The Holy of Holies (4)

 

O How He Loves Us!

 

“So that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me” (Jn. 17:23).

 

“So that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn. 17:26).

 

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

 

The overriding theme of the Upper Room is the love of God; God’s love for us, God’s love living in us, God’s love flowing from us to Him and to one another.

 

“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).

 

The Upper Room begins with love. “Jesus, knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” (John 13:1).

 

The Upper Room concludes in love, “So that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn. 17:26). We have an inclusio of love, and indeed, not only do we have a literary inclusio, but we see that our life in the Trinity is to be an inclusio of love, that our life with one another in the Trinity is to be an inclusio of love. Our biosphere is to be the essence of God, the love of God, the heart of God.

 

Our love for one another is to be our distinctive witness, the mark of the Christian, the mark of the Church – but it is not just any love, it is the very love of God, “That you should love one another even as I have loved you” (John 13:34 – 35).

 

Jesus reiterates this again when He says, “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).

 

Have we considered the possibility that the best training course on witnessing to the world is a course on loving one another? How can the world possibly see Jesus Christ without seeing His love living in His People? Arguments do not win hearts, love wins hearts. You may intellectually convince me of an argument, but unless my heart follows in love and commitment to Christ, I will not know eternal life. Arguments may draw me to a certain degree, but only love will keep me.

 

Love is the animating force in our life in the Trinity. “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to hm and make our abode with him” (John 14:23).

 

O dear friends, the Father loves us as He loves Jesus, Jesus loves us as the Father loves Him, we are to love one another as Jesus loves us, our love for one another (along with our unity in the Trinity, John 17:21 – 23) is our distinguishing mark, our identifying characteristic, our primary witness to the world.

 

As Paul writes, we can have all spiritual gifts and can engage in all kinds of service, but if we do not have love we have nothing (1 Cor. Chapter 13). Consider that this chapter lies between two chapters that explore our life in community, consider that it is prelude to the great chapter on the Resurrection; Chapter 13 is the animating and motivating life of the Holy Spirit, the love of God, within the Body of Christ (chapters 12 and 14), the Body which participates in the Resurrection, the Second Man, of Chapter 15.

 

No wonder Paul writes, “Beyond all these things put on love, which is the uniting bond of perfection” (Colossians 3:14).

 

To enter the Holy of Holies is to enter the depths of the love of God in Christ, to be plunged into the ineffable depths of the Divine shekinah, to be enveloped in the cloud of glory in which we behold Him and in which we realize that since He laid down His life for us, that “we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1 John 3:16). When we “see” this, we truly “see” the love of God.

 

How are we to know the fulness of God?

 

“That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17 – 19).

 

To know the love of Christ is to know the fulness of God, to know the fulness of God is to know the love of Christ.

 

But we cannot know the love of Christ without one another!

 

We “know we have passed from death to life because we love one another”!

 

Once again, “If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:11 – 12).

 

And let us not forget, “The one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).

 

We need one another so that we may love and be loved.

 

When we approach our Father, whether as individuals, as marriages, as families, or as congregations, it may be that our dear Father has a question, and that question is, “Where are your brothers and sisters? Have you come alone?”

 

As I write this, I am sure that some readers will be saying, “Yes, but…” Some readers will seek exceptions to loving others, some readers will want to maintain barriers with others, will want to find a doctrine, a practice, a teaching, to exempt them from loving others sacrificially, from laying down their lives for certain others.

 

Allow me please to simply point to our Savior, who leads us into the Holy of Holies by washing the feet of the Twelve, including Judas Iscariot. Our Savior, our Lord, instructs us, “If I then, the Lord and Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet” (John 13:14).

 

Our calling is to love and serve, we can trust Jesus to take care of what follows – even if what follows is betrayal and crucifixion…for most certainly there is also resurrection.

 

O if we only knew how much our Father loves us!

 

Your Father loves you just as He loves Jesus!

 

“Could we with ink the ocean fill,

  And were the skies of parchment made;

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

  And every man a scribe by trade;

To write the love of God above

  Would drain the ocean dry;

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

  Though stretched from sky to sky.”

 

By Frederick Martin Lehman

 

Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship Part II – Reflections (31)

 

 

In the final movement of his chapter on The Visible Church Community, Bonhoeffer reminds us that we are strangers in this world on our way to our heavenly Home. “The Christian community thus lives its own life in the midst of this world, continually bearing witness in all it is and does that the present form of this world is passing away (1 Cor. 7:31” (page 232).

