Lambs of the Lamb

 

 

“All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth” (Isaiah 53:6 – 7).

 

“For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered. But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:36 – 37).

 

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

 

Are we lambs of the Lamb?

 

More precisely, are we sacrificial lambs of the Sacrificial Lamb?

 

Is it enough to read Isaiah 53 and say, “Here is evidence that Jesus is Messiah?” Is it enough to read Isaiah 53 and preach it as an evidentiary text?

 

Are we not called to believe into the Christ of the passage and surrender ourselves to Him, allowing Him to enter into us, living in us and through us to others?

 

If this is so, then what is this to look like? How is Christ Jesus to be manifested?

 

Are we not to lay down our lives for others, just as Jesus Christ laid down His life for us?

 

“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).

 

“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).

 

And here is the thing dear friends, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us! Jesus teaches us that we are to love our enemies, blessing those who are opposed to us (Matthew 5:43 – 48), so that we may be the sons and daughters of the Living God. As the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ redeemed us, reconciling us to God when we were enemies of God (Rom. 5:10), so we are called to lay down our lives so that others may be reconciled. After all, we are the organic Body of Christ, are we not?

 

Note the emphasis on “He did not open His mouth,” in Isaiah 53:6 – 7. Consider that “Our griefs He bore and our sorrows He carried” (53:4), ponder “the anguish of His soul” (53:11), “He poured out His soul to death” (53:12), and “He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors” (53:12).

 

And then let us ask ourselves, “Is this a description of my life? Is this a portrayal of my local congregation? Is this how the professing church in America looks today?”

 

Dear, dear friends, what matters to the world…and I think to our Lord Jesus Christ, is not so much the evidence we have in linking the events of Isaiah 53 to those of Good Friday and Easter, but rather the evidence the world sees in our lives as we embody the sacrificial Lamb of Isaiah 53 – for this is indeed our calling. To have the former without the latter is to have a body without a soul.

 

In Romans 8:36 Paul brings his readers to the glorious fruit of the Gospel in our lives, the result of justification and sanctification, the glory of all that he has taught leading up to his quotation of Psalm 44:22, and that glory is that we follow the Lamb wherever He goes…and He goes to the Cross. The glory we lost in Romans 3:23 is eclipsed (if we can use such a term) in 8:28 – 39, for we enter into the koinonia of His sufferings (Phil. 3:10).

 

“To the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation” (1 Peter 4:13).

 

“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Colossians 1:24).

"Death works in us, but life in you" (2 Cor. 4:12).

 

Is Isaiah 53 a portrait of our lives?

O Jesus, please make it so.

Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship Part II – Reflections (34)

 

 

From page 241 through the first paragraph of page 245, Bonhoeffer explores the relationship between justification and sanctification. He begins with, “From now on, Christians in the New Testament are only named “the saints” (page 241).

 

After writing of baptism and justification, he writes of our preservation in God, “Living within this divine preservation is the process of sanctification” (page 241). We are placed in the Body of Christ through justification in Christ; we are preserved in the Body of Christ through sanctification in Christ.

 

“While justification incorporates the individuals into the church-community, sanctification preserves the church-community together with all the individuals” (page 242).

 

Bonhoeffer highlights the two elements of sanctification, being separated from the world and dedicated to Jesus Christ, and being made holy as our heavenly Father is holy. As he does this, he not only relates sanctification to the individual, but also to the church-community.

 

His confidence in God’s work of sanctification is expressed by the image of us being locked in a prison of the law and sin before coming to Christ, and of us now being “locked ‘in Christ,’ marked with God’s own seal, the Holy Spirit. No one may break this seal. It has been secured by God, and the key is in God’s hand” (page 242).

 

“This means that God has now taken possession of those whom God has gained in Christ” (page 242).

 

Bonhoeffer draws our attention to the sealing of Noah’s Ark, within and without with pitch for its preservation through the flood waters, so is the church-community sealed with redemption, deliverance, and salvation (pages 242-243).

 

Again, Bonhoeffer emphasizes that God’s People are “God’s earthly dwelling place, the place from which judgment and reconciliation go forth to all the world” (page 243).

 

Bonhoeffer does not limit sanctification to individual experience, as we may tend to, but contends that it is also the experience of the church-community. In fact, Bonhoeffer insists that if sanctification isn’t experienced within the church-community that it is “pious desires of religious flesh” and “mere self-proclaimed holiness” (page 244). His vehemence on this matter ought to give us pause to reconsider the highly individualized form of Christianity that many of us practice.

