A Holy Charge (5)

 

A Holy Charge (5)

 

“But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Having so fond an affection for you, we were well – pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us. For you recall, brethren, our labor and hardship, how working night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you, we proclaimed to you the gospel of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:7 – 9).

 

There are many passages where Paul writes of the nature and character of his service in Christ; they speak of the content of his Message, of his joys and sorrows, his motivations, his hopes and disappointments, and of his heart. Since these are letters he is writing, isn’t this what we would expect? Paul is giving his life for the people he writes to, he is giving them his heart. These letters are Valintine’s cards with deep love and affection, and deep content.

 

Is there a more tender picture to be found than of a “nursing mother tenderly caring for her own children”? (In verse 11 we see that he also pictures himself as a father.) Paul and his friends were not simply imparting the Gospel of God to the Thessalonians, “but also our own lives.”

 

Is this our picture of Gospel ministry today? Is this the image that servants of the Gospel seek to portray, and is it the image that congregations seek? Is it the image that elders and deacons exhibit? Sunday school teachers? Small group leaders? Is it the nature of our service to Christ and to His People, to one another?

 

Since this is the way Paul was toward the Thessalonians, it was, I think, the way he expected the servant leaders in the Thessalonian church to be toward their brothers and sisters (1 Thess. 5:12 – 13). They were to labor among the flock, and have charge over the flock, as a nursing mother with her own children, as well as “exhorting and encouraging and imploring…as a father would his own children” (2:11), giving the church not only the Gospel, but “also their own lives” (2:8).

 

Is this the way that we view leadership? This is the Way of Jesus.

 

“You know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:24 – 28).

 

All moral and ethical and righteous leadership is sacrificial – whether explicitly in the Kingdom of God or in the world; Satanic so-called leadership is narcissistic, self-seeking, and self-serving – wherever it may be found.

 

Yet we have Christian organizations teaching worldly models of “leadership.” Yet we have Christians and their leaders bowing down to so-called leaders of this world and nation, aligning themselves with people and movements who exalt and glorify themselves. Are we not like ancient Israel who want a king, like the idolatrous nations, to rule over us? Are we not similar to the civic and religious leaders who shouted to Pilate, “Crucify Jesus! We have no king but Caesar!”?

 

Do our training institutions, Bible colleges and seminaries, focus on “content” to the exclusion of teaching and modeling the character and nature of Gospel ministry? What good is content without heart? Where is sustainability in the soul without love? Paul’s ministry, whether in person or through letters, is a marriage of love and content, of a nursing mother and an imploring father.

 

Pastors were once charged with the care of souls. Today they are paid to be CEOs, to produce numbers and entertainment and churn out self-help messages, to hold Sunday morning group therapy sessions, or Sunday cultural and political and nationalistic rallies. The avatars of Johnny Carson, Ed McMahon, and Doc Severson appear on church platforms across our nation Sunday mornings…and we call it “worship,” we call it preaching, we call it being relevant. (Sorry…not really…for the Johnny Carson reference, I am out of the loop on current entertainment figures.)

 

Is Jesus no longer enough?

 

What Paul writes to the Thessalonians about Gospel ministry and servant leadership was counter cultural 2,000 years ago, and it is counter cultural today. It was counter cultural within Judaism then; it is counter cultural within Christianity today.

 

Yet, this is the Way of Jesus.

 

“If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet” (John 13:14).

 

What is your view of leadership?

 

Is it Biblical? Does it align with Paul?

 

With Jesus?

 

Faith, Love, Hope in Thessalonica

 

 

“We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers; constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father” (1 Thess. 1:2 – 3).

 

“Since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation” (1 Thess. 5:8).

 

I’ve been pondering the cluster of faith, hope, and love at the beginning and toward the conclusion of Paul’s first letter to the Christians in Thessalonica. The believers in this city were known for their faith, love and hope. Their way of life not only manifested hope, love, and faith, but faith, love, and hope was also their armor as “sons of light and sons of day” (5:5).

 

When we encounter faith, hope, and love in the Bible we see the core of our calling in Jesus Christ, the core of our life together, the core of our witness of Him to the world. Note that both 1:2 – 3 and 5:8 are closely related to the Father choosing us in Christ:

 

“Knowing, brethren beloved by God, His choice of you” (1:4).

 

“God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (5:9).

 

It is good to remind ourselves that we are not accidents looking for a place to happen – we can only be in a relationship with Jesus because God our Father has called us into that relationship.

 

“All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37).

 

“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws Him; and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:44).

 

We can have great assurance that Jesus is our Author and Perfector (Hebrews 12:2), that the One who began a good work within us will bring it to completion (Phil. 1:6). I may not fully understand these words of Jesus in John Chapter 6, in fact I can understand very little of them, but I am most certainly called to believe what Jesus says about the Father and me and Him. Believing what Jesus says allows me to live securely in Him, allowing faith, hope, and love to grow in me and flow through me – back unto Jesus and into the lives of others.

 

Consider what Paul writes to the Colossians:

 

“We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints; because of the hope laid up for you in heaven” (Col. 1:3 – 4).

 

The Christians in Colossae also have a testimony of faith, hope, and love.

 

Is this my testimony? When others look at me do they see faith, hope, and love in Jesus Christ?

 

Is this the testimony of our congregations?

 

Is this your testimony?

 

Perhaps, as we live today, we can watch for Jesus coming to us, teaching us to live in and to share the faith, hope, and love that He is giving to us as His brothers and sisters. Perhaps we can ask Jesus to teach us today how to share faith, hope, and love with others.

