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Published on 5 Comments on Podcast – Interview with Graham Miller of London City Mission

TEP-PodcastCover-1024x1024This is the first of two interviews with Graham Miller from London City Mission. Next week we'll talk about online witness. This week we discuss the work of London City Mission and the evangelistic task facing us all.

Here are just some of the striking things Graham said in the interview...

We can draw a false dichotomy between loving people and sharing Christ. The need is to be 100% Christian...

We have a kind of clericalism in our churches where everyone leaves things up to the paid staff.

We've bought into a friendship evangelism model which means we end up sharing the gospel only with people like us.

The  huge need in evangelism is to challenge our idols and get a lot more godly.

We need to set time aside to spend with our neighbours and we need to be ready to share our testimony. Most people could have a go at sharing something about the gospel but we need to be in those relationships. It's only a very short step from a conversation about something important to spiritual matters.

In my time in China, the pastor was a cheerleader for everyone else's evangelism. Over here we employ a youth pastor to look after 8 kids which is a very expensive way of doing ministry. We train up 20 year olds  to be able to teach kids Romans and Luke rather than send out all our 20 somethings to kick a ball around with the kids.

If you look in the book of Acts, Stephen rolled up his sleeves and  served tables when he was an exceptional evangelist himself. Anyone who gets past Stephen's level can be set aside specially for a preaching and prayer ministry. But if you're not at Stephen's level - and I haven't met any preacher better than Stephen - you should muck in and wait on tables with everyone else.

 

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Published on 5 Comments on Gravity – Which way is up?

Two weeks ago I watched this outstanding talk by Nate Wilson called Myth Wars:

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The central point is that, today, our grand myth speaks of man as "an ascendant ape" who has emerged by a process of "climb and scratch and grab." It's an ugly story but it has the great attraction of putting us top of the heap (even if the heap is the smoldering ruin of countless losers in the struggle for survival).

Against this, the true myth is the gospel in which man is not an ascendant ape but a fallen son. There is climbing, scratching and grabbing but that's not progress! Such beastliness is precisely the problem. Instead Christ comes down from a place above us to "serve and give and love." That's the very different story we have to tell.

With Wilson's thoughts still buzzing in my head, I went to the cinema today to see Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón's spectacular thriller set in space.

It is visually spell-binding and brutally tense. It opens you up to wonder then puts a knot in your stomach that only tightens over the course of an hour and a half. Go and see it in 3D but be prepared to be disoriented in more ways than one. You see there's something even more disturbing than the sense of threat sustained over 90 minutes. There's the myth into which the storyline fits.

We begin in the heavens which are glorious, spectacular, overwhelming in their glory. But also aimless, uncaring and deadly in every sense. Very soon shrapnel - what could be more random? - smashes through people and spaceships and such debris only produces more debris. This is the environment for Sandra Bullock and George Clooney - cut adrift from their space station, with minimal oxygen and a vanishing probability of survival.

The film has undoubted "spiritual" overtones - references to prayer, Christian icons, a statue of the Buddha - and one review in the Washington Post has seen the whole thing as pointing us to Christian truth. After all, says Paul Asay, it's a "hell-and-back" kind of story. There's re-birth and home-coming even after the death and darkness. But the trouble is, lots of stories have a kind of rebirth. Story-tellers have to use the same raw-materials that went into the ultimate story, the gospel. But the way they arrange those raw materials is vital.

Think about it, the modern myth also has birth coming out of death. Through the struggle for survival emerges a winner. But that path-way is through "climb and scratch and grab" and a heck of a lot of dumb luck. So which story is Gravity?

Well there is life through death - rebirth through darkness. And, it has to be said, there is self-giving sacrifice in the story - death so that others may live. At that point you might conclude that Gravity's on the side of the angels. But I'm not so sure. All stories will echo the gospel in some way (like I say, every cook's got the same ingredients), but when we see the overall direction of the film I think it's telling the modern myth.

