The Royal Inclusio – Love (8)

 

“…that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give you.” John 15:16.

We see the relationship between fruit and answered prayer in both John 15:7–8 and John 15:16. Our Father is glorified when we bear much fruit (v. 8) and thereby demonstrate that we are disciples of Jesus. If we consider that prayer is communion with God, and that it is only as we abide in Christ the Vine that we can bear fruit (15:4–5), then we see that fruit flows from communion with the Divine, indeed, it is a natural result of us abiding in the Trinity and the Trinity abiding within us. If the Trinity is fruitful then where the Trinity abides is fruitful (consider also Revelation 22:1–2). 

Jesus, the Firstborn Son, displays the image and pattern of abiding in the Father and of asking in prayer. In Matthew and Luke Jesus teaches a pattern of prayer in a broad sense, for He teaches in public. In the Upper Room, Jesus teaches the sons and daughters of His Father to pray in intimacy, an intimacy in which they offer up themselves as they pray for their brethren. The offering up is to God and for their brethren (John 17:9, 19).

Just as we have learned to pray what we term the Lord’s Prayer of Matthew Chapter 6, we are to learn to pray the Prayer that Jesus Prayed of John Chapter 17. Just as we are called to be the incarnation of the prayer of Matthew Chapter 6, we are to become the Incarnation of John Chapter 17. This is our high calling in Jesus Christ. 

The Prayer that Jesus Prayed is the Life that Jesus Lived; we are to Live this Life and Pray this Prayer as we abide in Him. 

The Lord willing, when we arrive at John Chapter 17, we will explore the glory of the Holy of Holies in Christ, the glory of participating in the Prayer that Jesus Prayed, flowing from the life that we have in Him. 

It is our Lord’s desire that we bear a particular kind of fruit; it is to be a fruit that remains. Are we interested in such fruit? 

My sense is that we are more concerned with fast food than food promoting sustained growth. Fast food is eaten quickly and is often eaten “on-the-go.” Since we are an on-the-go people in an on-the-go society we fashion our teaching and preaching accordingly – and then we wonder why we lack character and depth in Jesus Christ, then we wonder (perhaps) why we are consumers and not producers. 

Our attention spans are dwindling to nothing, and we are catering to the insanity, in so doing we are desecrating the image of God in Christ. The Scriptures teach us to meditate on the Word (Psalm 1), not to blithely gulp a verse or two down via a “verse of the day” or thought for the day or pithy saying for the day – we are called to holy communion with God, we are not called to “honk if you love Jesus.” 

The prayer teaching of the Upper Room is not about getting things from God to consume upon ourselves, it is about living in holy koinonia with the Trinity and our brethren and receiving from our Father so that we may bear fruit for His glory and for the sake of our brethren. The life of prayer portrayed in the Upper Room is a life born of “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”

The prayer teaching of the Upper Room is about costly prayer, we enter it through the Cross of Christ, we maintain it in the Cross of Christ, we share it flowing from the Cross of Christ. 

Jesus deeply desires you to know Him intimately; He already knows your heartbeat, now He wants you to know His heartbeat. Our Lord has removed every barrier to you knowing Him, to your abiding in Him and experiencing His Life in you, He simply calls you to “abide in Me.” Jesus knows that you, in and of yourself, cannot possibly live the Christian life, He does not ask you to try, He does not ask you to attempt such a task; He does call you to abide in Him, the Vine, and to learn to allow Him and the Father  and the Holy Spirit to live within you in daily fellowship, in the very koinonia which you will experience in eternity. 

Why wait until the future to experience what your dear Lord Jesus desires you to experience now? He calls you to unbroken friendship and communion with Him as your Way of Life. He loves you so very very much, so deeply, and He loves you with overflowing eternal joy. 

How to begin? Just ask Him in your own words to draw you deeper into Himself. Speak to Him and then listen and watch for Him…throughout the day. He will come to you, again and again and again. Those who know to look for His coming see Him coming throughout their lives, and He is glorious. O yes, sometimes we may miss Him, but He is gracious and do not be surprised if He says, “Didn’t you see Me when you saw that person in need? Didn’t you see Me when that man needed a word of encouragement? Didn’t you see Me when that woman expressed a prayer need? I was there to touch them through you.”

Jesus is our patient Teacher. 

You might also consider meditating in John chapters 13 – 17 for a season of life. Reading and meditating on a small portion each morning, reading aloud, listening for Jesus, visualizing yourself in the Upper Room with Jesus, seeing Jesus with you…for of course He is with you. Allow Jesus to draw you into the holy fellowship of the Trinity, allow Him to take the lead, as Reepicheep in Narnia says, “Let’s take the adventure that Aslan gives us.”

You are not an accident looking for a place to happen, you are a son or daughter of the Living God and He loves you so deeply, He cares for you so passionately. 

Why not live today in the incredible love and life of Jesus Christ? 

Questions, comments? robertlwithers@gmail.com

Married to Jesus, Faithful to Him (2)

 How To Biblically Read History

One of the heresies that is enveloping the professing church is a skewered way of reading history, including the history of our own nation, the U.S.A.  

The fundamental way to read and interpret history is through Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” We simply do not want to believe this when it comes to our own nation, we want to read history through various lenses that support our nationalistic, political, social, or economic notions. Since followers of Jesus are supposed to be citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20) and since we are supposed to be pilgrims and strangers on earth looking for our home City which God has prepared for us (Hebrews 11:8 – 16), when any lens other than Jesus Christ is promoted, within the church, as the way to view history we have heresy. It is heresy because our hearts are to belong to Jesus and only to Jesus, we are to be His faithful Bride (2 Cor. 11:2 – 3). There is no room in our marriage to Jesus for another husband, another suitor, another lover. When we gather as the Bride of Christ, do we really want to invite other lovers into our Divine Bedroom?

The primary image of unfaithfulness to God in the Bible is that of adultery, it is not idolatry per se, but spiritual adultery. How have we lost sight of this? Is it because our hearts no longer belong to our heavenly Bridegroom?

This makes movements such as Christian Nationalism and the New Apostolic Reformation especially egregious for it encourages us to give our hearts to a nation, rather than give them to Jesus; these movements have an affinity with past movements that have brought tragedy on their churches and nations. God’s People are called to serve others, not to dominate them. These movements are founded and perpetuated on a false reading of history, a reading that cares nothing for the truth and which spins false narratives to accomplish their own ends. (Yes, yes, to be sure there are other movements within the professing church that are also dangerous, but I am addressing those with whom I am more likely to have a shared history.)

Now, should you take offense at the above, I will ask you why you should be offended? Why would a married person take offense at someone encouraging them to be faithful to their spouse? Why would a married person take offense with someone encouraging them to love their spouse with all that they have and not to share marital love and conjugal relations with anyone other than his or her spouse? 

When we are told by our Father not to have other gods before Him, He means that there are to be no other gods in His Presence; yet often our “worship” is syncretistic as we introduce flags and patriotic songs and political agendas into the bedroom of the People of God, the Bride of Christ. Of course, in a sense these things, as they have normally been practiced, pale before the super-charged nationalism engulfing much of the professing church. We have all but wrapped the Cross in the flag, and thereby obscured the Cross of Christ and the Christ of the Cross. 