 

Let’s remember that love, hope, and faith are not only to be our Way of Life in Christ, but they are also our armor, protecting our hearts and minds (which are continually assaulted by the things of this world!).

Reflections on the Song of Solomon

 

A Passionate Love, A Passionate Life (1)

 

“May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine; your oils have a pleasing fragrance, your name is like purified oil; therefore the maidens love you. Draw me after you and let us run together! The king has brought me into his chambers” (Song of Solomon 1:2 – 4).

 

This is how it begins – with passion, exuberance, and consummation!

 

It does not begin with backstory; not with how they first met, not with how their eyes first connected, not with a first date, not with when they first held hands, and not with an evening kiss. It rather begins with hearts and minds and souls and bodies alive and vibrant with exuberance, passion and consummation. Forget backstory – let’s open with joy and celebration!

 

The love and marriage of Ruth and Boaz has backstory, the backstory with them is much of the message; but the love of the Song of Solomon explodes with consummation and desire and celebration – Let’s kiss, let’s enjoy the fragrance, let’s run and skip and jump, and O yes! O yes! Let’s enter the king’s chambers…no wait, let’s not just enter them, let’s run into them! O yes!

 

If we approach the Song of Solomon in any way other than the way it is written, if we ask questions such as, “What is it about? Who wrote it? Who is it written to? When was it written? Who are the players?” we rob the Song of its mystery, its allurement, its fragrance, and of our visceral and holistic participation in it.

 

When you sit down to a dinner that another has prepared, whether in a home or a restaurant, do you analyze what you are about to eat? Do you wonder about the pots and pans used? Do you want to know if it was cooked on gas or electric appliances? Do you ponder the origin of the recipe? Do you question the herbs and spices used? If you do, one thing is for sure, when you finally get around to eating your meal it will be cold – and then you may blame the cook.

 

As Ezekiel and John were commanded, when we come to the Song of Solomon, we are to “eat this book.” We are to take what is set before us and put it in our mouths and enjoy it – gobble it down, drink it and become inebriated for it is better than wine, O so much better than wine! We are to run and skip and hop and jump for there ain’t nothing better than knowing love, living in love, breathing love, giving love, receiving love, and enjoying love in all its fullness.

 

In whatever way it is given to you to experience the opening of the Song, then experience it! You may experience it in more than one way – isn’t that beautiful? I think it is. If you have a pulse, then allow that pulse to quicken, allow your imagination to flow, allow the Holy Spirit to pull back the curtain on the stage – not so that you watch others act out the story as you sit in a seat, but so that you may run to the stage and play your part(s)! There are to be no spectators to the Song, all of us are to be on stage, all of us.

 

The first individual church that Jesus speaks to in Revelation is the church in Ephesus. They were commended for their good works, for their rejection of evil, and for their perseverance, but yet Jesus warns them that their deeds are not the deeds of love for they had “left their first Love.” Jesus tells them that unless they “remember from where you have fallen, and repent, and do the deeds you did at first” that He will come and remove them. They must return to their first Love, Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ must once again be their only Love.

 

We are to love Him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength; and out of that we love our neighbor as ourselves. We are to love Jesus Christ with all that we have and all that we are – forever and ever, we are to belong to Him and only to Him. We are to be in a holy and pure marriage to Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 11:1 – 3). Our central and core calling and destiny is as the Bride of Christ – we see the shadow of the marriage in Genesis; we see its consummation in Revelation 21 – 22.

 

We also experience shadows and consummation in the Song. However, the Song is not structured as the entire Bible is structured. The Bible is structured with first shadows (Genesis 2; Ephesians 5:22 – 32) and then consummation, while the Song begins with consummation and then escorts us into a dance of shadow and consummation, of consummation and shadow – of point and counterpoint. (Is this not what we can experience in marriage?)

 

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!”

 

This lady “don’t want no hug and kiss,” she wants the real deal – there ain’t no warm up needed here – she is hungry for her lover and her lover is hungry for her.

 

O dear friends, can we ask ourselves whether we are hungry for Jesus? Is the Church hungry for Jesus?

If we are hungry for Him then how can we sell ourselves to the things of this world – its entertainment, its value systems, its economic systems, its political and national systems, its worship of so-called “freedom,” its scribal and Pharisaical religious systems within what we term Christianity?

 

For us pastors and teachers and professors – have we forgotten that our calling is to join the Bride to the Bridegroom and then get out of the way (John 3:28 – 30)? We have no business in the King’s Chambers in our teaching roles, we can only be there as the Bride.

 

Play the tape, stream it, read it, again and again read the Song of Solomon 1:2 – 4. What do you see? How is Jesus coming to you? Get on the stage, start living your role.

 

Enjoy Jesus and bask in His enjoyment of you.

 

Concluding thought:

 

I grew up listening to and appreciating many genres of music, including Big Band, Show Tunes, and what I’ll call Popular Standards of previous generations (1920s – early 1950s; some of which have been recycled and “covered” over the years). Below is a Standard that I can sing to two people and only two people, one is Vickie and the Other is Jesus. Can our congregations sing this to Jesus? If we did, would it be true? We can all learn to sing it, for Jesus so very deeply desires us to live in His exuberant, passionate, and consummated love! Jesus desires us to live in Song of Solomon 1:2 – 4.

 

I Only Have Eyes For You (Harry Warren, Al Dubin)

 

Are there stars out tonight?

I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright

‘Cause I only have eyes for you, dear.

