Some time ago, Microsoft produced an ad for their XBox gaming platform that featured a child being born. Rather than being ‘caught’ in the usual way, the child rockets out of the room, flying through the air. As he flies, he rapidly ages, transitioning through childhood, adolescence, middle age and into old age, before eventually crashing into an open casket.

When I first saw this ad, I could tell immediately what it was, because I had seen thousands just like it. I knew that, sandwiched in between two portions of whatever show I was watching at the time, the advertiser had only a limited time to tell their story and catch my attention. I could guess that there would be some summary statement at the end to make sure I didn’t miss the point, probably accompanied by the sponsor’s logo.

Tonight, my goal is to provide you with some tools for understanding the book of Revelation and then, using these to look at Revelation 12 and see how they help us to understand John’s message. Though these tools will be unfamiliar to you at first – as the conventions of advertising were once unfamiliar – the more you use them and immerse yourself in using them the easier and more familiar they will become.

Some guidelines

But first some guidelines for reading Revelation:

• The first thing to ask yourself when reading Revelation (or any portion of Scripture, for that matter) is, What was the author’s original intent? For example, John wrote Revelation to comfort those who were facing, or were about to face, suffering and persecution under the Romans.
• Read to see the whole, rather than allegorically pressing details – much as you would a parable. Where details are included, they are generally done so for (a) dramatic effect;¹ or (b) to make sure readers will not miss the reference.²
• Pictures of the future are just that: pictures. They express a reality, but are not to be confused with reality, nor is every detail necessarily to be ‘fulfilled’. Let’s say you get the opportunity to view Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. What do you do? You stand back just far enough to see and appreciate the whole. Only then do you get up close and appreciate the techniques and paints used. Apocalypse is seldom intended to give chronological details of the end of history. For example, we should not necessarily expect a literal pouring out of the four disasters described in Rev. 8:6 – 9:16. Instead it is more likely that this is a reference back to the plagues inflicted upon Pharaoh, and the judgment that went along with them. Don’t spend your time worrying about whether current events are the fulfillment of events described in apocalypse – instead, understand John’s message that God is in control, and will bring history to a close on his terms. Even where events described seem to mirror temporal (either present or past) events, be aware that there may be a “not yet” dimension.
• When the author interprets his own images, use these as a starting point for understanding the other images. There are several images in Revelation which John interprets for us: the Son of Man³ who is Jesus; the lampstands⁴ which are the churches; the stars⁵ which are the angels of the churches; the dragon⁶ who is Satan; the 7 heads of the beast⁷ which are the seven hills; and the prostitute⁸ who is Bablyon etc.
• Be aware of Old Testament references. John references or echoes the Old Testament some 250 times in Revelation, so that every significant moment in his narrative is described almost exclusively in Old Testament language.⁹ The OT context gives us clues as to how John’s images and pictures are to be understood.

The Passage

So how does this help us? Let’s look at Revelation 12 and see if we can apply these principles.

When you think about the Christmas story, what are the images that come to mind? For me, they are images of peace, tranquility and joy. “Peace on Earth and goodwill towards men,” as many carols put it. Aside from the minor problem of having to sleep in a stable, there seems little to indicate anything out of the ordinary. Hardly material for a story or movie, surely? Children are born all the time, there hardly seems anything special about this one. Sure, there are a few angels, some wise men, but where’s the action? Where’s the drama? The romance? Sure doesn’t seem to fit into any book or movie genre I know!

Then we turn to Revelation 12. The same event becomes considerably more interesting. Crowns of stars, clothing of sunshine, a seven-headed dragon, warrior angels, great battles. You name it, it’s there! Much more like what we are used to seeing on TV.

And yet this is not the Christmas story we know. This is not the part of the bible that we turn to each year at Christmas time, that our parents read to us when we were little. Why not? Perhaps because it is somewhat harder to come to terms with, lacking the solid, earthy realities of mother and father, stable and manger, donkey and cattle. Without these things, Revelation 12 (and indeed Revelation in general) is dismissed by many Christians as being a dream bearing little or no relation to reality. Without easily recognisable anchors to things we are familiar with, we find ourselves unable to understand what is going on.

Why does John use such outlandish imagery?

Since the invention of SMS, we have taught ourselves a new way of writing, almost a new language – words and phrases get compressed down to as few characters as possible. ‘I will see you later’ becomes ‘Cya l8r’, ‘Where are you?’ becomes ‘Wru’. These conventions are used so often that they are simply understood. And because everyone understands them, nobody feels the need to explain what each one means, we simply use them as a normal part of our communication.

As John writes Revelation, he takes similar shortcuts. He uses symbols and metaphors to express himself, many of which are completely foreign to us. The churches that John is writing to, however, were part of a culture very much used to interpreting such ‘signs’. It was quite common for people to go to the temples of the gods of their culture to receive an oracle from a seer – kind of like today’s horoscopes, only even more vague and obscure. It was then up to either the priest of the temple or the person receiving the oracle to interpret it. Over time, a rich tradition of how certain symbols were to be interpreted was developed. These would not have had to have been explained to the people receiving this message from John, but we don’t have the luxury of having grown up with them. Just like some future generation trying to understand our SMS messages or advertising, we struggle to understand what these symbols mean.

As we go through the passage tonight, I will try to highlight some of the most important symbols, and explain what they mean.

The Players

Let’s start by examining the characters in Revelation 12.

1 A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.

The first of our three major characters appears, at first glance, to be Mary. A pregnant woman, giving birth to a child who will “rule all the nations with an iron scepter” (v. 5) (more on this later!). A closer examination, however, gives us a different interpretation.

The woman wears a “crown of twelve stars” (v.1), is clothed with the sun and has the moon for her footstool. There is another place in the bible where this combination of sun, moon and stars occurs – Joseph’s dream in Genesis 37. There, Joseph dreams of the sun, the moon and eleven stars bowing to one star. The dream is interpreted to mean that the stars are the twelve sons of Jacob, whilst the sun is Jacob himself and the moon is Rachel, Joseph’s mother. Extending this somewhat, we can then understand that the stars in the woman’s crown represent the twelve tribes of Israel, with the woman herself representative of the people of Israel.

The next character to appear in our unfolding drama is a dragon.

3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 4 His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.

One of the most common symbols throughout Revelation is that of the horn. A horn, quite simply, is a symbol of strength. The dragon has ten horns, and so is a creature of great strength. In Revelation (and elsewhere in the bible) the number seven is usually symbolic of completeness. Having seven heads and seven crowns, therefore, indicates the completeness of the dragon’s power on earth – he is overwhelmingly powerful. This becomes clearer when we understand from verse 9 that the dragon is “that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the world astray” – that is, the dragon is the “Prince of this World”.¹⁰ Remember, where John explains the meaning of something, we should take that as our starting point in understanding what is going on.

The third character is, of course, the child himself:

5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.

Without any doubt whatsoever, the child is Jesus. As we said at the start, John loves to use Old Testament images to make important points, and the “iron scepter” here is a reference to Psalm 2:9:

You will rule them with an iron scepter;
  
You will dash them to pieces like pottery.

The image is of an iron rod being used to shatter clay. Just as the clay doesn’t stand a chance, so too is evil doomed under Jesus’ rule.

The Plot

Now that we have a feel for who the characters are, we can turn to examine what they are doing. I don’t think the woman giving birth needs any explanation… so let’s instead ask ourselves why the dragon is hanging around in the delivery room.

Some weeks ago, Cedric shared with us about Simeon, a man who had been waiting for Jesus to appear. His waiting would have been characterised by longing, a desire to see the promised saviour. For him, the appearance of Jesus was an occasion for great joy, together with great peace that God was keeping his promise. There was another, however, for whom the waiting period had not been so pleasant. Satan knew very well what the result of Jesus coming would be – indeed we see his fears come to pass towards the end of tonight’s passage:

7 And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down… He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

You see, Satan knew that his days were numbered – God had promised way back in Genesis 3 that there would come a descendant of Adam and Eve who would “crush [the serpent’s] head”. Since we have identified Satan as being the serpent (v.9), this prospect would not have been a pleasant one for him. Like Captain Hook hearing the crocodile’s clock, Satan has long been able to hear the sound of his death approaching.

In fact, Satan has been doing his level best to destroy the “seed” all along. Throughout history, he has taken every opportunity to try and kill off those who would be Jesus’ ancestors. Examples include: when Cain killed Abel; when Haman sought to have all of the Jews killed; the barrenness of both Sarah and Rebekah; and Esau threatening to kill Jacob for robbing him of his birth-right. In spite of this, he has failed every step of the way. His last remaining chance is that he can somehow corrupt or destroy Jesus himself.
Once again he fails, as Jesus is “snatched up to God and to his throne.” (v.5)

It would seem, from this passage, that Jesus was no sooner born than he ascended to be with God. Like the ad with which we started tonight, an entire lifetime is compressed into an instant. The reason, I think, is that this passage is not really concerned with the fate of Jesus. Jesus’ story is covered much more thoroughly elsewhere in Revelation. Instead, the point of this passage concerns the fates of the woman and the dragon.