The above is only Biblical common sense. After all, Jesus says that His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36), and the Scriptures are clear that the nations are opposed to the Father and the Son and that they will all be brought low as the Rock fills the earth (Psalm 2, Daniel 2). Just as we are prone to sin as individuals when we think we are exceptions to the Bible, so we are prone to sin collectively when we think our own nation, whichever nation that might be, is an exception to the Bible. 

So again we come to Romans 3:23, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. If this is true of an individual, it is certainly true of a collection of individuals. 

Now I’m going to ask you to think about a few more things before I close this reflection. I’d like to ask you to consider the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah lived in a time when the rulers, the government, the priests and most prophets were teaching the people, “Look at our foundation. God established us and we are His special people. God will preserve us. God favors us. We are exceptional people above all other nations.”

However, Jeremiah was saying just the opposite. He was saying, “This is what God is saying. Don’t look backwards at your forefathers and think that somehow God will overlook your wickedness. Judgment is coming on you in the form of the kingdom of Babylon. Surrender to Babylon and God will spare your lives and your cities. However, if you do not surrender then God will destroy you in judgment.”

Jeremiah was persecuted and imprisoned and almost lost his life because of his faithfulness to God. 

Let me ask you a question, Who was patriotic in this scenario? Were the rulers and priests and prophets who had a false and arrogant trust in Judah’s exceptionalism patriotic? Or was it Jeremiah who told the truth at the risk of his own life? O dear friends, what is popular is seldom the truth. 

I am reminded of G. K. Chesterton and his opposition to the Boer War. Chesterton argued that Britain betrayed its values in this war, and most certainly in its treatment of Boer civilians. Approximately 30,000 Boer women and children perished in British concentration camps - this is not a typo. When Chesterton was accused of not being patriotic, he countered by asking what a true patriot is. Is a true patriot someone who loves his country enough to speak the truth, even if it means rejection? 

Do we love God enough to be faithful to Him? Do we love those around us, including those in our nation, enough to be a distinctive People in Christ as His Bride? Do we love our nation to the point where we will confess that it is sinful as all mankind is sinful? Will we read history through Romans 3:23? 

About the same time that Chesterton was speaking out on the Boer War, there were citizens of the United States speaking out about a military conquest our own government was engaged in. I am sure we have all read about it and were taught it in school. Of course I am speaking of our conquest of the Philippines. (You were taught it, right?) While Secretary of State John Hay called the Spanish – American War, “A splendid little war, begun with the highest motives” (a statement highly suspect), and while we have been taught about Teddy Roosevelt and San Juan Hill and Commodore Dewey and the Battle of Mobile Bay, I don’t recall being taught about our conquest of the Philippines. Were you taught about the Philippine – American War?  

How is it that we, people of the land of the free and the home of the brave, did not free the Filipino people after the war with Spain? How is it that we simply replaced the Spanish as lords of the Philippines? How is it that we, when the Filipino people sought their independence, in essence said, "Our own Declaration of Independence is window dressing, we don’t really believe it, and if you have any doubts, look down the barrels of our rifles.”  

According to the U.S. Department of State’s Historian, not only were about 4,200 American and over 20,000 Filipino combatants killed in the fighting, but as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence, famines, and disease. 

When we read history through Romans 3:23, we read all of history, and when we read all our history, we can say with the Bible, “There is none righteous, no not one.”

Would you be faithful to your spouse even if everyone around you was unfaithful to their spouses? Will you be faithful to Jesus even if everyone around you is seduced by “God and Country” or economic agendas and lovers or social agendas (whether from the right or left) or entertainment or sports spinning out of control or academia having lost it mind (including seminaries).

Will you have a monogamous and exclusive relationship with Jesus Christ? 

And here is what it seems we just will not see, even if all the lies being told were true (of course they are not, they are lies), they still would not be the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they would still be a false lover and a false god. Our hearts are to belong to Jesus and Jesus alone and the people of our home nation and all nations need Jesus Christ. 

To borrow an image from C. S. Lewis and The Last Battle, dead lion skins are being used to deceive much of the professing church, and because we are not looking at the real Aslan, we are being duped into worshipping false gods. 

Are we reading history through Romans 3:23? Psalm 2 and Daniel 2?

Is not Jesus Christ enough? 

Mark 8:34 – 38.

Our Last Battle (3)

 Chapter Two is titled, The Rashness of the King, and in it Lewis presents a warning for those who will pay attention. This warning presents us with the first phase of our Last Battle. 

The chapter begins with two friends, King Tirian and the unicorn Jewel. Unlike Shift and Puzzle in the first chapter, these are true friends whose friendship has been tested and proved through life – threatening perils, they had risked their lives for each other. Jewel and Tirian love each other, they have a true friendship – they have been willing to lay down their lives for one another. 

It is some three weeks after the events of Chapter One. The scene is a woodland setting, away from Cair Paravel, the royal capital. The king likes to live simply, away from the protocols and finery of the capital. As we are drawn into the chapter, we hear the king telling his friend that he doesn’t feel like doing any work or sport because of the glorious news that Aslan is in the land. As Jewel replies that the news is indeed wonderful, he adds “if they are true.”

Tirian responds with incredulity, “How can they choose but be true?” The king goes on to list the testimony of birds and squirrels and a stag (who had seen Aslan from afar) and a Calormene, and a badger. In Tirian’s response we see the first sign of his great danger, that of anger. He will believe what he has heard, and he will countenance no suggestion that what he believes isn’t true, even from his dear friend Jewel. Jewel hasn’t said it isn’t true, but he has expressed the possibility that it might not be true. There is a sense in which Jewel is saying that the report of Aslan ought to be verified. Jewel hopes it is true, he wants it to be true, it will be glorious if it is true. The king will have none of it, it has to be true and that is that.

Why was Tirian still at his hunting lodge? Why wasn’t the king back at Cair Paravel with his people to meet Aslan? Why wasn’t the king, as the leader of his people, seeking Aslan? If the king had responded to the first reports of Aslan, our story may have unfolded in a very different manner, much heartache and tragedy may have been avoided, he may have been able to protect his people. 

Dear friends, we can be comfortable, or we can be faithful, but we cannot be both. Yes, you read the words correctly, we can be faithful to Jesus Christ and others, or we can choose to live comfortably, but we cannot have both. This is not to say that we cannot enjoy good things in life when we are able, by God’s grace, to do so (Phil. 4:12), but it is to say that the race we are called to run and the battles we are called to fight require constant engagement and vigilance for the benefit of those around us. While we may have respites at Tirian’s lodge, our place of service is at Cair Paravel, it is where people are. Jesus Christ came for people, not pleasure; He has called us to serve Him and people, not pleasure. 

Paul writes Timothy that he is to “endure hardship with me as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” and that he [Paul] “endures all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.” (See 2 Timothy 2:1 – 13).  Jesus’ call to follow Him is a call to self-denial and a call to lay our lives down for Him and others (Mark 8:34 – 38; John 15:12–13; 1 John 3:16). 

