glenscriv – Page 78 – Christ the Truth

For God’s Sake Don’t Grow Up For God’s Sake 4

glenscrivJanuary 17, 20114 Comments

For God's Sake Grow Up For Your Neighbour's Sake

This is just a reflection on that saying of Luther's: "God doesn't need your good works. Your neighbour does."

And Dave K's observation that, post-resurrection, no-one summarizes the law with "love God and love neighbour" but only with "love neighbour".

A friend recently told me of some "higher life" Christians he met who would chant together:

I refuse, I refuse, I refuse to come down from heaven to deal with earthly realities.

They were horrible people to be around. Their marriages were a mess. And it was impossible to get at their sins because they were supposedly "hidden" from it all at God's right hand.

Well you do have to admire their sense of unbreakable union with Christ. I will give them that.

But you've also got to question the kind of Christ they feel united to.

Isn't the true Jesus exactly the kind of Person who does come down from heaven to deal with earthly realities? Isn't that His eternal glory? And therefore, doesn't Paul constantly take us from that secure union and then into those battles with the flesh?

Never for the sake of our union. But always from that union and in the power of it. How can union with this Christ mean anything else?

Jesus said: "For their sake I sanctify myself." (John 17:19).

Our response should not be "And likewise, Lord, for your sake I sanctify myself." No.

But there is a response to Christ's work. And it does involve our sanctification. We pass it on in costly ways - just as Jesus passed it on to us in the most costly way.

We do engage with the mess, not for God's sake but for our neighbour's. Jesus doesn't need my sanctification, but my wife does. Desperately. And the way I glorify the other-centred Christ is not to pay Him back with godliness but to pass it on in sacrificial love. "Hidden in Christ" does not mean hidden from the battle. Christ leads me into the battle because He's adopted me into His kind of other-centred life.

So, for God's sake, don't grow up for God's sake
But, for God's sake, do grow up for your neighbour's sake.

“The delay of the parousia” 4

glenscrivJanuary 14, 20114 Comments

The myth of the ‘delay of the parousia’ has largely grown up in the modern world to fill the vacuum left when scholars insisted that the resurrection didn’t happen. For the early Christians, God’s new world – the world where God’s writ runs – had already begun, and they were living in it by the power of the Spirit. (NT Wright, here)

God is not triune – the Devil’s great lie. Part 3 53

glenscrivJanuary 12, 201153 Comments

This is the third of a three part article by Rich Owen,
minister at City Evangelical Church, Leeds.

In the first post, we saw how the creation was a magnificent preach. It’s pinnacle moment was in the creation of a uniquely vivid image and witness to the Divine Life, Man and Woman. A loving community of persons, ordered, relational, loving and *echad* in union.

Then we saw how Satan moved in to destroy that witness. His plan to seize power was to break this image. Corrupt the Doctrine of God and it all falls down into his greedy hands.

So today we will reflect on this: The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devils work.

Jesus is the dazzling, glorious and eternal image of the Invisible God. He is the Lord, the Living Word, the eternal expression of the Father, the Anointed One. So how does he pulverise Satan’s head?

The Angel of the Lord who ascends and descends in heaven’s fire, the Living Rock upon whom and in whom all creation holds together, this time descends as baby.

He sums up the human race into himself, assuming, owning, taking responsibility for humanity’s sinful self-love. He came from the Father’s side and became incarnate of the virgin Mary, fully divine, fully human so that as an Adam, He could live a human life from beginning to end in total devotion to his Father and in totally ecstatic (that is, out from Himself) love, a love for the poisoned race of Adam.

Satan even presented him with his master plan. Do what Adam did. Take your lead from another, one who is not your head… me. Take my lead and serve yourself. Become like me, a needy monad. A power hungry, glory seeking parasite and give yourself what YOU want.

But He destroyed the Devils work. He continued to love, He continued to do his Father’s will. He continued to pour himself out even to death, delighting even in that moment in his Father and with joy in His great heart as He considered His eternal inheritance! A Bride. A new Eve!

