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Author: glenscriv

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 Sinning really isn’t the worst thing

Oh it's bad.  It's very bad.  It's murdering your Maker.  It's cheating on your Lover.  It's grieving His Spirit.  It's tearing apart your soul.  It's bad.  Bad, bad, bad.

But not receiving forgiveness is far worse.  Failure to accept the grace of Jesus dwarfs all other sins in its monstrosity.  To refuse the vulnerable humility of God; to trample on the Lamb and blaspheme His Spirit as they offer blood-bought mercy and cleansing - this is unspeakable evil.  It's the reason people perish eternally.

Don't believe me?  1 Thessalonians 2:10:

They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.

Those in hell are there for refusal to love the life-saving truth of the gospel.  To sin is one thing.  To refuse forgiveness is itself unforgivable.

Now we know this on a macro level.  We know that eternity does not depend on minimizing sin.  It depends on receiving forgiveness.  We believe it for that Day, but do we believe it this day?  Do I live today as though sinning (or not sinning) is the ultimate spiritual barometer?  Or is my spiritual barometer daily calibrated to the forgiveness of Christ?

Here's how I naturally assess my Christian walk.  I rate my 'performance' largely by how much distance I've managed to put between me and my last 'big sin.'  (Of course it's 'big sins' I'm interested in, if I worried about the little ones my holy-count would never get off the ground).  When the number of 'sin-free' days hits double figures I'm doing great.  In fact, once I'm talking in weeks rather than days it rockets me into the righteousness stratosphere.  Best of all, it finally allows me to minister to people from the safe distance of 'All-figured-out-holiness.' 

Of course when I sin it sucks.  Why?  Because I'm back to zero.  My functional righteousness is caput and I'll have to endure the hassle of a 'holy' fortnight before I can feel good again.  If I minister to people it will have to be out of broken messiness and a dependence on the grace of Jesus.  Ewww.

Now that's a stark way of putting it.  But I don't think there is a nice way of portraying this mindset.  While ever we pursue the Christian life as though sinning is the worst thing and 'not sinning is the most important thing' then such a foul system will develop.   But it's to entirely forget the gospel. 

So friends, perhaps you've really blown it recently.  Praise God this could be the opportunity to realize your profound and continual need for the blood of Jesus.  Allow this to teach you the truth - the person you showed yourself to be in your sin is the person you have always been.  It springs from a heart full of evil which you will carry to the grave.  Your only hope lies far above and beyond yourself at God's Right Hand.  He is your profound and continual need.

Perhaps you blew it a while ago but you just can't seem to get beyond it.  Friend - the Word of God forbids you to take your sin more seriously than Christ's forgiveness.  Is your sin great?  Yes.  But is it greater than the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world?   Is it beyond the redeeming value of God's own blood (Acts 20:28).  I think your sin has met its match in Calvary's cleansing flow, don't you?

Perhaps you haven't blown it for a while now but you're realizing you operate according to a functional righteousness.  You hate sin only because it spoils your 'holy count'.  You're proud and graceless.  Well meditate on Philippians 3:1-11.  Know that such 'righteousness' is dung and reckon it all as loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ.  He alone is your life and peace.

Or perhaps you're a blogger who writes about grace.  You can dissect the sins of works-righteousness and see through latent Pharisaisms.  Well neither are you righteous for your pithy critiques of the flesh.  You haven't got it figured out.  If you know anything it's that you're ignorant.  If you have any strength it's only found in your helplessness.  There's no credit to your insight, there's only rest in His mercy.  You are nothing.  Jesus is everything.

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Published on Leave a comment on Where’s the turning point?

Where's the turning point in the parable of the two sons?  (Yes, that again).

Is it 'coming to himself' in the pig-sty?

pig-sty

If that's the turning point in the son's life, repentance will look like weighing things up and choosing obedience.

What's wrong with that?  Well for one it effectively makes the prodigal his own saviour. 

But aside from this.  Let's think about how this paradigm would affect our understanding of ongoing repentance. 

Basically, if repentance happens in the sty, when we sin we will think, 'Darn it, I've left the Father's house, I'm away from His love.  But now I need to clean up my act, prepare my repentance speech and return to His service.'

But is that really the turning point of the story?  I'm not talking in terms of literary devices. I'm asking the question, What is the point that determines the prodigal's fate?  What is the decisive moment for his life?  Is it 'coming to himself' in the sty?

No.  Of course not.  He could have devised the greatest repentance plan known to man and still been rightly shunned by his father.  The true turning point was the father's embrace.

