Tuesday, March 31, 2020
There is No Distinction (Quotes from Fleming Rutledge)
Romans chapter 5:12 reads, Sin came into the world through one man (Adam) and Death through Sin, and so Death spread to all men because all men sinned.
Notice the connection between Death and Sin. Paul declares that "the wages of Sin is Death" (6:23). Death, the ultimate separation from God and from all whom we love, is the punishment that has come upon the human race because of the original sin, the disobedience of Adam. Do not make the mistake of thinking that individual persons are stricken for individual sins in sudden catastrophic ways, as though a child who was hit by a truck were being punished for stealing a pack of gum. That would be mixing up sins with Sin again. God's righteous sentence of death lies upon us all, Jew and Greek alike, religious and irreligious, moral and immoral, godly and ungodly -- "there is no distinction ...... all have sinned, all full short of the glory of God..... There is no one righteous, no, not one".
"All human beings are under the Power of Sin" (3:9).
God hates sin; "the Wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men" (1:18).
Now perhaps you do not feel that you are a sinner. If you do not, then you can join the great majority of 20th century people. Dr Karl Menninger, the famous psychiatrist, published a book 5 years ago called Whatever Became of Sin? One of his chapters is entitled "the disappearance of sin: an eyewitness account." Today (he says) we have crime, we have neurosis, we have symptoms, we have errors in judgement and self-destructive behaviour and antisocial tendencies but we do not have sin. His book, written from his point of view as a practical psychiatrist, is an impassioned plea for the return of the word "sin" to the vocabulary of doctors and clergyman alike.
It is very important to notice what Dr Menninger has in mind when he speaks of sin. A theologian he is not, he comes very close to the mark when he says that "Sin traditionally implies guilt, answerability, and..... responsibility." "My proposal," he says, "is for the revival or reassertion of personal responsibility in all human acts...... ".
That is what St Paul says to:
The whole world is accountable to God. (3:19)
Do you suppose, O man, that you will escape the judgement of God? (2:2)
You can see for yourself that Paul is right; we are in a terrible mess. We are in bondage to the Power of Sin. Noticed Paul's conception of this Power (3:9). We're not talking about a combination of little individual sins added up together to make one big sin. We are talking about an actual Power, an alien and hostile force that deals death to the human race and acts in implacable enmity to God and his purposes.
Sin works death in me...... I am the purchased slave of sin...... I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate....... it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me...... I can will what is right, but I cannot do it...... the evil I do not want is what I do...... I am captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (7:13-24)
Let us be quite clear about what Sin is. Let us not trivialise it or domesticate it. Sin is not a matter of a few sins here and a few sins there. What is sin? Sin is the basic condition of man, the condition of rebellion against God, in his place. Sin is "mankind's essential illness," it is a condition we are all heir to, it is a demonic Power that enslaves us and binds us and prevents us from being either free or good. We are responsible before God for Sin, and yet we are unable to liberate ourselves from its grip. We are in a desperate situation, deserving God's Wrath and marked out for his judgement, each of us individually and all of us collectively.
Let us therefore say together the words of the general confession:
Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou those who confess their faults. Restore those who are penitent, according to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord. And Grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous and sober life, to the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.
Notice the connection between Death and Sin. Paul declares that "the wages of Sin is Death" (6:23). Death, the ultimate separation from God and from all whom we love, is the punishment that has come upon the human race because of the original sin, the disobedience of Adam. Do not make the mistake of thinking that individual persons are stricken for individual sins in sudden catastrophic ways, as though a child who was hit by a truck were being punished for stealing a pack of gum. That would be mixing up sins with Sin again. God's righteous sentence of death lies upon us all, Jew and Greek alike, religious and irreligious, moral and immoral, godly and ungodly -- "there is no distinction ...... all have sinned, all full short of the glory of God..... There is no one righteous, no, not one".
"All human beings are under the Power of Sin" (3:9).
God hates sin; "the Wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men" (1:18).
Now perhaps you do not feel that you are a sinner. If you do not, then you can join the great majority of 20th century people. Dr Karl Menninger, the famous psychiatrist, published a book 5 years ago called Whatever Became of Sin? One of his chapters is entitled "the disappearance of sin: an eyewitness account." Today (he says) we have crime, we have neurosis, we have symptoms, we have errors in judgement and self-destructive behaviour and antisocial tendencies but we do not have sin. His book, written from his point of view as a practical psychiatrist, is an impassioned plea for the return of the word "sin" to the vocabulary of doctors and clergyman alike.
It is very important to notice what Dr Menninger has in mind when he speaks of sin. A theologian he is not, he comes very close to the mark when he says that "Sin traditionally implies guilt, answerability, and..... responsibility." "My proposal," he says, "is for the revival or reassertion of personal responsibility in all human acts...... ".
That is what St Paul says to:
The whole world is accountable to God. (3:19)
Do you suppose, O man, that you will escape the judgement of God? (2:2)
You can see for yourself that Paul is right; we are in a terrible mess. We are in bondage to the Power of Sin. Noticed Paul's conception of this Power (3:9). We're not talking about a combination of little individual sins added up together to make one big sin. We are talking about an actual Power, an alien and hostile force that deals death to the human race and acts in implacable enmity to God and his purposes.
Sin works death in me...... I am the purchased slave of sin...... I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate....... it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me...... I can will what is right, but I cannot do it...... the evil I do not want is what I do...... I am captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (7:13-24)
Let us be quite clear about what Sin is. Let us not trivialise it or domesticate it. Sin is not a matter of a few sins here and a few sins there. What is sin? Sin is the basic condition of man, the condition of rebellion against God, in his place. Sin is "mankind's essential illness," it is a condition we are all heir to, it is a demonic Power that enslaves us and binds us and prevents us from being either free or good. We are responsible before God for Sin, and yet we are unable to liberate ourselves from its grip. We are in a desperate situation, deserving God's Wrath and marked out for his judgement, each of us individually and all of us collectively.
Let us therefore say together the words of the general confession:
Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou those who confess their faults. Restore those who are penitent, according to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord. And Grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous and sober life, to the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.
Monday, March 30, 2020
End of Fear
Hello all Bloggers. Here is a prayer that we can prayer night and day as a confession of praise to our Heavenly Father who soooooooooooo loves us.
Love Roger
PS. If you want the full sermon go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQszUHyRRNg
PS. If you want the full sermon go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQszUHyRRNg
Saturday, March 28, 2020
Friday, March 27, 2020
The Lord spoke to Abraham (please excuse typo's)
We've been talking about "and God said.....". Well, what did he say? Did he say he was going to send another flood to kill all the ungodly people? Noooooo we already heard that one. This is a new chapter. God told Abraham something that sounds very simple but isn't. He said, "leave home and go to a place that I, God will show you." Now I'm sure most of you have heard it explained that it was almost inconceivably more difficult for a man of ancient times to leave his roots then it would be for a young man today, when all young people are expected to leave home. For a man of Abraham's time it was nothing short of crazy to set out from home for no economic reason, just because God said so.