This is a survival story against the odds. Yes there is sacrifice which helps along the way. But the sacrifice is from below - the heavens themselves are the problem and we must outwit them. In the end, survival is just one of those very improbable things. Many others perish, but the lucky few make it, and they make it standing on the shoulders of the dead.

[Warning: this paragraph will give you a sense of the ending but only vaguely] By the final scene, the story is put in context. The Darwinian motifs are very striking. This is a survival tale. And what emerges from the striving is a brave new... well, pretty much a new species, erect and bettered by the struggle.

The lesson is, let go of the past, let go of losses, stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before, embrace the struggle and if you're lucky you'll live to fight another day.

A spiritual story? Yes, absolutely. But, if you ask me, it points to a markedly different spirituality. Maybe Wilson's lenses have skewed my viewing of the film, but I came away feeling mightily disturbed. Yet even in that disturbance, we are sent back to the gospel. I say, see the film and be wowed. But let it drive you to a true answer to the death and darkness. The true myth says: the heavens are not malign, the Lamb is at the centre of the throne.

 

Published on Leave a comment on Ecclesiastes’ Teacher is not an atheist. He’s a crummy christ

I've heard a lot of sermons on Ecclesiastes. And a lot of them preach the book as displaying the futility of atheism.  Of course when you preach it like that, what's the solution?  Good old theism.  Yay theism.

And one or two preachers then suggest that Christian theism gives the most amount of meaning.  So yay Jesus too.

But let me state something that's pretty darned obvious but it seems like it needs saying.  The Teacher is no atheist.  He's a hard-core theist.  Check it:

Ecclesiastes 1:13; 2:24-26; 3:10-22; 5:1-7, 18-20; 6:1-2; 7:13-14; 18,20; 8:2, 11-17; 9:1,9; 11:5,9; 12:1-14;

Here's just a sample of what he says:

God has set eternity in the hearts of men.... He's done it so that men will revere him... Stand in awe of God... God made mankind upright but men have gone in search of many schemes... I know that it will go better with God-fearing men who are reverent before God... God will bring you to judgement... Remember your Creator... Fear God and keep his commandments.

He's a theist right?  A pretty ardent one.

Well what do you expect from a son of David, a king of Jerusalem? (Ecclesiastes 1:1)  Here is a christ - an anointed king.  But, here's the thing, he's not the King of Heaven.  He's a king under heaven (notice how 'under heaven' and 'under the sun' are parallel 1:3; 3:1).  He's not the One full of the Spirit without measure, instead he seeks to shepherd the Spirit (or chase the wind, e.g. 1:14) while he must receive his teachings from the true Shepherd (12:11).

The teacher is self-consciously not the Messiah (he's a very naughty boy!).  He's not the Christ with a capital C certainly. But he is a christ with a small c.  And so he embarks on a sustained meditation on life in which the king is subject to all the forces that we are.  This christ is also under the sun and therefore under the powers that enslave mankind and even nature itself.  This king, for all his wealth and power and wisdom cannot pierce through the shroud of sin, law, judgement and death. (see this sermon for more)

So what hope is there?  None!  Not with this king.  Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.  And then we are judged - by the God is who is ever-present in Ecclesiastes.  But ever-present as Judge.  Who knows how we will fare under His judgement?

That's life under the sun.  Here's what we can expect if the Teacher is our christ.

But if that's the problem, what's the solution?  The glories of theism?  The truth that God knows us and has a wonderful plan for our lives?  The thought that my actions have eternal significance?  The Teacher knows all these things and declares them utterly meaningless.  Our only hope is Christ.  The true Christ.  The Christ from Heaven.  The Christ who conquers sin and law and judgement and death and bursts through into resurrection hope.  That's the answer to Ecclesiastes' meaninglessness.

Any other solution is vanity of vanities.

 A sermon on Ecclesiates 1

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Published on 8 Comments on Getting Ryled About Holiness

ladder-to-heavenThere's a famous short piece by JC Ryle called "Suppose an Unholy Man Went to Heaven." It's only about a thousand words but it's had a wide influence. I've heard it quoted approvingly a number of times.

