The Holy Spirit - Revealing and Convicting (3)

 

“I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.

“All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.” John 16:12 – 15. 

What do you see in this passage? What questions do you have? How is this passage living in your life? How are these words of Jesus living in your local church? Your denomination? Your particular tradition?

This passage is a reminder that Jesus deeply desires to reveal Himself to us. He wants us to know Him, the Father, and the Holy Spirit intimately – He wants us to know the very koinonia of the Trinity; this is where chapters 13 – 16 are leading us, into the Holy of Holies of Chapter 17. 

Sadly, most of us have the notion that God puts barriers between us and Him, when in fact Jesus came to break down all barriers, in fact He became sin for us so that we could become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). When Jesus died on the Cross the veil of the Temple was rent in two, signifying that the way to God is now open to us all through Jesus Christ. 

How do you view Jesus? Do you view Him as a God who is distant, or as one who is revealing Himself to you? Do you view the Father as an aloof parent, or as one who loves His children and enjoys being with them? 

Do you view the Father as a parent who is reluctant to give to you? As a parent who thinks you never measure up? As someone who keeps raising the bar of approval?

Or do you see our heavenly Father as a parent who loves us with all of His heart and who embraces us every moment of every day…who yearns for us to know Him as He truly is, and not as He has been caricatured within much of Christianity? Do we not cry to Him, “Daddy! Father!” (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6). 

If you have never truly called your heavenly Father “Abba” or “Daddy,” why not give it a try? I promise it won’t hurt you. 

We can trust our Father that He will respond to us, we can trust our Lord Jesus that He will be with us, we can trust the Holy Spirit that He will speak to us. The essence of the Trinity (if we can use such language) is loving koinonia – this is to be our experience now in this life, and we anticipate its fulness yet to come in eternity. 

Consider these words in our passage; guide, speak, disclose, glorify, take. What do they portray? They portray relationship, communication. We see the Holy Spirit guiding us, speaking to us, hearing from the Father and the Son, disclosing Jesus to us, glorifying Jesus. 

Three times Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will disclose to us. The Holy Spirit will disclose things to come, and twice Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will take what belongs to Jesus and disclose these things to us. The coming of the Holy Spirit entails us living in a relationship with Him in which we experience a life of the continuous unveiling of Jesus Christ. Jesus is always the focus on the Holy Spirit in our lives, always, always, always. 

Jesus says in Matthew 28:20 that He is always with us. When we arrive at John Chapter 17 we’ll see that we are called to live in the Trinity. Can we imagine a moment (if such imagination is possible) when communication in the Trinity ceases to be? When love and joy and delight and acceptance stop? 

(Let me acknowledge Jesus’s cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” While we can touch, in some measure, the depth of this holy cry, because it occurs in the Holy of Holies, in the depths of the Trinity, behind the veil that then existed, we cannot not truly understand or comprehend it – we can only fall on our faces.)

John writes in his first letter that he wants the recipients of his letter to have koinonia with him and his brethren because John and his brethren have koinonia with the Father and the Son (1 John 1:3). In other words, to have fellowship with John and his friends is to have fellowship with the Trinity. This is not hubris from the Beloved Apostle, it is simply stating a fact of life. 

If I am a member of a family, and I invite you to our family’s table, then you will experience (let us hope) the koinonia of our family. Since we will not talk politics, but since we will speak of Jesus, let us hope you have a refreshing time!

To know Jesus is to know the Father; and let us hope that to know the People of God, the Church, the Temple, the Bride of Christ…is to know Jesus. Of course, we can hardly know others if we don’t share life with them. 

As we ponder John 16:12 – 15, let’s ask ourselves, “What do I see Jesus saying about our Way of Life, how we should be living, what we should be expecting?”

Are we seeing and hearing Jesus today? Is the Holy Spirit our breath of Life? 

Our Last Battle (18)

Only Jesus 

I am going to conclude our reflections on Our Last Battle with a quote from Chapter Twelve and a quote from Chapter Thirteen from The Last Battle. After that, I may have an epilogue, one more reflection, in which I summarize what I see in Our Last Battle and why I wrote this series. 

The concluding chapters of The Last Battle, which I’m not going to cover, are some of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever read. I’m not going to cover them because they occur in the real and eternal Narnia and that is beyond the scope of this series. However, just as Revelation chapters 21 and 22, they form the glorious beginning of our glorious never-ending destiny in Jesus Christ. As I have often said, if I had to choose only one book to bring with me to the proverbial desert island (in addition to the Bible), it would be the one volume edition of the Chronicles of Narnia. (If you prefer an audio dramatized version, which I think is exceptional, the Focus on the Family, Radio Theatre series is outstanding. I consider the movies a failure.)

Aslan holds the Narniad together, just as Jesus holds the Bible together. The Narniad reveals Aslan, the Bible reveals Jesus. In the Narniad we are always looking for Aslan, in the Bible, hopefully we are learning to always look for Jesus. 