But there was a promise attached to the command of God:
I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great..... And by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves." (Verses 2-3)
This isn't primarily a promise to Abraham at all. It's a universal promise, a promise reaching to the ends of the earth and to the end of time as we know it. The offspring of this one man Abraham will be blessed by God, and through those offspring all other families who will ever live will be blessed by God. This is the promise that Abraham lived on for the rest of his life. But isn't this rather odd, to say the least, that an elderly man and an elderly, infertile wife should be promised gazillion's of descendant? Have we really thought about this? Why did God choose Abraham for this unique role? Why not someone younger? Someone who already had a child or two? And by the way, remember that after this first call from God, Abraham and Sarah continued to be childless for decades. There was absolutely nothing concrete to show for their long, long waiting.
The reason for this is that God is demonstrating the power of his promise. This is not a story about human potential. This is a story about what God did in the life of a man and woman who had no human potential ---- that's the whole point. This is a story about a God who makes a way out of no way. That is the way the story of redemption begins: with the God who promises to do what is humanly impossible. Only God can do what Paul the apostle said: the God of Abraham "raises the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist" (Romans 4:17). God promises that he will make Abraham's name great. It is the power of God and no other power that makes this no-name couple famous over the millennia. They would have been lost in the dust of Mesopotamia for all these thousands of years if God in his majestic purpose had not caused them to be revered today as Father Abraham and Mother Sarah.
Now listen to the rest of Paul's words concerning Abraham:
He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead because he was about 100 years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb..... He grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised,,,,, (Romans 4:19-21)
What God had promised. What is the power of a promise? President Obama has discovered that promises are easy to make but hard to keep. That is the reality that all politicians have to face when the campaigns are over. Have you had the experience of wanting to promise something and then being unable to do it because you didn't have the ability to follow through? Imagine being able to promise your friend with cancer that she will be healed. Imagine being able to promise a hard-working jobless man that you will definitely be able to find him a good position so he can support his family. Imagine being able to tell a child with a drug-ridden mother and an absent father in a poverty-stricken neighbourhood that he will have a brilliant future. Imagine being able to promise a person with early Alzheimer's that the disease will get better instead of worse. We want to make promises to people, and sometimes you want to make them so much that we do make them, and then we fail because we can't follow through.
This is the reason that it matters so much that God actually speaks. Preposterous as it may be, humanly speaking. But here are the words that the Church lives by: "God is able to do what he has promised." In spite of all the deconstructionists and the sceptics and the scoffers there is something about the Word of God in the Bible that eludes them all. There is a mysterious life in the Scriptures that renews God's people generation after generation.
How can this be?
It's because God is real, and he is our God, and he speaks the Word of life, and his Spirit cannot be quenched, and he - is able to keep his promises of blessing and redemption and abundance and righteousness and fullness of joy and eternal life in his presence.
Amen.
But there was a promise attached to the command of God:
I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great..... And by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves." (Verses 2-3)
This isn't primarily a promise to Abraham at all. It's a universal promise, a promise reaching to the ends of the earth and to the end of time as we know it. The offspring of this one man Abraham will be blessed by God, and through those offspring all other families who will ever live will be blessed by God. This is the promise that Abraham lived on for the rest of his life. But isn't this rather odd, to say the least, that an elderly man and an elderly, infertile wife should be promised gazillion's of descendant? Have we really thought about this? Why did God choose Abraham for this unique role? Why not someone younger? Someone who already had a child or two? And by the way, remember that after this first call from God, Abraham and Sarah continued to be childless for decades. There was absolutely nothing concrete to show for their long, long waiting.
The reason for this is that God is demonstrating the power of his promise. This is not a story about human potential. This is a story about what God did in the life of a man and woman who had no human potential ---- that's the whole point. This is a story about a God who makes a way out of no way. That is the way the story of redemption begins: with the God who promises to do what is humanly impossible. Only God can do what Paul the apostle said: the God of Abraham "raises the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist" (Romans 4:17). God promises that he will make Abraham's name great. It is the power of God and no other power that makes this no-name couple famous over the millennia. They would have been lost in the dust of Mesopotamia for all these thousands of years if God in his majestic purpose had not caused them to be revered today as Father Abraham and Mother Sarah.
Now listen to the rest of Paul's words concerning Abraham:
He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead because he was about 100 years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb..... He grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised,,,,, (Romans 4:19-21)
What God had promised. What is the power of a promise? President Obama has discovered that promises are easy to make but hard to keep. That is the reality that all politicians have to face when the campaigns are over. Have you had the experience of wanting to promise something and then being unable to do it because you didn't have the ability to follow through? Imagine being able to promise your friend with cancer that she will be healed. Imagine being able to promise a hard-working jobless man that you will definitely be able to find him a good position so he can support his family. Imagine being able to tell a child with a drug-ridden mother and an absent father in a poverty-stricken neighbourhood that he will have a brilliant future. Imagine being able to promise a person with early Alzheimer's that the disease will get better instead of worse. We want to make promises to people, and sometimes you want to make them so much that we do make them, and then we fail because we can't follow through.
This is the reason that it matters so much that God actually speaks. Preposterous as it may be, humanly speaking. But here are the words that the Church lives by: "God is able to do what he has promised." In spite of all the deconstructionists and the sceptics and the scoffers there is something about the Word of God in the Bible that eludes them all. There is a mysterious life in the Scriptures that renews God's people generation after generation.
How can this be?
It's because God is real, and he is our God, and he speaks the Word of life, and his Spirit cannot be quenched, and he - is able to keep his promises of blessing and redemption and abundance and righteousness and fullness of joy and eternal life in his presence.
Amen.
Thursday, March 26, 2020
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Easter Reflection - 04 (please excuse any typo's)
God made Jesus to be sin.
It the very end of this service we will be reading Psalm together. It begins with these words, "my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Those of you who stay to the end of these three hours will see that this Psalm written hundreds of years before Christ contains a startling number of details about the crucifixion of Jesus. Reading it on Good Friday brings us close to the experience of the early church immediately after the resurrection. Imagine yourself as one of the disciples trying to make sense of the stupendous thing that has happened to you. Wouldn't you be tempted to set the crucifixion aside as a nightmarish episode that had now been cancelled out by the resurrection? Wouldn't you want to set aside the terrible thing that had happened and concentrate on the happy ending? Human nature being what it is, we would have expected the biblical writers to say as little as possible about the crucifixion, passing right over it to the glory of Easter. Instead they made the passion narrative the centrepiece of all four gospels.
One of the first things that happened to the disciples after the resurrection was the discovery that the crucifixion was in the Old Testament. We in the church today need to recover the intimacy with the Psalms that was common in former times. Even today we have psalms in all our services because we are following ancient Jewish and Christian practice. Jesus and his friends would have prayed from the Psalms every day, several times a day. It would have been a deeply ingrained habit with them. Imagine the disciples returning to the Psalms after the resurrection and discovering that the crucifixion is right there in them. Wouldn't that blow your mind? As the early Christians prayed the Psalms in the light of the resurrection, they saw that the exposed and tortured death of Jesus was part of God's plan from the beginning. Everything that happened that day on Calvary, it seemed, was foreshadowed in the Psalms. The crucifixion had not been a horrible mistake after all. Their master hadn't been humiliated, degraded and treated like "the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things " for nothing. His suffering had a meaning, a meaning held in the mind of God as part of his purpose for salvation. It was all a fulfilment of what the prophets had said. Imagine what a thrilling discovery it must have been as they pored over the familiar words of Scripture was completely new eyes!
