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Query 4 (Faith and Practice of EFC-MAYM pg 61) Do you provide for the suitable Christian education and recreation of your children and those under your care, and…
5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.
Last week I was a bit heavy on the philosophy. I also put a great deal of weight on the idea that we are our brother’s keeper. I am guessing that those ideas are probably not something we have heard a great deal. I will admit that it is not a common teaching in the Western churches because that is not our culture. Those ideas are common in the eastern oriented churches. My introduction to those ideas came to me through the classic Russian novel Brothers Karamozov by Fyodor Dostoevesky. In that novel the youngest son, Alexei, who is a novice monk within the Orthodox church meets with the saintly mystic where for several pages the novelist writes one of the greatest sermons I have ever read. I will not bore you with the whole thing but, this great mystic says in essence, people must forgive others by acknowledging their own sin and guilt before others, And no sin is isolated, making everyone responsible for their neighbor’s sin. If you have not read that book, give yourself about a year and read it. It is probably the best book I have ever read.
I bring this up again today because it is important. We are going through great trials in our society. We are often losing faithful focus, and getting distracted by media pundits. I am just as guilty. I myself must be careful when I consume news. I get caught up and will watch news all day long. And as I do this I notice that anger wells within me. I get irritable and am not very patient with people that may hold differing opinions. I have been hear for fourteen years. I notice something early in those years. We all watch way too much news in our culture. News has become entertainment, and when news is consumed as entertainment instead of the transfer of knowledge, something happens. We become polarized, we stop thinking about what we heard and just repeat what we have been told, and we become angry and fearful.
I am saying this because I saw this in myself. I grew up on a farm and spent hours sitting alone in a tractor listening to news radio. Then I worked as a lawn and landscape chemical applicator, again my entire day was spent by myself working alone listening to news radio. I began listening to the news because I was tired of listening to the same songs over and over again on the radio, and this was before podcasts were common. I noticed that I became extremely opinionated about everything. It was not until I started my masters degree that things began to change. I was challenged to look at different perspectives and I had to write papers where I would have to explain why people held that particular view and explain why I may or may not agree with them.
Today many might say that school made me “woke”. I admit it is true. I realized that there are different ways to approach an issue, and the approach may not be the same but the intended outcome, the reason these scholars were writing were often for the same goal. This actually began when I was in Ukraine, even before I went back to school. I met people that lived in a completely different culture. People that took a radically different approach in many ways, and when I talked to them their goals in life were the exact same goals that I myself held. They wanted to get a good job, raise a family, and have security in their life.
All of this came crashing in on me the first few years I was here. I noticed that we as a meeting were living in fear. We were often distracted and wondering which direction to go. Things would happen and we would react. I say we, but the reality is I. I was distracted. I was reacting. I was afraid. I was not putting my faith in the right place. We are not the same meeting we were a decade ago.
“For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.”
Where is our faith when we fear? Where is our focus?
I just want us to sit with those questions for a moment. I want us to really consider where we are placing our faith when we are fearing the future as we approach the unknown. Speaking for myself, when I am worried about the future, usually I am focused and placing my faith in myself.
Paul is telling the Corinthians that he is not focused on himself. That those that are living for Christ are not focused on themselves. They are not worried about themselves. Their entire focus is on Jesus Christ, and they are serving the people within the community for Jesus’ sake. Have you ever really considered what Paul is saying? He is saying, I am my brother’s keeper. He is saying that everything they do is to promote the gospel of Christ, and as they minister their focus is not on their own comfort or will, instead they are doing the ministry to promote what is best for the people within the community they serve.
I sat with this verse for a while this week. I mulled over it as I drove down to camp yesterday. I looked out over the prairies along I35 and I thought about things. Then John made one of the most profound statements I have heard. “It is so clean.” I asked John what he meant by that statement. And he said, “It just looks like it was how God intended things to look. And people haven’t made a mess.” The prairies right now are the greenest I have seen them in a long time. The ponds and streams are filled with water, the cattle on a thousand hills looked happy and healthy. And I sat there looking out over the landscape stretching out before us and I thought, “John is very observant.”
