Everything is dying

The lectionary took me into Luke 8 this morning, and the account of the raising of Jairus's daughter.  I was struck again, as I have been before, by the drama of the story: the urgent pleading from Jairus which surely any parent can imagine; the nightmare delay as Jesus looks around for a sick woman who has touched him in the midst of the crowd; the messenger with his news of death and despair; the outrageous call from Jesus to believe in the face of death that all will be well; the mourners, whose wailing turns to mocking laughter when Jesus declares that the girl is not dead in spite of the clear evidence; the direct address to the corpse, calling life back in; and even the little detail that she was given something to eat.

But what I really took away from this morning was this: how we need the God of the resurrection.

It is, perhaps, a sign of my temperament that even in the midst of spring, with the evidence of new life all around, I still find myself thinking about the fact that everything is dying.  It is a fact, after all.  I don't mean this in the sense of the more alarmist ecologists of our culture - though I suspect those people might be worth listening to, at least a bit, and sometimes what passes for alarmism is just realism coming into contact with a lethargic and dismissive culture.  No, I don't mean that, I just mean the simple fact: everything that lives dies, and as far as we know the universe as a whole is also on track for (a very slow) death.

This is why gods who are bound up with the creation are no good to us.  Gods who exists within the cycle of life and death - which is in fact not a cycle, but a spiral downwards - won't suit our need.  Even gods of healing alone are not enough.

We need a God who can enable us to look death in the face and to hear his voice saying: do not be afraid; only believe.  And we need a God who has demonstrated that even at the utter end of everything - even in death - he is able to reach out a hand and recall us to life.

We need the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of the resurrection.

Thoughts on New Year's Day

Liturgically, New Year's Day is the eighth day of Christmas, and therefore observed (where such things are still observed) as the festival of the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus.  I find that provides rich themes for reflection and contemplation as one year turns over into the next.

For starters, the Lord was given the name 'Jesus' - meaning God Saves - because he would save his people from their sins.  This invites two lines of reflection.  First at the level of salvation history, the coming of Jesus is the faithfulness of God to his covenant people.  The stories which accompany the presentation of Christ at the temple reflect the longing of faithful Israelites for the promised salvation of God.  Simeon sees in this child God's salvation, the rescue and therefore the glory of Israel, the revelation to the world of God's good purposes to and through his chosen people.  Anna speaks of the redemption of Jerusalem, no longer as a distant hope but as a present reality.  It is good at the beginning of a new year to be reminded that God's faithfulness to his purposes and his people runs like a golden thread through each and every year, even when that thread is sometimes hidden from view.  His faithfulness to Israel meant the forgiveness of Israel's sins; and that faithfulness is ongoing.

And then at the personal level, how good it is when reflecting on the last year, with all its many sins and failings, to be reminded that Jesus is God's salvation.  He is the one who is able to deliver us from our sins and the consequences of our sins - and he will deliver us.  That is his very name.

There is also the circumcision, which perhaps seems obscure but to my mind conjures up similar reflections.  Circumcision was the sign of the ancient covenant with Israel, and so when Jesus is circumcised we see God's faithfulness to a promise made to Abraham hundred of years before.  We are reminded again of his constancy through the turning years.  But then again, the circumcision of Jesus is not just the continuation of that covenant, but its fulfilment - in him, the covenant sign becomes a present reality, or perhaps we ought to say that he is the reality which always lay under the covenant sign and gave it life and power.  His circumcision is God's faithfulness to the old, but just as that faithfulness it is also the putting off of every old thing, so that it points to Christ's cross, on which the old man is put to death - not for Christ, but for us, who are circumcised in him.  In Christ, the old is really old and done away with, and the new year can open with a sense of real newness, just as every day is a day of fresh mercy and therefore new creation.

The years go on.  Jesus is the same - yesterday, today, and forever.  Always the one who saved his people from their sins, and will save his people.  Always the one who kept faith, and made us faithful in him.  Always the one who decides and judges what is really old and has to go, and always the one who brings in the genuinely new.

Happy new year!

Christ the Psalmist

Two great Psalms in my reading for Morning Prayer today - Psalms 25 and 26.  Great Psalms in isolation, but curiously contradictory when you read them side by side.

King David Playing the Harp
(Gerard van Honthorst, 1622)

Notice first of all that these are both presented as 'Psalms of David'; whatever exactly we think about the originality or significance of the headings to the Psalms, we are certainly being encouraged to read these together in some sense.  We can't say that these Psalms belong to different traditions, or represent different theological viewpoints, or belong at very different points in the history of revelation and redemption.  The Psalms seem to originate together and belong together.  And yet...

In Psalm 25 we have confessions of sin, pleas for forgiveness, expressions of dependence on God's mercy:

Do not remember the sins of my youth
or the acts of my rebellion...

Lord, for the sake of your name,
forgive my iniquity, for it is immense.

Consider my affliction and trouble
and forgive all my sins. 

 But then in Psalm 26 we have a rather different mood:

Vindicate me, Lord,
because I have lived with integrity...

I wash my hands in innocence
and go around your altar, Lord...

How do we hold together the frank admission of 'immense' guilt with the confident appeal to one's own innocence and integrity?  How do we join up what is essentially an appeal to God to forget David's behaviour (because it was sinful) with the appeal to God to remember David's behaviour (because it was righteous)?

There are of course a number of simple ways we might get around it.  If we take the Psalms primarily as expressions of human psychology, perhaps in connection especially with the life of faith, then it's not difficult to think of times from our own experience when we felt especially sinful and other times when we felt basically innocent.  Perhaps it's just that these two Psalms are given to us so that we can pray appropriately in the light of those different feelings.

Or we can construe a scale of relative righteousness - we could argue that David knows of course that in God's sight he is sinful, but compared to the enemies who oppress and harass him (and these enemies are prominent in Psalm 26) he is innocent.  Or we can imagine a situation in which David, without denying his essential guilt, could be maintaining his innocence in this particular case.  He hasn't done this one thing of which he is accused, and so he can appeal to God on the basis of this innocence.

