The Zebedee Files

1.

A few soothing notes
Disturb the oars
Unfolding nets
Boats overturning to
The music of the morning

The early rays soften
Already soft greys
Overlaid with dawn fire
Woodpigeons - such
Unspectacular greeters

Moving three fishermen
Bed to bread to boat
Skins leather-tanned
The hue of hull timbers
Slatted and daubed

Against the Galilean
Storms. One stands,
Eyes closed, breathing in
The air, his habit; his heart
An ear, listening

Waiting for news; of a
Heavenly music beyond
The liturgical score; his
Synagogue stacked with
Dry wood, but no fire

Rumours from the Jordan.
New notes. Whispers of
A conflagration to come;
That’s all it took
To pull two sons away

From the boats, from a
Father who freely
Gave his only sons into
A baptism of fire to ignite
The dry ones of Israel

His sunset-soft grey hair
Now overlain with
Heavenly flames
His heart, an orchestra:
Zebedee, by name

Faith in Christ or Faithfulness of Christ? A new way to resolve this argument.

In recent years there has been fierce debate about how to translate pistis Christou; whether as ‘faith in Christ’ or ‘the faithfulness of Christ’, which, depending on your disposition, may have intrigued, dismayed, or troubled you…or passed you by.

Can this be resolved?

When such disagreements arise, it can be an indication that the underlying theology may be at fault, and alternative renderings are, in fact, a red herring. After all, it seems likely that St Paul’s use of pistis Iesou Christou made perfect sense to him and arose seamlessly from his understanding of the gospel.

When we encounter apparent ambiguity rather than clarity, it is time to inspect the foundations.

NT verses that are often quoted in this debate include Romans 3v22 and Gal 2v16:

‘the righteousness of God through (pistis Iesou Christou) faith in/the faithfulness of Jesus Christ’ Rom 3v22

‘…a man is not justified by works of the law but by (pistis Iesou Christou) faith in/the faithfulness of Jesus Christ’ Gal 2v16

When we encounter apparent ambiguity rather than clarity, it is time to inspect the foundations.

If, as is the case in many churches, our underlying understanding of the gospel is that the death of Christ was a substitutionary sacrifice – He died for me, in my place, took the punishment I deserved – then both translations are plausible. Whilst ‘being justified through the faithfulness of Jesus’ may seem unfamiliar and a categoric error (the subject being the believer's faith rather than Christ’s faithfulness), the Greek allows for either, so ‘faithfulness of’ cannot be dismissed simply because we are more familiar with ‘faith in’.

The debate rumbles on! NT Wright, for example, errs towards ‘the faithfulness of’ but concedes that ‘faith in’, as preferred by most bible translators, makes more sense in other passages such as Rom 5 v1,2. Others are firmly camped in either of the opposing camps.

But if we consider Galatians 2v20 we find that the gospel is not simply substitutionary but is inclusive as well. It is not my experience that the inclusive nature of Christ’s death is believed or being taught.

But Paul clearly viewed the crucifixion of Christ as inclusive as well as substitutionary:

‘I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ NKJV, RSV, NIV

Comparing with other translations:

‘I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ KJV, NRSVUE, ASV

Understanding the crucifixion to be inclusive as well as substitutionary, inevitably translators will view the Greek with slightly altered lenses.

Tucked away within substitutionary sacrifice theology is a continuation of a disunity between the believer (who has to believe to contact Christ) and Christ (who through his faithfulness reaches believers). The following examples are commonly used phrases that express the disunity:

Righteousness is credited to the believer. Sanctification is a process by which the believer progressively becomes more Christlike. The saved sinner is covered over with a robe of righteousness. When God looks upon the saved sinner, He sees the blood of Jesus. If Christ is ‘in’ the saved sinner, the work of the saved sinner is like John the Baptist who stated that ‘I must decrease and He must increase’. The saved sinner didn’t die when Jesus died but he/she has to ‘die to’ sin in order to follow Christ.

Paul clearly viewed the crucifixion of Christ as inclusive as well as substitutionary

But Galatians 2v20 (and Romans 6 v 6 and Col 3 v 3) states that we died when Christ died, that we have been crucified with Christ. If so, then, surely, the argument that it is ‘my’ faith that is in question in the above passages Rom 3v22 and Gal 2v16, is rendered obsolete? If we have died, salvation cannot be based on ‘my’ faith. Paul states that ‘It is not I who live but Christ lives within me’. Once we see ourselves included in the death of Christ, and raised in Christ, then ‘my life’ is indistinguishable from His; as Paul argues elsewhere, I have become ‘one spirit with the Lord’ (1Cor6v17). Now, since everything comes from His life, including His faith, the translation ‘I live by the faith of the Son of God’ is consistent with a theology that is based on inclusion as well as substitution.

In Mark 11v22 Jesus is teaching the disciples after the incident when Jesus cursed the fig tree. Peter, typically, expressed what must have been passing through the other disciples’ minds: ‘Look…the fig tree you cursed has withered’ to which Jesus replied ‘Exete pistin Theou’ ‘Have the faith of God’ often translated ‘Have faith in God.’

But Jesus was not operating from Himself: ‘Truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do’ John 5v19. If Jesus did not operate from his own resources, including His own capacity for faith, then neither do we, so, rendering exete pistin Theou as ‘Have the faith of God’ makes sense, as the little word ‘of’ in English refers to the source, faith located in God, but also contains the meaning ‘out from’ i.e. not garrisoned in God but His faith flowing out from Him in us.

