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.