Any or all of those things may have a grain of truth to them, but the deeper, and more Christian, reading of these Psalms is as expressions of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus.  Maybe David wrote these Psalms, but they belong nonetheless to Christ.  The Lord Jesus in his life took up the guilt and sin of humanity and made it his own; he identified with sinful humanity in his baptism, and he carried that identity through as far as the cross.  He can confess on our behalf the immense iniquity which we carry - indeed, he confesses it to such an extent that we no longer carry it.  But on the other hand, the Lord Jesus never sinned.  He, and he alone, could truly wash his hands in innocence.  The guilt which he bore, he bore guiltlessly.  The iniquity which he confessed, he confessed from a position of total integrity.  Jesus sings both Psalms.

And because he sings both Psalms, I can sing both Psalms.  Lord, forgive my iniquity, for it is immense.  In innocence I go around your altar and proclaim thanksgiving.  In Christ I sing.

For those about to lead worship

Jesus Christ is our worship, the essence of it and the whole of it, and we may worship God in Spirit and in Truth only as we are made partakers of his worship.

Thus T.F. Torrance, in Theology in Reconstruction, 249.

Torrance's point has at least a two-fold application.  Firstly, we cannot make an acceptable offering to God by ourselves.  All our worship is soiled by our sinfulness, and inadequate as a response to God's greatness and his grace.  We cannot possibly come of ourselves to appear before God and honour him.  Remember Nadab and Abihu?  Outside of Christ, our very worship of God deserves and attracts his wrath.  So if you're about to lead worship, please remember that you cannot do it - that you depend on Christ to pour out the Spirit so that what you do might be real, genuine, acceptable.  Worship is not within your powers, and leading others in worship is something that should make you tremble.

But second, an acceptable offering to God has been made, in our human nature, by our Brother the Lord Jesus Christ.  Because he appears in heaven before God, as our great High Priest, there is human worship which is sinless and holy, and which genuinely honours the Father.  And because that worship exists, we can come to worship - not as if we were offering something alongside Christ's offering, but as we are joined to him by the Spirit in faith our own inadequate worship is clothed in his great act of worship, and made to participate in it.  There is nothing for us to add, because he has done it all; but we may participate, because he has gone ahead of us.  So if you're about to lead worship, remember that what that means is directing people to Christ, who is the real worship leader, and resting in him and his perfect worship yourself as you lead others in doing so.

A new year with Jesus

I guess for many people the beginning of the year is an exciting time for a fresh start.  The old year, filled as it had inevitably become with disappointments, has passed; the new year stretches ahead, its story as yet unwritten.  Might not this be the year you finally make it at work, or find a spouse, or kick that vexing habit?  It might be, or at least there is nothing written about this year yet to say it won't be.  (Of course we all know that really there is a distressing amount of continuity between the years, and nothing has really changed.  But that is the great virtue of endings, drawing a line across the paper and saying 'now we start afresh'.  Otherwise, what hope?)

For the Christian this turning from the old to the new is the perpetual motion of life.  The old has gone, the new has come - and on this basis we turn (in repentance) from our old selves to be renewed (by faith).  And we do it again and again and again.  New mercy, not just each January, but each day, with every night a chance to practice dying to what we are and every morning an opportunity to have what we will be amended by God's Spirit at work in us.  Always a turning, because we know that in this life we will never have fully and finally turned.  The new self and new life towards which we turn is real, concrete and accomplished in Jesus, but in our experience it is always that towards which we are journeying.

Time is a bit funny for the Christian, or at least the way it works has been redefined.  When we say 'the old has gone', that is not a bit of autobiography, with a date when the old was done away with.  In actual fact, as far as our experience goes, the old is still very much with us.  And when we say 'the new has come', we are not saying that we have turned over a new leaf, or even that a new leaf has been turned over for us.  The 'new' remains, to our experience, something more often than not out of reach.  You cannot show this 'old' and 'new', and the dividing line between them, on a calendar.  Nevertheless, it remains the case that the old really has gone, and belongs always to the fading past, and the new really has come, and constitutes the bright and shining future.  In Jesus Christ, the old humanity has been put to death and buried, and the new has been raised from the grave.  This was a once-for-all movement, a transition from old to new which is definitive for all our time.  Because Jesus in his time passed from old to new, the old has been decisively and forever consigned to the past - even if my calendar future contains so much oldness, so much past-ness!  In Jesus the whole of life is like the new year.

And yet not quite.  One of the attractions of the new year for many is its sheer blank-ness.  It awaits content.  This is not so for the Christian.  Consider Ephesians 2:10:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.

Going into the new year, we don't go into empty territory, yet to be shaped, but into the landscape God has prepared for us, stocked with the things which he has providentially readied for us to do.

Now there is a burdensome way to read this, and I think I've often fallen into thinking of it like this: as if the apostle is telling us that God has written a to-do list for us already, before the year has even begun, and we now need to get on with ticking off the jobs he's got for us.  No doubt there are in fact tasks and acts of service which the Lord has prepared for us to undertake, but to focus here is to miss the middle of the verse and to view the new year in abstraction from Christ.  We are 'created in Christ Jesus for good works'.  Jesus Christ remains the determining factor in the new year.  It is not as if we were plucked from death and the power of the devil by God's grace and then sent off to face the new year by works.  It is not as if in Jesus our old sins are removed, the page wiped clean, but we are then left to write the new story ourselves, perhaps with a little divine help.

No, what the apostle is saying is that the resurrection of Jesus means that our time is already fulfilled.  He has accomplished all the good works necessary.  Our role now, going into this new year, is simply to keep close to him, to walk in his footsteps.  And then we will find that the works he has prepared are there waiting for us, not as a to-do list but as the contours of the land in which we walk.  He has not wiped out our past time without preparing for us a future time - and that not an empty wasteland or even a proving ground, but the hill of Zion, which yields a thousand sacred sweets even before we reach the heavenly fields and golden streets.

Look to him

"We don't mainly mortify sin by looking at it... We suffocate sin by redirecting our gaze to Christ."

Thus Dane Ortlund, in Deeper, p 139.

It is a strange kind of fight we're in, the fight against sin.  In pretty much every other war, the essential dictum is 'know your enemy'.  There is something of that in the fight for holiness - we are not unaware of the devil's schemes - but knowing our enemy is not going to take us to victory.  Doing reconnaissance, getting to understand sin and our own dark hearts better, is not going to get us there.