 

The moon may be high

But I can’t see a thing in the sky

‘Cause I only have eyes for you

 

I don’t know if we’re in a garden

Or on a crowded avenue

You are here, so am I

Maybe millions of people pass by

But they all disappear from view

‘Cause I only have eyes for you.

 

Do we only have eyes for Jesus?

 

Ernest Gordon (1)

 

Angus McGillivary

 

In a Japanese prison camp in Thailand during WWII:

 

“He’s dead.”

 

“Dead? How?”

 

For a moment Dusty could not speak. I could see that he was deeply moved. I wondered why, for he could scarcely have known McGillivray.

 

“It’s hard to say. He was strong. In fact, he was one of those you’d expect would be the last to die. But then I suppose he needn’t have died.”

 

“Then why did he?”

 

Dusty sat down on my bed.

 

“It has to do with Angus’s mucker,” he began, ‘who became very ill.”

 

It was the custom among the Argylls for every man to have a ‘mucker’ – that is, a pal or friend with whom he shared or ‘mucked in’ everything he had.

 

“It seemed pretty certain to everyone,” Dusty continued, “that the mucker was going to die. Certain, that is, to everyone but Angus. He made up his mind that his mucker would live. Someone had stolen his mucker’s blanket. Angus gave him his own. Every meal-time Angus would show up to draw his ration. But he didn’t eat it. He would bring it round to give to his friend. Stood over him, he did, and made him eat it. Going hungry was hard on Angus, mind you, because he was a big man, with a big frame.”

 

As Dusty talked on, I could see it all happening – Angus drawing on his strength through his will and depleting his own body to make his friend live.

 

“His mates noticed that Angus had taken to slipping out of the camp at night,” Dusty went on. “These excursions could have only one purpose. He was visiting the Thai villages. It was taken for granted that he had joined the black-marketeers! Angus, of all people! This shocked the others, for he was known as a man of high principles."

 

As men died in the camp, it became possible for others to come into possession of objects of some value – watches, shirts, shorts, knives and so on. These were highly prized by the Thais, who would gladly pay for them in their paper money known as bahts’, worth about one-and-sixpence each. Or they would barter for the goods, offering medicine or duck eggs.

 

“Although Angus’s mates thought that he was trying to make a bit of money for himself, they didn’t begrudge it to him,” said Dusty. “Perhaps you can guess the end of the story. The mucker got better. Then Angus collapsed. Just pitched on his face and died.”

 

“And what did the docs say caused it?” I asked.

 

“Starvation,” answered Dusty, “complicated by exhaustion.”

 

“And all for his friend?”

 

Dusty sat in stillness.

 

(Excerpted from To End All Wars, by Ernest Gordon, Zondervan, pages 99 – 100).

 

Ernest Gordon, a British officer and a Scot, had been given up for dead in the POW camp, but Dusty and others were determined to nurture him back to life. Gordon entered the camp not believing in God, that would change. Gordon would later come to the US and become the dean of chapel at Princeton, serving at Princeton from 1954 until 1981.

 

The Bridge Over the River Kwai (movie and book) is a fictionalized account of the railroad of death, Gordon’s To End All Wars (published earlier under other titles) is the true story, a story from which we can learn much. (Believe me when I say that Gordon’s book is far better and deeper and moving than the movie by the same name.)

 

The prisoners became subhuman, stealing from one another, unfeeling toward one another, driven by hate and despair. In the few, however, there was sacrificial love, and in the midst of hell, love prevailed – there was, as Gordon writes, a “miracle on the River Kwai.”

 

The prisoners became a community of love, serving one another, caring for one another, seeking Christ, serving Christ, and ultimately offering water, food, and aid to wounded and defeated Japanese soldiers. Jesus Christ transcended their suffering, He transcended war.

 

Love makes no sense. The Cross of Christ makes no sense. When Jesus says, “Love your enemies,” we respond, “Yeah but.” When Jesus says, “Lay down your life,” we reply, “Yeah but.”

 

During a conversation with Dusty, Ernest asked, “Why doesn’t He [God] do something, instead of sitting quiescently on a great big white throne in the no-place called heaven?”

 

Gordon writes, Dusty considered for a moment. Then he said, “Maybe He does…maybe He does…but we can’t see everything He is doing now. Maybe our vision isn’t very good at this point, for here we see in a glass darkly.”

 

Then Dusty quoted from a poem by Ernest Howard Crosby:

 

No one could tell me where my soul might be;

I sought for God, but God eluded me;

I sought my brother out and found all three –

My soul, my God, and all humanity.

 

“We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and yet he hates his brother or sister, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God must also love his brother and sister” (1 John 4:19 – 21).

 

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

 

Ernest and Dusty saw Jesus Christ in Angus McGillivray, what do others see in our congregations?

 

In me?

 

In you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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).

May I also remind us that within the Twelve were Matthew (Levi) the tax collector and Simon the Zealot, two men on opposite ends of the political spectrum, two men with opposing worldviews; one aligning himself with the oppressive Romans, the other committed to the armed overthrow of Rome – yet Jesus chose them both and their division dissolved in the love of Jesus and they became messengers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ – not a gospel of man or a kingdom of man. (Can you imagine what their first meeting looked like?)

 

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

 

A New Way

 

 

Now we come to John Chapter 17. “But wait!” you say, “we haven’t moved all the way through John 16 yet.”