 

“Here on earth, the church-community lives in a foreign land. It is a colony of strangers far away from home” (p. 232).

 

On page 233 Bonhoeffer writes that the church is to be “following only the voice of the one who has called it.” He says concerning the church, “They look only to their Lord. He is in heaven, and their life for which they are waiting is in him.”

 

From the middle of page 232 through the conclusion of the chapter on page 234, Bonhoeffer cites no less than twelve Bible verses that speak of our pilgrimage through the world to heaven, and to how our testimony of Jesus ought to appear.

 

“Christians are poor and suffering, hungry and thirsty, gentle, compassionate and peaceable, persecuted and scorned by the world. Yet it is for their sake alone that the world is still preserved. They shield the world from God’s judgment of wrath. They suffer so that the world can still live under God’s forbearance. They are strangers and sojourners on this earth (Heb. 11:13; 13:14; 1 Peter 1:1).”

 

Of course, the question is whether this describes us, the professing church in the United States, the professing church in the West.

 

Might we be like the Laodiceans in thinking, “‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked” (Rev. 3:17)?

 

Are we a cruciform people? When the world sees us, does it see a people marked by the Cross? Carrying the Cross? Suffering with Jesus for others?

 

Does the world see us at all? Do we matter? When the world does see us, does it see an appendage to a political party or a nationalistic agenda? Should the world notice us, does it see angry people, unmerciful people, people obsessed with worldviews and economic and political agendas, people aligning themselves with the economic, political, and religious forces of the antichrist and Babylon (Rev. chapters 13, 17, 18; 2 Thess. 2:1 – 12)? Are we living as the sheep or the goats of Matthew 25:31 – 46?

 

If Jesus is correct in teaching that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, then what can we say of ourselves? When we gather what do we talk about? If we are not speaking of Jesus to one another then we ought to tremble and call a fast and repent (Joel 1:14ff). If we are not serving “the least” of His people (see Matthew 25:31 – 46), then we ought to confess our sin and change our lives…serving the disenfranchised, the stranger in the land, the poor, the politically powerless, the hurting, the fearful, the hungry, the homeless, the sick.

 

When we stand before Jesus Christ, none of us will be wearing masks to conceal our identities – we will not be able to hide who we really are.

 

Following Jesus is not easy in the United States. We are bombarded with information, with hype and spin, with the peer pressure of agendas, with an Imperial Cult of nationalism, with various cults intent on wrecking our understanding of natural law, common grace, common sense, and human decency. We have been seduced by pleasure and comfort and affluence (or the illusion of these things). We worship at the altars of Wall Street, Hollywood, Nashville, Washington, D.C., Fox News, CNN, and other media outlets.[1] Our churches have imported idols into sacred spaces just as ancient Judah brought idols into the Holy Temple of God; political idols, national idols, economic idols, entertainment idols, idols of pleasure, religious idols.

 

It is not easy to follow Jesus in the United States, it is not easy for a congregation to keep focused on Jesus, the pressure to entertain, be attractive, to grow numerically, to grow financially, to measure ourselves by the standards of the world can be intense. It is difficult for pastors to be faithful when their churches are more attuned to the above idols than to God’s Word and Jesus Christ. How hard it is to serve people who have a consumer mentality, or who have a primarily economic and political mentality. We cannot serve more than one master (Matthew 6:24) – why do we think we can?

 

While we ought not minimize the obstacles to following Jesus as strangers and pilgrims, we should not fail to confess that if God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8:31).

 

Let us not forget that greater is He who is in us, than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4). Nor that we have been given the Holy Spirit so that we might be Christ’s witnesses to the end of the age, and that He is always with us (Mt. 28:20; Acts 1:8).

 

Let us remind ourselves and one another that we are brothers and sisters in the communion of saints, joined to those who have gone before us and to one another across the globe this very day; we are not alone (Hebrews Chapter 11; 12:22 – 24).

 

Let us also realize the while all things around us may be shaking, that those things that cannot be shaken will remain; in fact, the great shaking that we see within and without the professing church is to reveal the Lord Jesus Christ and the City of God (Hebrews 11:25 – 29). We ought to soberly realize that “judgment begins with the house God” (1 Peter 4:17). In Revelation, the Holy City is fully manifested after great judgments and shakings, after God’s People have proven themselves faithful to the Lamb through incredible times and judgments and difficulties.