In the 1850s Charles Blondin strung a tightrope across Niagara Falls. A crowd gathered as he made his way across the falls. Then he issued a challenge: "Who here believes I can cross over Niagara Falls again, but this time pushing a wheelbarrow? The crowd began shouting, "We believe you,’ Blondin pushed the wheelbarrow successfully across the Falls and back. Then issued a further challenge: "Who here believes I can cross over Niagara Falls but this time with a man in the wheelbarrow?" When the crowd cheered, Blondin replied, "Ok, then who will be my first volunteer in the wheelbarrow?"

Silence. Until one man walked out of the crowd and was carried across - and back safely.

Did the man have faith ‘in’ Blondin? Of course. But where did that faith come from? You could equally say it was located in Blondin. Blondin believed he could take the man across and return safely, and Blondin’s faith became the man’s faith, he was ‘living by the faith of Blondin’.

This is consistent with the promises in the New Covenant to Ezekiel and Jeremiah:

‘I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit in you and cause you to walk in My statutes’ Ez 36 v 26, 27

‘I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…I will out my laws in their minds, and write it on their hearts…they shall all know me from the least to the greatest’ Jer 31 v 31-34

Viewing the gospel as an individual ‘over here’ putting his or her faith in Christ ‘over there’ is a false distinction. There is no separation or disunity maintained as a consequence of the gospel. Through the New Covenant God has brought about a Spirit-spirit fusion, in which all things, including His life and His faith, resonate with our spirit.

True Christianity turns out to be a Spirit-spirit operation.

Referring to the question above – can this be resolved? – the answer is Yes.

Once we grasp that the gospel is inclusive as well as substitutionary, we see that we have been made one with Christ. and, in union with Christ, everything that is in Him is mine, including His faith.

‘I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’

Three Things in the background, easily missed

Three Things:

1. John chapter 3 – what really mystified Jesus about Nicodemus

2. John chapter 14 – when maths is reduced to the number 1

3. Luke 14 – the spotlight falling in an unexpected place

John 3 – famous for three interrelated high-tide marks. It’s the chapter that contains John 3v16 famously daubed on rocks, on posters, car bumper stickers, or on placards at the Olympics. Also, it’s the Born-Again chapter, the meaning of which has, perhaps, been obscured by unattractive personality politics from across the pond. And lastly it is famous for an encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus, a Pharisee, who was too fearful to show his interest in Jesus and so came to him at night.

(May I suggest there are millions of ‘Nicodemus’s’ in Britain today who would talk to Jesus privately, away from public gaze?)

In this encounter in which Jesus tells Nicodemus he has to be born again (v3) the line that often goes unmentioned is verse 10:

‘Jesus answered and said to him ‘Are you the teacher of Israel and yet do not know these things?’

I suppose you could take this as Jesus gently mocking his night-time visitor, a form of verbal jousting or friendly banter, but if you take it at face value Jesus was incredulous that this man – a Pharisee and a ‘ruler’ of the Jews i.e. a learned, rich, and prominent man in Israel had failed to see what true faith’s starting position even though he would have been steeped in the Scriptures from his youth.

It’s the same in Britain with all our church steeples, Christian traditions and Christian history, and all our literature that refers to the bible time and again, or music that refers often to the New Testament, sayings of Jesus, art, poetry and so on…and yet if you say to anyone in Britain ‘you need to be born again’ you discover just how many Nicodemus’s there are. I know, I was one. I was taken to church as a child. The bible was read in morning assemblies at school, I even read the Gideon New Testament from cover to cover as an 11-year-old, but, despite all this, I had no notion at all about true Christianity, about the starting blocks, about being born again.

Here's what Jesus said:

‘Most assuredly, Nicodemus, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God’

And the famous John 3v16 verse:

‘For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life’

When I was confronted with the challenge in my later teens to read the New Testament with fresh eyes, I was more like Nicodemus, wanting to find out if this was all real or make-believe. One of the many things that struck me was the choice that love offers. God, it seems, SO loves us. But it’s no good coming to Jesus in the shadows. The day comes when we have to go public. That was as scary for me as it is for anyone. Britain is pretty hostile to public demonstrations of personal faith in Jesus. It disturbs our ‘Englishness’ where we avoid religion, sex, and politics if at all possible and prefer to never talk about the things we ponder on privately.

John 14 v 6 is almost as famous as John 3v16. It’s a favourite preaching verse as it seems to focus everyone’s attention on the exclusive nature of the gospel:

‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No-one comes to the father except through me’

There it is. Jesus is, it seems, the only turnstile to heaven, to God the Father. I’m not going to get into the normal debate/interpretation about this except to say this Jesus is describing ‘religion’ as a restored relationship between God, who turns out to be our heavenly Father after all, rather than an effort to conform to a set of moral values, virtues, and norms. That must be important.

No, I’m not looking at the bluntness of the apparent exclusivity of the verse, but Jesus’ repeated use of the number One. Preachers often concentrate on THE Way or THE truth, rather than THE Life.

How many Jesus? The life?

‘Surely’, we say, ‘what you meant to say was true faith is when Your life touches My life? I mean, I’m an autonomous being with choices. If I choose to follow you, that’s my choice, right? And if I turn away, that’s my choice as well? After all, it’s my life and I can do with it precisely what I want’.

But Jesus said ‘I am…THE life’

One of the ways to unravel this is to return to John 3 when Jesus tells Nicodemus: ‘that which is born of flesh is flesh (i.e. organic life, body and soul) but what is born of the Spirit is spirit’

Christianity has less to do with musty hymn books and old pews - or hand-waving rock band worship – or ‘good works’ - than an invasion of the Holy Spirit bringing ‘the life’ of Christ into our being. You can’t fake it. Well, maybe you can try, anyone can attend church, sing hymns, pray even, or wave their hands around, but it won’t last. The invading Life resides as our life in us and, yes, bringing with it a new spirit in union with His Spirit from which our souls and bodies are animated in a completely new way.

