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.

 

The Royal Inclusio – Love (2)

 

 

“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” (John 15:12–13).

 

Earlier in the Upper Room Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34–35).

 

This is the measure of our life in Christ Jesus, this is the essence of life.

 

“We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16).

 

We see this again in 1 John 3:16: “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”

 

How do we think and speak of something which is beyond our comprehension? I suppose it is like going to the ocean, while we can’t comprehend it in its fulness, we can get in the water and experience it. It is like the Grand Canyon, it takes our breath away, and there are so many ways to experience it, it is never ending. The people who most appreciate the endless nature of the Canyon are those who know it best, those who have spent the most time in it, those whose souls are indistinguishable from the Canyon.

 

We are to love others as Jesus Christ loves us, and the central characteristic of His love is that He laid down His life for us. He lived a life of giving up Himself for others, and this life led to the Cross. The life of Jesus Christ was the fruit of the Cross and the Cross was the fruit of the life and love of Jesus Christ. This is to be the Way we live.

 

Paul writes, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma” (Ephesians 5:1–2).

 

The Cross is rooted in eternity, it appears in time and space, and it returns to eternity. Jesus is the Lamb foreknown and slain before the foundation of the world, and He will ever and always be the Lamb whom we worship, adore, and follow. (1 Peter 1:17 – 21; Revelation 5:1–14; 13:8; 21:22–22:5.)

 

The Nature of our life in Christ is to lay down our lives for others in love. This ought to be the nature of our marriages, our families, our congregations, our vocations, our civic life – it ought to be the essence of all that we do – to love as Jesus loves, to love in the pattern and shape of the Cross of Christ.

 

In case you haven’t noticed, this is not a safe way to live, at least not safe in the eyes of the world; yet in the eyes of our Father it is the safest Way to live – for in such living we abide in the Vine. We are called to die that others may live (John 12:24–26; 2 Cor. 4:12).

 

O how I recall a morning in January 1967 when I stood before the faculty and student body of a Bible college and shared a devotional from John 13:34–35. O how I was nervous. I had been asked to do this only about an hour ahead of time; the student scheduled to speak was ill and could not attend chapel, so two of the upper classmen came to my dorm room to ask me to fill in – foolish boy of 16 that I was, I agreed. But what passage to speak from?

 

As I turned the pages of my Bible in my room, John 13:34 – 35 arrested my attention. But what to say about it?

 

I had been a Christian less than a year, for it was around late winter of 1966 that a coworker at my after-school job, Howard Wall, shared Jesus with me. Now I was standing before the student body and faculty of the school from which my two pastors had graduated. I was by far the youngest student in the Bible college.

 

The essence of the brief devotional was, “Jesus gave us this new commandment so that we might obey it. Yet we cannot obey it on our own, After all, we have enough trouble loving people of our own color, but we are to love all people; red, yellow, black, brown, purple, green. All people. On our own we cannot do this. However, Jesus Christ living in us and through us will fulfill this commandment, in Him we can obey this new commandment, to love one another as He loves us.”

 

I was expelled for this a few days later, along with my older friend George Will, who was deemed a bad influence on me and others. While I did not know this before I arrived at the school (why didn’t my two pastors who recommended the school tell me – why did they send me to such a place?), the school was segregated. The administration took what I said to be a challenge to their policy of segregation.

 

Within a couple months it will be the 58^th anniversary of my expulsion – a merciful and gracious blessing from our Father. However, as I think back over the years I wonder how many places I’ve been that actually believe and teach and live out John 13:34–35 and 15:12–13. How many of us are laying down our lives for one another?

 

How many congregations are laying down their collective lives?

 

How many denominations and movements?

 

If such love, if such a Way of living, is one of the two marks of a Christian, is one of the two marks of the Church (the other being Trinitarian unity, see John 17:20–26), then is the world able to identify us because of this love? Are we that City on a hill? Are we, in Christ, the Light of the world?

 

Where is the cruciform love of Jesus Christ in our lives?

 

How have we come to substitute politics and worldviews and economics and naturalistic and humanistic hermeneutics and communication for the Person of Jesus Christ and the life and love that can only flow from Him? How have we come to construct entertainment parks of so-called prophetic teachings and ignore the holy Lamb of God, who we are called to follow wherever He goes?

