To Make Disciples Is to Transform How We View the Future

If you saw something in your future, would it change your present?

I was chatting with some Christians when the topic of future events came up. These future events were unfulfilled prophecies in the Bible, also referred to as eschatology, or events of the last days.

The comment was made that they were not interested in unfulfilled prophecies. They did not see them as relevant to their lives.

I can understand how disinterest or irrelevance results from arguments about end times to satisfy curiosity or prove a point, but ignoring or dismissing them is not the way forward.

What if God has a purpose in these disclosures of the future, designed to impact your present life?

God has a reason

God does not disclose the future without a reason.

A. Berkeley Mickelsen writes:

Any disclosure of the future was given to influence present action.[1]

This is confirmed by another scholar, J. Robertson McQuilkin:

A great deal of predictive prophecy of Scripture is yet unfulfilled. In the time before a prophecy comes to pass, it is designed to affect present thought and conduct, not to satisfy curiosity concerning the future.[2]

Here is the example I used in the discussion.

We read 1 John 3:1-3 together.

The end of verse 2 discloses something of the future: “… we know that when [Jesus] appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

Every person in Christ will immediately and ultimately be conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ when he appears at the moment of his return.

“Yeah, I get it. So what?”

In the very next verse, John tells us how this should influence our present thoughts and actions (3:3):

Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.

The disclosure of our complete transformation at Christ’s future return is given to motivate us to an urgent present ethic of purity.

God has great reasons for disclosing the future to us.

Another cluster of ‘spirit’ words

In this series, we are identifying clusters of “S/spirit” or pneum* words in the Corinthian letters.

Our goal is to discern how we can cooperate with the Spirit in his work of transforming us into the likeness of Jesus (2 Corinthians 3:18).

A cluster of pneum* words occurs in 1 Corinthians 15, a chapter about the resurrection of the human body. Here is the text of 15:44-46:

[the body] is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual.

Here are three basic observations:

1. “Spiritual” is not contrasted with physical; it is contrasted with natural.

2. As Gordon Fee points out, in the Bible,

… spirituality is defined altogether in terms of the Spirit of God (or Christ). One is spiritual to the degree that one lives in and walks by the Spirit; in Scripture the word has no other meaning, and no other measure.[3]

3. Our text indicates that the believer’s resurrected body will be like the resurrected body of Jesus (15:20-23). This is confirmed in Philippians 3:20-21:

Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

1 Corinthians 15 assures followers of Jesus that they will be resurrected in a “spiritual” body that is “like [Jesus’] glorious body.” Death is not the end; it is the promise of a new beginning.

So what?

God is disclosing something about the future of those “in Christ.” 

How is this disclosure of the future designed to affect present thought and action?

Here is how Paul concludes (15:58):

Therefore, my dear brothers [and sisters], stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Disclosure about your future resurrection body is meant to motivate you to:

• “Stand firm”—to be firmly or solidly in place—in your present way of life, and
• “Always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord,” now.

For my friends who see no relevance in the Bible’s unfulfilled prophecies, I encourage you to listen carefully to these disclosures of the future. In their contexts, discover how each unfulfilled prophecy is intended to influence how you live now. Then align your thinking, planning, and living with God’s future.

Aligning your future with God’s future is one way in which you cooperate with the Spirit in his work of transforming you into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

If you want to dig deeper into the value of unfulfilled prophecy, here is the link for the short series “Reclaiming Eschatology.”

May these insights equip, encourage, and transform how you view the future.

BACK TO “To Make Disciples is to Transform How We Serve”

Notes:
[1] A. Berkeley Mickelsen, Better Bible Study (Glendale, CA: Regal,1977), 84.
[2] J. Robertson McQuilkin, Understanding and Applying the Bible (Chicago, IL: Moody, 1983), 216.
[3] Gordon D. Fee, Listening to the Spirit in the Text (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 5.

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