The only thing that will bring victory over sin is looking to the Lord Jesus, gazing at him, seeing his beauty and glory and goodness, delighting in him.

This is a battle of loves.  The problem with focussing on the enemy is that at some level, even as Christian believers, we love the enemy.  There would be no temptation to sin if we did not love sin.  But we do.  All human beings love sin; in certain circumstances we also hate it, and as Christians that hate becomes a real and significant force in our lives by the Holy Spirit.  But we still love sin.

So it is all well and good to assess what our chief idols are, or to pick up what false beliefs we might be holding.  But those things won't make us holy.  We fight the sin that we still love by seeing Jesus and loving him more.

Can I make a particular appeal to preachers and pastors?  It is common to hear McCheyne quoted from the pulpit - "for every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ".  Great, that's wisdom.  But can I encourage you to look at your sermons, your counselling sessions, your Bible studies - is there ten times as much time going into describing and depicting and verbally delighting in the goodness and grace and glory and love of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus?  Please, don't just set this as homework ('this week let's try to look at Jesus more') but actually devote sermon time to it.  If we're meant to be looking at Jesus, show us Jesus.

And for those of us who are not preachers and pastors, think about what the main goal of your private devotions is - how much time is spent in just looking at Jesus?  And how do we respond to our sin, whether temptation or actual failure - is it to look to Jesus?

Love elicits love, you see.  Do you see the Lord Jesus, suffering the agony of the cross?  Then you see love, deep love, love for sinners who hated him.  When he prayed for the forgiveness of those who crucified him - that was love, the eternal love of God displayed in mercy and grace to his enemies.  And you and I were just such enemies.  We weren't there, but it was our sin that he bore.  We can stand before the cross of Calvary and say with the apostle "the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me".  We can sing of that love vast as an ocean, loving kindness like a flood - and know that it reaches me, even me.  His love has no beginning - he is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, the one who has always been devoted and committed to your good even at the cost of his life, at the cost of cross and hell - and his love will have no end, because the crucified One is risen and now lives to intercede for you before the Throne.

Let the love of the Lord Jesus for you draw out your own love for him.  And then follow what you love, and that will suffocate sin.

Who elected him?

A man was, briefly, arrested in Oxford yesterday for heckling during the proclamation of the King.  In response to the proclamation, he shouted a question: who elected him?  For this he was briefly detained and driven home.  I don't intend to comment on the rights and wrongs of this situation.  Not least, I am aware that the only account I've read is that of the republican in question, and it's quite likely there is another side to the story.  If you want to read a defence of his protest, from the point of view of freedom of speech absolutism, Steve has an article for you.  I don't entirely agree, but it might be a good place to start from.

I was thinking that I would instead write a little piece about how this protest in many ways captures the spirit of the age.  This is, after all, a deeply democratic age, in the sense that we want to believe that all power and authority starts with us, the demos, and is then passed on to whomever we choose.  That is why you get people saying 'not my king!' - they mean, I think, I didn't choose him, and I can't imagine any other grounds of legitimate authority.  This attitude does, of course, get us into trouble even with the democratic elements of our politics.  Some want to disown political leaders they disagree with (not my PM!) in the same way that others would disown the Monarch.  This is just the individualistic version of the democratic impulse - nobody can have power or authority over me unless I chose them.

There certainly is an extent to which this is the spirit of the age, but as I've thought about it I've been struck that this is really just the spirit of humanity.  The obvious verbal parallels in the story of Moses jump out at me - who made you a ruler and judge over us?  The deacon Stephen makes it very clear that this attitude was a rejection of the one whom God had chosen, and sees it as the archetypal reaction of Israel to God's authority.  Psalm 2 shows us that it's not just Israel, but all of humanity.  We will be in charge of our own destiny.  I will be my own ruler and judge.  Isn't this just the spirit of sinful rebellion?

I am not suggesting that there is a one to one relationship between political republicanism in the UK and spiritual rebellion in the human race!  There are all sorts of reasons (none of them good, in my view, but that's by the by) why one might be a republican.  After all, the answer which the proclamation gives to the protester's question - God, by whom kings and queens reign - is in the case of earthly leaders open to question.  But I do think there is something in the attitude that we ought to be wary of.

In the end, a King has been elected - by Almighty God.  The rule of King Jesus does not depend on our choice, or even our assent.  God laughs at our attempts to be 'spiritual republicans'.  Every knee will bow.

Psalm 110 and the cross of Christ

Psalm 110 is one of the most cited passages from the Old Testament in the New, and its popularity continued through the first centuries of the church.  It is not hard to see why.  For one thing, the Lord Jesus quoted it in reference to his own identity.  But even without that, the picture of the triumphant Priest-King, seated in victory at the right hand of God speaks powerfully of the Messiah and his glory.

For us, the Psalm can feel harder to appropriate.  There are elements of the structure which are confusing, and in particular it is not immediately obvious who is speaking at each point.  I think this can be cleared up relatively easily, just by noting the difference between LORD (a placeholder for the divine name, YHWH) and Lord (the Messianic King-Priest).  In verses 1 to 4, David reports the address of YHWH to the Messiah (who is David's lord); YHWH tells the Messiah that he will have victory and eternal priesthood.  In verses 5-7, David sings to YHWH, celebrating the fact that (just as YHWH promised in verse 1) the Messianic King-Priest is indeed at God's right hand, and is indeed accomplishing victory.

Probably the toughest bit for us, though, is the end.  "He will crush kings on the day of his anger.  He will judge the nations, piling up corpses..."  The image of the nations filled with the slain is of course deeply unpleasant, but more than that it sits uneasily with our vision of Christ and his victory.  Isn't this, in fact, the polar opposite of the gospel?  Christ suffered death to deliver his enemies from death, right - not to inflict it on them in vast numbers!  So what do we do with this end of the Psalm?