 

If the cruciform love of Jesus Christ is not our heartbeat, is not the essence of our life, is not the defining characteristic of our churches, is not the unambiguous mark of the Church in society – then what do we really have?

 

 

The Royal Inclusio – Love (1)

 

“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you...This I command you, that you love one another” (John 15:12, 17).

 

We’re going to ponder John 15:12 – 17, keeping in mind that this is a continuation of what precedes it and that it leads into what follows it – for this is all in the Upper Room.

 

Note that the passage begins and ends with Jesus’ command to us to love one another. This is what is termed an inclusio. Here is a basic definition from the Internet:

 

“Inclusio is a literary device in the Bible that involves repeating similar phrases, words, or themes at the beginning and end of a section or work. It's also known as bracketing or an envelope structure.”

 

Inclusio is employed for various reasons, and I’ll leave it to you to explore the reasons. I think of them as literary and oratorical devices used as punctuation and as guideposts for the reader and the hearer. I use the term “oratorical” because the Bible was written for the ear as much as the eye, as was much literature throughout history. This was for two reasons; people read aloud to themselves, and people read aloud to others.

 

Good literature is like good music, it has patterns and structure that help us “see” and remember what we read – good literature is a house that we can live in. This is one reason why reading the Bible to ourselves aloud helps us visualize and understand what we’re reading, it helps us see the house and how its furniture is arranged.

 

(This should also underline the importance of the public reading of Scripture in our gatherings – and of reading it well. If we are going to read Scripture we ought to know what we’re reading, to practice it just as a musician practices music before playing publicly. Ought we not to respect God, His Word, and His People? If we know people are coming to dinner, do we wait until they arrive to decide what to set before them? We ought to “give attention” to the public reading of Scripture, 1 Timothy 4:13.)

 

Jesus uses inclusio in John 15:12 – 17 to emphasize and mark off His new commandment, first given in John 13:34 – 35, that we are to love one another just as He loves us. Within our inclusio He deepens the texture of the commandment, drawing us deeper into koinonia with Himself and with one another, and raising us up into the Trinity.

 

The entire Upper Room narrative is found within an inclusio of love: “having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” (13:1); “so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (17:26).

 

What do you see in John 15:12 – 17?

 

What are the elements of this passage?

 

How is this passage connected to John 15:1 – 11?

 

What do we see about Jesus?

 

What do we see about us as individuals and as a people?

 

Is this the Way we are living?

End Note

 

END NOTE:

A concluding thought on the concept of worship in our gatherings:

 

The term “worship leader” is, I think, unfortunate. It reinforces the view that worship only occurs, or primarily occurs, during the musical portion of our gatherings. This is not good thinking or modeling; it sends the wrong message and conditions people to think in a way that is harmful.

 

Anyone who stands before a congregation is a worship leader, for we gather to worship and our focus is first on God and then on one another in Him. We gather in the Presence of Jesus Christ, the Lamb. Therefore, we should really have worship leaders throughout our gatherings, a collective group of men and women who lead us throughout our gatherings in worship.

 

Ministers of music? Yes.

 

Worship leaders, in the sense we’ve been using the term? No.

 

How we think about these things matters. Words form our thoughts and mold our souls and inform our actions.

 

Worship is to be our Way of Life in Jesus Christ.

Living in Jesus, Abiding in Him (34)

 

“These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be [“abide” in Greek] in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:11 NASB).

 

“But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.” (John 17:13 NASB).

 

The joy of Jesus is not dependent upon outside circumstances. The same is true for His peace. “Peace I leave with you; My peace do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful” (John 14:27). Jesus speaks of His peace when He will soon be betrayed, tortured, and crucified.

 

When Jesus approached the Cross, He was so focused on “the joy set before Him” that He “despised the shame” of the Cross (Heb. 12:20). The joy and the peace of Jesus make no sense to the natural man. How can a person be peaceful and joyful amid suffering and reversal and grief and loss? This is beyond understanding.