Francis Schaffer predicted that the two greatest dangers to the church, at least in the West, at the end of the 20th century would be personal peace and affluence. What Schaffer meant was that our attitude toward the world would be, “If you leave me alone to have my own space and my personal peace, and if you allow me to enjoy the things I can accumulate and experience, I will leave you alone. I will not bother you with the Gospel and we as a People will not bother you with a distinctive unified witness to Jesus Christ.” 

While Tirian was enjoying his time with his friend Jewel in the woodlands, his people were being deceived by the Ape and poor Puzzle in a dead lion’s skin. 

What about us? Where are we living and how are we engaged? Is our own selfish welfare at the center of our decisions? Does personal peace and affluence determine our words and actions and decisions? Is life all about us and our families and our wellbeing, and even our congregations and religious traditions? As Haggai the prophet put it, are our own houses at the center of our lives while the House of God (Eph. 2:19 – 22) lies in ruins? (Haggai Chapter One). 

Oswald Chambers wrote that every morning when we wake up, that we wake up on a battlefield. While Tirian was enjoying his time in a pastoral setting and believing a lie, his people were being deceived and enslaved.

In Chapter Two we see that our Last Battle includes the battle of personal peace and affluence as opposed to a life in Christ of self-denial and sacrifice for others; it also includes whether we will live in anger or in the peace of Jesus Christ. As we will see, the battle with anger unfolds in Chapter Two and the rashness of the king leads to much harm. 

We’ll consider the entrance of the majestic Roonwit in our next reflection, a centaur who has much to teach us. 

The Royal Inclusio – Love (7)

 

“You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you…” (John 15:16).

We often make much of our choices and our own wills in the wrong way. Rather than focus on the choices we have made, ought not we to focus on the choice that Jesus Christ has made? Regarding our will, isn’t the critical thing about our will that we surrender it to Jesus Christ? 

We are hardly independent autonomous agents, we are either dead in trespasses and sins, or we are alive in Christ, and if we are alive in Christ it is because He has called us from the dead as He called Lazarus from the dead (see Ephesians 2:1 – 10). We are either slaves to sin and unrighteousness or we are slaves to righteousness and holiness in Jesus Christ (see Romans Chapter 6).

If we have made a choice to follow Jesus, it is only because He first chose us to follow Him and enabled our choice as He enables our obedient following. Therefore Jesus makes the clear statement, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you.” 

Earlier in the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day” (6:44). Paul writes of the assurance that “He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is the “Author and Finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). What Jesus begins, Jesus completes, bringing it to maturity and perfection. 

O dear brothers, if the primary choice is ours, then we can doubt our choice; but if the choice is that of Jesus Christ, who can doubt the choice of God? 

If the choice is ours, then the foundation of our faith rests upon ourselves, and if it rests upon ourselves it rests upon that which is changeable and mutable, subject to the vicissitudes of life. Ah, but if Jesus chose us, if the choice is His, then our foundation is the immutable God, the God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. No matter how the structure of the building may be battered by the storms of life, it will remain because it rests upon a sure foundation. 

If the choice is ours, then we must be preoccupied with ourselves for if our beginning is of ourselves, then the working out and completion rests upon ourselves. O but if the choice belongs to Jesus, then we can trust Him to work within us for our perfection and maturity and we can focus on Him and on being a blessing to others (Phil. 2:13).

Does this not bring us back to the Vine and the branches? (John 15:1–8). We are, in fact, still in the same passage, and what we read in verse 16 flows from what we read in verses 1 – 8. Without Jesus we can do nothing! (15:4–5).

When we learn to live in the security of knowing that Jesus chose us and we did not choose Him, we can lay our lives down for the brethren. When we know the security of living in Jesus Christ, we can face persecution and pressure; consider that the very next section of the Upper Room deals with pressure, opposition, and persecution (15:18–16:4). Insecure people tend to cave into peer pressure, secure people tend to stand firm. Insecure people look to themselves and their own resources, secure disciples in Christ look to Him and His care for them, overcoming by confessing Jesus and living in Him as He lives in them (Rev. 12:11; 1 John 4:4).

A realization that what Jesus Christ began He will finish, a realization that we are His friends, that He chose us, does not, as the uninformed allege, give us license to do what we want, but rather makes us bondservants of Jesus Christ, for we realize that we have been bought with a price, the blood of the Lamb. 

To hear the Voice of Jesus Christ in the Upper Room is to hear the call of Jesus to live in Him and to participate in Him in His life in the Father. To realize that Jesus chose us and we did not choose Him, allows us to hear His call to live in Him in His betrayal, torture, crucifixion, bearing the sorrows of others, in His resurrection and ascension, and in His sitting at the Father’s right hand. We can wash the feet even of our betrayer when we are secure in Jesus Christ. 

The response to “If anyone will come after Me” (Mark 8:34) is a response to the choice of Jesus Christ, to have an ear to hear this call is a gift of God, to respond to this call is a gift from God, to be faithful to this call is a work of God. 

The disciples in the Upper Room may have thought that they chose Jesus, but Jesus wanted there to be no misunderstanding about who initiated the relationship, and so He says, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you.” 

I imagine there was no argument about the statement. I imagine that when they heard it that the disciples looked at one another and, after a moment or two, said to one another, “You know, He’s right.” 

Can anyone, in whom the True and Living God is doing a work of grace and salvation, ever attribute to himself the least amount of credit and glory? Can anyone who has been drawn into the koinonia of the Trinity ever look God in the eye and say, “I am here because of me, not because of You”?

“But by His [God’s] doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Cor. 1:30–31). 

Married to Jesus, Faithful to Him (1)

Tension – What to Write? What to Say? A Dilemma. 

A friend once asked me, “What do you really enjoy writing about?”

I immediately replied, “The love of God.” 

I love sharing the love of God in Christ with others. I love pondering how much our dear Lord Jesus loves us. I have found that the greatest need in the world, and most certainly in the professing church (Ephesians 3:14–19), is for people to know the depths of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. There is a reason John 3:16 was once the cornerstone of our message to the world and to one another within the professing church. I don’t think I ever heard Billy Graham preach without quoting John 3:16; there was a reason for that too. Yes, there is nothing like sharing the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.

If my friend had also asked me, “What do you least like writing about? Is there anything you avoid writing about?” I would probably have responded, “False teaching, heresy, and teaching which I wouldn’t term “heresy,” but which is enough off-base to affect others negatively, obscuring Jesus and the fulness of His life in us and our life in Him.”  

Now if you have either listened to me or read much of what I’ve written you won’t be surprised when I talk about the fact that we are not sinners but saints in Christ, nor should it surprise you if I say that we tend to live under the Old Covenant and teach the Old Covenant even though Jesus Christ is our New Covenant High Priest. Nor will you be surprised when I write about our pragmatic approach to the Bible and church life as opposed to living as the sons and daughters of God, or when I speak of us being people who are 100 miles wide and an inch deep. 

Whether you agree with me on these things, whether or not you see them the way that I do, I hope you do know that I love Jesus with all of my heart and that I want to love Him today more than I did yesterday. Presumably if you are reading this there is something God has given me to pass on that is helpful in your relationship with Him and with your relationship to our brothers and sisters in Christ. 

I think it is only by beholding Jesus that we are transformed into His image. Therefore, I want to focus on Jesus (1 John 3:2; 2 Cor. 3:17–18; Rom. 12:1–2; Col. 3:1–4).

