Abiding in Jesus, Living in Him (19)

 

“Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes (καθαίρει) it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean (καθαροί) because of the word which I have spoken to you.” John 15:2 – 3.

 

In the 7^th reflection in this series, we noted that the Greek word for “prune” is closely related in Greek to the word for “clean.” The idea of pruning was connected with the idea of cleansing, we see this in the Greek text as John relates the words of Jesus, and this takes us back to John 13:10 – 11, in which Jesus says, “…and you are clean (καθαροί), but not all of you.” We also discussed how, in English, the idea of pruning can be related to the idea of cleansing and cleaning up.

 

How might we think about, “You are already clean [pruned] because of the word which I have spoken to you”? In 15:2 we are being pruned, then in 15:3 we are already pruned – what is happening?

 

Let’s go back to John 13:10, “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean…” We can be completely clean, and yet we need to wash our feet. Jesus has cleansed us, and yet the Father continues to prune us.

 

Throughout the Scriptures we see that we experience finality and completeness and fulness on the one hand in Christ Jesus, while continuing to grow into and grow out from the fulness and completeness and finality that we have in Christ Jesus on the other hand. The failure to recognize this fundamental element of our relationship with Christ and with one another is debilitating – the work of our High Priest is perfect and complete (Hebrews 10:10, 14; 12:2). 

It is as if we were wearing eye patches, some of us over the left eye and some of us over the right eye, we see one aspect of the work of Christ or the other, we experience one facet of relationship with Him or the other. No wonder we keep bumping into each other! No wonder we keep running into the furniture of the Temple and thinking that it shouldn’t be there!

 

We rest in the fact that we are already clean because of the Word of Jesus, and at the same time we rest in our Father’s pruning and cleansing. Isn’t it nice to have all this attention from the Trinity? See how God loves us so very much!

 

Let’s ponder the association of the Word of God with cleansing and pruning.

 

In John 17:17 Jesus prays, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.” To be sanctified is to be made holy and pure and also to be set apart, to be devoted, to be consecrated. Both of these core meanings are embedded in the idea of sanctification and they can’t be separated when it comes to the woman or man or young person in Jesus Christ – they are just as one as the two natures in the Incarnation.

 

While, the Lord willing, we will explore the working of the Word in John 17 more fully when we come to John 17, we read, “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave me out of the world…for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them…I have given them Your word.”

 

So when Jesus prays that we will be sanctified in the truth, in the Father’s Word (17:17), He is praying in the immediate context of Chapter 17, in the intermediate context of the Upper Room (chapters 13 – 17), and in the greater context of the Gospel of John, which begins, “In the beginning was the Word…” Of course, we can also say that John 17:17 is spoken in the context of the entire Bible, for we see the Word from Genesis to Revelation, we see God revealing Himself through His Word, always through His Word. (As others have pointed out, can it be an accident that the longest chapter of the Bible is the grand Psalm of the Word (Psalm 119) and that it is found virtually in the center of the Bible?)

 

How does Jesus Christ cleanse His Bride, the Church?

 

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.” (Ephesians 5:25 – 27).

 

How are we sanctified? How are we cleansed? How are our spots and wrinkles dispelled? How is holiness and blamelessness manifested in His Bride?

 

And consider that Jesus says, “If I then, the Lord and Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” (John 13:14). That is, as Jesus has cleansed us with His Word, we are to cleanse one another with His Word.

 

“Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thanksgiving in your hearts to God.” (Colossians 3:16; see also Ephesians 5:18 – 21; 4:14 – 16).

 

God’s Word is living and active – it is alive! (Hebrews 4:12; 1 Peter 1:23). This Word is to live within us, and we are to share it with others. We are to have a continuous feast with one another, sharing the produce of the land, planting and harvesting, harvesting and planting. The Word of God is to be more than second nature to us, it is to be our Nature, for as the Fathers taught us from Scripture, Jesus became as we were so that we might become as He is. This is what we see in the Upper Room, it is how we are to live life together.

 

Every Christian is to be the Incarnation of the Word. Every congregation is to be a local embodiment, the Incarnation, of the Word. Every locality ought to have a collective Incarnation of the Word manifested in the unity of congregations and individual Christians. This is the vision and prayer of Jesus Christ (John 17). This is the vision and calling of God throughout Scripture. This is our destiny.

 

This is the City whose Builder and Maker is God (Hebrews 11). This is our Father’s House (John 14:2).

 

Anything less…is less.

 

And anything greater? Well, there is nothing greater.

 

 

Abiding in Jesus, Living in Him (18)

 “…and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:2b).

 

I have never been around a combat veteran who freely talks about combat or who glories in their war experience. There was a special operations veteran in one of my parishes who grew up in a rural community, hunting was part of his upbringing. I knew this man when we were both in our 60s. After his discharge from the Army he never laid hands on a gun, he told me, “I can’t touch them anymore because of combat.”

 

I had a dear brother in Christ, now with the Lord, who was a WWII combat veteran. In all the hours I spent with him he only made one remark about combat in the European theater. “The 88s were bad, they were really bad.”

 

One of my nephews, who served in the Marines in the Middle East, gets disgusted when people want him to tell “war stories” – he wants none of it.

 

There are certain experiences we have in life that are not to be made merchandise of, they are not be to gloried in. (Yes, for the purposes of our own healing and also helping others it can be right and needful to speak of them – for we are not to be their prisoners. Together in Christ we can experience victory and healing and wholeness.)

 

In much the same way I find that folks who have truly engaged in spiritual warfare tend not to talk about it; while that often folks who do go on and on about spiritual warfare have little idea what they are talking about.