 

Yes, that is true, and we will indeed enter John 17 through John 16, but as we move into John 16:25 – 33 we will be in the vestibule of John 17, the prelude to the Holy of Holies with its new time, its new language, its new seeing, and its new thinking. This is the thinking and language and seeing and time of the Sons of the Kingdom, it flows from the Trinity, from eternity past to eternity present to eternity future.

 

For sure, new ways take time to learn, they take practice, they require exercise and use in order to grow and experience proficiency.

 

As you read John 16:25 – 33 what questions do you have? What things do not make sense? Our Father uses our questions to reveal Himself, to draw us deeper into His Presence – questions are good; God is God and we are not, as we bow before Him we can learn.

 

When Jesus says that “an hour is coming” in which He will no longer speak to the disciples in figurative language, we might think it will be a while before this happens. Yet, in verse 29 the disciples say, “Lo, now You are speaking plainly and are not using a figure of speech.” It seems as if that coming “hour” happened quickly.

 

In verse 27 Jesus says that the disciples “have believed that I came forth from the Father.” Yet, in verse 30 the disciples say, “Now we know that You know all things, and have no need for anyone to question You; by this we believe that You came from God.” In other words, Jesus says that the disciples believe He came from the Father before the disciples confess this belief.

 

But then we have verses 31 – 32 in which Jesus challenges their confession by telling the disciples that they will all desert Him, leaving Him alone. Yet again, in verse 33 Jesus affirms their ultimate victory and peace in Him, “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace.”

 

Jesus affirms their belief in Him, the disciples confess that belief, then Jesus challenges their belief, then Jesus affirms their belief and confirms their victory in Him. Throughout the Upper Room we have seen the enigmatic dance of the Holy Spirit, we have seen Jesus drawing His friends deeper and deeper into the Temple of God, into the Holy City.

 

O dear friends, it is only as the Wisdom of God reveals Himself and His Father that we will hear the language of God, see the ways of God, think the thoughts of God, and know intimacy with God (Pro. 8; 1 Cor. 2).

 

“I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well – pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Mt. 11:25 – 27; see also 1 Cor. 1:17 – 31).

 

“For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind” (Jn. 9:39).

 

God’s time is not our time, His language is not our language, His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts.

 

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8–9).

 

Let us allow the Holy Spirit to draw us upward into the time and words and ways of God, rather than foolishly attempt to pull His revelation downward into the gravity of earth, and let us not forget Jesus’ words to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Jesus also says to His disciples, ““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).

 

Throughout the Upper Room Jesus says things about the disciples which, in light of their impending desertion of Him, do not seem to be true. Jesus speaks of both their abandonment of Him and their fidelity to Him. He speaks of their faithlessness and also of their faithfulness. He talks of their momentary fear, and of their unfolding peace, joy, and overcoming. Jesus calls them to His very own life, love, joy, peace, obedience, fruit, and calling. This language, this way of seeing things, this thinking, and this sense of time plunges ever deeper in the Holy of Holies of John 17, and is gloriously affirmed on Easter when Jesus says, “Go to My brethren and say to them, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God” (John 20:17).

 

We do not see as Jesus sees, but in Him we can learn to see as He sees. This is an element of the invitation of the Upper Room into the koinonia of the Trinity.

 

Paul writes that, “We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18).

 

Then Paul moves us from the way we look at things to the way we see people. “From now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer” (2 Cor. 5:16). This is a lesson the disciples will begin to learn on Easter Sunday; Mary Magdelene will learn it, the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus will learn it, the disciples fishing will learn it.

 

He follows this statement with, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). Can we hear the Father declaring this? “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

 

This, my friends, is why we are called to look at Jesus and not ourselves. This is why we are called to hear and believe Jesus and not listen to ourselves nor believe what we think about ourselves. Jesus, our Good Shepherd, has wrapped us up in His arms and carries us deep into Himself and we shall always be His and He shall always be ours.

 

Jesus says, “Don’t trust in what you think about yourself, trust in what I think about you. Don’t seek your identity in yourself, acknowledge your identity within Me. Abide in Me and allow Me to abide in you – rest in My arms, in My love, in My peace, in My joy – you and I have eternity ahead of us!”

 

Perhaps more than anything, the Upper Room is a glorious revelation of the love of God for us. In the Upper Room we hear a voice calling, “Come up here” (Rev. 4:1).

 

Let’s go!

 

 

The Royal Inclusio – Love (12)

 This is our concluding reflection on John 15:12 - 17. Our next movement in the Upper Room is John 15:18 - 16:4. 

We have asked three questions regarding the love of John 15:12 – 17: What does this look like in the church? What does this look like in my own life? What does this look like in my family? Having pondered the second and third questions, we’ll now consider the first question (though we touched on it in our previous meditation). 

Are our congregations (and denominations and movements) laying down their lives for others? Is my local congregation laying down its life for its community, for the world, and for other congregations? 

The term “doctrinal distinctives” is often used to delineate one group from another, indicating what beliefs or practices set groups apart from one another. As I ponder this, I wonder where we get this mentality of defining ourselves by our differences, and I wonder how we justify such thinking. I wonder why we don’t emphasize our common faith in Jesus Christ and our call to unity in Him. How have we arrived at such fragmented thinking? 

Jesus tells us that we are to have two distinctives, one is that we love one another as He loves us, the other is that we are One as the Trinity is One. Both of these distinctives are contrary to our cherished doctrinal distinctives – our doctrinal distinctives separate the Body of Christ, the Divine distinctives of sacrificial love and unity “perfect us into one” Body (John 17:23; Ephesians 4:1–16).