I think the answer, at least in part, is in passages from the New Testament like 2 Corinthians 5.  This passage is all about the Apostle Paul's missionary motivation.  What is at that drives him out to preach the gospel, at such cost?  One part of the answer to that, it seems to me, is that Paul sees humanity around him through the lens of the history of Christ.  That is to say, he doesn't look at the people around him and then try to work out how the gospel is relevant to them; rather, he considers Christ's story to be the central story of all humanity.  He has reached this conclusion, on the basis of his knowledge of Christ: "that one died for all, and therefore all died."  All died.  Paul, realising that Jesus truly is the Christ, sees his death as an event which has validity and reality for all humanity.  All died.  This is so because Christ took the place of sinners ("[God] made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us...") and suffered the judgement of God on sin - and in so doing, executed the judgement of God on sinners.  Sinners were put to death in him.

And so the Apostle, looking out across the nations, sees them filled with corpses, those slain by the judgement of God executed by - and miraculously, marvellously, in - the Messiah.  This is why the nature of his victory requires a Priest-King, after the order of Melchizedek: his great Kingly triumph over the nations is a Priestly sacrifice of himself.

Because Paul knows that Jesus is risen, he also knows the story doesn't end here.  Psalm 110, after all, envisages the Messiah's enemies coming to serve him; how can they do so if they are all slain?  But Christ died for all so that those who trust in him might rise with him; he put an end to their sinful humanity so that they might share with him in the new humanity, by foretaste in the outpouring of the Spirit ("he will drink from the brook by the way") and then finally in the physical resurrection.  Paul's missionary motivation, then, is that all the people around him are dead, really dead, because of the cross; they just don't know it yet.  But this judgement carried out in Christ is not the final word for humanity.  To submit to this judgement, to accept (in baptism) the death executed on sinful humanity in him, is to find the door opened to resurrection life, and to have a certain hope that as our King and Priest is seated at the right hand of God, so we will be seated with him.

The death of the sinner

As we approach the end of Holy Week, I've been thinking again about the significance of the death of Jesus Christ.  I've noted before that a central element of the New Testament presentation of this significance which I think is often missed in contemporary reflections is the death of the sinner in the death of Christ.  That is to say, when Jesus died on the cross, sinful humanity died a warranted, judicial death in him.  To unpack that a little:

-A real thing happened when Christ gave up his spirit and died.  It is not 'as if' we sinful people died there; we actually really did.  In God's sight, we died in his death.  The reality of this is, so to speak, crucial.  The foundation of the believer's response to the death of Jesus is faith expressed in baptism, and in baptism we are said to be buried with Christ.  But this can only be the case if antecedent to our recognising and entering into this being dead in Christ we had actually died with him.  In Christ, we really died.  (That might mean we need to rethink what death actually means!)

-The death of Christ was the death of sinful humanity per se.  The Lord Jesus took on our nature (not, note, an individual human being, but human nature).  He carried that nature through temptation and cross, and ultimately to the point of death.  Though he was not a sinner, it was the nature - the flesh - of those who were sinners which he had vicariously assumed.  There is no future, then, in sinful humanity.

-The death which was carried out in Christ was a death sentence, a warranted judicial death.  It was, in fact, the execution of God's just sentence on sinners.  I've been thinking a little, provoked by this post from Ian Paul, about the extent to which we can say, with the hymn, that in Christ's death 'the wrath of God was satisfied'.  This sits at the heart of the understanding of the cross as penal substitution - the idea that Christ bore the punishment merited by sinful humanity.  I think we can and should say, and sing, that God's wrath is satisfied, but amongst other qualifiers I would add that this only makes sense if we understand that God's wrath was satisfied by the removal of the object of his wrath.  It is not that there is a conflict in God - he really loves humanity, but he is wrathful against sin - and so to resolve the conflict he exhausts his wrath on Jesus, like a child punching a pillow until they've let out all their anger.  No, God's holy love and holy wrath are one and the same, and in his holy love for sinners he pours out his holy wrath on them (in the person of Christ) until sinful humanity is done away with.

-The heart of the gospel is that all this happened in him.  That he voluntarily assumed our place, identified with sinners, and carried their case through to death - this is amazing.  When we recognise who he is - the very God against whom we had offended, the God whose holy wrath burns with all the heat of his infinite holy love - well, then it is simply breathtaking.  That my death took place in him, that the death which awaits me is merely the shadow of death with nothing of judgement in it, this is the wonderful significance of the cross.  The key question, I think, which it provokes is: if all this happened to me in him, what then is to happen in me?  And the answer to that is essentially that being dead in him to sin, I ought to (and must) die in me to sin; that by the Spirit I am to be enabled to make real in my life and experience what is already real in my very being, because real in him.

The truth as it is in Jesus

The Lord Jesus says that he is the truth.

It is normally sensible when someone says 'I know the truth' to ask 'the truth about what?'  What aspect of truth have you stumbled across?  What particular truth is it that we're discussing?

We could, I suppose, ask this question of Jesus.  He is making a rather different claim: not merely to know the truth, but to be the truth.  But we could ask: what truth exactly are you?  What subject are we discussing? What particular truth is it that you are claiming to embody?

We could even probably start to sketch an answer to this question.  It is the truth about God.  In claiming to be the truth, Jesus is making a claim to reveal God.  Yes.  But when he makes this claim, it is linked to his claim to be 'the way' and 'the life'.  It is linked to the idea of 'coming to the Father'.  A way joins two points; a life stretches from one time to another.  So when the Lord says he is the truth, we should think in terms of two things.  He is not just embodying the truth about God.  He is embodying the truth about the relationship of God to creation and specifically to humanity.  The Lord Jesus speaks in two ways throughout his ministry.  In one way, he calls people to himself, as if he is their destination; in another way, he points people beyond himself to the Father, as the place where they will find their rest.  He does this because he is the truth of God's relationship with humanity, and vice versa.  He does not teach this truth or show this truth.  He is this truth.  His life is this truth as he obeys the Father, trusts him, and prayerfully depends on him.  This lived life, this life in communion with God, is the truth.

At this point we ought to realise that we've burst through the limits of our question.  What particular truth?  In trying to answer we realise that we've stumbled onto something more: the universal truth.  It is true of creation, because it is true in Jesus, that it exists in relationship to God.  It is true of humanity, because it is true in Jesus, that it exists in dependence on God.

Every particular truth is, in an obvious or concealed way, a species of this truth.