‘The wind blows where it will, you the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit’

Jesus’ words to Nicodemus.

Luke Chapter 15

The three parables of loss and being found in Luke 15 are so vivid, especially, the parable of the prodigal son, it’s difficult not to believe that the father with his two sons were fictitious. Henry Nouwen (a Dutch Roman Catholic priest) wrote a superb book The Return of the Prodigal Son as the result of being transfixed by Rembrandt’s painting of the same name.

I don’t need to repeat the whole parable, but the turning point comes in verse 17: ‘But when he came to himself he said ‘how many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare…?’’

It dawned on him, having wasted everything that his father had given him that he’d be better off as one of his father’s servants than on his own trying to eek out a living eating from the bins as a tramp.

Our attention in the story, of course, is taken up with the Father, the prodigal, and the prodigal’s older brother…and in doing so we miss what is in the background…deliberately put there by Jesus…I think with a chuckle ‘I wonder if anyone will see them’. By ‘them’ I mean the servants.

Our attention in church sermons is often taken up with Sonship, inheritance, forgiveness, restoration, the love of the father towards both his sons…and with good reason. But the servants? It turns out that what is in the background, was in the foreground in Jesus’ thinking:

‘And the father said to the servants ‘Quickly, bring out the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and put sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it – let us eat and be merry.’

‘Now, as the older son came near, he heard music and dancing…’

Who did the will of the father? The servants. Who found the robe and dressed the son? The servants. Who prepared the food and the drink? Who dusted off their musical instruments? Who sang? Who was dancing? The servants.

Who was Jesus?

Yes, the Son of God but also the one who washed His disciples feet as an example to us.

‘Christ Jesus, being in the form of God, made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant and coming in the likeness of men’ Philippians 3 v 5-7

Somehow in the miracle of God we end up doing and being things that can’t be replicated on Earth. Way back, I watched every episode of Upstairs Downstairs and other similar period pieces, even Westerns like The Virginian. In them you could either be a Son living upstairs or in the big house, or a Servant living downstairs or in the bunkhouse with the horses, but not both.

But our true identity in Christ, now born in us, is as sons and servants – simultaneously.

It’s the servants in the parable that had all the action, all the fun. The family was there, of course, working out their complexities and relationships, but all the while the servants were feasting, singing and dancing…full of the father’s joy over The Return of the Prodigal Son.

Now, as the older son came near, he heard music and dancing

The Moon

That precious tidal-rinser of our shores
That soft illuminator of tall trees
And horses’ manes at dusk

A constant reminder
Of other worlds
Above ours

An educator,
A lone adventurer,
Buffeted and pockmarked

Carrying a history of glory
Her surface illuminated by the Sun
Yet suffering the suffering of the defenceless

The Moon is you, is me, is all
Who have or are to live
And shine out

Unknowing of the next impact
The soldier next to you decapitated
Or the spouse who suddenly is not there

Cratered yet rolling on
I could never
Shake

It off, this
Shock-cratered
Life, scattering the light
In all directions to all nations
All creeds, convictions, cultures
It is the Moon that guides us home

Follow Me

Can I hear His voice calling me?
Must I leave myself once again?
Who is this Man?
Follow Me is all He said
Why look for the living among the dead?

What is it about this Man I cannot refuse?
A king wearing no crown that I can see
A prophet His message His flesh
A priest offering Himself
Beckoning me

Can I hear His voice calling me?
Must I leave myself once again?
Who is this Man?
Follow Me is all He said
Why look for the living among the dead?

I don’t deserve Your look I want to say
But His river of mercy is too strong
Undoing all that is wrong
Offering His hand to pull me from the waves
Drowning here I cannot stay

Can I hear His voice calling me?
Must I leave myself once again?
Who is this Man?
Follow Me is all He said
Why look for the living among the dead?

I wanted to kneel, but He said walk
I wanted to walk, He said swim
I wanted to swim, He said fly
I wanted to stay low
But He set me on high

Can I hear His voice calling me?
Must I leave myself once again?
Who is this Man?
Follow Me is all He said
Why look for the living among the dead?

Joey Mitchell…live performance…on Hope

Book Review: Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

Why, you may well ask, am I writing a book review for such a well-known and well-read book?

Spoiler alert: I suggest you read Jane Eyre before finding out too much in this blog!

First and foremost, to counter Elizabeth Rigby’s ludicrous criticism that Jane Eyre is an ‘anti-Christian’ novel. Criticism which, ironically, sheds a great deal of light on moribund Christianity in England that has suppressed true faith in England for centuries…bound up as it often is in formal, cold, religious traditions so unlike the Jesus of the gospels leaving many in Britain and the West generally, admiring Jesus but not church.

Brontë sets about uprooting false notions about Christianity in three key relationships, firstly exposing the cruel hypocrisy of Mr Brocklehurst, Jane Eyre’s headmaster at Lowood, who abuses his authority using scripture merely to control pupils whilst feathering his own nest, then with Helen Burns, Jane Eyre’s friend, and, finally, the off-course cleric, St John Rivers.

When Brocklehurst challenges Jane about her behaviour and how it could lead her to hell, he asks ‘What must you do to avoid it?’ Jane’s reply, dripping with sarcasm, is ‘I must keep in good health and not die’. Wonderful.

