The goal of grace

I find myself reflecting on how easily we restrict and narrow our expectation of how the Holy Spirit will act. Sometimes He confirms and sometimes affirms. Sometimes He convicts and sometimes comforts. Sometimes He heals and at times empowers. But whichever manifestation He will undertake as He visits upon us, it is best if our expectancy is for Him to come to do whatever will take us deeper into the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, at the point and in the place that we find ourselves now. Then we will not be disappointed through failed aspirations, but instead discover through His work in our lives more of life in all its fullness.

For however He visits us, it is that we might discover deepened motivation and renewed resolve to live in worship of God as disciples of Jesus Christ. This is the goal of grace.

Simply Succinct

A poem penned by my friend and colleague, New Testament scholar Rollin Grams. Says it all, really!

Communal gates are truly grand,
They ward or welcome by their frame.
For what’s let in will transform;
Or kept out, the same.

A sturdy gate, our faith in God,
A crimson beam, its only latch,
Blessèd hope, the inner quad,
Love, the cobbled path.

Let us never forget it

A friend of mine has just been baptised again in the Holy Spirit, 13 years after first being so. Their joy is palpable. Their eyes are full of life and their joy in the Lord is so full. The sheer excitement of meeting with the infilling glory and presence of the Holy God of Holy love.

And it reminds me that, however much it is right and necessary to stress intentionality and focus in the Christian life, with a consequent emphasis on life-enhancing practices and habits, it all begins with the sheer generosity of the God whose divine identity is made known to us in and through Jesus Christ. The power of His atoning sacrifice and bodily resurrection open the way for us to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And it is this infilling that is the ‘engine room’ of the Christian life. Let us never forget it.

Stories

People love 'em. TV's full of them. Magazines at checkout tills shout out with them. Stories draw us in, feed us with life (or death), influence and steer us.

At the centre of the Bible is the story of Jesus. Four stories, written from different angles. Books of stories designed to draw us into their puzzles and struggles. To meet with God in a way that changes us. Try reading one of the Gospels this way today. It will make a difference.

Hospitality, Compassion and Meaningful Involvement

We get ourselves into such worries about how to reach people. But the heart of the Gospel witness is so simple! Show hospitality to those outside the church. Express compassion to folk outside the church. And give ordinary folk opportunity to have meaningful involvement in the Christ-like thing of caring for the poor, the oppressed and marginalised. 'Draw a line' of a circle of Kingdom care and activity that can include those not yet Christians, giving fresh  purpose, reason for being and hope to those who become involved.

The place of the third of these aspects was the message today to our baptist pastors' fraternal of Albert Bogle, a parish minister who in earlier days was a rock evangelist and now chairman of an exciting 'Gospel action' charity, the Vine Trust. Many people are not hostile to Christianity: they just don't see the relevance of it to anything in the real world. Enrolling the 'not yet Christian' into activities of caring in Jesus' name can give them the opportunity to understand that Christian faith is a relationship with God that leads to involvement and investment, in the Jesus way, in His world.

Hope Sharing

A quote from a perceptive and generous book by Alan & Ele Kreider, Worship and Mission after Christendom. It really got me thinking and excited. It's so right for today!

"Hope is the most interesting currency a congregation has to spend. Christians in worship are renewed in hope: by the big story, the little stories, and their encounter with God in sacraments, words, and brothers and sisters. The New Testament does not urge Christians to evangelise other people; it commands Christians to 'give an account of the hope that is within them (1 Peter 3.15)'. The Christians' main task is not so much faith sharing as 'hope sharing'." 

(Worship and Mission after Christendom, Paternoster, 2009, p 173)

Focus

After 4 days back here in Prague, at the International Baptist Theological Seminary, my theological home …..

In IBTS, at this centre of research in baptistic theology, we have a resistance to talking about ‘values’. For values are easily made interior and subjective. Each person can claim their own. There’s no real way of testing them. And the Bible does not speak in terms of values. So what does it speak of?

What the Bible does speak about is vision and drivers. Vision of the Kingdom of God brought to realisation here on earth. Drivers rooted in God’s covenants of grace. And we confess that the fullness of an irreducible vision of a renewed heavens and earth is brought to realisation through the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This humbles us, leading us into speaking of establishing, within our different contexts, convictions expressed through practices that we demonstrably engage in. Such an attitude was beautifully articulated in morning prayers today, through the words of the Christian martyr, Archbishop Romero,

It helps now and then to step back and take the long view, the Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that can be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders, ministers not messiahs. We are prophets of a future that is not our own.

Archbishop Oscar Romero

Crucifyingly intense

For the Lord your God is a fire consuming – a passionate God (Deuteronomy 4.24)

‘Passionate’. A better word to use in translating the Hebrew than the more usual ‘jealous’, which has bad connotations in contemporary English usage. God has such intensity of feeling of purpose, with plans to prosper and mature those made in His image and likeness.