There is no escaping this reality, even in the human absolute of contradiction.  It is possible to live in ignorance of this truth.  It is possible to live against this truth (to one's own destruction).  But the truth cannot be evaded.

Be courageous

Jesus said to his disciples, shortly before he was betrayed: "You will have suffering in this world.  Be courageous!  I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

It is striking what he does not say.  It is not: "I have overcome the world, so you won't suffer."  In the context of John's Gospel, that could never be right.  Christ overcomes the world by his own suffering; his glory is revealed at the cross.  How, then, could there be no suffering in the world for Christ's followers?

The point is how we respond to the suffering that must be encountered in the world.  That suffering, I think, includes the temptation which the world throws at the follower of Jesus, and of course the dislocation that comes from not belonging any longer to the world.  The natural human reaction to being in a minority, to not belonging, is fear; that fear may be expressed as a defensive retreat from the world, or as an offensive assault on the world.  Fear can motivate both the closed Christian community that harks back to a (mythical) vanished golden age, and the zealot moral crusader (or even evangelist).  The world as enemy, to be fled from or perhaps attacked.

The world, then, as decidedly not overcome.

Christ has overcome the world.  "The world" in John's Gospel is not so much the created reality in which we live, but the social reality of humanity organised without reference to, or in rebellion against, God and his purposes.  It is the world of Psalm 2, and the desperate (and vain) attempt to throw off God's rule and the rule of his Christ.  It is the world we live in.  Sometimes the world disguises its godlessness (and can indeed put on a good show of religion); sometimes the world displays its true colours.  But always it is the world.

Christ has overcome the world.  This does not mean that the world is done away with.  Of course the world as sinful dominion is ended.  But far from being destroyed, the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of God and his Christ.  In his cross and resurrection, the Lord Jesus overcomes the world by establishing the world; he upturns the apparent reality of human existence in order to found human existence again on the basis of his righteousness.  He takes his throne.  The world, then, despite appearances is overcome, to its own great blessing.  The defeat of the world is the world's great victory.

When Christ calls us to courage in the face of suffering in this world, it is simply a call to faith.  This is the victory which has conquered the world: our faith.  Not that faith in and of itself has any power, but faith it is which sees the world as it really is, as overcome.  Faith sees the victory of Jesus, his glory in his suffering on the cross.  Faith sees the world as changed, even though the world itself does not know that it is changed.  Faith therefore enters in to the victory of the Lord.

Fear of the world runs through so much our Christian living.  The simple fear of what folks will think.  Fear for our children - to what depths of godlessness will they be exposed?  Fear of being tainted, fear of being tempted.  Fear, fear, fear.

Be courageous!  He has overcome the world.

The present presence of the risen Lord

The Lord Jesus is alive - risen, ascended, enthroned.  As the Living One, he is present in and to his church by the Holy Spirit.  He himself, as the One who is in heaven, is present with us on earth.  This is something which hopefully all Christians would acknowledge, but what do we do with it?  Is the presence of the Lord Jesus of functional importance to us?

One of the themes running through John Webster's collection of essays Word and Church is the constant danger of ignoring or minimising this presence.  As Webster points out, there are plenty of things - theological things! - that threaten to squeeze out the place of the risen Christ.  The church, for example, can easily expand to take his place, and the doctrine of the church can come to supplant the doctrine of the risen Lord Jesus.  When this happens - and we should probably not move too quickly to glance over at Rome here, since it surely happens closer to home than that - the church's sacramental and liturgical life continues, and it continues to talk about the risen Christ, but it becomes increasingly hard to see what difference it would make if Jesus were absent.  Perhaps he just set up the church and then left it to run - a kind of gospel deism.

I suspect that sometimes in evangelical circles the doctrine of Scripture can pose a threat in this way.  It is good that we have a high view of the Bible and its authority, but there is always a danger that the authority of the Bible is cut loose from the authority of the Lord.  In analogy to the danger with the church, might we come to act as if Christ had provided Holy Scripture as a deposit of sacred truth and then basically left us to it?  What difference would it make to our preaching and teaching if he were absent?

We are used to looking back, to see Jesus in his crucifixion and resurrection; we are used to looking forward, straining to see Jesus in his glorious return.  Are we used to looking up, to see Jesus in heaven - and not only to see him there, but to be lifted up in our hearts to be with him there now, because he is with us?

Because the only substitute for the presence of the Lord Jesus which is held out in the New Testament is the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Think about the discourse in the latter chapters of John.  Jesus is going away, but he will send another Counsellor.  And yet it turns out this is no substitution at all - for where the Spirit is, there is Christ himself!  It is his spiritual presence that we're talking about, or his presence by the Spirit.

It all raises questions particularly for our corporate worship (and I think the NT gives us reasons to talk specifically about Christ's presence in the gathered worship of his people).  When the Scriptures are opened and the word is preached, do we have a sense that Christ is presently speaking to us - is it first hand or second (or third) hand?  Is it the viva vox dei that we're hearing as we hear the voice of the reader and the voice of the preacher?  When we gather at the Table, is it the Lord's Supper that we're attending - is he the host?  Is he present, as the one who was crucified and is now risen, to feed us with his own body and blood?  Or is this just a memorial of a thing that happened long ago and far away?

The Lord is here!

Not feeling it

One of the most helpful things, for me, in preaching through the Song of Songs is the corrective it gives to some of our undue stress on objectivity over subjectivity, and thinking over feeling.  This is probably, once again, one of those pendulum things - we've reacted to something unhelpful, and swung way too far in the opposite direction.

Let me give an example.  How might we respond to someone who doesn't feel like they are forgiven?  Or doesn't have any sense of Christ's love for them?  Because we're the truth people, we'd probably push in the direction of the objective.  Whether you feel forgiven doesn't change the objective truth that if you are trusting in Christ you are forgiven.  Whether you sense the love of Christ or not has no bearing on the objective truth that he does love you.  This objectivity is grounded in God's revelation, and supremely in the cross and resurrection of Christ.  It's true, regardless of feelings or experience.

That's not the wrong response.  It's half the right response.

