How He feeds us

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me."  For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.  (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)

I've spent many years in churches where the preferred description for the bread and wine is 'emblem'. A peculiar, rather timid word. Not likely to impart faith to us that anything is really happening spiritually when we eat and drink them.

Last night, amongst a small group of worshippers welcoming the Spirit among us, I read the passage above - which felt an odd thing to be moved to do, for we weren't going to take communion - and spoke out what God was showing me.

Each of us present had received the bread and wine many times; and every time, Jesus was infusing His body, His blood, His very life, into ours. If we forget all the theological and historical arguments, isn't this so obvious? How a child can see it? Believer, be of very good cheer: this has been done to you by God, Who is working the miracle through and through you, time and time again.

Then, see how the body He gives to us is broken, and the blood He shares is spilt out. Those are His terms for us to be able to receive Him: His death, His cross.

And there is more: this spiritual work done in me is a proclamation to others. Like every action Jesus took, it is a sign which proclaims that the Kingdom of God is here with power - not just a matter of words. Jesus said His disciples would live on the same terms as He did: by the cross.

So our own lives now make the same proclamation as His: they are given to others broken and spilt. We are little Christs now, becoming identical to Him, and ever more so each time He gives us His body and blood.

I'm an Archbishop too

It has been quite a tumultuous time for elections: Obama's epic struggle and perhaps against-the-odds victory; China's old-fashioned transfer of power, or at least of figurehead; and now the cumbersome, decent, ever-ridiculed Anglican Church has proved herself nimble on her feet and come up with a refreshing surprise: Justin Welby.

What sparks in me a hope and delight is Welby's own delight, humour and optimism in accepting the position. No hint of "poisoned chalice" talk here. And I personally identify with the way he demonstrates an authentic mix of views on different matters, defying our desires to categorise others.  I could trust a man who appreciates his Evangelical inheritance and has a Catholic spiritual director.

For that is what seems to happen as we mature: we become more our true selves, and find ourselves holding convictions in balance which place us outside any one human camp. And gradually, the Kingdom of God takes shape in us and shapes us.

And so to the capricious title of this post (I'm going to blog more light-heartedly in future): it struck me this morning that my role in my immediate family is beginning to resemble that of the A of C. 

Once upon a time we were a family of six and our children naturally fell in with what Mum and Dad believed and where they worshipped.  Simple days, so long ago ...  They grew up, left home, some of them got married and started their own families - and our little closely knit family has expanded to fifteen and has become very diverse.  By the grace of God, every one of us has found a place near God's throne and believes in our Saviour, Jesus the Christ: but He was absolutely right in telling us that there were many rooms in the Father's house!  One family is part of a Baptist fellowship on a deprived estate in Bradford; another is now Roman Catholic, drawn to the most traditional wing of that Church, and in a fellowship in Ipswich; another son is recently married and planting new Christian communities in Helsinki; and our daughter belongs to a large Anglican church in Oxford.  Mum and Dad are between fellowships right now, but looking for one with enough pentecostal freedom and passionate worship - that's where we thrive.

I absolutely love this diversity, and I let all our grown-up children and daughters-in-law enrich my devotion to God by sharing their lives in Him with us.  They will sometimes argue among themselves and reject things another holds dear, but I will not exclude anything or any of them.  Of course, it doesn't rationally add up.  We have become a microcosm of the Church Universal.  But I see the good fruit which validates all this diversity; I appreciate how different we are from each other, and therefore how different a journey God will have planned for each of us, until we all become like Christ.

This made me weep

It seemed like all the anguish and injury of those days swept over me

(St Andrew’s, Cullompton, Devon)

The heart is a slow learner

I owe an immeasurable amount to human teachers, the ones I’ve heard and the ones I’ve read; but my heart only begins to believe things if it hears them from the Spirit, Who has drawn as close as can be to my heart, as Jesus promised.  

This is how I tend to think: ‘If God likes what I do, I don’t have to worry about what someone else thinks.’   But I see that I am selective about thinking like that.  I wouldn’t dream of applying such thinking to those I love and respect - that’s a bit of a give-away!  It’s obviously not a godly principle, but rather self-serving.  To cut to the chase, I love those whom I feel loved by, and ignore those whom I feel I’m not loved by.   But these days, God is correcting my course, adjusting my sails a bit so they can pick up breezes from other directions.

Jesus taught this: ‘Love your enemies’.  He added no reservations or conditions.  He loved people, all the time, and most of all as He faced the Cross.  He let His enemies do their will.  Although His Mother and other companions were with Him on the road to Golgotha, I believe He went ahead alone without the reassurance of their comprehension, with a faith unique to Himself that to do so would ‘draw all men’ to the Father and to Himself.  

So does that still work in the same way?  It must!  Serving and loving our enemies, adversaries and uncomprehending strangers is what may free them to find salvation: which means their reconciliation with the Father and their resurrection to life.  Jesus always intended His followers to do this as well, once He’d gone ahead first in living out love to the unimaginable extent of His humiliation, torture and death.  St Paul calls this ‘sharing in the sufferings of Christ’, and teaches that it is a vital part we are to play, as co-workers in the healing and salvation of the world.

Yes, Jesus has finished His one, perfect sacrifice; but that opened the way for us to live like He did. Unless we co-work with Him to do the same things He did, others will not be reached by the Kingdom of God.  It’s not at all enough just to tell people about what Jesus did, and say that they are saved if they believe the story.  My life, and their lives, are intended to change and look like Jesus’ life, and we are intended to become inspired by the same faith which once upon a time, now so long ago, He was the only Person on earth to have.  But no longer.

Beginning a new season

I greet again all my readers in name of the Father of all Mercies and pray His grace be with you.

Five years ago, God started me on a training programme in His love through the ministry of John and Carol Arnott and the 'Catch the Fire' network they founded.  He has brought me into a secret and intimate place with Him, where my heart lies open to His loving gaze and healing, and heaven is open all around me for a thousand loving conversations.

This morning, we talked about what is happening now.  Through our intimacy, I know He is my loving Father all the time, and all my value and identity come now from Him.  If anyone speaks a different word about me, I know immediately it is not true, and I run to hide in Him in safety.

This intimate relationship with God protects me so that when I encounter damaged people - including myself - I will not be damaged.  I will not "return evil for evil" (1 Peter 3:9 ) nor become "spotted by the world" (James 1:27).

But I am sensing a change in season, spiritually.  A first stage of my training is over, and I have had a big shock: when training is over and you start doing what you have been trained for, at first you will mostly fail.  The overwhelming feeling is the cry: 'What then was it all for?'

But He comes to comfort and reassure.  My failures and sins are all necessary and good, to complete everything God loves to change about me.

On the third day He rose again from the dead!

Today, no words - just Piero della Francesca's icon of Christ's resurrection which he painted for the town hall of his native town, Borgo San Sepolcro, in around 1458





Christ has died!  Christ is risen!  Christ will come again!

No 49: So that He Would be Crowned with Glory and Honour

All religions worship and glorify their god or gods, and most stress the transcendent and powerful character of their gods and the huge distance there is between them and a human being.   What differentiates the Way of Jesus' followers is scandalous to that kind of religious thinking.  We carry this revelation in our lives: that God's purpose is to welcome us into His intimate presence, no longer as servants but as sons and daughters.  We are to rejoin His family.  Jesus will share everything He is and has with us.  Our relationship to the Father is to be the same as Christ's.  The very Trinity - Father, Son and Spirit - is expanding to include all redeemed humanity.  Isaiah and Matthew named Jesus "Immanuel, which means God with us" (Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23); Jesus completed this revelation by saying: "I will take you to be with me that you also may be where I am" (John 14:3).  Where we are to be is in eternal communion with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  St Paul describes this as a mystery, in other words a truth kept hidden: "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27).

Jesus taught this mystery over and over again, in parables to crowds and more plainly to His disciples.  The parable of the prodigal son has the wayward son returning with the conventional religious attitude of humility and self-abasement: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men"; which his father cuts short and orders the utmost honour and status to be given him: "Quick!  Bring the best robe and put it on him.  Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Bring the fattened calf and kill it.  Let's have a feast and celebrate" (Luke 15:11-32).  On the eve of His passion and death, Jesus spoke at length to His disciples, preparing their hearts and minds for these future spiritual realities:  "Before long, the world will not see me any more, but you will see me.  Because I live, you also will live.  On that day you will realise that I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you" (John 14:19).  Perfect communion.