That is what Paul is getting at. That is what the mystic in the novel was getting at. We cannot make the world into what God intended to be if we are focused on the wrong things. We cannot expect the people outside these walls to follow Christ until we fully follow. We cannot expect change within our community unless we see our own contribution to the mess.
“For what we proclaim is not ourselves.” We are not the answer. We are part of the problem. I am afraid that if I do not take it for myself I will not get what I want. I am the problem.
“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of the darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Paul is taking us back to the very beginning. Back to the third verse of the first book of scripture. Before the world was brought into order, God’s Spirit hovered of the waters in the chaotic darkness, and he said let there be light.
I have mentioned many times how I love Genesis. I say this as a man who studied life sciences in the university. I say this as a man that fully embraces science and faith. Because when I read those words I see things a bit different than some, and Paul alludes to this. In Hebrew light is often used as a metaphor for knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom is transferred from one person through words. God said let there be light, and there was light. God spoke words, he transferred what was in his mind to this created place. And scripture tells us that the beginning of wisdom is the fear or respect of God. God spoke he and his wisdom illuminated Earth, and John the apostle tells us that in the beginning the word was with God and the word was God. Everything was made through him. And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And that word was the light, shining in the darkness to enlighten humanity. It is almost as if Paul and John are saying similar things.
He is not proclaiming himself, but Jesus, and as he does this he is a servant to the community for Jesus’ sake. And Jesus is the light, the wisdom or word of God revealed to us as he made first century Israel his dwelling place. What do we fear? And where is our focus?
Since Paul has taken us back to that first book of scripture, he continues to draw on that image. “But we have this treasure in jars of clay.” Often when I have heard this verse quoted the speaker takes a platonic approach. They speak of the spirit as being good and the body bad. I do not think Paul is speaking in this manner, although I do understand why they take that approach. We have this treasure, he says, what treasure? The light or wisdom of God shining in the darkness, that has shone into our hearts to give us knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The treasure we have is wisdom and knowledge. We have this treasure within us, in jars of clay.
A jar is a container. We put many things within a jar. When I lived at home on the farm, I often helped my mom and grandma in their gardens picking beans, digging beets, and plucking tomatoes. We would then wash and cut this produce and place them into jars, and then we placed the jars into the pressure cooker I cannot explain the whole process because I did not pay attention I was just hoping to get some bread and jelly. Somehow in the heating and cooling process the air was removed from within the jars and the produce within was preserved for many months. We place the things we want to keep within jars. The things that preserve life and make it worth living. Green beans, beets, homemade tomato sauce and soup, jellies and jams. I am making myself hungry. A jar is a container to store precious things for later use. It is a vessel used to transfer these precious goods from one person or place to another.
Paul says we have this treasure this precious resource in a jar of clay. I said he is taking us back to that first book of scripture. God said, “Let us make man in our image.” and he formed the adam, of dust from the ground. My wife has a degree in ceramic arts, and ceramic artists take the dust of the ground, add water, and make clay. They then take this malleable clay and they use it to form just about anything the mind can imagine. They can make bowls and plate to allow us to eat. They make cups and mugs so we can have our morning coffee. They can make sculptures that have little utility except to bring joy to the person that created and purchase the item. A ceramic artist participates in the very art that God initiated. They take the dust of the earth and they form it into something. They then let the clay dry. This dry clay hold the form the artisan intended but this dry clay is fragile, until fire is added. This baking process removes all the remaining moisture and the jar is like stone, and fragments of ancient pottery can be found centuries or even thousands of years later.
I hope you are beginning to see the larger picture. We are formed from the dust. We are dust and to dust we will return. But there is something precious within these vessels of dust that will go beyond. “We are afflicted in every way,” Paul says, “but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed…” We have struggles, trials. We have gone through the very fires of what some might describe as hell. Fire bakes clay and turns it into stone. Our struggles and trials harden us so that we can persist without breaking. We are jars of clay, formed to carry a precious treasure. We were formed to bear the image of God. We face the trials so that the light or wisdom of God can be carried within us, preserve within more heat and pressure so that we can share it with others at the proper time.