The woman, we are told, “fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days”.¹¹ In Israel’s history, the desert was traditionally a place of testing and refuge – God took care of Israel whilst they wandered through the desert for 40 years. It is definitely not the ‘promised land’. More specifically, this reference reminds us of Elijah being cared for in the desert during three and a half years of drought – 1,260 days. Whilst there, God provided food in the form of the widow’s flour and oil which miraculously never ran out. Because of this, the period of 1,260 days is traditionally associated with a time of testing and trial – it is not actually a literal 1,260 days, but is symbolic. It is also, by the way, the exact length of time that Satan is given to “trample on the holy city” (v11:2), as well as the length of time given to God’s witnesses for witnessing (v11:3). It is important to note that there is a fixed end to Satan’s rule on earth – it will not go on for ever. This is an important promise to us, who have to live through it!

The final part of the passage explains exactly what happens to Satan:

10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
’Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Christ.
For the accuser of our brothers,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
11 They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.
12 Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
 But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is short.

Wherever you come across the words “I heard a loud voice say”, it generally means that an explanation is on the way. The Scooby gang is about to pull the rubber mask off the bad guy and tell us exactly who dunnit, how and why.

The who? The word Satan is the Hebrew word for ‘accuser’, so when the voice talks about the accuser having been “hurled down” (v.10), we know it is Satan they are talking about.

Why did they cast him out? Well, the only reason Satan was allowed to remain in heaven was because of his role as ‘accuser’. Kind of like the heavenly prosecutor – his purpose was to accuse us of our sins, to remind God that we are sinful and to invite his judgement upon us. More than just a job, this is something he did “day and night,” (v.10) suggesting that it is his purpose for existence. It is easy, now, to understand why Satan was so desperate to prevent Jesus’ coming – his reason for living was being taken away!
And God’s verdict? “Case dismissed. Thankyou Mr. Prosecutor, your services are no longer required, please remove yourself from my presence!”. Then when he refused to go, it was up to Michael and the other angels to remove him.

Now hang on. How could God, who is just, deliver a not-guilty verdict when we are so obviously guilty? From verse 11, we find that ‘They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb (Jesus) and by the word of their testimony.’ You see, when Jesus came to earth and died for our sins, Satan no longer had grounds for accusing us. As C. S. Lewis puts it in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

Though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.¹²

The Witch, like Satan, had the role of accuser. Her demands that Edmund was hers because of his treachery, and that his treachery could only be dealt with through blood, are not denied by Aslan. Instead of killing her then and there and removing the problem that way, instead of breaking the Emperor’s law, he chooses instead to be killed on the Stone Table in Edmund’s place – with amazing results! Aslan lives, whilst Edmund is freed from his guilt and the punishment that go with it. And the Witch? Her role as accuser is done – there is no-one left to accuse – and so she dies at Aslan’s hands (or paws!).

So out of all of this, what have we learned? Even if you didn’t know the Old Testament background or the significance of many of John’s symbols, you could still tell from this passage that a great battle was fought, and a victory won, that Satan has been cast out of heaven and those he ‘accused’ have ‘overcome him by the blood of the Lamb’. You don’t need to be an art critic to appreciate the ‘Mona Lisa’, neither do you need to be a theologian. But, when we do look closer, each additional detail that we have learned tonight – sun, moon, stars, time, 1260 days etc. – has served only to confirm that ‘big picture’, and this is a very promising sign that we are on the right track.

Christmas is, if you like, history’s alarm bell. The coming of Jesus marks the commencement of the time between his birth and his return – sometimes referred to as the “last days”. It heralds the 1,260 days of Satan’s time on earth, and of God’s witnesses witnessing. We who live in these times should remember that we, like the woman, have a place of shelter and refuge made ready for us by God. More than anything else, however, it should be a reminder of a victory already won, won by ‘the blood of the Lamb':

Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God
and the authority of his Christ.
For the accuser of our brothers,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down. (v.10)

Endnotes

1. e.g. Rev. 6:12-14
2. e.g. Rev. 9:7-11
3. Rev. 1:13
4. Rev. 1:20
5. Rev. 1:20
6. Rev. 12:9
7. Rev. 17:9
8. Rev. 17:18
9. e.g. Rev. 1:5b-6 refers back to the sacrificial imagery of Ex. 19:6.
10. John 12:31
11. Wherever you see the phrase “Times, time and half a time,” in the Bible, it is referring to this length of time – a ‘time’ is a year, so ‘times’ is 2 years and half a time is half a year – three and a half years or 1,260 days.
12. C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (London: Lions, 1980; reprint, 1987), 148.

Pick a city. Any city in the world, so long as you have never been there. Got one? OK, hands up if you can name a Christian in that city? Two? Five? Ten? As Paul reaches the conclusion of his epic letter to the Roman churches, churches in a city that he has never been to, he greets no fewer than 24 people by name! Some are people he has worked with, or been in imprisoned with. Some are family or close friends, others he may know only by reputation. Men and women alike are greeted with respect and affection. Paul is obviously intimately aware of the goings on in the churches in Rome.

This passage is all about people. Which is not surprising, really, since Paul has been talking about people and how Christians relate to other people – both Christians and non-Christians – since chapter 12. In that chapter he wrote about the renewing of the mind, and how that leads us to have transformed attitudes, actions and reactions to one another. In chapter 13, he spoke about the need to submit to authorities, which might not seem to be about relationships at first glance until the first person decides that traffic lights are simply providing suggestions of guidelines at which time relationships are both formed and broken very quickly. In 13:8 Paul wrote about our ‘continuing debt to love one another’. In chapter 14, and through into the first half of chapter 15, Paul is arguing very strongly that those who are ‘strong’ should nevertheless care for those who are ‘weak’ by not trampling their consciences.

From there to the end of the epistle, including the passage we are looking at tonight, Paul is recounting his own pastoral efforts on behalf of the church at large, and continuing to model his love for his fellow Christians, not least those in Rome. Where the previous chapters were about relating to people in general, this final chapter is very personal and specific, as reflected by the number of people addressed by name. Paul was a real person, writing to real people about real problems, and this is a fact we do well to keep in view as we read his epistle to the Romans.

Tonight, we’re going to consider Paul’s love for the Christians in Rome under three headings: (1) the foundation of love; (2) the promptings of love; and (3) the actions of love.

Love fellow believers because Christ has loved us and rescued us

On the 5th of August, 2010, a mine in San Jose, Chile, collapsed. 33 men were trapped 700 metres underground and 5 kilometres from the entrance to the mine they were working in. It was 17 days before those on the surface could even confirm the presence of any survivors. These men spent a record 69 days underground before their rescue could be effected. When they reached the surface, they all shook hands, waved goodbye, went home and never talked to one another again… What?

Of course, that’s not how the story ended at all! There was, in fact, great joy. An entire nation had collectively held its breath during the whole time they were underground; friends and relatives doubly so. For them, the response was great relief and joy at being reunited. But what about amongst the 33 men who had been trapped? These men, who were all but dead, had been rescued… together. I don’t know this, but I can easily imagine that the bonds formed underground were strong indeed. They had shared a terrible, harrowing experience and emerged from the other side of it alive. One thinks also of those who have survived wars, earthquakes, tsunamis and so on. Shared experiences, and particularly those charged with great danger or suffering, draw us together in a way that few other things can.

Paul recalls many shared experiences with those whom he greets, but the most repeated one may be seen in the phrases ‘in the Lord’, ‘in Christ’. These phrases are not empty, nor are they mere religious jargon. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that Paul’s entire epistle has been developing the theme of how and why anyone can or should be ‘in Christ’.

Christians have been rescued from a much greater peril than being stuck underground. They faced the death of their bodies; we faced the eternal death of our souls. It may have taken an entire nation to rescue those miners, but it took the God of the universe to rescue us! The foundation of love between Christians is the action of God in Christ to rescue us. We are to love our fellow believers because Christ has loved us and rescued us.

Do you think those Chilean miners ever talked about their experience again? I reckon they did. Why are we Christians so shy, then, about reminding one another about what we have been saved from, how and by whom?

Remind each other of God’s grace in your shared experiences

Paul does not stop short at recalling our shared experience of salvation, however. God has saved us in Christ, and this is the foundation of our love for one another but, sinful as we are, we often require further promptings to love one another. Paul has a good solution for this: with those he has had personal interactions with, he regularly makes brief reference to some way in which God has blessed one or both of them through their interaction. So, with his good friends Priscilla and Aquila he recalls their shared work together and the fact that they risked their lives for him. This is an expression of love, because he is reminding them of God’s grace to him through them. Similarly, Paul greets Andronicus and Junia who were imprisoned with him, thus reminding them of God’s grace in setting them free. And there are many other examples packed into these short verses.