Whatever our doctrinal distinctives may be – and I think we should acknowledge that whatever they are, they are likely imperfect and incomplete – the test of their validity is whether they are Christocentric, rooted in Christ. Since we cannot be rooted in Christ without also being rooted in His Body, any doctrinal distinctives that do not result in service and preference for the Body of Christ lack validation. 

Consider a wheel with many spokes. Are the spokes leading to the hub or away from the hub? When we seek to emphasize our unity, the spokes lead to the hub, Jesus Christ. When we emphasize and identify with our so-called distinctives, we move away from the hub. 

Nowhere do we see Jesus teaching us to move away from Him and our brethren, in fact, throughout the Bible we are taught to live for one another in Christ. How is it that we have come to celebrate division? How is it that pastors see no need to know one another and to lead their people by example into the glorious fellowship of the Body of Christ? 

On the congregational level, are we collectively living sacrificial lives for others? How are we spending our money, our time, our resources? I have often shared the story of a trustees’ meeting in which I said, “I would not want to appear before Jesus with this budget and financial statement. It is all about us.” 

I have known folks who thought that if they volunteered so many hours a month at church that they would not need to give money. I have known others who thought that if they gave money that would not have to give time or talent. Where does this thinking come from? We are either living for Jesus and others or we are not. We are either living in relationship with the Trinity and others or we are not. 

Years ago there was a church in Richmond, VA in the midst of a building program. They were ready to begin the next phase of the program and they had the money for the project. However, they had also promised a church in Haiti that they would provide funds for a building. They only had enough money for one project. The church gave their funds to their Haitian brethren. That, my friend, was the turning point for the Richmond church. The church became a center for outreach to the world, supporting churches throughout the world, sending missionaries, and (the last time I had contact with them) sending about 25 short-term mission groups every year. Because they put others first God was able to use them for His Kingdom. (Also, as I think about this particular church, even though it was a member of a denomination, it never had a denominational feel to it, it had the feel of the Body of Christ.)

Just to be clear, I am not talking about being “non-denominational,” whatever that means. I think whether or not a congregation is associated with a denomination is like circumcision, the Bible says it doesn’t matter whether you are or you aren’t, what matters is that we have “faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6; 6:15). We are all products of traditions and practices and ways of looking at things, and folks who make a big deal of being non-denominational are ignoring the obvious and often leading their people in ways that lack foundation, that have no continuity with the transcendent Body of Christ. Of course, this disconnect with our past is the norm across most congregations and institutions, even those who profess otherwise – we are so “in the moment” and reactionary that our congregations are ships without rudders and navigational charts. We are more like bumper cars than vessels on a carefully charted course. 

What does the Royal Inclusio look like in my life? In your life? In our marriages? Our families? Our congregations? Our denominations and movements?

Are we laying down our lives for others in love as Jesus laid down His life for us? 

The Royal Inclusio - Love (11)

We have asked three questions regarding the love of John 15:12 – 17: What does this look like in the church? What does this look like in my own life? What does this look like in my family?

We’ve pondered the second question, now let’s consider the third. There are two elements to the question of what loving one another as Jesus loves us looks like in our families. The first is obvious, the second may not be. 

Do we, within our families, love one another as Jesus loves us? Do we practice laying our lives down for one another? At the same time, we should ask whether our families, as family units, are laying their lives down for others outside their families. 

What I mean is that just as individuals are called to love others as Jesus sacrificially loves them, so families are called to love others as Jesus sacrificially loves them (and of course the same is true of congregations and denominations and other associations in Christ). Self-centeredness within families and congregations is idolatrous just as self-centeredness in individuals is idolatrous. The Nature of God is loving and self-giving, therefore if the Nature of God abides within us and in our relationships in Christ, then those relationships ought to display the self-giving and sacrificial love of God, the love that lays down its life for its friends. 

This can be a difficult thing to wrestle with in our self-centered culture, for we have been taught, within and without the professing church, to rationalize our selfishness. We have erected our own images of spiritual health and success in place of the Lamb of God. We have substituted our own images of righteousness for the righteousness of Jesus Christ. There have been many things God has given us for our good that we turned into bronze serpents.

Rather than on mission to share Jesus Christ with the world, our mission has become our own self-improvement, our own blessing, and perpetuating our own kingdoms. Our center of gravity is us as individuals, is us as families, and is us as congregations (and denominations and movements). 

This, my friends, is opposed to our text (John 15:12 – 17), it is opposed to the Upper Room, the Gospel of John, the life of Jesus Christ, and to the Message and Call of Scripture. 

The Good News is that because our heavenly Father knows each of us, and because He loves us so deeply, He will guide us out of our individual and collective self-centeredness if we will ask Him for help. And let’s remember, it must always begin by looking in the mirror – it must begin with me, always with me. I must never look at another person, whether it be my wife, other family members, friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, and think, “If only that person would change!” 

O my how we lie to ourselves! My love for Christ and others, and my obedience to Jesus Christ, is at the core of the Royal Inclusio. I am called to lay my life down for others, I am not called to manipulate others to lay their lives down for me. 

Let’s make no mistake that we are talking about the Cross of Jesus Christ working itself out in our lives – and the Cross means crucifixion. We must not spare ourselves, our families, or our congregations from the Cross – not if we truly love them. We must not be like Peter when he attempted to shield Jesus from the Cross (Matthew 16:21–23). Do we realize this? O pastors, you are doing your congregations no favors when you shield them from the Cross of Christ. We are called to participate with Jesus Christ in His crucifixion (Galatians 2:20; 6:14; 2 Corinthians 4:11–12; Romans Chapter 6). 