In Chapter Twelve of the Last Battle, as Jill considers the Stable door and the death she thinks it leads to, Jewel the unicorn says to her, “Nay, fair friend. It may be for us the door to Aslan’s country and we shall sup at his table tonight.” 

In Jesus Christ, all of death’s doors lead to Him and His Table of Communion. 

In Revelation 12:11 we read that we overcome Tash and his minions because of the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony – our testimony being that of the Lamb, and that our overcoming in Jesus Christ encompasses self-denial, even unto death. As Paul writes, “Death works in us but life in you” (2 Corinthians 4:12). 

We can live this Way because Jesus Christ has “abolished death” (2 Timothy 1:10) and brought “life and immortality to light through the Gospel.” In the Gospel we see the present reality of life and immortality, a reality that consumes death and the fear of death, a reality that envelopes us in the Light and Life of Jesus Christ. 

Jesus, our Elder Brother, came to set “free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives” (Hebrews 2:15). He rendered the enemy “powerless” who once had the power of death (Hebrews 2:14). O dear friends, if we only realized the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ, that in Him we can cry out “Abba! Father!” and live in freedom as the daughters and sons of the Living God (Romans 8:12 – 25). 

Our quote from Chapter Thirteen occurs within the real Narnia:

“Then he fixed his eyes upon Tirian, and Tirian came near, trembling, and flung himself at the Lion’s feet, and the Lion kissed him and said, ‘Well done, last of the Kings of Narnia who stood firm at the darkest hour.’” 

This is all that I desire for myself, for you, for others, for those close to me, my family, my neighbors; that we would stand firm in Jesus during the dark hour in which we live.

What makes this an especially dark hour, perhaps the darkest hour, is that we have substituted dead lion skins for Jesus, we have forms of Christianity masquerading as Jesus. Some of these forms may have had the testimony of Jesus at one time, just as the Seven Churches of Revelation once did, but now they have substituted other ways of life and thinking for Jesus, while still claiming to be the church.

There are those who think that being “liberal” or “conservative” or having a certain worldview or coming from a certain religious tradition or following a syncretistic American – Christian nationalistic agenda is akin to the Gospel and Person of Jesus Christ, but this simply isn’t true. Jesus Christ is a Person, He is God, and we are to worship and follow Him – not an ideology, not a worldview, not a religious tradition, not a system of thought, not a form of worship – we are to be in a love relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus is to be our passion, our desire, our Friend, our Bridegroom, and we are to love and worship and serve Him with all that we have and all that we are.

An irony for me is that when I was a young Christian I was taught that there is a difference between knowing about Jesus and actually knowing Him – of living in a relationship with Him. I still believe this, and I have shared this truth with many over the years. I have seen others come to know Jesus Christ as they came to see the truth of this statement – we can know about Jesus or we can actually know Jesus.  

The irony is that much of the element of the professing church that taught me this truth has now abandoned this truth. We have been taken captive by sociology and philosophy and marketing and economics and politics – and even those who profess a high view of Scripture now insist that we employ naturalistic methods to interpret the Bible. (I have been making this a point of emphasis because if our starting point is wrong then our trajectory will be off, our ending will be off. What we plant in the ground is what will come from the earth. The seed we plant determines the fruit we will eat.)

If Jesus isn’t everything then Jesus isn’t anything. This is my message. This is the call of Jesus we see in Mark 8:34 – 38. 

God help us return to Jesus…perhaps for the first time. 

The Holy Spirit - Revealing and Convicting (2)

 

“And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged” (John 16:8 – 11). 

A fundamental challenge in seeing, in some measure, what Jesus is saying is that we live as if we are of this world, not as citizens of the heaven, not as those looking for that City which is to come (Philippians 3:20; Hebrews 11:8 – 16). This is a tragic irony of the “Christian” worldview movement, it does not reinforce our separation from the world, it does not recognize that the world is under judgment (Psalm 2, Daniel 2), it does not teach as Jesus does that we are in the world but not of the world (John 15:18 – 21; 17:14 – 16).

This movement thinks that if we can change the way people think that all will be well. Of course, its ultimate tragedy is that the Person of Jesus Christ is not its focus, He has been displaced. Having a “Christian” worldview, whatever that may mean, does not mean that a person knows Jesus. Getting someone to think a certain way is not the same as bringing someone to know Jesus. The worldview movement is a Nehushtan. It once likely had a reasonable place in our lives, we have now made it an idol. It was once our servant, now we serve the idol. 

John writes, “We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).

It has been pointed out that the work of the Holy Spirit toward the world in John 16:8 - 11 is not the same as His work in the People of God. In the Upper Room we see the Holy Spirit revealing Jesus to His People, the Holy Spirit is our Helper, our Paraclete, our Advocate. However, regarding the world, the Holy Spirit is not an Advocate but a Prosecutor. Let’s recall that when we considered 15:18 – 4 we saw that the Holy Spirit in us testifies of Jesus, and that in testifying of Jesus we encounter opposition, persecution, and suffering – the testimony of the Holy Spirit and the People of God are One. 

