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Month: December 2008

Published on Leave a comment on New Years Encouragement

 Here are Paul Blackham's wonderful new year's sermons from All Souls, Langham Place.

Galatians 4:9

Matthew 11:25-30

2 Corinthians 5

1 Corinthians 15:20-26

John 3:1-21

His Matthew 11 is a personal favourite (surprise surprise).

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And here's my new year's encouragement to our Wednesday communion service this morning.  A little ten minute sermon.  It's David and Goliath again.  Here's my conclusion...

We are the fearful and faithless Israelites, standing behind our brave Champion.  But friends, He has won!  And we have not contributed a calorie of effort - all we've done is flee from Goliath and deride our King.  Even so - His victory is our victory.

And so, as in 1 Samuel 17, we LOOK, we SHOUT and we ADVANCE.  Of course we don't advance killing Philistines, but we do make in-roads into enemy territory as we spread the gospel.  That's a wonderful consequence of Christ's victory.  We LOOK, we SHOUT and we ADVANCE.

 But perhaps you don't feel like shouting this morning.  Perhaps you're not looking forward to advancing into 2009.  Well what would you say to an Israelite at this battle who remained unmoved by David's victory?  Clearly they haven't seen it properly.  Or they don't realise how it affects them.  What would you tell them?  You'd say LOOK - LOOK to your Champion.  Don't grit your teeth and advance anyway.  Don't look to your own strength and convince yourself you can take on Goliath.  LOOK at Christ.  Your champion has won the battle for you.  And He won it for you when you were weak, faithless, sinful and cowering in fear.  Doesn't matter.  He has done it.  You might still be weak, sinful, cowering, faithless.  Doesn't matter.  He has won for you salvation, forgiveness and new life. 

So LOOK, SHOUT and ADVANCE into 2009.

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Published on Leave a comment on Summing up

Let me take this end-of-year opportunity to sum up what this blog has been about...

 

Christ the Truth means Jesus is not just the one Way or one Life, but the one Truth of God.  Truth - all truth - is in Jesus. This means all our thinking about God must begin with Him.  Not some Christ-principle but Jesus of Nazareth.  Not some divinized ideal but the actual Jesus of the Gospels.

When we do this we realize the cruciformity of the Christian God.  The Lamb is at the very centre of the throne.  His glory is the glory of self-giving and not the glory of self-centredness. 

How can this be?  Our God is trinity.  He is One and Three.  God's One-ness and Three-ness are not un-coordinated perspectives.  Rather the Oneness of God simply is the communion of these concrete and particular Persons.  To approach God's oneness in this way guards against many errors and brings many benefits.

Of course this christocentric, trinitarian approach is not a New Testament novelty.  Christ has always been the object of faith and hope for Old Testament believers.  Revelation has always been on a trinitarian dynamic.  The Hebrew Scriptures themselves give us a trinitarian witness on their own terms and in their own context. 

From this it becomes obvious that there are no true understandings of God that are not Christ-centred, trinitarian revelations.  Neither reason, nor creation, nor religion (be it biblical or unbiblical) can offer us stepping stones towards true knowledge.  We either begin with the Christ, the Son of God or we don't begin at all.  Yet from Christ we can reason truly and understand the wealth of God's revelation in all the universe.  This is faith seeking understanding and is the proper method for all enquiry.

All of this is to say that the God with Whom we have to deal is never an abstract deity but always the very concrete Jesus with His Father and Spirit - He is always and at all times irreducibly the God of the Gospel.  And His being is unfolded and expressed precisely in the gospel economy.

From the Father has come His Son to lay hold of our humanity in incarnation, and to die our death in crucifixion.  This has always been the way of the LORD.  He rose again as Head over creation and ascended to the Father's right hand in glory. 

Humanity is not free to choose participation in this life.  Rather we are freed by the Son to enjoy His status.  We find ourselves as those already embraced by this triune God.  We find ourselves participating in this divine nature - loved with the eternal love of the trinity.  