 

Peter terms our joy “inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Pt. 1:8). Paul writes that the peace of God “surpasses all comprehension” (Phil. 4:7). Suffering for Christ and the glory and joy of Christ are themes of 1 Peter. Suffering for Christ and rejoicing and peace in Christ are themes of Philippians, written from prison.

 

Our joy and peace in Christ Jesus are not outwardly oriented. Paul and Silas sang praises to God in prison (Acts 16:25). Do we want to teach people Biblical joy in Jesus Christ, or do we want to make people dependent on their feelings and outward expressions? What is the foundation of our teaching and practice? Upon what are we building?

 

If our joy and peace are in Jesus Christ, then all is well; but if Jesus is simply a mascot, if He is akin to Colonel Sanders, if He represents a lifestyle, if He is our therapist or motivational speaker, if He is our public spokesman – then we have a problem. Jesus is God and He calls us to a way of life that requires self-sacrifice and obedience to Him. As Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”

 

“Rejoice then in the Giver and his goodness, be happy in him, O my heart, and in nothing but God, for whatever a man trusts in, from that he expects happiness.

 

“He who is the ground of thy faith should be the substance of thy joy.” The Valley of Vision, page 278.

 

Is my faith in Jesus, or is it in a way of doing “church”? Is my faith in Jesus, or is it in a certain way of having a Sunday morning “experience”?

 

If our churches were closed next week (and why should they be for we are hardly a threat to anyone), would we still gather? Would we still gather to worship and to edify one another, whether in small groups or larger assemblies? If our power grid collapsed so we could no longer have amplified speaking and music, would we still gather? If our pastors and lead musicians and singers were no longer available, would we gather to worship and share His Word? Would we have joy?

 

When things are tough at work, at school, in society, in family – do we worship, do we know His joy and His peace?

 

Jesus desires that His joy be perfected within us – this is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that surpasses circumstances and our surroundings. The joy of Jesus is grounded in koinonia with Him and with one another, it is a Way of Life, it is His Way of Life in the Father.

 

Now I’m sure I’ve been misunderstood in what I’ve written. I deeply believe in the organic expression of the Body of Christ, and I love music that emanates from His Body. I think that it would probably be good for quiet churches to learn to let loose now and then, and I think it would be good for churches accustomed to exuberant expression to just be quiet occasionally. There is a lot we can learn from one another. I have a tambourine that I love to play when I can, and I have danced in church a time or two and I have found that a good shout of “glory!” and “hallelujah” to our Lord is wonderful. I also know what it is to be so overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit that to speak seems like profaning the moment.

 

So to remind us, if we think that “worship” is what happens when we have a band play during our gatherings, if we confine our thinking of worship to that particular part of the service, then we have departed from the Biblical view of worship. Of course worship ought to occur when we engage in singing and music – but Biblical worship is so much more, it ought to encompass all that we do when we gather, it ought to encompass all of life in Christ.

 

In our worship, we will know joy; in our joy we will know worship.

 

In both we will know Jesus.

Living in Jesus, Abiding in Him (33)

 

 

“These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be [“abide” in Greek] in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:11). NASB

 

“But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.” (John 17:13). NASB

 

Continuing from our last post…

 

Somewhere around 1992 I subscribed to receive “worship and praise” tapes every so many weeks from one of the top Christian music publishers and producers. I enjoyed the lyrics of the songs, the way they were presented, and the fact that they were basic enough for me to sing along while playing them. Also, the publisher was issuing spiral bound books of the music with cords, which made it possible for me to play the songs on our piano. (I’m not much of a piano player, but I love to sing to our Lord and worship Him with music.)

 

After receiving a few of these tapes, and very much enjoying them, I recall reading an advertisement about the tape series, soliciting subscriptions. I may have read it in a Christian magazine, or it may have been included in one of the tape mailers I received; while I can’t recall the source of the advert, I distinctly recall its content and my reaction.

 

It was along the line of, “Experience the presence of God with Worship & Praise Music’s [not the real name] monthly worship tape series. Listening to this music will bring you into the presence of God.”

 

What is your reaction when you read the substance of what I read? What are you thinking?

 

I imagine that many folks are thinking, “So what? Looks like good marketing.”