Psalm 22 was one of the most amazing of all the texts. Imagine yourself as one of the disciples trying to get a grip on the stupendous thing that has happened to you. How are you going to explain the fact that the Lord Jesus, now raised from the dead and ruling over your transformed life, had been a derelict on across along with the criminal scum of the land? How, in particular, are you going to live with the cry of dereliction? Did Jesus really think that God had abandoned him? If so, how could he have been the divine son of God?
The Psalms were Jesus' prayer book. Even in an extremity of pain and suffering greater than anything you or I will ever know, the words of the Psalms were on his lips. Mark's Greek indicates that he cried out on the cross with a desperate kind of scream. Still, his words were addressed to God, as though even in this further wrist reach of despair Jesus continued to place his trust in God. There is a Psalm, number 88, which I often recommend to people who are so angry at God that they cannot pray. It is one long outburst of anger and hopelessness. There is not a word of comfort or encouragement in the whole of Psalm 88. But there is one remarkable thing about it. It is addressed to God. It begins, "Oh Lord, my God, I call for help by day; I cry out in the night before thee" we all need to know of this Psalm. It teaches us that we can still pray even when we can't pray. No matter how dark and terrible your thoughts may be, you can still offer them to God. In a very real sense, God is there ahead of us. We know he is, because of what the Bible tells us about Jesus's death.
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? I have pondered these words for many years, and I have read many interpretations of them. I have often been disappointed in these interpretations. It often seems to me that they are trying to avoid what Matthew and Mark do not avoid, trying to soften what they do not soften. There are other places in the new Testament where we can check our reactions. The Epistle to the Hebrews and the letters of the apostle Paul are similar to Matthew and Mark in their insistence that Jesus drank the dregs of abandonment and despair on the cross.
In the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians, there is a sentence of great importance. "For our sake God made him (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (second Corinthians 5:21). This single verse has always been recognised as having a special significance in the interpretation of the cross. Here, we find a key to the Cry of Dereliction. For our sake God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin. Even grammatically; it is a strange formulation. There are depths upon depths here.
In order to understand the cross of Christ we need to consider the gravity of sin. In the time of the Old Testament, a guilt offering had to be weighed so that a value could be given to it. This is described in the book of Leviticus (5:15-16). We need to weigh the cross, the price that Jesus paid. The higher the price, the greater the sin. If Jesus suffered abandonment by God on the Cross, then that is an indication to us of the enormity of sin. Paul was making this connection when he wrote to the Corinthians. Looking at the cross of Jesus Christ, we see the degradation and Godforsakenness of it, we see how "he was despised and rejected by men," and we see the gravity, the weight, of sin. The price paid by the Lord is commensurate with the depth of human wickedness. I don't know if I can do justice to this or not. I feel very inadequate to the task. If Jesus was despised and rejected on the Cross it is because he took upon himself the burden of all that was despised and rejected by God. He took it for our sake. He took it so that it would be removed from us. And when he took at, he experienced something that perhaps even in the garden of Gethsemane he had not foreseen. When Jesus rose from his knees in the garden, he had overcome his fear; he had engaged in the second stage of his lifelong battle with the evil power and he had accepted the well of the Father. Surely, however, he did not fully even then know what it would be like, for he knew no sin. Jesus was not like you and me. He lived in unbroken fellowship with the Father every moment of his life. Never once had he been distracted by the selfishness that afflicts you and me. He had been the Man for God and the Man for Others all of his life. Now for the first time his communion with his Father in heaven is broken, not just broken in the sense of God being absent but all --- infinitely more dreadful than anything you or I will ever know --- it was broken as he took into himself the full weight of God's condemnation and judgement on the unholy triumvirate of Sin, Death, and the Devil.
There is a portion of another Psalm that will help us here:
There is no soundness in my flesh because of thy indignation;
there is no health in my bones because of my sin.
For my iniquities have gone over my head;
they weigh like a burden to heavy for me.
(Psalm 38:3-4)
Now perhaps we can see. The voice of the speaker in the Psalm as it was originally written and sung was the voice of a human being. It was my voice, your voice, saying as in the old general confession, "the burden of them (our sins) is intolerable." "There is no health in us," we used to say, echoing the Psalm. "There is no health in my bones because of my sin." This person who was speaking as the person whom God in Christ looks upon. He looked upon us, not from afar, but from within our midst. He did not remain above our struggle, but came down into it. He looked upon us with our sins overwhelming us, crushing us, drowning us; and he entered into our condition until he began, on the Cross, to speak along with us, indeed to speak instead of us; "my iniquities have gone over my head." Our Lord Jesus Christ loved us with such an unrivalled love that he determined to step into our place and take our unbearable burden upon himself as though it had been his own. He bowed his head and became subject to the dark powers and for that one soul-destroying, first-stopping, light-quenching moment it overwhelmed him to. "My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me?" God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
- Fleming Rutledge
It the very end of this service we will be reading Psalm together. It begins with these words, "my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Those of you who stay to the end of these three hours will see that this Psalm written hundreds of years before Christ contains a startling number of details about the crucifixion of Jesus. Reading it on Good Friday brings us close to the experience of the early church immediately after the resurrection. Imagine yourself as one of the disciples trying to make sense of the stupendous thing that has happened to you. Wouldn't you be tempted to set the crucifixion aside as a nightmarish episode that had now been cancelled out by the resurrection? Wouldn't you want to set aside the terrible thing that had happened and concentrate on the happy ending? Human nature being what it is, we would have expected the biblical writers to say as little as possible about the crucifixion, passing right over it to the glory of Easter. Instead they made the passion narrative the centrepiece of all four gospels.
One of the first things that happened to the disciples after the resurrection was the discovery that the crucifixion was in the Old Testament. We in the church today need to recover the intimacy with the Psalms that was common in former times. Even today we have psalms in all our services because we are following ancient Jewish and Christian practice. Jesus and his friends would have prayed from the Psalms every day, several times a day. It would have been a deeply ingrained habit with them. Imagine the disciples returning to the Psalms after the resurrection and discovering that the crucifixion is right there in them. Wouldn't that blow your mind? As the early Christians prayed the Psalms in the light of the resurrection, they saw that the exposed and tortured death of Jesus was part of God's plan from the beginning. Everything that happened that day on Calvary, it seemed, was foreshadowed in the Psalms. The crucifixion had not been a horrible mistake after all. Their master hadn't been humiliated, degraded and treated like "the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things " for nothing. His suffering had a meaning, a meaning held in the mind of God as part of his purpose for salvation. It was all a fulfilment of what the prophets had said. Imagine what a thrilling discovery it must have been as they pored over the familiar words of Scripture was completely new eyes!
Psalm 22 was one of the most amazing of all the texts. Imagine yourself as one of the disciples trying to get a grip on the stupendous thing that has happened to you. How are you going to explain the fact that the Lord Jesus, now raised from the dead and ruling over your transformed life, had been a derelict on across along with the criminal scum of the land? How, in particular, are you going to live with the cry of dereliction? Did Jesus really think that God had abandoned him? If so, how could he have been the divine son of God?