Faith is not a thing we contribute to this salvation. It is a looking unto Jesus - the very opposite of self-regard. 

In this we find our identity - not in personality types but in Jesus.  We find our assurance - not in personal piety but in our perfect Priest.  We find our encouragement - far above and beyond ourselves, in Christ who is our righteousness. Since this is so, sinning really isn't the worst thing - refusing His forgiveness is.   We respond to sin by looking away from self to our Champion.  This is not cheap grace, but the true grace of God. 

Such a gospel overflows in our hearts with singing.  And with proclamation - we believe therefore we speak.  Preaching is basically the heralding of our Champion's victory.  This proclamation is itself the Word of God.   And it is our sole task as we await the return of Jesus - not the moral, social or political reformation of society (or even ourselves), but the proclamation of King Jesus.  And its point (it's application if you will) is not moralism but always to look to Him.

That's basically what I'm on about. 

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Published on Leave a comment on Letter to a loser

You've gotta read this!

...Ted [Haggard], gentle readers, is now living proof that “it” doesn’t work the way “it” is supposed to work. Ted is now a living demonstration that, darn it, we aren’t fixable. A good church with a kickin’ band? Great shoes and suits? Sermons researched by assistants and delivered with the proper film clips and jokes? Nope. Tear filled illustrations? Prayer groups? Sermon series on mp3? Book? Seventeen verses of the latest “I love you Jesus” song? A big smile?

All worthless for real sinners like Ted and yours truly.

No Ted, it’s resurrection or nothing. It’s Jesus does the whole deal or there is no deal.

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Read the whole thing.

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Published on Leave a comment on Why the West needs winning.

Thinking about the last post...

Why does Matthew Parris see God as the hope for Africa but not for Europe?

Well his diagnosis of Africa's problems boils down to this: too much crushing passivity and collectivism.  And so...

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

While he makes excellent points about the need for Christian evangelism in Africa, we must ask: Is Africa the only place that needs 'liberation'?   Surely to avoid an awful colonial condescension, we'd want to answer no!  But the alternative is to say that the Christian God needs to liberate both the African animist and the Western atheist.  Wouldn't it?  But Parris is a western atheist.  So what's going on?

Effectively Parris wants Christianity to convert Africa to the Enlightenment!  You see Parris has his own gospel of fearless individualism that will transform Africa's fear-bound collectivism.  The great trouble for Parris (and for all secularists) is that he has no basis for bringing this philosophy to Africa.  He's not allowed to proselytise.  The very autonomy that he prizes is incapable of crossing cultures.  How can the individualist enforce individualism?  Simply modelling it will not be enough as he himself admits.  The group-think, the tribalism, the spiritual bondage to fear is too great.  So what does he need?  He needs a stronger spiritual power that can proclaim freedom for the captives.  But what he also needs (yet doesn't own up to) is the warrant to cross cultures with such universal truth claims. 

He's wants to piggy-back on Christian evangelism to bring one aspect of the gospel's fruit to Africa.  This really shouldn't surprise us.  The Enlightenment itself had to come via this route.  It didn't have the power of its own rational cogency to birth itself!  It flowed out of a distorted Christian gospel, and could only have done so. 

You see, Parris's fearless individualism based on unmediated access to God isn't the Christian gospel.   What's it missing?  Well, notably - the Mediator and the community - Christ and His church.

Why has Parris missed such obvious elements of the gospel?  Because this is precisely what the west collectively misses.  If Africa's problem is 'fear-bound collectivism' who could deny that the west has an equally dire problem: 'me-first individualism'?

And from this problem the west, equally, needs liberation.  And for this problem there is only one solution - the Christian Gospel.

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Published on Leave a comment on We’ll always have Parris

It's been a busy week.  I've only just read this from the the Saturday papers and now realise it's all over the blogosphere anyway - nonetheless...

Whenever evangelicals lose their nerve, Matthew Parris (columnist for the Times) can be counted on to set us straight - atheist though he is.