Jesus says, “Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out” (John 12:31). 

My sense is that John 16:8 speaks of the Holy Spirit convicting the world of its collective sin, its identity in sin, its soul of sin, its ocean of sin. The holy Prosecutor is proclaiming, “You have been convicted, and your conviction will stand, your judgment will stand.”

The righteousness of 16:8 is of course the righteousness of Jesus Christ, the Lamb who knew no sin. The Lamb comes into the Presence of the Father because He is altogether holy. While we may not see Him in one sense, we most assuredly love Him (1 Peter 1:8).

The judgment of the enemy is final (see also Colossians 2:15; 1 Corinthians 15:20 – 28). 

What I think we see in John 16:8 – 11 is something primarily judicial in the Court of Heaven that is manifested on earth. I do not get the sense than we are looking at the subjective conviction of individuals that can lead them to repentance and following Jesus Christ, but rather the blanket conviction of fallen and rebellious humanity. The judgment on Satan in 16:11 is final and is being worked out, and the judgment of rebellious humanity in 16:9 is also final and is being worked out. 

“The ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me” (John 14:30). 

The conviction of righteousness in 16:10 is tied to both the judgment of the world’s sin and the judgment of the ruler of this world. “Your throne O God, is forever and ever, and the righteous scepter is the scepter of His [Christ’s] Kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You” (Hebrews 1:8 – 9).

As Jesus says in John 15:22, because of Him the world no longer has a cloak or excuse for sin. 

The book of Revelation portrays a kaleidoscopic unfolding of these realities in generation after generation – at some point the trajectory of the world, the flesh, and the devil will terminate, while the trajectory of the Lamb, the Father, and the City will gloriously flourish into ages upon ages. 

The final words of Jesus on the Cross that John records are, “It is finished.” The work of Jesus Christ is final, He is the Omega, He is the Completion, He is the Perfection and Consummation of all things.

“He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He proposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fulness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth” (Ephesians 1:9-10, NASB). 

John 16:8 – 11 has a finality about it; the world has been convicted, the righteousness of Jesus Christ has been declared, the ruler of this world has been judged. We are to live in this final and present reality. 

We are to live in Jesus Christ.

Our Last Battle (17)

 Seventeen – “Here I Stand”

Chapter Ten of The Last Battle concludes with Tirian and his cohort coming to the defense of the Boar, for those faithful to Aslan cannot stand by and watch others slaughtered; Chapter Eleven opens with the “last battle of the last king of Narnia,” which continues into Chapter Twelve. 

As Tirian makes his appearance on Stable Hill in defense of the Boar and to defend Narnia he cries, “Here I stand, Tirian of Narnia, in Aslan’s name.”

The declaration, “Here I stand,” may transport the astute reader to both a Biblical exhortation and to a historic trenchant statement and is a critical element of Our Last Battle. 

In Ephesians 6:13-14 we read, “Take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore…”

There is a sense in which all of the glories of Ephesians 1:1–6:9 lead to the Last Battle of Ephesians 6:10 –24. When we know what it is to sit with Christ in the heavens (2:6), and to walk with Him on earth (4:1), we are able to stand in Him in the evil day. We stand not only to resist evil, but we also stand to deliver others with the Good News of Jesus Christ (6:18 – 20). Our lives, just as Tirian’s, must not be about ourselves but about Jesus Christ and the salvation of others. 

On April 17, 1521, Martin Luther, standing before religious and Imperial authorities, placed his life in jeopardy by proclaiming, “I neither can nor will retract anything; for it cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.”

While Luther had faults, cowardice was not one of them. 

When Tirian declared, “Here I stand,” he knew full well that he and his friends would likely die within the next hour; but as Roonwit reminds us, “Noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.”

How is it that the church in America is centered on the self, on money, on power, on politics, on nationalism? How is it that we have abandoned the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ? How is it that we have exported our narcissistic brand of “Christianity” to the peoples of the earth? How is it that we clothe ourselves in dead lion skins? How have we come to go along to get along? How is it that we have forged golden calf after golden calf, and have transformed Aslan into Tashlan into Tash?

We are called to die, to live cruciform lives, to lay down our lives for others, to allow death to work in us so that life may work in others – and if our congregations and our denominations and our institutions will not accept this message, then that tells us all we need to know – we have denied the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. 

If pastors and teachers and professors refuse to know only Jesus Christ, and Him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2), then can we not be honest enough to acknowledge that, whatever we have, it is not Biblical Christianity. C. S. Lewis did not have a problem with people not believing the Bible, but he did have a problem with people not believing the Bible and taking salaries from the church. 