Yet, what to do when false teaching and heresy permeate the church? What to do when dangerous thinking and practice deceive and tear down the People of God? What to do when these things are popularized? 

How to be faithful to our dear Lord Jesus in the midst of a tsunami of destruction? 

I would like to think that simply preaching the incredible love of Jesus Christ would bring professing Christians back to their senses, but the Bible does not teach this nor does experience demonstrate this. In the Gospels we witness conflict between Jesus and the religious establishment, with Jesus clearly denouncing the teaching and practice of the Pharisees (see Matthew 23). In the book of Acts there is conflict between legalists and those preaching the Gospel. Virtually all the New Testament letters address false teaching, some more than others. 

One of the benefits of preaching and teaching the books of the Bible is that we cannot avoid the hard passages about false teaching, we can’t cherry pick what we preach…well at least I hope we don’t. A steady diet of topical preaching and teaching eventually loses its way, Jesus is no longer its center and interpretive lens. Topical preaching seduces us into self-centeredness; our wants, our needs, our desires, our priorities. 

Why do I not care to write about false teaching? 

The first reason is that I want to focus on Jesus, always on Jesus. Again, it is in Jesus that we are transformed.

The second is that it is easy to get sucked up into negativity when thinking about false teaching and false teachers. I don’t want to be defined in terms of what I do not believe, I want to be defined in terms of what I do believe, I want Jesus and His love to define me. Another way to put it is that I want to be known for what I am for (Jesus Christ!) and not for what I am against. 

There are folks who style themselves as heresy hunters, always looking for what they think is error and being quick to criticize others. A steady diet of this distracts us from our Lord Jesus Christ, plus I think it sickens our souls. 

Then there is a very selfish reason why I avoid dealing with false teaching, it is a burden to me, it entails a heaviness. To ponder the works of darkness is hard, only a fool takes these things lightly. C. S. Lewis expressed relief when he completed The Screwtape Letters, and it took him a while to recover from the experience. Lewis paid a price for touching the realm of the enemy to help God’s People, that was the only way he could tell the story. 

Yet, to be faithful to Christ and His People we need to point out that the messengers of the enemy can transform themselves into apparent messengers of light (2 Cor. 11:13–15). O that it was not so.

I have tried both ways as a pastor. I have not said anything much about false teaching and practices and have hoped for the best, and then I have made a point of dealing with them in some measure (I can’t truly say that I have been completely straightforward – I tend to be oblique too often) and have also hoped for the best. I wish that I could say that one way or the other made a difference, but I can’t…I just don’t know. 

In the last church I attempted to pastor, there was such an ingrained heresy when I arrived that I wasn’t sure how to deal with it, other than keep pointing folks to Jesus and His Word. While toward the end of my time there I did try to illustrate the problem and point to Jesus as our Way out of it, the heresy was too ingrained. Jesus was simply a mascot, a tool of nationalism, there was no difference between the national flag and the Cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus was the spokesperson for a political agenda and He was the sanitizer for a nationalism where might makes right and we need not consider morals or ethics or the widow and orphan or stranger in the land. 

Above all else, the thought that Christians are citizens of heaven and that we are pilgrims and strangers on earth (Phil. 3:20; Heb. 11: 8–16) was a Biblical teaching stoutly rejected. 

From a young Christian I have known Ezekiel 33:1–9. This passage has been a burden to me, you could almost call it a “curse.” I can hear Paul say, “For if I preach the Gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion; for woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16). 

So what am I saying and why am I writing this? I’m writing this to clarify my thoughts and seek direction, and I am saying that while these things are not easy and that they are fraught with tension, that for the sake of the Gospel I am going to write a thread dealing with false teaching and certain heresies. You see, dear friends, it truly must be all for Jesus or nothing for Jesus – are we not bought with a price? The blood of the precious Lamb of God.

So the Lord willing, on this blog we'll continue with the Upper Room, The Last Battle, and now this new thread, which I'm calling Married to Jesus, Faithful to Him. Much love! Bob

Journeying On - A Prayer

 Journeying On

Lord of the cloud and fire,

I am a stranger, with a stranger’s indifference;

My hands hold a pilgrim’s staff, My march is Zionward,

My eyes are toward the coming of the Lord,

My heart is in thy hands without reserve.

Thou hast created it,

redeemed it,

renewed it,

captured it,

conquered it.

Keep from it every opposing foe,

crush in it every rebel lust,

mortify every treacherous passion,

annihilate every earthborn desire.

All faculties of my being vibrate to thy touch;

I love thee with soul, mind, body, strength,

might, spirit, affection, will,

desire, intellect, understanding.

Thou art the very perfection of all perfections;

All intellect derived from thee;

My scanty rivulets flow from thy unfathomable fountain.

Compared with thee the sun is darkness,

all beauty deformity,

all wisdom folly,

the best goodness faulty.

Thou art worthy of an adoration greater than my dull heart can yield;

Invigorate my love that it may rise worthily to thee,

tightly entwine itself round thee,

be allured by thee.

Then shall my walk be endless praise.

From “Valley of Vision” a collection of puritan prayers, pages 198 – 199.

Our Last Battle (2)

 I'm going to ask you to hang in here as we work through The Last Battle. I've been deferring this for a few years. Do we have the courage to face The Last Battle? Do we have the courage to face anything?

The Pilgrim Church, by E.H. Broadbent, (forward by F. F. Bruce) provides a nice historical background. 

My goal is to do one posting a week on the Last Battle, and continue to focus on the Upper Room. 

Love,

Bob

Two – By Caldron Pool

In Chapter One we meet the ape Shift and the donkey Puzzle. They say that they are friends. When Puzzle says it he means it. When Shift says it he says it to manipulate Puzzle, for Puzzle’s desire for friendship blinds him to the fact that Shift has only one interest in him, to use him and to abuse him. Shift is always reminding Puzzle how he knows better than Puzzle and only wants the best for Puzzle. Shift also plays off Puzzle’s emotions, making Puzzle feel guilty and sorry for the way he treats Shift when we fails to do Shift’s bidding.

One morning, as Puzzle and Shift walk alongside the Caldron Pool, the Ape spots something yellow floating in the water. After manipulating Puzzle to retrieve the object, they both realize that it is a lion’s skin. As Puzzle frets about the former occupant of the skin, Shift’s bent soul is at work, devising a plan to benefit from this sudden find. Here is a contrast between Puzzle’s sympathy and Shift’s narcissism, between Puzzle’s simplicity and Shift’s subterfuge. 

Puzzle wants to give the lion skin proper burial, for even if it is not the skin of a talking lion of Narnia, out of respect for Aslan Puzzle honors all lions. However, Shift reminds Puzzle that he isn’t good at thinking and then announces that they will turn the lion skin into a nice coat for Puzzle. How thoughtful and kind of Shift, always thinking of others. Then Shift has an even better idea, for since Puzzle will look like a lion when wearing the skin, he might as well pretend to be Aslan and speak to others as if he is Aslan. 

The balance of the chapter portrays the back and forth between Shift and Puzzle, Puzzle feeling uncomfortable with wearing the lion’s skin and pretending to be Aslan, and Shift insisting that this is Aslan’s plan and that they will be able to do much good for others. As Shift reminds Puzzle again and again, donkeys are not very good at thinking and he really should leave the thinking to Shift. 