The Son has His Being in unending glory with the Father and Holy Spirit - forever and ever, world without end, amen.  But He left that behind to become one of us: "He made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness" (Colossians 2:7).  As a son of man, the glory He was crowned with through His passion, was only ever to be a means to this end: to bring us into the selfsame glory. 

In Jesus' great prayer in John 17, He says this to the Father: "I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one.  I in them and you in me" (John 17:22).  A more fitting title for this chapter, so near the end of Piper's book, might have been: 'So that We Would be Crowned with Glory and Honour'.

No 48: To Gain His Joy and Ours

A few days ago somebody said I was irrepressible.  He spoke it in anger and frustration; but my heart rejoiced at the word and received it as the tenderest encouragement and affirmation from my God, who really knows me.  It is a profound experience to see that sudden conjunction of heaven and earth, where the same words express sanctification from God and condemnation from man.  St John records an extraordinary instance of just this happening to Jesus:  "Caiaphas spoke up. "You know nothing at all!  You do not realise that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish."  He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation" (John 11:49-51).

In fact, these moments are glimpses of redemption in operation.  Not only spoken words, but events and circumstances may seem at first to be evil, but are then discovered as bringing good.  This is so familiar an experience, that everyone knows sayings like 'Every cloud has a silver lining'.  Usually, it is only with hindsight and subsequent events that we realise God's hidden plan and intent; but sometimes, as I said, we realise simultaneously what is going on in heaven and earth, and that is amazing.  Our relationship and intimacy with God has grown to the point that we are aware of both realms at once. 

This was clearly how Jesus experienced things.  For Him, it seems to have been a state of constant 'twin-awareness', not momentary gifts like it is for most of us.  He testified: "I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.  The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him" (John 8:28,29).  Even in the confusion and terror of his nightime arrest, He remained totally aware of heaven, saying: "Do you not think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?" (Matthew 26:53).  I believe all of us can aspire to be so changed and renewed in mind and spirit that such awareness and consciousness of God become increasingly normal in daily life.  In fact, I think that this is one way of describing what 'faith' is. 

In the verses from Hebrews which preface Piper's chapter today, it is clear to me that this is how Jesus experienced His crucifixion.  At the same time as his physical and emotional agony on earth, he experienced a heavenly joy.  The words chosen by the writer of this letter try to express this profound experience.  The Greek word which is translated 'set before' in verse 2, is the same word which is translated 'surrounded' in verse 1:  "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses ..." (Hebrews 12:1).  Jesus was surrounded by, caught up in, immersed in, drenched by, the Father's love and joy: at the same time as He was "enduring the cross and disregarding its shame" (Hebrews 12:2).

But not for the entire time.  To complete His identification with us, His beloved Bride, as the moment of death approached He suddenly lost all awareness of heaven and all intimacy with His Father.  This had never happened to Him before, and it wrenches agonising words from Him:  "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46).  Of course, His loving Father and our loving Father never had, and never does.

No 47: To Rescue Us from Final Judgment

To reflect properly upon this chapter, we would need to dig deeply into the Bible's shifting and evolving concept of the wrath of God.  For the moment, I  have nothing more to add to what I wrote in my very first Lenten post on this theme:  'Whatever His wrath means, we know that love is His abiding and defining attribute - they aren't opposites.  God doesn't stop loving, to be wrathful.  Clearly, like God's love itself, his wrath lies outside all categories of human experience.  The analogy He has taught me comes from His natural order.  If I am walking along a cliff and fall off, I will experience violent consequences because of gravity.  Nature isn't angry with me, gravity isn't vengeful.  But I am being punished for my action.'

Piper quotes a passage from Revelation, describing it as 'the most graphic glimpse of hell'.  As I have begun a little bit to experience visions and prophetic pictures, I have realised how we can seize on an expression of the spiritual realm and apply it grossly to our physical, material world.  It is rather akin to taking a dream literally - very young children do, but soon learn not to. 

There are several occasions recorded in the Gospels where we see Jesus dealing with this wrong way of receiving spiritual truth.  One is related in John 6:32-58.  Towards the end of a long altercation, Jesus says: "I tell you most emphatically, unless you can eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (verse 53), and He goes on to emphasise this message using the same words three more times.  Many of His disciples then said: "This is a hard teaching.  Who can accept it?"  No doubt their imaginations were filling with 'graphic' images.  Jesus replies: "Does this offend you?  The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing.  The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life" (John 6:61, 63).

It is interesting that we have no record of Jesus ever mentioning God's wrath in proclaiming His good news.  He even cut short the reading He had been given to recite in the Nazareth synagogue, omitting "... and the day of vengeance of our God" (Isaiah 61:2).  This makes me wonder why we should, either, when telling others our good news.  Isn't He our model? 

No 46: To Gather All His Sheep from Around the World

Reading this chapter, and reflecting upon the scriptural quotations in it about God's scattered children and Jesus' one flock, God reminded me of another scattering:

Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower which reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth...  The Lord said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.  Come let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."  So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. (Genesis 11:4-7)

We think divisions and misunderstandings between men a great evil, and work hard to overcome them - and so they are, and so we should.  But the truth is that God decided that we should be confused and scattered, to stop us uniting in rebellion and alienation from Him.  This challenges our simple ideas about God.

The Holy Spirit has linked two scatterings in my mind this morning: that first one in Babel and the second one in the Church, which has also produced division and misunderstanding.  Could it be that in the second as well as the first case, "the Lord scattered them" (Genesis 11:7)?  And for similar reasons?

Nevertheless, Jesus firmly prophesied:  "I have other sheep that are not of this sheepfold.  I must bring them also.  They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd" (John 10:16).  And He is praying this for us:  "May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me" (John 17:23).

One good purpose I discern in the separated denominations, churches, practices, theologies and points of view, is that it forces me to realise that God is greater than the Church, and Jesus stands over and distinct from us all.  Gerard W Hughes in his classic book 'God of Surprises' writes:

'The Church is a sign, and an effective sign, of God's presence among us.  God is not static.  The Church, if it is to be true to its meaning, cannot be static.  We can never adequately describe God: therefore we can never adequately describe the meaning and nature of the Church.  As an organisation of human beings, the Church must have structures, laws, discipline, a body of teaching and ways of communicating, but its structures are provisional and it must be constantly developing.  God is always greater, greater than the Church.  God is at work in all creation and dwells within each one.  God is at work across the Christian denominations, across the religions and in the hearts of those who profess to have no religion.  No religion can monopolise God, although most will try to do so, claiming that unless you follow their particular way, you cannot be saved.'

No 45: To Ransom People from every Tribe and Language and People and Nation

What God has done for us through Jesus' life, death, resurrection and return to the Father, is to ransom us!  To ransom us out of every prison of the mind and spirit so we can all love and serve and call God our Father too!  The new angelic songs St John heard and wrote down for us in Revelation 5:9-13 are some of the most sacred and faith-imparting words in the whole Bible.  That whole chapter brings together earth and heaven, God and man, joy and tears, passion and purpose, victory and poignancy.  Contemplating its visions, all my thinking stops.

This morning I found it next to impossible to still my heart in God in more than a momentary way.  My wife and I had been put through an awful experience four days ago, and despite every tender and affirming word since from my Lord, the memories of the ordeal crowd my mind and my heart speeds up as if for a physical battle.  But do we imagine it was any different for Jesus, through the ordeal of those ghastly inquisitions and show-trial and physical assault?  Do we think He was emotionless and impervious, so no sword could "pierce his soul" (Luke 2:35)?  Jesus bore the limitless love of God for us, and the sufferings of such love spurned were commensurately limitless.

I know my faithful God does not expect me to 'keep it together' under severe trial.  He will carry me, "as a father carries his son" (Deuteronomy 1:31).  He knows how I am formed, and how all my physical systems work - memory, adrenaline, emotion.  No matter what is happening and how I am reacting in the thick of it, no accusation from man or Satan will stick because I have been ransomed.  And this God has said to me this morning: "Your accusers are ransomed too."

We have been ransomed from the power of an enemy, from the forces of evil, from Satan, and from the law of sin and death which he prosecutes.  Never for a moment think of your heavenly Father, the God of all mercies, as your enemy - past, present or future.

No 44: To Destroy the Hostility between Races

Maybe it’s a sign of my age (59 later this year), but I have become much less caught up with the theory and theology of my Christian faith, and far more interested in how to get it to work out in me in practice.  This is probably why Piper’s book has not really been the book for me: it has been 100% theology, all rather abstract.  Such a book could only have been written by a man! 