 

prodigal-son

 

The real change in the prodigal - both his change of status and of heart - truly happens in the arms of the father.  That's where repentance occurs.

Imagine yourself in those arms.  You may have been sorry before, now you loathe youself.  Yet you cannot escape his love.  You had thought you stank in the sty.  Now you feel your stench to the core.  Yet you are held close.   You had composed a repentance speech.  Now your awareness of sin is overwhelming.  But you're enfolded in grace.

This is true repentance - that which occurs in the Father's embrace.  And this is where our ongoing repentance occurs. 

When we sin, do we consider ourselves to be in the pig sty - the long journey back home stretches ahead of us?  Or do we consider ourselves to be already in the Father's arms?  There's a big difference.

I remember speaking with a Christian man about his extra-marital affair from years earlier.  As he spoke about the pain of those memories I said to him "You realise that in the midst of the very worst of that, Jesus was rejoicing over you as a Bridegroom rejoices over His bride."  He paused for a long time and said "That makes it a hundred times worse!"  I said "Yes it does.  A thousand times worse."  We think that we manage to sin away in a corner somewhere.  No, no, no.  Just read 1 Corinthians 6:15-20 to see that we are very much united to Christ in our sin! 

We stink of pig in the Father's arms.  That's a thousand times worse than stinking in the sty.  But it's a million times better too. 

The point of our turning - and our life of turning and turning again to the Father - is in His unchanging embrace.  When you sin don't imagine yourself alone in the sty.  You are there in His arms - reeking and held fast.  It's a thousand times worse.  A million times better.

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Published on Leave a comment on Creation’s voice proclaims… what?

As we've been thinking about how to know God (and how not to) we're basically thinking about the subject of revelation.

It's common when speaking of revelation to treat two categories - general revelation (God made known through nature and conscience) and special revelation (usually meaning 'the bible').  Now of course such a distinction can be fruitfully and biblically made.  Psalm 19 for instance spends the first 6 verses describing the proclamation of the heavens but the last 8 verses speaking about 'the law/testimony/precepts/commandments of the LORD.'   And while creation's voice is not said to revive the soul - the bible does in fact give us life (v7ff).  And so, often, the difference between general and special revelation is imagined to be something like this...

gen-revelation-1

 

Such a presentation protects the fact that general revelation cannot save.  Well that's a good thing.  But here are four things that I think are really problematic with such a view:

1) It works off the assumption that salvation is a matter of accumulating stuff - in this case knowledge.  And it imagines that God works salvation by adding to our natural stash a supernatural donation and together it gets us over the line. 

I hope alarm bells are going off.  I mean let me just switch the terms from epistemology (knowledge of God) to soteriology (salvation by God).  As we've seen in previous posts, these are parallel concepts.  Hopefully you'll see the problem immediately...

gen-revelation-3

 

That's no way to conceive of salvation.  Not this side of the reformation anyway!  It's not a matter of God's grace bridging the gap between my good works and God's standard.  God's grace in Christ judges even my righteousness.  In fact - especially my righteousness.  You see, because salvation is a gift, any imagined journey towards salvation via works is proved to be completely backwards.  Only receiving in faith is the proper response to a gracious salvation.  Works don't advance me towards this salvation at all.  Now of course, at the same time there are such things as Christian good works.  Yet those works flow from faith and do not lead to faith.

In just the same way we mustn't think of general revelation (knowledge of God that which we piece together from observing nature) as advancing us towards the truth that is in Jesus.  By all means there is a Christian knowledge to be had in observing the creation.  But because of point 2 below, observing the creation does not by itself lead to Christian knowledge.  Rather from the knowledge we have in 'special revelation' we perceive the creation rightly.

In short - the problem with general revelation is not its lack of content in getting us over the line.  The problem is any idea of 'getting over the line' in the first place.  Knowledge, like salvation, must be received.  Where it is not received, attempts to grasp it don't just 'leave us short' they are travelling in entirely the wrong direction.

2) Let me re-assert my reformed credentials and drop some shibboleth terms like 'total depravity' and 'the noetic effects of sin.'  I believe in these.  More to the point, I think the bible teaches them:

 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God (Rom 8:7)

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Cor 4:4)

You... once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds (Col 1:21)

Straight after Paul tells us that "what may be known about God" has been made plain to all people through creation he says that men "suppress the truth." (Rom 1:18,19).  Humanity once knew God (aorist tense, v21) but something has happened.  Humankind "became futile in their thinking" (v21) - a reference, I believe, to the fall.  Our foolish hearts have been darkened and we have become fools (v21-22).  We have exchanged the truth for a lie (v25).   Our epistemological depravity is every bit as deep as our moral depravity - and in fact the two are inextricable.  Just as there is no-one righteous, not even one (Rom 3:10), so there is no-one who understands (Rom 3:11). 