 

“Sanctification through the seal of the Holy Spirit always places the church in the midst of the struggle” (page 244). Bonhoeffer tells us that the struggle is to prevent the seal from being broken, from both within and without, it is the struggle for the earthly space that he has been writing about, it is the struggle for God’s holy realm on earth, it is the struggle for separation from the world (page 245).

 

On page 243 Bonhoeffer writes that the community of saints “implies three things.” A clear separation from the world. Holy conduct. The hidden work of sanctification “waiting for the day of Jesus Christ.”

 

The idea of separation from the world may be difficult to us to understand, so enmeshed are we in the world and its ways in our practice of what we term Christianity. Also, some of us have had the experience of equating separation from the world in terms of externals, of how we look on the outside – this was very much true of me in my early years.

 

Being separated from the world begins in our hearts and minds, it is a matter of the soul and spirit. We offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices so as not to be “conformed to the world,” but rather to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Romans 12:1 – 2).

 

We come to realize that the temple of God (whether individual or corporate) has no agreement, no meeting of the minds, with false gods. We must “come out from their midst and be separate” “cleansing ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 6:14 – 7:1). Note the tandem emphasis here on separation and holiness, the two dimensions of sanctification.

 

Again, this may be difficult when we are rooted in the things of this world: its values, priorities, communications, affirmations. When our eyes are fixed on the world we cannot really see our dear Lord Jesus. We become what we focus upon, we ought not to be so foolish to think otherwise. We cannot serve two masters, no matter how foolishly we argue otherwise. We can’t have dual citizenship with the Kingdom of Christ and the kingdoms of this world.

 

I could give example after example of how the professing church has brought idols into the Temple, of how we profane the sacred ground of our individual and collective lives and teach others to do so, but what matters is that we follow the Lamb wherever He goes for if we learn to follow Him all other things will be manifested for what they are; lies and chaff and sin and false teaching.

 

The people of the world don’t need us to be like them; they need us to be a holy People with a holy love and holy grace and holy mercy and holy truth in Jesus Christ. They don’t need our gatherings to be entertainment venues. Our classmates and coworkers and neighbors don’t need us to be chameleons, changing color and blending in with our surroundings, they need us to be distinctly identified with Jesus Christ (with all our warts and blind spots) caring for them, praying for them, living lives of truth and integrity – being in the world but not of the world.

 

We have been on a binge of trying to sell Jesus, and what we have done is sold ourselves and others to darkness. Instead of selling Jesus, we ought to be giving our lives to Him and to Him alone. There is nothing about the Cross of Crucifixion that lends itself to sales and marketing and shame on us for making the Gospel a form of cotton candy guaranteed to rot our souls.

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

Revelation - Letter to a Friend (2)

LETTER I continued...

The central figure of Revelation is Jesus Christ the Lamb of God. We see Him in the first verse, we see Him throughout the book, we see Him in the conclusion. Revelation is a letter written to seven churches. We may speak of the “letters to the seven churches” when referring to chapters 2 and 3, but Revelation is actually one letter to the seven churches, and within the one letter we have specific messages that Jesus sends the churches in chapters 2 and 3.

 

Within this letter Jesus Christ is revealing Himself to those who are His. More specifically to His slaves, to His bond-servants, to those whom He has purchased with His blood, those who are no longer their own but who have been bought with a price.

 

Seeing the Lamb is seeing Revelation. If we are not seeing the Lamb, if we are not being drawn into deep relationship with Him, if we are not following Him wherever He goes, then we are not seeing the book of Revelation, we are not seeing what Jesus Christ had John write to the seven churches. Why look for the beast and its cohorts of chapter 13 when we ought to be seeking the Lamb? We only recognize the false when we know the True; if we aren’t in relationship with the Lamb nothing we can do will help us to identify the antichrist.

 

I think that 2 Thessalonians 2:3 – 11 can be instructive here. Those who do not receive the love of the truth come under a deluding influence sent by God – it is foolish for people to think that they can reject Jesus and yet discern the antichrist. There really is no middle ground, there is no individual autonomy. We either serve the Lamb or the enemy.