There was this famous piece in 2003, declaring that Evangelical Anglicans were right to oppose gay bishops.

As it happens I do not believe in the mind of God. But Christians do and must strive to know more of it. Nothing they read in the Old and New Testaments gives a scintilla of support to the view that the God of Israel was an inclusive God, or inclined to go with the grain of human nature; much they read suggests a righteous going against the grain...

Revelation, therefore, not logic, must lie at the core of the Church’s message. You cannot pick and choose from revealed truth.

Or there was this brilliant aside here when comparing climate change advocates with Christians:

British ministers talk about climate change in the way many Christians talk about their faith. If they believed only half of what they profess, then the knowledge would surely have galvanised them, shaken them rigid; they would be grabbing us by our lapels and begging us, imploring us, commanding us, to repent.

But his Saturday piece on Christian evangelism as the hope for Africa was just excellent:

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good...

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

 

Of course in among all those "M" words there's a glaring omission - but the point is well made no?

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Published on Leave a comment on We'll always have Parris

It's been a busy week.  I've only just read this from the the Saturday papers and now realise it's all over the blogosphere anyway - nonetheless...

Whenever evangelicals lose their nerve, Matthew Parris (columnist for the Times) can be counted on to set us straight - atheist though he is.

There was this famous piece in 2003, declaring that Evangelical Anglicans were right to oppose gay bishops.

As it happens I do not believe in the mind of God. But Christians do and must strive to know more of it. Nothing they read in the Old and New Testaments gives a scintilla of support to the view that the God of Israel was an inclusive God, or inclined to go with the grain of human nature; much they read suggests a righteous going against the grain...

Revelation, therefore, not logic, must lie at the core of the Church’s message. You cannot pick and choose from revealed truth.

Or there was this brilliant aside here when comparing climate change advocates with Christians:

British ministers talk about climate change in the way many Christians talk about their faith. If they believed only half of what they profess, then the knowledge would surely have galvanised them, shaken them rigid; they would be grabbing us by our lapels and begging us, imploring us, commanding us, to repent.

But his Saturday piece on Christian evangelism as the hope for Africa was just excellent:

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good...

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

 

Of course in among all those "M" words there's a glaring omission - but the point is well made no?

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Published on Leave a comment on David and Goliath sermons

david-and-goliath-2

source

Preached on 1 Samuel 17 twice today.  I tried to make them fairly different (for all the twicers).

The morning was a more detailed look at the text (audio).

The evening was a bit more drawing out some implications (audio).

A lot of this first saw light of day in this series: Five Smooth Stones.

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6

Published on 6 Comments on Incarnation and salvation

ok the Christmas clock is against me.

So let me just say that for all the talk about incarnation manifesting the triune glory and incarnation giving coherence and consummation to creation, the biblical emphasis falls overwhelmingly on salvation as the reason for incarnation.  (Though of course the interconnectedness of God's outgoing being, creation and salvation ought to give us much to chew on!)

But let's realize that Jesus comes as Saviour.  And Saviour from sin.

John 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. 

1 Timothy 1:15 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the worst.

 1 John 3:8 The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work.

How's it all work?  Well due to time constraints, let me simply link to a sermon I preached last year from Hebrews 2.  Audio here. 

Christ as the Seed of Abraham (singular) lays hold of us, the seed of Abraham, (plural).  He sums us up so as to be our substitutionary Lamb and merciful High Priest.  He lives our life, dies our death and now presents us to the Father in Himself.  Therefore...

"As you look into the manger this Christmas, look with irrepressible hope.  There, in the face of Christ, you see not only the Father's self-giving love.  There also you see yourself.  There in the manger is your humanity laid hold of by Immanuel.  There is your life, hidden with Christ.  And His victory is your victory, His future is your future, His righteousness is your righteousness, His joy is your joy.  God has gotten hold of you, permanently, irreversibly.  Christmas guarantees it."

I wish you all God's blessings in His Son.  Rejoice that they flow to you because today He became our Brother.  Happy Christmas.