This is the God who grips us in Jesus. Who draws us into and through the Cross of Christ to be united with His Son, calling and commanding us to invest ourselves in all that Christ represents, brings to us and is concerned about.

This is what God defines as love. Crucifyingly intense.

A people of God's inheritance

But as for you, the LORD took you and brought you out of the iron-smelting furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of his inheritance, as you now are (Deuteronomy 4.20).

A colleague, visiting from another part of the world, asked me this week what I made of the church in the UK, and whether there was a hope of revival. I was able to give a positive and enthusiastic reply. Why?

At least three things seem to me as characteristic of authentic church, a people set apart as witnesses to the character and concerns of God. Firstly, they will be a people who have a testimony of being rescued and redeemed from a life where they were held captive by destructive and oppressive forces that dehumanised and demeaned them as persons made in the image of God. Secondly, there will be sense of struggle, being brought through a process of transformation, both personal and social, that was by no means easy and quite likely to be painful. And thirdly, there will be a growing awareness and vision of a holistic reality and quality to eternal life begun now, of a New Heavens and New Earth filled with the goodness of God’s character and also the goals that are the realisation of His concerns for humanity and the Cosmos.

Authentic church will have these three components of testimony, struggle and focus here and now. And there are increasing signs of this kind of thinking appearing among congregations throughout the land. Pray God that such a revival continues!

A New Year Blessing

As we enter a New Year, may you find joy in the simplicity and profundity of a faith focused on Jesus Christ alone.

May Jesus, as witnessed to faithfully in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, become bigger for you this year. May deficient pictures of God, formed in your mind because of sin in your life, be shattered again; so that you might see afresh God revealed to you in and through Jesus Christ.

May all your understanding and experience of God be remade by the God of Israel, who loves you as a Father loves His Son. May He work in you by His Holy Spirit to draw you to and reshape you in His image and likeness in Jesus Christ. And may the pain of that reshaping be surpassed by the joy of a life freshly emptied, humbled and made compliant to the will of God, that you might find delight in the purpose for which God created you in Christ Jesus.

Have a blessed New Year.

Drawn to Discipleship

In looking back over these studies on the Philippian Hymn, it occurs to me that the biggest contemporary challenge to the Christian Church is the diminution and devaluing of the cost of discipleship.

Truth is, you can have a religion that speaks of the value of the individual, the importance of love and acceptance and tolerance, without having either God or Christ. Karl Marx had a good try. Ron Hubbard arguably managed it even better, in a smart move from writing science fiction into designing Scientology. Religions that appeal to human instinct are always going to be popular.

But there is nothing popular at the heart of the Christian gospel, where faith is never but a ‘decision’ to believe or an experience of existential reality. The faith that marks discipleship must be prefaced by real repentance and the cry of the Jewish shema, affirming allegiance to the God of Israel, who declares His Word of instruction and command, drawing His people into reflecting His character and participating in His actions.

As we look to celebrate and embrace the Christ of Christmas let us remember this cost to God, in terms of self-renunciation and pain, of embracing us through the Incarnation. And let us not imagine that His way can be anything but costly for those who would find and follow it.

Perspective on life

Bad deal, born with a hint of illegitimacy and dumped in straw?

'We don't get to make our lives up. We get to receive our lives as gifts. The story that says we should have no story except the story we chose when we had no story is a lie. To be human is to learn that we don't get to make up our lives because we're creatures. Christians are people who recognise that we have a Father whom we can thank for our existence. Christian discipleship is about learning to live our lives as gifts without regret.'

Stanley Hauerwas & Jean Vanier, Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness, IVP, Downers Grove, 2008, pp. 92-93.

Fragile yet fixed

“We commonly assume that the opposite of trusting God is doubting God. In the Old Testament, the opposite of trusting God is trusting something else, such as another god, or political resources, and thus trusting ourselves (Doubting God doesn’t matter so much as long as you are doubting the right God.).”

John Goldingay, Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, pp. 49-50.

The Christ Hymn - pt. 10

That Jesus Christ is ‘LORD’, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2.11)

To ascribe to Jesus the title, ‘LORD’, is to assign to Him the accolade given to the God of Israel. Here is the recognition that in Jesus all that God is and proves Himself to be is met with. It is a declaration of worship.

But more than that. Here we have a vital connection with the first part of the hymn. His complete humanity was so emphasised, in v 7 and v 8. For we are called to celebrate Jesus by embracing His humanity become our humanity, His attitude and ministry expressed through our attitude and ministry.

To admit Jesus is LORD is to approach the place of harmony and submission to Him and His call. To become His disciples. It is giving ourselves to be drawn into the reality of the God who loves and invests us as a Father, who treats us and commands us as siblings of His Son, who energises and empowers us for this new identity by His Spirit.