When the Cross of Christ and the Christ of the Cross ceases to be our center of gravity, and is displaced by self-centeredness, including familial, congregational, institutional, and political and nationalistic self-centeredness, we have made our own golden calves. 

Radical? Why of course it is radical. It is radical because the love of Jesus Christ is radical. This is the Love that is our calling into eternity…and if we are not living for eternity then we are a foolish people. Are we ashamed to live for eternity? Are we ashamed to live for Jesus?

Are we not a collective expression of the Rich Young Ruler? Unwilling to give what we cannot keep to gain what we cannot lose? 

If we are not teaching our families this love by the way we live, why not? If our families are not teaching others this love by the way they live, why not? If our churches and denominations and movements are not displaying the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ, why not?

Jesus will teach us His Way of Life, His Way of Love, His Way of giving. We can trust Him to teach us today, tomorrow, and into eternity. He calls us into the deep koinonia of the Trinity, a koinonia of sacrificial love and kindness and grace and joy. We cannot do this in and of ourselves, but as we abide in the Vine, O yes, as we abide in the Vine, He will teach us to lay down our lives for others as He laid down His life for us. 

There is no greater love than this!

The Royal Inclusio - Love (10)

 

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

Do we understand what Jesus is saying? Do we understand what this is? Do we understand, at least in some measure, what Jesus is offering us? 

There is no one as glorious and as beautiful as Jesus Christ. We have never seen or heard anything in creation, or anything produced by man, as beautiful as Jesus Christ. The sum of all beauty and all wonder and all glory and all joy falls short of Jesus Christ – He is truly beyond comparison and description. 

What is it like to be in the Presence of Him who is altogether Wonderful? What is it like to know friendship and koinonia with Him? To touch Him and be touched by Him? To know joy with Him, to laugh with Him, to enjoy singing and music with Him? What is it like to know Him as the Elder Brother and to enjoy a relationship with our Father with Him? 

When Jesus commands us to love as He loves, to lay down our lives as He laid down His life, He is inviting us to know Him in the depths of His Being (if we can use such language). He is calling us to have the image of God restored (actually beyond restored in the sense of beyond what Adam knew) within us. Jesus is inviting us to know the glory which He had with the Father before the foundation of the world (John 17:5, 22–24) and to which our Father is calling us (Hebrews 2:10–13; 2 Thess. 1:12). 

When Jesus calls us to love as He loves, He is calling us into the beauty of the love of God. “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). 

Let’s recall that the Upper Room begins with Jesus washing feet, including the feet of Judas the betrayer. Jesus calls us to live such a life as we live in Him. Jesus loves as no one else is capable of loving, and He calls us to live in that love and to love with that love as we abide in the Vine and as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit abide in us. 

When Jesus calls us to love one another as He loves us, He calls us to live in His beauty and wonder and glory and joy. True and enduring courage is found in His love, it is found in Him as we love. This is a love that is intercessory in nature, self-giving, that suffers gladly for others, that bears their burdens and sorrows and infirmities – spiritual and physical – and offers itself as a living sacrifice. 

To know Him in the koinonia of His sufferings (Phil. 3:10) is to know Him in His inexpressible beauty and love and glory. This is to be captured and held tight by the love of God, a love from which nothing can separate us (Rom. 8:35–39). 

Now friends, here is the thing, if we are only living as if this life is all there is, then who cares about any of this? It is a sweet story, or a story for fools – call it what you will, but it doesn’t matter, or at least it matters no more than baseball or Wall Street. 

But if we are indeed the sons and daughters of the Living God through Jesus Christ, then loving as Jesus loves forms our souls for eternity and draws us into the depths of the Trinity. Furthermore, God draws others to Himself through us. Also, God uses us to bear the burdens and sufferings of others, He invites us to share the sufferings of Jesus Christ, to serve alongside Jesus our High Priest (Col. 1:24). 

Jesus says, “Come be with Me where I am. Come and love as I love. Come and give as I give. Come and serve as I serve. Come and suffer as I suffer. Come and rise as I rise. Come and ascend as I ascend. Come and know our Father as I know our Father. Come and behold My beauty and know My joy and bask in the warmth and security and glory of My love.”

There is no greater command than, “Love one another as I have loved you.” There is no greater command in terms of importance, in terms of promise, in terms of invitation, and in terms of glory and destiny. There is no greater command because it calls us to unity with Jesus Christ. 

The Royal Inclusio – Love (9)

“This I command you, that you love one another.” John 15:17. 

Here is the completion of the Royal Inclusio that began in verse 12 with, “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.” 

Love forms the beginning and the end of the Upper Room (another inclusio), we saw it in 13:1, “Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end,” and we will see it in John 17:26, “So that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” 

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

Now I suppose there are at least three things we ought to ask ourselves: What does this look like in the church? What does this look like in my own life? What does this look like in my family? 

When I ask, “What does this look like in my family?” I am asking two questions. The first question is the one most people likely hear, the second question is one we likely do not hear. What are the two questions? We’ll come back to them.

Since it is always good to begin by looking in the mirror, let’s ask ourselves whether we are keeping this royal command of Jesus Christ. Am I loving others as Jesus Christ loves me? Am I laying down my life for others just as Jesus Christ laid down His life for me? I must not look at others, I must not look at the church, until I have first looked at myself in the light of God’s Word. 

Is my center of gravity Christ and others, or am I the center of my life? Is my life about self-preservation, is it about my wants and needs and agendas, or is it about Jesus Christ and others? 