 

Again, I find the same principle when it comes to sin, and most certainly with what I term “deep sin.” I was once with a group of folks from a certain congregation who seemed to want to outdo each other in talking about how sinful they were – and it shocked me. Where was Jesus in all of that? Where was the Gospel? They were proclaiming an anemic Gospel, if it can be called a Gospel, for I didn’t detect any good news. They were a sweet group of people, but they were wearing grave clothes (John 11:44).

 

Have you ever had food poisoning? If so, this is the best illustration I can give you – sinning ought to be like contracting food poisoning, it ought to make us sick…really sick. Now since there are degrees of food poisoning, I’ll leave it to you to work out the nuances of the analogy, but my point is that sinning is not something casual – it is toxic, and to talk about it as if it is a daily way of life…well…something is amiss if we do that, that is not the Biblical image of our life in Christ. (Thank God that we have continual cleansing in Jesus – 1 John 1:7!).

 

“Surely every man at his best is a mere breath.” (Psalm 39:5c).

 

“With reproofs You chasten a man for iniquity; You consume as a moth what is precious to him; surely every man is a mere breath.” (Psalm 39:11).

 

When fish from the dark places of the ocean depths come to the surface of the waters, we are reminded of who we are outside of Christ and that there is no self-righteousness or pretension that we can hide behind – and so we run to Jesus Christ, confessing and giving thanks that we have been made “the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Cor. 5:21). We see that Jesus has drawn us to Himself, that our dear Father has drawn us to Jesus, and that this drawing and the grace and faith of Christ has its source in God and not ourselves (John 6:37, 44; Ephesians 2:1 – 10). As Jesus holds us tight, we hold tight to Jesus.

 

Those who know about deep sin are reluctant to mention it, for it is hideous and vile. All the superficial trappings of religion are blown away in the face of the abyss, and it is only when we look to the Cross that we find light and life and healing and forgiveness and peace and rest. At the Cross we enter into the purity and holiness of our Lord Jesus Christ, He clothes us in His righteousness, and we are His lambs forever. We become one with Jesus our Shepherd.

 

When we see “deep sin” we do not see the things we’ve done, so much as get a glimpse of who we are (were) outside of Jesus Christ – we see ourselves rather than our actions, or put another way, we see that the source of our sinful actions was the “self” the “old man” that we once were – a creature of the abyss of sin and death, an enemy of God.

 

This, my friends, is an element of our Father’s merciful pruning – so that we might always and forever be joined to our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

There is a sense in which the prophet Nathan is before us, saying to us as he said to Daivd, “Thou are the man!” Once we realize that this is indeed true, but that Jesus Christ is the Greater and Perfect Man, and that we are in Him, we can get on with life in love to God and others, we can lose our lives that we might find them.

 

Hans Boersma writes of John Climacus and the “gift of tears – a mourning over sin.” Boersma points out that we “don’t conjure up such tears, they are a gift from God.” He quotes Climacus, “When the soul grows tearful, weeps, and is filled with tenderness, and all this without having striven for it, then let us run, for the Lord has arrived uninvited and is holding out to us the sponge of loving sorrow, the cool waters of blessed sadness with which to wipe away the record of our sins.” (Pierced by Love, Hans Boersma), pp. 38 – 39).

 

I find great comfort in this picture of the Lord arriving uninvited and of us running to Him, for there are times when the veil is drawn back and I see myself in certain past situations and it is more than I can stand – it makes me sick and disgusted, I see myself as I was outside of Jesus. I am not simply writing of things I did or didn’t do, I am writing of “me,” of who I was – and it is frightening. It is a severe pruning and it reassures me of the incredible salvation that I, that we, have in Jesus Christ.

 

Dante’s Purgatory is the finest book of its type I’ve ever encountered, a trusted companion on my pilgrimage when dealing with the purging and cleansing of the core of our being. (I recommend the Dorothy L. Sayers translation because of her fidelity to the structure of the Comedy, her pains in translation, and her notes.) Perhaps we could term it a journey of practical sanctification. 

1 Corinthians 3:10 – 15 makes clear that we have a purification process to experience, and I think that Hebrews 5:8 – 9 indicates that this process has an important element that has nothing to do with sin; which is to say that this process has much mystery to it – only our Father can prune us, only our Lord Jesus can truly disciple us, only the Holy Spirit and the Word can work deep within us. Of course to be sure, we are called to experience this in koinonia with one another in Christ.

 

Writing about “deep sin” is something I thought I should do in the event any readers have experienced this radical pruning. You are not alone, you have joined the saints through the ages. Take comfort that our Father’s pruning is merciful, that He wounds so that He might heal, and that He is ever drawing us deeper into Himself and the Holy Trinity, He is ever and always enveloping us in His everlasting love in Jesus Christ.

 

Our Father prunes us so that we might bear more fruit – what a wonderful assurance!

 

 

Abiding in Jesus, Living in Him (17)

 

 

“…and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:2b).

 

I recently saw in the news that a fish from the ocean depths appeared at the surface of the waters; this was most unusual. Fish who live in the deep realms are supposed to stay in the trenches and valleys fathoms below, they are not supposed to visit the upper seas where light penetrates. This fish reminds me of deep sin, of elements within us, hopefully in our past, that seldom make their appearance, but when they do they arrest our attention – demanding acknowledgement in the form of contrition and confession and immediate release to our Lord Jesus.

 

Our Father’s pruning is about shaping us into the image of the Firstborn Son, it is always about Jesus, ever and always about Jesus. Consequently, there is an element of pruning that not only reveals who Jesus Christ is, our Everything, but also who we are outside of Jesus Christ – which is beyond description because there are no words to communicate the wickedness of our old selves, after all we were “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1 – 3) and we were enemies of God (Rom. 5:10).