 

The book of the prophet Malachi portrays the people of God, the church after returning from Babylon, as failing to distinguish between the clean and unclean, as offering to God less than the best, as a covenant-breaking people toward God and in marriage, with an unfaithful priesthood.

 

The church was engaging in sorcery, in sexual promiscuity, they were liars, they did not pay employees a fair wage, nor did they care for the widow, the orphan, or the immigrant! They did not fear God. (Malachi 3:5). These people were not faithful stewards of the resources that God was giving them (Malachi 3:8 – 9).

 

There were even those who were saying, “It is vain to serve God; and what profit is it that we have kept His charge?” (Malachi 3:14). Doesn’t this remind us of our own approach to church life? We ask, “Where is the profit? Where is the return on investment? Where is the practical result of this action? What is it in for us?”

 

We ask these questions rather than ask, “How shall we follow Jesus? How shall we bear His Cross? How shall we deny ourselves and serve others?”

 

Yet we also read in Malachi:

 

“Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, and the LORD gave attention and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the LORD and esteem His name. ‘They will be Mine,’ says the LORD of hosts, ‘on the day that I prepare My special treasure [jewels], and I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him’” (Malachi 3:16 – 17).

 

“But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall” (Malachi 4:2).

 

God has always had a remnant faithful to Him and committed to each other.

 

Bonhoeffer wrote (as quoted above): “Yet it is for their sake alone that the world is still preserved. They shield the world from God’s judgment of wrath. They suffer so that the world can still live under God’s forbearance. They are strangers and sojourners on this earth (Heb. 11:13; 13:14; 1 Peter 1:1).”

 

Isaiah wrote, “Unless the LORD of hosts had left us a very small remnant, we would be like Sodom, we would be like Gomorrah” (Isaiah 1:9).

 

Shall we live as a remnant, following the Lamb wherever He goes? Shall our Father prepare us as His special treasures, His jewels? Shall we live in the Light of the Sun of Righteousness?

 

“He who overcomes will inherit all things, and I will be his God and he will be My son” (Revelation 21:7).

 

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[1] Lest you misunderstand me, this is not to say there are not faithful people serving in these centers of power and influence, but it is to say that the ethos and underlying power in these centers is opposed to the Lamb (Psalm 2). The powers of this world are often depicted in the Bible as beasts, even as a combination of beasts, bestial Frankensteins if you will. They devour those who ride them, who serve them, and who are in proximity to them.

The Holy of Holies (3)

 

 

“That they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me” (John 17:22 – 23).

 

“My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him” (John 14:23).

 

“Abide in Me, and I in you” (John 15:4).

 

This is the Way we are to live, in the Trinity, by the Life of God. We live in God and God lives in us. As the Trinity is One, just as the Trinity is One, so are we to be One. We live in the Trinity as individuals, and we live in the Trinity as the Body of Christ.

 

If we are indeed the Body of Christ, we must live in the Trinity, for wherever the Head lives, the entire Body lives.

 

While the Holy Spirit lives within each of us who are in Christ, the Holy Spirit also lives in us as the Temple of God – on Pentecost the Holy Spirit filled the true Temple of God, He filled “us.” He made us the “dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Eph. 2:21 – 22).

 

Jesus Christ is our Bread of Life, we live by His body and blood, we partake of the Divine Nature (John 6:53; 2 Peter 1:4).

 

This is not something we attain to, this is something that we believe, accept, submit to, and confess. We learn to live according to this understanding, we learn to live according to what Jesus is teaching us. We have been raised from the dead in Christ and we now sit with Jesus Christ in the heavenlies (Eph. 2:1 – 10) – He is the basis of our life, He is the sole source of life, and the oneness with one another to which He calls us is our mission in life (Eph. 4:14 – 16).

 

Since Jesus is clear that effective witness is dependent on our loving as He loves (John 13:34 – 35) and being one as the Trinity is One, how is it that we either ignore what Jesus teaches, or provide excuse after excuse why we should not obey what Jesus teaches?

 

In the Holy of Holies we not only find our source of Life (God the Trinity), we also find our mission; we not only find our mission, we find the means by which our mission is fulfilled. To live in the koinonia of the Trinity means that those who live in koinonia with us also come to live in the koinonia of the Trinity (1 John 1:3).