Ryle begins:

Suppose for a moment that you were allowed to enter heaven without holiness. What would you do? What possible enjoyment could you feel there? To which of all the saints would you join yourself and by whose side would you sit? Their pleasures are not your pleasures, their tastes are not your tastes, their character not your character. How could you possibly be happy, if you had not been holy on earth?

The bishop then spells out the heavenly life in stark contrast to earthly pleasures. Therefore...

heaven would be a miserable place to an unholy man. It cannot be otherwise. People may say, in a vague way, they "hope to go to heaven", but they do not consider what they say... We must be heavenly-minded, and have heavenly tastes, in the life that now is, or else we shall never find ourselves in heaven, in the life to come.

If all this sounds like salvation by works, Ryle has a verse: "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord" (Heb. 12:14).

He repeats the verse again and again - it seems pretty much the foundation of his case. But he ignores the way holiness (or "sanctification" - same word) is used throughout Hebrews - 2:11; 9:13; 10:10; 10:14; 10:29; 13:12.  In virtually every case it's a declared status, won through the sanctifying sacrifice of Christ (e.g. "we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." (Heb 10:10)).

In only one of the verses cited above is sanctification mentioned as an ongoing process - but even then the process is anchored to a definitive salvation:

By one sacrifice Christ has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. (Hebrews 10:14)

It's true we must be holy to see the Lord. It's also true - and the whole book of Hebrews proclaims it - that Christ's sacrifice alone gives us that holiness. Yet Ryle seems to want to locate this saving quality within us.

He understands that folks might protest at this. So he addresses the objection we all feel...

You may say, it is impossible to be so holy and to do our duty in this life at the same time: the thing cannot be done. I answer, "You are mistaken." It can be done. With Christ on your side nothing is impossible.

Did somebody say infused grace? And make no mistake, the thing to be achieved here is heaven itself. If anyone complains at this achievement of glory, Ryle reminds us...

It is in religion as it is in other things, there are no gains without pains. That which costs nothing is worth nothing.

There it is - no pain, no gain. And finally the whole thing is unmasked - it's actually a very worldly way of considering holiness! Religion is like all other things, a costly, painful achievement which we make on our way to heaven. Surely Ryle is not being heavenly-minded enough! Surely he's not considering spiritual things spiritually. In the end, doesn't he prop up the whole enterprise on a carnal foundation? Holiness is like everything else, the achievement of hard work.

It seems to me that Ryle isn't being spiritual enough. Now it's true that Ryle says more in his book "Holiness." And there he stresses that holiness comes in Christ alone and he counsels us to seek it in Christ. But there's also all this stuff as well which, if you ask me, seriously undermines the 'Christ alone' teaching he wants to uphold.

Where does it go wrong?

Well fundamentally, in these teachings, everything important about holiness gets located in us and not in Jesus. And from that foundational error flows a characteristic problem with Ryle's presentation. For Ryle the "holy" trajectory for everything seems to be in and up and later.  'Come in out of the world, lift yourself up into heaven so that later you'll enjoy salvation.' All godly travel is coming in from the nasty world and up into glory, white-knuckling it now because later it'll be worth it.

But if Jesus Christ - the Holy One of Israel - defines holiness for us, we get a very different picture.  Because we are so carnal and unable to work up a holiness of our own, therefore Christ descends with His sanctifying love that reaches outwards and downwards, to be felt now. Holiness is Jesus-shaped. It means being met in our filth now, cleansed, and then swept along with Jesus to extend ourselves out into an unclean world, stooping down to the gutters of this world and in this way experiencing now the life of heaven.

It's really not about preparing ourselves for heaven later - it's about living the heavenly life now: the life of self-forgetful, neighbour-loving, cheek-turning, enemy-forgiving love.  That's holiness. It's Christ's own life which He has given us in the gospel. It's ours to live now - not as some qualification for heaven later.