Later Jane finds her first true friend in a girl of the same age, Helen Burns, and, whilst she learns a great deal about faith in Christ from Helen, is critical of her passivity in the face of injustice. Helen, by contrast to Mr Brocklehurst, has her eyes firmly fixed on heaven: ‘God waits only for the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward’ or, ‘I can resign my immortal part to God without any misgiving, God is my father…I love Him, I believe He loves me’.

What I particularly like about how Brontë presents Jane at this young age, maybe fourteen, is that she is full of questions, she is open, and exploring…her faith is not fully formed. For example she asks Helen, ‘You are sure, then, Helen, that there is such a place as Heaven?’

Far from being an anti-Christian novel, this is an honest account of a fictional character maturing physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Later, after the marriage to Rochester is prevented and she leaves Thornfield, Brontë confronts Jane with yet another dissatisfying version of the Christian faith in St John Rivers, a man so dedicated to service as a Missionary that he completely misses God’s plan, to bless him emotionally and romantically with forming a relationship with the beautiful Miss Oliver, beautiful not only in appearance but in her character.

Jane extricates herself from St John’s demands and his alarming proposal for marriage, with customary straight-talking, ‘O! I will give my heart to God. You do not want it!’

A reply that also reveals that her faith in God is more solid, confirmed later as she prays later prior to her final journey from St John back to Rochester, now at Ferndean:

‘I fell on my knees; and prayed in my way – a different way to St John’s, but effective in its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit, and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet.’

Personally, I do not know of a sentence that describes true Christianity any more accurately.

As St Paul wrote ‘the sons of God are led by the Spirit of God’.

Brontë has demolished the hypocrisy of Brocklehurst, steered clear of the undue passivity of dear Helen Burns, and, in her rejection of St John, correctly distinguishes between dry duty demanded by cold formal religion and the fire and relationship of the true Christian faith.

By the time Jane Eyre is returned to Rochester her faith is more or less complete, she is spiritually mature and at ease with life, love, and marriage. She readily submits herself to Rochester as her husband having no fear that her individuality is under threat any more than Rochester is afraid of being dominated by a woman of independent means.

This is anything but ‘anti-Christian’.

Brontë has deposited a novel into the mix whose climax in the marriage between Jane and Rochester has more to say about the relationship between Christ and an individual than the journalist-critic Elizabeth Rigby could see.

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë: 1847

Elizabeth Rigby’s criticism: 1848

We Shall Rise

Escaping to the beach
Sandals and tee-shirt discarded
Looking down at the
Rhythm of the waves
Toes tipping over the jetty
My arms leap up and,
Free from the planet, I rise…
…and fall

Columns of sunlight pour
Through the water illuminating
Seaweeds waving with joy
Fish dart about
Iridescent in shoals, but
No sooner do I relax,
Calm and at home,
Than I rise

Wounded healers, fashioned
Somehow to sink like stones
To suffer shipwreck and sorrow
Our outer garments,
Facades and masks removed
O! Take us under Lord
Let us see life and light
As we fall

Until at home
Above and below
In season and out of season
Abounding or abased
Until we know You, truly,
In reverses and walking
Drenched and anointed,
Then we shall rise

And on that day
When the Sun falls, when
Dress rehearsals are complete
When we journey beyond
Our horizons, what we know,
And all is laid aside,
We shall rise

To face the One, whose
Garments were taken and torn,
Distracting the soldiers
His toes tipping over the brink
And arms stretched out wide
Proving for all eternity
That falling
Is only a prelude:

We shall rise.

Lost & Found

A long heavily stained
Desk, teak maybe
Stretched across the dingy
Office a flight of stairs
Under the concourse
Where life is faster

The man, an identikit
For all L&F officers?
Overweight, pallid
And unimpressed
A trained smile,
No deus ex machina,

No joy, and I wonder if
Anyone is waiting for him
Or whether we all
Look lost and this Earth
Is where we are deposited
Until Someone comes

 For us

Rabboni

Why come so vulnerable
Covered in straw?
You make everyone suffer
Your arrival took its toll
On Joseph, on Mary, and children
Extinguished by a king

 Why a mere carpenter’s son
Out of the way, up North
In Nazareth?
Why wait so long
An inert Messiah, watching
The blind lead the blind?

Jesus, why shun the limelight?
Why refuse the crown?
Those willing to honour the
King of glory?
Why relinquish riches, not knowing
Where to lay your head?

After all said and done
Why set your face to Jerusalem?
You stilled the storm, my storm,
Yet offered your wrists to nails
Your head to thorns
Your cheeks to spittle

And, risen, in dawn dark
Avoiding adulation
You dressed as a gardener
Trowel in hand,
Earth under your fingernails
And spoke my name

Raiders of the Lost Ark…and the Three-in-One

The names we associate with the film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, are Harrison Ford, playing the archaeologist Indiana Jones, and Steven Spielberg the director, but it was Lawrence Kasdan who wrote Raiders (and co-wrote the Star Wars films The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens and others).

 Spielberg and Kasdan, it may not be surprising to know, are Jewish.

 Grappling as they did with the deeply Jewish angst over the lost Ark of the Covenant, Spielberg and Kasdan introduced to the world the biblical account that the ark of the covenant contained a power greater than any earthly power. One that, in the film, our hero, Indiana Jones, managed to prevent the Nazis from acquiring.

 The Ark, in fact, was a fairly small acacia wooden box laid in the Holy of Holies in the Temple overlaid with gold, containing the stone tablets engraved with the Ten Commandments, a pot of manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded. It was lost when the First Temple was destroyed in 586 BC…although Ethiopian Orthodox Christians claim the Ark is located in the Church of St Mary of Zion, in Askum, several hundred miles north of Addis Abiba.