May this bring you joy this Advent Season.

The Christ Hymn - pt. 9

And every tongue might confess (Philippians 2.11)

Singing can be a beautiful thing. And so can celebratory talking: speaking about something or someone because you are excited, joyful.

Here is the heart of Christian worship and witness. To tell out the wonder and the joy of discovering what God has done and is doing because of Jesus Christ.

Evangelism isn’t so hard. Not when we have discovered, or rediscovered, a source of joy and delight beyond measure. To realise who God is and what matters to Him. Because we have been shown Jesus.

To be continued .....

The Christ Hymn - pt. 8

…. So that at the name of Jesus every knee - whether heavenly, human or hidden – might bow (Philippians 2.10)

It is hard for those of us who are Gentile, non-Jewish, worshippers of the God of Israel to appreciate the immensity and intensity of these words. Here is the declaration that Jesus Christ is not only the Word of God, He is also God’s last Word, His ultimate declaration to and over the whole Cosmos. Here and in Him is the full majesty and holiness of the Creator made manifest. Here is the one before whom all will bow in tribute awaiting His judgment. It is Jesus who stands at the end of all time in this Creation, holding the key to the destiny of all in the sight of God.

A tame Jesus, a nice Jesus, a docile Jesus, a teddy bear Jesus, would be so much easier to live with. But not to worship.

To be continued …..

As it is written

Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked: Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear. They will say of me,`In the LORD alone are righteousness and strength.' All who have raged against him will come to him and be put to shame. But in the LORD all the descendants of Israel will be found righteous and will exult (Isaiah 45.22-25).

The Christ Hymn - pt. 7

…. and has given Him the name that is over and above every name (Philippians 2.9)

Those who look to Jesus will be exalted because of Jesus. And they will also discover the power of His name.

The vindication and preferment that is here given to Jesus is given to the son of Mary. Jesus is not an uncommon name today, especially in Spanish speaking environments. It is the name given to a child born of flesh and blood. And it the one called Jesus who is found in flesh and blood, now both resurrected and exalted, that is given pre-eminence over all things by the God of Israel.

We may not fully grasp, but let us at least glimpse the dignity and honour that is bestowed on us by God, through Jesus Christ. This dignity is for those whose humanity is caught up in his humanity, into the very presence of the God of Israel. Here is the wonder. That the One who came down to serve, the Son of God pouring Himself out, took to Himself our humanity and now holds it, conjoined to himself, for all eternity. Through Jesus and only Jesus we find ourselves participating in the presence, in the glory and the goodness, of the Creator of the Cosmos.

Here is why we willingly participate in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, moulded by His manifesto, galvanised by His goals. As we find ourselves participating in His ministry we find too that we are arrested and infused with the power and presence of the resurrected and exalted Messiah, whose name is above all names, and whose humbled humanity we share.

To be continued …..

The Christ Hymn - pt. 6

…. God highly exalted Him (Philippians 2.9)

The language here is unmistakably that of vindication, of reward. In v 6-8, we are given insight into the attitude of Jesus Christ, how he approached and engaged with life as a human being. Now we see it from the perspective of God in heaven. Here, in v 9-11 is the response of the God of Israel to what Jesus had undertaken.

Jesus is not simply resurrected, or made alive again. The language here is of exaltation, celebration of accomplishment and its reward. The life of obedience and the sacrifice made is now vindicated and honoured.

There is something fundamentally wrong in our perception of the Christian life, if we have not grasped this key attitude: that we are called to a life where we are ‘co-crucified’ with Christ. Being a Christian is not a free pass to get what you like from heaven’s 'supermarket'.

We are to focus on the Kingdom of God; and to get on with promoting its advance here and now. This is what Jesus did, and received His reward from God. If we adopt His attitude, this will involve seeking to be gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, merciful, faithful, loving and forgiving. Emptying ourselves in humility, pursuing servanthood and obedience to God. Pursuing justice and behave righteously. And growing our lives into deeper participation in the life of ministry of Jesus Christ.

Get focused. Remember, those who live for Jesus will be exalted because of Jesus. Everyone will get their reward.

To be continued …..

the resurrected crucified Christ

'Once again, we must stress that it is the resurrected crucified Christ with whom believers are initially and continually crucified….co-crucifixion is not merely a meta­phor but an apt description of an encounter with a living person whose presence transforms and animates believers: "It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. And the life I live, I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me by giving himself for me." ….. The kenosis of the preexistent Son of God, known in the fidelity and love of the historical Jesus, continues to define the reality of the resurrected Christ and thus of those whom he enlivens ….. As Kasemann famously said, "The cross is the signature of the one who is risen." ' (Gorman, Cruciformity, p.71)