The Psalms were Jesus' prayer book. Even in an extremity of pain and suffering greater than anything you or I will ever know, the words of the Psalms were on his lips. Mark's Greek indicates that he cried out on the cross with a desperate kind of scream. Still, his words were addressed to God, as though even in this further wrist reach of despair Jesus continued to place his trust in God. There is a Psalm, number 88, which I often recommend to people who are so angry at God that they cannot pray. It is one long outburst of anger and hopelessness. There is not a word of comfort or encouragement in the whole of Psalm 88. But there is one remarkable thing about it. It is addressed to God. It begins, "Oh Lord, my God, I call for help by day; I cry out in the night before thee" we all need to know of this Psalm. It teaches us that we can still pray even when we can't pray. No matter how dark and terrible your thoughts may be, you can still offer them to God. In a very real sense, God is there ahead of us. We know he is, because of what the Bible tells us about Jesus's death.
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? I have pondered these words for many years, and I have read many interpretations of them. I have often been disappointed in these interpretations. It often seems to me that they are trying to avoid what Matthew and Mark do not avoid, trying to soften what they do not soften. There are other places in the new Testament where we can check our reactions. The Epistle to the Hebrews and the letters of the apostle Paul are similar to Matthew and Mark in their insistence that Jesus drank the dregs of abandonment and despair on the cross.
In the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians, there is a sentence of great importance. "For our sake God made him (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (second Corinthians 5:21). This single verse has always been recognised as having a special significance in the interpretation of the cross. Here, we find a key to the Cry of Dereliction. For our sake God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin. Even grammatically; it is a strange formulation. There are depths upon depths here.
In order to understand the cross of Christ we need to consider the gravity of sin. In the time of the Old Testament, a guilt offering had to be weighed so that a value could be given to it. This is described in the book of Leviticus (5:15-16). We need to weigh the cross, the price that Jesus paid. The higher the price, the greater the sin. If Jesus suffered abandonment by God on the Cross, then that is an indication to us of the enormity of sin. Paul was making this connection when he wrote to the Corinthians. Looking at the cross of Jesus Christ, we see the degradation and Godforsakenness of it, we see how "he was despised and rejected by men," and we see the gravity, the weight, of sin. The price paid by the Lord is commensurate with the depth of human wickedness. I don't know if I can do justice to this or not. I feel very inadequate to the task. If Jesus was despised and rejected on the Cross it is because he took upon himself the burden of all that was despised and rejected by God. He took it for our sake. He took it so that it would be removed from us. And when he took at, he experienced something that perhaps even in the garden of Gethsemane he had not foreseen. When Jesus rose from his knees in the garden, he had overcome his fear; he had engaged in the second stage of his lifelong battle with the evil power and he had accepted the well of the Father. Surely, however, he did not fully even then know what it would be like, for he knew no sin. Jesus was not like you and me. He lived in unbroken fellowship with the Father every moment of his life. Never once had he been distracted by the selfishness that afflicts you and me. He had been the Man for God and the Man for Others all of his life. Now for the first time his communion with his Father in heaven is broken, not just broken in the sense of God being absent but all --- infinitely more dreadful than anything you or I will ever know --- it was broken as he took into himself the full weight of God's condemnation and judgement on the unholy triumvirate of Sin, Death, and the Devil.
There is a portion of another Psalm that will help us here:
There is no soundness in my flesh because of thy indignation;
there is no health in my bones because of my sin.
For my iniquities have gone over my head;
they weigh like a burden to heavy for me.
(Psalm 38:3-4)
Now perhaps we can see. The voice of the speaker in the Psalm as it was originally written and sung was the voice of a human being. It was my voice, your voice, saying as in the old general confession, "the burden of them (our sins) is intolerable." "There is no health in us," we used to say, echoing the Psalm. "There is no health in my bones because of my sin." This person who was speaking as the person whom God in Christ looks upon. He looked upon us, not from afar, but from within our midst. He did not remain above our struggle, but came down into it. He looked upon us with our sins overwhelming us, crushing us, drowning us; and he entered into our condition until he began, on the Cross, to speak along with us, indeed to speak instead of us; "my iniquities have gone over my head." Our Lord Jesus Christ loved us with such an unrivalled love that he determined to step into our place and take our unbearable burden upon himself as though it had been his own. He bowed his head and became subject to the dark powers and for that one soul-destroying, first-stopping, light-quenching moment it overwhelmed him to. "My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me?" God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
- Fleming Rutledge
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Easter Reflection - 03 (please excuse any typo's)
The Heart that Broke
I direct your attention now to one final verse of Scripture: "My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch." (Mark 14:34). These are the words of Jesus to his disciples as he goes into the garden of Gethsemane on the last night of his life. These words are very strong in the original Greek and they have been variously translated:
My soul is very soulful, even unto death.
My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.
My heart is nearly breaking.
And we might add, from the Psalms, "thy rebuke hath broken his heart" (69:20)
We need to let our imaginations work on these verses so as to approach more closely to the meaning of the sorrow of Jesus. Think of how you would feel if the person you love most in all the world were to say, "my heart is nearly breaking." I think it would make our hearts break too. But the heartbreak of Jesus is almost indescribable, for it is unique.
Was Jesus' heart breaking because he knew he was going to die? We can answer that with an unqualified NO. It has often been noted that even the most ordinary human beings frequently go to their deaths quite bravely and stoically. Why would the Son of God be more heartbroken about dying than Thomas More or Marie Antoinette or Dietrich Bonhoeffer or even criminals who go calmly to their lethal injections? The evangelists, in their accounts of Gethsemane, put a lot of emphasis on the agony of Jesus in the garden. Why?
The answer is a simple one, but simple as it is, it requires faith to understand it - faith and the imagination of faith. Every single person in this church today has been given at least a small glimmering of faith, or you would not be here. However tiny your seed of faith may be, it is enough. Your faith is a mustard seed that Jesus promised would grow into a great tree. If you are new to all this, let your seed of faith began to sprout and grow today.
Jesus' heart was breaking in the garden not because he was going to die, but because he knew that on the cross he would assume the burden of the sin of the world. Jesus had never experienced personally the weight of sin before. He had seen it, grieved over it, and forgiven it - but he had never succumbed to it, had never himself been personally overwhelmed by it, because he alone among all the human beings who ever lived was not a sinner. Now he was about to take upon himself the entire accumulated mass of the world's sin, and what that must've been like we can only imagine, for no other human being has ever been through anything like it.
It is bad enough to watch someone we love suffer. It is un-endurable to think of someone we love suffering because of what we have done. There are not words enough in the world to say what was going on when Jesus suffered on account of the sin of everybody that ever lived. The evangelists didn't even try. Matthew and Mark simply report that Jesus cried out, "my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" And that Cry of Dereliction from the cross, as it is called, has run down the ages as Jesus' ow all n expression of what was happening as he voluntarily bowed his head and became accursed for our sake, and in our place. "For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2nd Corinthians 5:21).
It is important that we understand what this "rebuke" is. The "rebuke" is not the Father rebuking the Son. Rather, it is the rebuke of Sin, the sentence pronounced on Death and the condemnation of the works of the Devil, that Jesus undergoes today. The Bible makes it very clear that this Father and this Son are accomplishing this work together, that their two wills are one will. It is the will of them both that Jesus should absorb into himself the rightful wrath of God against sin. God the Father and Son together love us so much that it was their one will that we not be destroyed by it.