The action is in the Holy of Holies…the Spirit of God witnessing with our spirit that we are children of God.

 From the perspective of the New Covenant, the physical temple, important though it had been, was merely an earthly copy of the heavenly original. Each part of the temple, therefore, has a present-day eternal counterpart including the three courts: the outer court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies, and, specifically, the ark and its contents held within the Holy of Holies, in the presence of the glory of God.

 If the acacia box represents the new spirit God has put in those whose faith is in Christ, the contents of the ark represent God Himself dwelling in each believer. In the New Covenant, the physical temple in Jerusalem has been replaced by believers: ‘temples of the Holy Spirit’ 1 Cor 6v19.

 If you had looked inside the box at the three objects, physically distinct and seemingly unrelated from each other, would have stared back, inert and unremarkable, however, the three objects represent three facets of God, a three-in-one reality.

1.      The tablets of the commandments – but in the New Covenant the engraves the law on our hearts (Jer 31 v31f). Paul wrote about the ‘law of the Spirit of life’. This is what is set loose in us, nothing short of God’s own life. And He doesn’t need an external written law (the tablets of stone) to know how to act!

2.      The pot of manna – representing the miraculous ‘daily bread’ or ‘bread of heaven’ given to the Jews as they made their way to the Promised Land from Egypt. Rather than praying for God’s word to come to us from outside, externally, God has Himself in our spirits and His word(s) shape our lives. It isn’t that we need His word for ‘our lives’; it is more that His word is our life. Jesus said ‘the words I speak to you are spirit and life’

3.      Aaron’s rod that budded – if the rod represents us in our humanity, like the acacia box made from dead wood, the miraculous life that comes from it is His life. True Christianity, true spirituality, starts when His life appears in us.

Attempting to live the Christian life – either as a believer or, maybe as a non-believer who admires the teachings or person of Christ – through your physical abilities (the outer court) or your soulish strengths (intellect, emotional passion, or sheer will-power), is missing the point.

The action is in the Holy of Holies…the Spirit of God witnessing with our spirit that we are children of God.

The Lord’s Prayer – with new eyes

I can’t shake off the version I was taught as a child:

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
forever and ever. Amen.

I can’t, for example, say ‘forgive us our debts’ as some versions put it. Or replace ‘thine’ with ‘yours’ easily, it’s so ingrained. Not that the newer versions are inaccurate. There’s an interesting debate to be had over ‘trespasses’ or ‘debts’ in translating Greek and Aramaic…but that’s for others to argue over.

This post is about looking at the very familiar Lord’s Prayer but with new eyes…

We tend to think that this prayer is answered if we have faith when we pray, rather than know in ourselves that this prayer has already been answered and we are now to live it out in our lives.

This post is about looking at the very familiar Lord’s Prayer but with new eyes…

For example ‘give us this day our daily bread’. We might pray this as if it is our prayer that extracts from God our daily bread, whereas it has already been given. The challenge is for us to believe it has been given not that it lies in the present or near future…if we ask.

Jesus’ mission was to bring the Old Testament or Old Covenant to a close and inaugurate the New Testament or New Covenant as prophesied principally by Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

In the Old Covenant , the temple consisted of three parts. First the outer court for the people, then the Holy Place where the priests ministered, and then the Holy of Holies where the High Priest was permitted to go once a year, with the blood of a lamb, to make Atonement for Israel.

In the Holy of Holies, apart from God’s presence, there was the ‘ark of the covenant’, a wooden box overlaid with gold, with three items inside.

1. The tablets of stone on which the ten commandments had been carved

2. A pot of manna – the bread miraculously provided each day during the Exodus

3. Aaron’s rod – a dead piece of wood, a rod, which miraculously budded

In the New Covenant, each believer is a temple within which God abides by His Spirit. Jeremiah and Ezekiel gave us the details of the New Covenant:

The days are coming when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.
This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.
(Jeremiah 31 v 31f)

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes
(Ezekiel 36 v 36,37)

If our physical bodies relate to the outer court in the Old Testament temple, and the Holy Place relates to our souls (that precious part of us that gives us individuality, our minds, emotions, and will), our spirit is represented by the acacia box in the Holy of Holies.

When we believe and are born again, our old heart of stone is removed and we are given a new heart, a new spirit. Our ‘new’ spirit is joined with His Holy Spirit so that, just as in the Holy of Holies in the physical temple where God’s presence dwelt, so, now, the Holy Spirit dwells in us. Genuine Christianity turns out to be a spirit/Spirit operation.

‘Do you not know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?’ 1 Cor 6 v19

Jeremiah and Ezekiel as prophets, both saw that the tablets of stone laid in the acacia box were really just figurative copies of the heavenly original, the Old Covenant foreshadowing the New Covenant in which we live. Now, in the New Covenant, the law of God is no longer external carved out in stone, it’s internalised; the Holy Spirit writes the law on our hearts and we learn a whole new way of living…just like Jesus. As C. S. Lewis said we have become like ‘mini-Christs’.

Equally, God has placed in us the heavenly reality of the pot of manna, the miraculous provision of ‘daily bread’, manna from heaven. The Lord’s Prayer has been answered in the New Covenant. Now, wherever we are, whatever our circumstances, we have the pot of manna in our spirit, and it pours out eternally the living word by the Holy Spirit. It is not something we need to pull down from heaven it has been given.

This post is not really about Aaron’s rod but when Jesus instructed his disciples to pray ‘deliver us from evil’ the bible tells us the last enemy is death. But now we have ‘rod that budded’ in us. Resurrection is our new normal.