By recalling these things, Paul is encouraging those he is addressing, but the encouragement is also for the rest of the church who are hearing this letter read, who can experience God’s grace second hand, and be encouraged to look for it in their own lives also. We should be encouraged as well. God provided ‘fellow workers’ for Paul, to help him in the mission that he was called to, and God will provide such people for us as well. Rufus was indeed ‘chosen in the Lord'; we have been also. You may be imprisoned for the sake of Christ, as Paul was, but God will provide encouragement for you in the form of fellow believers such as Andronicus and Junia. Be encouraged by the faithfulness of people who have been Christians for longer than you have, such as Epenetus. Rejoice in the service of Mary, Tryphena, Tryphosa and Persis, and those who faithfully host house churches like Aristobulus and Narcissus.

Let’s be enthusiastic about reminding one another about God’s gracious working in our lives.

Turn your love into action

But, as the old saying goes, love is a verb. Paul does not just remember old times in order to ‘feel’ love toward these people. No, he uses these experiences as a motivation to ‘do’ love toward them. What kind of actions result from Paul’s love? Well, writing this epistle for a start!

Most obviously, Paul instructs his readers to ‘greet’ one another 13 times in this passage. Paul is physically separated from these believers, so he relies upon others to convey and express his love.

Yesterday morning, I was upstairs getting ready to face the day, whilst the rest of my family were downstairs having their breakfast. At least, Katrie and Elyana were downstairs. Aedan was having great fun coming up the stairs to see me before promptly asking ‘where’s Mummy and Baby Elly’ and heading back downstairs to look for them. After the first couple of times he did this, I suggested he go and tell Mummy and Baby Elly how much Daddy loves them. Then I sent him to give them each a kiss from Daddy. And so on. By doing this, Katrie and Elly were receiving expressions of my love for them. But, just as important, Aedan was learning about my love for them, and learning appropriate ways of expressing his own love for them.

So it was with Paul. He was unable to come to Rome and greet people in person. He did not have the opportunity to give Ampliatus a hug to reinforce his words of love. He could not sit down and have a beer with Urbanus and Stachys. And so he relied on others already in Rome to do these things on his behalf. And in standing in for Paul, these people were learning about Paul’s love for them and how to express it, much like Aedan learning about my love for Katrie and Elyana.
But they were also forming relationships with one another. It is hard to ‘greet’ someone – especially to greet them with a kiss, as commanded in verse 16 – without forming some measure of relationship with them! I used to be a part of a church where the two pastors made a particular effort to introduce people to one another, as the first step towards building relationships within the church. Paul does a bit of this too, introducing Phoebe (who was probably the person carrying this letter to Rome) and asking them to provide for her needs. I believe this is a good reminder to us to not be shy about introducing people to each other, particularly where we can see they can help each other in some way.

But… wait… kissing? Really? What’s with that? Kissing was the standard way of greeting a close family member. Paul is reminding us that we are family to one another, and our greetings and relationships should reflect that. So, if kissing is not appropriate for your family today, then what is? Find some healthy way of expressing the love that is appropriate amongst family members. We lose so much when cut physical interaction out of our relationships.

Let me ask, what do we do to promote relationships between Christians in this church? Let’s try an experiment. Introduce yourself to someone in the church you don’t know, and say, ‘The apostle Paul told me to greet you in the Lord.’ Do you know everyone? Go find someone in one of the other congregations… or another church… or a student fellowship group… or at Livewire… or somewhere else. Or else find someone you know well, and remind them of some way in which God has shown grace to both of you.

I also wonder what we can do to promote relationships with Christians in other parts of the world. It amazes me that, in a day where any news had to be carried by messenger that Paul could be so informed about the church to which he was writing, but we who can send a message to the other side of the world are so uninformed. What can we do to become partners for the gospel with those in other places? If you’re not already, why not make the effort to find out about how life looks for one (or more!) of our link missionaries? Who is in their church? What are their needs? What is God doing in their midst? How can you pray for them?
In these ways, you will be sharing Paul’s love but, more importantly, you will be sharing Christ’s love. Because, like Paul relied on the Roman churches to embody his love, Christ relies upon us to be his ‘hands and feet'; it is through his ‘body’ that Jesus expresses his love for his people and for the world.

So let’s love our fellow believers we have all been rescued together by Jesus Christ. This is the foundation of love. Let’s remind one another of God’s grace to us; these things are the promptings of love. And let’s turn our love into action, becoming the embodiment – the incarnation! – of Christ to one another.

Amen.

It has sometimes been said that the great ‘therefores’ of Romans neatly outline the themes of the epistle.¹ In chapter 5, Paul proclaims, ‘Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Rom 5:1); in chapter 8 he continues, ‘Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,’ (Rom 8:1). Each time he uses the word ‘therefore’, it is to introduce a new theme, yet one which builds on what has gone before.

It is no great surprise, then that when we get to chapter 12, he offers us another therefore:

‘Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God’ (Rom 12:1).

Here he is introducing a new section which is dedicated to explaining how the great and wonderful things that he has taught in the preceding chapters are translated into daily obedience. The ordering is very important; it is only now that Paul has firmly established the priority and necessity of God’s gracious working to free us from sin (‘we have been justified by faith’) and the condemnation that it would otherwise bring (‘there is now no condemnation’) that he introduces the subject of obedient works.

Just in case we miss the point, he lays special emphasis on what he has been saying before moving on to give instruction: ‘Therefore… in view of God’s mercy…’, referring back to all of Romans.

But what is it that Paul commands? I’m going to suggest that Paul’s instructions can be summarised in one word found in verse 2: ‘transformation’.

‘Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’ (Rom 12:2)

There are two different kinds of change pictured here. The first is a change brought about by outward pressure from the world. We’ve all seen it; we’ve all felt it. The world has certain attitudes about sex, money, power, justice, relationships and so on, and anybody who does not fall into line with these feels tremendous pressure to change their ways to meet the norm. This could be called ‘adaptation’. But transformation is completely different, for it originates with God’s working on us from the inside rather than the world working on us from the outside. J. B. Phillips captures it nicely in his paraphrase of this verse: ‘Do not let the world squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-make you so that your whole attitude of mind is changed’.

The specific object of this transformation is our minds. This is not altogether surprising, since we know that the way we think about our circumstances greatly changes both our attitudes and our actions.

This week our daughter, Elyana, has had a number of nights when she has been particularly grumpy in the evenings. I found that the way that I responded toward her at these times varied greatly, depending on what I was thinking about at the time. When I was thinking primarily about how inconvenient it all was that she should pick this week to be unsettled, when I was trying to write a sermon, and I was so tired, how dare she not go to sleep when I tell her to and I have done all the ‘right’ things and so on… guess what? I have to confess to you that there were two grumpy children in that room, one of whom is 30 years old!

But when I instead focused on my relationship to her, that this is my daughter whom I love, and who was clearly upset, I was able to show the tenderness and compassion that she needed. A renewed mind led to a transformation in my attitudes and actions.

When God renews a mind, the results are spectacular. Paul goes on to outline some of the consequences in three main areas: (1) our relationship with God; (2) our perception of ourself; and (3) our love for others.

A renewed mind transforms our relationship with God (vv. 1-2)

Let’s dive on into the passage then. The first thing that Paul commands in verse 1 is that we ‘offer [our] bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God’. This imagery would have been much more accessible to Paul’s Roman audience than it is to us, for ‘they had stood by their altar and watched as an animal was identified as their own, as it was slain in the ritual manner, its blood manipulated, and the whole or part of the victim burned on the altar and ascended in the flames to the deity they worshipped’.² Such sacrifices were required to be ‘without defect or blemish’ (Lev 22:21)³ in which case they would in the process of being sacrificed be made ‘holy and pleasing’ to the deity to which they were offered.

First century readers would also have spotted immediately the contradiction in terms – ‘living sacrifices’. For an animal sacrifice, by definition, was dead. What, then, does it mean to offer a ‘living sacrifice’? One commentator describes it like this:

The sacrifice of which Paul writes demands not the destruction but the full energy of life. It is positive and dynamic.⁴

Even though, as Paul has explained in chapter 7, the body contains much indwelling sin, he nevertheless emphasises the importance of offering the body to God. Our bodies – indeed, our entire lives! – are offered to him to use as he will.

Yet, the problem with ‘living sacrifices’ is that they have a tendency to crawl off the altar!⁵ It is only when our mind is renewed that our relationship with God can be transformed in such a way as to allow us to continually offer a living sacrifice.

When our mind is renewed, a second transformation occurs in our relationship with God. We begin to be able to understand and appreciate God’s will.

‘Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.’ (Rom 12:2)

‘Test and approve’ implies first-hand experience. I think we sometimes want to know God’s will from the outside, so that we can decide for ourselves whether it is really the right thing for us, or so that we can offer our own ‘helpful’ critiques and suggestions of things that God may have overlooked or could do better. But God’s will can only be understood and appreciated from the inside. The psalmist writes:

‘Taste and see that the LORD is good.’ (Ps 34:8a)

As the old saying says, ‘the proof is in the pudding’ – it is only by tasting that we see how good it is, only by taking the plunge into the river that we know its power. We are called to an active participation in God’s will, not just an objective assessment.