 

O dear friends, what have we come to if we think that by playing a tape or a CD or an audio file that we will experience the Presence of God? What does it mean if we have incorporated this thinking into our theology, our way of thinking about God and our relationship with Him? Please bear with me as I try to unpack this. (I canceled my subscription.)

 

Do we really believe that by listening to a recording of music that we will be ushered into the Holy of Holies and that we can sell this music and create an industry out of it? Have we become purveyors of tickets into the Presence of God?

 

Let me be quick to say that the Holy Spirit certainly does use music to draw us to Himself, that He uses music by itself, lyrics by themselves, and both together to draw us into koinonia with the Trinity and with one another. I have experienced this with many genres of music, from Classical to Country to popular Rock and with others – and songs are with me every single day of my life. But I do not think, “Let me play this music and I will be in the Holy of Holies.” I do not say to others, “Play this music and you will be close to God.” And I would hope that were I talented enough to be a true composer or musician, that I would not create or perpetuate an industry which sells access to God.

 

This is, at least for me, not a simple thing to ponder, and it is a difficult thing to write about because of its complexity. Yet, the baseline should not be complex, there ought to be something on its very face that causes us to say, “We can’t manufacture worship, we can’t manufacture the Presence of God, we ought not to think we can manipulate others or play the part of the Holy Spirit in the lives of others. Christ is the Vine and we are the branches and we can do nothing apart from Him.”

 

Again, the principle involved here applies to all that we do; music (whatever its form), teaching, preaching, counseling, financial management – for we can really do nothing that is lasting, nothing that matters, out of ourselves – we must draw our life from the Vine. If we do not acknowledge this in all that we do, we set ourselves (and others) up for doing life outside of Christ, of manufacturing our own brand of religion and supposed spirituality.

 

When preparing a sermon, while I need to be a good steward of the training I have, I must submit that training to the Lordship of Christ and His Cross, it must be put to death and offered up to Him – I must not rely on my training, I must rely on Jesus Christ. Am I presenting Jesus Christ, and Him crucified? (1 Cor. 2:2).

 

What I’m writing about is a Way of Life, and it is a willingness to surrender our control and pragmatism and need for “success” to Jesus Christ and His Cross. It is a willingness to stop trying to “make things happen” and to rest in Jesus, to trust Jesus, to truly trust the Holy Spirit to work within His People.

 

This is not something I, or you, can put on autopilot. This is about knowing the Cross in all that we do – and it will never be easy and never lend itself to a system. We cannot replicate it – and we hate this idea, because if something “works” in one place we want to package it and sell it to other places. If something works for us in July, we are convinced it will work for us in October.

 

Do we gather together to worship Jesus, to encourage one another in Jesus, and to share Jesus with those who don’t know Him? Or do we gather to have a “Sunday morning experience”?

 

If we are gathering to have an “experience,” then we must produce that experience every week to satisfy the audience, and if we don’t then they will stop coming. The larger the audience, the bigger the budget; the bigger the budget the more we need the audience. But if we gather to worship and know Jesus, and to know one another in Jesus, then He is our focus and our hearts will belong to Him rather than to an experience. We will belong to Him and to one another, rather than to an experience…and frankly rather than to a pastor or leadership…love them as we might and as we should.

 

Our passage is about joy, and if our idea of joy is amiss then our idea of worship will be amiss, and if our idea of worship is amiss then our idea of joy will be amiss. Biblical joy, the joy of Christ, is a joy known amid suffering as well as in good times. Biblical worship is worship known in suffering as well as in pleasant times. In our passage Jesus is speaking about joy knowing that within hours He will be betrayed, tortured, and crucified…Jesus was worshipping the Father through His betrayal, His suffering, and His death. Shall we really relegate “worship” to an upbeat time in our gatherings and limit our understanding and experience of it?

 

Worship is to be our Way of Life. The joy of Christ is to abide with us forever.

 

The Lord willing, we’ll continue to ponder joy in our next post in this series.

 

 

Living in Jesus, Abiding in Him (32)

 

“These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be [“abide” in Greek] in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:11). NASB

 

“But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.” (John 17:13). NASB

 

Please note that in John 15:11 we see, once again, the theme of “abiding”. In this instance it is the joy of Jesus abiding in us.