Take this chapter as an example.  Looking through it, I have found just one indication of a slightly more practical nature, of what we might do about what he says: ‘Ritual and race are not the ground of joyful togetherness.’  Presumably, by race he means here that we should never value our neighbour more or less on grounds of his race.  That’s unquestionably good.  I would hope also that Piper means by ritual that we should never value our neighbour’s spiritual walk more or less on grounds of his rituals.  But I know from his chapter 13 that he really thinks that all rituals must be got rid of. 

In my reflections on that chapter, my main point was that none of us can live without ‘a certain way of doing things’; shared habits and practices and points of view in our particular church – in other words, traditions and rituals.  So abolition is clearly not the answer; and in fact churches which think they have, are the most self-deceived and unable to critique what they do.

In that chapter and this one, St Paul’s letter to the Galatians is most quoted.  What interests me this morning is how much St Paul changed and matured over his lifetime, on this issue.  Galatians is believed to be his earliest letter.  From its polemical tone, the bruising encounter in Jerusalem seems very fresh in his memory, and what is more, he writes unapologetically about the way he handled it.  He is clearly still in the thick of a battle, and we have to forgive him some very unholy words – look at Galatians 5:12.

By the time we get to Romans, which is maybe his last letter, his teaching in chapter 14 is compassionate and inclusive.  He now accepts how precious some traditions and rituals are to their practitioners, and urges Christians not to look down on each other on such grounds.  His decades as a father to many new churches have deepened his understanding of people, and deepened his trust in God’s hand on all of them, in all their diversity.  It’s a wonderful, wise chapter.

“Who are you to judge someone else’s servant?  To his own master he stands or falls.  And he will stand for the Lord is able to make him stand” (Romans 14:4).

“Why do you judge your brother?  Why do you look down on your brother?  For we all stand before God’s judgment seat” (Romans 14:10).

“Whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God.  Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves” (Romans 14:22).

No 43: To Unleash the Power of the Gospel

The beginnings, the first stirrings, of my faith seem like the first moments of my life: they happened in secret, deep within my mother's body, far from any possibility of recall, for no 'I' had yet been formed to remember.  As I grew inside her, even by the time of my birth when every part of me had been formed, no memories survive.  Were any laid down?  Surely so, but they exist now like deep foundations, invisible, but supporting everything else above ground and familiar.  So with faith: there may be beginnings we remember - key encounters with other believers, or a life crisis in which we cried out for help, or, rarely but wonderfully, an unbidden epiphany like St Paul's on the Damascus road.  But we can all trace a back history to those times, too, which to our new eyes reveal the activity and grace of God long before we realised it.  My spiritual life was gestating in secret before it came to my attention.

It was Bill Johnson, I think, who coined the term 'pre-believers' for those with no confession of faith yet.  I like that.  Not only does it capture a sturdy faith that God will one day reach them, but it also hints at the truth that He has already planted His seeds in them.  It is not really the clear-cut 'them and us', 'saved or not', 'in or out', which typifies attitudes to non-Christians in so many of us.  George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement, referred to a 'divine light' in every man.

Piper asks: why is the death of Christ not seen as good news by all?  To his two reasons, I would add another.  It may not yet be the right time for them; the seed still has hidden growing to do, or the right season has not yet come round.  This is why Jesus usually framed his teaching to mixed crowds in parables.  Some will understand the parable there and then because they are ready to do so; others will remember it without understanding it, and later understand when they are ready.

No 42: To Disarm the Rulers and Authorities

'The legal case is closed', as Piper writes in this inspiring chapter.  Exactly so. 

One of my favorite words of Self-revelation by God comes in the letter of St James: "Mercy triumphs over judgment" (James 2:13).  Judging is one of the things God can do and will do, but He has always preferred not to.  Jesus, teaching us as He always did to be like our Father, said: "Do not judge, or you too will be judged" (Matthew 7:1).  Indeed, if you think about it, forgiveness is 'breaking the rules'.  It is saying: I have a case here, but I'll drop it.  Not condescendingly, or keeping it on the books; but utterly renouncing it.  That's what God does: He abandons the mechanisms of law.  Why would He do this?  Out of pure love and grace, for "God is love" (1 John 4:16).

And because He can - it's quite easy for Him, for He can sovereignly do what He chooses with all His natural, moral and spiritual creation.  "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion" (Exodus 33:19).  "The Lord your God is a faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations [i.e. forever, poetically] of those who love him and keep his commands" (Deuteronomy 7:9).

But it is not at all easy for us.  In fact, it was impossible.  Our first parents chose to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, rather than the tree of life; and ever since then, laws of good and evil have dictated how our hearts and minds work.  It was to rescue us from this " law of sin and death", as St Paul mystically writes in Romans 8, that God came to live amongst us as an ordinary Jewish man, Jesus of Nazareth.  Jesus perfectly embodied God, and this is what He told us about God's eternal intention: "I do not come to judge the world, but save it" (John 12:47).

I watch, and receive faith.  I watch God on the Cross forgiving and abandoning any case against me, when that crime of all crimes should have surely given Him one.  I receive, finally, faith to be forgiven, accepted and loved - no matter what my past.  My heart and mind are healed and, finally, it becomes possible for me to become like God and no longer to judge.  Then I find myself in the Kingdom of Heaven, where there is no judgment (cf Matthew 7:1).

No 41: To Secure Our Resurrection from the Dead

There's a dramatic moment in St Paul's life when he artfully manages to split the Sanhedrin down the middle by suddenly saying: "I stand on trial because of my hope in the resurrection of the dead!" (Acts 23:6).  At which point "there was a great uproar" - proving that Jews too could sometimes fall out over theology.  It's not just a Christian speciality.

Jesus said to Martha, grieving for her brother Lazarus' death: "I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will not die forever" (John 11:26).  Jesus brought several people back to life, to this life as we know it; and so did Elijah and Elisha before Him.  But they more seem to be examples of 'extreme healing'.  None left any account of what they experienced, if anything. 

Jesus was the first man to die and then return to life with a body of quite a different sort: as physical as ours, not an apparition or ghost, but not confined by the laws of space-time. He could walk through walls!  Disappear and be somewhere else instantly!  So He has provided us with the first real glimpse of what our future resurrected life may look like.

Jesus always said He would take His life up again (e.g. John 10:17), in other places it is said that the Father raised Him to life (e.g. Galatians 1:1).  Both are true because Jesus and the Father are One.  In Jesus, our God totally identified our fate with His Own.  When God suffered death on our behalf and came out on the other side in glorious new life, it has ever since been possible to believe fully His determined intention to rescue us completely and eternally.  Jesus' forefathers did experience God's forgiveness, favour and salvation: but what God planned for them in eternity remained an open question for them.  The only answer they saw then was death, though they hoped for much more.

This is why St Paul calls death "the last enemy" (1 Corinthians 15:26).  When Jesus rose from the dead, complete faith was finally given to us that God would never loose His firm, loving hold on us, "even though we die" (cf John 11:26).

No 40: So that We would be with Him Immediately after Death

It's interesting that the matter of what happens the moment after we die, which people everywhere long to be sure about, remains quite elusive in the Bible - even allowing for the way more becomes revealed as we read from the earlier to the later books.  Piper quotes exclusively from St Paul; always a pity, in my view: it's better to add up a variety of biblical testimonies, for each will only see a part of the truth.

I used to find the 'soul sleep' interpretation made most sense to me; .  It was so odd to conceive of 'disembodied souls'; our resurrection is our great hope; this earth, one day renewed, was made to be our home, not heaven.  But I have long since felt that this was taking too rational an approach and, in particular, it didn't fit everything in the Bible.  It also didn't fit the 'near-death' visions many have experienced - although I regard those very much as 'secondary evidence': the mind can play strange tricks.

My son Anthony, now a Roman Catholic, takes very seriously this 'in-between time' as Piper aptly describes it.  He does not believe all spiritual influence for our salvation ceases on death, so when he comes to see us he usually walks across the field to the graves of my sister, mother and father, and offers up prayers for their salvation.  I find that incredibly moving.

So I let apparently divergent pointers in Scripture co-exist in my heart and mind.  I feel no urgent need to know; the Spirit doesn't encourage me to ask.  Perhaps, like the great scientific conundrum of how relativity fits with quantum mechanics, a uniting truth exists which we simply need different mental 'software' to process. 

What I am confident about, is this promise from Jesus: "In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.  I am going there to prepare a place for you" (John 14:2).  Actually, I like not knowing exactly what will happen next.  I like adventures.