 

Do we have the Name of the Father and the Lamb written upon us (Revelation 14:1 – 4; 3:12)?

 

We should also note, regarding the beast, “All who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain” (Rev. 13:8).

The only security against the deception of the beast is the Lamb, Jesus Christ. But note, that the saints will be overcome, and yet, in being overcome they will be overcomers (Rev. 13:7; 12:11).

This revelation is given to slaves, to bond-servants, to those who belong to Another. When we read, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev. 2:7), I wonder if this may not refer to the ear which has been pierced with an awl, indicating that the servant has become the forever bond-servant property of his or her master (Deut. 15:17).

 

Since the revelation is given by God to His bond-servants, it is unlikely that those who are not bond-servants can understand and “see” the revelation, which again is Jesus Christ. In other words, whether it is Boris or anyone else, if we are not “in Christ” as His bond-servants, the revelation is not given to us, it is not written to us. In addition, as 1 Corinthians Chapter 2 makes clear, without the Spirit of God we cannot understand the things of God.

 

Also, note that in verse 1 we read “the things which must soon take place” and in verse 3 we read “for the time is near.”

 

This means that, whatever else we may think, if we cannot “see” the present reality of Revelation when it was written, that we cannot see the present reality of Revelation today; furthermore, if we cannot see the present reality of Revelation today, we cannot see the reality of Revelation tomorrow and in eternity. In other words, Revelation is transcendent and its transcendent reality can only be experienced in Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.

 

In Revelation, God gives His bond-servants holy and heavenly imagery to counter the imagery of the world and the enemy. In Revelation, we are called to follow the Lamb wherever He goes. In Revelation, we are called to not love our lives, even to death. In Revelation, we are called to live in the City of God and not the city of man, not in the political and economic systems of man, not in the religious systems of man. If we do not see these things and respond in obedience to the Lamb, we can read all the “signs” we want to between now and death and at best will be puppies chasing our tails. At worst we will find ourselves on the side of the enemy.

 

 

Revelation – Letter to a Friend (1)

 

LETTER I

Dear Linus,

 

It occurred to me that one way in which we are strikingly similar is in our response to a subject, a problem, an issue. As I observed my response to you bringing up the subject of The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John, I realized this, for I have been pondering Revelation and your discussion with Boris ever since your spoke of it and thinking of a thousand follow up elements. True, we did not go into the subject in any depth, but you lit the fuse.

 

What I mean by our similarity is that when I bring a project or problem to you, whether regarding health or a home improvement project, I can expect a chain of follow up thoughts from you. For example, when I raised the issue of replacing our rear deck, you went into high gear in your consideration of the project; preparation, material selection, the best fasteners, how to measure the project and lay it out, tools to use, to name just a few things we discussed over a few weeks, up until the time you (and Boris) arrived to blessedly carry the project forward to completion.

 

Once I asked you about a home repair problem over the phone (I can’t recall what it was) and you gave me your initial thoughts. When we finished our call Vickie, who was listening said, “He’ll get back to you once he’s given it more thought.” Indeed, you did, a few times. This is the way you are when I bring something to you, and this is the way I am when you bring something to me. Our conversations have a life of their own, and any one conversation may contain threads from many past conversations. I often lament the fact we live so far apart, but if we lived close to each other we might never leave the coffee shop!

I live in Revelation, just as I live in the entire Bible, it is my biosphere in Christ for it is the Word of Jesus Christ, the revelation of Jesus Christ with both an upper case “R” and a lower case “r.” All of the Bible is the revelation of Christ Jesus, I see Him everywhere, I meet Him everywhere, He lives in me everywhere, I live in Him everywhere. Everywhere I seek to partake of His Divine Nature as I meet Him in His Word (2 Peter 1:4).

 

I see our journey Home in Revelation, in fact I see that this very day we are to live in that Holy City with the Father and the Son as our One and Only Light, with God as our Temple, with transparency as our Way of Life. I see us living as the Tree of Life in Christ, for the healing of the peoples. But I am getting ahead of myself, my point is that Revelation is very much “already – not yet,” I live in Revelation today, I will live in Revelation tomorrow.

 

As I pondered your chat with Boris, one of the first things that struck me is that if you don’t know what you’re reading you won’t know how to read it. The other thing that I thought about was whether Boris could even begin to understand Revelation because it was not written to him (more on this below).