Jesus was the first prototype of this new humanity of ‘living temples’, now in Christ, we have become like Him…not because of our goodness, holiness, or our religious performance, membership, or attendance of any church…but simply having faith that this is what God has made possible through Christ.

We are not a huge stone-built temple stuck in one location, in Jerusalem, but mobile temples, through whom God pours out His life.

A real-time blog: The Letter to the Hebrews – final post, VII, Aaron’s Rod

To summarise, the writer is addressing a problem that has occurred with the recipients of the letter, a group of Jewish believers who seem to have stopped growing. He reminds them of God’s dual purpose for them. Firstly that God is ‘bringing many sons to glory’ and, secondly, that they need to move on from milk to meat - to ‘move on to maturity’.

In the Old Testament the ‘glory’ was contained in the ark of the covenant held inside the Holy of Holies, the innermost room in the temple, this being an earthly copy of the heavenly original. The ‘ark’ was a wooden box (acacia wood) covered in gold. Inside the box were the Tablets of the Law, a pot of manna, and Aaron’s budding rod.

It is a picture of Christ and therefore of us, in Him.

Our bodies, souls, and our new human spirit given via the New Covenant, combine to make merely a container for His glory. We are overlaid not with gold – but the glory of God. And on our insides, in our spirit, are the Law, written not on stone but by the Spirit in our hearts, not a pot of mann but the bread of heaven, the word of God, and, like Aaron’s dead stick that budded, resurrection life.

We, who have become sons of God through Christ, are glory pots.

‘…we have this treasure in earthen vessels…’ 2 Cor 4 v 7

The glory residing in the most unlikely of containers. We have become mini temples with God dwelling inside:

‘Your body is the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you’ 1 Cor 3 v 17

There was only one occasion where He permitted a few of his disciples to see His normally invisible glory – the Transfiguration.

‘His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them’ Mark 9 v3

But the truth is, most of the time the glory of God resided in Christ unnoticed: lying as a baby in a stable, or as a refugee fleeing from Herod, or facing hostility from the synagogue in Nazareth, or the Pharisees as they opposed Him, or being whipped and crucified, and later lying dead in the tomb.

But death could not hold Him. Aaron’s rod budded.

It will be similar for us. We suffer, and as we operate as sons of God in this world in Christ, we move on to maturity through obedience to the leading of the Spirit. We may or may not have occasional glimpses of the glory, but finally, like Jesus, we enter into the glory that has been ours all along.

‘I consider the present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us’ Rom 8v18

Aaron’s Rod

Winter’s lost its hold:
Yielding, exhausted,
Blackened branches held up
In wordless surrender.
Even death must sleep
Naked trees, stripped annually
Of leaves and blossom and fruit
Unable to hide far-off horizons
From prying eyes

The birds, though, know
A different story
Twigs, flying mission on mission,
Clamped and carried in beaks
Of hope
Nests appear before
The camouflage of Spring
Spares them, covers them
They know, the birds

Eruption from death
The first buds, a day away.
Like Aaron’s rod,
As unstoppable as unlikely,
Dead as we are Eden’s nightmare,
I am the Life, like a heavenly parasite,
Displaces our winters
With His orchards;
Trees of life once more.

A real-time blog: The Letter to the Hebrews - 6

Premiership football teams in trouble look for a new manager. Each one, José Mourinho, Ferguson, and now Pep Guardiola, Arteta and others transform their team…often backed up with a few dollars!

The writer to the Hebrews, searching a round for a suitable new manager for his flat-lining believers – ‘by this time you should be teachers, but I can only give you milk not solid food’ – lands on Melchizedek.

Melchizedek? Who? Chapter 7 explains all, I’ll summarise key points below:

‘Jesus has become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek’ Heb 6 v 20

Melchizedek (King of Righteousness) was King of Salem (Salem means ‘peace’) without genealogy, having neither beginning nor end, like the Son of God, he remains as a priest forever.

So, Jesus, King of Righteousness and King of Peace, the Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End, is the true High Priest.

In the Old Testament, the High Priest entered the Most Holy Place, known as the Holy of Holies, in the temple once a year, which was only an earthly copy of the heavenly original (Heb 8 v5)

But Jesus, the true High Priest, carried his own blood as the Lamb of God into the true holiest place in Heaven to secure our salvation:

‘By one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified’ 10 v 12

Being ‘in Christ’ we have become like Him, united with Christ and we have become, as Peter wrote, ‘partakers of the divine nature’ or, as my friend Chris Welch puts it, ‘Melchizedek particles’, caught up as we are in the High Priest according to the eternal order of Melchizedek.

‘…having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus…having a High Priest over the house of God let us draw near with faith’ Heb 10 v19f

Unlike the previous ‘orders’, the Aaronic and Levitical priests, who only visited the Holiest, it has become where we abide. It is here that we ‘move on to maturity’ dependent entirely, as was our initial salvation, on Jesus’ High Priestly ministry, and not our effort or ‘dead works’.

The rest of Hebrews is written assuming that the recipients of the letter have woken up and realised that falling back under the old Levitical priesthood, temple worship, the Law of Moses will not make us like Christ.

The illustrations the writer employs from this point on in the letter all describe forward motion and the future:

Faith to run the race

Brotherly love to continue

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever

For here we have no enduring city but we seek the one to come

As ‘Melchizedek particles’ we are moving on. Like Jesus said, ‘The wind blows where it wishes…you cannot tell where it comes from or where it goes…so it is with those who are born of the Spirit’.

Next and final Hebrews blog: Glory is spelt strangely, not as we might imagine

A real-time blog: The Letter to the Hebrews - 5

The gospel writers provide us with a pitch-side view of individuals and their encounters with Jesus of Nazareth.