This can only be done with a renewed mind. Remember what Paul said back in chapter 1:

‘Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.’ (Rom 1:28)

Men and women rejected God, disregarding ‘the knowledge of God’, and as a result God ‘gave them over to a depraved mind’. But now, because God has renewed our minds, we can once more ‘test and approve’ God’s will.⁶

A renewed mind transforms our perception of ourself (vv. 3-8)

So, a renewed mind transforms our relationship with God, causing us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, and enabling us to be active participants in God’s will, appreciating just how ‘good, pleasing and perfect’ it is. It also changes the way we perceive ourselves:

‘For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.’ (Rom 12:3)

There are two traps that we can fall into when thinking about ourselves. The first is that we think too highly of ourselves. But the phrase ‘more highly than you ought’ reminds us that there is a sense in which we ought to think highly of ourselves. How, then, are we to achieve the right course in between these two extremes? Paul’s answer is that we must consider our place in the body of Christ.

‘Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.’ (Rom 12:4–5)

A couple of ideas are prominent here. Firstly, the image of the body highlights the diversity of the members. Each member of our bodies has a role that it is uniquely suited to fulfil. In rare cases, other parts of the body may be able to compensate for a time, such as when muscles provide some stability to joints when ligaments fail, or when other organs take on the functions of a removed spleen. But the body is inevitably weaker than it would otherwise be when this happens, since these members are operating outside of the areas that they are particularly suited to.

Paul develops this idea in verses 6-8.

‘We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.’ (Rom 12:6–8)

We don’t have time to consider each of the gifts Paul lists here, but we need to note that this list is representative rather than comprehensive. In other words, don’t worry if you don’t see your particular gift or gifts listed here; that does not mean that you have no gift to offer. On the contrary, every member of the body of Christ has some gift to offer; and if they don’t offer it then the body suffers. And this brings us to the second idea that the imagery of the body gives us: unity.

‘In Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others.’ (Rom 12:5)

What does it mean that ‘each member belongs to all the others’?

John Murray says of Christians, “They have property in one another and therefore in one another’s gifts and graces.” It would be correct to add that you, as a Christian, have a right to the gifts the other members of the body have been given, and they have a right to your gift. You cheat them if you do not use it, and you are poorer if you do not depend on them.⁷

I think most of us are mistaken in the way we exercise our gifts. We think that our calling is to be as self-sufficient as we can. We want to make sure we have taken care of our needs and those of our family etc., and only then do we offer our excess time, energy and gifts for the benefit of the church at large.

But this is wrong.

If, instead, we were to allow others to serve us in their areas of strength, all of a sudden we would have more time and energy to exercise our own gifts to serve others! Perhaps you can cook a meal for someone, which will free some time for them to clean for someone else, who can in turn mind someone else’s kids… and so on. Each is then spending more time working in their area of gifting, and less in the areas that they are not gifted for, and which are therefore more draining.

For this to work, we need to be willing to both offer our gifts AND to be willing to ask for and receive help from others.

Let me ask two questions, then. (1) Are you exercising your gift or gifts as part of the body of Christ? and (2) Are you relying upon other members of the body to use their gifts on your behalf? If the answer to either of these is no, then the body is weakened… and the mind needs to be renewed.

A renewed mind transforms our love for others (vv. 9-21)

This brings us nicely to the third and final section in this passage, that deals with the way we relate to other people. I am going to group my comments on these verses into 3 categories: (1) our attitudes; (2) our actions; and (3) our reactions.

Firstly, our attitudes towards other people. I already shared with you some of the differences that a renewed mind make to attitudes; in verses 9-12 Paul describes some of the characteristic attitudes that are associated with a renewed mind. These include sincere love; a hate for that which is evil and a desire for that which is good; devotion toward one another, honouring one another; zeal and fervour; joy; patience in affliction; and faithful prayer. As with the gifts we skipped over earlier, we don’t really have time to consider all of these in detail, so I will just make one general observation.

All of these attitudes are possible for the unrenewed mind… for a time. But it is only with a mind renewed by God that they become consistent and characteristic. So the unrenewed mind may ‘love’, but that love quickly degenerates into insincerity unless it flows out of love for God. Similarly, zeal that is born out of human capacities rapidly fades, but the zeal of a renewed mind is constantly refreshed as we consider God’s mercies toward us.

The next four verses speak of the actions we are to take toward other people:

‘Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.’ (Rom 12:13–16)

Notice how each of these actions runs against the grain of what the world would recommend. Share, where the world says hoard. Be hospitable, not just to your friends (who will be hospitable in return) but with those are not able to return the favour (Luke 14:12-14). Bless, where the world curses. Enter into both the joy and grief of others, where the world teaches us to envy their joy and pity their grief.
In short, ‘Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’ (Rom 12:2).

Finally, Paul shows us how a renewed mind responds to the actions of others:

‘Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.’ (Rom 12:17–21)

The first and last verses of this section describe the two alternatives. The unrenewed mind seeks to overcome evil by responding with evil, particularly revenge. The renewed mind, however, acknowledges that revenge is God’s right, and his only. As we know from Romans 3, all have sinned, which means that all have incurred God’s wrath. Any evil that is perpetrated against us is, therefore, only the latest in a long line of atrocities against God (not us), and it is God’s decision how to respond. He does so in one of two ways: either that person is in Christ, in which case their sin is paid for, God’s wrath has been expended upon Jesus, and ‘there is now no condemnation’ (Rom 8:1); or he will impose judgment, expending his wrath upon them directly. In either case, we have no business taking our own petty revenge.

Instead, we are called to ‘overcome evil with good’. Providing for the needs of our enemies, blessing them (which means to pray will bring good to them) rather than cursing them, is the response of the renewed mind. As a result of doing this, we will ‘heap burning coals on [their] head’, a phrase intended to signify bringing them to repentance. Without doubt, the best result for everyone is for our enemies to repent and seek Christ, so that they need not face God’s wrath on their own. In this way, also, we may gain a brother or sister for ourselves.

Conclusion

What shall we say in conclusion then? It is clear that the renewal of the mind has (and is supposed to have) far-reaching consequences. It is, first of all, to transform our relationships with God, leading us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices and to test and approve God’s will. When we have done those things, we will begin to perceive ourselves in a different way, being enabled to think of ourselves and our gifts with sober judgment. Then, and only then, are we able to relate properly with other people, with transformed attitudes, actions and reactions.

I have one final warning and encouragement. Transformation is not just an individual thing; it requires Christian community if it is to be truly effective. Yes, God is the one who does the transforming, and we should certainly pray that he continues to do so. But his usual method of doing so involves other believers. It is in the church that we learn most and most truly about God, ourselves, and the world. It is in Christian community that we are given opportunity to develop our gifts, to serve one another, to form lasting relationships with God and each other. It is with other believers that we are best able to test and approve God’s will.

So, West Pennant Hills Community Church, the challenge for us this week is to seize every opportunity to encourage one another to be transformed in our attitudes, actions and reactions towards one another. Let us serve one another with the gifts that God has given us, depending on them to serve us in return. Let us offer our body – this body of Christ – as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God in a joint act of spiritual worship. May we not be conformed to the pattern of this world any longer, but let us be truly transformed by the renewing of our mind.

Amen.

Bibliography

Boice, James Montgomery. Romans. 4 vols. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1991.
Dawn, Marva J. Truly the Community : Romans 12 and How to Be the Church. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1997.
Moo, Douglas J. The Epistle to the Romans. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 1996.
Morris, Leon. The Epistle to the Romans. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1988.

Endnotes

1. See, for example, Marva J. Dawn, Truly the Community: Romans 12 and How to Be the Church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1997), 7.
2. Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1988), 433.
3. For instructions on the kinds of sacrifices the Israelites were to offer, see Exod 12:5; 29:1; Lev 1:3, 10; 3:1, 6; 4:3, 23, 28, 32; 5:15, 18; 6:6; 9:2; 14:10; 22:19, 21; 23:12, 18; Num 6:14; 19:2; 28:3, 9, 11, 19, 31; 29:2, 8, 13, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29, 32, 36; Ezek 43:22, 25; 45:18, 23; 46:4, 6, 13. cf. Eph 5:27; Col 1:22; 1 Pet 1:19.
4. Ibid., 434.
5. Dawn, Truly the Community : Romans 12 and How to Be the Church, 23.
6. Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 1996), 757. Moo notes particularly the use of ἀδόκιμος (‘depraved’) in 1:28 in comparison to δοκιμάζω (‘approve’) in 12:2.
7. James Montgomery Boice, Romans, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1991), 1582.

To perform a piece of music really well, there are two things you need to know: (1) the ‘shape’ of the music – what is its main theme, structure, and major components (verse/chorus/bridge etc.); and (2) the ‘style’ of the song – will it be fast or slow, loud or soft, jazz or rock and so on. The first one won’t change much – if it does, you are actually singing a new and different song. The second one, however, may change every time you sing or play it – and this is largely determined by your context, particularly the context of your audience. If they are feeling energised and upbeat then they may appreciate a quiet, reflective song. Similarly if they are quiet, or sad, or introspective then wild rock music will grate on them and your music will be rejected.