 

As we partake of the life of God, we share that very life of God with others. As we partake of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus, we offer that very same Body and Blood in Christ to others. We share His life with one another in the Body, and as His Body we share His Life with the people of the world.

 

Our calling in Christ is to say with Jesus, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The words we speak, the things we do, are not to be done on our own initiative, but are to be what we hear the Trinity speak and what we see the Trinity do (John 14:10). We are to live as Jesus lives, always, always, always. We are to know no other source of life than Jesus Christ.

 

Must this not begin in our congregations? (Phil. 2:1 – 16; Eph. 4:1 – 16; 1 Cor. 12; Rom 12).

 

Must this not begin Christian to Christian? In congregation to congregation?

 

Where is the congregation, the pastor, the movement, the denomination, with the faith and courage to say, “We will live according to the Word of Christ, we will live for the Temple of God (Haggai Chapter 1), we will live in the Oneness of the Trinity seeking the Divine Oneness of our brothers and sisters – no matter what others may do or say. We will give our lives up so that others may live. We will love as we are commanded.”

 

The “new and living Way” that we are called to live is in intimacy with God within the Holy of Holies, the veil has been rent once and for all (Hebrews 10:19 – 25). This is an experience best enjoyed together – there is nothing like unity in Christ (Psalm 133).

 

Yet, instead of moving in this direction, we move away from Him into our own little spheres of religion and practice and parochialism. We think we know better than God. We think God is impractical. We seek solutions in the natural, in the flesh, we do not think the Holy Spirit and the Word sufficient for life and ministry. Rather than living in the Light of the City (Rev. 21:23) we seek and produce lesser lights. Rather than living in the Temple of the City (Rev. 21:22) we build our own temples. How foolish we are and how unfaithful are our shepherds!

 

We do not need to live like this.

 

You, dear pastor, can teach your people to live in the Holy of Holies…as you live in the Holy of Holies.

 

You, dear Christian, can learn to abide in the Vine and allow the Life of Christ to live in you and through you.

 

We all can cry out to Jesus to have mercy on us and restore His Temple, renew His Body, draw us to Himself in the Oneness of the Trinity. We can cry out to God to use us as broken bread and poured out wine to bring others to know Him through Jesus Christ.

 

If we are truly the Flock of the Good Shepherd, then we are already One in Him, why have we been taught to deny who we are? To deny our Oneness? To assume false identities?

 

Ah, what a foolish people we are…how loving our Good Shepherd is.

 

 

Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship Part II – Reflections (30)

 

 

Bonhoeffer emphasizes that the visible church-community must not be conformed to the world, but to Christ. At the bottom of page 229 he quotes Romans 12:2:

 

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed into a new form by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.”

 

Bonhoeffer writes that we have a “form” that is different form the world, and that “form” is Christ. We are “called to be ever increasingly transformed into the form…the form of Christ himself” (pp. 229 – 230).

 

“If it engages the world properly, the visible church-community will always more closely assume the form of its suffering Lord” (p. 230).

 

Is this true of the Western church? Of the professing church in the United States? Or have we embraced the culture of the world? Are we indistinguishable from American culture - from one of the cultures and movements now within American society? Are we colored red or blue or purple, rather than wearing the righteousness of Jesus Christ, white robes which can only be found at the Cross and in obedience and conformity to the Cross? Are we marked by the dollar sign of the American dream, or by the Cross of Jesus Christ?

 

With Paul, are we crucified with Christ? With Paul, have we been crucified to the world and has the world been crucified to us? (Galatians 2:20; 6:14).

 

Bonhoeffer teaches us that whatever we possess, we are to possess only through Christ…in Christ…and for the sake of Christ (p. 230). We are not to be prisoners of our possessions, we are to hold possessions in trust as stewards of Jesus Christ. Since we are free from possessions and from the world, we are “able to abandon the world whenever it prevents them from following their Lord" (p. 230).

 

On pages 230 – 231 Bonhoeffer references ten verses dealing with our relationship with money and possessions, including, “But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires” (1 Tim. 6:6 – 9).

 

As I read these pages I was reminded of the second chapter of Tozer’s The Pursuit of God. Its title is “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing.” Tozer deemed our relationship to possessions so critical and foundational to our pursuit of God that he placed it right after Chapter One, it is something we need to deal with and settle, something we need to understand, we cannot serve God and also serve money and possessions (Mt. 6:24).