 

(Why, O why, our English translations are not consistent in their translation of certain words in the same passages I do not know – other than for “stylistic” reasons in English, which seems to me a poor justification. Certainly the Holy Spirit knew what He was doing when He inspired the human authors of Scripture – can we not trust the Holy Spirit?)

 

In John 15:11 and 17:13 we have the idea of Jesus’ joy being “made full” in us.  What does this mean and what does this look like? What is the source of this joy? Is the joy of Jesus being made full within us? As individuals and as His People, His Bride?

 

I want us to ponder this, to explore it, and not to gloss over it. Jesus deeply desires us to have His joy made complete within us; He wants us to live in His joy and for His joy to live in us, no matter where we are in life. Consider, that it was Jesus “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2b).

 

Jesus not only wants us to know His joy, He wants His joy to fill us and to be made complete within us. Peter writes that even in the midst of our faith being “tested by fire” that we can “greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory” (see 1 Peter 1:3 – 9), and let us not forget that it was from prison that Paul wrote, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4).

 

Let me state two points, and then we’ll explore them. The first is that we cannot manufacture the joy of Jesus, we cannot produce it, we cannot “make it happen.” The second is that Jesus, forever and always, is our source of Divine joy and in Him our joy is made complete. To quote from a prayer that we’ll return to, “He who is the ground of thy faith should be the substance of thy joy.” (The Valley of Vision, page 278).

 

These two points are in line with the Vine and the branches – apart from Jesus we cannot bear fruit, and that includes the fruit of joy (John 15:4 – 5).

 

Do we truly believe that Jesus must be the source of our joy? Do we really believe that we cannot manufacture joy?

 

The way we use words matters, and the way God uses words in Scripture especially matters. One of the tragedies of our age is that language is being desecrated in an orgy of deconstruction and destruction – we are destroying the beautiful gift of language that God gave us, and we don’t seem to care. We are now at the point where we are surrendering our God – given creative abilities to AI and we are unable to discern the frontiers and dividing lines of the issues at hand. We don’t even see that there are issues, and we continue to be agents and pawns of our own destruction – within and without the professing church.

 

In John 15:11 we read “that your joy may be made full.” Then in 17:13 we have “that they may have My joy made full in themselves.” In both passages joy is not something that we produce, it is a work that is being done within us. The Greek words in both instances for “made full” are passive verbs, meaning that we receive the joy rather than produce the joy (πληρωθῇ in 15:11 and πεπληρωμένην in 17:13).

 

Perhaps two passages from James can help us with this.

 

“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2 – 4).

 

When James writes that we should “let endurance have its perfect result” the picture is of a work being done within us to bring us to a place of maturity – we are to submit to the Divine working, we are not the originators or sustainers of the Divine working. (Consider Galatians 3:1 – 5).

 

Similarly we read in James 1:21, “Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.” We receive the word of God, implanted within us, and the growth and action of this Word will save our souls (see also 1 Peter 1:22 – 25; Phil. 2:13).

 

I am attempting to make this point about our source of joy and our inability to manufacture joy because I am not sure we understand it. We have become so good at choreographing our gatherings (our Sunday morning “experience” as I have seen it termed), our music has become so professional, that we don’t really need the Holy Spirit any more than popular performers – and we call what we do “worship”…but is it really? Can we tell the difference between having a good time, responding to music and lyrics and group excitement, and the worship of the True and Living God?

 

Let me be quick to say that this principle also applies to teaching and preaching. I realized early in my pastoral ministry that I was so well trained in preaching that I didn’t need the Holy Spirit to present a good sermon – and that was a sobering and frightening realization. I don’t know why we weren’t cautioned about this in seminary. 

 

(I have seen Christians sing lyrics that not only make no Biblical sense, I have seen them sing lyrics which go against clear Biblical teaching – how can this be? And how can this pass for Biblical worship? God does not ask us to leave our discernment behind when we gather, nor to subordinate sound wisdom and teaching to the excitement of music and pop culture conformity.)