We see this all the time, don’t we? Who hasn’t been to a wedding where the band mistakenly thought they were the main attraction and belted their tunes out at top volume. One of my abiding memories of the first Blues Brothers movie is Jake and Elwood Blues (and their band) rocking up at a venue that enjoys both kinds of music – Country and Western – and launching into their standard blues revue. The results are predictable: empty beer bottles fly at the performers caught only by the chicken-wire shield erected in front of the stage. In fact, the entire premise of both Blues Brothers movies is a group who are unwilling to change their songs or their style in response to their context – instead, they must keep going until they eventually find the right context for their music.

We must know the same two things when we proclaim and promote the gospel: (1) what is the message we are proclaiming? (i.e. the tune) and (2) what is our method for proclaiming it? (i.e. the style). The message does not change, but the style of its presentation must match the context if the message is to be received. Unlike the Blues Brothers, we cannot wait for people to adopt Christian culture and context before we share the gospel – although many have tried! To use the language of the subtitle of this series, we must ensure that the ‘real gospel’ (the ‘tune’) is applied to ‘real life’ (the ‘style’).

So the goal tonight will be to understand the distinctive characteristics of a student’s context in order to better understand how to share the gospel with them. And yet I can only paint in broad brush strokes – you will have to take what I say and decide for yourself how well it fits with your own context… and modify accordingly.

So, what makes a student different from, say, a lawyer or a mother, a pensioner or an athlete? I have identified a number of characteristics (in no particular order), each of which presents its own unique opportunities and challenges for the proclamation of gospel.

The first, and perhaps most obvious, characteristic of a student is that they’re there to learn. This could be for any number of reasons – to get a job, for the sake of learning, or because Mum & Dad made them – but the end result is the same: they rock up each day to school or uni expecting to be confronted with new ideas. This is both an opportunity and a challenge for the gospel. Obviously it is an opportunity, because the gospel is just such an idea. In fact, you could say it is the idea, against which all other ideas must be measured. Students spend their days learning facts, which mean that they are ideally placed to hear about the occurrences of the gospel (to borrow Mark’s language) – Jesus’ sinless life, death on a cross, resurrection and so on – in a way that few other groups in the world are. However, it is also a challenge because it is all too easy for the distinctive nature of the gospel to be lost; it becomes just one more idea among many. I remember this was a common response at my uni, where lunch-time Christian meetings were spoken of as ‘just another lecture’ by Christians an non-Christians alike. Furthermore, many of the other teachers are professionals, paid to be effective teachers, meaning that there is a certain pressure to be ‘professional’ in the way we teach the gospel.

I believe that the only possible response to these challenges is to ensure that the message you have to proclaim is proclaimed as clearly as possible. Make sure that you understand the gospel and its importance and impact on your life. If you don’t understand how will you be able to share it? If it’s not important to you, why should it be to them? At the same time, don’t feel you need to be as slick a teacher as your teachers. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, a town totally immersed in slick teachers and speakers, he said,

When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power. (1 Cor 2:1–5)

This is excellent advice.

The second characteristic is that they’re learning to think critically about what they are being taught, particularly as you get toward the end of high school and even more so at university. No longer is it enough to accept the teacher’s word, instead they must evaluate and integrate ideas for themselves. Again, this is both an opportunity and a challenge. It is an opportunity because it means that they are willing to consider evidence and reconsider their presuppositions. In fact, university is often the first time people have moved out of home, and they take advantage of that by reconsidering the assumptions they have inherited from their parents. In some cases, this means they re-think their Christian heritage, but there are many others who are suddenly ready to consider the claims of Christianity.

Sometimes this can go too far: some people will set themselves up as judges over everything, presuming to render verdicts on matters which they have little or no familiarity with. Others are too lazy to push past their own misconceptions and stereotypes of Christianity, whilst others still have their own agenda to push and Christianity stands in their way and must be fought at all costs. Sadly, all these kinds of people are all too common on a university campus. Take, for example, the well-known militant atheist Richard Dawkins, formerly Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford university. In his 2006 book, The God Delusion, Dawkins sets out to discredit what he calls the God Hypothesis – that there is a creator God or gods. He writes,

Life is too short to bother with the distinction between one figment of the imagination and many… I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented.¹

This is actually symptomatic of Dawkins’ approach to the whole discussion: he lumps all religions together so that he can speak in generalities and not deal with the specific claims of any one of them – although he is not shy in adopting examples from any of them that he thinks might support his cause. It is not clear what his motivation in doing this is – ignorance? laziness? malice? – but the end result is a work that would be rightly laughed out of any scientific forum or court of law! He trades on his expertise in one field (biology) as a platform for pontificating authoritatively on where he has little or no expertise (theology, cosmology, philosophy to name but a few). Such self-styled ‘intellectuals’ pop up in every academic institution, and aim to persuade by virtue of their reputation or pseudo-argumentation.

Our response should be to always encourage honest scrutiny of the claims made by Jesus Christ. Jesus said, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14:6), thus any genuine search for truth will and must find its way to Jesus. There is no need to feel threatened or defensive. In particular, unless that is your gifting don’t spend so much time debating with ‘intellectuals’ that you neglect to spend time with others more open to hearing the gospel.

Another characteristic of students, particularly uni students, is that they have more discretionary time than any other adult group save, perhaps, retirees. Those of you who are currently at uni may disagree, and this is indeed a generalisation meaning that there are plenty of exceptions to the rule. But sit on a university campus sometime and look at how many people spend hours sitting on the lawn, or haunting the unibar, and then try telling me that uni students have no free time!

How is this an opportunity for the gospel? In several ways: (1) you have time for gospel work; and (2) the people you’re sharing with have no excuse for rushing off! The flip side of the coin is that you are only at school and uni for so many years – don’t miss out on the opportunity. The Apostle Paul was only in Thessalonica for 3 weeks, yet he still had enough time to found a church which, a short time later, he would call his ‘joy and crown’ (1 Thess 2:19-20).

When Paul was in Athens, he met people with exactly these characteristics. He met with the Jews in the synagogue and reasoned and argued with them, but he also proclaimed his message in the marketplace where people of that time and place would go to buy a good philosophy along with their eggs and milk. The result was that he was brought before the Areopagus, a group of (presumably wealthy) people who ‘spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas’ (Acts 17:21). I believe that we can learn a lot from Paul’s example in this instance.

First, we note that Paul spent some time in immersing himself in the context (as we are doing tonight). He spent time walking around Athens, understanding what the people did day by day, and thinking about why they did it. When he spoke to the people on Mars Hill (another name for the Areopagus), he did so using the language of the great Greek poets, meaning that he was at least familiar with their literature. In our terms, this might mean participating in the broader life of your school or uni. Join a choir or a sports team. Know what the controversial political issues are on campus (even if you don’t participate in the debate). Go and see the school play. Help out at the working bee. And so on. In this way, you will have a shared context with those to whom you are witnessing, and you will show that you have made the effort to understand them and their context, even if you don’t agree.

Our response to this opportunity must be to reflect on our observations and experiences, asking questions about why things are the way they are, and happen the way they do. In particular, I find it helpful to ask myself the question, ‘What need or desire are they meeting by doing that?’ I then ask, ‘How does the gospel meet that need or desire?’ Paul noticed that the Athenians were ‘very religious’ (Acts 17:22), with a desire for peace with all of the gods even if they didn’t know who they all were. Paul’s response was to show that their desire was honourable but misguided, for there was only one God. Pleasing God is not a matter of temples and altars, but is achieved purely and simply by Christ’s actions on our behalf.

When invited to do so, Paul presented his beliefs clearly and unflinchingly. Here were gathered some of the greatest ‘intellectuals’ of his day – the Richard Dawkinses and the like. He would have known that proclaiming a physical resurrection of any person, let alone all people, would have been treated with incredulity by these people, yet because it was a core gospel issue he declared it anyway. We, like Paul, must be true to our beliefs and proclaim the whole gospel and not just the parts that are currently fashionable. At the moment, for example, there is a debate raging about whether a loving God could ever consign people to an eternity in hell. As a result, it is tempting to step around, or downplay, and discussion of sin and hell when proclaiming the gospel. It is not my intention to teach on the topic of hell tonight, but only to point out that you need to work out what issues are core to the gospel, and make sure that you don’t compromise in their proclamation.

Finally, Paul evaluated the response from his audience. In Thessalonica he taught in the synagogue and many were persuaded, though some were jealous and caused him trouble (Acts 17:1-9). In response, he moved on but made provisions for those who had come to faith, as evidenced by the two letters that he wrote to them (1 Thess 3:1-5). This raises two important points: (1) as already mentioned, don’t spend so much time arguing with those militantly opposed to you that you neglect those who do respond positively; and (2) always have a follow-up strategy.

