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'.

No 19: To Give Eternal Life to All who Believe on Him

'Jesus repeatedly warned us that a terrible and unalterable fate waits for those who reject the goodness, the love, the compassion for others, the wholesomeness, the peace of heart, the humility, the justice, the mercy, which is God.  Jesus would not have issued these warnings if, in fact, noone would ever suffer this fate' (see previous post No 14).

As I read through the Gospels, His words about 'hell' are clearly addressed to certain goups of people: the religiously, politically and financially powerful.  So it was with all previous prophets, and notably John the Baptist.  To the poor, the bereaved, the downtrodden, the kindhearted, the peaceable and to all longing somehow for God, He declared a welcome into God's Kingdom (cf Matthew 5:3-12).  It never seems to matter how they had sinned.  And I have to keep reminding myself of two things: this perfectly reflects God's heart to us all, always; and this welcome was offered before He died for us.

When tip-toeing humbly towards the whole subject of God's final judgment of us all, I hold fast to certain truths, those 'high level' truths I've mentioned before.  One is that "God is love" (1 John 4:16).  Another is that "He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).  Another is that the greatest of sufferings is endured by God, and the greatest example of sacrifice, love and service is shown to us by God, in Christ.

Some theologies can be spiritually toxic, combining an bleak, unbalanced picture of man with an angry, exacting picture of God.  They gain converts through reinforcing our deeply held doubts and fears about God, and hold our loyalty by instilling clear rules about who is saved and who is lost.  Thank goodness Jesus was not at all like that.  But no wonder He had to be killed by the religiously, politically and financially powerful of His day.

No 18: To Heal us from Moral and Physical Sickness

I am 58, and so far, excepting our annual diet of colds and coughs, I have suffered no disease except jaundice at 18 - and that wasn't painful.  On the other hand Susan has suffered an auto-immune onslaught and now has no pancreatic or thyroid function.  Her daily life is circumscribed by this disease, and St Paul's phrase about being "subject to frustration" (Romans 8:20 NIV) seems very apt.  In other areas between us, you might say things go the other way.  All her brothers and sister are with her to this day; my beloved big sister, Catherine, died at 20 from lupus when I was 14.  Periodically, I need to weep and mourn my loss afresh.  Neither of us grew up in godly or safe families.  We really feel rescued and redeemed by God.  He continues to heal the damage to our hearts.  But Susan is not healed of her physical disease - yet miraculous healings break out around us, now in this person, now in that.

Piper's observations take an eternal perspective, and that's what we have to hold on to.  Disease will 'one day be utterly destoyed'. But not yet. 

A mystery is that every one of us can testify to how God has used suffering to change us and bring us closer to Him, repeating in our lives the principle of the Cross - life out of death, victory out of failure, healing out of suffering.  I believe that if I had not been wounded by losing my sister, I may not have gone searching for God.

Last October, God gave me this personal word, which I was allowed to share on Sunday morning at church:

“I am sovereign, I am King over My whole creation, and I will bring My creation to a glorious fulfillment.  Man, and you too, Johnny, are glorious amidst My creation and destined to sit beside Me in the world to come, holy and sanctified.  In that time My victory will be completed when even Satan and every evil power at his disposal bend the knee and acknowledge that I am just and true and everything I have done is just and true:  My righteousness will be glorious across My whole creation and every mouth will be stopped.  It will not be possible for you to possess My understanding while undergoing your span of life and serving out your part in My unfolding Kingdom.  But I have revealed a mystery of My working which will guide you through many dark places like a pole star: I train My children in the Kingdom by letting them suffer from evil – to stop the mouth of Satan.  The victory can be won in no other way, although My heart breaks to see how you suffer.  As each of you make your way into My courts when your life’s race is run, the noblest angels step aside before you, bowing in your honour, wondering and rejoicing to welcome such a hero home – for you have been tested in a fire which is outside their experience.

“Go back and read again the sacred writings of My people, which you call the Bible, and see how this word is true; and how eternal and unchanging the Gospel is.  You have always been made perfect in suffering.  Only in this way can I save you from reproducing the very evil which you oppose.”

No 17: To Obtain for Us All Things that are Good for Us

This verse is an example of distinctively Jewish thinking by St Paul: a mode of reasoning known in Hebrew as 'qal va-chomer' ('simple and difficult' or 'trivial and important').  Jesus used it again and again.  Here are a couple of His:  "If that is how God clothes the grass of the field ... how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith?" (Luke 12:28).  "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:13).  You could say that several of His parables make the same point in story form: the unjust judge grudgingly hears the widow, so how much more likely is it that God will "... bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?  Will he keep putting them off?" (Luke 18:7).  That's an amusing one.  I wish preachers would laugh a bit more at Jesus' words, like His original hearers did.  In fact lots of the Bible is funny.