 

Since we tend to focus on the exterior of life, on the things we do, we seldom get a look at just who we are, at what lies in the depths of our hearts and souls and inner selves. Psychobabble, Christian or otherwise, is more preoccupation with self and a coddling of self than anything else, it is about making little Bobby or Roberta feel good – only the Cross of Christ can deliver us from such nonsense, only the Cross can bring us to the end of ourselves and to the Life of Christ. Our problem is not self-esteem, it is in not esteeming Jesus Christ.  

 

As Romans Chapter 6 makes clear, the Gospel is not about perpetuating our old selves, it is about bringing us to the end of ourselves and into new life in Jesus Christ. (Why do we not recite Galatians 2:20 to one another?)

 

Yet, a curious thing is that when we focus on sins, on the things we have done against the Law of God, or even on the things we may still do (occasionally let us hope) in violation of God’s commandments and Way, we avoid the core of the problem of sin – for the problem of sin is not sins, it is not the things we do, it is who we are and who we were – for once again, before we knew Jesus Christ we were not sinners because we sinned, we sinned because we were sinners.

 

Now for those in Christ, we are saints – we have been made the “righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). We live out of our completeness in Jesus Christ (Col. 2:10; Heb. 10:10, 14). This new identity is manifested by “considering ourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11) and by putting off our “old man with its evil practices and putting on the new man who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him” (Col. 3:5 – 11). We learn to live “as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved” (Col. 3:12), we do not live as a bunch of miserable worthless worms and sinners for we are now holy in Jesus Christ.

 

We trust our Father that He is working within us “both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13; see also Phil. 1:6).

 

But you see, to focus on sinful actions is to look at the surface, it is to look at the deeds done, while to focus on the nature and source of the deeds is to strike at the root of the problem – we are either drawing our Life from the Vine, Jesus Christ, or we are drawing from the poisonous well of what the Bible terms the “old man” – that self-centered nature which rejects the Tree of Life (Jesus Christ) and aligns itself with the serpent.

 

There are times when the process of Divine pruning requires that we see our reflection in the waters of sin, death, and hell. That is, there are times when we need a glimpse of just who we were – and would be – outside of Jesus Christ. These glimpses are what I call “deep sin.” These are the times fish from the depths of the ocean surface, if only briefly, to refresh the contrast between Light and darkness, between Life and death, between Truth and lies, between Heaven and hell.

 

These are reminders that sin is not about eating too much chocolate, nor that it is something that can be glossed over. They are reminders that our actions indeed matter and that sinful actions are horrific and that only the blood of Jesus can provide forgiveness and cleansing. They also remind us what is fathoms below the surface, of what lurks in the depths of sin and self and the hell of rebellion – of what resides in the nature of the “old man” – something beyond human description, something that we ought to fear as we cling to the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ, confessing our identity in Him (once again, Galatians 2:20) and His perfect salvation.

 

And let me also say something about the “will.” We don’t hear much about the will these days. We don’t hear much about surrendering our will to God in Christ. What we do hear about the “will” is usually in terms of us having free will and making choices, about us being free moral agents and autonomous. I am not going to chase my tail like a puppy and attempt to untangle the mystery surrounding the will, for it is a mystery. But there is one thing about the will that ought not to be a mystery, and we see that in Romans 6:16:

 

“Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?”

 

We cannot live autonomously. We will serve either God or the enemy. We will live either by the life of Christ or according to the poison of the serpent. We can either live as bondservants of Jesus Christ, as His disciples, as His sheep, in His Family…or we can live in bondage to the system of death and rebellion. What we cannot do is live independently, we cannot live autonomously. There are only two kinds of people on earth; those who are alive in Christ and those who are dead outside of Him.

 

Now to be sure there are professing Christians who live in the twilight land of the “natural” or “soulical” man, and that is a sad place to live, in one’s carnal strength (1 Cor. 2:14; 3:1 – 3). We see this too much, and I suppose we see it because the Cross is foolishness to us (1 Cor. 1:17 – 2:5) and we want to preserve our natural person rather than know Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection. But my immediate point is that no matter how we negotiate the matter of “will,” let us not be so foolish as to think we can live life on our own terms, that is a lie. We will either live on God’s terms or Satan’s – and only a fool thinks otherwise. I know what it is to be a fool…am I the only one?

 

Our Father prunes us, in part, so that we will know these things. So that we will see ourselves as we are in Christ, and as we were apart from Christ. From time-to-time fish from the deep appear to remind us of the depths from which we have been delivered to know Jesus.

 

We’ll continue with this, the Lord willing, in our next reflection.

 

Abiding in Jesus, Living in Him (16)

 

 

“…and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:2b).

 

Before we transition into John 15:3, I want us to ponder what I’ll term “deep sin”, for I consider that the conviction of “deep sin” is an element of our Father’s pruning. I realize that many dear folks reading this will be unfamiliar with the difference between “sins” and “sin” within the context of the Bible – especially Romans. While we tend to focus on the things we do, whether righteous or unrighteous, whether good or bad, the Scriptures focus on who we are – in Christ or in Adam, saint or sinner, a righteous  person in Christ or still an unrighteous person outside of Christ, a person justified and complete in Christ or a person not justified and outside of Christ, a New Creation in Christ or still a person dead in trespasses and sins.

 

The Cross of Christ, the Atonement, not only deals with forgiveness for the things we have done, but it also brings us to the end of ourselves and raises us up in newness of life in Jesus Christ. Hence we see justification, the forgiveness of sins, in Romans up to 5:11, and then from 5:12 – 8:39 we see that we have been given a new identity in Jesus Christ through the Cross – we have died with Him and we have been raised with Him; and our relationships with sin, our old selves, and the Law, have been severed by our death with Jesus Christ.

 

Yes, of course the things we do matter, let us not be stupid about that – but who we are matters more because the things we do flow out of who we are, or who we think we are – only God knows our hearts. Before we know Christ, we are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners. Yes, of course conviction by the Word and the Holy Spirit regarding individual sins matters, let’s not be stupid about that either – but conviction about who we are outside of Christ matters more, because our nature and identity is always the heart of the issue.