It is not always easy to discern why someone is opposed to the gospel. Sometimes it is because of the manner in which you present the gospel, in which case your manner may need to be changed. In other cases it is because of a prior ‘defeater’ belief – a belief (usually a misunderstanding) that seems to preclude belief in the gospel. Examples of this might include the belief that ‘all religions are equal’, that a good God wouldn’t allow suffering on the scale that we observe in the world every day, that science has disproved Christianity and so on. In these cases, it may be worth addressing that specific issue first, and in this there are many great resources that might be of assistance. One which I would particularly recommend is a book by Tim Keller, called The Reason for God.² This addresses a number of common misconceptions about Christianity in a way that is easy to read and understand. For more specific issues, have a chat to one of the pastoral staff or elders who may be able to recommend something appropriate.

Often your follow-up strategy will (and should) involve other people – usually a church or Bible study community – which is a good reason not to go it alone. One of my regrets from my own time at uni is that, for various reasons, I decided not to be a part of the university church but to attend instead a church down the road. This had some small advantages, in that though I was known as a Christian I was not rejected as a so-called ‘campus Christian’. But the disadvantages were that I had no immediate support network when sharing the gospel, and I missed out on the work being done by the campus church to equip students for university mission.

So, to recap, proclaiming and promoting the gospel requires that we know the shape (the gospel) and the style (the manner of presenting the gospel, dictated by context). And for a school or uni student the context is dominated by such things as developing habits of learning and critical thinking, an excess of discretionary time, intellectuals and intellectualism, and so on.

If this all seems a bit intimidating, well… you’re not alone in that! But, fortunately, neither are we alone in doing the work because, ultimately, it is God himself who is responsible for contextualising the gospel. It is his gospel, and he sends his Spirit to do this very work. He has already done so by putting his word into human language, which we can read and share. And the Holy Spirit works through us to translate words written thousands of years ago into culture of all kinds in order to reach and transform those very cultures.

Bibliography

Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006.

Keller, Timothy J. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2008.

Endnotes

1. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006), 35-6.
2. Timothy J. Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2008).

Wisdom is a matter of good life and good actions (3:13)

If I gave you a series of photographs, and asked you to identify which of these people were ‘wise’ and which not, how do you think you would go?

How do you tell whether or not someone has wisdom? Is it necessary to have knowledge?Is someone with a high IQ ‘wiser’ than someone with a lower IQ? What about practical experience? All of these, I think, would be common definitions of wisdom in the world today.

The first point that James wants to make about wisdom is what it results in:

‘Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.’ (3:13)

Clearly, in James’ day some where claiming to have ‘wisdom’, but were not actually doing anything about it. But is this still a problem today? In his 1986 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman accused the western world of being a bunch of LIARs. Not liars in the sense of not telling the truth (though there may also be substance to such an accusation). Rather, Postman meant that we have a low ‘information-action ratio’ (L. I. A. R).¹ Prior to the invention of the telegraph most of what people knew was actionable, relating to their local community, work, neighbours, family etc. However, with the telegraph, radio, modern newspaper, television etc., we are constantly flooded with information that is no relevance to us, makes no difference to the way we live our lives. We make a virtue of being well-informed and knowledgeable, and invent games that allow us to exercise our endless store of trivia. Only a small proportion of what we know ends up being converted into action, and even this is being eroded away as we are exposed to Facebook, Twitter and other technologies that overwhelm us with even more information.

Wisdom without action is as impossible as faith without works.

But what kind of action? Here in this one verse are three ways in which wisdom is demonstrated: (i) the way you live; (ii) the things you do; and (iii) the attitude with which you do both. All three are necessary – miss one and you miss them all! Unless you are living right, then your actions will not carry conviction or credibility. People do not care what you do or say until they can see who you are. Similarly, humility that is not rooted in a good life and good actions is simply an invitation for pity.

This contrasts strongly to the way the world expects people to manifest wisdom. The stereotypical ‘wise’ person is one who, having lived a long time and gained knowledge and experience, now sit around and pontificate, rendering judgment on all and sundry who cross their path. But those qualities – age, knowledge, experience – are all about things that have happened in the past. For James, however, wisdom is about what you do in the present! To be sure, experience will help to build wisdom in you; knowledge will help you to understand your situation and respond accordingly. But it is that response that is all important. Wisdom results in continual action today, not continual reflection on the actions of yesterday.
But James does not stop there, for he wants to make his hearers aware that there are two kinds of ‘wisdom': counterfeit and genuine.

Two Kinds of Wisdom (3:14-18)

How do you spot a fake? The simple answer is by being intimately aware of what the real deal should look like, then closely examining the object in front of you. So if I gave you a $100 note, you would draw on your knowledge of what Australian currency looks like. Perhaps you would even know what some of the distinguishing marks of a hundred dollar note are, and if they are not present, or something else is in their place, you would rightly refuse to accept it. Sometimes it’s obvious; sometimes not. But the better you know the real thing, the easier it will be to spot a fake.

So it is with wisdom. Perhaps someone seems wise, but there are just these one or two things that seem off. Or perhaps you are trying to decide on the wisest course of action, and one seems at first glance to have merit, but when you reflect on it later and it wasn’t really right after all. As one commentator notes, ‘The most natural thing in the world is to think that your own reaction as a Christian is surely of divine origin. If you’re a new Christian, there may be a feeling that because God is with you and he’s for you and you’re doing something right for a change then everything you’re going to say is going to be right. And then you find yourself saying something that is wrong and somebody rebukes you for it.’² How, then, can we tell the difference between wisdom that is real, and that which is fake? James is very helpful in giving us a couple of major warning signs to watch out for.

Counterfeit wisdom (3:14-16)

The first is what he calls ‘bitter envy’ (3:14). This might be characterised as an action or attitude which seeks to pull others down because of jealousy. This is common in the world today: the student who denigrates their high-performing classmate; the person who speaks ill of the wealthy, all the while wishing they had that wealth; the hypocritical backlash against ‘celebrities’ who don’t live up to standards we ourselves have no intention of heeding.

When considering what you will do and what you will say, then, stop and consider the other people involved. What is your attitude toward them? Are you jealous of what they have or are? Do you resent them? Are you bitter and angry against them? If any of these things are true then, no matter how right or good the action itself is, you need to stop. ‘To the extent that you have bitterness you then and there surrender true righteousness.’³ Any work that grows from the root of bitterness will ultimately bear bitter fruit.

Similarly, James highlights ‘selfish ambition’ (3:14) as a sign of counterfeit wisdom. This happens in the world, of course, but sadly it often finds its way into the church as well. We fight for control, to be proven right, to see our needs met ahead of our brothers’ and sisters’. The worst thing is that we can fool ourselves into thinking that it is ‘right’.

Let me give you an example. At one church it was proposed that the time of the evening service on a Sunday be moved from 7pm to 6pm. This, it was argued, was to allow young families to attend, and still get their kids home to bed at a reasonable hour. Funnily enough, however, the people doing the arguing were – you guessed it – young families, who were doing so because they preferred the style of service that was conducted in the evening. As a result they would not hear the argument put against the idea that many amongst the youth who attended worked during the day on Sundays and would be unable to attend, or to contribute to the service by playing in the band etc., if the time was changed. Can you see that the ‘parties’ in this discussion were, by and large, driven by ‘selfish ambition’?

‘When we fight for power in Christian circles, evil establishes a foothold. When we operate with worldly values, seeking our own honor and status, we even offer Satan an entrance into the house of God! Our actions no longer demonstrate our faith (as throughout ch. 2), but rather show our commitment to the world and its standards of behavior (setting up ch. 4).’⁴

James says that counterfeit ‘wisdom’ is ‘earthly, unspiritual, of the devil’. This thing that these three descriptions have in common is that they are direct opposites to God. Just like any currency not printed at the mint is counterfeit by definition, the reason that this kind of ‘wisdom’ is counterfeit is that it does not originate from God. God gives good gifts (1:17), but counterfeit wisdom results in ‘disorder and every evil practice’ and is thus clearly not ‘good’ and so not from God.

Genuine Wisdom (3:17-18)

Genuine wisdom, on the other hand, does come from God. And it too, has particular characteristics:

‘But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.’ (3:17)

First and foremost, James says, genuine wisdom is ‘pure’. This is a word that means that it is all of one substance, and has nothing foreign mixed in. Consider what James has said about speech (an aspect of wisdom) earlier in this chapter:

‘Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.’ (3:11–12)

Godly wisdom must not be diluted by triviality or inaction, nor sullied by being mixed with sin through compromise.

The truly wise person is also a lover of peace. This is a strong contrast to the counterfeit wisdom which results in ‘bitter envy and selfish ambition… disorder and every kind of evil practice’ (3:14, 16); genuine wisdom that comes from God seeks to promote peace within the community of God’s people and in the world. Yet, because wisdom is ‘first of all pure’, we know that this peace cannot be achieved at the expense of compromise with sin. Simply avoiding the issue is not wisdom. We must still contend for the truth of the gospel, even where that leads to conflict; the difference between counterfeit and genuine wisdom, though, is that even in the midst of conflict genuine wisdom longs for peace.