It is impossible to read the Song without picking up on the delight and desire which stand at its heart.  That Christ is delightful, and that his people desire him; that remarkably - astonishingly, to the human mind and heart illogically and almost unbelievably - Christ also delights in his people and desires them.  This delight and desire play out in different moods through the Song.  There is pleasant desire, full of anticipation, and there is satiated delight; but there is also painful desire, responding to the absence of the lover, there is delight which is also almost agony because it is delight in the distant lover.  We do well not to flatten this out, or strip it down to make it fit into a theological scheme.  The Christian who has no sense of Christ's love ought not to settle for a bare assertion of objectivity, anymore than the woman in the Song should settle for the fact that she is objectively loved.  Feeling matters.  Reality matters as well as truth.

It seems to me that older Christian writers got this (and I should say at this point what a joy it was to read Julian Hardyman's book Jesus Lover of My Soul when prepping for the Song, which has the same sort of emphasis to it).  They encourage us to pursue Christ, not to be satisfied with a head-knowledge of the truth but to chase after...  After what?  An experience?  Yes, I think so.  And I think that matters because these older authors (and Julian, and I'm sure others) see clearly that the objective truth by itself won't transform us to live joyfully for Christ.  How can I love Christ wholeheartedly, passionately, if I have no sense of his great love for me?  How can I act like someone who is forgiven if I don't have an experience of my conscience being cleansed?

Delight in Christ - the subjective, emotional, experiential sense of his goodness and beauty - is the engine which drives sanctification.  And that is more than just objectivity.

Resting and Running

Here is a normal Christian narrative about legalism: if you're relying on your own works to establish your righteousness, you'll be continually aware of your shortcomings, always anxious about whether you've done enough.  You'll have to work harder and harder to make sure that you're okay, without ever knowing for sure if you've made it or not.  But then, when you become a Christian and realise that the gospel offers you a righteousness that is not dependent on your own efforts, you'll find rest.  You won't have to be constantly striving.  You can just receive God's gift.

There is a lot of truth in this narrative.

But preaching from Philippians 3 over the last couple of weeks, I notice this isn't the story Paul tells.  Back when Paul was relying on a righteousness of his own, from the law, he seems to have been happy and confident.  "Blameless" is his own verdict on himself in that era.  Pre-conversion Paul was undoubtedly a busy guy - church ain't gonna persecute itself - but he doesn't seem to have been driven by anxiety about his status.  He was secure and apparently at peace.

It is actually post-conversion Paul who describes himself as not having obtained, as not being complete, as straining forward, making every effort to take hold, pressing on like an athlete in a race.  I don't think there is anxiety here, either, but there certainly is effort, running, striving and straining.  There has to be, for Paul.  He now knows that what matters is only Jesus.  Being performatively righteous is no longer the big concern.  Being in and with Jesus - that is the thing.  And Paul is very aware that he does not yet know Jesus as he wants to know him, that he is not with Jesus (and indeed, it would be far better from his perspective to die in order to get to him).

I imagine different people have different stories, pre-conversion.  Relying on the flesh, on your own efforts, could make you confident, or it could make you anxious, depending perhaps on how high you set your standards and how close you came to meeting them.  But post-conversion, the story is always Christ Jesus, the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord.  And whilst that certainly means resting from both anxiety and boasting, it also means running.  Running like someone who wants the prize.

Running like Jesus is waiting for us on the finishing line.

Going to heaven

One effect of lockdown has been to make me much more acutely aware of location.  I am, as I have mostly been for the last couple of months, at home.  Location has been revealed as one of those things which has much more effect on my life than I had ever realised.  Being perpetually in my house makes work and rest more difficult.  It shrinks the world of my experience.  It restricts my access to others.  (And as I write this I am very aware that this is the reality all the time for many people: those justly or unjustly imprisoned, those who are housebound or hospital-bound through illness and disability...)  I am currently unusually conscious of where I am and what that means for me and my life.

As the pastor of a church I'm also particularly conscious of what is not happening: the church is not gathering together for worship.  Given that corporate worship is what the whole of creation is actually for, this is a big deal.  We are seeing each other, digitally, and hearing the word of God through our screens; but it makes the world of difference that we are located in our lounges (actually I get banished to the kitchen for preaching purposes) and not in the same place.  With the greatest respect to those who would love this digital interaction to be a part of our 'new normal' post-Covid, it is not the same thing as a physical gathering.  It must never become the norm, even if we might consider how greater use of technology might be made to ameliorate the cases of those who simply cannot gather.  Location matters.

But today is Ascension Day, and that also has a great deal to do with location.  Where is Jesus?  He has gone 'to heaven'.  That is to say, he has gone to the place of God's immediate presence and power.  Biblically, heaven is the place from which God hears prayer, sends help and judgement, acts and reveals himself.  Each act and intervention of God is a movement from heaven to earth.  The ascension of Christ is a movement from earth to heaven only because it completes an earlier movement from heaven to earth; in that sense, it is the counterpart to the moment of incarnation.

Jesus is in heaven.  But because Jesus' people are united with him, we can also be said to be in heaven - seated in the heavens, our lives hidden in heaven with Christ.  We are in heaven, in terms of our identity, our status, because Jesus is in heaven and we are in Jesus.  (Worth pondering, in terms of location, the regular address to Christians in the NT as those who are 'in Christ' - because this is often paired with a city, e.g., the saints who are in Christ in Philippi.  Both are location terms.  Of course, for the NT being in Christ is a far more significant location than being in Philippi.)

But this is also described in another way.  In the Letter to the Hebrews, which is all about the priestly movement into God's presence, we are urged to take advantage of the blood of Christ shed for us and to enter the sanctuary - not meaning any earthly sanctuary, but the very heavenly sanctuary which is the original of all earthly sanctity.  (And it is not coincidental but important that this is at once linked to the importance of meeting together, for this entry into the sanctuary - accomplished by Christ and received by faith - is symbolised and therefore to some extent experienced when believers come together in worship).

What do we come to when we draw near?  According to Hebrews 12 it is the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, the place where Jesus is.  It is heaven.

We are in heaven, because we are in Jesus.  We come to heaven when we pray, when we meditate, particularly when we come together in corporate worship.  We do well to hold on to both perspectives: we are there, static, immovable, because that is the status Jesus has; but in our experience we draw near, we approach, we enter.  Lose sight of the former and anxiety will set in - how can we approach God in his heaven?  Lose sight of the latter and all sense of relationship with God will disappear - just accept salvation and then get on with your life without reference to God.

