There Are No Bad Christians

Posted on by January 30, 2015
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Romans 14:4 — Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.

OK. So I can see the claim is a bit extreme. “No bad Christians?” Suppose I said “there are no good Christians”?
It’s just that from time to time I here somebody called a “good” Christian, or I hear of somebody misbehaving that they “are a bad Christian”. Either way, it seems wrong to me.
Remember what Jesus said when the rich young ruler called Him “Good Master”? “And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.” (Mark 10:18)
I think there are a few things to be remembered.
First, when we come before Jesus for judgment, none of us are righteous … but all of our sins are forgiven. There is a warning, and an assurance in 1 John:

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10 )

If we will confess our sins we all, equally and with no exception, stand forgiven. If we will not confess, we are probably not saved — not “bad Christians” but “not Christians”!
Second — there are no “better sins” and “worse sins”. We have a tendency to rank sins, as though his adultery was not so bad as her lesbian lifestyle, or her theft was worse than his bullying. There is no “league table”! All sins separate us from God — and for a Christian, all sins can be forgiven. I know this seems extreme — surely stealing a loaf of bread isn’t the same as genocide. That’s fair — and Jesus certainly said that a servant knowing His will and not doing it would be beaten more than someone who strayed unknowingly — but it seems to me that the cases are not the same. The servant adds disobedience to his other faults …
The last though I had is the one that flows from Paul’s comment in the letter to the Romans. Only God can judge Christians. Nobody else can call a Christian “good” or “bad”. Only God sees the heart … only God knows why we do what we do.
There are no bad Christians. Only Christians who haven’t finished growing!

Hallowed Be Thy Name …

Posted on by January 28, 2015
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Matthew 6:9-13 — After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

I seem to be going through “classes” of Bible passages this week! Passages that hide from me, passages that I hide from, and now passages I revisit and keep getting (new) value from! One such is Psalm 23. Then there are some whole books — Jonah and Job, for instance. And then there’s this one. “The Lord’s Prayer”, “The Model Prayer” … it has been called both. It’s Jesus answering the disciples question about how to pray very directly, by giving them a prayer guide. That was pretty unusual, I think. Most of Jesus teaching of the disciples (that we know about) was either indirect or by example. This question was so important that He gave them a straightforward — but very deep — answer. 
Here are just a few things I’ve discovered about the Lord’s prayer.
It’s structure might be important. It’s a bit like the Ten Commandments — the first half of the petitions relate to God, and the second half relate to us.
Inside the first group, the direction is from God to man, from above downwards. The second group starts with our most basic physical need and works to our deepest spiritual need — complete deliverance from evil.
The individual petitions might have more to them than meets the eye. To illustrate that, I want to talk about “Hallowed be thy Name”… four words only, but how much they say.
Matthew Henry says, beautifully, “The Lord’s prayer (as indeed every prayer) is a letter sent from earth to heaven.” and then says about “Hallowed”, “It is the same word that in other places is translated sanctified. But here the old word hallowed is retained, only because people were used to it in the Lord’s prayer. Sanctified, of course, is “made holy, not used commonly”. God hallows His name when He shows His character by His actions. We hallow his name when we treat it with the reverence due to it.
God’s name is more than just the label. It is His whole identity, His character. His name is the one we should hold more carefully than any other. We pray “hallowed be thy name” and so we should!
“Hallowed be thy name” — four short words in a prayer that is short itself, only sixty-six words. How much weight they carry. I will, no doubt, return to the prayer often and find new riches every time!

What?

Posted on by January 27, 2015
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Exodus 4:24-26 — And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me. So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision.

Yesterday, I mentioned that there are Bible passages that my eye usually passes over — until they pounce on me! There’s another sort of passage that I tend not to look at too closely, because I know they’re mysterious, and I don’t want to get into deep water! As we move on through Exodus I come to this one … which is one of those, one I usually skirt around.
What’s going on? God has a task for Moses, He’s given him some direction and it seems like he’s set off to do the job — and now God is seeking to kill him! (There’s a mystery in itself, surely if God wants to kill him, He can just kill Him?). Then Zipporah circumcises their son, God lets him go and — apart from Zipporah being mad, it seems everything is well. Isn’t that strange? Zipporah was so mad, in fact, that it seems she left Moses, taking the boy with her, because in Exodus 18 we can read that Jethro (her father) brings her back.
I’m comforted by knowing that I’m not the only one who finds this passage difficult. One Jewish commentator says of it that it is “arguably the single most bizarre and baffling passage in all of the Hebrew Bible.” One of the biggest problems is about the word “him” in the phrases “and sought to kill him” and “So he let him go”. It’s been suggested that they refer to Moses, or to his son … In the end it seems simplest to let it refer to Moses and understand the passage in that light. The best suggestion seems to be to take the incident at the inn in the context of the two previous verses:

And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn: and I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn. (Exodus 4:22-23)

Considered in this light it might seem that Moses had been told what the punishment for Pharaoh’s prevention of religious observance would be, and the mock attempt in his own life was a rebuke for his own failure — failing to circumcise his son prevented his religious observance.
Then why does Zipporah call Moses “a bloody husband”? Perhaps because if he had done his job she wouldn’t have had to get involved in the bloody business of circumcision.
Matthew Henry draws the lessons from the passage. He points out that God’s people must be quick to meet their obligations, or fear His displeasure. When God reveals sin to us, we must correct it quickly. When we return to our duty, God will remove His judgment. If others misunderstand us in the performance of our duty, we must bear it patiently and, finally, when we have God’s work to do we must put away distractions — as Moses sent away his family.
So there we are. It’s a knotty passage but, like every other scripture, “given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:” (2 Timothy 3:16)

Turning Point

Posted on by January 26, 2015
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Exodus 2:24-25 — And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them.

This little passage caught my eye today. Another of those passages that the eye might pass over nine times out of ten. Today though it called out to me, and I had to dig into it. As I looked at it, it seemed to me that it’s a key moment in the Exodus narrative, and also a good description of how God cares for His people.
First, God heard. When His people cry out, God responds. It’s not that He was previously ignorant of Israel’s pain — an omniscient unchanging God knows everything. “In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears.” (Psalm 18:6).
Next, God remembered his covenant. Not literally, of course. God does not forget, and does not remember. But in the eyes of the Hebrews, perhaps it seemed that God had forgotten them — but God does not forget. “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord ‘s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:21-23).
Then, God looked upon the children of Israel. Matthew Henry quotes verse 11 of this chapter “And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, one of his brethren.” (Exodus 2:11) and comments “Moses looked upon them and pitied them; but now God looked upon them and helped them“.
Finally, God had respect unto them. I think this is the phrase that caught my eye. In the version I was reading it was simply translated “and God knew”. The word is not a simple one to interpret, but I believe the suggestion is that God distinguished them among the peoples by the action he decided to take.
This is how God treats His people — He hears, is faithful, He sees and He acts. In the case of the people of Israel, it was a turning point. It was time for them to set out for the Promised Land, and He would act dramatically to shake them free …

They Never Apologized

Posted on by January 25, 2015
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Genesis 50:15-17 — And when Joseph’s brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him. And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him.

Myra and I are nearly a month into this year’s read through the Bible, and this morning we reached the end of Genesis. We read the passage in Genesis 50:15-21 which is often characterized as Joseph’s brothers’ apology for the harm they had done him. It is no such thing — at best it’s a pretty poor imitation.
Over the years I have become something of an expert on this business of apologies — I’ve had plenty of opportunity to practice, as Myra can attest. To me, it can be summarized using five “R”s — “Recognition”, “Repentance”, “Responsibility”, “Request” and “Restitution”.
“Recognition” is a simple idea. Before you can apologize for an offense, for hurting someone, you have to realize they have been hurt, to recognize their pain.
“Repentance” is a familiar, but often misunderstood, idea. It’s not just being sorry. It’s about empathy, about seeing the offense from the point of view of the offended party. It implies seeing the pain as the sufferer sees it.
“Responsibility” is about taking ownership … saying that you did harm, and that nobody else was to blame.
“Request” might be the hardest step. An apology is not complete unless you humble yourself and ask for forgiveness.
Finally, there is “Restitution” — doing whatever you can, whatever the offended part will accept, to repair any damage caused.
How did Joseph’s brothers do? I might give them a pass on “Recognition”. In Genesis 42:21 we can read “And they said one to another. We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us.” That certainly implies recognition and some of the second and third “R”s — “Repentance” and “Responsibility”. What I can’t see is a genuine “Request” or any offer of “Restitution”. What I do see is a gesture driven by fear which, if they are telling the truth, is only made at the direction of their father.
There are two things I ought to say in fairness to the brothers, I suppose. One is that I rarely achieve an apology with all the elements. The other is that Joseph had been a pretty aggravating youth … which certainly never got acknowledged. If you are ever on the receiving end of an apology and want to maintain the relationship, accepting your part of any problem is very gracious.
I suspect there was a lot more family rebuilding needed than is told at the end of the Book of Genesis …

Forever

Posted on by January 24, 2015
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1 Corinthians 15:12-14 — Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.