The rest of the words James uses in this verse to describe heavenly wisdom are variations on and contributors to the idea of peace.⁵ Being considerate towards one another is a good way to avoid unnecessary friction. To be submissive is often misunderstood as being a ‘doormat'; whoever wants to can walk all over you as and how they like. But this is not a biblical concept of submission, and conflicts with the stress on purity. In this context, it is better to think of the word as meaning ‘teachable’. The submissive person is willing to admit that they are wrong, and to learn from their mistakes; this, too, is wisdom. This is then complemented by mercy, which is a gracious acknowledgement that others may also be in the wrong. In particular, it means forgiving others who have wronged you. Impartial means not ‘taking sides’ on the basis of friendships or natural affinity or external things such as wealth or social status. This is a point that James made very strongly in chapter 2, as Ted shared with us last week. Finally, James tells us that true wisdom is sincere, a word which might more literally be translated ‘without pretense’ or even ‘without hypocrisy’.⁶ Once again, these things are barriers to peace within the people of God, for they drive people apart.

‘In essence, peace is the ultimate goal of wisdom, and wisdom only reaches its fullest potential in the midst of peace.’⁷

James is his own best example of the value of peace in the church, as the picture that we get of him in Acts makes clear. For it is James who chairs the Jerusalem council (Acts 15:13-21), the event above all others that made peace between Jews and Gentiles in the early church.

So the wisdom that comes from heaven is recognised by its purity, and the peace that it brings, in that order. And, just as counterfeit wisdom has its fruit, so too does genuine wisdom. On the one hand, earthly wisdom results in ‘disorder and every evil practice’ (3:16); but of heavenly wisdom James says, ‘Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness’ (3:18).

Trade in your counterfeit for genuine

But what do you do when you detect counterfeit wisdom in yourself or someone else? Well James tells us what not to do: don’t boast about it and don’t try to cover it up (3:14). But what should we do instead? The exact opposite of these two things: repent and confess! And the more you do these things, the more you will find that the gap in time between sin and repentance will shrink until, eventually, you find yourself stopping before you commit the sin. This is genuine wisdom.

Unlike counterfeit currency, it is always possible to trade in counterfeit ‘wisdom’ for the genuine wisdom. Well, ‘trade in’ is not quite right; what you actually do is to throw away the counterfeit, and go to God for the real deal. In chapter 1, James wrote: ‘If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him’ (1:5). Wisdom is a gift that comes from God – and only from God. No matter how much time you spend trying to increase your knowledge, no matter how old or experienced you are, these things will never be transformed into wisdom unless God by his Spirit does the transforming. And so we find we have come full circle to where we started: a wise man or woman demonstrates their wisdom by what they do… and the first thing they do is to ask God for wisdom!

Brothers and sisters, don’t settle for counterfeit ‘wisdom'; go to God for the real thing!

Bibliography

Blomberg, Craig, and Mariam J. Kamell. James, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary Series on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2008.

Kendall, R. T. Justification by Works: How Works Vindicate True Faith, New Westminster Pulpit Series. Waynesboro: Authentic Media, 2001. Reprint, 2005.

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. 20th anniversary ed. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin Books, 2006.

Endnotes

1. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 20th anniversary ed. (New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin Books, 2006), 69.
2. R. T. Kendall, Justification by Works: How Works Vindicate True Faith, New Westminster Pulpit Series (Waynesboro: Authentic Media, 2001; reprint, 2005), 270.
3. Ibid., 271-2.
4. Craig Blomberg and Mariam J. Kamell, James, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary Series on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2008), 175.
5. The ordering here is less likely to be important – in the Greek, the words appear to be grouped in a manner that maximises assonance.
6. BDAG, “ἀνυπόκριτος”.
7. Ibid., 177.

It is well known that Martin Luther didn’t think much of James’ Epistle, calling it a ‘right strawy epistle’,¹ and arguing that it should be thrown out of the University of Wittenberg where he taught because ‘it doesn’t amount to much’.² His main criticisms were that James does not emphasise the work of Christ, and appears to teach justification (and hence salvation) by what you do – anathema to the man who spent half a lifetime defending the truth that justification is by faith alone. But are these valid criticisms? It is true that James rarely mentions his brother Jesus directly, but we will discover throughout this series numerous allusions to the words and teachings of the brother he acknowledges as ‘Lord’ (1:1).

The charge of teaching justification by works is somewhat harder to answer. After all, James does say ‘You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone’ (2:24) – that seems pretty clear, doesn’t it? I think we start to come near to understanding the solution to this ‘problem’ when we realise that James is arguing against a particular kind of faith – a ‘dead’ faith (2:17, 26). By implication, therefore, there must be a ‘living’ faith which contains and results in certain characteristics, certain actions… and he spends this entire letter telling us what those characteristics and actions are! As has been well said,

though we are justified by faith alone, the faith that justifies is never alone. It produces moral fruit; it expresses itself “through love” (Gal. 5:6); it transforms one’s way of living; it begets virtue.³

I put it to you that if we equate James’ ‘living faith’ with Paul’s ‘faith’ then we find that the two are not in conflict but rather in agreement.

Since describing and defining ‘living faith’ is so important to James, it is and should be important to us also. So, over the next five weeks, we will be exploring what James teaches us about ‘living faith’.

James 1

In his opening chapter, James gives us a sampler of all of the main themes that will appear in the remainder of the epistle. If you’ve ever tried to separate different coloured paints that have been mixed together, you will have some idea what it is like trying to distinguish distinct themes in this chapter; they are all of one texture, and so closely related that it is difficult to tell where one leaves off and the next begins. But if I’m right, there are four key themes here: perseverance in the face of trials and temptations (1:2-4), seeking after God’s wisdom (1:5-11) trusting God in the midst of temptations (1:12-18) and obedience to God’s word (1:19-27).

A living faith perseveres in the face of trials (James 1:2-4)

After the briefest of introductions, James gets straight to work: ‘Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance’ (1:2–3). We don’t know the precise circumstances of the recipients of James’ letter, but we can infer straight away that their life wasn’t one of comfort and security – James clearly expected that they would soon face, if they weren’t already facing, ‘trials of many kinds’. They would not have been surprised at James addressing the topic of trials, but they would no doubt have been surprised to hear his command that they consider it ‘pure joy’!

James is not asking the impossible here; he does not instruct his audience (including us!) to ‘feel’ joyful when we undergoing trials. When external circumstances are against you – you’re out of work, with few prospects; your child is sick and the doctors can’t put their finger on the issue; your finances bottom out and you don’t know where your next meal is coming from – James would not expect you to go about with a maniacal grin on your face. Rather, he invites you to ‘consider’, to think things through and to seek God’s perspective on your circumstances. Above all, he points out that such trials serve a purpose – that of ‘testing’ (or ‘proving’) your faith and building perseverance. It is perseverance that results in blessedness, not the circumstances themselves.

‘Perseverance’ is an important word in James’ vocabulary, and one which will come up again in chapter 5. It means more than just passive endurance of circumstances; it is an active advance in spite of those circumstances. The boat that endures drops anchor in the storm; the boat that perseveres continues on toward the destination. The old saying, ‘What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,’ though often uttered in bitter jest, contains truth. Often when I was in school or uni, I would come to a realisation that today’s lesson builds on one I struggled to learn last week, or last month; yet ironically that very struggle to learn, though painful at the time, was what entrenched the lesson so firmly in my mind that it could now form a solid building block in overcoming today’s challenge. The same is true in life in general. Struggles, trials and persecutions are powerful precisely because they are so memorable. If today’s challenges had come yesterday, last week or last month they may have overwhelmed you, but because you persevered yesterday, last week or last month, you have grown to a point where you can persevere again today. The end result is that you will become ‘mature and complete, not lacking anything’ (1:4) and you will ‘receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him’ (1:12).

What is your response when you face trials? When you are falsely accused by a workmate, or crash your car, or get bad news from the doctor, what do you do? What do you think? When the storm comes, is it time to batten down the hatches… or to put on more sail? Is your faith ‘dead’ or ‘alive’ when trials confront you? James calls you to ‘consider it pure joy…. because… the testing of your faith develops perseverance’ (1:2, 3).

A living faith seeks wisdom (James 1:5-11)

The final result of perseverance is that we will be lacking in nothing, but in the meantime James acknowledges that we may lack wisdom (1:5). Fortunately he is prepared with a remedy for that too. God-willing I hope to return to the subject of wisdom in two weeks, when we come to chapter 3 and so won’t say too much now, but it is important to note now how wisdom is related to the overall direction of James’ thought in this chapter. It is trials that form the immediate context of the need for (and lack of) wisdom, but not in the way that we might think. Our natural association between the two would be that when we are undergoing trials we require wisdom from God in order to persevere, and there is truth in that. But that is not James’ point. Rather he is showing that perseverance comes first, then prayer then wisdom. In fact, one might even say that perseverance (1:2-4), prayer (1:5) and faith (1:6-8) are all prerequisites for receiving God’s wisdom.

‘Wisdom’ on this context is not about intelligence, accumulated knowledge, practical expertise or life experience. It’s not even about having complete knowledge of the specific contents of God’s will and plan for you. Instead, it is the ability to to see yourself and your circumstances from God’s perspective, and to act accordingly. James has already given us an example of the wisdom granted him when he pointed out God’s perspective on trials, showing that they are developing perseverance and should be cause for joy. Similarly, in vv. 9-11, he explains God’s perspective on poverty and wealth, and the required responses to each.