A few weeks ago I heard a sermon by a priest who had just returned from the 50th reunion of the veterans of the battle of Iwo Jima. He used as a Lenten illustration the example of soldiers who threw themselves on hand grenades, absorbing the explosion in their own bodies, offering themselves to certain death in order to save others. It was a very moving sermon and the illustration works, up to a point, but it is not sufficient. Jesus has done still more. The sort of death he suffered was not heroic or glorious, but shameful and degrading. The death Jesus died was not so much to save his comrades, for they all forsook him; it was to save not only his friends but also and most especially his enemies, and indeed in the end his friends became his enemies - such is the depth of our disgrace. And finally, Jesus was broken, not only by Death, but also by the consequences of Sin, as he took our place on the cross on the first Good Friday.
We do not understand value until we see what the price is. Only by looking at the price - the cross of Christ - do we learn the weight of God's judgement against Sin and the value that we have for him. It just isn't enough to say that Jesus died for us. We need to understand the many-times-repeated statements in the new Testament that he died for our sin. That is his heartbreak. That is what makes his death different from other deaths, his agony different from other agonies, his sorrow . . . . Well, let Scripture speak; "behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow" (Lamentations 1:12). The answer is, no, there isn't any other sorrow like unto are all very good adult months will will will all his sorrow. We did not know how great was the burden of Sin until we saw what Jesus had to endure in order to save us from it. Jesus bowed his head under the condemnation that went along with the captivity of Sin. That is what you and I are worth to him. Jesus did that for you. That is why you cannot go out from here today and be the same ever again.
The service last night dramatised it for us. The altar was stripped, the candles were put out, the lights were slowly extinguished, and there was a horrific crash upon the organ that made it seem as if the world was coming to an end. The underlying intention of this dramatic action (symbolises) the apparent victory of the powers of darkness and the seeming failure of the divine plan of redemption at the (time of) the crucifixion.
Put yourself in the place of the disciples. I encourage you, today, to try to imagine their situation, if we can do so, we will understand and celebrate Easter as never before. It is 3 o'clock on Good Friday. Capture this moment. This is the space between Good Friday and Easter. Jesus is dead. All is blackness and despair. Can you feel the magnitude of what he has done? Christ has descended into hell for us. Satan has had his way. There is no human hope left. The long-awaited Messiah has died the despised death of the lowest criminal class. Nothing we can do will bring him back. All the spring flowers and sunshine and Easter eggs and greeting cards and positive thinking in the world will not bring him back. We are left in the wreckage, in the darkness, in the silence. There is nothing -- nothing -- that can rebuild this wreckage, nothing that can lighten this darkness, nothing that can break this silence -- Except an Act of God.
- Fleming Rutledge
I direct your attention now to one final verse of Scripture: "My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch." (Mark 14:34). These are the words of Jesus to his disciples as he goes into the garden of Gethsemane on the last night of his life. These words are very strong in the original Greek and they have been variously translated:
My soul is very soulful, even unto death.
My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.
My heart is nearly breaking.
And we might add, from the Psalms, "thy rebuke hath broken his heart" (69:20)
We need to let our imaginations work on these verses so as to approach more closely to the meaning of the sorrow of Jesus. Think of how you would feel if the person you love most in all the world were to say, "my heart is nearly breaking." I think it would make our hearts break too. But the heartbreak of Jesus is almost indescribable, for it is unique.
Was Jesus' heart breaking because he knew he was going to die? We can answer that with an unqualified NO. It has often been noted that even the most ordinary human beings frequently go to their deaths quite bravely and stoically. Why would the Son of God be more heartbroken about dying than Thomas More or Marie Antoinette or Dietrich Bonhoeffer or even criminals who go calmly to their lethal injections? The evangelists, in their accounts of Gethsemane, put a lot of emphasis on the agony of Jesus in the garden. Why?
The answer is a simple one, but simple as it is, it requires faith to understand it - faith and the imagination of faith. Every single person in this church today has been given at least a small glimmering of faith, or you would not be here. However tiny your seed of faith may be, it is enough. Your faith is a mustard seed that Jesus promised would grow into a great tree. If you are new to all this, let your seed of faith began to sprout and grow today.
Jesus' heart was breaking in the garden not because he was going to die, but because he knew that on the cross he would assume the burden of the sin of the world. Jesus had never experienced personally the weight of sin before. He had seen it, grieved over it, and forgiven it - but he had never succumbed to it, had never himself been personally overwhelmed by it, because he alone among all the human beings who ever lived was not a sinner. Now he was about to take upon himself the entire accumulated mass of the world's sin, and what that must've been like we can only imagine, for no other human being has ever been through anything like it.
It is bad enough to watch someone we love suffer. It is un-endurable to think of someone we love suffering because of what we have done. There are not words enough in the world to say what was going on when Jesus suffered on account of the sin of everybody that ever lived. The evangelists didn't even try. Matthew and Mark simply report that Jesus cried out, "my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" And that Cry of Dereliction from the cross, as it is called, has run down the ages as Jesus' ow all n expression of what was happening as he voluntarily bowed his head and became accursed for our sake, and in our place. "For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2nd Corinthians 5:21).
It is important that we understand what this "rebuke" is. The "rebuke" is not the Father rebuking the Son. Rather, it is the rebuke of Sin, the sentence pronounced on Death and the condemnation of the works of the Devil, that Jesus undergoes today. The Bible makes it very clear that this Father and this Son are accomplishing this work together, that their two wills are one will. It is the will of them both that Jesus should absorb into himself the rightful wrath of God against sin. God the Father and Son together love us so much that it was their one will that we not be destroyed by it.
A few weeks ago I heard a sermon by a priest who had just returned from the 50th reunion of the veterans of the battle of Iwo Jima. He used as a Lenten illustration the example of soldiers who threw themselves on hand grenades, absorbing the explosion in their own bodies, offering themselves to certain death in order to save others. It was a very moving sermon and the illustration works, up to a point, but it is not sufficient. Jesus has done still more. The sort of death he suffered was not heroic or glorious, but shameful and degrading. The death Jesus died was not so much to save his comrades, for they all forsook him; it was to save not only his friends but also and most especially his enemies, and indeed in the end his friends became his enemies - such is the depth of our disgrace. And finally, Jesus was broken, not only by Death, but also by the consequences of Sin, as he took our place on the cross on the first Good Friday.
We do not understand value until we see what the price is. Only by looking at the price - the cross of Christ - do we learn the weight of God's judgement against Sin and the value that we have for him. It just isn't enough to say that Jesus died for us. We need to understand the many-times-repeated statements in the new Testament that he died for our sin. That is his heartbreak. That is what makes his death different from other deaths, his agony different from other agonies, his sorrow . . . . Well, let Scripture speak; "behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow" (Lamentations 1:12). The answer is, no, there isn't any other sorrow like unto are all very good adult months will will will all his sorrow. We did not know how great was the burden of Sin until we saw what Jesus had to endure in order to save us from it. Jesus bowed his head under the condemnation that went along with the captivity of Sin. That is what you and I are worth to him. Jesus did that for you. That is why you cannot go out from here today and be the same ever again.
The service last night dramatised it for us. The altar was stripped, the candles were put out, the lights were slowly extinguished, and there was a horrific crash upon the organ that made it seem as if the world was coming to an end. The underlying intention of this dramatic action (symbolises) the apparent victory of the powers of darkness and the seeming failure of the divine plan of redemption at the (time of) the crucifixion.