 

We have so paganized Revelation that these things are a challenge. “Paganized!” you say.

 

Well, we are friends and I can write to you as a friend. Yes, I do mean “paganized.” We are like ancient pagan priests observing the entrails of animals to discern the future, having an insatiable desire to satisfy our appetite for knowing the future, for being ahead of the curve, for having special knowledge, and for drawing a crowd.

 

Let’s be honest, there are “Christian” ministries who keep followers tantalized with End Times teaching rather than teaching them to follow the Lamb of the Bible, the Lamb of Revelation. While Revelation teaches us to lay down our lives for the Lamb and others, these ministries offer a steady dose of self-preservation. While Revelation teaches us to participate in the ironic victory of the Lamb (it is both ironic and irenic as we lay down our lives), these teachers would have us align ourselves with world powers and earthly forces and conquer through violence and natural power and might and national and political and economic and cultural authority. Our victory is ironic in that who would think that we conquer through dying with Christ (Romans 8:35 – 39)? It is irenic in that we conqueror peacefully (James 3:17 – 18).

 

Well, as I said, you are my friend and I will write plainly.

 

“The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must soon take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John, who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw” (Revelation 1:1 – 2).

 

Three things immediately strike me about the first two verses.

 

1.       This is about Jesus Christ; it is the unveiling (the revelation) of Him.

2.       This revelation is given to His bond-servants (or slaves).

3.       It is about things “which must soon take place.” If we understand this in the natural sense of the word “soon,” then it actually means “soon,” it does not mean hundreds or thousands of years later than “soon.” I will come back to this.

 

 to be continued...

The Holy of Holies (6)

 

 

“O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:25 – 26).

 

Is this the conclusion of the Upper Room? Is it the conclusion of the Holy of Holies? Or is it the Beginning?

 

There are those who read these words of Jesus to the Father and move on with life, or with what they think is life. They turn the page and go to the next thing they read. Page after page they turn of the Bible, perhaps even memorizing verses, perhaps quoting long passages; but their knowledge is like that of someone who reads a travel guide over and over again but never visits the actual place, never lives in the actual country.

 

In a sense all that Jesus says in John 17:25 – 26 is a recapitulation of what we’ve experienced in John chapters 13 – 17, it is what we’ve seen in Chapter 17. But it is more than a recapitulation, it is an affirmation of God’s love for us and our calling as His sons and daughters in Jesus Christ. Verses 25 – 26 are Christ’s affirmation to us that we are to live in unbroken eternal koinonia with the Trinity – today, tomorrow, and forever.

 

We see that the Father is righteous, He is our righteous Father. The world does not know our righteous Father, but Jesus Christ knows Him and we know that the Father sent the Son. In 17:11 we see that He is our holy Father, keeping us in the Name that He has given Jesus Christ.

 

In the beginning of His ministry Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father” (Matthew 6:9). Perhaps all of the Gospel can be encapsulated into these words, “Our Father,” for the Gospel is the Good News that our Father has redeemed us back to Himself in and through Jesus Christ. Jesus came so that we might say, “Our Father.”

 

Jesus came declaring the Name of His Father to us. Jesus came so that the Father, our Father, might bring many sons and daughters to glory (Hebrews 2:10 – 13). Jesus the Elder Son leaves the Father’s House to rescue His brethren from the pigpen and brings them back Home rejoicing to His Father and their Father, to His God and their God (John 20:17; 1 John 3:1 – 3).

 

God loves the world, He sends us into the world as He sent Jesus (John 17:18; 20:21), yet the world does not know the Father just as it did not know the Son and as it does not know us (as we’ve seen in previous reflections). We ought not to be surprised that the world does not know the Father, and we should not be surprised that the world (and religious systems) does not know Jesus or us, for we have been told that this is the way it is (John 15:18 – 16:4).

 

We can identify ourselves with our Father or with the world, we can be citizens of heaven or citizens of the world, we can live in Babylon or in the City of our God. This is fundamental to life, there is the City of God and the City of Man, which do we choose?

 

Jesus has made the Father’s Name known to us, and He continually makes it known. To know His Name is to know Him in intimate relationship, to know His love and acceptance, His care and warmth, His righteousness and holiness, His sacrificing heart. We can expect that Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit will reveal the Father Name in unfolding glory throughout our lives (John 16:12 – 15), leading us into that glorious Holy City of Revelation chapters 21 – 22 today, tomorrow and forever.