It seems I’m on a “back-to-basics” journey at the moment — but maybe this piece is the punchline. I’ve talked about sin, and about Holy God, but there’s a truth that adds force to the discussion. We all have an eternal future.
There’s nothing new about skepticism about the idea of life after death. Despite Old Testament scriptural support for resurrection, a major Jewish sect — the Sadducees — rejected it. More significantly for the letter to Corinth, the Greeks and Romans living there had no background of a belief in eternity.
Nowadays, it’s not surprising that non-Christians don’t believe in any kind of life after death. What is surprising is that there are Christians who don’t believe in the idea either. You might ask if it really matters, so long as they have Jesus as their Lord? It does.
If there is no afterlife then, as Paul points out, Jesus’s sacrifice for us is of no value — whatever our fate would be before we accepted Him as Lord would be unchanged by His death. In fact, all we believe would be mistaken.
If there is no afterlife, the world’s pursuit of “all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” might seem perfectly reasonable!
However there is an afterlife… we do have an eternal future. J. C. Ryle, the first Anglican Bishop of the English city of Liverpool laid out the alternatives that await us:

Let us settle it then in our minds, for one thing, that the future happiness of those who are saved is eternal. However little we may understand it, it is something that will have no end: it will never cease, never grow old, never decay, and never die. “God will fill us with joy in His presence, with eternal pleasures at His right hand.” (Psalm 16:11) … For another thing, let us settle it in our minds, that the future misery of the unbelievers who are lost is eternal. I am aware that this is an awful truth, and flesh and blood naturally shrink from the contemplation of it.

There is an afterlife. It follows that sin, the offending of a Holy God, has terrible eternal consequences!

God Is Holy!

Posted on by January 23, 2015
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Leviticus 10:1-3 — And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. Then Moses said unto Aaron, This is it that the Lord spake, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace.

Yesterday I wrote that it seems more and more difficult to have people recognize the reality of sin. Today I want to talk about what I believe to be the root cause of that moral decline.
Put simply, most people — even many church-going Christians — have forgotten that God is holy. I don’t know that there is any point addressing the rest of this piece to non-Christians. If you’re reading this I can only beg you to surrender your life to Jesus. Until you do you are irretrievably alienated from a Holy God.
But we Christians … we need to remember that God is holy.
Remembering who God is would surely be the most effective preventive to sin. Failing to do so is, as Nadab and Abihu did, will prove fatal. It is not clear to me that their intentions were anything but pure — but they were acting not in response to God’s direction, but in response to the prompting of their own wills. God’s reaction is fierce, and immediate. He demands precise obedience — all the more so from those honored by the call to His service. Charles Erdman, in his study of Leviticus makes the point, “The words ‘them that come nigh me,’ were, in the first instance, addressed to the priests, but the message is for all who approach God as worshippers.”
If we take seriously the idea that God is Holy we are forced to recognize that the moral distance between us and Him is as great as the distance between us and His infinite reach. It should make us see sin in its proper perspective. R. C. Sproul sets us right in his book “The Holiness of God”:

Sin is cosmic treason. Sin is treason against a perfectly pure Sovereign. It is an act of supreme ingratitude toward the One to whom we owe everything, to the One who has given us life itself. Have you ever considered the deeper implications of the slightest sin, of the most minute peccadillo? What are we saying to our Creator when we disobey Him at the slightest point? We are saying no to the righteousness of God. We are saying, “God, Your law is not good. My judgement is better than Yours. Your authority does not apply to me. I am above and beyond Your jurisdiction. I have the right to do what I want to do, not what You command me to do.

We have become accustomed to think of God more as a benevolent friend than a Holy Lord. We have slipped into the habit of seeing even small sins as social discourtesies to that good friend instead of treason against that great Lord. It is one of Satan’s best strategies, brilliantly described by C. S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters, “It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing.“

Sin

Posted on by January 22, 2015
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1 John 2:15-17 — Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