 

Our actions can distract us, whether those actions are good or bad, what matters is whether we are being conformed to the image of the Firstborn Son; that image resides deep within us and works itself out from the inner recesses of our being. This is one of many reasons why Jesus says that without Him we can do nothing, we can bear no real lasting fruit – whose Life is living in us and flowing through us? This is always the question.

 

When I say that our actions can distract us, what I mean is that a professing Christian who only focuses on the things he does, his actions, and never confronts the issue of his core nature – inside and outside of Christ – never gets to the heart of the matter, and in this sense he remains a child. And let me say, that as painful as conviction of our sins may be, that they bear no comparison to the conviction of the deep sin of who we are outside of Jesus Christ – for the nature that produces sins, the core of the tree of death, is hideous and we can only “see” it in the measure that our Father allows us as He gives us grace and assurance.

 

Put another way, of course Jesus died because of the things we did, because of our sins – His blood covers and cleanses us, His blood is, in some mysterious fashion beyond our comprehension, the perfect and complete satisfaction and offering for our sins. But Jesus also died because of who we were – because of our deathly sinful and self-centered nature – for the sins we did were the result of the people we were, and unless our old nature was put to death and we were raised to newness of life in Christ, we would remain eternally dead (Ephesians 2:1 – 10; see also Galatians 2:20 and 2 Cor. 5:14 – 21).

 

To have our sins forgiven without a change of identity, a change of life, without being given new life within the Vine, would hardly be good news, it would not be a Gospel – for we would still have no hope of eternal life, no hope of union with the Trinity, no hope of the restoration of the image of God that was defaced in the Garden. (Justification is primarily forensic, sanctification is both forensic and organic; in sanctification Christ’s righteousness is both Imputed and imparted in our union with Him.)

 

To understand justification is to understand that we are set free from guilt and condemnation to live in unbridled koinonia with the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and with one another in the Body of Christ. The veil of the Temple has been rent and we are to freely live in the Holy of Holies.

 

What then of what I term “deep sin”?

 

We’ll have to pick this back up, the Lord willing, in our next reflection.

 

 

Abiding in Jesus, Living in Him (15)

 

 

“…and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:2b).

 

As we continue to ponder the pruning of our Father, let’s remind ourselves that His purpose in pruning is that we might be conformed to the image of His Firstborn Son and that this pruning need not have anything to do with sin. Because of our preoccupation with sin in much of the professing church, I cannot over emphasize this. Not only might pruning not have anything to do with sin, hopefully a time comes in our lives when it seldom has anything to do with sin.

 

Please understand that this is not making light of sin, it is rather highlighting the glory and power of salvation that Jesus Christ has brought to us; it is living in our inheritance in Jesus Christ. It is also learning to live in the Cross of Christ and in the Christ of the Cross.

 

“For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:10 – 11). Why do we insist on speaking as if we still are who we were instead of speaking and affirming of who we now are in Jesus Christ? Paul tells us not to do this!

 

There are things deep within our souls that require pruning, but which can only be touched as we know a deep and abiding security in Christ – otherwise we could not stand the pain and we would interpret the deep working of the Holy Spirit as rejection. These are mysteries, and while we may not understand them we can experience them in Jesus Christ.

 

“Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And having been made perfect, He because to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation…” (Hebrews 5:8 – 9).

 

Now friends, we know that Jesus was sinless (Heb. 4:15; 2 Cor. 5:21), and yet we see that there was a process, a journey, a pilgrimage of maturation and of learning obedience. In Philippians 2:8 we see that Jesus became “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Here we have the mystery of the Incarnation, Jesus was fully God and fully Man – we do not understand this. We can experience the Incarnation because we are joined to Jesus Christ; we share His Divinity and His Humanity – we share the unity of His Nature; but we really cannot understand these things and we speculate to our peril.

 

The immediate point is that if Jesus had a maturation process that had nothing to do with sin, then as we learn to live in the fulness of the Gospel – especially those dimensions we find regarding our identity in Christ (Romans 5:12 – 8:30) – that we ought to anticipate that the Father’s dealing with us, His pruning, is focused on the Person of Jesus Christ and our conformation into His image, rather than on a preoccupation with sin. Healthy plants are pruned to enhance their health! (The Lord willing, we are going to circle back and take another look at sin in a deeper dimension before we move on from our passage on pruning.)

 

We see the journey of obedience and maturation in Jesus Christ consummated in Gethsemane and on Calvary. “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done…And being in agony He was praying very fervently.” (Luke 22:39 – 46). “Father into Your hands I commit My spirit.” (Luke 23:48).

 

In John chapters 13 – 17, the Upper Room, Jesus draws us into deep koinonia with the Father, with Himself, with the Holy Spirit, and with one another. The love to which He calls us is a cruciform, that means that it looks like the Cross, it is rooted in the Cross, which is in the depths of the Trinity, and its manifestation is the Cross. “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (Jn. 15:13).

 

Jesus speaks to us of knowing Him in the koinonia of His sufferings when He says, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you…If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you…an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is doing a service to God.” (See John 15:18 – 16:4).

 

The Cross is the great pruning shear of our heavenly Father, for in the Cross we learn that Christ is life and that life is Christ. In the Cross all that is not the image of Jesus Christ is removed, chisel and hammer stroke by chisel and hammer stroke.

 

When Paul writes, “I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified,” (1 Cor. 2:2) he is writing about our Way of Life; the Way we think and feel and imagine and speak and make choices and do things. This is the context of the statement, what precedes and follows the statement is all about Jesus Christ being our source of wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

 

Our glorious calling is to know Jesus, to share life with Jesus in His Cross; to share this life with one another, and to offer this life to the world.