As the last battle of the last King of Narnia swirls around the reader in chapters eleven and twelve, we see faithful dogs and horses killed while standing for Aslan, other Narnians running for their cowardly lives, and yet other Narnians fighting for Tash. We also see the perfidy of the Dwarfs, killing both Calormene and Narnian; their slaughter of the brave horses a shattering of hope. “The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs” is a cry we hear too much in today’s professing church, and in society. 

Inch by inch Tirian’s faithful cohort is forced into the Stable, the Calormenes’ expectation is that they will be destroyed by Tash, but they have another destiny.

As the cohort find themselves in the true and eternal Narnia, they realize that the Stable seen from the outside and the Stable seen from the inside are “two different places.” The inside is bigger than the outside. 

This reminds us that we don’t look at what is “seen,” but rather at what is unseen, for what our natural eye sees is temporal, but what the eye of the Spirit sees is eternal (2 Cor. 4:18). How sad that the professing church has been “naturalized” by the present age, it is as if we’ve taken a course on worldly citizenship and taken an oath of allegiance to the world’s ways and thoughts. 

We now teach worldly exegesis, methods which do not need the Holy Spirit. We align ourselves with political, economic, and social agendas to promote our own pleasure and comfort. We rely on marketing and social “sciences” and we promote teachings that appeal to our self-centered interests, rather than modeling and teaching what it is to deny ourselves and take up the Cross of Christ. 

Why is it that many of our most popular teachers trade in the merchandise of “Biblical” prophecy, churning out teaching after teaching to keep their followers entertained, rather than making disciples of Jesus Christ? Is this not akin to reading the entrails of animals or tea leaves or…drum roll…horoscopes? 

The thought that we should know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified seems too small and impractical for us. Yet, as Queen Lucy says, “In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.” 

The professing church in the United States thinks that the stable is too small, too impractical; that Jesus is asking too much when He calls us to deny ourselves and follow Him. We dare not preach a Gospel of self-denial – what would happen to our offerings? Better to develop a theology and message of Tashlan, after all, we don’t really think that Jesus is alive, not really. We don’t really think that He will appear…or that He is appearing. Not really.

We can tailor our dead lion skins to fit any situation, we can make them look much better than they did on Puzzle the Donkey. 

Now, for those who disagree with me, you only need to do one thing. Show me a people who gather around Jesus, who speak of Jesus, who love Jesus, who follow Jesus, who tell others about Jesus. Show me a people who, when they speak with one another during the week, speak of Jesus; speak of how Jesus is revealing Himself to them, changing their lives, of how they love Him more with each passing day.

Show me a people who love others enough to share Jesus with them, at home, in their neighborhoods, at work, at play, in church, in denominational settings, at school, in seminary. Show me a people whose heartbeat is the Lamb of God.

Show me a people who are citizens of heaven, to whom the politics of this world are dung, who do not call themselves conservative or liberal or capitalist or socialist or by the name of any nation – but who desire to be known as the People of Jesus, the Bride of the Lamb, citizens of the New Jerusalem, disciples of Jesus Christ. Show me a people who declare, “Jesus is not only enough, Jesus is not only more than enough, Jesus Christ is everything.”

Jesus is at the heart of Our Last Battle. He is at the heart of everything.

Is He the heart of my heart?

Is He the heart of your heart?

A Prayer

 Journeying On

From the Valley of Vision, pp. 198-199.

Arthur Bennett, editor; Banner of Truth Trust

Lord of the cloud and fire,

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

My hands hold a pilgrim’s staff,

My march is Zionward,

My eyes are toward the coming of the Lord,

My heart is in thy hands without reserve.

Thou hast created it,

Redeemed it,

Renewed it,

Captured it,

Conquered it.

Keep from it every opposing foe,

Crush in it every rebel lust,

Mortify every treacherous passion,

Annihilate every earthborn desire.

All faculties of my being vibrate to thy touch;

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

Might, spirit, affection, will,

Desire, intellect, understanding.

All intellect is derived from thee;

My scanty rivulets flow from thy unfathomable fountain.

Compared with thee the sun is darkness,

All beauty deformity,

All wisdom folly,

The best goodness faulty.

Thou art worthy of an adoration greater than

My dull heart can yield;

Invigorate my love that it may rise worthily to thee,

Tightly entwine itself round thee,

Be allured by thee.

Then shall my walk be endless praise. 

The Holy Spirit - Revealing and Convicting (1)

 

“But now I am going to Him who sent Me; and none of you asks Me, “Where are You going?” But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” (John 16:5 – 7).

In John 16:5 – 22, Jesus returns to two themes that we saw earlier in the Upper Room, that of His going away and of the Holy Spirit’s coming. This is a reminder for us to read the entire Upper Room passage (chapters 13 – 17) again and again and again until it becomes familiar to us the way a favorite song or piece of music does. There is probably not a week that goes by that I don’t read at least one section of the Upper Room, whether or not I’m writing a series of reflections on it. For years, when Vickie and I go on vacation, my practice is to meditate on John 17 the entire week. 