No 39: To Free Us from the Fear of Death

Through Piper's book so far, it feels to me as if there has been an 'elephant in the room', whom Piper finally turns his attention to.  I am surprised he has taken so long.  That elephant is Satan - that mysterious power in spiritual realms whose name, a Hebrew one, means 'accuser'.

We are introduced to him right at the beginning of the Bible: when God creates Adam and Eve, Satan is already there (Genesis 3:1-15).  The Garden of Eden was not quite the carefree paradise it is usually depicted - there was an evil influence which our first parents had to face.  When they listened to Satan's version of reality rather than God's, they placed themselves under his influence.  We are composite miracles of creation, flesh and spirit interfused, creating our own descendants out of our own bodies: how this influence endures forever down the generations is now much clearer to our understanding, through our recent science of DNA.

As with Adam and Eve, Satan acted swiftly on the news of Jesus' birth: firstly by trying to kill Him by getting Herod to order the slaughter of all young boys in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16), and secondly by testing Him in the desert the moment after the Father confirmed His Son's mission (Matthew 3:16-4:11).

Jesus makes it clear what His prime objective is, when He cooly picks apart the accusation that He was acting for Satan: "How can Satan drive out Satan?  If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.  If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.  And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come.  In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can rob his house.  I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them" (Mark 3:23-28).  Jesus was going to overpower Satan and dispossess him of all his power and influence over mankind.  When His 72 disciples returned astonished at their power over demons, Jesus said:  "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.  I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you."  St John simply writes: "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work" (1 John 3:8).

Contrary to what Piper says, the devil has no power to damn.  God is the One and Only Judge of all mankind.  Amongst the Trinity, this work will be done by the Son:  "The Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father" (John 5:22-23).

Jesus came to settle a score with the devil, not with God.  God's intentions have always been loving towards us, and His single purpose from the beginning has been to save us from the power of Satan, whom Jesus called "the prince of this world" (e.g. John 12:31).  God has always known that we cannot do this ourselves; nor would there be any victory for God simply to swat Satan into oblivion, as He always could.  A Man had to win the victory, reversing the defeat of another man, long ago.

No 38: To Create a Band of Crucified Followers

We each see different things in that image of Jesus crucified, although much will be shared, because at each point in our life our view from that point is different.  I wrote yesterday about how we have to experience suffering before Christ's suffering really strikes home in our heart and becomes life-saving.  The same applies across all experiences in our life - we are all on a journey, and at different points along the way.  This is why the first believers just called their new life with God 'the Way'.  Our diversity of experience, of age, of our pasts, of our spiritual maturity, of our reasoning capacity, makes mutual understanding and empathy difficult.

But Piper's theme today is the ground where all believers stand completely undivided from each other, for it is about how the message of the Cross actually gets to work in me by setting me free from the worst tyrant I ever have to face: my own self, my 'ego'.  When I venture into this interior territory, I find myself fighting the hardest battles. 

But wherever we are along the Way, this work of the Cross, this dying to ourselves, is the practical answer to our misunderstandings, disagreements and antagonisms.  It truly enables me "in honour, to prefer one another" (Romans 12:10) because there's no point any longer in asserting myself.  God has something far better in store: "Humble yourself under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time" (1 Peter 5:6).

No 37: To Call Us to Follow His Example of Lowliness and Costly Love

To recognise and honour the redemptive power of suffering is by no means unknown before or outside the influence of the Christian message, as we find out if we read the literature of other cultures.  But Christianity places it at its heart, and reveals something previously unknown to mankind: that God Himself suffers - has suffered - before we ever do.  That is why the simplest and most complete expression of the gospel is and always has been the image of Jesus crucified.  It has been painted and sculpted and filmed, hung outside and inside churches and homes and places of government.  St Paul said: "I resolved to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2).  Jesus prophesied: "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself" (John 12:32).

We have to go through suffering ourself to discover the transformational power of this part of the gospel.  Many of us welcomed the message of God's love and forgiveness, and entered life in His Kingdom, without noteworthy prior suffering; nevertheless Father God doesn't hold back His intimacy and blessing to us.  Life may go on in calm waters, in a well-governed era in our native country.  But that doesn't last forever: "Man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward" as one of Job's friends philosophically observed (Job 5:8).  If we care about others, there is suffering to be witnessed all the time, perhaps in other lands.  Suffering is well known to every son of Adam, and it raises the hardest questions about the goodness of our existence.  It comes up quickly in conversations with unbelievers.

Jesus' life and death tested His faith in His Father's ultimate good intentions to the absolute limit.  He was without sin, so there were no grounds at all for persecuting Him.  Whatever was done or said to Him, He forebore from retaliating or calling upon heaven's hosts to do so.  Like His Father, He never wavered from love.  He stood firm until He died, entrusting His future and His fragile band of disciples to God.

When we face suffering, His faith will be imparted into us to have exactly "the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5), and the same divine power to do so. And then we will have the extraordinary privilege of co-working with Jesus, in our sufferings, to redeem the world.  This is one of St Paul's most faith-stretching revelations:  "Now I am full of joy to be suffering for you. In my own body I am doing my share of what has to be done to make Christ’s sufferings complete. This is for His body which is the Church" (Colossians 1:24).

No 36: To Create a People Passionate for Good Works

This is a very heart-felt chapter.  I desire more passion, more zeal - and I know that is a prayer God is always answering.  What I have deeply learnt in the last 5 years is that it has to be passion which He plants and grows.  He is a gardener: He must make space for His new plants by taking out weeds which He hasn't planted, and especially ones which look very like His new plants: passions in me which seem very moral and worthy, but have actually been nurtured by myself. 

I have been able to discover these by allowing God to tell me about my true motives.  Ever since I was taught by Mark and Patti Virkler to recognise how God speaks to us, I have been able to listen to Him teach me in remarkable detail.  It's every believer's birthright, and there's nothing more thrilling than imparting the same faith to somebody else, and watch the wonder in their eyes as exactly the same experience begins.  For me, the Holy Spirit seems to take the lead, although either or all of the Three Persons of God may start the conversation, and They often speak collectively as 'We'.

Most of what God has wished to talk to me about has been to do with my heart, and the Spirit has graciously dug down into it to bring to light the things He wishes to heal, change or remove.  At key moments, He has arranged for me to hear the same things in another way, so my faith in the way I am hearing Him is maintained and strengthened.  These other ways include prophecies given to me by somebody else, what I 'happen' to be reading in a book, the significance of circumstances and natural events, and, of course, the Scriptures.  The Virklers, echoing centuries of spiritual tradition, strongly recommend having one or more spiritual advisers who will read one's journalling and hear independently from God about it.  I've been a bit hit-and-miss at organising that, but by a mix of Susan, my wife, and various other friends, I don't keep anything to myself.  I would like particularly to thank Martin Shreeve in my church here, who accepted this role early on in 2008-9, when I was starting out.

One personal prophecy from Nick Pengelly on 31 May 2008 has been a vital waymarker for me, and brings me back to today's chapter.  He had a picture of a Morris Minor car* which had been completely restored; it looked the same as when it was first built, but every single part of it had been replaced.  God is replacing my passions with ones which are still 'me', but are now rooted and nourished by Him.

* My father had a Morris Minor for 12 years, which he sold when I was 10, and I loved.  He also gave my beloved sister one in the last year before she died aged 20, when I was 14.

No 35: To Give Marriage its Deepest Meaning

I have heard my wife Susan say a number of times that if a husband really loved his wife like Christ does, no wife would have any difficulty submitting to him!  Piper's final paragraph is a moving expression of what that might look like.

But marriage is also an institution which fits into the larger picture of a society, whose culture defines roles permitted to men and women, and deemed acceptable.  Across a huge range of historical time and cultural variety, the Bible records the engagement of the people of God with the different cultures it lived amongst or was influenced by - from earliest tribal matriarchy to the dominance of patriarchy, from the family clan culture of Abraham to Egypt, Canaan, Babylon, then back to the Land of Israel but soon influenced by Greece and then Rome.  St Paul, of course, was writing to people living in Hellenistic culture, and in the international language which it spread, Greek.

So Paul teaches practically.  He doesn't decry slavery: he advises how both slave-owner and slave may engage with that social institution in a godly way.  I think the consensus among Christians is now universal that slavery falls far short of the dignity of God's image, and Christian-influenced cultures have banned it.  But when the campaigns against it began in the 18th and 19th century, Christians lined up on both sides of the argument, because slave-owners could point to Scripture and say "The Bible clearly teaches it".  And it does! 