I'm still thinking about what I wrote yesterday, about God's readiness to give everything, but our unwillingness and unreadiness to accept His grace.  How clearly this comes across in St Paul's passionate plea we've just read in this chapter: "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8:32).  How could we fear otherwise?  How could we fear not being provided for by God, if He pays so much attention to a small flower or a sparrow?  How could we doubt God's lavish generosity, when even we are like that towards our own children?  Do we have lesser expectations of God than of a corrupt judge?

God utterly humbled Himself before His children, He pulled no rank, and He  loved us unwaveringly through the worst things our sick hearts made us do to Him.  Nothing less than that, it seems, could overcome our doubts and fears and finally "purify our conscience" (Hebrews 9:14), so we and He could henceforward live together in perfect trust, love and peace.

No 16: To Give us a Clear Conscience

'If you were allowed to take just one reason for Christ's death away to your desert island, which would it be?'*

Without question for me, this would be the one.  Why? 

Without a clear conscience, I remain fundamentally unsure about God's good intentions towards me - however many truths I hear and believe about them.  As Piper describes, none of us can shake off a sense of personal guilt.  Even if I can convince myself I am 'doing everything right' now, I can't change my past and undo the effect of things I may bitterly regret saying or doing.  When I have talked about this with Muslim friends, they stress God's mercy, compassion and readiness to forgive; and their words greatly honour God and encourage any sinner.  But they don't reach the very wounded heart of my being.

As I meditate across the whole testimony of the scriptures, it seems to me that this purification of our conscience is the one thing that had never been experienced by mankind until Christ rose from the dead.  Our Hebrew forefathers experienced God's unconditional love and choice: "The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.  But it was because the Lord loved you and kept his 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).  They experienced God's forgiveness and restoration:  "Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits - who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that my youth is renewed like the eagle's" (Psalm 103:2-5).  God was offering everything to them, with only one condition - their love, attachment and obedience in response.  And so He always has and always will.  Nothing prevents reconciliation and complete shalom and salvation from God's side.

All the difficulty lies on our side.  These amazing, kind, utterly true words from God best express, for me, what is our problem and what He would do about it:  "I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 11:19).  A 'divided heart' is a perfect description of an uneasy conscience.  St Paul accurately describes what it feels like: "[Gentiles] ... show that the requirements of the Law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them" (Romans 2:15).  This struggle leaves us in that state of uncertainty and doubt about God's good intentions towards us:  "... he who doubts is like the wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.  He is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.  That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord" (James 1:6-8).  So God offers everything - but we cannot receive it because our consciences will not allow us to.

I don't think we can ever explain how this purification of our conscience happens, once we "eat and drink" the death and resurrection of God in Christ for us.  Yet every believer knows it has happened.  Never mind what we've done.  What a scandal! God breaking all His 'rules'!  Now He and I can truly delight in each other without a shadow falling between us.


* My foreign readers will need to ask a British friend about our radio programme 'Desert Island Discs'

No 15: To Make us Holy, Blameless, and Perfect

This is an inspiring chapter.  Among Piper's own comments, I like these two particularly: 'The good news is that being on the way is proof that we have arrived.'   'In other words, we should become what we are.'  St Paul and the writer to the Hebrews, and Piper, all find themselves having to use the same word to describe different things.  For instance, 'perfected' means something already done by Christ for us (Hebrews 10:14), but also something yet to be completed in us (Philippians 3:12).  We are already 'unleavened' but apparently there is leaven still to be cleared out (1 Corinthians 5:7).  Another example is how Jesus spoke of the Kingdom as here and now, but also yet to come.  These illustrate the limitations of language.  The Bible is full of such paradoxes because all we can do, and all each writer and editor of the Bible could ever do, is "... see but a poor reflection as in a mirror", as St Paul beautifully wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:12.

I have to try and keep the balance of both meanings in a sort of tension, and this is a powerful instrument the Holy Spirit uses to wean me off my addiction to rational systems and push me towards a new way of seeing.  I do believe that this is what is meant in Isaiah 55:9:  "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

A major thread in my personal testimony over the past 5 years has been a deep engagement in the process of "cleansing out the old leaven", and becoming the man God saw before He created anything.  This has involved letting the Spirit examine my heart and examine my past and show me where anything ungodly has taken root (cf Hebrews 12:15).  I can then confess it and bring it to the Cross where Jesus takes it away together with all other sin.  I teach children to visualise the Cross surrounded by a sort of rubbish heap, to which we can add what we've just admitted; or to write it secretly on a piece of paper and drop that in a bin beneath a crucifix.  I find it helps to do the same - to become "like little children" (Matthew 18:3) in these things.