When I ponder the Upper Room, I see myself in the room with Jesus and His disciples; I also see Him in my own room with Me, this is especially true in John 17 – I watch Jesus talking to the Father. The Scriptures are transcendent, the Word of God is heavenly, and when we are in Christ we are made to sit in the heavenlies in Him (Ephesians 2:6). We are called to worship God in Spirit and in truth as our Way of Life (John 4:21 – 24), our worship and koinonia with the Trinity is not confined to a place or to a time.

Let’s note that when Jesus says, “None of you asks Me, ‘Where are you going?’” that in 13:36 Peter says, “Lord, where are You going?” What are we to make of this apparent contradiction? 

To begin I’ll mention that John 16:5 – 11 is, I think, a particularly enigmatic passage within an extended passage with many enigmas, with many puzzles and mysteries. I think some of the best words a good teacher can say or write sometimes are, “I don’t know.” After all, isn’t our quest to know Jesus and to love Him more today than we did yesterday? Isn’t friendship with Jesus and love toward Him and others the desire of our heart? We don’t need to “know” everything, but we do desire to love Him with all that we have and all that we are. 

It isn’t the end of the world or of the Kingdom of God if we don’t fully understand a passage of the Bible, in fact, acknowledging that God is God and that we are not, and that we don’t have full understanding of the Scriptures can be a very good thing for us, it can remind us of our utter dependence on Him for all wisdom and knowledge (see 1 Corinthians Chapter 2). 

This also ought to be a caution against primarily using humanistic approaches to understand and teach the Bible, including those employed by Evangelicals – if our epistemology and hermeneutics are not rooted in Jesus’ teaching on the Holy Spirit and in 1 Corinthians Chapter 2, we have a foundational problem (which we do). Jesus says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63). 

We ought not to feel compelled to know everything and to answer every question; but we should certainly feel compelled to pursue Jesus and to love and serve others. 

Since when we come to 16:16 – 22 we will spend extended time on Jesus going and coming (as we did in John 14:16 – 22), we’ll move on from verses 5 and 6 for now but return to them when reflecting on 16:16 – 22. 

In 14:16 – 17 and 15:26 Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit’s coming. In Luke 24:49 He calls the coming of the Holy Spirit “the Promise of the Father,” and in Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:8 Jesus associates the Holy Spirit with the power for witnessing, of proclaiming Jesus Christ to others, of revealing Jesus in Word and deed to others. 

In the Upper Room we see the Holy Spirit both in terms of revealing Jesus to us, the Family of God, and also enabling our witness to the world; while in Luke and Acts we see the Holy Spirit especially in terms of giving us the power to reveal Jesus to the world, to bring others into God’s Family.

In John 14:17 Jesus says that the Holy Spirit “abides with you and will be in you.” Since the Holy Spirit has already been with the disciples, when Jesus speaks of His coming He is speaking of the Holy Spirit coming in a new way, in a way that they have not previously known Him, “He abides with you and will be in you.”

Many things change when Jesus dies on the Cross and conquers death. Many things change when Jesus rises from the dead. Many things change on the Day of Pentecost. Our failure to have a holistic view of the Atonement, of the wonderful and perfect work of Jesus Christ, and our fractured idea of salvation and our virtually nonexistent understanding of sonship – all of this means that we live as blind men and women even though the Light of the world has rescued us from sin and death. 

An entirely new creation now lives on earth, a New Man, a new Race (1 Corinthians 15:45 – 48; 2 Corinthians 5:14 – 21). We are now called to live every day and every moment in the Holy of Holies, for the veil has been rent and intimacy with God ought to be our normal Way of life, we see this throughout the Upper Room and we see it in Hebrews 10:19 – 22 and 1 John 1:1 – 4; it is the motif of the New Testament. We have now been placed in Christ Jesus as sons and daughters of the Living God who are coming into their inheritance, crying out, “Daddy! Father!” (Romans 8:14 – 39).

As the Holy Spirit comes to live within us God once again breathes the Spirit of Life into mankind, the very Life of Jesus Christ. Those who are in Christ have the very life of Jesus Christ, the very life of God. Sadly, much (most?) of our teaching denies this glorious reality – if not explicitly, certainly implicitly. While we may have been delivered from Egypt, we are taught that we are still slaves, still sinners, still bearers of the image of fallen humanity. 

One of the many reasons I so dearly love the Upper Room is that in it Jesus calls us to intimacy with Himself, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus calls us to a life that is beautiful and wonderful and so very sweet. Jesus calls us to a life that lies deep inside of us, but which we seldom taste and live. We live as if the veil in the Temple is still blocking the way to intimacy with God, yet Jesus cries, “Come in! Come in! Come in! I have broken down all barriers, you are now holy in Me and have been made whole in Me, come in! Come in!”

How will we respond to Jesus today? 