Nor does St Paul decry patriarchy.  He may not have been able to imagine an alternative - just as no-one could imagine an economy without slaves at that time.  But the Kingdom of God "advances" (Matthew 11:12), and the leavening of God's word has brought about huge cultural changes since that day.  The issue of slavery has been settled, after a long struggle.  Our culture has been engaged in a similar, now century-old struggle over the equal standing of men and women as the image of God.  Some hold fast to the prescriptions in Scripture from past, vanished cultures; others respond to the advancing direction of the Holy Spirit, Who is always changing us and changing our societies.  By faith, they are building a future society which reflects more closely the promise that "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).

Transitional times are always confusing to live through.  Jesus places great importance on "interpreting the signs of the times" (Matthew 16:3), so it is apparently possible for us to do that.  But prophets can get it wrong too.  Ultimately, as it says somewhere in the Bible (my readers, help me out here!) the test of a prophecy is if it turns out to be true.  I am personally at confident rest within my heart and mind that the day will come when the consensus among Christians is universal that no area of service is barred to women.  Christian marriages will become beautiful expressions of this new, fuller life for all God's children.

No 34: To Enable Us to Live by Faith in Him

These days, absolutely as I write, God is taking me through a great difficulty, and He is staying my heart on Jesus' experience through Passiontide.  It is an extraordinary thing to undergo.  How well I know St Paul's mystical words from Galatians 2:20, which Piper heads this chapter with:  "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 faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me".  But this, like everything else in the Bible, is not be nodded to as some kind of saving 'tenet of faith'; it was written down in order to impart by faith the same experience in us. 

I am so glad for the years during which I have read and re-read Scripture; for all that time, God has been sowing His word, which has lain apparently dormant, waiting for the events in my life which will cause it to push through the soil - just as Jesus described in His parable: "A man scatters seed on the ground.  Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how ..." (Mark 4:26-29).  The events I am going through now - it feels at times as if Jesus is opening His most private thoughts and experiences up to me.  I think I now see why you find those strange statues of Jesus in Catholic churches with His heart painfully exposed.

This morning, I was resting in God before getting up, listening to the wonderful CD 'Sound of Glory', recorded by Jeff Jansen and Julian and Melissa Wiggins.  As I was listening to the part where Jeff reads Deuteronomy 33:7-23, the Spirit arrested me particularly at verse 20:  "But you cannot see my face, for no-one may see me and live".  And He showed me that it was not because of Moses' sinfulness or creaturely frailty that he would not survive seeing God's face.  Nor did it mean that he would be struck dead there and then - any more than Adam and Eve were, after disobeying God.  What He showed me was that the pain and suffering and total, undefended awareness of it which Moses would see in God's face would rob Moses of the will to live - his capacity to go on living in faith, hope and love.  God had to protect Moses from that.

So this morning, I have seen something totally new to me in Jesus' death.  He now hides us in His heart so we can become absolutely united with the suffering face of God, and still live.  Thank you, Lord, for Your living word to me today.

No 33: To Make His Cross the Ground of all Our Boasting

It's possible for Christians to brandish the cross, literally or verbally, as a kind of stick to beat the heads of unbelievers; and for their message to come across as: 'Agree with what we tell you about the Cross, or you go to hell'.  But this attitude is worlds removed from how Jesus approached people.  As an evangelising technique it may have apparently worked when Christianity dominated society's outlook on things, but nowadays it doesn't work - and I for one am glad it doesn't.  Anyone 'converted' that way, then finds it very difficult to 'unlearn' the angry, judgmental picture of God it conveys and, ironically, to discover how to live in the true grace of the Cross.

Fundamentally, the Cross imparts to us the fullest revelation of Who God is and has always been - although until that moment, it had been harder for mankind to perceive that.  True personal faith always has to be based upon personal revelation, however helpful theological thinking can later be: "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven" (Matthew 16:17).

So, what does the Cross tell me about my God?  All my remaining days will be filled with finding out more, and the thought of that causes a great joy to arise in my heart.  'How can it be, that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?'  That You give all of Yourself for the human race? You allowed nothing to stand in the way as You reclaimed Your Bride? You never, despite what we thought, intended to "count men's sins against them" (2 Corinthians 5:19)?

A few saw this before the Cross, and we cherish the amazing moments of such revelation which are scattered through the Hebrew scriptures.  For the rest of us, it takes the sight of Jesus dying and rising to open our eyes to "how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ ... and all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:18-19).  The Cross isn't a stick, it is 'salve for our eyes' (cf Revelation 3:18) so that they are opened to God's true nature and intentions for us.

Postscript - A plea for non-religious language

Normal English attaches only a negative meaning to the word 'boast'.  That is confirmed in any dictionary you might check.  It really sounds odd to pick it to translate the original Greek, and it's only our familiarity with religious language which allows us to give it a positive meaning here in Galatians 6:14.  Kauchaomai was a word St Paul really liked and used 35 times - not including his use dozens of times of the derived nouns kauchema and kauchesis.  There are only two other uses, both in the letter of St James.  It actually means 'to glory in', with a generally positive sense, although in some contexts that can imply self-glorification, ie boasting.  The King James translators usually used 'to glory in'.  We may need to find a more modern phrase - but, please, not 'boast'. 

In the NIV, it gets even worse: in Romans 2:17, the translators render that verse: "Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God ..."  This is so tendentious - verging on the anti-semitic.  St Paul's much more neutral words are: "Now, you are called a Jew, and you stand upon the Torah, and you glory in God ..."  His true meaning is the reverse of what the NIV says.

No 32: To Enable Us to Live for Christ and not Ourselves

I confess to being a bit baffled by Piper's first three paragraphs - these 'troubling' difficulties seem manufactured and beside the point.  I struggle to get inside his mind here.  I just keep firmly in mind that "in Christ, God is reconciling the world to himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19), in other words God Himself was undergoing crucifixion; and all is then clear that it should somehow ultimately be for God's glory.

I'm not sure Piper's right to say that the essence of sin is our failure to glorify God.  That's one of sin's results.  Don't we glimpse the essence back in Eden, in our first parents' doubt and distrust in God's good intentions towards them?  And it has gone on from there: man tends not to believe his best interests coincide with God's; and, as I now think Piper may be getting at, he objects in his heart to God glorifying Himself and he thinks: 'Isn't God being rather Self-centred?'  You do meet reactions like that in many people.

Another truth I keep firmly in mind is that God is love (1 John 4:16).  When you love somebody, you make yourself vulnerable to being hurt by them.  It is, and always has, been the same with God.  Our Lover has constantly searched for His Beloved, and He has grieved for her wretched and lonely state.  Only in a most abstract, primordial way is God Self-sufficient.  Once He created man, in His image, the object of His infinite affections and love, He no longer had only Himself to think about.  His great Self-giving had begun, bringing with it all the disappointment, frustrations and pain which the Scriptures uniquely express.

His love led Him to breach every distance and every barrier which had built up between Him and His beloved children, and to turn Himself into one of us; He "made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross!" (Philippians 2:7-8).  I know He retained reserves of heavenly power - "more than twelve legions of angels" (Matthew 26:53) as Jesus put it - but He would not use them.  The glorious outcome He saw was our homecoming into His Kingdom, to be consummated in a perfect union and a marriage.

In marriage, all is shared.  God will no longer be constrained to reserve all His glory for Himself.  This is what Jesus speaks into being, in His prayer before His arrest:  "My prayer is not for them alone.  I pray for all those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.  May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me" (John 17:20-22).

No 31: So that We would Die to the Law and Bear Fruit for God

Tread carefully when you have a go following St Paul's deeper speculations!  And the material Piper is largely basing this chapter on is a good example.  A charming personal touch in one of St Peter's letters reassures us that it's OK to get confused:  "... just as our dear brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom that God gave him.  He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters.  His letters contain some things that are hard to understand ..." (2 Peter 3:15-16).

One of the great difficulties is the word 'law'.  St Paul jumps around several different meanings, sometimes in the same sentence.  Even the original Greek is of little help, because neither Greek nor English have the terms in Hebrew which shaped St Paul's thinking.  If you use the NIV, you may have noticed the word is sometimes capitalised 'Law'.  This is an attempt by the translators to clarify what St Paul means - remember there are no capital letters (or punctuation!) in the original manuscripts - but they don't always get it right.  In one place, St Paul himself looks for another phrase:  "He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us ..." (Colossians 2:14); or he amplifies it as "works of the law" (eg Romans 3:28).  To get a flavour of what I'm talking about, read the first 8 verses of Psalm 119, where you have all six distinct Hebrew words, for which the NIV team chose five English words - and some of those rarely used.

