Godly Old Men - Part 2
Your spiritual prime occurs at the same time as your physical prime.
True? Many Christians think it is. The next time you get an advertisement for a Christian conference in the mail make a quick survey of the people pictured and their average age. What do you think it will be? 40? 35? 30? Lower? 25? We’ve been taught to believe that physical virility is synomous with spiritual vitality.
And we have pews full of older men who think that the days of profound affections for Jesus Christ have passed. They believe they have already learned all the biblical doctrine they need. They are asleep, awaiting death, filling pews.
Is this biblical? Are God’s sovereign purposes displayed in the cross of Christ empowered by the Holy Spirit reserved only for the young. Joel 2:28-32 and Peter’s quotation of it in his Pentecost sermon (Acts 2:17-21) lead us to believe otherwise. Pay attention to Acts 2:17.
And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.
Peter is announcing the fulfillment of the New Covenant in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit has been poured out like a fire hydrant wrenched open. And who will be the objects of God’s culminating redemptive work? All types of people. Yes, all types of people, but Peter and Joel are more specific than that. Sons will know the blessing of the Holy Spirit. Daughters will know the blessing of the Holy Spirit. Young men will know the blessing of the Holy Spirit. And…old men will know the blessing of the Holy Spirit.
Drawing upon this promise and its fulfillment we must confess that old men are just as much the objects of Gods ongoing redemptive work as any other age group. Though our bodies grow old the Holy Spirit does not grow old within us. Though our outer man wastes away our inner man is renewed daily.
I have 29 years under my belt. I’m passed my physical prime. I’ve owned up to the fact that I will never dunk a basketball. However, I have great hope that I am only an infant in Christ. How little I have learned! How great is my sin! How little I’ve accomplished for the kingdom of Christ! Yet, if the Lord should tarry, I have a life of growth in spiritual maturity ahead of me as the Holy Spirit daily conforms me to the image of Jesus Christ.
Ignatius–late in life–said in his letter to the Ephesians,
I do not issue orders to you, as if I were some great person. For though I am bound for His name, I am not yet perfect in Jesus Christ. For now I begin to be a disciple. [1]
“For now I begin to be a disciple!” How could an aged saint and father of the early church say something like that? It is because he knew spiritual growth was always in front of him not behind him. He knew that physical virility had nothing to do with spiritual vitality.
He refused to believe one of the lies old men are tempted to believe.
Older Christian man, will you not rouse yourself from your spiritual slumber and pursue Christ with spiritual recklessness? What you think is spiritual death is only spiritual apathy. The remedy is not slumber but exercise in the means of grace. Run after Christ and know that you are–in your old age–an object of God’s ongoing redemptive work.
Younger Christian man, will you not prepare now for the marathon before you? It is no sprint that you have endeavored to begin. Do not aim only for productive 20’s and 30’s. Aim to be productive in your 50’s, 60’s, and 90’s. Prepare now for unabaited growth in Christ. Does your sin weigh you down? Take heart, you are young in the faith. Look to those elderly soldiers of Christ in your midst–full of the Spirit and truth. Place yourself in their discipleship. Train now to be a godly old man.
_________
[1] ANF, 1.50.