In short - the reason general revelation doesn't save is not because its content is supposedly sub-Christian.  The problem is sin.  Humanity is blind to the bleeding obvious - ie Jesus is LORD.

3) I just don't see the bible teaching that the content of general revelation is sub-Christian.   In fact I see the opposite.  Psalm 19 tells us one prominent example of how the heavens proclaim the Glory of God (hint hint!).  Verse 5 goes into detail about the light of the world that is like a Bridegroom Champion (cf Psalm 45).  And Paul specifically calls this Scripture 'the word of Christ.' (Romans 10:17-18) 

We've already noted how Paul says "what may be known about God" is made plain in creation (Rom 1:19).  Do we really imagine that "what may be known about God" should be understood to be some minimal information about how big and clever the creator deity is?  Is that really "what may be known about God"??  Don't we know a wee tad more than that?

I believe Revelation 5:13 to be a present reality - all creation sings about the Lamb.

Colossian 1:23!  The gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven.  That statement makes perfect sense in the context of Colossians 1.  To say that creation preaches the gospel is simply what you'd expect if you take the previous 8 verses seriously!  Col 1:23 is no more hyperbole than Col 1:15-22!  The creation that was made by and for Christ and holds together in Him - that creation proclaims Him.  Of course it proclaims Him.  Who else is it going to speak about?

In short - I do not think the biblical evidence supports a 'sub-Christian' content for general revelation.  In fact I think the bible tells us that Jesus is being proclaimed in manifold ways, at all times and in all places. 

4) What kind of knowledge of God is there that's sub-Christian?  I just don't get it.  Are we to imagine that creation proclaims a basically unitarian creator deity - a kind of Allah-lite?  Please no!  And please don't tell me that this basically unitarian creator deity is a foundational revelation that can set me up for true knowledge of the Father, Son and Spirit! 

I remember speaking to a lecturer at bible college about these things.  Incredulously he spluttered out, "So you think that tree out the window is preaching Christ to you right now?!"  I'm sure I'm remembering my response with a few coats of gloss but I said something like: "Of course it's preaching Christ, who else would it speak about??"

Ok.  Enough ranting.

I can say all I want to say with the old hymn:

Jesus is LORD, creation's voice proclaims it.

The difference between the proclamation of creation and the proclamation of Scripture is not basically one of content (though obviously there are differences).  Both of them preach the triune God, Christ as Mediator, His life, death, resurrection, ascension, the church, etc, etc.  

Perhaps this diagram gets at what I'm trying to say.

gen-revelation-2 

The difference in size between the two boxes is immaterial.  (In some ways I could have drawn the General Revelation box bigger - after all, the data available in everything from the horsehead nebula to sub-atomic particles seriously outstrips the bible!).   But really the difference is in the way that true knowledge comes.  No-one becomes a Christian through creation because all are blinded in sin and no-one can earn knowledge of God.  Just like salvation, it must be received.  Which is why the gospel must be specially revealed.  But once it is, we are equipped (and more so as we study the Scriptures) to hear the profoundly Christian sermon of creation.

Sorry.  A lot of words to say not very much...

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Published on Leave a comment on Now that’s how to preach the Good Samaritan

We've talked about how Jesus is the Good Samaritan.  But seriously - this is how you preach it...

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5Mr4UUYetw&eurl=http://thefoolsgold.net/&feature=player_embedded]

ht Fools Gold

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I was like a wounded man

Jesus came all the way down.

On a Friday evening, He died on a Roman cross

Early one Sunday morning He got up

How many of you believe - He got up?

Thank You, for being a Good Samaritan

Thank You, You didn't have to do it

Thank You, for taking my feet out of the miry clay,

Thank You, for setting them on the rock

Thank you, for saving me,

Thank You, for binding up my wounds

Thank You, for healing my wounds

Thank You, for fighting my battles

Did He pick you up?

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Published on Leave a comment on You know it’s time to stop blogging when…

...in the same week you find out that both Ron Frost and now Paul Blackham have blogs!

Paul's is less a blog, more of a one man theological mega-resource. 