Jews at the time were deeply divided over Jesus. Some came to him humbly for teaching, or healing, or deliverance, or simply to follow him. Others were opposed. None of those who came humbly remained the same.

Once we encounter Christ, all is left behind, like the fishermen’s nets, and we start growing spiritually; like newborn babies, we need milk, then solid food.

‘Let us go on to maturity not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and faith toward God, the doctrine of baptisms, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgement. And this we will do if God permits.’

Repentance from dead works and faith toward God

This is not referring to the crisis at the time of conversion to Christ, it is addressed to believers. This is the John 15 father with the knife again, coming to us as a vinedresser, ready to cut out any dead branches. Dead works are not necessarily ‘sinful’ at all, they can appear to be very good…but they are not what the Spirit is witnessing in your spirit…and they must go. From now on it is faith toward God. It’s learning to respond to the voice of the Spirit in your spirit.

Baptisms

There are three main baptisms. The Father baptizes us into Christ. Jesus baptizes us in the Spirit, and the Spirit baptizes us into the church as the body of Christ. Our water baptism is a burial of a dead body. We have died to our former life and are open to the above three baptisms. Resisting any one of them is a contradiction of our water baptism.

Resurrection of the dead

There is a future and a present dimension to this. In the parable of the Prodigal son, the son was ‘dead but is alive again’. As far as God is concerned, we were dead but we were brought back to life when we are born again by the Spirit. God’s life is now in us; Christianity is a Spirit/spirit operation. And, of course, there is a future greater fulfilment of resurrection, the day of resurrection. ‘I tell you a mystery…in a moment, at the last trumpet…the dead will be raised incorruptible and this mortal will put on immortality’ 1 Cor 15 v51-54. But our resurrected life, fused with Christ, has begun.

Eternal judgement

This is a living word, alive 24/7 in us; it is not reserved exclusively for the future. God accurately discerns between good and evil and therefore makes sound judgements. If we are being ‘transformed’ or ‘growing up into all things into Christ’ we must learn to operate with the same ‘eternal judgement’. The writer of Hebrews expresses his frustration over the recipients’ lack of progress: ‘…but solid food belongs to those who are mature, those who by practice have their senses exercised to discern good from evil’. Just like Jesus who ‘knew what was in the heart of men’. We begin to discern what lies at the heart of an issue or a person as the Spirit witnesses with our spirit. It is not a ‘natural’ ability.

Next blog: Melchizedek…progress

A real-time blog: The Letter to the Hebrews - part 4

In the previous blog, we looked at the starting point on our journey to ‘glory’ and ‘spiritual maturity’ ‘ceasing from our own work’ and entering God’s rest or, Sabbath, as a continual place – called ‘Today’ if you look closely at Hebrews.

The Letter to the Hebrews challenges us to realise that we are caught up in the Father’s purpose ‘bringing many sons to glory’ and the need to ‘go on to maturity’.

The key verse:

‘By this time you should be teachers, but you need to be taught the first principles again…you need milk not solid food…let us go on to maturity not laying again the foundation of repentance of dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrines of baptisms, of the laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgement’ Heb 5v12-14; 6 v 1,2

The writer of Hebrews has reminded us that our Father in heaven wants to lead us to glory and spiritual maturity as sons.

The evangelical gospel will lead someone to Christ as Saviour and give them confidence in the Bible as the word of God, but so easily stop at the point of salvation, waiting for glory in heaven after you die. The Pentecostal/charismatic gospel rediscovered the Holy Spirit; many have received gifts of the Spirit evangelicals taught had died out with the apostles. But even the best charismatic churches often do not teach about glory or spiritual maturity.

Paul, when writing to the Corinthians made three important distinctions:

‘I could not speak to you as ‘spiritual’ but as ‘carnal’ as ‘babes in Christ’. I feed you with milk and not solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are not able, you are still ‘carnal’ – for where there is envy and strife and division, are you not ‘carnal’ and behaving like ‘mere men’?’ 1 Cor 3 v 1-3

We have three stages of growth: ‘mere men’, then ‘carnal’, then ‘spiritual’.

‘Mere men’ looks back to where we are before coming to Christ. ‘Carnal’ means ‘fleshly’. Carnal Christians are born again, and may well be baptised in the Spirit, but are still operating from their own resources, their souls: minds and thinking, or the emotions, or will, trying to live the Christian life, not operating from the Spirit witnessing with their spirit. ‘Spiritual’ Christians are those who have abandoned any thought of operating from their abilities and strengths. Like Jesus, they only do what they see the Father doing.

We need, as John has taught, to move on from being ‘little children’ to ‘young men’, and then ‘young men to fathers’ 1 John 2 v 12-14

Next blog: ‘moving on’ from the foundations, not abandoning them

A real-time blog on the Letter to the Hebrews - part III

A spiritual MOT. How’s your Sabbath observance? And I’m not talking about Sundays.

Here’s the key verse:

‘There remains, therefore, a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God from His’ 4v9,10

It may seem strange that the writer is making so much of the Sabbath…but it turns out to be vital if God is going to ‘bring many sons to glory’ or for us to push on to ‘maturity’ as chapter 6 urges.

One of the legacies of the disaster of Eden is the persistent belief that we are independent of God, expected to make our own decisions good or bad, wise or unwise. Like the prodigal son, cut off from his father who, when the son returns said to his elder son ‘Your brother was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found’. As far as God is concerned our attempts at living an independent life are considered as ‘death’ just as He said ‘in the day you eat it you shall die’, clearly not referring to biological but spiritual death.