 

How do we reconcile the Bible’s treatment of possessions and our obsession with them? Do we live as a people who are not owned by money and materialism but rather by Jesus? Do we not measure our lives by what we have, by our investment accounts, by the opulence and attractiveness of our church buildings? Do we measure the lives of our children and grandchildren by their love for Jesus and others, or by their vocations and income?

 

Do we freely give to others – as families and as congregations? Are we placing the welfare of others before ourselves? Why do we raise funds for new building projects for our church campuses but not have the same (it should be a greater!) passion for raising funds to alleviate hardship and suffering in communities near and afar? Have we forgotten that we are to lay down our lives for others? (1 John 3:16; John 15:12 – 13).

 

Are we being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, or to the images of Wall Street, Hollywood, Nashville, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, Silicon Valley, and the sports world?

 

Are we being formed into the image of the world, or of Jesus Christ?

Are we "assuming the life of our suffering Lord"?

 

The Holy of Holies (2)

 

 

“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one” (John 17:22).

 

How is it that Jesus says that He is giving His glory to us, and yet in Isaiah 42:8 God says, “I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, nor My praise to graven images [idols]”?

 

For sure our God does not give His glory to idols, but do we really believe that He doesn’t? Are we asking God to give His glory to the idols we have made in life and in religion? Do we not have household idols (as ancient peoples did), community idols, national idols, professional and vocational idols? Are we honest enough to consider that we just might have religious idols, Christianized idols? Have we crafted our brand of Christianity into an idol?

 

 Does our speech and teaching reveal our idols?

 

As to the idea that God does not give His glory to another, this can help us understand what Jesus says about giving His glory to us – for in giving His glory to us He does not give His glory to another for we are One in the Father and the Son and in the Holy Spirit. We have no oneness apart from the Oneness of the Trinity. There are not two onenesses.

 

That is, we do not look at the Trinty and see Oneness and then look at ourselves and see oneness; for we cannot have oneness with a lower case “o,” such oneness is impossible. Hence, in Christ we know koinonia in the Trinity, and knowing koinonia in the Trinity is knowing the Oneness of the Trinity; this is ineffable, it is the Holy of Holies.  

 

Recall that Jesus says, “Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was” (17:5).

 

Jesus also prays, “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me” (17:24).

 

As the Father gives His glory to Jesus, so Jesus gives His glory to us; so that the world may know that the Father sent the Son and that the Father loves us even as He loves Jesus.

 

O dear friends, let us not forget that we “are all from one Father” (Hebrews 2:11) and that our Father is “bringing many sons to glory” (Heb. 2:10).

 

As Jesus comes to us, as He comes into the world, He comes “to be glorified in His saints,” He comes that “the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him” (2 Thess. 1:10 – 12).

 

Let us remind one another that we are “heirs of God and coheirs with Christ,” that there is a glory “being revealed in us,” and that we are in the process of glorification in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:17, 18, 30).

 

We are the Body of Christ, we are the Bride of Christ; one with Him. Being one with Him, when He gives His glory to us He does not give His glory to another, for we are in the Us of John 17:21.

 

We have seen this coming in our approach to John 17. Jesus gives us a glimpse in John 14:23 in the Upper Room, “My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.”

 

Jesus emphasizes our unity in Him with the Vine and the branches, “Abide in Me, and I in you…apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:1 – 5). The Vine, Jesus Christ, is our sole source of life.

 

There is only one person who can live the Christian life, that Person is God.

 

All of our little self-help idols which demand worship, all of our idols crafted into religious images (as Christianized as they may be), all of our pragmatic programs, lead us deeper and deeper into bondage and away from the liberty of Jesus Christ, away from the koinonia of the Trinity, away from glorious Oneness with one another in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

 

No wineskin can contain the glory of the Holy Trinity, no wineskin can contain God’s unfolding glory; how foolish to force others into straightjackets, how silly not to desire God’s glory rather than glory for our fiefdoms and images.

 

I heard a denominational leader saying that he hoped that 200 years from now his denomination would still be going strong. How much better to hope that 200 years from now God’s glory will be inhabiting His People who have been perfected into One in Jesus Christ? How much better to desire a creditable testimony to the world of the Father’s love for the Son?