You will be introduced to his excellent 'Book by Book' bible studies.  These are ready-made resources (DVD and all) to be used individually or in groups.  The books covered thus far with DVDs are:   

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Psalms, John, Philippians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians.  Esther, 2 Corinthians and 2 Timothy are coming.

Watch sample episodes and read overviews...

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You can also read his articles on issues such as:

Did the NT writers misunderstand the OT

Explaining the Trinity

The Trinitarian God

The Life of Jesus

The Death of Jesus

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But perhaps my top recommendation of all - visit his Frameworks page where Paul is building up a doctrine course podcast by podcast.  I did Paul's Frameworks course about 8 years ago at All Souls Langham Place.  It remains hands down the most challenging, profound, heart-warming, life-changing and Christian theology I've ever been taught.  Everyone... Everyone... will be fed, challenged and equipped by listening to these.

So go to it...!

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Published on 3 Comments on Now that’s good sermon crit

From a Tim Keller sermon on 'the first shall be last':

There was once a young seminary graduate eager to preach his first sermon.  He ascended the pulpit steps, sure his great learning would amaze the simple lay folk.  Halfway through the sermon he realized he was making a hash of it.  First the congregation lost what he was saying, then he lost what he was saying.  At the end he climbed down from the pulpit crestfallen.  An old Christian woman met him at the end and said "If you'd have gone up the way you came down, you'd have come down the way you went up."

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Published on Leave a comment on Who’s the daddy?

Ok, no-one wants to touch Preaching Groups.  I respect that.

Let's return to the parables.

By now we know.  Jesus is the man who found treasure, the merchant looking for fine pearls and He's the good samaritan.  So now we turn to the most famous parable.

And what shall we call it?  The prodigal son?  Of course not, there are two sons.  Well then how about that for a title - the two sons?  Perhaps.  But are they really the focus?  Why not call it what Michael Ramsden tells us many oriental cultures call it: The parable of the running father.

Clearly it's the father who is the hero of the story.  Going out to meet the younger and then the older son, the father's deepest passion is to reconcile his estranged children to himself.

And both children definitely need to be reconciled.  The younger son may have asked for the inheritance but the older son also takes it when it's offered (Luke 15:12).  They've both taken the fruits of the death of their father and have spurned their filial relationship with him.

Physical distance and a slave relationship characterizes both sons, it's just more obvious with the prodigal.  The younger son puts a lot of distance between he and his father but the basis on which he returns is thoroughly calculating.  He plots to return as a hired hand and uses a form of repentance very reminiscent of Pharaoh's counterfeit repentance in Exodus 10:16.  Everything in the story up until the father's embrace shows that the prodigal prefers to be a slave at a distance than a son in the father's arms.

And that is just as true of the older son.  We find him out in the field, refusing to go in (physical distance).  And again, how does he perceive his relationship to his father?  "All these years I've been slaving for you." (v29)  Physical distance and a slave relationship mark both sons.  The only difference is how the two sons receive the approach of the father.  The one melts in the arms of his father, the other remains angry outside the house.

And now to turn to the title of this post: Who's the daddy?

Well, you've heard it preached numerous times I'm guessing.  What did the preacher say?  The father is God right?  I mean it's obvious isn't it?  We call God 'Father' and here's a story of a reconciling father - it must be God.

Well don't forget how Luke 15 begins.

Now the tax collectors and "sinners" were all gathering round to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them." 3 Then Jesus told them this parable...  (Luke 15:1-3)

The occasion for the three stories - lost sheep, lost coin, reconciling father - is the grumbling of the Pharisees.  Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them, and the religious complain about it.  So then Jesus tells a story about a man who welcomes a sinner, eats with him, and someone complains about it.  Well now - who is the younger son?  The sinners and tax collectors of course.  Who is the older son?  The Pharisees and teachers of the law of course.  And who is the father who eats with one and is complained to by the other?  Jesus of course.

Jesus is the father.  Plain and simple.  Jesus is the father.  Jesus is the good shepherd (v4-7), he's the good woman (v8-10), he's the good father (v11-32).  It just seems blindingly obvious don't you think?  And have we been confused on this simply because of the role 'father'?  Well Jesus casts himself as father even in the Gospels - 'Son, your sins are forgiven... Daughter, your faith has healed you.'  He has children (Is 8:18; 53:10; Heb 2:13; see also Luke 7:35).  If He can be a woman and even a mother hen, it's not at all inappropriate for Him to be pictured as father.