Of all these six words, the really important one to get a grasp of is 'torah'.  This is what the translators have in mind when they wrote 'Law', capital L.  One of the commonest criticisms of St Paul from teachers of Judaism is that he misunderstood what they mean by 'torah'.  Now I don't for a moment believe that is true - but they are reading him through the prism of Christian theologians' failure to get into his Jewish mind, ironically.

The best fit in English religious terms is the phrase 'the word of God'.  By that, we gather a wide range of meanings: how He guides us, what He has generally commanded, what He wanted preserved in writing, how He speaks to us personally.  It is pretty much the same with 'torah'.  Its root meaning is a word 'yarah', which variously means to aim (eg an arrow), to lay a foundation, to water, to point out (ie with the hand), to guide, and to teach.  Another derived word means 'parent'.  The same root begins the name 'Jerusalem'.  So is this the 'law' St Paul has in mind, with his strange talk of 'dying to the law' or 'no longer being under the law'?  Obviously not.  How should we ever benefit from straying out of the gracious path of God's guidance?  St Paul would have exactly echoed Jesus before his critics: "Do not think I have come to destroy the law and the prophets; I have not come to destroy, but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17).

Neither Jesus nor St Paul ever taught anything which altered God's unchanging intentions regarding mankind and law - but their critics thought they were, and to this day, some theologians think they did.  Our relationship with God was never based upon a set of commandments; it has always been based upon His love and forgiveness - His free choice.  Before I think about what Jesus' death and resurrection really, and uniquely, achieved, I love to remember this story from Luke 18:9-14:

"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself ... but the tax collector stood at a distance.  He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner'.  I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God."

'No escape from the curse of the law' - in Piper's words?  Whoops - that tax collector just did!

No 30: That We might Die to Sin and Live to Righteousness

When I try to understand Paul, and the rather dense theological reasoning which Piper goes in for - especially in this and the next chapter - the question that arises for me is this:  Is it working for you?  Perhaps my blog will cheer up those for whom it isn't.  Let me repeat the comforting word I heard when writing blog No 10:  "It's OK if you don't understand it, or even like it."

Because the wonderful thing about the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus is its utter simplicity.  You don't have to add much explanation to 'get it'.  "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself" (John 12:32), Jesus prophesied.  St John adds his comment that this was "to show the kind of death he was going to die" (John 12:33); but Jesus' words take in His resurrection and ascension too.  You cannot speak of one, without the other two.  St Peter, staggeringly inspired at the feast of Pentecost, wraps all three up so powerfully and succinctly that I expect preachers have studied it ever since as a model for announcing the gospel (Acts 2:22-36).  It's all there.  I can do the same:  tell people what things Jesus did and taught, the terrible circumstances of His death, the astounding reversal of His resurrection, and then His full unveiling as "Lord and Christ" by ascending home to the Father.  I do think we owe it to our neighbours to put this account before them in as unadorned a way as possible, nearer to the experience of its first witnesses.  The Holy Spirit did the rest then: do we need to leave more to Him now? 

As soon as they could, Christians began to use pictures of these events, for pictures bring us nearer to watching what happened at the time.  I am sure that there is still no substitute for pictures.  The enduring icon of our faith is the crucifix - not just the empty cross.  A statue or painting of the Son of God hanging crucified speaks more powerfully than a hundred sermons.  I'd like to see churches make a big investment in photographs and film.  You cannot deny that this is a perfect fit with modern culture, where images proliferate.

No 29: To Free Us from the Slavery of Sin

Those who have been following my blog will know that I part company with John Piper over his picture of relations between God and  mankind in general.  He knits together a theology which seems to exclude any relationship outside the fold of Christianity and turns God into an enemy to whom an appeasing ransom must be paid before he lifts his condemnation over our whole race.  The best corrective to this point of view is to cultivate an open gaze at the whole sweep of Scripture and see how much of it simply does not fit Piper's ideas.  This isn't as easy as it sounds, because we all have organising minds which prefer to pay most attention to the things which are familiar - the things which fit the organising framework we already have. 

This is why prayer is so vital, and a particular way of praying which some call 'contemplative'.  In essence, this is giving myself a lot of time with God, time in which I am not thinking what He is like, or petitioning Him about mine or others' needs , or fretting over my sins.  It is a place of open gaze, open mind, and above all, open heart.  Nor is this as easy as it sounds: have a go, and you will immediately experience how strongly your mind objects to being 'stood down', and how self-obsessed your heart is.  But there is a wealth of practical advice out there, disciplines developed over centuries which gradually re-train us to become fully present before the Ultimate Reality of God, and therefore fully "transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2), and fully able to "love one another, for love comes from God" (1 John 4:7).

This morning, as I lay worshipping before rising, the Spirit repeated to me these words of Jesus: "Watch and pray" (Matthew 26:41); and then began teaching me more about what He meant.  I had always separated this into two things: that we should keep watch and we should pray.  Keeping watch meant staying informed about what's happening around me; and praying about those things.  And that is good, and necessary - Jesus was amazed at how the nation's leaders could miss what was obvious: "You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times" (Matthew 16:3). 

But what I saw this morning was that in the words "Watch and pray", Jesus is giving us a glimpse into what prayer is like for Him. Jesus always watched as He prayed.  What - or Whom - was He watching?  His heavenly Father.  So Jesus was able to say: "I am telling you what I have seen in the Father's presence" (John 8:38); "It is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work" (John 14:10); "I speak nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me" (John 8:28).

Before God speaks or acts, He has prepared the way (cf John 14:2).  This morning's revelation was also a huge encouragement to me, because I also recognised that this is how the Spirit has been schooling me these past 5 years, without my realising.  And this was also what happened in 1980 before my baptism in the Holy Spirit, a key moment in my life.  At that time, I was filled with such an inarticulate longing and dissatisfaction inside that I carved out some time each morning before our two young sons woke up, to try and pray.  Often still half asleep, all I could do was just be with God, with no idea what to say or ask for, and no awareness of anything happening.  Without realising it then, I now believe I had stumbled into the open field where God can do everything - and He did.

No 28: To Free Us from the Futility of our Ancestry

In the last 150 years Western culture has given birth to the science of psychology, investigated how life has evolved on earth, explored the strange uncertain world of relativity and quantum physics, learnt how DNA influences our heredity, and made huge advances in understanding how our brains - our consciousness - works.  The impact and influence of these areas of knowledge can scarcely be overstated: we think, and think about man, very differently as a result. 

This morning, I found Piper's observation about a new congruity between modern and ancient thinking very interesting.  I think it is new: in between, our culture embarked upon a long love-affair with rationalism.  Philosophers and scientists really thought they would soon understand how the universe worked, which was conceived like a vast clockwork mechanism determined precisely by knowable laws.  In religion, everything outside that box was rejected, and blinkered scholars got to work 'reconstructing' biblical texts with anything miraculous stripped out.

I love hearing about all these new, mind-blowing developments in scientific thinking.  Physicists talk like priests nowadays: they speak of searching for the 'God particle' and 'heaven's field'!  Where they now spend their days thinking and researching has expanded into a vast 'open field' of possibilities and mystery.  Sounds familiar?  "The wind blows where it pleases.  You hear its sound; but you cannot tell where it comes from nor where it is going" (John 3:8).

As Piper points out, these new insights have brought us closer to the outlook of the Bible, which recognised the reality of evil spirits, the power of words to curse or bless, and of spiritual consequences down the generations.  And again and again, using a variety of words, the first followers of Jesus testified how their lives were starting again on a new basis, free from everything in their 'old life' which held them back in fear.  Jesus' freedom and fearlessness had become theirs too.  And believers ever since have testified that this goes much, much deeper than the inspiration of His example: mysteriously, as I contemplate my God dying for me on the Cross, I am changed and healed and united with Him.

Over the past 5 years, I have at last connected effectively with this process of spiritual transformation and personal change.  Or I should say 'reconnected'.  Because God did many changes in me when I first believed, aged 21.  But I see a long period of over 20 years when little changed.  I'm not negative about that period - I was a husband and father, I acquired important skills and experience, and I absorbed the Bible in detail.  I accept the need for fallow seasons, when God still works but in a less visible way. 

This came to an end in 2007: and I may consider copying my testimony about that time onto a separate blog post.  But what I grasped then, initially through the ministry of the Arnotts from TACF, were practical ways to understand, identify, confess and receive freedom from strongholds of fear and unbelief - all made possible by a profound encounter with God's unconditional love and forgiveness.