 

Now for the dear reader who thinks I’m being a bit harsh, I only ask you to look around you. What do you see? Do you see Christians with a vision of the Church of Jesus Christ? Do you see Christians with an understanding of the Body of Christ? Do you see a People speaking of Jesus, speaking of Jesus to one another, to their coworkers, to their neighbors? Do you see a People whose hearts have been captured by a love for Jesus?

 

Do you see a People for whom the Body of Christ is more important than their denomination, their movement, their doctrinal distinctives? (Please understand, whether someone is in a denomination or is so-called nondenominational is irrelevant.) Do you see pastors in fellowship and in ministry and friendship across organizational lines?

 

Since we do not know who we are, we allow others to define who we are and to enslave us to their idols. Political idols, economic idols, national idols, sports idols, entertainment idols, racial idols, idols of pleasure, idols of possessions, worldview idols (including so-called “Christian” worldviews). We even craft idols from the Bible, such as “End Times” idols.

 

Revelation 11:2 speaks of the nations treading under foot the court outside the temple, the holy city. I wonder if “we” are the perpetrators, if “we” aren’t desecrating the holy city with our foolishness, with our pollution.

 

Are we not like the people in Haggai? These people were released from Babylon for the express purpose of rebuilding the Temple of God, and yet when they arrived in Jerusalem they were only concerned with their own houses (see Haggai).

 

We have been saved from sin and death to follow Jesus, to belong to Him, to be the Holy Temple in the Lord (Eph. 2:19 – 22; 4:1 – 16; 1 Peter 2:4 – 10), to be the Presence of God in the earth.

 

Now I realize that there are exceptions to our self-destructive behavior, but they are exceptions. Thank God for the exceptions, for I think they hold back a measure of the tsunami.

 

Only the Holy Spirit can bring us into the unity that Jesus prays for, we cannot organize this, we cannot program this, in fact, we must come to the end of ourselves, we must confess that “Unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it” (Psalm 127:1).

 

To lay down our lives for one another (1 John 3:16; John 15:12 – 13), includes laying down our preferences, our little religious houses, our theological and religious idols…our self-interest.

 

Is this possible?

 

The measure of a man, a woman, a family, a local church, a movement or denomination, an institution, is the measure in which it gives itself for others, the measure in which it lays down its self-interest, it’s life. This is the measure of Jesus Christ.

Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship Part II – Reflections (29)

 

“But the older this world grows, and the more sharply the struggle between Christ and Antichrist grows, the more thorough also becomes the world’s efforts to rid itself of the Christians. To the first Christians the world still granted a space in which they were able to feed and clothe themselves from the fruits of their own labor. A world that has become entirely anti-Christian, however, can no longer grant Christians even this private sphere in which they pursue their professional work and earn their daily bread…In the end, Christians are thus left with no other choices but to escape from the world or to go to prison” (page 229).

 

Bonhoeffer writes as darkness descends over Germany, as he sees the church in Germany being swallowed up by the forces of nationalism, as pastors and their congregations capitulate to the demands of the state, aligning themselves with state agendas and abandoning Christ. Christianity and patriotism are becoming one in Germany. This is not the first time this has happened, religion has been used by the state throughout history to help the state achieve its ends, and the myth of Christian nationalism is a powerful seductive tool in both the East and the West. Democracies and totalitarian regimes both use the myth, constructing narratives which professing Christians accept and endorse, leading them away from Christ.

 

Bonhoeffer has forgotten that early Christians were not always able to work to support themselves. In some regions in ancient Rome Christians who belonged to trade guilds, which we might think of as union shops, were expelled from the guilds for refusing to pay homage to the guilds’ patron idols. If you were not a member of a guild you could not engage in that particular trade. Then we have the notable widespread persecution under the Emperor Decius (250 A.D.) in which everyone was required to offer an incense sacrifice to Roman gods in the presence of a magistrate, for which they received a certificate indicating their compliance with the edict. Those who refused were persecuted. Persecutions were often local, sometimes regional, and sometimes (as with Decius) they were across the Empire.

 

In our own day, earning a living as a faithful Christian can be difficult, there are professions and contexts in which Christians are marginalized, and countries in which being a Christian can mean the loss of employment and prison.

 

Whether in “open” or “closed” nations, if there is no conflict between the visible church – community and the world, it means that the visible church – community is abrogating its witness to Christ, for if we are faithful to Jesus Christ there will be conflict and persecution; the servant is not greater than his Master (John 15:18 – 16:4).