 

Jesus reveals the Father’s Name to us so that the Father’s love may live within us. “So that the love with which You loved Me may be in them.” Jesus reveals the Father Name so that He may live in us, “And I in them.”

 

We have seen these themes of God’s love for us and God’s indwelling us throughout the Upper Room. The Father loves us as He loves Jesus. We are to be one with one another in the Trinity just as the Trinity – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – is One. The Trinity is within us and we are in the Trinity and in us and through us God desires to manifest His love to the world – even when the world rejects us.

 

Consider when you awake every morning that “the love with which the Father loves Jesus is the love with which He loves you!” Do not doubt God’s eternal love for you in Jesus Christ but respond to His call of love by accepting His love and by loving others as He loves you.

 

When you awake every morning remember that Jesus desires to live within you, that this is why He reveals the Father’s Name to you – to draw you into intimate union with Himself, His Father, and the Holy Spirit (and with the communion of the saints).

 

O dear friends, let us not be so foolish as to believe what the world teaches us, or what religious systems often teach us, but let us embrace what Jesus reveals to us of our Father, let us confess what Jesus teaches us about who we truly are in Him – the precious and loved daughters and sons of God. We are not accidents looking for a place to happen, we are loved and redeemed and have been brought home to the Father’s House on the shoulders and in the arms of our Good Shepherd Jesus Christ.

 

John 17:25 – 26 is not the end of the journey, it is the Beginning – for it opens eternity (and eternal living!) to us in our Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

 

The Holy of Holies (5)

 

 

“You loved Me, before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).

 

“The glory which I had with You before the world was” (John 17:5).

 

There are those who speculate, then there are those who live. No one who ever has been touched by Jesus can explain how or why it happened, not really. We may have insight into our relationship with Him, we may have been given some insight of Him, but we cannot comprehend Him comprehensively. The deeper we know Him, the greater we are enveloped by His majesty and the less we know of some things and the more we know of other things. We lose sight that we may gain sight, and we gain sight so that we may lose sight – for the one sight we seek, the one vision we hunger for, is Jesus Christ the Lamb that we may follow Him wherever He goes.

 

To know Him and to be with Him where He is, brings us to the eternals, to the “heavenly places” of which Paul writes in Ephesians. It brings us to the Beginning (Christ) and to the End (Christ). In the heavenlies, in the eternals, we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ and have been chosen before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:3 – 4).  We can either respond, “Yeah but…” and chase our tails like puppies with speculation upon speculation, flaying with natural reason, questioning how these things can be; or we can embrace the koinonia of the Trinity and the assurance that God loves us and move on with life in Him.

 

Many (most?) of the things we think we need to know, we do not really need to know, life is a question of knowing Jesus, always knowing Jesus, for in Him are “hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). Why is it that we will eat of every tree of the garden except the Tree of Life? Why are we so infatuated with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

 

Well, here is the thing, when we eat of the Tree of Life we find ourselves in the eternals, participating in the life of Christ Jesus, experiencing the love which the Father had for Him before the foundation of the world, seeing the glory which the Father bestowed on the Son before the ages began. Here is why we might say that the grandest phrase in all the Bible is “in Christ.” For to be “in Christ” is to have everything, and to not be in Christ is to have nothing.

 

That which the world thinks is nothing is everything, and that which the world thinks is everything is nothing (1 Cor. 1:17 – 31; 2:14; 1 John 2:15 - 17). Remember this the next time you watch the news or listen to political and social pundits – no matter what “color” they wear. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has many colors, including blue and red and purple – they all have poisonous dye in them.

 

When we read John 17:5 and 24 what do we experience? Do we read or do we hear? Do we see letters and words and sentences, or do we see Jesus? Is the passage simply words on paper or on an electronic reader, or is the passage a place of communion with the Trinity? Is the passage confined to the room or place in which we read? A living room, kitchen, bedroom, a deck, or an office? Or is Jesus coming to us and are we coming to Jesus in and through the passage?

 

Are we touching that which was before the ages and before the foundation of the world? Are we entering into the heavenlies and are the heavenlies entering into us?

 

O dear friends, the gravitational pull of earth, of the natural man, of politics and economics and nationalism and entertainment and pleasure and man’s religious tradition are all formidable; yet our Lord Jesus tells us that God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:24). We are taught that as many as are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God (Romans 8:14). It should be clear to us that we are citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:30) and that we live by faith rather than by sight (2 Cor. 5:7).