Put yourself in the place of the disciples. I encourage you, today, to try to imagine their situation, if we can do so, we will understand and celebrate Easter as never before. It is 3 o'clock on Good Friday. Capture this moment. This is the space between Good Friday and Easter. Jesus is dead. All is blackness and despair. Can you feel the magnitude of what he has done? Christ has descended into hell for us. Satan has had his way. There is no human hope left. The long-awaited Messiah has died the despised death of the lowest criminal class. Nothing we can do will bring him back. All the spring flowers and sunshine and Easter eggs and greeting cards and positive thinking in the world will not bring him back. We are left in the wreckage, in the darkness, in the silence. There is nothing -- nothing -- that can rebuild this wreckage, nothing that can lighten this darkness, nothing that can break this silence -- Except an Act of God.
- Fleming Rutledge
Easter Reflection - 02 (Copied from Fleming Rutledge's Book)
I wonder if you would agree with me that we live in a time when it has become popular to be one of two things in America; either generically religious or completely secular. From where I sit orthodox, biblical Christianity is not considered cool. As members of Christian churches drift further and further away from knowledge of the Bible and historical doctrine, it is therefore becoming more and more difficult to help people understand that Christianity is not just one of many religions, that it can't be blended together with yoga and tarot cards and self-help and Angel worship to make a bigger and better religious hybrid.
Why not?
There is one definitive answer to that question and it is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. I believe that all of you here today know that already. I don't think you would be here if you didn't have at least a glimmer of an idea that the crucifixion is an event unique in the history of religion and that it demands our awed and undivided attention. It is my prayer today that the crucified Lord himself would be present during these three hours by his Holy Spirit, in my words and in your hearts, for in his risen glory he is indeed able to make the message of the cross a living and breathing power - power for radically re-orientated living.
Why not?
There is one definitive answer to that question and it is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. I believe that all of you here today know that already. I don't think you would be here if you didn't have at least a glimmer of an idea that the crucifixion is an event unique in the history of religion and that it demands our awed and undivided attention. It is my prayer today that the crucified Lord himself would be present during these three hours by his Holy Spirit, in my words and in your hearts, for in his risen glory he is indeed able to make the message of the cross a living and breathing power - power for radically re-orientated living.
Monday, March 16, 2020
Easter Reflection - 01 (The Accursed Messiah)
Hi All, I typed this out from Fleming Rutledge's book that I'm reading. It will have typo's!!!
This meditation is based on the third chapter of Galatians which was just read to you. It is rarely heard in the church, and rarely preached on - because of its complexity? Or because it is tough to take? At any rate, it is one of the central texts for understanding the crucifixion. Like so many of the passengers in Paul's letters, it is a conception of great originality and penetrates to the heart of what is happening on Good Friday. Let us hear the central portion again:
All who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, "cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and to do them."
Focus for a moment on just one sentence. All those who are seeking justification by works of the law are under a curse. What are works of the law? Basically, works of the law are works that are
commanded by God - godly works, moral works, righteous works, the best works that we can think of - good deeds, as we say. Now listen to Paul's words again: "all those who are seeking
justification by works of the law are under a curse." That is the most radical utterance ever uttered - I'm quite serious - and the Epistle to the Galatians is the most radical writing ever produced. Perhaps you can sense why. If St Paul is truly saying that you rely on God's own commandments is to be under a curse, what becomes of morality? What becomes of godliness? Indeed, what becomes of religion?
Now in the congregation at Galatia there were many who were preaching and teaching the justification was available only through works of the law. What is the meaning of this word justification? It may sound technical and for bidding, but it isn't really. We readily use it today and a question like, how are you going to justify what you just did? That is, how are you going to demonstrate that you are in the right? That's what sets steak, for the Galatian Christians and for us. Think about yourself for a minute. What do you rely on in order to prove to yourself and others that you are a worthy human being? What do you count on to clear yourself from judgement, whether the judgement of your own conscious or the judgement of those parental voices that still lie in the back of our psych even though our parents have been dead for decades, or the judgement of our peers and our families and our growing children, or, for that matter, the final judgement of God? What do you count on to clear yourself from judgement? How do you justify yourself?
Some rely on status and rank achieved in a career. Some rely on the successful raising of children. Some of us justify ourselves by the number of people we control, whether in the workplace or at home. We justify ourselves by our reputation, our good name. Or maybe we rely on our "lifestyle" - we think of ourselves as being in better shape, or more healthy, or slimmer, going to more fashionable places, eating in the best restaurants and talking about it afterwards. Most telling of all, we seek to justify ourselves by the kinds of people that we think we are. You justify yourself, I justify myself by convincing myself that I am a certain kind of person: more moral, more sensitive, more loving, smarter, more thoughtful of others, more patriotic, more community minded, more socially aware, whatever. Or, to take the reverse of that, more marketed, more put upon, more misunderstood, more long-suffering than anybody else. We can sum all of this up by saying that we justify ourselves, subtly or not so subtly, but evaluating ourselves above others.
But what about God? How do we justify ourselves before God? Well, by keeping his commandments, right? But what are they? Here are two of them: "thou shalt love the Lord thy God with although heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." How are we doing on these? Can we justify ourselves before the throne of God by saying, "Well, I keep some of the commandments some of the time"? I once had a woman from our local community helped me with choosing some fabrics. When we were talking about colours and patterns we did all right, but I had a hard time keeping her off the subject of religion. She wanted me to know that she had no use for the church. "What is religion?" she said. It's do unto others, that's what it is. I don't have to go to church for that." I wish I had the nerve to look her in the eye and ask her how she could say with such confidence, because the fact is that, far from "doing under others," she had a reputation in town for being unusually self-centred and bent on having her own way.
St Paul quotes from the book of the law, the Torah itself, to make his point. From Deuteronomy 27:26, "cursed be everyone who does not do everything that is written in the book of the law." That's certainly puts out ostentatious efforts at self-justification into perspective. How can we live, then, under the threat of this judgement by Almighty God? According to Paul, we can't. It really doesn't matter what we seek to justify ourselves by, because it's no use. Using an old expression, I once said to my husband in a jocular way that someone we knew was "living in sin" with a woman. My husband said, "We are all living in sin." That's the point. We are under a curse because we are in bondage to the power of sin and we can't do the right thing all the time even if we want to; as Paul says unforgettably in Romans 7: "the evil I do not want to do, that is what I do."
Now comes the critical verse in our text. "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse on our behalf." "What is a curse?" Asked a young woman in a Bible class I was teaching; "A curse as a swear word. I don't understand how Christ became a swear word." But that isn't what curse means in the biblical sense. Cursing and blessing, in the Bible, means the power of God to accomplish his ultimate purpose, and so, the power of God to bless and the power of God to condemn. If we were living under the rule of the law, we would all be condemned.
Christ became a curse for us. You know that St Paul, before he became a Christian, was zealous and even vehement in his persecution of Christians. Why? The reason Paul was so enraged against Christianity is that he, a highly trained rabbinical Jew, could not tolerate the idea that the Messiah of God, long promised a long expected, had died under the condemnation of God. And why did Paul the Pharisee think such a thing? Here is the key: in Deuteronomy there is a verse that says, "cursed be everyone who was hanged on a tree." A dead body publicly displayed was anathema to good religious people, a godforsaken object. And so the claim of the Christians was that the Messiah had died under the curse of God. That was intolerable for the zealous Paul. He went to the Damascus to root out Christianity where ever he could find it. And you know what happened; he was knocked off his horse, blinded for three days, and utterly transformed by his vision of the risen Lord Jesus Christ.