 

When we use the term “worship” today it tends to be isolated to the musical element in our gatherings, and that is a problem that we don’t realize, so accustomed have we become to this use of the term. Life ought to be worship – all of life, and all that we do in our gatherings ought to be worship, for we ought to be offering ourselves and our actions to God, receiving from Him, and all that we do ought to be holy to the Lord.

 

Since in worship we find joy and receive joy, since in worship we know the Trinity as our source of joy, I am touching on this as we consider John 15:11; for if we associate the “joy” Jesus speaks of with momentary experiences, rather than as an abiding character of our life in Him, then we will be confused about His joy.

 

Perhaps we can know if we are worshipping on Sunday by how we truly live Monday – Saturday. Are we sharing Jesus Christ as our Way of Life? Is witnessing our Way of Life? Are we loving one another as Jesus loves us, laying our lives down for one another? Are we loving God with all that we have and all that we are? Are we living holy lives as our Father is holy? Are we communing with God in His Word? Are we interceding in prayer for others? Do our calendars and bank accounts testify to Jesus Christ? At work and in school and in our civic lives, are we known as disciples of Jesus Christ?

 

Well, a blog has its limitations, one of which is length. The Lord willing, we’ll pick this back up next time…

 

“He who is the ground of thy faith should be the substance of thy joy.” (The Valley of Vision, page 278).

 

Living in Jesus, Abiding in Him (31)

 

 

“Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” John 15:9 – 10.

 

Where we live is a theme of the Upper Room. Who lives in us is also a theme. Regarding the former, perhaps it is better expressed as “Who we  live in”. A word in our passage that often expresses this theme is “abide”.

 

In 14:17 we see that the Holy Spirit had been abiding with the disciples and that He would soon be “in” them (as He now is in us).

 

In 14:23 Jesus says that He and the Father will come and make their “abode” in us.

 

In 15:1 – 6 we see that we are called to “abide” in the Vine and that we can do nothing apart from Him – Jesus the Vine is our sole source of life.

 

In 15:9 – 10 we read of Jesus abiding in the Father’s love and of us abiding in His love.

 

Then in the Holy of Holies of John Chapter 17 we read, “…that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us…I in them and You in Me…”

 

We will not understand what Jesus is saying about commandments if we do not understand, in some measure, what He is saying about abiding in Him, about living in Him, and about the Trinity living within us. When Jesus speaks of us keeping His commandments He is speaking of our internal relationship with Him, He is speaking of us abiding in the Vine – He is not speaking about outward behavior, He is not talking about externals. (Yes, outward behavior ought to be an element of the fruit of an internal life in Christ.)

 

This is not about outward performance; it is about knowing Jesus and loving God with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength (Mark 12:29 – 30). Our benchmark by which to gauge whether we are keeping His commandments is found in John 15:12 – 13:

 

“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.”

 

We see this again in 1 John 3:16, “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”

 

This is a love and a way of life that can only be the fruit of abiding in the Vine, it can only be the fruit of an internal relationship with Jesus Christ. As we abide in His love we keep His commandments, and as we keep His commandments we abide in His love.

 

These are not the commandments of the Law, they are the commandments of relationship – commandments flowing from intimacy with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These commandments have a distinctive form to them, and that form is the Cross. The lives of the men and women and young people who follow Jesus and keep His commandments bear the pattern and the mark of the Cross of Jesus Christ – their lives are cruciform. (Ponder Galatians 2:20; Mark 8:34 – 38).

 

Just as Jesus, our food is to do the will of the Father, and to accomplish the work that He has given us in His Son (John 4:34), so that one day we can also say, “I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given me to do.” (John 17:4). This is Paul’s cry when he writes, “Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3:12).

 

The commandments of Jesus, the will of Jesus which we are to obey, are for us to discover in Him every day. We have a constant and all – pervading commandment in which we live, to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love one another as Jesus Christ loves us – laying our lives down for one another. We also have the commandment to “go” and make disciples of all people groups. These commandments imbue and produce all other commandments, that is the commandments which we discover in our relationship with Jesus Christ, the Father, the Holy Spirit, and with one another.