But perhaos there's this objection: Doesn't this rob us of the story's potential to reveal to us the Fatherhood of God.  Well no it shapes our understanding of it properly.  Surely we want to understand God the Father in God the Son.  And this parable helps us do that very well.  As we see Jesus running to the lost and eating with sinners we can hear Him saying "I do none of this by myself, I am doing only what I see My Father doing."  But the fact remains we see the Fatherhood of God in Jesus, who is the central character - portrayed as father.  The story is about Jesus - the Jesus who goes out to reconcile both the religious and the irreligious to bring them in.

Does this matter?  Well yes.  What if the story is spun in the usual manner - i.e. the father = God and those who come to their senses will get back into his good books?  Well if that's the story then we've just described Islam not the gospel. Kenneth Bailey puts the case for the Muslim interpretation like this (h/t Matt Finn)

“Their case can be stated thus: In this parable the Father obviously represents God while the younger son represents humankind. The son leaves home, gets into trouble and finally decides to return to his Father. He “yistaghfir Allah” (he seeks the forgiveness of God). On arrival the Father welcomes the son and thus demonstrates that he, the father, is “rahman wa rahim” (merciful and compassionate). There is no cross and no incarnation, no “son of God” and “no saviour”, no “word that becomes flesh” and no “way of salvation”, no death and no resurrection, no mediator and no mediation. The son needs no help to return home. The result is obvious. Jesus is a good Muslim who in this parable affirms Muslim theology. The heart of the Christian faith is thus denied by the very prophet Christianity claims to follow. Islam with neither a cross nor a saviour preserves the true message of the prophet Jesus”.

The Cross and the Prodigal, Kenneth Bailey, p15

But no, Jesus is at the very centre of this drama.  And His reconciliation is unlike anything Allah could or would offer.  He goes out, He bears the shame, He pleads, He appears weak and He celebrates sinners.  This is not prompted by the sinner's repentance, which was calculating at best, but by His own reconciling love.  Take this together with the other two stories which form a single 'parable' according to verse 3 and what do you have?  You have (as Barth put it) the father going into the far country to hoist the lost onto his shoulders and bring them home.  Luke 15 is no Christ-less, cross-less forgiveness tale.  Christ and His cross is the heart of it all.

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Matt's posts on the parable are great.

Michael Ramsden's sermon is extraordinary preaching (though, if I'm picky, a bit vague on the point at issue here)

Keller's sermon is wonderful (though, again, not as straightforward on this point as I'd like).

Here's my attempt at a Luke 15 sermon

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA0-syI-rE0?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent]

Audio Download

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Published on Leave a comment on He saved my life and I don’t even know his name

Anyone else sick of the whole 'Christ in the OT' debate?  Man... some people just go on and on.

I'm announcing a new hobby horse - Christ in the NT.  In fact I think this is where you really see a preacher's Christ-centredness.  We've had the rule drummed into us by now - Thou shalt 'bridge to Christ' at the end of an Old Testament sermon.  But does this 'bridge' come from convictions regarding Jesus the Word or is it simply a preaching convention that we slavishly follow? 

Well you can probably guess at the answer by listening to a preacher's New Testament sermons.  Now I fail at this all the time but I think the challenge for all of us is this: Is Jesus the Hero of the sermon on the mount or Mark 13 or the gifts passages or James?  And the issue for this mini-series - what about the parables? 

Last time I looked at Matthew 13:44-46.  Who the man?  Jesus the Man.  He seeks and finds us and in His joy He purchases us.  All praise to Him.  As Piper likes to say 'the Giver gets the glory' and in this parable (contra Piper's own interpretation of it) Jesus' glory is on show as He gives up all for His treasured possession - the church.

In this post we'll look briefly at the Good Samaritan: Luke 10:25-37 

First notice this: the teacher of the law asks 'Who is my neighbour?'  This prompts the story.  At the end of the story Jesus asks Who was neighbour to the guy left for dead? (v36).  So now, think about this:  With whom is Jesus asking us to identify?  The priest? Levite? Samaritan?  No.  Not first of all.  First of all we are asked to see ourselves as the man left for dead.  And from his perspective we are to assess who is a good neighbour.  Here's the first clue - we're meant to put ourselves in the shoes of the fallen man.

Why do I say 'fallen'?  Well the man's fallenness is triply-underlined in v30.  He "goes down" from Jerusalem (this earthly counterpart of the heavenly Zion).  He's heading towards the outskirts of the land (Jericho) which is due east of this mountain sanctuary (echoes of Eden).  This would involve a physical descent of about a thousand metres in the space of just 23 miles.  If that wasn't bad enough, the man "falls" among robbers.  He's stripped, plagued (literally that's the greek word), abandoned and half-dead.  That's the man's precidament and Jesus wants us to see it as our predicament.  So what hope do we have?