Now I realize that this is a hard saying, but I wonder why it is hard. After all, the call of Jesus to follow Him clearly includes the call to lose our lives (Mark 8:34 – 38). Why then should we be surprised at the thought that we are live for Christ and others? 

If I am a student, I am in school for others. If I am at work, I am at work for others. If I am engaged in recreation, I am there for others. If I am involved in social or civic activities, I am involved for the benefit of others. In other words, there should be no sphere of life in which I am not living for Jesus Christ and loving others as Jesus loves me. This should also, naturally, include participation in church. Would it not be novel to see churches whose members love one another as Jesus loves them? (More on this later). 

Yes, this Way of Life is radical, but this is the Way of Jesus. Jesus is quite clear, we are to love one another as He loves us, and this means laying down our lives for one another. 

As we will see in the next section of the Upper Room (15:18 – 16:4), there is a price to be paid for living this Way, but it is an honor and glory to pay such a price.  This is the Way of the Cross, and it is also the Way of Resurrection (Romans 8:12 – 25). 

Do we tell ourselves lies to excuse ourselves from following Jesus? 

Do we say, “That was Paul, Jesus appeared to him.  Peter and John were with Jesus, so they could live like that. I am not a pastor (and for sure pastors have their own excuses!). Jesus understands that I must be practical in my life. My family and friends and coworkers will not understand if I am obedient to Jesus. Why should I love people who do not appreciate me? Once I achieve my goals, once I have financial security, I’ll do better about obeying Jesus and loving others." 

What other lies do we tell ourselves to justify not loving others and not laying our lives down for them? 

The glory we forfeit when we refuse Jesus’ command to love one another is the glory of Sonship in Him. Our Father has a grand and glorious eternity awaiting us, and it is His desire that we enter it knowing Jesus in the power of His resurrection and the koinonia of His suffering, being conformed to His death (Philippians 3:10). 

Are we members of the koinonia of the Lamb? Are we following the Lamb wherever He goes (Rev. 14:1–5)?

Can we say with Paul, “For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you” (2 Cor. 4:11–12)?

O dear friends, how foolish to think that our lives are to be measured by success or bank accounts or possessions, how foolish to use this world’s measurements in our lives, how short-sighted to compromise with the surrounding culture of self-centered evil – including elements of the “church culture.” We are called to live as a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:4–10; Rev. 1:6), belonging to and serving with our High Priest Jesus Christ.

The core of our lives is to be the love of Jesus Christ, it is to be loving one another as Jesus loves us, it is to be the Greater Love that lays down its life for its friends. Jesus gave His life for us, for our brethren, and for the world; we are to give our lives for Him, for our brethren, and for the world. 

Is this the pattern of our lives? 

Is my way of life His Way of Life? Am I living a life of love for others?

What about you? 

The Royal Inclusio – Love (8)

 

“…that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give you.” John 15:16.

We see the relationship between fruit and answered prayer in both John 15:7–8 and John 15:16. Our Father is glorified when we bear much fruit (v. 8) and thereby demonstrate that we are disciples of Jesus. If we consider that prayer is communion with God, and that it is only as we abide in Christ the Vine that we can bear fruit (15:4–5), then we see that fruit flows from communion with the Divine, indeed, it is a natural result of us abiding in the Trinity and the Trinity abiding within us. If the Trinity is fruitful then where the Trinity abides is fruitful (consider also Revelation 22:1–2). 

Jesus, the Firstborn Son, displays the image and pattern of abiding in the Father and of asking in prayer. In Matthew and Luke Jesus teaches a pattern of prayer in a broad sense, for He teaches in public. In the Upper Room, Jesus teaches the sons and daughters of His Father to pray in intimacy, an intimacy in which they offer up themselves as they pray for their brethren. The offering up is to God and for their brethren (John 17:9, 19).

Just as we have learned to pray what we term the Lord’s Prayer of Matthew Chapter 6, we are to learn to pray the Prayer that Jesus Prayed of John Chapter 17. Just as we are called to be the incarnation of the prayer of Matthew Chapter 6, we are to become the Incarnation of John Chapter 17. This is our high calling in Jesus Christ. 

The Prayer that Jesus Prayed is the Life that Jesus Lived; we are to Live this Life and Pray this Prayer as we abide in Him. 

The Lord willing, when we arrive at John Chapter 17, we will explore the glory of the Holy of Holies in Christ, the glory of participating in the Prayer that Jesus Prayed, flowing from the life that we have in Him. 

It is our Lord’s desire that we bear a particular kind of fruit; it is to be a fruit that remains. Are we interested in such fruit? 

My sense is that we are more concerned with fast food than food promoting sustained growth. Fast food is eaten quickly and is often eaten “on-the-go.” Since we are an on-the-go people in an on-the-go society we fashion our teaching and preaching accordingly – and then we wonder why we lack character and depth in Jesus Christ, then we wonder (perhaps) why we are consumers and not producers. 

Our attention spans are dwindling to nothing, and we are catering to the insanity, in so doing we are desecrating the image of God in Christ. The Scriptures teach us to meditate on the Word (Psalm 1), not to blithely gulp a verse or two down via a “verse of the day” or thought for the day or pithy saying for the day – we are called to holy communion with God, we are not called to “honk if you love Jesus.” 