 

Perhaps what Paul writes to the Romans will help us see this:

 

“Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,’ and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:8 – 10).

 

James terms “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” the “royal law according to Scripture.” (James 2:8).

 

While we all have the common ground of the Cross in our relationships with the Trinity, our individual relationships with God have their distinctive characters and expressions – Jesus manifests Himself in myriad ways through His Body, and He reveals Himself to us in countless ways. I am making a point of this because we have a tendency to look at others and think, “If he (or she) knows Christ in this fashion, then I must know Christ in that same fashion. My experience ought to be the same. My expression of Christ ought to be the same.”

 

Sadly, there are teachers and movements who insist that such-and-such a model is “the” model that we all must follow, insisting that we all must have certain experiences, or insisting that we cannot have certain other experiences – this seems to be a tendency most of us have (including myself).  

 

Your heavenly Father will reveal Himself to you as His particular daughter or son in Jesus Christ. Others can indeed help us along the way. In fact, our Father reveals Himself to us through others all of the time; but He does so not that we might be exactly like others, but that we might be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:29).

 

There have been (and are) people in my life very different than I am, and I have received Christ from them and been drawn closer to Christ through them – but I am not called to have the same particular expressions of Christ that have been given to them. Realizing this gives us the freedom to be who we are in Christ, and to give others that same freedom. Realizing this allows us to function as a people, to enjoy one another, and to discover Christ together.

 

Never forget Psalm 139.         

 

Dorothy L. Sayers illustrates what I’m trying to convey in writing of Charles Williams in a letter dated 12 June 1957:

 

"...I can enter into Charles's type of mind, to some extent, by imagination, and look through its windows, as it were, into places where I cannot myself walk. He was, up to a certain point I think, a practicing mystic; from that point of view I am a complete moron, being almost wholly without intuitions of any kind; I can only apprehend intellectually what the mystics grasp directly."

 

In Christ, we need to be who we are for the sake of others, and others need to be who they are for our sake. We are all called to learn and do the daily commandments of our Lord Jesus, as well as live within those commandments which inform all other commandments: loving God, loving others and laying our lives down for them, and making disciples of all people groups.

 

Is Jesus Christ not the Vine, and are we not His branches?

 

Be the branch that He has called you to be today.

 

 

 

 

Living in Jesus, Abiding in Him (30)

 

 

“Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.” John 15:9

 

Nothing I can say, nothing I can write, can possibly approach the depth and height and length and breadth of what Jesus is saying. We might as well attempt to traverse the length of the Grand Canyon on foot in one day. The eternals are filled with praise for the love of Jesus Christ, the Lamb, for us; for you and for me.

 

As Paul writes, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?” (Romans 8:31). As John says, “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us…” (1 John 3:1).

 

Jesus also says to the Father, “I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected into one, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.” (John 17:23).

 

O dear, dear friends. Jesus says that He loves us as the Father loves Him. Jesus says that the Father loves us as He loves Jesus.

 

Let’s say and read this and write this again, “Jesus loves us as the Father loves Him, and the Father loves us as He loves Jesus.”

 

Let us repeat this, “Jesus loves me as the Father loves Him, and the Father loves me as He loves Jesus.”

 

Do not simply read this, say it out loud, “Jesus loves me as the Father loves Him, and the Father loves me as He loves Jesus.”

 

Have you ever spoken words more glorious? Have you ever uttered words more reassuring? Do you know words of greater healing and peace?

 

If there were no other words in the universe, no other words in the language of mankind, would not these words be enough to live on, to feed on, to live by?

 

Will you say, “Jesus loves me as the Father loves Him, and the Father loves me as He loves Jesus”?

 

Will you receive these words of Jesus? Will you confess them? Will you live in them and by them?

 

Will you walk into, and swim in, this ocean of the love of God for you? Will you allow God to fill you and bathe you in His love in Jesus Christ? Will you allow Him to envelope you in His love? And will you share His love with others?

 

Just as the Father loves Jesus, so the Father loves us. Just as the Father loves Jesus, so Jesus loves us.

 

O what a glorious and unfathomable love we have in the Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit.

 

Will we, will I, will you, receive and live in this love today?