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6

Published on 6 Comments on Incarnation and Creation

Yesterday we looked at incarnation and trinity.  Today I'll just make some observations about incarnation and creation.

Christ is "The Beginning", "The Alpha", "The First".  His Person is itself the basis for creation.  He is the One who is eternally Other from the Father and the foundation for all else that is other than Him.  Because of Him, through Him and for Him flows a creation. 

Christ is by nature and eternally from the Father in the Spirit. 

Creation is by grace and in time from the Father through the Son and in the Spirit. 

This shows us

a) the spreading goodness of the triune God, Whose being is outwardly curved.  Creation is not necessary to God.  But God's being, like a fountain, by nature overflows.  It is a being going out towards the other.

b) creation is not a free floating reality but something beginning in the Son, crafted by Him, cohering in Him and headed towards Him as His inheritance.  While God's being reaches out towards the other it is simultaneously a being that draws the other in bonds of love. 

These twin tendencies - the going out and the drawing in - find fulfilment in creation and incarnation.

Let's think about Genesis 1.  The heavens (masculine) and the earth (feminine) - like head and body, husband and wife - set the scene for this theatre of God's glory.  And centre stage is man - Adam made from the Adamah (the ground).  He is not spoken into being.  This man of dust (Gen 2:7) is made of the very stuff of the earth - drawn up, pinched off like clay and breathed into.  The earth-man is strongly united to the earth over which he is placed as head. 

Adam means 

a) that particular bloke;

b) 'a man' (a true human being) and

c) 'humanity' (as a whole).   

This central actor - man - is king.  He is God's ruler, through whom He exercises dominion.  From the outset God's rule is a mediated rule - through man.

Now when man is disobedient you may have thought that God would renege on His determination to rule through man.  But no.  He takes this mediation through man very seriously.  It is because of the cosmic kingship of man that man's fall entails the fall of all creation.  The ground (adamah) is cursed because of man (adam).  Man remains king.  But while man is perverse, so is his world.

But all of this looks towards the Man of Heaven (1 Cor 15:47-49).  Flesh and blood could never inherit the kingdom of God.  Men of dust were never the intention.  The intention was always the union of heavenly Man and earthly man.  The intention was always for the Logos to take this flesh and as Man to rule as God's true king.  This rule was not to be a divine rule over and against man.  It was to be a heavenly rule in and through man.

And so came the eschatological Adam (1 Cor 15:45).  He is

a) that particular bloke, Jesus;

b) 'a man' (a true human being) and

c) 'humanity' (an eschatological humanity to answer Adam's)

He sums up the man of dust, his being and life.  He retraces the steps of his disobedience and hammers out instead a being and life of perfect faithfulness.  And then, exalted as the pinnacle of all creation, this eschatological Adam is lifted up between heaven and earth - absorbing the curse of both and reconciling one to the other.  As Priest He ministers by the Spirit, offering to God the true worship of earth (Heb 9:14).  As Lamb He receives the curse of God on behalf of man (Gal 3:13).  As King, He reigns from the tree, manifesting God's righteous rule to the ends of the earth.

Ascending as Priest, Lamb and King to the Father's right hand, Jesus has lead captives in His train and sat down as Head over all things for the church.  The True Man, our Brother, sits in heaven as ruler of earth, not over against earth.  Rather, having taken Adam (and in him, adamah!) to Himself, He rules as and for man for all eternity.  When the heavenly Husband (masculine) moves house with His Father to earth (feminine) there will be the Marriage to end all marriages.  The manifested union of Bridegroom and bride will be at the same time the manifested union of heaven and earth.  Christ and creation will be consummated that day.

As Alpha, Christ has crafted a creation and granted it a gracious otherness.

As Omega, He has entered in and drawn back that creation to a gracious oneness.  

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7

Published on 7 Comments on Incarnation and trinity

Here's the first of three sketches of posts:

Incarnation and trinity

Incarnation and creation

Incarnation and salvation.

I'll try to be brief.