No 27: To Become a Sympathetic and Helpful Priest

This is an inspiring chapter.  It hadn't occurred to me that by not 'giving in', Jesus would actually have undergone stonger temptation than we ever do. 

The revelation through Christ of God's "sympathy with our weaknesses" (Hebrews 4:15) did not mean God had changed His attitude towards us. In His very first words and decisions with Adam, Eve and Cain, He dealt with what had gone wrong compassionately and positively, and never distanced Himself from them.  At the end of Israel's 40 years in the desert, Moses told them: "There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place" (Deuteronomy 1:31).

Reading the exodus of Israel from Egypt takes us deeply into the heart of God and equally deeply into our human condition.  God makes it so clear that He is acting purely out of His love, without any regard for Israel's 'worthiness': "The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were greater than other peoples, for you were the least of all peoples.  But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers, that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharoah king of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 7:7-8).  On the other hand, He is only able to walk intimately with a very few of them: Moses, particularly.  Why was it possible for Moses?  What had happened to him?  After all, he was a man like us, who could and did sin - very seriously.  We ask the same questions later about David.  Moses and David and Paul - all murderers, all so intimate with God.  Of the people of Israel as a whole, "... they stayed at a distance and said to Moses: Speak to us yourself and we will listen.  But do not have God speak to us or we will die" (Exodus 20:19-19).  Even when Moses assures them that God means no ill-will towards them by His volcanic exhibition, they do not believe him - or God.  In the end, after the awful event of the golden calf, we read some of the saddest words in the whole Bible:  "Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey.  But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.  When the people heard these distressing words, they began to mourn and no-one put on any ornaments.  For the Lord had said to Moses: Tell the Israelites: You are a stiff-necked people.  If I were to go with you even for a moment, I might destroy you" (Exodus 33:3-5). 

It seems that there was a fatal flaw in the people which meant God's Presence was dangerous to them, despite God's perfect love towards them.  Why wasn't it dangerous for Moses?  All alike were sinners. 

From the actions God then took, across the whole sweep of Israel's history, one thing is clear: He remains wholly focussed upon saving mankind.  Those, like Moses and David, who realised this and realised all their sins were forgiveable and forgotten in God's ocean of grace and love, stepped right into His Presence and Kingdom.  Those who for whatever reason couldn't do that, were still "carried, as a father carries his son".  We shall never skewer in words the mystery of how the Cross does its work; but as Jesus said: "By its fruit you will recognise it" (Matthew 7:20).  The fruit of the Cross is millions of people being able, as they never could before, to trust God's grace, forgiveness, love and personal choice and delight in them - and join Moses, David and Jesus in God's Kingdom.

No 26: To Bring the Old Testament Priesthood to an End and Become the Eternal High Priest

It seems to us such a remote era when animal sacrifices played a vital part in religion - of Israel, and everywhere else.  I find it difficult to place myself back in those days and culture and see why all this is so important to the writer to the Hebrews.  But maybe the main reason why it got chosen for the canon of scripture - what the Holy Spirit wanted to be remembered for all time - is to ensure we understood the marvel of the whole story and the marvel of the one, consistent God who has been our Lover and Protector and Counsellor throughout.  And of course, missionaries are still finding cultures who sacrifice animals.

Reading about it in the Old Testament, especially the Psalms, I don't get the impression Piper seems to, that Israel found the temple sacrificing gloomy.  Festivals were occasions of huge rejoicing, celebration and feasting!  David exclaims: "At his tabernacle I sacrifice with shouts of joy; I sing and make music to the Lord" (Psalm 27:6).  When he brought the ark back to Jerusalem he was absolutely ecstatic and ordered the procession to sacrifice a bull and a calf every six steps of the way!

We know that God instructed such animal sacrifices, so they were good; yet He also reveals an apparently contradictory attitude towards them.  Through Isaiah He said: "The multitude of your sacrifices - what are they to me?  I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats" (Isaiah 1:11).  The shock of such words is palpable, and there's much more as we read on.

The explanation is this: God allowed (and regulated) sacrifices like these because mankind needed them.  God forgives, and He has no need of anything, no 'quid pro quo'.  It is we, prisoners of "the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2), who cannot accept forgiveness unless there's a penalty and punishment somewhere.  Retribution is hard-wired into our hearts - until they are "sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience" (Hebrews 10:22).

In fact, we do have blood sacrifice back amongst us in the UK, a veritable epidemic going on all around us - but you might not have recognised it for what it is.  Hospitals deal with a steady stream of people coming in for treatment for cutting themselves.  They are people who are the most troubled by sin, who are being abused, who are suffering - the most wounded inside.  As they will tell us if we ask them, wounding themselves outside brings some kind of temporary relief inside.  Most of them are young, and not yet hardened in heart to life's pains.  Most of them are girls.  Ask God for yourself why that should be.

Perhaps for many of us now, this modern form of blood sacrifice provides a key to understand that remote era of animal sacrifices, and what the writer to the Hebrews is speaking of.  "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29).  God has met all our need for some sort of sacrifice by letting Himself be one.  The best thing we can do for that young girl, bleeding from her self-inflicted wounds, is to show her a picture of Jesus, bleeding from the whiplashes, and nails, and spear thrust - just like she is.

No 25: To Become for Us the Place where We Meet God

This, surely, is what it is all about: our reunion with God in a relationship perfectly restored in mutual delight and purpose, love and peace.  Everything Jesus did and said and embodied, had this end in view.  "Anyone who has seen me, has seen the Father" (John 14:9).  So everything Father God has ever done and said, has had this end in view.

There is no question, but that St John looks the deepest into this, of all the New Testament writers.  Church tradition has it that he wrote his gospel at the end of his life.  St John was able to recall and understand the most deeply, because he had had his whole, long life to experience his union with God.  Many of the conversations with Jesus which St John records are so personal, so 'interior', that their subject matter cannot be the stuff of public preaching.  This is why it didn't find its way into the other three gospels, whose content was shaped around the needs of the first evangelising communities.

Jesus lived His life in perfect union with His Father.  "I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him" (John 8:28-29).  When He says that, my jaw drops - but I believe Him.  Many don't.  Faith has to be planted in us by God to last forever.  Some come along for a while 'because that makes sense to me now' - and then later, something else makes more sense.

How does Jesus reunite us with Father God?  By transferring to us His Own perfect relationship with His Father.  St John even captures the moment when this first began to happen.  The one God chose first to confer this on was the extraordinary St Mary Magdalene.  Jesus said to her:  "I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (John 20:17).

No 24: To Give Us Confident Access to the Holiest Place

As Piper describes, the tabernacle of Moses contained a hierarchy of spaces which we read about in Exodus 25 to 27: an outer enclosed courtyard, the tabernacle tent itself within it, a curtained-off part of that tent called the Holy of Holies, and finally a wooden chest inside the Holy of Holies called the ark of the covenant.  Detailed instructions controlled access to each space, and how those who were allowed to should prepare, or consecrate, themselves.  When a permanent building - the temple - was later built by Solomon it followed the same hierarchy, with the addition of another outer court where non-Jews were also allowed.

The Presence of God in this Place was dangerous, and people would die if they approached it in the wrong way, much as we might if we moved around a nuclear power station without the proper protection needed.  It was His Presence which was the key factor: the building itself had no inherent power - it later got destroyed several times by invaders, who seemed able to dismantle it quite safely.

Another great mystery Piper may get round to mentioning later is the tent which David set up when he brought the ark back to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:17).  It seems to be a far simpler affair, with direct access near the ark for all - yet God commanded that worship should eventually revert to the "house" which Solomon was to build.  But at that vital council of apostles and church elders in Jerusalem, described in Acts 15, it is David's tent which the Holy Spirit shows James when he remembers the prophecy given to Amos:  "After this, I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent.  Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and the Gentiles who bear my name" (Acts 15:16,17).

St John had not yet written his gospel at the time of that council.  In it, he recalled these words of Jesus to the Samaritan woman which fit perfectly with that prophecy:  "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem ...  a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks" (John 4: 21, 23).

Where was this new Place of worship?  What would it be like?  Like the old one, it would be where God is Present.  Jesus in St John again:  "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.  My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" (John 14:23).  This is even better than me having free access to the ark in David's tent: God in His Three Persons has free access into me!  He has now made His home and His Presence in me - and that is where worship now wells up from.  I once heard us described individually as 'a mobile headquarters of the Trinity'.  I like that!