So then, be holy! But define holiness Christianly - i.e. according to Christ.

Be holy! But let Christ's holiness thrust you outside the camp (Heb 13:12-13)

Be holy! But realise it's Christ's gift, once for all, not your continual achievement.

Be holy! But know that the point is to live Christ's life now, not to earn His blessing later.

Be holy! But don't be so carnal as to think it's the ladder to heaven.

Be holy! But make sure it's Spiritual holiness - the gift of Christ's Spirit to you - the very life of heaven to be enjoyed here and now on earth.

Be holy because Jesus your Lord is holy. And right now you're in Him.

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Published on 1 Comment on Help Get Prayer Mate on Android

PrayerMateI use Prayer Mate for my morning prayer time and it's helped massively (see Tim Challies' very positive review here).

Don Carson talks about the problem of mental "drift" in prayer. My problem is mental "quantum leaps". My thoughts do not merely wander, they embark on Odyssian journeys from which few, if any, return.

Prayer Mate has helped anchor my thoughts (along with the practice of praying out loud - I have no idea how people can pray for any length of time silently. Does that actually work for anyone?) Prayer Mate has also helped me arrange my prayer points, ensured I don't miss stuff and introduced me (through its feeds) to other worthy ministries to pray for. I highly recommend it - if you have an iPod/Pad/Phone.

Until now, there's been no Android version, but this Kickstarter project is aimed at fixing that. Head over and see if you can help out - it will certainly help you.

 

 

 

Published on Leave a comment on Latest Dawkins Tweets

Looks like Dawkins has, once again, got into a sticky situation...

 

 

 

 

 

...And here are some earlier cantankerous Dawkins tweets from April...

[now deleted] What kind of person throws chewing gum in the streets, where it sticks to shoes? What kind of person chews gum in the first place?

Greetings to all atheists. But please, not so many athiests, aethists or aetheists. Greek theos: god. Hence theist. Hence a-theist.

I re-tweet for a reason. I know not everybody likes it. They are free to unfollow.

Comparisons often made of Jesus with Horus, Dionysus, Krishna etc. Any real scholars out there confirm each one? pic.twitter.com/IuN1u7McNq

then, when called on such tired and lazy comparisons…

Was it seriously not obvious that I posted that set of other gods because I was SCEPTICAL of the alleged similarities to Jesus?

If you’re used to the obscurantist smokescreens of religion, the sudden shock of the unambiguously clear voice of reason can SEEM aggressive

Dear Americans, please understand that “grade” as in “7th grade” is not part of the English language. Please state the child’s AGE in years

People outside America truly don’t know what “7th grade” means. In Britain we’ve “Year 10″ but don’t expect others to know what that means.

If you only care about communicating to Americans, “7th grade” is fine. But there’s this obscure little place called The Rest Of The World

I’m NOT arguing for British English. “Year 10″ not part of the language either, which is why I wouldn’t use it in an international medium.

“Hit a home run” great metaphor, understood internationally. But “7th grade” conveys precision. Don’t you WANT to be understood outside US?

Struggling with London tube notice: delays because “customer” taken ill on train earlier in day. Sorry for sick passenger, but why DELAYS?

Published on Leave a comment on Happy Friday

"It's just a song" says the mother. The baby knows there's no "just" about it.

http://youtu.be/nIsCs9_-LP8

 

And a frighteningly awful movie trailer


 

Apparently it's real. Like really a real movie that people made on purpose.

 

Do you have any Happy Fridays to add? Put them in comments...

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Published on 2 Comments on Not Nature and Super-Nature – Old Creation and New Creation

Maybe it's been since the Enlightenment and/or maybe it's come through Aquinas with his Aristotelian nature/grace divide, but either way... Today we tend to imagine the interaction of nature and "super-nature" like this:

Nature is the solid and certain thing.  And it has its own self-determined course.  But every now and again this ethereal, super-natural world shows up and freaky stuff happens.  Then it's back to business as usual.