We discover many things have taken root and provide a stronghold for Satan, and this explains our repeated failures or fears in certain areas.  It is usually a mixture of things I have personally done wrong and wrongs done to me - and God wants to take both kinds away.  I might remember harsh, unfair words spoken over me as a child; but then the Spirit also reveals the resentment and judgments I formed as a result.  These are vital to confess and get free from, because I shall be reaping evil consequences until I do.  When ready, we are taken a step further by God to consider what may lie in previous family generations.  In 2010, my wife and I had the great privilege of hosting a day in our church when Mike Preece confronted us with the fearsome Masonic vows which our forefathers had made, and we very thoroughly spoke them off ourselves with the authority we now possess in Christ.

I was surprised to find that this process of inner healing is thought controversial by some evangelicals, and I have been challenged even within my fellowship here.  Their reasoning is that "... if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17).  This brings me back to where I started.  Yes, in the Spirit St Paul sees our perfected creation and wrote these amazing truths.  On another occasion, taking a different perspective, he also wrote: "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works" (Ephesians 2:10).  God's work in us is both finished and in progress.  I still think the wisest name to give our faith was the first one: the Way (Acts 9:2, 24:14).

No 14: To Bring us to Faith and Keep us Faithful

Before I get into this beautiful chapter, I need to say a few words, as I did on my post No 2.  I have received private comments that some of my posts seem to imply something which theologians call 'universalism'.  I haven't received any theological training myself, and so I shall have to find out what this is all about; but my critic defined it as believing that all will be saved irrespective of their faith in the work of Christ. 

Some men have the cast of mind to get very interested in abstract debates like this: but I don't.  I am intuitive, I think.  I do apply my rational mind to the revelations God has given, and is giving, us; but it is a secondary activity.  What has been given to me by God, whether it is written in the Bible or spoken to me now or expressed as a sign in daily life or is a glimpse of His mystery in His creation,  I try to keep my heart and mind spaces open to the raw reality of it; and I consciously control the desire to select only the bits which fit into what I already understand.  A wise retired pastor, emailing encouragement to me a few days ago, wrote: "It's a given that you can't adequately describe God in human terms."

So, when God speaks to me about His unconditional love, which I can see has emerged as my major theme this past fortnight, I give that my rapt attention.  I examine my heart's response and I listen to more that the Spirit is waiting to say to me about it - a meditation and a conversation.  Then, when I meditate on other truths He speaks of, I try to do so with His unconditional love always lodged in my heart and mind; because St John has revealed to us that "God is love" (1 John 4:16).  The astonishing simplicity of those words is one of those 'high level' truths which we see Jesus organising His teaching around on at least two occasions (Matthew 7:12 and 22:40).  This is why in my first post I wrote: '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.'

I couldn't possibly be a 'universalist' because Jesus repeatedly warned us that a terrible and unalterable fate waits for those who reject the goodness, the love, the compassion for others, the wholesomeness, the peace of heart, the humility, the justice, the mercy, which is God.  Jesus would not have issued these warnings if, in fact, noone would ever suffer this fate.  But what I can't do, is to let this fact qualify or lessen the truth of God's unconditional love for us all.  If our rational, 'either / or', ways of thinking balk at this, well, there's nothing I can do about that.  Ultimate Reality, the Kingdom of God, lies beyond all human categories of thought and perception.  It is possible for us to contemplate it; but only mystically.

This leaves me with little space and time to add anything to what Piper has written!  I'll just share one thing which has been precious to me for some years, and it fits today's theme well.  Galatians 2:20 is one of St Paul's most important insights, written in my NIV like this:  "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."  I took a look at the Greek, and saw that the second part can be translated differently:  "The life I live in the body, I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."  This way of putting it accords better with my experience and other related scriptures.  The faith I have is His gift, and it's His faithfulness which keeps me safe in Him.  If it was only my faith, I doubt I could keep that up.

No 13: To Abolish all Rituals as the Basis of Salvation

Since 1981, I have belonged to two church fellowships and both have taken a very negative line about rituals and traditions.  This is a hallmark of reformed churches, to a greater or lesser degree.  These are great truths which Piper quotes from St Paul, which were hard-won in fierce argument in the Church's first days.  But as I looked around me, I began to see things were not as I first thought.  My first fellowship prided itself (I fear it did) on not being enslaved to tradition, and contrasted itself with 'traditional churches' like Catholic, Orthodox and high Anglican, which used many rituals and set great store by their traditions.  However, we still retained two rituals: communion and baptism; and we followed all kinds of perhaps unacknowledged traditions in the pattern of our meetings, our church government, and our preferred doctrines.  There was no denying that we too 'did things a certain way'.  We belonged to an evolving pentecostal / charismatic / evangelical tradition, call it what you will.  Of course, knowing our St Paul well, we wouldn't dream of saying this was a 'basis of salvation', although in our enthusiasm at times we probably thought it nearly was! 