 

(When we engage in “marketplace ministry in the United States, are we equipping Christians with Biblical teaching on the Cross, obedience, and suffering for Christ?)

 

 “But the older this world grows, and the more sharply the struggle between Christ and Antichrist grows, the more thorough also becomes the world’s efforts to rid itself of the Christians.”

 

There are two ways to control others, one is through pain and the other is through pleasure. The first is straightforward, “If you don’t do what I want I will inflict pain on you.” In the West this pain may be the loss of employment, denied promotion, the withholding of an academic degree, ostracism, or legal penalties.  

 

The second can be subtle. The pleasure can be in the form of money, promotion, accolades, acceptance, perquisites, entertainment, and good food and drink. It can be open doors leading to proximity to power – the power can be corporate, academic, religious, political…proximity to power can be intoxicating and few people can resist its seduction.

 

Seduction is a greater threat to us in the West than pain. Once we have been seduced by pleasure, our resistance to pain crumbles, we are trapped in the good life, in the American Dream, and the professing church has descended into Babylon. The Cross then becomes an offense to us, even as it is to the world.

 

“Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But evil men and seducers will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:12 – 13).

 

Bonhoeffer adopts the Biblical teaching of two trajectories, that of those faithful to Christ and that of those under the domain of Antichrist. The visible – church community will overcome and prevail, the Stone cut without hands will indeed fill the entire earth, bringing an end to the kingdoms of this world. A tragedy is that those faithful to Christ not only face opposition from the world, but from a church that is falling away from the Lord Jesus.

 

“But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1).

 

“Let no one in any way deceive you, for it [the Day of the Lord] will not come unless the apostasy comes first” (2 Thess. 2:3).

 

Here is the thing dear friends, apostasy need not mean the explicit verbal denial of Jesus Christ and the Bible, apostasy can be syncretistic, it can be a blend of Christ and nationalism, Christ and economics, Christ and politics, Christ and a social agenda, Christ and materialism, Christ and religious success.

 

Which is the greater danger to the average professing Christian, a teaching which explicitly denies Jesus Christ and the Bible, or a teaching and movement which blends other elements into Christ and the Bible and thereby seduces our hearts away from Jesus? Which is the greater danger, a movement which appears evil, or one which appears good?

 

If a pastor would not (let us hope) take his people to a brothel, why would he take his people into teachings and movements which draw their hearts away from Jesus Christ?

 

Again, the chapter title is The Visible Church – Community. Bonhoeffer is saying that we must have our own space, for we, as the Body of Christ, are distinct from the world. We are to live and breathe in Christ, we are to be joined to one another in His Body. We are not to be subsumed and enveloped and find our identity in politics, economics, nationalism, materialism, hedonistic pleasure, racial identity, or even in religious tradition – we belong to Jesus and to Jesus alone, He is our Husband we are His Bride (2 Cor. 11:2  -3) and nothing is to come between Jesus and His Bride, nothing.

 

“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. For behold darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; but the LORD will rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you” (Isaiah 60:1 – 2).

 

“Who will separate us form the love of Christ?” (Romans 8:35 – 39).

The Holy of Holies (1)

 

 

This post is number 156 in our reflections on the Upper Room (John chapters 13 – 17). The first reflection was posted on June 24, 2023, now we are in 2026. By God’s grace, these posts contain around 140,000 words, all, I hope, focused on Jesus Christ; all, I hope, seeking to reveal His amazing love and grace for you, for us.

 

I still recall sitting at our computer in 2023 and wanting to write about John 17, a passage at the core of my heart, mind, and soul; a passage which has been capturing my life for decades, a passage which has been drawing me into the koinonia of the Trinity; a passage which has made me know that such koinonia is about “us,” not just about me; it can never be just about me.

 

I also recall the realization that I could not write about John 17, the Holy of Holies, without taking us on the journey to the Holy of Holies, from the Outer Court with its laver for washing, into the Holy Place, and then into the Holy of Holies.

 

I began with that first post, An Inclusio of Identity, which contains this paragraph:

 

If we fully enter into the Upper Room we will find ourselves before the foundation of the world, in the Incarnation, and in the transcendence of koinonia with the Triune God. We will see the unfolding of John12:24, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

 

Jesus took His disciples through John chapters 13 – 16 before He could lead them into Chapter 17, I could do no less.