He wasn’t going to betray who He is. After His resurrection, He carried on. At His Father’s command, He breathed out His Spirit onto the old Adam so that it could be joined to the new. The loving Two sent out the Third. And they gave out the Third. The Living God went forth and multiplied!

The Father gives us the Son. The Son gives us the Father. The Father and the Son give us the Spirit and the Spirit gives us to the Father, in the Son.

He set His love upon the unlovely, so that the unlovely could be made lovely in Him.

So lets draw some points for rumination:

The Trinity is the gospel. God’s triune life is good news for a monadic, image-of-Satan world.
The life of God is love - other centred, generously giving love
Satan wants you to believe God is not loving, and not Triune. That’s all.

So perhaps you might want to ruminate in the following direction. Knowing is not enough. Live it:

Are you Trinitarian? I don’t mean in theory, but in practice. Do you read, preach and speak as a Trinitarian? Reading the OT as a Trinitarian will minister to your soul and give such freshness and light to your study as you never had before. Remember – God didn’t suddenly declare his Trinitarian nature 2000 years ago in Bethlehem. He declared it when He spoke in Genesis 1.
Do you give yourself in love to others? If you are married do you serve, love and cherish, *know* and delight in your spouse? Whether married or not, do you give yourself to those who are not like you – in church and where you live and work? Do you go out of yourself, seeking to beatify and serve the really nasty people? The “chavs”, the office weirdo? Do you do the unglamorous jobs at church *because* there is no glory for *you* – putting the chairs out, washing the cups, cleaning the loos?

Know and live the Trinitarian life. Image Him – be who you ARE.

God is not triune – the Devil’s great lie. Part 2 1

glenscrivJanuary 11, 20111 Comment

This is the second of a three part article by Rich Owen,
minister at City Evangelical Church, Leeds.

Since their arrival, what has humanity only ever experienced from God? Love! Generous, outward focused, other centred, creative love

Their great commission – “from your oneness you must create, love, cherish send out more and look after it, look after all this garden. Do you best for it so that all of the life you give and the love you have is like mine for you. You are my image. Just don’t eat from that tree over there, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

And so Satan makes his move on Eve and Adam. Not Adam and Eve, Eve and Adam. This is part of Satan’s plan to corrupt the image, to pervert the world’s view of God away from how He really is.

Jesus says that He does His Father’s will. Not the other way round. The Father wills, the Son does. The Father speaks out his Word. The Word is from the Father’s side. Not the other way round. In other words, the Father is the head of the Son.

And so Satan’s plan to corrupt the image begins. He is so crafty, so skilled at this. There are so many layers of evil to this terrible moment in history. Can he get the image of the Son to command the image of the Father? Can he trick Eve into being the head of Adam?

The insipid corruption of God’s image and witness is looming. Headship and order were being threatened. But it’s not happened yet. This isn’t the seat of corruption, just a fruit which comes later.

Here is the seat of corruption. Eve sees that this fruit is *desirable* for gaining wisdom. There is a *desire* which rises in her which is not for Adam and not for the Lord God. The desire was to gain wisdom for herself.

A new love, a new desire had entered. It was a perverted love… an inverted love. It went against the flow. It was not outward but inward. It was unnatural and ungodly. The corruption began. Satan was achieving what he set out to do. He sparked in Eve an new love, a wicked invader.

The image was now self loving, self obsessed and so she threw off her role, gave the fruit to Adam and he too acceded. An ungodly love lead to an ungodly action. The corruption was complete.

Eve, and her husband after her, set their desires and affections onto something which was entirely outside this created order and image. Sin had entered and ravaged the great image and witness to the loving, creating and ordered community of Three Divine Persons.

As soon as their love went in instead of out, they felt shame. They hid from the Word of Lord.

Just meditate on the shattering moment. They hid from the Word of the Lord.

The world now had a witness which was self loving, not other loving, a witness which has no concern for order and headship – in other words, an independent monadic witness. The world now had a witness which went solitary and which removed itself from The Divine Life. Satan introduced unitarianism to the world.