 

“…that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the koinonia of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” (Phil. 3:10).

 

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Gal. 2:20).

 

“But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Gal. 6:14).

 

There is no pruning apart from the Cross. There is no life in Christ outside the Cross. There is no spiritual formation not birthed and shaped by the Cross.

 

Friends, I don’t care if it is a book on marriage, on parenting, on pastoring, on church “growth”, on preaching, on spiritual gifts, on conflict resolution…on Christians in business, on “leadership” – if it isn’t centered on the Cross of Christ and the Christ of the Cross, we ought to question its Biblical roots.

 

It is the Lamb who has been slain who is seen in the heavens (Rev. 5:6), not a bunch of slick preachers and entertaining Sunday programs and self-centered books and boutique coffees and pastries that we can enjoy while our brethren elsewhere are suffering persecution for their witness for Jesus Christ…and while believers a few miles or blocks from us may be homeless or without food or a safe place to live.

 

The pruning of our kind heavenly Father means that we die not only to sin, but we die to ourselves – so that we might live for Christ and for others.

 

“For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.” (2 Cor. 5:14 – 15).

 

“…and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me…”

 

“…Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Col. 1:27).

 

Abiding in Jesus, Living in Him (14)

 

 

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me and lead me in the everlasting way.” (Psalm 139:23 – 24).

 

Having considered Psalm 19:12 – 14 in its context, let’s now ponder Psalm 139:23 – 24 in its setting. We’ll begin by noting that the psalmist asks God to search him, we are not capable of searching ourselves. Our “insides” are too complex and too jumbled for us to rightly discern them – we must look to God and His Living Word to reveal what He will in the times and seasons that He desires. We must trust our kind heavenly Father and our faithful Lord Jesus.

 

Psalm 139 begins with, “O Yahweh, You have searched me and known me.” The psalm begins with God searching us, and it concludes with a prayer that God may continue to search us.

 

In the first movement of the psalm (vv. 1 – 5), we see that God knows when we sit and stand, He knows our thoughts, He knows the paths of life we take and when we lie down, He knows what we are going to say before we speak, He envelops us.

 

Then, in verse 8, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it. We might say that the awareness of God’s intimate knowledge of us is a “mind blower.”

 

Our Father’s intimate knowledge of us continues in the second movement (vv. 7 – 16) in which we see that wherever we go He is there and that His caring hand will rest upon us, that He wove us and knew us in the womb, and that our days have been recorded.

 

Then we come to another pause for reflection, similar to verse 6, “How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with you.” (vv. 17 – 18).

 

The psalmist is overwhelmed with the impenetrable depth of intimacy with God, of God’s knowledge of him and of his knowledge of God. To think the very thoughts of God, to sense His heartbeat, to touch Him and to be touched by Him – who has words for these things? (Consider Rom. 8:26 – 27 and 1 Cor. 2:6 – 16).

 

The third movement (vv. 19 – 22) reminds us that we live in a world in conflict (Psalm 2; 1 John 2:15 - 17). Whether within us or without us, we can have no compromise with evil and elements in rebellion against God.

 

Then we have the conclusion, standing alongside the interludes of verses 6, 17, and 18. We want our intimate relationship with God our Father and His searching to continue, we want the way the psalm begins to be the way the psalm concludes, but not only the way it concludes, but rather the way life in the Father continues – we desire our intimacy with Him to grow ever higher and ever deeper – for He is our destiny, our purpose, our glory…to know Him as daughters and sons in Jesus Christ.

 

Can we see the Father’s pruning in Psalm 139?

 

The prayer for God to know and test and purify our hearts and thoughts, is part of the fabric of life as sons and daughters of the Living God (Hebrews 4:12 – 16; 5:8 – 9; 12:1 – 13). This is to be our Way of Life in Jesus Christ as we are conformed into His image.

 

We are not capable of pruning ourselves – our heavenly Father is the vinedresser and He uses the pruning shears of His Word to operate deep within us.

 

“And see if there be any hurtful way in me…” Anxious thoughts (v. 23) can lead to hurtful ways (v. 24) in that anxious thoughts can drive us from trusting in our Father and toward taking things into our own hands. Hurtful ways hurt both ourselves and others – they deface the image of God within us and they seek to destroy the image of God in others.

 

When we rest in God we acknowledge His knowledge, Presence, and sovereignty as expressed in Psalm 139. When we attempt to seize control of life we repudiate the foregoing and make a hurtful mess of things.

 

Most of us have anxious thoughts. The challenge is what we do with our anxious thoughts. We can either submit our anxious thoughts to our Father and Lord Jesus, trusting them to care for us, or we can nurture our anxious thoughts and allow them to take over our hearts and minds and souls – becoming their slaves and forcing those poisonous thoughts on others.

 

To return to John 15:1 – 11, will we draw our life from the Vine or will we attempt to live life on our own?

 

Certainly “the Everlasting Way” is our Lord Jesus Christ.  He is the Way of Psalm 1, and in Him there is healing and not hurt; in Him anxious thoughts are dispelled as we know Him as our Sabbath Rest.

 

As we ponder how intimately our Father knows us, let us realize that “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love. That He predestined us to adoption [the placing of sons] through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will.” (Ephesians 1:4 – 5).

 

Our Father prunes us, drawing us ever deeper into Himself, so that we may bear the image of His Son, so that Jesus might be the Firstborn among many brethren.

 

O holy Father, search us and try us deeply, so that we may know You deeply.

Abiding in Jesus, Living in Him (13)

 

  

“Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults. Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not rule over me; then I will be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Yahweh, my rock and my Redeemer.” (Psalm 19:12 – 14).