Our Last Battle (16)

 Sixteen – In His Arms

The conclusion of Chapter Nine of The Last Battle sees Shift telling the Narnians assembled at Stable Hill that a donkey in a lion skin has been masquerading as Aslan, thus knocking the props from under Tirian’s plan to unveil the Ape’s lies by showing everyone poor Puzzle. Tirian realizes that lies can be strengthened by just a little truth.

We see this all around us, lies incorporating truth; religiously, politically, academically, lies and lies and lies…but do we care as long as we get what we want? 

While the story of The Last Battle isn’t finished, in one sense it is, just as Our Last Battle is completed by this point, well, for many of us it is, we’ll get to the rest of us in the next reflection. While a physical battle awaits Tirian and his cohort, their internal battle, the battle of the heart is consummated, for they are willing to follow Aslan and to be faithful to one another even to death, an honorable death, that treasure which no one is too poor to purchase. 

You see, if we haven’t fought the battles of our heart, if we haven’t taken up our cross and followed Jesus, learning to live lives of denial and self-sacrifice, we will succumb to the notion that Aslan and Tash are the same, we will worship Tashlan. It may be from fear, from moral and spiritual confusion and promiscuity, from ego, from peer pressure, from a lust for power and prestige and material gain; I suppose the list is endless. Initially, our Tashlan will probably look good. It will look Biblical and theological and religious and maybe patriotic and political and make social and economic sense and be alluring. Tashlan will appeal to whatever is in us that is not surrendered to the Lamb of God. 

Tirian has taken a journey from anger and murder to self-sacrifice for the sake of his people and for Aslan. I think we all have journeys from the self and the ways of the self to laying down our lives in love for others, which is the greatest love. This means laying down our lives for “the least of these my brethren,” a prospect we seem reluctant to embrace. (Matthew 25:31 – 46). Will we take these journeys? 

In Chapter Ten the Ape then tells the Narnians that Tashlan will no longer leave the stable to appear to them, but that if they wish to see Tashlan that they can come, one by one, into the stable. 

As Tirian and his friends contemplate the unfolding events on Stable Hill, the King says to Jill, “Courage, child, we are all between the paws of Aslan.”

These are not words of resignation; they are words of trust and commitment. These are the words of those who follow the Lamb wherever He goes, those who have the testimony of Jesus, who overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, and who do not love their lives even to death. 

These must be our words as we live in a world that has gone mad, and in the midst of a professing church, at least in the West, that is selling itself to the surrounding culture – and make no mistake, I am talking about “us” and not those other people who do not profess to hold Scripture in high regard. We must trust the arms of Jesus, the One who says, “I will never leave you or forsake you. I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.”

When no one volunteers to enter the stable, Ginger the Cat, now a coconspirator with Shift, says that he’ll go in, and with that he primly and arrogantly enters the stable, thinking that nothing will happen to him. What follows are noises of terror, with Ginger bolting from the stable, making unintelligible sounds while climbing a tree for safety, having lost the Narnian gift of speech. Whatever happened in the stable is not what the Cat expected, nor was it what Shift and the Calormene officer, Rishda Tarkaan, expected. 

The Narnians recall the teaching that at the creation of the world, when Aslan bestowed the gift of speech on some animals, that He warned them that if they learned the ways of the dumb beasts that they would lose the gift of speech and become like them. 

When we learn the ways of the world, the ways of false thinking and religion, we also lose the gift of speech, the gift of discernment, of clear thinking and feeling and loving and living. Words no longer have real meaning for we have prostituted them, we now use words for manipulation, we have become a nation, a world, of liars – the great liar must be rejoicing. People who are good at “spin” now make good money as consultants, are now elected to high office, and have great religious followings, including within the professing church. 

Major “Christian” institutions now produce miracles of spin, justifying sexual abuse, greed, political alignments, hoarding wealth while people go hungry and homeless, Tashlan seems to be reigning. If someone questions their actions, they quickly spin a response, using ever more convoluted language – I think these practitioners even confuse themselves. 

When Vickie and I watch television advertising we often look at each other and ask, “What was that about?” There are images and words, but there is no substance. But that is the way of our society, in religion, in politics, in commerce, in education – we have destroyed words and language and coherent thought, and in the process are destroying ourselves. 

We are an example of people living in a strong delusion, for we have not received the love of the truth…we are living in a delusion so strong that only God could have sent it (2 Thessalonians 2:11 – 12; Romans 1:18 – 32).

Amid the deceit and ugliness of the assembly on Stable Hill, an unlikely man of integrity and purity arises, Emeth, a young Calormene officer. Even though Emeth worships Tash, or at least thinks he does, his is a pure heart, a heart of devotion to an image which he thinks is the true God. Tirian and his cohort recognize this in Emeth, and honor and admire the young officer. The faithful Narnians have more in common with Emeth than they do with the Narnians who have abandoned Aslan. 