So this is a striking thing.  Wherever we are located on earth - and as noted above, this is not an entirely insignificant factor; far from it! - we are able to go to heaven.  Going to heaven is not something that happens when you die; it is something that happens when you pray, when you believe, when you worship.  Let's draw near with faith.

The Judge Judged in our Place

People sometimes ask whether Barth believed in penal substitution, the doctrine which maintains that Christ endured on the cross the punishment which sinners deserve.  Since this doctrine has (rightly, in my view; those who deny it are typically unorthodox on other important points) become something of a shibboleth in evangelical circles, a lot rides on the answer.  Did Barth believe that Jesus bore the wrath of God deserved by sinners, in their place?  Did he believe that the death of Christ was a vicarious death, the righteous taking the punishment which the sinful deserved?

Isenheim Altarpiece

Well, the short answer is yes.  "My turning from God is followed by God's annihilating turning from me.  When it is resisted His love works itself out as death-dealing wrath.  If Jesus Christ has followed our way as sinners to the end to which it leads, in outer darkness, then we can say with that passage from the Old Testament [Isaiah 53] that He has suffered this punishment of ours."  (CD IV/1, 253)

But of course with Barth things are rarely quite so simple!  The yes has to be qualified with a 'but'.  In Barth's understanding, the element of punishment in the cross is not the central element.  It is true that the death which Christ endures is our death, the penalty for our sin.  It is true that "He has suffered what we ought to have suffered so that we do not have to suffer it, the destruction to which we have fallen victim by our guilt, the punishment which we deserve" - and you won't find a much clearer statement of penal substitution than that!  But the deeper thing, the more ultimate thing, is that "in the death and suffering of Jesus Christ it has come to pass that in His own person He has made an end of us as sinners and therefore of sin itself by going to death as the One who took our place as sinners."

For Barth there certainly is a transaction in the atonement - our sin vicariously borne by Christ - but the transaction rests on a more decisive thing - our being-as-sinners vicariously borne by Christ, and in his death borne all the way to destruction.  Atonement is about reconciliation.  What stands in the way of my relationship with a holy God?  Not merely my guilt, but my whole being as a person given over to sin and rebellion.  In Christ, that sinful person has been put to death, and therefore removed.  "One died for all, therefore all died" (2 Cor 5:14).

The action of God in the death of Christ is not to avoid the judgement and the necessary death of sinful man, but to carry out the sentence, fully and completely, but vicariously, in Jesus Christ.  The penal aspect of substitution rests on something deeper - if you like, an ontological substitution, a being in our place which, by walking the sinners road all the way to death and destruction, crowds the sinner out of his place and establishes space for a new creation by faith in the resurrected Jesus.

In our place

In Church Dogmatics IV/1, 240-243, Barth reflects on three directions in which we have to look when we acknowledge that Christ, in his death, took our place as sinners.

1.  Because Christ died in our place, we can and must know ourselves as sinners.  In fact, it is only in Christ that we can see this; if we say we are sinners on any other basis, we are judging by an arbitrary standard of good and evil, something we've invented ourselves.  By taking our place, Christ shows us what exactly our place is, and removes from us the possibility of trying to excuse our sin or understand ourselves in any other way than as those who stand under judgement.  Faith in Christ must therefore always involve confession of sin and repentance.

2.  Because Christ died in our place, we can and must know that our sin is taken from us.  It belongs now to him - not because he is a sinner, but because he has taken our sinful place from us.  "It is true that we are crowded out of our own place by Him in that He made our sin his own."  It remains 'our place' - we are the sinners - but he has taken responsibility for that sin, standing in our place.  Faith in Christ must therefore always mean assurance and confidence before God as the one who has reconciled and forgiven us (as the sinners we are) in Christ.

3.  Because Christ died in our place, we cannot stand in that place anymore.  "If Jesus Christ came and took our place as the Representative of our evil case, then there is nothing more that we can seek and do there even as evil-doers."  Our place as sinners being taken, we can no longer act as sinners.  Neither can we act as judges, as if judgement had not already been carried out.  "There is no 'way back'."

Whole humanity

I've recently finished reading Rowan Williams' book Christ the Heart of Creation, which was stimulating and also one of the most complex pieces of work I've come across.  This post is not about the book - I'm not confident I understood it well enough - but is about the thought processes it kicked off for me.  I found it particularly helpful to reflect on the fact that we should be thinking of the Creator-creation, infinite-finite dualities on the basis of the Incarnation, and not coming up with an abstract model into which the Incarnation of the Lord then has to be made to fit.  Any consideration of the question which doesn't begin with Jesus will, I think, always fail to do justice to him.  Space cannot be made for him in a system which is not wholly derived from him.  To be honest, from my very limited understanding I'm not sure this book passes the test.  Although it aims to build on Christ, the analogia entis takes over, and the Incarnation seems to become just a specific example of the non-competitive co-existence of infinite and finite.  I'm not sure what the personal union means in this model.

If that didn't make any sense to you, don't worry about it.  I'm not sure it made much to me.

The significant question that I came away asking was this: what is the pastoral/discipleship significance of the fact that in the Incarnation the Word of God took on a whole human nature?  The Word did not replace a part of the humanity, creating a divine-human hybrid; nor did the Word over-ride the humanity of Christ.  In Jesus we have a real and entire human being, living out in time the eternal life of the Word of God.  What does it mean for us that he was a whole human being?

Of course, there is the central issue of salvation: that which Christ has not assumed, he has not healed.  In other words, it is important to us that Christ is a whole human being, because we are whole human beings wholly in need of salvation.  By taking on human nature whole and entire, Christ has redeemed whole human beings, leaving no part of them to the dominion of sin.

Then there is the fact that in taking on a whole human nature, Christ affirms the goodness of human life as created.  It is not as if there is a 'wicked bit' of human nature which needs to be cut away.  This is in fact too small a view of sin: the human as we know him or her is wholly ruined; they do not just need a few parts changing.  It is also too low a view of God's creation: he made humanity good, and though each human being we meet is now a glorious ruin they are nonetheless glorious.