The narrator reminds us that if you had seen a real lion that you would not have been taken in by Puzzle, but that if you had never seen a real lion, and if you only saw Puzzle at a distance, and if you couldn’t clearly seen him, and if he didn’t make donkey noises, that it is possible that you could be deceived into thinking that he was an actual lion. 

Puzzle’s instincts told him one thing, but he was so intimidated by Shift and was so convinced that he was stupid, and that Shift knew best, that he allowed himself to be led into a tragedy. Was it that Puzzle so wanted to have a friend that he kept accepting Shift’s deprecating evaluation of him? Had Puzzle become so brow beaten that even when his instinct for truth was strong, that he didn’t have the courage to break away from the malicious Ape? 

When the dead lion’s skin, after being tailored for Puzzle by Shift, was fitted on Puzzle, things were even worse, for Puzzle had become a captive to the skin of a dead lion and the Ape had even more control over him.

I wonder how we might be manipulated to wear the skin of a dead lion. How might we be induced to wear a Christianity that has no living relationship to the life of Jesus and the Gospel portrayed in Scripture?  If, after all, we don’t have an intimate relationship with Jesus, if we don’t know Him as our Friend and Brother, if living with Him is not our daily Way of Life; then is it not possible that we can be manipulated into accepting an image of Jesus that is not that of Scripture, that is not really the Word made Flesh? 

Since we are donkeys and not wise apes, this could be possible. But would we know it? 

In John Chapter 9 Jesus heals a man born blind. The Pharisees are angry about it for it was the Sabbath, and as we all know, God does not like it when people heal other people on the Sabbath (well, that is what the Pharisees taught about God, of course that isn’t the truth). After an extended back and forth between the Pharisees, the man’s parents, and the man who was healed; and after the man refused to denounce Jesus, the Pharisees said to the man, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you teaching us?”

Then the religious leaders did the man a favor by putting him out of the synagogue.

Just as Shift belittled Puzzle, so the Pharisees belittled the man born blind. Unlike Puzzle, the man born blind had to wherewithal to say, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” 

The manipulators of life, including in the religious world, exalt themselves and belittle others to maintain their power and deception. They may do this with smoke and mirrors – with prophetic utterances, with ever unfolding interpretations of events, with creating bogey men to evoke fear, with raw emotionalism; or they may be subtle and sophisticated, making pronouncements from the heights of exalted learning, or by convincing us that we need therapeutic ways of thinking and self – analysis.

         Then there are those who promise health and wealth and success and affluence. There are yet others who so browbeat their people and burden them with guilt that the people become prisoners of a sick relationship. Whatever the case, no matter the genre, they are smart apes and we are dumb donkeys; we were born in our sins and we cannot possibly teach them anything. We ought to be quiet and to accept whatever dead lion’s skin they fashion for us. 

Jesus said that you can’t put new wine in old wineskins. Do we believe that? Wouldn’t we rather change the chemistry of the new wine to make it compatible with the old wine skin? Don’t we really want the Holy Spirit to work within our status quo? 

C. S. Lewis wrote about inner circles, about closed groups who desire to control others. He had an aversion to these groups. He portrays such a group in That Hideous Strength. Lewis saw such groups as a schoolboy. He saw such groups in the world of scholarship.

        Do we see such groups today?

        Are others trying to fit us with dead lion skins?

        Would we know it if we were wearing dead lion skins? 

        Are we trying to induce others to wear the skins of dead lions?

        The best protection against being duped by dead lion skins is to know the real and true Aslan. 

The Royal Inclusio – Love (6)

 

“All things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” John 15:15b.

What does Jesus mean? If this is true, should we have thousands of pages of His teaching? Does the Father have so little to say? To teach? Are the Gospels all that the infinite God has to teach us? 

Certainly in the Divine koinonia from eternity the Father must have infinite glories to share with the Son. In the mystery of the Incarnation there must be wave upon wave of wisdom and insight and understanding for the Father to open to the Son. 

How has Jesus made known to us all things that He learned from the Father?

All things that Jesus learned from His Father are contained in what He has taught us. They are discovered in “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” 

All things that Jesus learned form His Father are hidden in all things that Jesus has taught us, they are discovered in the life of Jesus Christ - in what He said and in what He did. The life of Christ then (2,000 years ago) is seen in the life of Christ now; the life of Christ now flows from the life of Christ then. 

The life of a grand oak tree began in an acorn. Within the acorn was all we now see and experience in the majestic oak tree. Of course we can trace the acorn back to another tree, to another acorn, to another tree, and so forth. 

Little wonder that Jesus also says that the Holy Spirit will guide us into all the truth and that He will glorify Jesus, because “He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you” (John 16:12 – 15). Jesus says, “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12). 

On the one hand, in John 15:15 Jesus says that He has made known to us all things which He has learned from the Father. On the other hand, in John 16:12 Jesus says that He has many more things to say to us. On the one hand Jesus has given us the acorn, on the other hand Jesus wants to talk to us about the great oak tree. 

Therefore, the Holy Spirit is given to us to continue to teach us, to continue our conversation with Jesus Christ. The friends of Jesus are in communion with Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit; and with one another. The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us, directly and through one another. The Holy Spirit takes the Word that Jesus has spoken and causes it to grow and expand and deepen, stretching into the eternals. Friends talk with friends, and our conversation with Jesus continues from generation to generation. How foolish to have a conversation frozen in time, whether frozen 2,000 years, or during the Middle Ages, or during the Reformation, or during a renewal movement of the past 200 years. 

The table we sit at for the conversation extends beyond our own time and space, it is the communion of the saints. Our Road to Emmaus is populated with pilgrims from all places and ages and languages and times and seasons – and we can joyfully mix with them, joyfully encounter Jesus Christ with them. We live and romp and sing and learn among a great cloud of witnesses, within the Family of families. 

I see Jesus introducing us to one another and I see His pleasure as we get to know one another. When our friends meet our other friends we have joy, image the joy of Jesus! Imagine the joy that Jesus will have on that Great Day!

So, dear friends, Jesus continues to speak to us today. When we gather as our way of life, whether in large groups or small groups or to have coffee with one or two, we can gather in expectation that Jesus is continuing to speak to us, that the Holy Spirit is disclosing more and more of Jesus – to us as individuals, as marriages, as families, as congregations, and as the greater Body of Christ. 

Since we are His friends, He has much to say to us…are we listening? 

The Royal Inclusio – Love (5)

 

“No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15). 

Again, Jesus uses the word “friends.” Is it too much for us to think ourselves the way that Jesus thinks of us, as His friends? Is it too much for us to think of ourselves as His brethren? (Romans 8:29; Hebrews 2:10–13). It is good to have a brother, and it is good to have a friend; how wonderful it is to have someone who is both your brother and your friend!

It is one thing to see the outside of things, it is another thing to see and understand the inside of things. Consider Psalm 103:7, “He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel.” The People of Israel saw the works of God, Moses saw the ways of God. Israel saw the outside, Moses saw the inside. Because Moses knew the ways of God, because he knew the character and Person of God, he was able to intercede for Israel and save the people from a consummating judgment. Moses knew that “the LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness” (Psalm 103:8). 