The priest?  Nope.  The Levite?  No chance.  What about a 'certain Samaritan' (mirroring the 'certain man' of v30)?  He's not at all like the religious.  In fact the one who 'comes to where the man is' happens to be someone who'd equally have been shunned by the priest and Levite! 

Yet this Samaritan 'had compassion' (v33).  In the New Testament this verb, which could be translated 'he was moved in his bowels with pity', is used only of Jesus. (Matt. 9:36; 14:14; 15:32; 18:27; 20:34; Mk. 1:41; 6:34; 8:2; 9:22; Lk. 7:13; 10:33; 15:20) In every narrative passage Jesus is the subject of the verb and the three parables in which it's used are the merciful King of Matthew 18 (v27), here and the father in the Two Sons (Lk 15:20).  More about that in the next post.

Well this Good Samaritan comes across the man left for dead and for emphasis we are twice told about him 'coming' to the man (v33 and 34).  The Outsider identifies with the spurned and wretched.

Now remember whose shoes we are in as Jesus tells this story.  We are meant to imagine ourselves as this brutalized man.  Now read v34:

He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own beast, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. `Look after him,' he said, `and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'

Now I don't have to tell you what these things mean.  You've got blueletterbible - you can do your own biblical theology of oil, wine, etc.  But remember you're meant to be putting yourself in the position of this fallen man, left for dead, unaided by religion, healed by an extraordinary stranger and awaiting his return.  Are you there?  Have you felt those depths and appreciated those heights?  Well then, now:

You go and do likewise. (v37)

Don't first conjure up the character of the good samaritan.  First be the fallen man.  First experience the healing of this Beautiful Stranger.  Then go and do likewise.

Or... leave Jesus out of it.  Spin it as a morality tale and end with "Who was that masked man? No matter - just go and do likewise."  

See how important 'Jesus in the NT' is?

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Published on Leave a comment on Jesus or ’empathy and courtesy’?

Channel 4 screened the first of Make Me a Christian last night.  Haven't seen it yet.  But here's one reviewer's reaction:

The infuriating thing will be if some of the group think happier lives can only be achieved through Jesus, rather than, say, empathy and courtesy and not being fat / crying / shagging all the time.

btw I'll give you one guess which newspaper!

Anyway, here's the gist of their gripe: 'You Christians can have your Jesus, I'll stick with my empathy and courtesy.' 

First notice what diminished values they are.  Not love and sacrifice - empathy and courtesy.  (Reminds me of a parishioner telling me we need to preach more 'tolerance' from the pulpit. I told him we'd do no such thing.  We would preach what Jesus preached - to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.  How ridiculous is the virtue of 'tolerance'!)

But notice most of all the self-righteousness.  They haven't rejected Jesus in favour of license.  They've rejected Him in favour of law.  Their own law to be sure, but law nonetheless. 

Even the most 'lawless' can actually be seen seeking their own righteousness by their own power according to their own law.  Hitler was a non-smoking, vegetarian, tee-totaller. He had his own struggle with his own rules by which he would be righteous.

In this sense the vast majority of people are legalists.  Only the truly despairing, depressed and suicidal have actually given off the quest for a righteousness of their own.  And note too that such people have also given off their quest for freedom and happiness.  I'm just not sure that there is a category of licentious people who are not also legalists.  Am I wrong on this?

If not, what would this mean?  Well it should remove from us any desire to give people God's law as the proper guide for their self-righteous instincts!  The problem is not merely and not mainly that the law by which they are seeking to justify themselves is faulty.  To justify themselves by the right law is even worse!  The Jew who sought to justify themselves by God's law is not less but more culpable in His sight (Romans 2-3). 

The gospel must be the answer.  The gospel is not, 'Try doing things this way'.  The gospel is 'It is finished!'  Now that will humble.  That will drive the world down to contrition and brokenness because our real drive is not an abstract lawlessness but a craving to establish ourselves, justify ourselves, to make a name.  Jesus, in being our righteousness, strips us of our fig leaves of empathy and courtesy.  Our deepest social, ethical and environmental concerns are filthy rags.  He calls us to renounce this 'righteousness' and be clothed only in Him. 

That's far more offensive than telling people the right laws by which to self-justify.  I wonder which route the Channel 4 team will take?  I think I can guess.

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UPDATE: Read Marcus' blog here or Daniel Blanche - seems like my fears are founded!

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