So, seeing that we never get away from rituals and traditions to some extent, I began to question the sharp dividing lines I heard being drawn between one church and another, and to examine my own heart and motivations.  Was I really just joining the church whose style I preferred, and whose main thrust of teaching made most sense to me at the time?  Was I misunderstanding what I saw happening at a Catholic Mass, and jumping to the conclusion that those rituals meant Catholics were "enslaved" to them?  Was I, in fact, enslaved to some church practices and doctrines without realising I was because I hadn't recognised that they, too, were rituals and traditions?

In recent years, God has shown me how much He loves every diverse expression of His Body here on earth, His Church; and how much more spacious the Kingdom of Heaven is.  He is constantly enlarging the 'box' of my awareness and letting me glimpse new regions in His Kingdom which He invites me to explore.  One of our sons, certainly already a sincere believer with a good grasp of the Bible and of evangelical doctrines, found his heart deeply touched and converted by God when he was amongst Catholic believers; and last Easter he was formally received into the Catholic Church - an amazing spiritual journey which you can read about in his blog.  Anthony has his testimony of encounter with God in that way, and everyone around him can see how God's hand is upon him and he is alive and fruitful in ways he wasn't before.  His testimony is irrefutable, even if it doesn't fit our different experience: so I am humbled afresh to realise how small my thoughts are, compared to God's whole truth, and how limited are my understanding and spiritual experiences, thus far along the Way.

All this has been the means God has used to bring me into a new freedom which exactly resonates with this chapter in Piper's book.  With the 'eyes of my heart' (Ephesians 1:18) I can now see Jesus in almost any tradition of Christian gathering.  I have found myself barely able to stay on my feet, so strongly have I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, amongst Catholic monks at Douai Abbey (joining their morning prayers whilst doing my quinquennial inspection) as well as charismatic evangelicals in our Wallingford church.  Like He did for St Paul and St Peter, God has taken me into the simplicity of His salvation for us.  And a surprise was waiting for me: a new-born delight in the Church's amazingly rich heritage of tradition, ritual, wisdom and disciplines to help us become complete in Him.

No 12: To Take away our Condemnation

I think it must be one of the most difficult but most important tasks for a teacher, to make St Paul's ideas understandable!  His thinking is so fertile and quick, darting up trains of thought, sometimes losing the thread of his main point and even forgetting to finish a sentence, if you know some Greek.  I think it's worth pondering the fact that God wanted his writings to go in as letters, and to ponder what a letter is - and is not.  And to ponder the wisdom behind Jesus' decision to leave no writing at all behind!

Alerted by the 'therefore' in Romans 8:1, I've been looking again at what St Paul has just written before (I have to remind myself to ignore chapter divisions when I meditate upon scripture).  As I briefly mentioned in posting No 1, in chapter 7 St Paul sees a bigger picture than our preoccupations with sins and laws, and daringly states that '... apart from law, sin is dead.  Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.' (Romans 7:8-9).  In other words, if we are innocent about a law, we aren't sinning if we break it.  It sounds so much better to live that way! and I naturally wonder whether law is such a good thing.  St Paul delves into the psychology of all this in chapter 7, and it's a fascinating voyage he takes us.  In answer to my question, he points out that 'I would not have known what sin was, except through law' (7:7).  Reading on, we witness how St Paul realises what's going on inside him.  He has a part to him which longs to do the right thing, which he calls his "inner being", and another part which never manages to do so, which he calls the "flesh":  'So I find this rule at work: when I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members' (Romans 7:21-24).

This is what chapter 8 explains we are rescued from, this "law of sin and death" (8:2).  St Paul is talking about how we become free of what imprisons us.  This affects both unbelievers and believers alike - St Paul certainly trusted in Christ, but these two parts of him were still in conflict.  It's fundamentally this huge conflict within us which brings us our worst misery and self-condemnation.  That's what God wants to heal us of, and restore to us His peace, His wholeness, His shalom.  We are prisoners, even while believing, until He does so. 

As St Paul recognises, it's an imprisonment that is part and parcel of our psychological make-up, our human condition, and to that extent not our fault.  The wonderful Good News St Paul brings us is that God "knows how we are formed" (Psalm 103:14) and doesn't blame us for it.  And never has.