How tragic to spend all of one’s life learning about Jesus but never knowing Him as our Friend. How many Sunday school classes have I observed, how many small groups, in which my brothers and sisters speak of Jesus as a stranger, as a “subject” to be studied and speculated about, as we might speak of Lincoln or Caesar or Shakespeare or Buddha. The triteness and low expectations of our curriculum acknowledge this, whether it intends to or not. How many church leadership meetings have I attended in which we think and act as if Jesus could not possibly be in the room with us. – as if He is no more than an image on a wall or in a stained-glass window. We proclaim “He is risen” on Easter, but it seems to be a momentary confession. 

Why this does not trouble us is something I have never understood. 

Jesus desires intimate relationship with us, with all of us and with each of us. He is our good and tender Shepherd who so desires to hold us close to Himself. Jesus says to us, “I don’t just want you to see the things that I do, I want you to see Me and know Me and understand why I do the things I do. I want you to know Me and My ways. This is why I have said, I Am the Way.”

The New Covenant is the Covenant of the Inward Way, and that Way is Jesus Christ. “I will put My laws into their minds, and I will write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be My People…for all will know Me, from the least to the greatest of them.” (See Hebrews 8:7–13; 10:1-18.) 

The Father and Son bring their Way into us as they come to abide within us, as we learn to abide in the Vine, drawing our life from Him. 

Ah, but we are taught to see the outside, to live by the outside, to value appearances, to conform to outward religious and social expectations – which can only bring heartache and condemnation and alienation from one another and from God. We are taught that the New Covenant is not really for us, and so we live as if the veil still separates us from the Holy of Holies, we live as if our sins are not truly forgiven, we live as if intimacy with Jesus is impossible. 

A child refrains from doing something because the parent has said not to do it. A son or daughter refrains from doing something because they know it is against the Nature of their Father who lives in them. A daughter or son knows to do something as a Way of Life because they live in intimacy with the Father, a child must be told to do such and such, and can only do so with limited understanding. 

A daughter or son knows that laying one’s life down is a Way of Life in Jesus Christ, whether in family, in civic community, at work, at school, or within the Church. A child might not steal because of a commandment; a daughter or son will not steal because it is against the Nature of the Father who lives in them. They further know that to steal is to drink the cup of Satan, they know that to steal would be to allow poison into the Body of Christ. 

Are we living as children or as sons and daughters? Are we living as servants or as friends of Jesus?

We’ll continue with John 15:15 in our next reflection in the series.  

Our Last Battle

 

Our Last Battle

 

Reflections on The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis and our pilgrimage in Christ.

 

Robert L. Withers, 2024

 

One – What Does It Mean?

 

            What does Lewis mean by the title, The Last Battle? Our response to the question seems simple at first; surely we find the answer on page 738, “And then the last battle of the last King of Narnia began.” Maybe this is what he meant by the title, maybe this is all he meant by the title, but maybe it isn’t. If it is all that he meant, then he wrote more than he knew – which is probably the way it should be, for the story and its images are not simply linear and one dimensional, anymore more than Lewis was one dimensional and linear – anymore than the Bible is flat. [I am using the one volume edition of the Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis, Harper Collins].

            When we birth life we do not know where the life will go, how it will grow, how it will be transformed and transform those around it. Tolkien did not care for the Narniad, he considered its images incongruous, for example, what in the world was Father Christmas doing in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? What has Father Christmas to do with a witch or an Aslan figure of Christ? Tolkien wanted Lewis to follow the congruity of The Lord of the Rings, he wanted Lewis’s creative life to mimic his own creative life.

            How likely was this to happen? After all, Lewis said that for many years he had an image of a faun carrying a package, and that it was from this image that life took the form of Narnia – an unlikely progression to our natural eyes, but who knows the mystery of creation and birthing in our souls? I think only Christ Jesus.

            After decades, The Lord of the Rings is still giving life, likely in forms that Tolkien did not anticipate, as is the Narniad, likely in forms that Lewis did not consider. Authorial Intent can be a poor primary hermeneutic, and Lewis argued that we ought to encounter the creative work of the author rather than the author, and indeed Lewis and others, such as Dorothy L. Sayers, were disgusted with the trend of knowing personal details about authors – including themselves – they thought that creative work ought to be encountered on its own merit. 

            While my sense is that they both went a bit far on this, my point is that to encounter the Narniad is to enter into Narnia and to allow Narnia to enter into us – it is not to primarily ask, “What did Lewis mean?” We might well ask this question when reading The Problem of Pain or Miracles, but we ask it because we acknowledge the genre of what we’re reading – both of these books are didactic and tightly reasoned, whereas the Narniad is imaginative with imaginative seeds sown everywhere and cross pollinating. To enter into the world of Narnia is to “take the adventure that Aslan gives us,” an adventure taking us “further up and further in.”

            For the past few years I have been pondering The Last Battle and wanting to write about it. My motivation is simple, I love Jesus and I love His People and I think that The Last Battle is a message of both warning and encouragement. I have come to see that the question of just what the last battle really is, is a bit more complex than we might think. Is the last battle found on page 738, or is it found throughout the book?

            I think that the last battle on page 738 is found within the true Last Battle which occurs throughout the book, which is to say that the physical battle that commences on page 738 is but a component of the battle that commences at the beginning of the book, or at any rate that commences no later than Chapter 2, when Tirian and Jewell digest the news of Aslan’s appearance.

            You see, we all have a last battle. We have this battle as individuals and as a People, and the battle centers around “What think you of Christ?” That is, “Who do men say that I am?”

            Most of the Narnians bought into a caricature of Aslan, a caricature which grew and grew, which twisted and twisted, until their faith was transferred from Aslan to Tashlan. In other words, the Narnians believed the worst of Aslan. Of course they couldn’t see it, because once they stepped on the slippery slope their descent accelerated.

            There would have been no last battle on page 738 had not King Tirian first fought his own last battle, had not Tirian come to see the gross caricature of Aslan in the deceitful work of the Ape.

            But what of us? Do we worship the true Jesus Christ, or have we so twisted Him that we’ve created our own Tashlans – our syncretistic idols? Are we parading our theologies and politics and worship styles and nationalism and materialism in the skins of dead lions, convinced that we have the true Jesus? Do our hearts belong to Jesus? As the deer pants for water brooks, are our souls panting for Jesus?

            I have a dear friend who graciously invited me to preach his installation sermon – it is one of the highlights of my life. My text was 2 Corinthians 11:2 – 3:

For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.  

 

            The hallmark of all Christian ministry ought to be leading Christians into a monogamous marriage with Jesus Christ; a pure and simple marriage to Jesus, in which Jesus is our All in all. We ought to be teaching others to love Jesus, we ought to be encouraging one another to love Jesus, we ought to have eyes for Jesus and only for Jesus. Jesus is not a capitalist, a socialist, a nationalist, a materialist; nor He is “red” or “blue” or of a particular religious tradition or denomination or of a church that claims to be exclusive. It seems we have many variations of dead lion skins that we parade shouting and teaching, “This is Jesus, this is Jesus!”

            It is frightening to me that we even cloak the Bible in dead lion skins – what hubris!