 

Are we living as the adults in the room of popular Christianity? Or are we still children “tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Ephesians 4:14)?

 

Unless we have some experience, some measure of experiential knowledge, of the Holy of Holies, of Christ before the ages, I am not certain we can escape and live above the toxicity of the world’s atmosphere, of its hatred, selfishness, cruelty, and blindness; I am not certain we can escape the seduction of man’s religion, including man’s caricature of Christianity, a Christianity without the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ. Is it possible that the more crosses we display, the less like Christ Jesus we become?

 

A few years ago I did a series on this blog in which we explored Geerhardus Vos’s sermon, preached at Princeton Chapel, Heavenly Mindedness, based on Hebrews 11:9- 10. One of the things that struck me as I was working through Vos’s message was the communion of saints. Vos saw that the Patriarchs were experiencing this communion, Vos himself was experiencing it, and Vos was inviting his hearers to experience it. That is, Vos wasn’t simply reading words on a page as he preached Hebrews 11, and he wasn’t asking his listeners to simply exegete the text with him, he was living Hebrews 11, he was inviting others to live in Hebrews 11 with Noah and Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Jacob and Jesus and with one another. Hebrews 11 was a transcendent experience for Geerhardus Vos, as it ought to be with us, as the Upper Room of the Gospel ought to be.

 

As Bonhoeffer writes in The Cost of Discipleship, God has established a holy realm on earth and it is called Christ and the Body of Christ – the Holy of Holies is within His People, within His Son. As with the Stable in Lewis’s The Last Battle, the inside is far greater than the outside, it is immeasurable. We live in the Holy of Holies and the Holy of Holies lives within us…therefore, why do we have anything to do with the unclean?

 

Somewhere Francis Schaffer wrote about us having two rooms, and I think this can be a helpful image. We tend to live on the first floor; the second floor, the upper level, is something we may hear about, we may theorize about, but it is essentially off limits. We don’t think it practical to explore it. Perhaps we have a quick visit once in a while, but it is better to leave it alone and remain on the first floor, after all, we don’t want folks to talk…do we?

 

Yet, when we come to Ephesians, Paul begins on the second floor, in the heavenlies and before the foundation of the world in Chapter One. He begins in the Upper Room and then, in Chapter Four, he answers the question, “The Upper Room is great, but how do we live on the first floor with one another and with the world?”

 

In the Gospel of John the answer to this question of how we should live is answered again and again, we live in the Upper Room, and out from the Upper Room we live in the world as Christ, for He lives in us and we live in Him; He is the Vine and we are the branches, He is our source of life….our only source of life. Our fellowship and friendship with Him is unbroken, for the Word is being made flesh and is living in us and among us, and we are being perfected into one in Him.

 

What does your participation in this mystery look like today?

 

 

Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship Part II – Reflections (33)

 

“How, out of sinful human beings, does God create a community of saints that is totally separated from sin? How can God be defended against the accusation of being unrighteousness, if God enters into a relationship with sinners?” (page 237).

 

Bonhoeffer tells us that we can be separated from sin only through our death. There must be a “killing of the sinner” (page 237). This may shock us. If we react by thinking, “I’ve never heard that!” we need only to look to Romans chapters 1 – 8 to see that Bonhoeffer’s message, his Gospel, is the Gospel of the Bible. Embedded within the Gospel is the truth and glorious news that “the sinner must die” to be free from sin.

 

If we ask, “How can this be?” we will be echoing Bonhoeffer, for this is also his question midway through page 237, “How can this come about?”

 

He tells us this comes about by God becoming human, weaving this in with the theme of “God’s self-justification” and of God being “justified before God” (page 237), working with this theme into page 241 where he will then weave sanctification into the tapestry and work with justification and sanctification together.

 

Since Bonhoeffer refers to Romans 3:21ff in this section, let’s read the entire passage. I have used bold print to demonstrate the emphasis on God’s righteousness and self-justification.

 

21 But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 but it is the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in God’s merciful restraint He let the sins previously committed go unpunished; 26 for the demonstration, that is, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

 

What questions do you have as you read this passage?

 

What challenges do you see to understanding it?