 

Knowing that “unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it,” I’ve sought to submit myself to the Holy Spirit and the Word as we’ve been on pilgrimage. I’ve also endeavored to “take the adventure that Aslan gives us,” keeping in mind that “those who are being led by the Spirit of God are the sons and daughters of God.”

 

As Jesus draws us into the Holy of Holies, let us keep in mind that the veil is no more.

 

“And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:51; see also Hebrews 9:1 – 14; 10:19 – 23). You and I now have a “new and living Way” in koinonia with our God, it is time for us to come Home, the Door is open.

 

“I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me” (John 17:20 – 21).

 

As we saw in our previous reflection, Jesus prays for you, He prays for me, He prays for us…Jesus is always praying for us (Hebrews 7:25).

 

What does Jesus pray for us?

 

That we may all be one even as He and the Father are one.

 

“That they may all be one” (17:21).

 

“That they may be one, just as We are one” (17:22).

 

“That they may be perfected into one” (17:23).

 

Let us read these words of Jesus to the Father over and over again, allowing them to sink deep into our souls, our hearts, our minds. Let us allow the Holy Spirit to create a vision of these words in our innermost beings. Let us allow the roots of these words to penetrate the essence of our who we are, forming us into the image of this Word, drawing us together in Christ into the Trinity.

 

Behold the beauty of “I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected into one.” This is a transforming beauty, a beauty that, once seen, can never be forgotten (let us hope). This is a beauty worth selling everything to purchase, a beauty worth a man's or a woman’s life.

 

This is a beauty that dwarfs our little religious fiefdoms, our parochial territories and attitudes, our doctrinal distinctives, our insistence on ownership of our religious franchises. This beauty is about more than “Jesus and me,” it is about more than “Jesus and our group,” it is about Jesus and us His Body, and then it is about us in the Us of John 17:21; that our “us” may be in the “Us” of the Trinity – “that they may be in Us.”

 

We are to love one another just as Jesus loves us (John 13:34 – 35; 15:12 – 13). The Nature of our love for one another is to be the Nature of Jesus’ love for us, divinely cruciform. We are to live in unity, in oneness, just as the Trinity is One, the Nature of our unity is the Nature of the Trinity. We must desire no less, we must preach no less, we must live (by His grace) in no less than the Nature of God.

 

Let us note that there are two testimonies, two elements of witness, that are the result of our Oneness in the Trinity. The first is that the world may know that the Father sent the Son (John 17:21, 23), the second is that the world may know that the Father loves us as He loves Jesus (17:23)..

 

In other words, as the Father loves the Only Begotten Son, so the Father loves the corporate Son; as the Father loves the Head, so the Father loves the Body; but of course they are One.

 

How foolish we are to think that we can circumvent the prayer of Christ Jesus, that we can relegate it to the impractical, that we can find a method for witness that bypasses the heart of the Father, that we can impose our standards of acceptance on others, that we have warrant to build our own houses while the House of God lies desolate (Haggai 1:9).

 

We are also foolish to think that we can organize and create the Oneness for which Jesus prays. Let us be clear about this, only the work of the Holy Spirit and submission to the Word of God can fulfill the prayer of Jesus. “Except the LORD build the House, they labor in vain who build it” (Psalm 127).

 

As we as individuals experience the koinonia of the Trinity, it ignites a flame on the altar of our hearts that all our brothers and sisters may know this glorious fellowship, this sweet communion, our prayers rising to the heavenly altar as sweet incense to the Triune God. Our lives are transformed into a holocaust, an offering, on behalf of the Lamb for His People. As John writes, “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16).

 

Perhaps my 5^th great grandfather, Patrick Henry, expressed (on a lower level) what our attitude should be when he participated in the First Continental Congress. Henry said, “I am not a Virginian, but an American.”

 

We must be more than Baptists, more than Roman Catholics, more than Presbyterians, more than Lutherans; more than Reformed or Arminian or Pentecostal or Anglican; we must be first and foremost, first and last, Christians…followers of Jesus Christ…seeking to obtain and preserve “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3).

 

Must this not begin in my own heart and life?

 

Must this not begin from congregation to congregation in our respective locations?  

 

Must this not begin in pastor-to-pastor local relationships?

 

To think that Jesus is making the Name of the Father known to us, so that the “love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26).

 

Isn’t this worth living for?