Have you ever heard the history of trinitarian thought taught like this:

Once upon a time everyone was a strict monotheist.  And then the incarnation happened.  And it messed with our heads for the first 4 centuries of the church.  But eventually, through some philosophical sleights of hand, we managed to slip Jesus into our assumed monotheism.  Phew. 

Ok that's a bit of an exaggeration.  But perhaps you'll recognize that order of explanation - i.e. the incarnation forces us to do trinitarian theology.

Now - as you'll probably know - I firmly believe that Christ is the foundation for all knowledge of God.  Christ, as He introduces us to His Father and Spirit, is indeed the starting point for trinitarian theology.  But - as you'll also probably know - I think Christ is revealed long before the incarnation!   And therefore it is not 'incarnation' that makes us think 'trinity'.  It's 'trinity, revealed in the eternal Son' that then helps us think through 'incarnation.'

And here's the pay off:  Attributing divine honours to the One Sent from God is not a New Testament novelty.  To give one example - Christ appears often in the OT as the Angel of the LORD.  As such He is One in Whom God's Name dwells (Ex 23:20ff), One Who is Himself called LORD (everywhere!) and Who, as God of Abraham, is the Object of prayer and Source of blessing (Gen 48:15,16).  A proper Hebrew doctrine of God is already comfortable with the One Sent from God being distinct from God and yet Himself God. 

Now fast forward to the New Testament and let's confront those questions that the incarnation naturally throws up:

  • Why doesn’t Jesus just say ‘I am God’?  Why all this ‘I am sent…’ stuff?
  • Why does Jesus keep saying things like: ‘I can do nothing by myself’? (e.g John 5:19,30)
  • How come Jesus sleeps?
  • How come Jesus doesn’t know when He’s returning?

Typically such questions make people question His divinity.  'How can He be other than God and yet be God?  How can He be divine when He defines Himself as the ultimate servant?'  Yet if we'd properly understood the OT doctrine of God, such considerations might well make us affirm His divinity!

You see it's a revelation of His divine nature (and not a concealment) that we see in Jesus such dependence on the Father.  When He says ‘I am sent’ it reveals His divine nature as the eternal Son of the Father - THE Angel.  When He says ‘I can do nothing’ it reveals His divine nature as the eternal Servant of the LORD.  When He sleeps it reveals His divine nature as One dependent upon the ever-wakeful Father.  When He says He doesn’t know when He’s returning He reveals His divine nature as One sent from God.  He waits on the Father’s command and does not initiate His first or second coming.

All of this means we can take His humanity with the utmost seriousness.  He really can’t do anything by Himself.  He really does sleep (He really does die even!)  He really doesn’t know when He’s returning.  He says He doesn't, let's just go with the Word on this one.

We don’t need to assign these differences in Jesus to some ‘human nature’ locked off from a special sphere of uncorrupted deity.  Jesus’ deity is not insulated from these differences, it includes them.  It is the Man Jesus who says ‘If you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father.’  It is the Man Jesus who says ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’  In His differences, in His complete humanity, He is the living God. 

So for all of this He is no less divine.   In fact all this is the very expression of His triune Godness - a Godness that has always included distinction and servitude.  Jesus is God precisely because He is the Spirit Anointed Servant of the LORD - in other words, the Christ, the Son of God.  This divinity is not at odds with His humanity but fully expressed within it.  (For more on this see Nicea comes before Chalcedon.)

In this way the incarnation is not a departure or a nuance but a true expression of God's nature.

And this is where I'd like to end for now - to see Jesus of Nazareth is to see into the deepest depths of the divine life.  Jesus is not like diluted orange squash - His humanity watering down a divinity that would otherwise be too strong for us.  The Man Jesus reveals the eternal life of God at full strength and in its true nature.  Because the life of God is a life of Offer and Receipt, Command and Obedience.  It has ever been outwardly curved.  It has ever been a being towards incarnation.

Christmas is not our best shot at getting an angle on God.  Christmas is looking into the manger and staring the trinitarian God full in the face.

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