This has an effect on how we think about life.  Think about the caricature of the monk, shutting off various aspects of human life - sexuality, appetite - as the source of temptation.  Or think about the more legalistic aspects of fairly recent evangelical culture, which in their desire for holiness - or perhaps more, their fear of sin - tried to shut out aspects of human existence.  Or think about the new convert who can't see the value in anything which isn't directly 'spiritual'.  That Christ took on a whole human nature is a warning and a rebuke to all these tendencies.

The Gospels seem particularly unembarrassed by Jesus living a normal human life.  It is noteworthy that the Gospel with the most obviously high Christology - that of John - also contains some of the most obviously 'human' in the life of Jesus.  It is not wrong to be human.  It is not wrong to engage in, and enjoy, culture and work and food and family and conversation and...  well, life.  God did not need feel the need to over-ride or over-write the human in Christ; nor does he in you and me.  Live richly and well, and be glad.

Identity in Christ

What does it mean when Christians are encouraged to find their identity in Christ?  At least, I think, the following:

Because Jesus is in heaven, and we are united to Jesus by faith and the Holy Spirit, we too can be described as being in some sense seated in the heavenly places in Christ.  What does that mean?  I think primarily it means access to God, permanent access (hence 'seated').  Here is the Christians direct answer to a sense of self which is blighted by guilt, or by that sense of exclusion which so many of us feel.  We have access to God.  We are welcome in heaven.  No guilt shuts me out, no awkwardness raises a barrier.  When questions of identity are raised within us, we look - not inward, to find some solid identity there - but upward, to Christ.

Because Jesus is currently not with us, our identity is in a sense unknown.  Our life is hidden with Christ in God.  What will be has not yet appeared.  For the Christian in the here and now, that means an often painful reserve in speaking or thinking of our identity.  We literally don't know what a Christian is.  Our identity is in the future, at least in so far as our experience of it goes.  Can I suggest that although this is painful there is nonetheless some relief that goes along with it?  Everyone is a mystery to themselves at some level, and I suspect often a painful mystery; to understand that there is no need to wrestle with this incessantly, to find peace in knowing that we will know ourselves when Christ appears, can be a release.

Because Jesus is crucified and risen, our identity is a constant movement from death toward life.  This is where all the NT instructions about putting the old nature to death come in, and it is the key to Paul's paradoxical sense that although physically he is moving constantly from life to death, spiritually he moves constantly from death to life, from the cross toward the resurrection.  I think this might be the most practical aspect of finding our identity with Christ, and the most terrifying.  It means a venture.  It means concretely saying 'I will put to death my own desires, trusting that God will turn that apparent death to life'.  It means living day to day in a way which only makes sense if the resurrection is real; living as if the gospel is the pattern for human living as well as the best news we ever heard.

The Lord is One

Deuteronomy 6 contains one of the foundational statements of Jewish, and thereafter Christian, theology:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might."

The first part - verse 4 - is the Shema, the central confession of the faithful Jew.  God is One.  I think that means two things. 

Firstly, God is unique.  This does not necessarily mean that Deuteronomy is teaching a rigorous monotheism here; in fact, the book seems to maintain the reality in some sense of other gods and spiritual powers.  Even when Moses affirms that "the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other" the context implies a comparison with other 'gods'.  The uniqueness of Yahweh, the God of Israel, is not simply a matter of alone-ness.  Rather it is that none of the other 'gods' or powers or whatever you want to call them are this God, the Creator of all and the Redeemer of his people.  He is unique.  What other 'god' has ever tried to save a people out from the midst of another nation?  What other 'god' has ever spoken to his people and entered into saving relationship with them?  As we move towards the New Testament, we have to add: what other 'god' has humbled himself to human flesh and Calvary's cross to redeem a people for himself?

Martin Luther in his Large Catechism asks: "what does it mean to have god?  Or what is God?"  His answer is: "a god means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress".  In other words, what you trust is your god.  I think this helpfully illuminates the meaning of Deuteronomy.  The Lord is God, the one and only; he is the one from whom we are to expect all to good, and in whom we are to take refuge in all distress.  He and he only, because he is the only real Saviour.

But second, God is united.  God is always himself.  He is not in any sense divided.  In this he stands in contrast with the ancient deities, who might appear differently in different sacred sites.  He also stands in sharp contrast with us.  We often find that we are divided against ourselves, hardly knowing what it is that we want or who it is that we really are.  Not so God.  He is always God.  That means that he is always dependable, always the same.  The Lord is One, and therefore he can be our God.

It's worth noting in passing that, theologically speaking, the fact that God is One is also the foundation of the church's doctrine of the Trinity.  Because God is One, we can take Jesus absolutely seriously when he says that to see him is to see the Father.  Wherever the Son is, there is the Father and the Spirit.  Therefore, in Jesus, we have a true revelation of God, God without remainder.

Between verse 4 - the theological affirmation - and verse 5 - the instruction to Israel - there is an implied 'therefore'.  Because God is One, you shall love him with all your heart, soul, and strength.  The logic is simple: because he is the only god, in the sense discussed above - the only source of good and only refuge of our souls - he is to receive absolute loyalty, love, devotion.  That could be terrifyingly totalitarian, and indeed it would be if any human being were to make such a claim on our loyalty.  But to love God wholeheartedly does not eclipse the love of other things.  Rather, it orders the love of created things, such that in loving God wholeheartedly we find ourselves loving other people and indeed all God's creation appropriately - and we find that our love for those created things flow back into love of the Creator.  Because God is really God, the source and fountain of all good, he is not a black hole sucking in all our devotion and love, but the one in whom we really learn what it is to love in the first place.

And then again, because God is united, wholehearted love of him is the only way to bring our fragmented and sin-shattered lives together.  "Unite my heart to fear your name", prays the Psalmist.  Take, O God, this bundle of contradictions that I call myself, and, by orienting it around your great self, bring it to order and sense.  God alone is great enough to be the sun at the centre of the solar system of your life.  This is why in Jesus we see the only real example this fallen world has ever known of true humanity - life properly oriented, lived out of a centre in God which makes the disparate whole and the complex simple.