 

When the Word of God is the fabric of our life in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit through the Word will reveal sin within us as well as transform us into the image of Jesus. The Holy Spirit will also reveal things in our lives that are not sin, but that are weights and hinderances that we need to deal with. Let’s remember that pruning does not only deal with dead and diseased plant material, it also cuts away healthy plant material that does not conform to the desired image and growth of the plant, and which may indeed lead to disease in the future. The problem with many professing Christians is not sin, it is good – for the good is the enemy of the better and the better is the enemy of the best.

 

Also, let’s not forget that Creation can reveal sin within us – my dog’s innocence convicts me of my selfishness. The birds and their songs convict me of my lack of trust in my heavenly Father.

 

After the psalmist mediates on Creation and God’s Word he asks, “Who can discern his errors?” Now here is a baseline question that is critical to the Christian life – because our answer to this can determine the trajectory of our lives in Christ. And let me acknowledge that there are at least two lines of thought on the answer. The core issue is whether the tree can prune itself or whether it needs a Master Gardener to prune it and shape it.

 

I recently read a book by a brother in Christ whom I deeply respect, I love the body of his writing and think the Church needs what he has to say. Yet in this book, his most recent, I sense that he has moved away from his organic approach to growth in Christ and into a motif of disciplines that rely more on the efforts of man than the Spirit of God – I hope this is a temporary distraction. In the book our dear brother insists that self-examination is critical and essential to the Christian life. I strongly disagree with this statement, especially in its context of the self-disciplines contained in the book.

 

Disciplines of self-examination tend to make us self-focused rather than centered on Christ and others – do we forget that we are called to lose our lives for Jesus Christ and the Gospel? Self-examination assumes that we have the ability to identify sin and imperfections in our lives, that we can understand the inner workings of our ourselves – and this simply isn’t true. Self-examination also distracts us from the perfect work of Jesus Christ and of our completion in Him. We are called to focus on Jesus and not on ourselves, we are called to seek the good of others and not our own good.

 

Self-examination leads us into a never-ending Gnostic labyrinth from which there is no return.

 

We do not grow into the image of Jesus Christ as we focus on ourselves, we are transformed into His image as we behold Him and confess our completeness in Him – as a dear friend has said to me for decades, “We are becoming who we are in Christ.” (Col. 2:10; Heb. 10:10, 14; 1 Jn. 3:1 – 3; 2 Cor. 3:17 – 18).

 

We first “sit in the heavenlies in Christ” so that we may “walk out our lives” in Him – this is the structure of Ephesians (Eph. 1:3; 2:6; 4:1) – we do not walk that we may ascend into the heavenlies, for Christ has already placed us in the heavenlies in Himself and in His perfect work. We will never be any more complete than we already are – the manifestation of that completeness is working itself out in our daily lives in Christ – but we can do nothing in ourselves, we abide in Christ, we rest in Christ – ceasing from our own works (John 15:4 – 5; Heb. 4:10). It is God who is working in us, doing His will and pleasure (Phi. 2:12 – 13).

 

It is when we are engaged in the Word of God, and the Word of God is working deep within us, even piercing to the soul and spirit – that the “thoughts and intentions of our hearts” are revealed (Heb. 4:12) – and this leads us and keeps us in the “rest of God” that we see in Hebrews 4:10, as we trust in our Great High Priest of Hebrews 4:13 – 16.

 

As the Word of God (Ps. 19:7 – 11) works within the psalmist he realizes that without God’s Word that he would never see his errors, his sins, and the toxic hidden things within him. And friends, even if we think we know our sins, until those sins are placed under the light of the Holy Spirit we really don’t know what we think we know – for the illumination of sin is devastating – claiming and confessing cleansing and forgiveness is wonderful for sure, but talking about sin, as we so lightly do in many church circles, is no parlor game.

 

Since the psalmist knows that he can’t discern his errors, he prays for God’s protection and deliverance – and of course in Christ all is forgiven, all is forgiven (Romans 5:1 – 11; 2 Cor. 5:21).

 

Here is our assurance in Jesus, we experience continual cleansing in our koinonia in Him, “…the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn. 1:7). When individual sins occur, when they are shown to us by the Holy Spirit, then we confess them and “He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1:9 – 2:2).  

 

More than anything, the working of the Holy Spirit and the pruning of our kind heavenly Father is less about what we do and more about who we are…about our character, about the real me and the real you, for our Father’s desire is that we bear the image of His Firstborn Son (Rom. 8:29). This in turn leads us to another dimension of pruning, our Father’s loving discipline, which we will ponder in a forthcoming reflection.

 

Our heavenly Vinedresser prunes us through a sacramental relationship with Creation and with His Word – life in Christ is holistic, it is a relationship – and the Trinity speaks to us through, and in, all of life…and all of life is to be in Jesus Christ.

 

[A note on self-examination: In Galatians 6:1 - 4 Paul writes that each one should “look to yourself” and that each one must examine his own work. This passage is framed in the context of Galatians, with the question, “Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (3:3), and with a continual emphasis on life in the Spirit and our sonship in Christ. Therefore, it ought to be understood that we need the enabling grace of God and the Holy Spirit to truly see ourselves and to examine our works.

 

In 1 Corinthians 11:28, in speaking of the Lord’s Table, Paul writes that, “a man must examine himself.” Once again, when we consider the context of this statement, we find that we can only do this with the grace of God and in our Lord Jesus Christ, we must look to the Holy Spirit to enable our self-examination. Jesus Christ is our wisdom (1 Cor. 1:30) and the Spirit of God must reveal the wisdom of God and knowledge of God to us (1 Cor. 2:6 – 16).

 

The Scriptures do not teach a preoccupation with ourselves; they teach that we give our lives to Jesus (Mark 8:34 – 38) and that He is the center of our lives. They also teach that just as Jesus laid His life down for us, that we are to lay our lives down for our brethren (1 John 3:16). We have no time or warrant to keep looking to ourselves.]