            It also seems that we are in competition to see who can produce the most authentic looking dead lion skin. We have become adept at making dead lion skins look alive, and it really does not seem to bother us…I find this puzzling.

            So many of our “Christian” books, our nationalistic pronouncements, our song lyrics, our teachings on “End Times,”  our Sunday school and small group curriculum, our emphasis on money and possessions, and the way we often “do” church – seem to me to be dead lion skins, for they do not point us to Jesus and only to Jesus, and they require artificial life support, otherwise they will die quickly. They also require marketing, manipulation, pressure to conform, and a return on investment. They must make economic sense.

            Well, I trust you will forgive me for the above, I am simply sharing my heart and the impact of The Last Battle. There is a simplicity in Jesus that our sophistication has left behind, there is also a directness in His call to discipleship (Mark 8:34 – 38) that we avoid, but which Bonhoeffer captures when writing, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

            We like to quote Jim Elliot’s, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose,” but we don’t really want to live it out in our lives – we don’t really want to encounter the true Aslan, the son of the Emperor across the sea – for while Aslan is good, He is most certainly not tame.

            I hope you will join me in reflecting on The Last Battle. Every time I walk through this last book of Narnia it tears my soul but it also gives me hope, for I know that I will see Aslan and be with Him, going further up and further in…always with Him, always in Him.

Much love,

Bob

 

 

 

 

The Royal Inclusio – Love (4)

 

 

“You are my friends if you do what I command you.” John 15:14.

 

Obedience consummates our relationship with God’s Word. Without obedience, God’s Word is not made one with us, without obedience God’s Word is not sealed in us and we are not sealed in the Word.

 

We live in an age where we think that possessing information is what matters, we think that intellectual knowledge of God’s Word is what we need and that it constitutes spiritual growth. Yet, true spiritual growth is transformation into the image of Jesus Christ (Roman 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:17 – 18); true spiritual growth is being “perfect as our Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) and holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:13–16).

 

As I write this, I have a letter on my desk from a sister in Christ in which she writes that she isn’t going to share Christ with those around her because that isn’t who she is at this time in her life. Even though she lives in close daily proximity to others, she isn’t going to share Jesus.

 

A dear friend recently told me that he prays, “Your will be done” on a regular basis, yet he too refuses to share Jesus with those around him, with those whom he has known for many years.

 

In effect, this sister and this brother are both saying that their personal preferences and desires override the command of Jesus to make disciples of all peoples and to love others, even to the point of laying down our lives.  

 

Dear friends, I write from painful experience, painful for me and painful for those I have hurt – every time I have grievously sinned in my life it is because I have thought that I was the “exception” to Jesus’ commandments – every time.

 

Jesus says, “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him” (John 14:21).  Then He continues, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My father will love him, and We will come to him and make our abode with him” (John 14:23).

 

Would we know the Trinity in a deeper and deeper fashion? Then we must obey the commands of Jesus, we must keep the Word of God.

 

How tragic that much of our mentality is, “Now that you have become a Christian, you need to know that because your core identity remains that of a miserable sinner, you cannot keep the commands of Jesus.” No wonder we are a disobedient people, we are being taught to fail, taught to sin, taught to come up short, taught to make excuses for our disobedience and sin. We seek self-improvement and humanistic therapy instead of the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

Jesus tells us that He is the Vine and we are the branches and that we are to live by His life – and yet we do not believe Jesus, instead we believe the teaching of the First Church of Yeah But. We always have an excuse because we have been taught to always have an excuse.

 

A marriage ceremony does not make a marriage. Going down to an altar, or completing a confirmation class, or being baptized, or obtaining a church membership certificate, or saying a few words about accepting Jesus…these things do not make a Christian, they do not make a disciple. (Consider the Parable of the Sower in Mark 4:1–20 as well as Mark 8:34 – 38).

 

There are three components to a wedding day. There is the ceremony, then there is the marriage certificate signed by the officiant, and then there is the physical consummation of the marriage. There have been times in history when it was customary for there to be a witness to the consummation – an uncomfortable prospect for us today. The point is that the ceremony and the certificate were sealed and confirmed by the consummation.

 

In much the same way, our obedience to Jesus confirms and seals His Word in our lives and brings us into intimate friendship with the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit.

 

While we tend to portray Christ’s commandments as difficult, the Scriptures portray His commandments as delightful. John writes that “His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3) and Daivd calls them “More desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb” (Psalm 19:10).

 

Our thinking and teaching, which tends to set us up for failure and alienation from Jesus, ought to be exalting the glory of His commandments and our joy in obeying them.

 

We are called to say along with Jesus, “My food is to do the will of the Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work” (John 4:34).

 

Jesus calls us into intimate friendship with Himself through obedience to His commandments. The distinguishing commandment is that we love one another just as He loves us, laying down our lives for one another. Within such love, we will find holy friendship with Jesus and with one another, within such love we will experience intimacy with the Trinity and with one another, within such love we will come home to the Father and live in His House.

 

Shall we live as the friends of Jesus today?

 

The Royal Inclusio – Love (3)

 

 

“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13.

 

This is the love whereby Jesus loves us, and it is the love whereby we are to love one another. While John 3:16 is a message for the world, 1 John 3:16 is a message for the People of Jesus:

 

“We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”

 

Do we wake up every morning seeking to serve our brothers and sisters? Are our lives oriented toward others? Our Upper Room journey began with Jesus washing the feet of His disciples, and with the commandment, “If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you” (John 13:14 – 15).

 

Is washing the feet of our brethren our Way of Life? Are we learning to serve one another? Are we teaching new disciples to serve one another? Those of us who have been following Jesus for years, is the depth of our service greater today than yesterday? Are we serving the least of our brethren – or do we only focus on those in the spotlight, or those who will reciprocate? Do we serve when no one is looking?

 

Note that the characteristic of our love and service is the surrender of our lives. Are we living for ourselves or for others? Are our congregations living for themselves or for others? Our marriages? Our families?

“In every way it has come to this, that what one now calls Christianity is precisely what Christ came to abolish.” Soren Kierkegaard.

 

When we consider the self-centeredness of North American Christianity we might be challenged by Kierkegaard’s statement. So much of our teaching and preaching is about the sovereign self, about our “best lives now,” about our wants and needs and desires and pleasure and affluence. Then there is that element of the professing church which thinks that if it believes the right thing that it is enough – but Jesus does not tell us that if we believe the right thing we will be His friends and disciples, He tells us that we must do what He commands us.

 

What does He command us? To love one another as He loves us, to lay down our lives for one another; to live in unity with one another in the Trinity. There is an orthodoxy that is dead, an orthodoxy that is parsimonious, an orthodoxy divorced from gentleness and grace – an orthodoxy Pharisaical.  Jesus says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63).

 

But this is not only the Way of Love, it is the Way of abiding Joy (John 15:11; 17:13). We will never find abiding joy in ourselves, but we will experience overflowing joy as our lives are orientated toward others in our dear Lord Jesus. What a tragedy that we have turned the Gospel into therapy, self – improvement, and entertainment. How sad that we have nationalized Jesus and politicized Him.

 

There is a sense in which our first question of the day should be, “How is Jesus calling me to die for others today?” As Paul writes:

 

“For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you” (2 Corinthians 4:11 – 12).