It is not unusual for those who follow Jesus to have more affinity with non-Christians than with professing Christians. Many men and women who respond to the common grace of God in Christ have a greater sense of compassion and care and concern for others than professing Christians, many of them have a nobler sense of ethics and integrity than professing Christians. Vickie and I have known folks of other religions who have a clearer sense of morality and ethics than professing Christians, and it has been much easier to talk to them about issues of truth and falsehood than with professing Christians.

Perhaps one reason for this is that American Christians tend to politicize and monetize everything, rather than view life through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Of course the core issue is whether we belong to Jesus or not, whether we are following the Lamb wherever He goes. Whether we have determined to know only Jesus Christ, and Him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2).

Are we taking the adventure that Aslan gives us?

The adventure from living for ourselves to living for Jesus and others, to surrendering our lives, our hearts and souls, to Jesus Christ. Is this our journey?

The Cost of Witness (12)

 The Cost of Witness (12)

“These things they will do because they have not known the Father or Me” (John 16:3).

“But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me” (John 15:21).

The context of the latter verse is “the world”; the context of the former verse is the synagogue, “They will make you outcasts from the synagogue…everyone who kills you will think he is offering service to God” (16:2). The truth of Jesus’ words was not only borne out in the first century, in the Acts of the Apostles and beyond, but we have seen its fulfillment in persecutions instigated by the professing church throughout history. Even today, in some lands, “Christian” churches in power, usually aligned with the state, use their power to stifle believers who will not acknowledge that particular church’s primacy.

I am at a loss as to how such institutions can claim to be the one true church, the ancient faith, when the nature they display is contrary to the Lamb of God who gives Himself for all peoples of the world. I cannot understand how anyone can excuse or defend religious persecution. If our respective traditions have this sin in their histories, let us acknowledge the evil – yes evil – learn from it, and resolve not to commit the sins of our ancestors. 

And let’s be honest enough to recognize that there must be errors in thinking and theology and church practice that led to such heinous behavior. We cannot separate the behavior from the theology, somehow, some way, the theology, the thinking, led to the evil of persecution. 

This should also be a warning about attitudes that may stop short of persecution, as we normally think of it, but which nevertheless are ugly and mean spirited within the professing church. I have been in some nasty church leadership meetings as well as congregational meetings. There is something amiss when professing Christians act like vipers – such behavior does not display the Nature of the Lamb, and if not His Nature, then whose nature? Let’s always recall that the Upper Room begins with Jesus washing our feet…the moment we stop washing the feet of our brethren we can expect problems. 

Those who persecute followers of Jesus, whether they are in the world or in the professing church, do so because they do not know the Father. If what Jesus says is true, then what does this say about those professing Christians in history who have persecuted other Christians? 

It is easier to understand, I think, persecution from the world, for the world is the world is the world, and Psalm 2 will always be true. It is difficult, at least for me, to understand persecution from the professing church, for I want to assume that professing Christians are Christians in nature, the Nature of the Lamb. I don’t fully understand these things. I do know that the Cross will attract opposition, within and without the professing church; I do know that the children of the natural, of the flesh, will persecute the children of the spirit and promise (Galatians 4:29). I often find more honesty in the world than in the professing church, the people of the world often have no reason to play hide and seek, while folks in the professing church are adept at maintaining religious self-righteousness. 

“If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains” (John 9:31). 

As we conclude our passage, John 15:18 – 16:4, which I’ve titled The Cost of Witness, let’s again note that Jesus has told us these things so that we “may be kept from stumbling” (John 16:1), and that He wants us to ponder these things as we face opposition within and without the professing church (John 16:4). To follow Jesus means to be identified with Jesus and the Father, it means to display His Nature to others, and it means going outside the camp to Jesus, bearing His reproach, “For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the City which is coming” (Hebrews 13:14). The “camp” which we are to go outside of is the religious camp; we live in the world but not of the world, and we are careful to understand that there are two Jerusalems, two mothers, and that our City and Mother is that which is above (Galatians 4:21 – 31).

The validity of our traditions and doctrinal and practical distinctives is the measure in which they encourage us to seek that City which is above and to seek the communion of saints in the Trinity which we see in John Chapter 17. Their validity is the measure to which they encourage us to lay down our lives for our brethren outside of our traditions. Their validity is the measure in which they teach us to think of ourselves as the People of God, the Bride of Christ, the Temple of God, as opposed to other self-identifications. 

We ought not to be surprised when we are put out of the church, nor when folks think they are doing God service when escorting us to the altar of sacrifice. 

There is, after all, a cost to witness, a cost to be paid for discipleship. (Mark 8:34 – 38). 

Our Last Battle (15)

 Fifteen – Accepting the Treasure

In Chapter Nine of The Last Battle, as Tirian and his cohort process Farsight’s news that Cair Paravel has been seized by the Calormenes and its inhabitants slaughtered, and that the noble Roonwit has been killed, their hope for reinforcements is shattered. They also realize that the Calormene army is on the march from Cair Paravel to Stable Hill, and that the longer they wait to return to Stable Hill and tell the deceived Narnians the truth about Puzzle and the Ape, the more likely the Calormene army will be there to overwhelm them. If they can arrive before the army, and display poor Puzzle for all to see, surely the Narnians will rally to their King and to the true Aslan. 