So Paul had to go back into the Bible and find out: why? Why did the Messiah of God die a God-forsaken, God cursed death? Why did the Messiah die by crucifixion, the most shameful of all
methods of execution? When St Paul read the passage in Deuteronomy with Jesus in mind, he must have seen fireworks. Now he understood: Jesus was taking upon himself the curse that would have been hours because of our inbred nature as rebels against God's righteous commandments.
Now what this means for you and me is that there is no condemnation in heaven or earth that can touch us anymore. "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us." We deserved the condemnation, but he stepped into our place. Therefore, as Paul writes in Romans, "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
A woman close to me lives tormented by her memories of her mother. Her mother wanted to spend her last years under her daughter's roof, but her daughter, my friend, did not feel up to it. She arranged for her mother to have good care, and she visited her very often, but she cannot shake off the sense that she failed her mother. She feels condemned. Once she was telling me about this and she said, using the present tense, "I wonder if my mother for gives me." Then she said, "I guess she does." I was struck by this, "I guess she does." It was so uncertain, so unconvinced. It was clear that my friend could not really believe it, that she continued to labour under the thought of that condemnation. How I pray for my friend that she will come to know the merciful action of Jesus on the cross, where he took our condemnation upon himself so that we should not have to be it. My friends mother's forgiveness is something that will not be known to us until the resurrection; but Jesus forgives us right now. We do not "guess" it, we know it. What is more, he not only forgives us, he justifies us. When a printer lines are a margin, he says he is "justifying" the margin. We cannot see it fully now, but in for giving us God is also justifying us, making us not bent, but straight. That is what is happening on the cross. We cannot do it for ourselves. He alone can do it for us; he alone has done it for us. In the words of the hymn, "Rock of ages"
Should my tears for ever flow,
should my zeal no longer know,
all for sin could not not atone:
thou must save, and thou alone.
This meditation is based on the third chapter of Galatians which was just read to you. It is rarely heard in the church, and rarely preached on - because of its complexity? Or because it is tough to take? At any rate, it is one of the central texts for understanding the crucifixion. Like so many of the passengers in Paul's letters, it is a conception of great originality and penetrates to the heart of what is happening on Good Friday. Let us hear the central portion again:
All who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, "cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and to do them."
Focus for a moment on just one sentence. All those who are seeking justification by works of the law are under a curse. What are works of the law? Basically, works of the law are works that are
commanded by God - godly works, moral works, righteous works, the best works that we can think of - good deeds, as we say. Now listen to Paul's words again: "all those who are seeking
justification by works of the law are under a curse." That is the most radical utterance ever uttered - I'm quite serious - and the Epistle to the Galatians is the most radical writing ever produced. Perhaps you can sense why. If St Paul is truly saying that you rely on God's own commandments is to be under a curse, what becomes of morality? What becomes of godliness? Indeed, what becomes of religion?
Now in the congregation at Galatia there were many who were preaching and teaching the justification was available only through works of the law. What is the meaning of this word justification? It may sound technical and for bidding, but it isn't really. We readily use it today and a question like, how are you going to justify what you just did? That is, how are you going to demonstrate that you are in the right? That's what sets steak, for the Galatian Christians and for us. Think about yourself for a minute. What do you rely on in order to prove to yourself and others that you are a worthy human being? What do you count on to clear yourself from judgement, whether the judgement of your own conscious or the judgement of those parental voices that still lie in the back of our psych even though our parents have been dead for decades, or the judgement of our peers and our families and our growing children, or, for that matter, the final judgement of God? What do you count on to clear yourself from judgement? How do you justify yourself?
Some rely on status and rank achieved in a career. Some rely on the successful raising of children. Some of us justify ourselves by the number of people we control, whether in the workplace or at home. We justify ourselves by our reputation, our good name. Or maybe we rely on our "lifestyle" - we think of ourselves as being in better shape, or more healthy, or slimmer, going to more fashionable places, eating in the best restaurants and talking about it afterwards. Most telling of all, we seek to justify ourselves by the kinds of people that we think we are. You justify yourself, I justify myself by convincing myself that I am a certain kind of person: more moral, more sensitive, more loving, smarter, more thoughtful of others, more patriotic, more community minded, more socially aware, whatever. Or, to take the reverse of that, more marketed, more put upon, more misunderstood, more long-suffering than anybody else. We can sum all of this up by saying that we justify ourselves, subtly or not so subtly, but evaluating ourselves above others.
But what about God? How do we justify ourselves before God? Well, by keeping his commandments, right? But what are they? Here are two of them: "thou shalt love the Lord thy God with although heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." How are we doing on these? Can we justify ourselves before the throne of God by saying, "Well, I keep some of the commandments some of the time"? I once had a woman from our local community helped me with choosing some fabrics. When we were talking about colours and patterns we did all right, but I had a hard time keeping her off the subject of religion. She wanted me to know that she had no use for the church. "What is religion?" she said. It's do unto others, that's what it is. I don't have to go to church for that." I wish I had the nerve to look her in the eye and ask her how she could say with such confidence, because the fact is that, far from "doing under others," she had a reputation in town for being unusually self-centred and bent on having her own way.
St Paul quotes from the book of the law, the Torah itself, to make his point. From Deuteronomy 27:26, "cursed be everyone who does not do everything that is written in the book of the law." That's certainly puts out ostentatious efforts at self-justification into perspective. How can we live, then, under the threat of this judgement by Almighty God? According to Paul, we can't. It really doesn't matter what we seek to justify ourselves by, because it's no use. Using an old expression, I once said to my husband in a jocular way that someone we knew was "living in sin" with a woman. My husband said, "We are all living in sin." That's the point. We are under a curse because we are in bondage to the power of sin and we can't do the right thing all the time even if we want to; as Paul says unforgettably in Romans 7: "the evil I do not want to do, that is what I do."
Now comes the critical verse in our text. "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse on our behalf." "What is a curse?" Asked a young woman in a Bible class I was teaching; "A curse as a swear word. I don't understand how Christ became a swear word." But that isn't what curse means in the biblical sense. Cursing and blessing, in the Bible, means the power of God to accomplish his ultimate purpose, and so, the power of God to bless and the power of God to condemn. If we were living under the rule of the law, we would all be condemned.
Christ became a curse for us. You know that St Paul, before he became a Christian, was zealous and even vehement in his persecution of Christians. Why? The reason Paul was so enraged against Christianity is that he, a highly trained rabbinical Jew, could not tolerate the idea that the Messiah of God, long promised a long expected, had died under the condemnation of God. And why did Paul the Pharisee think such a thing? Here is the key: in Deuteronomy there is a verse that says, "cursed be everyone who was hanged on a tree." A dead body publicly displayed was anathema to good religious people, a godforsaken object. And so the claim of the Christians was that the Messiah had died under the curse of God. That was intolerable for the zealous Paul. He went to the Damascus to root out Christianity where ever he could find it. And you know what happened; he was knocked off his horse, blinded for three days, and utterly transformed by his vision of the risen Lord Jesus Christ.
So Paul had to go back into the Bible and find out: why? Why did the Messiah of God die a God-forsaken, God cursed death? Why did the Messiah die by crucifixion, the most shameful of all
methods of execution? When St Paul read the passage in Deuteronomy with Jesus in mind, he must have seen fireworks. Now he understood: Jesus was taking upon himself the curse that would have been hours because of our inbred nature as rebels against God's righteous commandments.