 

Again I ask, are our congregations living this Way? Is this our mindset? Our desire? Is it emanating from our souls?

 

Jesus says, “You are My friends, if you do what I command you.”

 

Are we His friends? Is there evidence to convict us?

 

The Royal Inclusio of Love, which Jesus gives us, requires everything; our hearts, our minds, our souls, our bodies, our desires, our wills. Let there be no mistake about this – following Jesus is all consuming, we place our lives on the altar to be consumed by Divine fire, and in losing our lives we find them in Jesus and in one another.

 

Anything less is not Biblical Christianity; anything less is not the Gospel – and let us not be so foolish as to think it is.

 

“And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:34 – 38, ESV.)

The Cup of Rebellion

 

Yesterday I happened upon a piece I wrote back in 2010. As I read it and thought about the ensuing years, and where we are today, I realized that if the piece was true then, that it is so much truer now. The world does not add to the burden or challenge of being a Christian, it is the professing church; it is one thing for the world to lose its mind, it is another thing for the professing church to lose the mind of Christ.

 

When Christians Drink the Cup of Rebellion

Robert L. Withers

February 10, 2010

 

            Last night before retiring I checked my email and read something that made me physically sick – it was as if I had ingested spoiled meat, rancid with maggots. It began:

            “This belongs in the ‘Email Hall of Fame.’ How’s this for apocalyptic literature. This was written by a pastor’s wife in biblical prose as a commentary on current events. It is brilliant.”

            What follows is a verbal and pictorial attack on the President of the United States, Barak Obama. “Attack” is too mild a word. The verbal sarcasm and the disrespectful pictorial caricatures are dung splattered upon the man who is the President of the nation in which American Christians live, the man who represents duly constituted authority – not only authority under the Constitution of the United States, but authority under the God of the Bible.

            I am going to restrain myself in this piece. I have already restrained myself by choosing the word “dung” above – there are more appropriate words to make the point, and I suppose that if I had the presence of a Luther I’d use them.

            Two preliminary comments on “biblical prose” and “brilliant” above; then I’ll move on to the heart of the matter.

            What follows in the email is hardly Biblical prose, it is more akin to something out of Mad Magazine; it is juvenile, written in the style of Mother Goose – with apologies to both Alfred E. Newman and Mother Goose. The only claim the prose and drawings have to any Biblical association is that the Bible warns us against the sin of disrespect for authority and positively commands Christians to honor authority.  It is brilliant in that Satan has not only used a Christian to write it, but also that our enemy is using Christians to propagate it – Screwtape must be envious.

            In 1 Peter 2:13 – 17 Christians are taught that their attitude toward government is integral to their testimony. Considering the political, economic, and social disabilities with which these First Century Christians lived – the American Church doesn’t know what an unjust government, social or economic system is. Yet, these believers are exhorted to, “Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.” Note the proximity of fearing God and honoring the king. Those who indeed fear God will honor the king for they recognize that all authority is from God – those who do not fear God, but set themselves up as rebels after the fashion of the enemy, will decide whom to honor and when to honor and how to honor.

            Paul teaches, in Romans 13:1 – 7 that, “…there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.” Paul also speaks in this passage of rendering honor to those in authority. Again consider the historical context; the recipients of this letter were Christians living in the city of Rome, the seat of Imperial power and hence the foundation of persecution against Christians – in this context Paul teaches them that God is in control and in that knowledge Roman authority should be honored.

            Jesus lived in submission to authority. In Matthew 8:1-13, the Roman centurion recognized that Jesus was not a rebel or loose cannon in terms of authority – the key element that the centurion recognized about Jesus was not that Jesus had authority or was in authority, but that Jesus was under authority. The centurion understood that only those who are under authority can exercise legitimate authority – Jesus commended the faith of this Roman soldier.

            What better picture of submission to authority could we have than Christ before Pilate? Then there is Paul and his numerous appearances before Roman authorities. And then we have the other Apostles in the Book of Acts when they disobeyed the Sanhedrin by continuing to preach Jesus Christ – they gladly suffered the punishing results of their obedience to God without exhibiting a disobedient and rebellious attitude toward authority. We might speak of David, who even after being anointed by Samuel as a future king, knew that only God had the prerogative to execute a change of authority – that it was not given to David to effect a change on the throne. When David gave in to temptation and demonstrated disrespect for Saul he repented and asked Saul’s forgiveness.

            A characteristic of false teachers is rejection of authority, Jude 8, 2 Peter 2:10; but this does not appear to deter Christians from heaping disrespect and rebellious abuse on the President of the United States. When we consider that the root of rebellion and slander is found in “our ancient foe,” ought we not to pause and consider the cup from which we drink?

            The Biblical books of Daniel and Revelation teach that all power is in God’s hands and that God sets up and casts down whom He will. Disrespect of the President of the United States by Christians is a manifestation of unbelief in the teaching of Daniel and Revelation – though it is a manifestation of the Satanic spirit which these Biblical books describe.

            The introduction of the email I received terms the piece apocalyptic literature. Perhaps it is ironically apocalyptic in that in Revelation we see a religious system riding on the Beast and the Beast then devouring the religious system. Any religious system, including elements of the American Evangelical Church, that rides the Beast in a symbiotic relationship has had fair Biblical warning. Let us recall that Revelation is a letter written to the Church, not to the world; it is a warning to the Church, not to the world. The irony is that the email is a picture of the people of Jesus giving themselves over to a temporal political, social, and economic agenda to the point where they join in rebellion against duly constituted authority. There is no moral ground in slander, vitriolic, and in disrespect for authority; there is, however, spiritual quicksand. The very wing of the American Church that reviles elements of society that have abandoned “traditional” values, has itself abandoned the foundation of those values in adopting the spirit of this age – they that live by the sword of rebellion will perish by the sword of rebellion. The Beast has room enough for all to ride.

            For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself, Philippians 3:20 – 21.

            Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them? But He turned and rebuked them…, Luke 9:54-55.

           

           

           

 

           

We Need More Veterinarians

 

 

“A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast the less he knows it.” George MacDonald, quoted by C. S. Lewis in George MacDonald An Anthology, page 160.

 

“Creatures, I give you yourselves,” said the strong happy voice of Aslan. “I give to you for ever this land of Narnia. I give you the woods, the fruits, the rivers. I give you the stars and I give you myself. The Dumb Beasts whom I have not chosen are yours also. Treat them gently and cherish them but do not go back to their ways let you cease to be Talking Beasts. For out of them you were taken and into them you can return. Do not so.” The Magicians Nephew, C. S. Lewis; One Volume edition The Chronicles of Narnia, page 71. Italics mine.

 

Based on the above it appears that we need fewer doctors and more veterinarians.  

 

“See how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, the very world of unrighteousness; the tongue is set among our body’s parts as that which defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. For every species of beasts and birds, of reptiles and creatures of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by the human race.

 

“But no one among mankind can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people, who have been made in the likeness of God; from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, these things should not be this way. Does a spring send out from the same opening both fresh and bitter water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, bear olives, or a vine bear figs? Nor can salt water produce fresh.

 

“Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peace-loving, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the see whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” James 3:5b–18.