The prayer teaching of the Upper Room is not about getting things from God to consume upon ourselves, it is about living in holy koinonia with the Trinity and our brethren and receiving from our Father so that we may bear fruit for His glory and for the sake of our brethren. The life of prayer portrayed in the Upper Room is a life born of “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”

The prayer teaching of the Upper Room is about costly prayer, we enter it through the Cross of Christ, we maintain it in the Cross of Christ, we share it flowing from the Cross of Christ. 

Jesus deeply desires you to know Him intimately; He already knows your heartbeat, now He wants you to know His heartbeat. Our Lord has removed every barrier to you knowing Him, to your abiding in Him and experiencing His Life in you, He simply calls you to “abide in Me.” Jesus knows that you, in and of yourself, cannot possibly live the Christian life, He does not ask you to try, He does not ask you to attempt such a task; He does call you to abide in Him, the Vine, and to learn to allow Him and the Father  and the Holy Spirit to live within you in daily fellowship, in the very koinonia which you will experience in eternity. 

Why wait until the future to experience what your dear Lord Jesus desires you to experience now? He calls you to unbroken friendship and communion with Him as your Way of Life. He loves you so very very much, so deeply, and He loves you with overflowing eternal joy. 

How to begin? Just ask Him in your own words to draw you deeper into Himself. Speak to Him and then listen and watch for Him…throughout the day. He will come to you, again and again and again. Those who know to look for His coming see Him coming throughout their lives, and He is glorious. O yes, sometimes we may miss Him, but He is gracious and do not be surprised if He says, “Didn’t you see Me when you saw that person in need? Didn’t you see Me when that man needed a word of encouragement? Didn’t you see Me when that woman expressed a prayer need? I was there to touch them through you.”

Jesus is our patient Teacher. 

You might also consider meditating in John chapters 13 – 17 for a season of life. Reading and meditating on a small portion each morning, reading aloud, listening for Jesus, visualizing yourself in the Upper Room with Jesus, seeing Jesus with you…for of course He is with you. Allow Jesus to draw you into the holy fellowship of the Trinity, allow Him to take the lead, as Reepicheep in Narnia says, “Let’s take the adventure that Aslan gives us.”

You are not an accident looking for a place to happen, you are a son or daughter of the Living God and He loves you so deeply, He cares for you so passionately. 

Why not live today in the incredible love and life of Jesus Christ? 

Questions, comments? robertlwithers@gmail.com

The Royal Inclusio – Love (5)

 

“No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15). 

Again, Jesus uses the word “friends.” Is it too much for us to think ourselves the way that Jesus thinks of us, as His friends? Is it too much for us to think of ourselves as His brethren? (Romans 8:29; Hebrews 2:10–13). It is good to have a brother, and it is good to have a friend; how wonderful it is to have someone who is both your brother and your friend!

It is one thing to see the outside of things, it is another thing to see and understand the inside of things. Consider Psalm 103:7, “He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel.” The People of Israel saw the works of God, Moses saw the ways of God. Israel saw the outside, Moses saw the inside. Because Moses knew the ways of God, because he knew the character and Person of God, he was able to intercede for Israel and save the people from a consummating judgment. Moses knew that “the LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness” (Psalm 103:8). 

How tragic to spend all of one’s life learning about Jesus but never knowing Him as our Friend. How many Sunday school classes have I observed, how many small groups, in which my brothers and sisters speak of Jesus as a stranger, as a “subject” to be studied and speculated about, as we might speak of Lincoln or Caesar or Shakespeare or Buddha. The triteness and low expectations of our curriculum acknowledge this, whether it intends to or not. How many church leadership meetings have I attended in which we think and act as if Jesus could not possibly be in the room with us. – as if He is no more than an image on a wall or in a stained-glass window. We proclaim “He is risen” on Easter, but it seems to be a momentary confession. 

Why this does not trouble us is something I have never understood. 

Jesus desires intimate relationship with us, with all of us and with each of us. He is our good and tender Shepherd who so desires to hold us close to Himself. Jesus says to us, “I don’t just want you to see the things that I do, I want you to see Me and know Me and understand why I do the things I do. I want you to know Me and My ways. This is why I have said, I Am the Way.”

The New Covenant is the Covenant of the Inward Way, and that Way is Jesus Christ. “I will put My laws into their minds, and I will write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be My People…for all will know Me, from the least to the greatest of them.” (See Hebrews 8:7–13; 10:1-18.) 

The Father and Son bring their Way into us as they come to abide within us, as we learn to abide in the Vine, drawing our life from Him. 

Ah, but we are taught to see the outside, to live by the outside, to value appearances, to conform to outward religious and social expectations – which can only bring heartache and condemnation and alienation from one another and from God. We are taught that the New Covenant is not really for us, and so we live as if the veil still separates us from the Holy of Holies, we live as if our sins are not truly forgiven, we live as if intimacy with Jesus is impossible. 

A child refrains from doing something because the parent has said not to do it. A son or daughter refrains from doing something because they know it is against the Nature of their Father who lives in them. A daughter or son knows to do something as a Way of Life because they live in intimacy with the Father, a child must be told to do such and such, and can only do so with limited understanding. 

A daughter or son knows that laying one’s life down is a Way of Life in Jesus Christ, whether in family, in civic community, at work, at school, or within the Church. A child might not steal because of a commandment; a daughter or son will not steal because it is against the Nature of the Father who lives in them. They further know that to steal is to drink the cup of Satan, they know that to steal would be to allow poison into the Body of Christ. 

Are we living as children or as sons and daughters? Are we living as servants or as friends of Jesus?

We’ll continue with John 15:15 in our next reflection in the series.