And the consequences flowed.

Adam *blamed* Eve. Prior to this Adam only ever *knew* Eve. He loved, nurtured, served, lead and rejoiced in Eve knowing her intimately through sexual union. But now he blamed her. He *accused* her. He now bore the image of an accuser, not of the Living God. Adam on his own looked like Satan now.

This is the great crime of the fall. A massive corruption of the Doctrine of God. A Satanic collapse.

So do we see what it is that Satan does?

He leads people to loves and desires which are inward in focus. He wants to draw your affections away from the Triune God and to self satisfaction, self gratification. Self love. He wants you to think of yourself as an island – solitary and your own source of order.

Why? Because he hates God.

Satan wants to corrupt your view of God. That is all. Once he does that, he has you. You are now his child, you bear his image, you live his life.

More tomorrow...

God is not triune – the Devil’s great lie. Part 1 2

glenscrivJanuary 10, 20112 Comments

This is the first of a three part article by Rich Owen,
minister at City Evangelical Church, Leeds.

Why is it that the Devil attacks Christian marriage? Well, it’s the same reason that he is the head of the Unitarian Church. The Devil wants the world to believe that God is not Triune. That is pretty much what his work boils down to. That is why he attacks marriage in the church, that is why he seeks to build a unitarian edifice within the Christian church.

Give them the wrong view of god, and they get me – that’s how Satan is seeking to win the world to himself.

Over the next three days, I’ll give a few thoughts on this. We’ll lay a foundation for truth starting with the genesis of love, then secondly, how Satan seeks to undermine this in the genesis of the lie and thirdly some reflections and pastoral musings.

So lets kick off with what happened back in the Garden in Genesis 1-3.

In chapters 1 and 2, we have the glorious description of the creation of mankind, male and female, the image of the Living God. So first comes the man. He is placed by the Lord God in the garden that God had personally planted. A garden appealing to the eye and good for food. What a great place to be!

But it wasn’t good.

It is not good for man to be alone. He can’t image the Living God on his own. He can’t work in the garden on his own. So the Lord God took woman from the man’s side just as the Son comes from the Fathers side so that the image would be true.

The man says “this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”. Or to paraphrase, the woman is the same as me – she is just like me – of one being and substance because she comes from my side, in the likeness of my Father and his Son.

And how is this likeness expressed? For this reason and man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh. Different and distinct persons, equally human – of the same stuff - and God says for this reason, one flesh. And the oneness is expressed in the deepest emotional, relational and physical reality that you can have – sexual union.

The majestic union of flesh – a profound joining of the persons as one – echad just as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are echad.

Adam and Eve are then immediately charged with their task. Procreate! Bring forth a third! Let this love and unity send out another, just as the Father and Son send the Spirit.

The love between man and woman isn’t a sugar-coated, “get a room” kind of love which is shut off to the outside world. No, their outward focused love keeps flowing out and onto a third. Out of their union comes the offspring, the third person.

Only AFTER the charge to procreate are they then tasked with subduing and ruling. The out-flowing, increasing love of man and woman and their offspring gives birth to dominion. Dominion is a function of love and is a community activity.

But before they go off to work, the Lord God has one more thing left to do. Day seven, the holy day, the day which is set apart for rest.

Are we to imagine after all this that God intended to spend this rest day on His own? I don’t think so.

The Word of the Lord takes a brisk walk in the cool of the day, looking for his beloved image bearers. That seems to be natural to the out flowing, other centred life which the creation story has already spoken of. Jesus says come to me and I will give you rest. Rest is relational.

The One who speaks out the Word, this Personal Word Himself and the Brooding Spirit want to spend time fellowshipping with the created image, man and woman and they deliberately set a day apart to do this.

I get lost in a haze of wonder at this thought. Imagine the joy! What did they talk about? What was it like? What fellowship! What love! And what a venue!