Abiding in Jesus, Living in Him (12)

 

 

“Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults. Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not rule over me; then I will be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Yahweh, my rock and my Redeemer.” (Psalm 19:12 – 14).

 

In the second movement of Psalm 19 (verses 7 – 11) we encounter a second way that God speaks to us and prunes us; that is, of course, His Word. God’s Word; His law, His testimony, His precepts, His commandments; restores us, makes us wise, brings us joy, and enlightens our eyes and understanding.

 

How sad it is when those who sense the Divine in Creation do not come to Him through His Word, and what a shame that there are those who profess a high regard for His Word and yet discount His revelation in Creation – even though His Word teaches us that He speaks to us, and reveals Himself to us, in and through His Creation. We ought not to read verses 1 – 6 without also reading verses 7 – 11, nor should we teach verses 7 – 11 without also teaching verses 1 – 6. Why would we put a patch over one eye, and not use both to see our Lord Jesus and our Father? Why would we plug up one ear, and not use both to hear the Word of our God speaking to us through Creation and through His written Word?

 

The nature of both Creation and the Bible is a mystery; just as the Nature of the Incarnation is a mystery. In the previous reflection we touched on the mysterious nature of Creation. As regards the Bible, to know the Scriptures as data is not enough, knowing the information the Scriptures contain is not enough; religious people of Jesus’ time knew the Scriptures but they did not know Him, therefore they did not really know the Scriptures.

 

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.” (John 5:39 – 40). Unless the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus Christ to us through and in the Scriptures, we simply cannot know them (1 Cor. 1:17 – 2:16).

 

In 2 Timothy 3:15 – 17 we see that Scripture gives us wisdom which leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. This passage tells us that Scripture is fruitful for teaching and reproof, for correction and for training – can we see the work of pruning in this?

 

Hebrews 4:12 – 13 shows us that God’s Word is living and active, it is sharper than a two-edged sword, penetrating deep within our being, judging and revealing. Can we see the work of pruning?

 

Psalm 19:12 tells us that the law of Yahweh is perfect, that it is blameless, restoring the soul. God’s perfect Word does a perfect work of restoration in us through our Lord Jesus Christ. While I may not perfectly understand what I am reading (and I do not!), I can have perfect trust in Jesus that what I am reading is perfect and that my Father will perfect me in Jesus (Ps. 138:8; Phil. 1:6).

 

May I share with you one reason why the Word of God has so little affect among us? Why it is akin to what we read about Jesus, that when He went to His hometown that He could do little to help them because of their unbelief. (Mt. 13:53 – 58). It is because we do not believe God’s Word, and it is particularly because we do not think His Word is perfect.

 

I have facilitated many Bible studies over the years, I have been in many small groups and Sunday school classes, and I have seen over and over again how we doubt God’s Word, we do not believe the Word of God is perfect. We say, “This cannot mean what it says. Paul was off on this point. Someone added this to Jesus’ words. This doesn’t make sense. Jesus cannot have meant this.”

 

We stand in judgment of God’s Word, rather than submitting to the judgment of God’s Word.

 

We explain away the Bible, we apologize for the Bible, we functionally edit the Bible, we pick and choose what in the Bible we will obey and convey to others. How can we receive from that which we do not trust? I have seen brothers spend most of their small group time stumbling over the Bible rather than submitting to the Bible. I have seen Sunday school classes waste hours using curricula that questions the truth of Scripture – and the people in the classes don’t discern the toxic nature of the curricula because they themselves do not see the Word of God as perfect. If we do not know the True Measure, how can we identify false measures? If we do not know what it is to touch and use true currency, how can we identify counterfeit currency?

 

Knowing that we can trust the perfect Word of God is critical to allowing His Word to restore our souls into His image. Do we trust the pruning shears of our Father? Do we trust His Word?

 

There are, I am sure, many things in the Bible I don’t know fully understand; but I understand that the Bible is God’s Word and that it reveals Jesus Christ harmoniously and consistently. The glory of the Bible, its heights and depths and lengths and breaths, is ever expanding in my life, the glory of Jesus Christ is more and more radiant. On my best days of seeing and understanding, I am still a child, I am still utterly dependent on my heavenly Father and Lord Jesus, I still desperately need the Holy Spirit.

 

I expect to meet Jesus when I open the Bible, when I mediate on His Word during the day, when I awake and visualize Psalm 23 at night; I expect Jesus to come to me and to draw me to Him in and through His Word…and He does not disappoint. The Word of God is the nexus of my koinonia with the Trinity and the People of God.

 

What else do you see in Psalm 19:7 – 11? What does this passage tell us about experiencing the Word of God? What does this tell us about the pruning of our heavenly Father?

 

The Lord willing, we’ll ponder verses 12 – 14 in our next reflection.

 

 

Abiding in Jesus, Living in Him (11)

 

Continuing to consider our Father's pruning: 

 

“Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults. Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not rule over me; then I will be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Yahweh, my rock and my Redeemer.” (Psalm 19:12 – 14).

 

Keeping in mind the questions asked in our previous reflection, how do we arrive at verses 12 – 14? Where does the journey begin in Psalm 19?

 

In verses 1 – 6 we see God speaking to us through His Creation, then in verses 7 – 11 we see Him speaking to us through His written and inspired Word, the Scriptures. Yahweh reveals Himself through both the Scriptures and through Creation – He gives us two books in which He unveils Himself. We see Him and hear Him and touch Him, and are touched by Him, in both; we hear God in both. Both are sacramental – that is, God communicates His grace to us, imparts grace to us, through both Creation and His Word.