Jewel the Unicorn is the first to speak amid their anguish, “There is no need of counsel,” they must return to Stable Hill and “proclaim the truth, and take the adventure that Aslan sends us.”

As Tirian contemplates the likely battle ahead of them, he commands Jill and Eustace to return to their own country. Jill, even though she is afraid, refuses to do so. She will remain on her mission, she will be faithful to the end, she will not abandon her friends. Eustace, true to his character, points out that they can’t go even if they want to, they didn’t choose to come and they can’t choose to return – Aslan is the One who transports them from England to Narnia, and from Narnia back to England.  

As Tirian realizes that Jewel is right, that they must yield themselves to the adventure that Aslan gives them, another realization descends upon the faithful few, they will likely be killed in the coming hours, they will purchase that treasure which no one is too poor to buy, an honorable death. 

Eustace asks Jill, “What’ll happen if we get killed?’

She replies, “Well, we’ll be dead I suppose.” 

Upon further reflection she adds, “Even if we are killed. I’d rather be killed fighting for Narnia than grow old and stupid at home…and then die in the end just the same.” 

Later, after the cohort make their way back to the Stable and await evening, when the Narnians will be assembled and they can reveal the truth, Tirian says to Jewel, “Kiss me, Jewel, for certainly this is our last night on earth. And if ever I offended against you in any matter great or small, forgive me now.”

“Dear King,” said the Unicorn, “I could almost wish you had, so that I might forgive it…I would choose no other life than the life I have had and no other death than the one we go to.” 

I wonder, if when Jill and Eustace considered their situation, they might have been looking back into the adventure that Aslan gave them in The Silver Chair, for a certain adventure it was, an adventure in which death seemed more certain than life at times. And I wonder, if when reflecting back on their confrontation with the Queen of the Underland, that they recalled what is perhaps the finest testimony given in the entire Narniad, given by their friend Puddleglum, that included:

“I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia…Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”

As Roonwit might say, “Even a Marsh-wiggle can purchase an honorable death.”

The lives of Jill and Eustace, their friendship, had been forged through trials and victories in following Aslan and serving others. They had both made serious mistakes in The Silver Chair, they had been disobedient to Aslan, they had struggled with each other; out of those fires had come a friendship reflecting the glory of Aslan, a friendship unbreakable, a friendship that also bonded them to the others who had served Aslan in Narnia. 

Eustace and Jill, in looking at each other, would not have seen fault, but rather Aslan’s glorious redemption and faithfulness to them and to those around them. This is what friends do, they see Jesus Christ in one another, and together they learn to look to Jesus and take the adventure that Jesus gives them. Where will their friendship take them? 

Jill and Eustace have shared their young lives together in Aslan, and they will die together in Aslan. 

But consider Jill’s thinking, beyond her years, or maybe because of her years. She would rather be killed fighting for Narnia rather than grow old and stupid at home, dying in the end just the same. 

Let me share a little secret with you, most of us are growing old and stupid. Most of us have spent all our lives preserving our lives and we are too stupid to know that we are going to die anyway. 

The essence of Christian ministry is, “Death works in us, but life in you” (2 Corinthians 4:12).

The essence of Christian love and calling is, “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). 

The essence of Jesus’s call to us is, “If anyone will follow Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever will save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:34 – 35). 

The essence of our overcoming is, “The blood of the Lamb, the word of our testimony, and not loving our lives, even unto death” (Revelation 12:11). 

Falling into the ground and dying produces fruit, this is what Jesus says (John 12:24), and yet we are focused on self-preservation. 

There is a sense in which the essence of our life in Jesus Christ is our death in Jesus Christ. We cannot receive His love, we cannot share His love with others, unless we live lives of dying to ourselves and to the world around us, a world that would seduce us and kill us in so many ways, a world that would deaden us to the suffering of those around us. To the shame of the professing church in the United States, we do not teach this, we do not live this…and yet we call ourselves Christians. 

O dear friends, if we are not living for Jesus Christ, if we are not sharing Him with others, if we are not loving the unlovable and touching the untouchable, if we are embracing other gods than Jesus, including political, economic, and national agendas, including so-called Christian worldviews, if we are not embracing the disenfranchised, including the stranger in our midst, if we are not insisting on Jesus being the sole object of our love and devotion within our churches and seminaries and “Christian” colleges and other ministries…then we are growing old and stupid. Then we are worshipping Tashlan, soon to be revealed as Tash.   

Do not speak to me of self-preservation, speak to me of the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ. 

Is it not better to die with a friend or two, than to be swept up in the delusion of the masses, including the Christian masses? 

This question is at the heart of Our Last Battle. 

“But if not…” (Daniel 3:18).