But this is the context for chapter 3. This is the world which was very good, the life which was very good. It is into this world and this life of fellowship that the serpent slithers in. “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

More tomorrow...

God and ‘the Good’ by Paul Blackham 5

glenscrivJanuary 8, 20115 Comments

From Paul's brilliant Frameworks papers. Check them all out here:

Let’s begin with the question in the form that Socrates asked it in Plato’s Euthyphro.

The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.

Forgetting these pagan gods, we ask of the One Living God, do the Father, Son and Holy Spirit love goodness because it is intrinsically good… or is it that whatever they love is defined as good because they love it?

Do they define goodness or justice or truth or mercy or love… or are they defined by universal concepts of goodness, justice, truth, mercy and love?

Many people, at first, think that the Trinity love goodness because it is good. However, where did that definition of goodness come from if even the Father, Son and Holy Spirit follow it? It sounds as if there is a definition of goodness that ‘exists’ before and above the Living God! All qualities or ‘universals’ would then exist prior to [in a logical sense] the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We would need to first determine these ‘universals’ if we were going to get an accurate idea of the Trinity.

If we thought about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in this way, then we would have to find out which of these universals apply to the Divine Three. We would build up a ‘jigsaw’ picture of God by finding out which of all these ‘universals’ fit the Living God. God would then seem to be a collection of qualities or attributes.

This is not a solution that seems to do justice to the utter freedom and sovereignty and glory of the Trinity as revealed in the Bible.

Robert Reymond says that this makes God look like a pincushion full of pins. God would be a sort of cosmic bag full of eternal qualities!

How can the Father, Son and Holy Spirit be defined by these other things?

How can anything stand over or define the Living God?

How can the Living God be described as a collection of attributes? ...continue reading "God and ‘the Good’ by Paul Blackham"

Spurgeon on “My sister, my spouse” 2

glenscrivJanuary 7, 20112 Comments

From today's evening and morning (ht Paul Blackham):

“My sister, my spouse.”

— Song of Solomon 4:12

Observe the sweet titles with which the heavenly Solomon with intense affection addresses his bride the church. “My sister, one near to me by ties of nature, partaker of the same sympathies. My spouse, nearest and dearest, united to me by the tenderest bands of love; my sweet companion, part of my own self. My sister, by my Incarnation, which makes me bone of thy bone and flesh of thy flesh; my spouse, by heavenly betrothal, in which I have espoused thee unto myself in righteousness. My sister, whom I knew of old, and over whom I watched from her earliest infancy; my spouse, taken from among the daughters, embraced by arms of love, and affianced unto me for ever. See how true it is that our royal Kinsman is not ashamed of us, for he dwells with manifest delight upon this two-fold relationship. We have the word “my” twice in our version; as if Christ dwelt with rapture on his possession of his Church. “His delights were with the sons of men,” because those sons of men were his own chosen ones. He, the Shepherd, sought the sheep, because they were his sheep; he has gone about “to seek and to save that which was lost,” because that which was lost was his long before it was lost to itself or lost to him. The church is the exclusive portion of her Lord; none else may claim a partnership, or pretend to share her love. Jesus, thy church delights to have it so! Let every believing soul drink solace out of these wells. Soul! Christ is near to thee in ties of relationship; Christ is dear to thee in bonds of marriage union, and thou art dear to him; behold he grasps both of thy hands with both his own, saying, “My sister, my spouse.” Mark the two sacred holdfasts by which thy Lord gets such a double hold of thee that he neither can nor will ever let thee go. Be not, O beloved, slow to return the hallowed flame of his love.

“Son of mud” a sonnet

glenscrivJanuary 7, 2011Leave a comment

Over at King's English Michael Mates has written a wonderful sonnet in response to this post.

Son of mud
And other crud
Lift up your eyes
For you shall rise.

Conceived in dirt,
Be bold to flirt
With Light who woos
What once was ooze.

Man of dust,
It’s time to trust
Your Maker’s thumb
And, soft, succumb.

Let Him weep for you today,
For wetted dust is yielding clay.