 

Now for sure the passage needs to be read in its context, that is it ought to be read in the context of Romans 1:1 through 5:11. We ought not to think that we can capture the passage on our first or second or tenth reading, but we can ask our Father that the passage might capture us, our hearts and our minds. I’ve been reading this passage for sixty years and it still has mystery and awe and wonder, I still bow before it…more now than ever before.

 

Bonhoeffer writes, “The death of Jesus Christ is the place where God has supplied the gracious proof of God’s own righteousness, the only place from that moment on where God’s righteousness dwells. Whoever could participate in this death would thereby also participate in God’s righteousness” (pages 237-238).

 

“What happened to him happened to all of us. He took part in our life and in our dying, and thus we came to take part in his life and his dying” (page 238).

 

Bonhoeffer wants to be clear that the Gospel insists that “God alone” is “the one who is righteous” (page 239). The Cross is both a place of judgment and of reconciliation, and it is God’s righteousness which brings about the reconciliation (Romans 3:25 – 26; 2 Cor. 5:19ff). We are to “find yourselves included in Jesus Christ’s death” (page 239).

 

Bonhoeffer refers to the following Scriptures on pages 239 – 240: 2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 10:3; Phil. 3:9; Isa. 54:7; 1 Cor. 1:30; Isa. 7:14; Jer. 33:16; Heb. 6:5ff; 10:26ff; Rom. 6:3; 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19; Rom. 6:11. Once again we see Bonhoeffer’s thinking deeply grounded in the Bible. He concludes this survey of Scripture with these words:

 

“Everything has already taken place, not only on the cross of Jesus, but also as far as you are concerned. You have been separated from sin, you have died, you are justified. God has thus completed God’s work. Through righteousness, God has established God’s realm of holiness on earth. This realm of holiness is named Christ or the body of Christ.

 

“God has a community which has been justified, and thus freed from sin. It is the community of the disciples of Jesus, the communion of saints. They have been accepted into God’s holy realm, indeed they are God’s holy realm” (pages 240 – 241, italics mine).

 

I have not attempted to follow Bonhoeffer in the details of his presentation on pages 237 into 241, it is too tightly written and interconnected with various Scriptures to be able to do this in a blog. Indeed, one could possibly write a small book in response to Bonhoeffer’s teaching, especially since he assumes that the reader has a background in the Bible and the terms he is using, such a justification, sanctification, the righteousness of God, the self-justification of God.

 

The idea that God justifies Himself is a case in point, how often do we think of this idea? Do we not live in a world, including a religious world, in which we tend to think that forgiveness of sins can be arbitrary? That if God wants to forgive that He can forgive? Do we really, deep down inside, consider just why Jesus died for our sins? Why couldn’t God have just said, “I forgive you. I forgive all of you. Let’s just start all over”?

 

Do we think that the character of God really matters? O sure, we want Him to be love and mercy, but beyond that does the idea of holiness or justice or righteousness really matter to us? Would it matter to us if God were not holy? Does the Nature of the Divine matter, truly matter to us?

 

When Moses encountered God at the Burning Bush, God said, “Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

 

When God called His People unto Him after delivering them from Egypt, during the construction of the Tabernacle, in giving laws and ordinances for worship, for relationship with Him and neighbors, the overriding message was “You must be holy, for I am holy.” The Message of Leviticus is “Holiness,” the holiness of God and the holiness of His People.

 

The overriding Message of great Messianic Prophet Isaiah is holiness. Just as Israel’s call in the Wilderness was “holiness,” so was Isaiah’s. “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:3). Perhaps nowhere in Isaiah do we see the holiness of God as in chapters 52 and 53, when the LORD justifies Himself and us through the suffering, death, and resurrection of the Messiah.

 

The concluding book and prophet of the Old Testament, Malachi, carries the Message of God’s holiness and a warning not to continue profaning it, and a promise to those who honor it and live according to His Nature, His holiness.

 

Peter cries out to Jesus, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8). Later Peter will emphasize the holiness of God when he quotes from Leviticus, “You shall be holy for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16).

 

The consummation of our pilgrimage, of the Biblical narrative, of our homecoming, occurs in the “Holy City” (Rev. 21:2), a City that “nothing unclean” can enter (Rev. 21:27).

 

The chapter we are considering is titled The Saints, but we cannot know the meaning of the term saints unless we are rooted in the righteousness, self-justification, and holiness of God; for all justification, sanctification, and sainthood must be rooted in the holiness of God – the holiness expressed in the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ – there is no holiness for us outside of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.