But the truth is that:

‘it is not by might nor by power but by My Spirit’ (Zech 4 v6)

How easy it is to initially believe that salvation is a gift. And that we are ‘under grace’ only to drift away and yield to that insatiable appetite to ‘do something’. As the scripture says to enter God’s rest we ‘cease from our works’.

How easy it is to celebrate the Sabbath externally only (Seventh Day Adventists and many Messianic believers celebrate the Sabbath on Saturdays, most other denominations on Sundays) and miss the essential point, we cannot grow in the life God has given us in Christ if we insist on trying to live the Christian life from our own resources, our minds, or emotions, or will. It’s Spirit/spirit operation.

‘As many as are led by the Spirit, these are sons of God’

So, here’s the MOT. Or, to switch metaphors, consider the vinedresser, knife in hand, in John chapter 15. He’s advancing on the vine ready to lop off any branch that’s not bearing fruit AND to prune even those branches bearing fruit…for the sake of greater fruit.

Then, like Jesus, we are living the Sabbath life. ‘I only do what I see the Father doing’.

Next: On to maturity…I’m looking at a pruned apple tree, ready to grow some ripe fruit.

A real-time blog on the Letter to the Hebrews - 2

In present-day Israel, as in the whole of Israel’s history, there are opposing spiritual forces. On the one hand, Orthodox Jews call for the restoration of the Temple, the Priesthood, and the sacrificial system à la Law of Moses. On the other hand, in Israel, there are more churches full of Jewish believers in the Messiah Jesus than at any time. Many include Gentile as well as Jewish believers but there are some that are like the Jerusalem church in Acts – Jews only.

It was such a church that the Letter to the Hebrews was written.

The tug of war is understandable. To drift back to the Old Testament, to Moses, to Aaron, to the Levitical priesthood, to the temple, to the sacrifices and feasts is supremely relevant today, especially for Jews who believe in Jesus, wanting to retain connections with the past whilst pushing on to…on to what exactly?

And this is true for all believers. For all of us. On to what exactly? What is the purpose of God in Christianity?

‘It was fitting for Him…in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings’ Heb 2v10

This is the vision of true Christianity. First to make many sons from sinners and then for God to bring His sons to glory. I don’t know what that means. Not really. I know that John wrote ‘the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory’ looking back to the Transfiguration. I know that the other witness to the Transfiguration, Peter, wrote ‘Jesus, Messiah, who having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory’.

The New Testament teaches that God, through faith in His only begotten Son, Jesus, has made ‘many sons’ and we are ‘heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ’ Rom 8v17 and that ‘the whole of creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God’.

Poets, songwriters, and prophets have looked for words adequate enough to describe the indescribable…the best we can do is…glory.

Christianity is not about ‘going to church’ or ‘reading the Bible’ or ‘worship’ or ‘good works’ or ‘baptism’, or ‘communion’; all these things you may well do as a Christian but, firstly, it’s about God making you one of His sons inheriting everything with Christ. This is big. Poets, songwriters, and prophets have looked for words adequate enough to describe the indescribable…the best we can do is…glory.

Why abandon this to retreat back to Law, to regulations, to human effort, to self-improvement? Why drift?

And yet, many are drifting, neglecting their salvation. And not just individuals but whole churches and denominations and streams are departing from Christ, replacing Him with their human efforts to produce the kingdom on earth, or simply a good life, or a Christ-like life, and, in doing so, losing sight of the glory.

Blog 3 No more drift…let’s push on…oddly, to ‘rest’, to the true Sabbath

A real-time blog on the Letter to the Hebrews…part 1

Hebrews, I feel, suffers a little from being left out. If Romans is fighting for the Premiership title with Ephesians maybe, Hebrews is in a relegation battle, in need of a miracle manager to climb up the table. And they’ve just hired Melchizedek.

More of Melchizedek later. Romans and Ephesians have had a good run…

But if the Holy Spirit has given us this letter and we ignore its contents, we are denying the children their bread.

In fact, ‘neglect’ was a chief concern of the author.

‘lest we drift away…how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation…’ 2 v 3

The gospel had been preached to them and they had believed. The concern was that they, a group of Jewish believers, would ‘drift away’, not that they had disbelieved the gospel when they heard it.

‘At first (the gospel) was spoken to us by the Lord and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, God also bearing witness with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit’ 2 v 3,4

Countless ‘charismatic churches’ are attended by thousands who, when they heard the gospel, believed and then have seen the power of God at work in miracles and signs and wonders and yet are in danger of drifting away. And I’m not particularly writing about individual believers, but whole denominations and streams are in danger of drifting away. This Letter to the Hebrews is more relevant than we might think. When was the last time you read the letter? Or heard it taught carefully, chapter by chapter?

If we drift, we reduce Jesus

I can’t offer that. This is written more or less in real-time highlighting verses and themes that seem to stand out as I am writing, downloads from the past as well as the present.

The first three chapters remind the church of the pre-eminence of Jesus, the Messiah (Christ), who ‘tasted death now crowned with honour and glory’ 2v9; God’s Son 1v2, seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high; 1v3, higher than angels 1v4-14; and superior to Moses, chapter 3. Jesus is the Son in the house, the heir, and Moses is a servant in the house…a particularly dramatic and important distinction for the Jewish recipients of this letter.

If we drift, we reduce Jesus. He becomes a wonderful teacher, or a Jewish prophet, or Rabbi, he becomes a guru from Nazareth, a spiritual teacher, a Christ to be understood only in the historical or sociological context of the first century, rather than the ‘heir of all things’ and ‘the express image of His glory’ at whose name we bow and worship in all generations.

Blog 2 will deal with the purpose of the gospel: ‘bringing many sons to glory’ 2v10