Of course once you grant the certainty and self-sufficiency of "nature" you're already committed to explaining away all "freaky stuff."  And, hey presto, naturalism.

Many of us will know how infuriating it is to engage with an atheist who has already defined God out of the equation through assumptions like these.  There is, perhaps, only one thing more infuriating.  That is the Christian who shares the atheist's assumptions but protests loudly: "No, seriously guys, God is really at work because... let me tell you about this other realm where freaky stuff happens." At that point the Christian is only confirming the Enlightenment worldview.

I suggest we should frame things more like this:

It's the old creation that is, in some sense, less real than the new.  It is subject to futility and plunging down into death.  There is an arrow here - there is a direction - but under Adam, that direction is downwards.

Overall however there is progress because the second Adam has come.  And He brings new creation.  The reality of this in-breaking kingdom holds true in Christ Himself and spiritually we belong to that new reality, even as we wait in this passing age.

But let's ask:  What does it look like for God to show up?

Well God is at work in the Old Creation and intimately so, it's just that Old Creation goes from life to death.   This is God's alien work, but His work nonetheless.  Overall though His proper work is the renewal of all things under the feet of Christ (from death to life).  Therefore the signs of His coming kingdom are restoration and recreation. Freaky is not so much the point. New life is.

I have friends who appreciate my emphasis on "the word" but wish I would equally emphasize the work of the Spirit. I long more and more to be a man of the Spirit but sometimes I fear that phrase is coming from a Diagram 1 view of the world, rather than Diagram 2. Sometimes people speak of word and Spirit as parallel to 'nature' and 'supernature.' So then word ministry is a vital foundation but then, in a discrete mode of operation, God also needs to show up."Nature" equals the ordinary operations of church - church structures, preaching, band practice.  But when God shows up the Spirit, almost by definition, works outside of structures. Regularity and order are fine. But Spirit equals spontaneous and sporadic.

What would it look like to see the work of the Spirit in the context of Diagram 2?  Here word and Spirit are not two spheres of activity (one being "natural" and the other "supernatural"). Word-and-Spirit is the way the gospel of Christ is proclaimed. And in that context we see new life.  Through the gospel, the Spirit spotlights Christ.  He opens hearts to Jesus.  He draws believers to their Lord and to each other.  He empowers the church to live in love.  And yes He heals today, of course He does. But the healing is not the point where God shows up.  Both the word of the Kingdom and the signs of the kingdom (which include all kinds of new life) are the work of the Spirit.

My two cents.

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Published on 8 Comments on Four Thoughts on Grace for Reformation Day

Luther PreachingI've written previously about The Trendy Trifecta - Trinity, Grace and Idolatry. We love to preach them but it's so easy to speak of these topics anthropologically. We preach Trinity because it connects with our need for love. We preach grace because it gives us our motivation for the Christian life. We preach idolatry because it explains our psychological struggles with sin.  On reformation day, let me say a couple more things about that middle topic: grace. Here are four things it's important to affirm as we speak of grace:

Grace is not a substance.

Quite often among those who want to spotlight God's grace, it's spoken of in impersonal terms, as a concept, even as a liquid that Christians should be drunk on. Grace, Grace, Grace, they say. And I think "She sounds great but I think I'll stick with Father, Son and Spirit."

Remember the medieval church was all about "grace" too. But, again, it was more like a liquid, dispensed through the sacraments with the priests controlling the taps. Certainly we Protestants have done away with such intermediaries, but the chief error is the thought of grace as a substance.  Properly, grace is the Father's free gift of Jesus given by the Spirit. He's the One we proclaim, not "grace" in the abstract.

Grace is not, primarily, a motivation 

Again the medieval church was full of "grace" as a motivator. Infused grace filled you up and helped you live the Christian life. Ironically, there are many who say we need a reformation today (Amen, may it come) but they seem to champion "grace" chiefly in terms of its motivational qualities. Apparently Jesus, freely given to me, is mostly important because of the gratitude fuelled ethics that flow from His gift. And then it becomes very important to discern the motivations of my heart - whether they've originated by command or promise.