It seems more and more difficult to have people recognize the reality of sin. Any kind of sexual activity seems to be increasingly regarded as a matter of choice. Theft, vandalism and destruction are often forgiven as “protest”. Marital infidelity, it seems, is more seen as a misfortune than a misdeed. 
I’m not sure why this struck me so forcibly today, but so much of the news I have seen recently supports my argument. Anyway, I thought I’d go back to basics and see what the Bible says.
It seems pretty straightforward. Believers – the “little children” to whom John is writing, having risen above the world’s level by faith are to be detached from it – loving its victims but rejecting – utterly – its attractions. We cannot love the things of the world. You can either love the things of God, or the things of the world – but “no man can serve two masters”.
All the things of the world can be put into one of three groups.
There are things whose attraction lies in “the lust of the flesh”. Things like hunger, or sexual attraction fall into this group. They are the things to which we have a visceral, bodily attraction. There are those who say that these are the temptations that plague us most when we are young. If so, I still have a fair bit of aging to do!
There are things whose attraction lies in “the lust of the eyes”. These are the external things which when we see them, we want. It is easy to confuse these with things that fall into the first group – but if the key to their attraction is the desire to possess, then it is the lust of the eyes at work.
Lastly, there are those things whose attraction lies in “the pride of life”. These things are more about status and position than about possessions in and of themselves. This is the sin that causes people to buy houses beyond their means from a desire to “keep up with the Jones’s”.
Sometimes, of course, the sins come as a pair – or even all three together. When Eve “When she saw that the tree was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise,” she was tempted in all three ways at the same time. 
The end of the things of the world – the wages of sin – is, of course, death. “The world passeth away”. But the gift of God is eternal life.
Lord, lead us not into temptation.

Who Are You?

Posted on by January 21, 2015
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Galatians 2:20 — I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.

The idea of obliging everyone to carry an identity card is very controversial. In England, in particular, where I was born, the idea is seen as very threatening. There is still a strong recollection of the way identity cards were used to persecute minorities in various countries in the past. Here in the USA the idea of obliging people to prove their identity for purposes such as voting is very objectionable to some people.
Some people seem not to like having their autos identifiable either. In fact that was the seed for this devotion. Driving to work this morning we saw several cars with their license plates deliberately obscured, as though they had something to hide.
Identity is one thing Christians should never be confused about. As you read through the New Testament you can find lots of passages that talk about who you are. You can find at least fifty. I’ve selected just a few for a starting point.
I think the text that I headed this piece with is one of my favorites. William Barclay explains it by saying that Paul felt “So great was the change that the only way he could describe it was to say that he had been crucified with Christ so that the man he used to be was dead and the living power within him now was Christ himself.” It’s such a wonderful idea … and matched by the beauty of “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)”. My identity is wonderful — Christ lives in me and I am a new creation!
Actually, not only is Christ in me but I am in him — “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10)”.
But wait! There’s more! “But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name:” (John 1:12). I am part of a wonderful group — “the sons of God” — “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.” (1 Corinthians 12:27). The body of Christ, the church, is a marvelous thing.”Ye are the salt of the earth: …“. (Matthew 5:13).
The hardest things about writing this piece were keeping it from getting too long and choosing which few verses to use! So how about it? Are you clear about your identity as a Christian and proud to claim it?

The Call

Posted on by January 20, 2015
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Amos 7:14-15 — Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son; but I was a herdman, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit: and the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel.

This little autobiographical note is part of a punitive prophesy, where Amos warns Amaziah of what the result will be of his attempt to silence Amos. That’s not what spoke to me when I read it today though. It was the irresistible nature of the call that Amos felt.
I suspect that this struck a spark off me today because I spent time with a good friend who has recently embarked on a new ministry. I’ve watched with admiration as he moved aside from his business, moved into one ministry for two years and has now stepped up to lead an initiative that’s new for our area. I’ve been privileged to be privy to some of his thought process over the last several years, and the thing that sticks out is the way the call on him was so clear and compelling.
Like Amos, my friend was not a “professional”. He doesn’t have a degree in theology or a seminary-based training in how to do evangelism and ministry. Amos was a shepherd, a tender of sycamore trees — but he was called to be a prophet.
I believe that most Christians are Amos’s. How many people have you heard say “I can’t do missions (or share my faith, or whatever…). It’s not what I’m good at.” I dare say that was Amos’s first reaction too: “I can’t go North to be a prophet in Israel. I’ve got shepherd and tree management skills, but I never went to prophet school!” It didn’t matter. The Lord spoke, Amos answered.
Amos wasn’t in it for what he could get out of it. That’s part of what’s implied by “I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son”. He wasn’t a professional prophet, and was quite used to living of the fruits of his sycamore (mulberry fig) trees. I think there’s something in that for many modern ministries to consider. They typically lay significant financial burdens on potential missions people — causing a high drop out rate.
Amos didn’t wait around when he go the call. In fact he tells Amaziah that the Lord “took” him. If you are fortunate enough to get the call … Don’t wait, go.