Sabbatical ends

Today, as Jennifer and I pass through what has become my theological 'home' at IBTS in Prague, on our drive home to Edinburgh from Bulgaria, I cannot reflect on the wonders of contrast in life. The contrast where there is no contrast - how people have shown genuine love and friendship, and are as delightful in North West USA as they are in South East Europe; and the inherent contrast and contradiction of humanity - so innately lovely and yet so inherently sinful - Christians and pagans all!

And it causes me to see again that only God is good; only He is unchanging; only He is pure love; and the only place where He, as He fully is revealed can be found, is in the person and works of Jesus Christ of Narareth. He is the complete focus and example for human life. Participation in His life is life itself. And such cause for peace and pleasure and hope and faith and love ....

This, truly, is what I see with such vivid clarity refreshed and thankfulness renewed. Praise God!

Delightfully disagreeable

One of the sheer joys of Sabbatical study is having the time to read and seek to understand writings that one would never normally have time for nor choose to look at. Infuriating, frustrating …. and always instructive! It’s not just about enforcing self-abasement, although that has to be part of it. It’s good to be faced with a well argued conviction that one finds hard to own. There’s something good about the way our convictions are shaped by not only our response to the Word of God, but also by our character and circumstances. And its also good to read something that one, initially, wands to disagree with! and then perhaps to rethink and reevaluate. To rejoice in the diversity that is born out of the reality of Christ impacting upon people in so many different circumstances and situations.

Following in faith

And when the Israelites saw the great power the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant (Exodus 14.34).

This morning, I have been reflecting on this verse. Increasingly, I see how our ability to read and understand the Bible is both enhanced and curtailed by the parameters of the culture and context we find ourselves embedded in. Now, given that God’s Word has the power to speak into each and every situation, this should not unduly alarm us. At the same time, however, we need to be aware how our own presuppositions can limit our appreciation of the revelation that comes in and through the Word of God.

I am increasingly discomforted by popular, contemporary interpretation of faith in God in our western context. Too individualistic, too voluntaristic. Here, the reality of God evokes a response that is here rendered ‘and put their trust in him’. This interpretation is based on the LXX rendering, but the Hebrew reminds us of another, deeper sense: one which carries the connotation of a relationship characterised by an acknowledgement of God’s sovereign power and the need for our submission to and seeking of Him.

I think a deeper understanding of this submission is what is needed in our culture. It would transform, for one thing, the nature of prayer. Submission brings a culture of faith that looks for the fulfilment of God’s covenant desires, not our covetous ones.

Glimpse

Karl Barth –a great theologian, misunderstood and misrepresented by so many. But does dogmatic theology get better than this?

“If God required and makes possible that He should be served by the creature, this service means that the creature is taken up into the sphere of divine lordship. We have always to remember that God’s glory really consists in His self-giving, and that this has its centre and meaning in God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and that the name of Jesus Christ stands for the event in which humanity, and in humanity the whole of creation, is awakened and called and enabled to participate in the being of God …. The self declaration of God is true and real, which means that God Himself is God in such a way that He wills to have the creature as a creature with Him, that He does not will to be God without it, without claiming it, but also without being personally present to it”

(Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 2.1 pp. 670 & 756, quoted by John Flett in his impressive monograph, The Witness of God, Eerdmans, 2010, p. 196.)

Submission

Submission is not something that we find readily acceptable in our day. The rights of the individual are so strongly asserted that any challenge to free, personal determination can be received as a violation.

But this is how it is in the life of Christian discipleship. Our Lord models submission, submission to the God of Israel, Creator and Sustainer of the Cosmos. Although in the nature of God, he embraced the nature of a servant and, as man, humbled himself in obedience. For the Christian, submission is a necessary way.

Submission begins in the heart of each of us. But it does not end there. The security of corporate discernment is that it is allows an environment of confirmation as to the will of God. Submission to our own delusion or ambition is no submission at all. It is one of the beauties of fellowship in Christ that we should find confirmation through the discernment and confirmation of others. If we are truly seeking to submit to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.