For me, the 'sh'ma' of Israel rings out eternally:  "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one ..." (Deuteronomy 6:4).  This is why, right at the end of Piper's chapter, something strikes a false note in my heart.  God has never needed protection from us - how could he?  But we have needed protection from His blazing holiness, which we could not survive until we are healed inside - until "our hearts [are] sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience" (Hebrews 10:22).  God let Himself be dishonoured.  He came vulnerable and unprotected amongst us.  He let us humiliate and dishonour Him on that hateful Cross, and He didn't count any of that against us.  Everything is forgiven.

No 23: So that We Might Belong to Him

Indeed, the dream of 'self-determination' is pictured so unforgettably in Genesis 3.  The serpent 'grooms' Eve with a succession of questions and suggestions, whose end purpose was to detach her from God.  It sowed doubts in her mind about the truth of what God had told her and Adam, and then planted the idea in her that they would become "like God" if they did what it suggested.  But why was Eve, and then Adam just on hearsay, ready to believe it?  There is no escaping the conclusion that God created them - and us - with a vulnerability (which eventually got tested).  Nor the conclusion that God created our first home, Eden, with dangers - it wasn't quite the safe place it seems at first reading.  What was the serpent doing there?

An intriguing avenue of speculation; but what interests me more practically is that vulnerability.  I am quite sure that God knew what He was doing.  When the first chapter of Genesis ends with God seeing all that He had made and pronouncing it "very good" (Genesis 1:31), he was including man and woman.  So our vulnerability is also "very good".  But it carried a big risk.  God the risk-taker?  Quite a thought.  Reflect on this too: we are made "in his image" (Genesis 1:27).  Is our vulnerability, too, a quality God copied from Himself to us?

When we gaze upon the crucified Christ, in whom "God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell" (Colossians 1:19), then we know that this indeed is so - if the Father reveals it to us.  It runs so counter to concepts about God then and even now.  It's good to ask God: 'show me again the shock of it all, the foolishness and the offence; dulled in me by familiarity, by accommodating theologies, or by deep-seated doubts that You should go to such extremes for me.'

And God wasn't changing anything about Himself when He allowed Himself to be tortured and killed by us.  This ultimate expression of His love and committment to His lost family becomes revealed to our new eyes all through scripture.  Philosophical ideas about God preserve Him in remote detachment from mankind: the genius of the Hebrew people lay in their passionate engagement with an even more passionate God. 

But love always hurts, always makes us vulnerable.  The Cross shows me that God and I are made of the same stuff.  My vulnerability, which in my life has caused me to sin, is in the image of God's vulnerability, of which we know "in whom is no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21).  The Cross shows me that from God's point of view, even the cause of my downfall, my vulnerability, is a precious quality He shares.  He crossed into our world and shared our experience of it, exactly as we do.  With His eyes of love, nothing else counted.

"The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. 
 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating." (Isaiah 65:17-18)

No 22: To Bring Us to God

'Many people seem to embrace the good news without embracing God'.  Wow - Piper is right, I'm sure.  And the more I think about that, the more it explains why there is so much that is wierd, unnatural and inhibiting about church life.  This observation of Jesus' springs to my mind:  "You yourselves do not enter [the kingdom of heaven], nor will you let those enter who are trying to" (Matthew 23:13).  Have I ever done that to others?  I hope not.

I can scarcely recognise my old selves in all the repenting and changes God has steered me through over 40 years as a Christian; but I think, because of the way He first drew me to Himself, that I haven't got sidetracked in the way Piper describes.  Wounded at 14 by my family bereavement, He drew me to Himself to comfort and heal me.  His love has always been the good news to me.  I've always treasured in my heart these words He gave to Hosea: "I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them" (Hosea 11:4). 

We can wrap so much into what we think of as the "good news" - all the testimony of the New Testament, then the theologies people have developed on the back of that, then the customs and traditions of the church we've chosen.  It's easy to miss the wood for the trees.  But there is a wealth of wisdom out there about prayer, spiritual formation and personal self-disciplines which will enable us to re-centre ourselves on Him, on Truth, on the Ultimate Reality towards which words can only take us some of the way.

I find that if I keep going there, then when I return to think about things, I can see what hangs from what so much more clearly - I can better identify what I've previously called those 'high level truths'.  Regarding the good news, it's not surprising that they'll be found at the very beginning of things.  The angels announced to those rough, uneducated shepherds: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests" (Luke 2:14).  The good news is first and foremost about Who God is - but we hadn't realised.  He is a God who always looks upon mankind with love and favour.  Going back even earlier: "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good" (Genesis 1:31).  We see it in the boyish Jesus' natural comfortableness with His Father: "Didn't you realise I was bound to be in Daddy's house?" (Luke 2:49).  We hear it in the first words Jesus chose to read out in that Capernaum synagogue (Luke 4:18-19):

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
         because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
 He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
         and recovery of sight to the blind;
 To release the oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour."

No 21: To Reconcile Us to God

Today, I am off to the Spring Meeting of the grandly named Ecclesiastical Architects and Surveyors Association - a lovely, friendly professional association for some of us who work on church buildings like I do.  We are in Bristol this Spring, staying one night and returning on Saturday evening.  I shall not be able to do my customary morning blog tomorrow, so I shall pen a few reflections upon it now.

My readers will by now know that I have a different point of view from Piper about God's attitude to mankind, and I have probably said enough in post No 1 and post No 8.  Having absorbed the sweep of scripture and now experiencing life with the Father, the Son and the Spirit at "home with me" (John 14:23), I cannot now repeat teaching that God was ever my enemy, needing appeasement or a ransom-price.  Is that the picture Jesus paints in the parable of the prodigal son?  Nor would I ever presume to say what is possible or impossible for God to do - who is John Piper to define or limit God's sovereign abilities?

Jesus' words restore a true perspective: "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26).  The faults and obstacles all lie in man.  He reveals His true heart over and over again to His children.  This is how Jeremiah heard Him:

"Is not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight?
 Though I often speak against him, I still remember him,
 Therefore my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion on him."   (Jeremiah 31:20)

No 20: To Deliver Us from this Present Evil Age

How do we regard this "present evil age" (Galatians 1:4)?  It is probably our different perceptions about it which create the most difficulties in our relationships with each other in our local churches.  This is what St Paul is trying to deal with in Romans chapter 14, where he sets out views which many might consider to be dangerously subjective and morally relative.  He picks a couple of examples to do with holidays and diet, but he is tracing general principles:  "One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables" (14:2).  "One man considers one day more sacred than another, another considers every day alike.  Each man should be fully convinced in his own mind" (14:5).  "But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean" (14:14).  "So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God.  Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves.  But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin" (14:22-23).  So two people can be doing the same thing, and one is sinning and the other isn't!  St Paul drops me into a place where I feel I'm losing a grip on what I thought objectively certain; he is turning my attention to my own state of faith and conscience.  He is also making me aware that we are all at different stages spiritually.  Where we are on the Way will determine our point of view - and my views are just from my point now.

Most of us, after some reflection on our personal journey with God so far, can acknowledge how true this is.  I am constantly repenting - changing my mind - as God shapes and deepens my faith about His Kingdom.  Our collective history teaches us the same thing: 200 years ago, I could own slaves and not sin.  Now I cannot.  This process will go on: many Christians nowadays still sincerely hold the traditional belief that leadership is male; and they do no wrong in so believing.  But the time will eventually arrive when God has changed all our minds on this matter.

What do we hang on to then?  A popular answer is the Bible, which is described by words like 'inerrant' and 'infallible'.  But this isn't enough, for this great collection of sacred writings itself traces a huge journey across history, and out of its pages we can construct very different views of God, man and the order of our personal and social lives.  This had happened in Jesus' day, where different groups of Jews were going off in separate and mutually critical directions, and of course this has gone on in Christian history too.  Another answer is Tradition (I always think of Tevye in 'Fiddler on the Roof).  This is actually starting to make a little more sense to me these days, because at least traditional churches acknowledge that none of us can live without traditions, and therefore they engage and think about them; whilst in so-called non-traditional fellowships, peculiar ways of doing things remain unquestioned and hence quite tyrannical.

Jesus made this observation to the 'Bible-believing' Jews of His day:  "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life.  These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life" (John 5:39-40).  He made this promise to His disciples:  "I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.  But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.  He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come" (John 16:12-15).

Bill Johnson from Bethel Church, Redding CA, puts it so simply and so well: 'Jesus is perfect theology'.