Well... motivation is important but that's not where the law/gospel distinction should be pressed. In the bible, God graciously saves me in Jesus and gives me the new life to live. So off I go - and yes, I work it out with blood, sweat and tears. And no, I don't for a minute think that such "effort" is opposed to grace. Because grace is not distinguished from law in terms of what goes on in my heart! That distinction happens far above my pay grade. Or at least, it ought to. Which leads us to...

Command does need to be distinguished from promise

The grace preachers are correct when they say that law and gospel must be distinguished. There is far too much co-mingling, leading to what Mike Horton calls GoLawspel preaching. The good news of Jesus gets mashed up with principles for holy living and the Christian is left without a promise to rest their hope on - only a string of conditionals they must fulfil. Many people who complain about the grace-preachers counter it with calls for balance.  This, to my mind, is a great mistake (for more, read The Monstrous Evil of Balance: Or Why Nuance is Always, Always Wrong). Gospel and law are not to be balanced. Faith and works aren't opposite ends of the spectrum that require a happy medium. We don't need the pendulum to swing back from 'too much grace' so that we add in some holiness to compensate. We are grace alone people and works come - MUST come - on the far side of a radical insistence on the blood of Christ alone.

Passive and active righteousness need to be sharply distinguished

Having distinguished law and gospel, here's the other vital distinction: Before God you can only receive righteousness in the gift of Christ Our Righteousness. Before the world, you are to pour yourself out for the family of God, for your neighbours, for the nations (this is the distinction between passive and active righteousness). We live by faith as regards God, by love as regards the world. Therefore calling the Christian to an active righteousness in their Christian walk is not anti-grace at all. Grace flows downhill into exactly that kind of life.

Therefore I don't need to be forever agonising over the motivation of the saints if I want them to stop sinning in this way or that. Absolutely I should set everything in the context of the gospel and when we rebuke each other it should be because "they are not walking in line with the truth of the gospel" (Gal 2:14). Yet Galatians 2 - itself a stunning proclamation of the gospel - speaks of opposing folks to their face because they are wrong. Paul commands Peter to stop and he's not particularly bothered about unearthing the depths of Peter's emotional commitments in the moment. Similarly, if I discover that my brother in Christ is cheating on his wife I will feel no qualms about taking drastic and forceful steps to try to end it. None of that is a betrayal of the true grace of God because telling folks to behave like Christians is totally what the grace of God produces. Of course you should be faithful to your wife - God has claimed you in Christ, you belong to Jesus, you are acting out of line with your true self, cut it out!

Commands are totally, totally awesome. It's just, they don't make you right with God. And you and I are quite prone to linking our active righteousness (with the world) to our passive righteousness (with God). So preachers should take care to distinguish the two. But having done that, commanding Christians to obey is not only permitted. It's necessitated by the fact that - by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone - we belong to God. Therefore, be generous, give sacrificially, love your spouse, practise hospitality, forgive your enemies. You're free now - free to live this life. So go do it.

But - someone might ask - won't the gospel itself produce these characteristics in us by the Spirit? Yes and no. Yes, in that those behaviours are the fruit of the gospel and our teaching about them must be organically tied to the gospel. But no in that you and I are flesh as well as Spirit. Therefore, let's allow the good law to shape (even to pummel) our fallen flesh, not because our identity with God depends on it (it doesn't), but because our graciously secured identity entails it.

To summarize

Let's love and proclaim the grace of God in Jesus. But let's make sure it's Jesus we're spotlighting, not a substance or motivational spur. Let's distinguish clearly between law and gospel, making sure to offer Jesus as the Gift He most clearly is. But let's not shy away from commands in the Christian life. In Jesus, God graciously gives us a new life, entirely apart from our works or worthiness. This life is secure with God, but wonderfully it is to be lived before the world. Thus commands regarding our active righteousness do not negate the gospel but flow naturally from it.

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