 

“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

 

 

The Holy of Holies (5)

 

 

“Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am” (John 17:24).

 

“If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:3).

 

“If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also” (John 12:26).

 

What does Jesus mean, that we should be with Him where He is?

 

Does He mean that we should all find ourselves with Him in the Upper Room? In Gethsemane?

 

What is it that we should be with Him where He is so that we may see the glory which the Father has given Him, a glory given in love before the foundation of the world (John 17:24)?

 

In John 12:26 we see that if we follow Jesus that we will be with Him where He is. Where is Jesus?

 

We may recall that in previous reflections we pondered the theme of Jesus going and coming, of Jesus hiding and revealing Himself; of us seeing Jesus, not seeing Jesus, and then seeing Jesus again.

 

What does it mean for us to be with Jesus where He is?

 

Certainly we are indeed to be with Jesus in the Upper Room, in Gethsemane, on the Cross, in the Resurrection, in the Ascension, sitting with Him in the heavenlies. Yes, we are to be with Jesus as He teaches, casts out unclean spirits, heals, feeds the hungry, touches the untouchable, loves the unlovable, and has compassion on humanity. We are to know a transcendence in this koinonia with Jesus, a fellowship with Him and in the communion of saints as we live in Jesus and He lives in us.

 

And this brings us to what it means that we be with Him where He is, for He is in koinonia with the Father, in unity with Him. We see His glory when we join that Divine fellowship and unity, when our biosphere is the Trinity, as we are being “perfected into one” (Jn. 17:23). As we live in the Holy of Holies, as we discover the ground of our being in God the Trinity, as we realize that Jesus Christ is truly our Author and Perfecter, that He is truly our Alpha and Omega, our Beginning and our End, our First and our Last – then we are with Him where He is, beholding the Father, beholding the incomparable glory of Jesus Christ, which the Father has bestowed upon Him, and which He (mystery indeed!) bestows upon us (Jn. 17:22).

 

And here, my friends, is the dance of the ages, the song of the ages; hidden from ages and generations but now revealed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that the Father should bring many sons to glory through the glorious Firstborn Son Jesus Christ, and that He should bestow His inheritance in the Father upon His brothers and sisters, and that we should all, in Him, give ourselves for the life of the world.

 

To be with Jesus where He is, is to live in intimacy with the Father, in loving communion with the Father, in sweet adoration of the Father. To be with Jesus where He is, is to keep our eyes on Jesus, fixing our minds and hearts and souls on Jesus, and in so doing to be transformed into His image as our way of life, as our source of life, and as our destiny in life.

 

To be with Jesus where He is, is to look upon one another as the saints of God, purchased and washed by the blood of the Lamb, perfected in Christ Jesus, made complete in Him. We no longer bring accusation against one another, we do not expose one another, but as Christ’s holy priesthood we cover one another in the confession of the Cross, the Atonement, the New Creation in Christ. The priesthood of Christ covers, we are mediators in Him, we sing the song of the redeemed and teach others to sing it. We baptize in water and the Spirit, not in sewage and the flesh.

 

To be with Jesus is not to wait for another day, though we do anticipate a glorious Day beyond comprehension, but it is to live with Him where He is today, right now. He comes to us every day, He brings us to Himself every day, He draws us deeper into the Trinity every day – we do not wait to participate in the Trinity – the Trinity is our very life today!

 

This is to live in the Holy of Holies; to know the love of God with one another, the unity of God with one another, the glory of God with one another, to experience the joy of God with one another. John Chapter 17, the Holy of Holies, is ineffable for the veil has been rent and we now have free and complete access to intimacy with God in Jesus Christ…always in Jesus Christ.

 

There are holy things and places in John Chapter 17 that cannot be spoken of in human language, but they can be experienced in Jesus Christ and with one another.

 

To “see” John 17 in some measure, to enter into the Holy of Holies, is not to arrive at the end of the Gospel, but rather at the purpose of the Beginning. The rending of the veil was not so that we should enter the Holy of Holies and arrive at the conclusion of our journey, but rather that we might finally get to the Beginning (or perhaps the End of the Beginning?) of our journey, of our glorious eternity in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…with one another.

 

Right now, this very moment, are we with Jesus where He is?