 

Let’s be clear about this, for the person who knows Jesus Christ, Creation is about so much more than evidence about God – after all, we are speaking of God’s Creation – so ought we not to expect to see and hear our dear Father, to touch Him, as we live in and among His Creation? We can sense the numinous in Creation just as we can sense the numinous in Scripture – and in one sense the two are one, for they have one Author. Creation plays a significant role throughout Scripture, and the Psalms evoke Creation and extol the majesty of God in Creation, and see His glory in the heavens and earth, on page after page.

 

Unless we ignore the inspired text, to read the Psalms is to contemplate Creation. Consider, if the Scriptures are sacramental, if we receive the Divine Nature as we participate in the Living Word (2 Pt. 1:4), then since Creation is woven into the Bible (as we see in Psalm 19), then the Bible teaches us to also enjoy koinonia with God in His Creation.

 

Can we see what a disservice we do to Creation and its Creator when we only use Creation as evidence for the Creator?

 

Let’s also acknowledge, while Creation can be misused and misunderstood by both exploitation and by deification, that so can the Bible. Just because people misuse the Bible – either by making it dead letter or by deconstructing it, or even by functionally worshipping it, does not mean that we do not rightly enter into God’s Word and desire it to enter into us. Why should we reject our glorious inheritance in Creation because others seek to misuse it in any number of ways?

 

Creation speaks to us of the transcendent, and sacramentally draws us into communion with the Trinity.

 

“…because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them, for since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:19 – 20, NASB).

 

Creation speaks to our souls, our inner persons, we see this in the words, “is evident within them.” Our innate sense of God speaks to His Creation, and His Creation speaks to our innate sense of God – they correspond to each other. Our downward spiral begins when we “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18).

 

But once again, let’s be clear that we are speaking of much more than Creation as some form of evidence of God, for Paul writes that God’s “invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen” through Creation.

 

If this is true, and if we have a high view of Scripture it must be true, then this demonstrates how far professing Christians have fallen, how far the professing church has fallen, in its understanding of Creation – for when is the last time you heard a message or read a book which teaches about God’s attributes and His Divine Nature as revealed in and through Creation? Such people and books exist, but they are rare.

 

Let’s now consider a transcendent and mystical passage in Romans 8 concerning Creation:

 

“For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” (Romans 8:19 – 22).

 

Creation is longing and waiting eagerly for us to be revealed in Christ Jesus (see also Colossians 3:4), for with our revealing will be Creation’s deliverance from slavery to glorious liberty. Creation is suffering birth pains. It seems to me that Creation has more awareness of our destiny in Jesus Christ than we do; Creation is looking forward to the Eschaton while we still contemplate our religious navels. Creation would like us to move on with the business of sonship, living as the sons and daughters of the Living God, and cease from our preoccupation with our sovereign selves.

 

I hope you will agree with me that what we see concerning Creation in Romans chapters one and two is a bit more than Creation as mere evidence of a Creator.

 

How does Creation lead us to verses 12 – 14 in Psalm 19? What does this look like in your life?

 

I will give you two examples in mine, but I want to hasten to say that every morning the sacrament of Creation is renewed in my soul…every morning. Viewing Creation as the sun rises to the east of our home, as its rays hit the pond across from our house, as I see and hear the first birds of the day, and drink in the colors of the plants and trees outside our windows – my soul is refreshed. And there is always something new about first walking outside, whether it is on our rear deck, or going out our front door – there is something about moving from inside to outside, a renewal, a reconnection, a refreshing in the graciousness of our dear heavenly Father.

 

“Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?” (Mt. 6:26).

 

Do we actually “look at the birds”? If not, why not? Doesn’t Jesus tell us to look at them? Do we refuse to do as Jesus says? Do we think the birds are beneath our attention? Do we think we can learn nothing about our Father from His Creation, specifically from His birds and His care for them?

 

More than once, I have been convicted by birds, convicted of my unbelief and also encouraged to trust the same God who cares for the birds. Many times I have been encouraged by songs of praise and joy from birds, by their call and response way of life. Birds have led me to Psalm 19:12 – 14 as my heart has been laid bare before our Father and Lord Jesus. Am I not called to offer the sacrifice of praise? (Heb. 13:15).

 

Let me tell you of how Creation has done what no preacher has done in my life, it has convicted me of sin so deep it cannot be described. My dog has partnered with the Word of God, penetrating my soul (Heb. 4:12 – 13), as no preacher has ever done. Let’s recall, that in Psalm 19 we see a partnership between Creation and the Word of God.

 

For I will tell you something, and if you have been blessed to have a dog, and I suppose a cat, you should know the truth of this – Creation is innocent and we are not. (Creation’s innocence makes cruelty to animals especially heinous and despicable.)

 

More than once, my dog Lily (and other dogs we’ve had) has looked at me in her innocence and my heart has been pierced with the illumination of my selfishness, unthankfulness, petulance, and other disgusting noxious sinful growths within me. The unconditional love of dogs has convicted more than one man or woman of their attitude and  behavior, and it has driven me to Psalm 19:12 – 14.

 

Preachers are not innocent, and we tend to manipulate, to construct rhetorical schemes to lead to certain results, such as conviction of sin. I do not say this is necessarily wrong, for we see responsible rhetorical construction throughout the Bible, but I think we likely interject our own humanistic machinations in preaching more than we ought to – for we are not innocent…saints in Christ though we may be.

 

My dog is innocent, and she has laid me low in conviction at the altar of God in Creation more than I have ever experienced in a church setting. I fear that I have succumbed to peer pressure in church settings, with my dog there is no peer pressure, with my dog I am caught between the innocence of Creation and the holiness of God…and there is no escape!

 

How has Creation been a sacrament in your life?

 

O dear heavenly Father, open our hearts and minds and souls to receive from You through Your Creation. To see You, to know You, and to rejoice in You. Amen.