Now what this means for you and me is that there is no condemnation in heaven or earth that can touch us anymore. "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us." We deserved the condemnation, but he stepped into our place. Therefore, as Paul writes in Romans, "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
A woman close to me lives tormented by her memories of her mother. Her mother wanted to spend her last years under her daughter's roof, but her daughter, my friend, did not feel up to it. She arranged for her mother to have good care, and she visited her very often, but she cannot shake off the sense that she failed her mother. She feels condemned. Once she was telling me about this and she said, using the present tense, "I wonder if my mother for gives me." Then she said, "I guess she does." I was struck by this, "I guess she does." It was so uncertain, so unconvinced. It was clear that my friend could not really believe it, that she continued to labour under the thought of that condemnation. How I pray for my friend that she will come to know the merciful action of Jesus on the cross, where he took our condemnation upon himself so that we should not have to be it. My friends mother's forgiveness is something that will not be known to us until the resurrection; but Jesus forgives us right now. We do not "guess" it, we know it. What is more, he not only forgives us, he justifies us. When a printer lines are a margin, he says he is "justifying" the margin. We cannot see it fully now, but in for giving us God is also justifying us, making us not bent, but straight. That is what is happening on the cross. We cannot do it for ourselves. He alone can do it for us; he alone has done it for us. In the words of the hymn, "Rock of ages"
Should my tears for ever flow,
should my zeal no longer know,
all for sin could not not atone:
thou must save, and thou alone.
Friday, March 13, 2020
Thursday, March 12, 2020
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
Monday, March 9, 2020
Timothy and the Holy Spirit
6 I’m writing to encourage you to fan into a flame and rekindle[a] the fire of the spiritual gift God imparted to you when I laid my hands upon you.
7 For God will never give you the spirit of fear, but the Holy Spirit who gives you mighty power, love, and self-control.
8 So never be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor be embarrassed over my imprisonment, but overcome every evil by the revelation of the power of God!
9 He gave us resurrection life and drew us to himself by his holy calling on our lives. And it wasn’t because of any good we have done, but by his divine pleasure and marvelous grace that confirmed our union with the anointed Jesus, even before time began!
10 This truth is now being unveiled by the revelation of the anointed Jesus, our life-giver, who has dismantled death, obliterating all its effects on our lives, and has manifested his immortal life in us by the gospel.
2nd Timothy 1:6-10 (Passion Translation)
PS. I have reflected on this passage for the last couple of days. Roger
7 For God will never give you the spirit of fear, but the Holy Spirit who gives you mighty power, love, and self-control.
8 So never be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor be embarrassed over my imprisonment, but overcome every evil by the revelation of the power of God!
9 He gave us resurrection life and drew us to himself by his holy calling on our lives. And it wasn’t because of any good we have done, but by his divine pleasure and marvelous grace that confirmed our union with the anointed Jesus, even before time began!
10 This truth is now being unveiled by the revelation of the anointed Jesus, our life-giver, who has dismantled death, obliterating all its effects on our lives, and has manifested his immortal life in us by the gospel.
2nd Timothy 1:6-10 (Passion Translation)
PS. I have reflected on this passage for the last couple of days. Roger
Sunday, March 8, 2020
Christ Our Hope in Life and Death
“What is your only comfort in life and in death?” For centuries, believers have learned the Christian faith beginning with that question. It’s the first article in the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563. Why start there? Because death is our common fate. Unless Jesus returns first, we will all die. To find comfort in life, we must know how we can face death. Hope comes only in trusting the one who died to take the curse of death and who crushed the power of death by his resurrection. “Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Cor 15:20). That is the only statement that can transform how we live each day, how we prepare for our earthly life to end.
The hope of the resurrection spurs us to sing. That’s why a group of songwriters from Getty Music wrote the modern hymn “Christ Our Hope in Life and Death.” Like the Heidelberg Catechism that inspired it, this song is honest about death. There is no need to shrink back from mentioning death in our hymns, because we know the Living One who has conquered death forever. The Christian can sing hallelujah, because Christ assures us of our glorious future. Now and ever, we confess: “I am not my own, but belong—body and soul in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”
Christ Our Hope in Life and Death
What is our hope in life and death?
Christ alone, Christ alone.
What is our only confidence?
That our souls to him belong.
Who holds our days within his hand?
What comes, apart from his command?
And what will keep us to the end?
The love of Christ, in which we stand.
O sing hallelujah!
Our hope springs eternal;
O sing hallelujah!
Now and ever we confess
Christ our hope in life and death.
What truth can calm the troubled soul?
God is good, God is good.
Where is his grace and goodness known?
In our great Redeemer’s blood.
Who holds our faith when fears arise?
Who stands above the stormy trial?
Who sends the waves that bring us nigh
Unto the shore, the rock of Christ?
Unto the grave, what shall we sing?
“Christ, he lives; Christ, he lives!”
And what reward will heaven bring?
Everlasting life with him.
There we will rise to meet the Lord,
Then sin and death will be destroyed,
And we will feast in endless joy,
When Christ is ours forevermore.
Play the Audio (then switch to previous tab to follow the words)
Music by Keith Getty, Matt Boswell, Jordan Kauflin, Matt Merker, and Matt Papa
© 2020 Getty Music Publishing (BMI) / Messenger Hymns (BMI) / Matthew Merker Music (BMI) /
Jordan Kauflin Music (BMI) / Getty Music Hymns and Songs (ASCAP) / Love Your Enemies Publishing (ASCAP)
The hope of the resurrection spurs us to sing. That’s why a group of songwriters from Getty Music wrote the modern hymn “Christ Our Hope in Life and Death.” Like the Heidelberg Catechism that inspired it, this song is honest about death. There is no need to shrink back from mentioning death in our hymns, because we know the Living One who has conquered death forever. The Christian can sing hallelujah, because Christ assures us of our glorious future. Now and ever, we confess: “I am not my own, but belong—body and soul in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”
Christ Our Hope in Life and Death
What is our hope in life and death?
Christ alone, Christ alone.
What is our only confidence?
That our souls to him belong.
Who holds our days within his hand?
What comes, apart from his command?
And what will keep us to the end?
The love of Christ, in which we stand.
O sing hallelujah!
Our hope springs eternal;
O sing hallelujah!
Now and ever we confess
Christ our hope in life and death.
What truth can calm the troubled soul?
God is good, God is good.
Where is his grace and goodness known?
In our great Redeemer’s blood.
Who holds our faith when fears arise?
Who stands above the stormy trial?
Who sends the waves that bring us nigh
Unto the shore, the rock of Christ?
Unto the grave, what shall we sing?
“Christ, he lives; Christ, he lives!”
And what reward will heaven bring?
Everlasting life with him.
There we will rise to meet the Lord,
Then sin and death will be destroyed,
And we will feast in endless joy,
When Christ is ours forevermore.
Play the Audio (then switch to previous tab to follow the words)
Music by Keith Getty, Matt Boswell, Jordan Kauflin, Matt Merker, and Matt Papa
© 2020 Getty Music Publishing (BMI) / Messenger Hymns (BMI) / Matthew Merker Music (BMI) /
Jordan Kauflin Music (BMI) / Getty Music Hymns and Songs (ASCAP) / Love Your Enemies Publishing (ASCAP)
Tuesday, March 3, 2020
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