“We are struck down, but not destroyed,” Paul says, “always carrying in the body of death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”
We live in a world of unknowns. We live in a society where fear often reigns and we make decisions based on that fear. We face these struggles, these trials and our emotions often burn like a hot furnace. We fear but where is our focus?
I know many have watched the news this week. And for some of us we are angry. Others of us might be worried as we face an unknown future. Some of us might be jubilant. This is all distraction, every bit of it. It is distraction because our focus is not where it should be. We are focused on ourselves, our hope, our dreams, and the things that we want. This is not what we were created to be. We were created to bear the image of God in the world. We were created to be fruitful and multiply to fill the earth and transform it into a place where God would dwell with us. But we are distracted.
Why did Christ come? Did he come for a kingdom on earth? “Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked Jesus during his trial. And Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”
The words that Jesus uses are important. Of and from, and the order he uses them are significant. My kingdom is not of this world. In this sense the word of tells us of the substance or nature of Jesus’ kingdom. It is not of this world. Its composition is of something else. He goes on to say if it were of this world my servants would fight. The nature of God’s kingdom is not the same as the nature of the kingdoms of men. The kingdoms of men go to war seeking power and resources. We see it throughout the news. On the battlefields of Ukraine, Israel, Haiti, and pretty much every continent. We see in the courtrooms and in the ads on television. The kingdoms of men fight for power and resources, for influence and domination. But Jesus’ kingdom is not of that nature. It does not come from men. It is not of the people, by the people, for the people. It is not from the world. It is from a different source and substance. It is from the knowledge and wisdom of God.
The kingdoms of the world use fear to rule. They us the threat of death. Yet Jesus did not fear. He did not run from the threat of death, because his focus was on some more precious than the things this world can offer. His kingdom is hope.
My grandma did not have me pick the beans and snap them into bite size pieces out of fear. She had me do this because she had hope that in three months we would eat those beans when the weather turned cold. We prepared not out of fear but hope, and we ate those precious beans out of the jar as we sang praises of thanksgiving around a table. Hope and fear. One focuses on self preservation and the other focuses on the sharing of God’s bountiful blessings. One focuses on the potential loss and the other focuses on future existence. One focuses on death and the other on life.
Jesus came to give hope. His kingdom is from hope. His life is pregnant with hope. And he told Pilate that the kingdoms of this world do not take his life but he gives it. He gave his life, he suffered through the injustices of this world so that he could bind and bury then within the depths of this earth. He face the trials, affliction, crushing blows, perplexing denials, persecution and the hammer struck piercing nails. He faced this all so that a treasure could be preserved in his own jar of clay. Hope.
Death is at work in us. Fear and anger rage within our bodies. Clouds of unknowing descend around us, and hamper our sight as we traverse the pathways of life. Death is at work. Wars rage. Verdicts are passed. Decrees are issued. Death is at work. The rulers of this world all face the same end. Eventually power will be lost to another. It will either be taken from them through the violence they perpetuate and given to another. Or they will breath their last as disease overtakes them. Scripture tells us in Hebrews 9:27 that it is appointed for man to die once , and after that comes judgment. Death in some form will take the wealthiest and the most powerful, and they like the poorest and least influential will return to the dust. “Death is at work in us, but life is in you.”
“And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” Death is at work in us. We are part of the problem. We are our brothers’ keepers. We are in need of forgiveness and restoration, but this only comes when we recognize that death is at work in us, and repent or change directions. Stop focusing on the fear and despair, and looking to the light God is shining out of the chaotic darkness. Death is at work in us, but as bearers of a precious treasure in jars of clay, life is in you.
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By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 19, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 1:17–23 (ESV) 17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time…
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 12, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 1:3–9 (ESV) 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born…
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 05, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili John 20:1–18 (ESV) 1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the…