Do you have this kind of wisdom? If not, one of three things has gone wrong: (1) you have not persevered; (2) you have not asked; (3) you have not believed. Is yours a living faith when you lack wisdom? Do you seek is from him? James commands: ‘If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him’ (1:5).

A living faith trusts God when tempted (James 1:12-15)

James returns to the subject of trials, but primarily as an introduction to the topic of temptation.⁴ Perseverance and God’s wisdom are also the order of the day when faced with temptations. Just as trials lead to perseverance, which results in us being ‘mature and complete, not lacking in anything’ (1:4), so too temptation leads to desire, which conceives and gives birth to sin, which in turn gives birth to death.

When tempted, we are liable to think, ‘God is tempting me.’ Can you see the magnitude of the lie? For, if it is God doing the tempting, if God is somehow trying to entrap us and lead us astray, then he is to be rejected rather than turned to. James quickly heads off this line of thinking, and he is at pains to point out that the source of temptation and sin is not God but our ‘own evil desire’ (1:14). Temptation results in death (1:15); God’s gifts result in life (1:18); therefore temptation cannot be a ‘gift’ of God. Trials are to to be counted as joy, for they are from God and result in life – not so temptations!⁵ Once again, God’s wisdom, his perspective on our temptation, helps us to understand how to respond.

What is your response to temptation? Do you turn away from God, blaming him for sending this temptation upon you? Do you believe that God is secretly winking at your sin? Or do you turn to him, cling to him, confessing that the sin stems from your own evil desires, and asking forgiveness? Is your faith alive, or is it dead when facing temptation? In the end, ‘Not all of us have the same weakness but all have the same responsibility and the same resource: God’s word – the word of truth.’⁶ It is to this word of truth that we now turn.

A living faith hears and obeys God’s word (James 1:19-27)

‘My dear brothers,’ says James, ‘take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry’ (1:19). He then goes on to unpack this statement in the remainder of the chapter, showing what it means to be slow to anger (1:20-21); quick to listen (1:22-25) and slow to speak (1:26). We will save discussion of James’ commands for speech until we come to chapter 3 in a couple of weeks.

My son, Aedan, is 2 years old, and Katrie and I are trying to teach him to be obedient. The first challenge in getting him to obey me, is teaching him to listen to me. When I can attract his attention then half the battle is won. Conversely, when Aedan is himself talking, he is not listening. Hence we are trying to teach him to listen and not to speak when we are speaking. In this manner also we should obey God.
Anger is also an obvious impediment to obeying God, particularly when that anger is directed at God. This is another reason why James has been so clear that temptation is not from God (1:13-15). The order is important here: James says ‘be quick to listen’ and ‘slow to speak’ first, and doing these things will make us ‘slow to become angry’. This is a sign of humility, and one who is humble cannot at the same time be angry; in this way you can ‘humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you’ (1:21).

Being quick to listen, however, is not enough – it must be coupled with active obedience. If Aedan listens but doesn’t do what I say then I’m not likely to be terribly happy. James compares a person who listens to God’s word but doesn’t act on it to a man who stares at himself in a mirror yet doesn’t retain enough memory of what he looks like to pick himself out of a lineup!⁷ Mirrors in James’ day were not the crystal-clear affairs we have today, but were made of polished bronze. Using them, then, wasn’t a casual affair but was always for a purpose, usually remedial. So also with God’s word: we read it for a purpose, and that purpose is that we should do (and keep doing) what is says. If we don’t use it for that purpose, we are either vain (we just like looking), careless (we can’t be bothered acting) or stupid (we can’t see that there is a problem).

As a Bible college student, this is a trap I regularly fall into. I spend so much time trying to understand the parts of the Scriptures that I don’t currently understand, instead of obeying the parts that I do understand. As the psalmist wrote, God’s ‘word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path’ (Ps 119:105), but a lamp is not a torch; it illuminates only a pace or two around me, and I need to take a step before I can see the next step beyond that.

Do you obey God’s word? Do you obey what you understand first, then work to understand what you don’t? Is your faith alive or dead when confronted with God’s word? James instructs: ‘Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says’ (1:22). And he promises that if you do you will be blessed in what you do (1:25).

Conclusion – A living faith

So, James has shown us what it means to have a living faith: perseverance in the face of trials; seeking God’s wisdom; trusting God in the midst of temptation; and hearing and obeying God’s word. Yet the distinctions are largely of convenience, for they are all so closely related that it is hard to tell where one leaves off and the next starts. For instance, perseverance is itself a form of wisdom, trust and obedience; as we saw wisdom is only granted in conjunction with perseverance, and leads to obedience and so on. What’s more, they build on one another: perseverance brings wisdom; wisdom reminds us that God is not the source of temptation, allowing us to trust him; trust in God works itself out in obedience.

So, what is your diagnosis? Is your faith alive? Yes? Well praise God for that! But what if it’s not? What if, after reading all that James has said in this chapter and, indeed, in this entire Epistle, you look at your life and faith and come to the conclusion that it is dead? What if you lack perseverance, wisdom, trust or obedience? This is the good news, the gospel of Christianity! For there is only one who can bring life out of death, and he ‘gives generously to all without finding fault’ (1:5) as he has promised. That one is God, so ask him. What God commands he also gives!⁸ As James says,

‘Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.’ (1:17)

Bibliography

Augustine, Saint Bishop of Hippo, and R. S. Pine-Coffin. Confessions: Penguin, 1961.
Blomberg, Craig, and Mariam J. Kamell. James, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary Series on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2008.
George, Timothy. “”A Right Strawy Epistle”: Reformation Perspectives on James.” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 4, no. 3 (2000): 20-31.
Kendall, R. T. Justification by Works: How Works Vindicate True Faith, New Westminster Pulpit Series. Waynesboro: Authentic Media, 2001. Reprint, 2005.
Packer, J. I. Concise Theology : A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1993.

Endnotes

1. Cited in Timothy George, “”A Right Strawy Epistle”: Reformation Perspectives on James,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 4, no. 3 (2000): 23.
2. Cited in R. T. Kendall, Justification by Works: How Works Vindicate True Faith, New Westminster Pulpit Series (Waynesboro: Authentic Media, 2001; reprint, 2005), 1.
3. J. I. Packer, Concise Theology : A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1993), 160. I have seen a similar quote attributed to John Calvin and John Owen, but could not find it in print.
4. The two words ‘trial’ and ‘temptation’ both translate the same Greek word, πειρασμός, and it is only by context that we can tell which one is intended.
5. Kendall, Justification by Works, 57. cf. Paul’s instructions to ‘flee’ from various temptation in 1 Cor 6:18; 10:14; 1 Tim 6:11; 2 Tim 2:22.
6. Ibid., 103.
7. Baker, cited in Craig Blomberg and Mariam J. Kamell, James, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary Series on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2008), 90.
8. cf. ‘Give me the grace to do as you command, and command me to do what you will!’ Saint Bishop of Hippo Augustine and R. S. Pine-Coffin, Confessions (Penguin, 1961), x.30.

Let me tell you about the second scariest day of my life. When I was 17, and newly arrived in Sydney to attend university, I awoke one morning to find that I could not open my eyes because any light brought me intense pain. The day before one eye had been very bloodshot, and I had gone to hospital to get treatment, but was sent home with some ointment, an eyepatch and the doctor’s advice that they couldn’t see a problem. But there was no ignoring it this time – I am reliably informed by a (female) optometrist that this kind of pain is of a comparable level with childbirth, except entirely concentrated in one eye!

I called my Dad, a GP, who drove 2 hours to reach me and take me to Sydney Eye Hospital. At this point I began to wonder whether the cure might not be worse than the problem. On the long list of things I hope never to hear again, the phrase, “Please hold still whilst I take a ‘sample’ from your eye with my spatula,” rates very close to the top! I am proud to say that I held rock steady whilst this went on (and quite possibly for some minutes afterwards) though I did plenty of trembling later.

Why was I so afraid? I think perhaps it was because since before I can remember I have been so dependent upon my eyes for everything I do. Whilst my eyesight is far from perfect, with a bit of assistance it suffices for most things that I would ever want to do. This dependence was brought home to me in the week that followed this particular incident, since both my eyes were kept completely dilated and I was not able to focus upon anything and so I couldn’t read, couldn’t see the friends who came to visit or do much of anything else that I wanted to do… I was reduced to listening(!) to television, and it doesn’t get much worse than that.

Imagine, then, the tragedy of a man born with sight that he later loses, such as Mark records for us. Whilst I was at risk of losing sight in one eye, this man had lost sight in both eyes. (We deduce that he had, at some time, had sight by the fact that he can recognise trees and people when he does see them.) This happened in a society lacking the blessings of guide dogs, braille, text-to-speech computers and so on – meaning that he thus became completely dependent upon others for everything.

Bring your friends to Jesus… and let them bring you!

We become aware of this dependence straight away: ‘some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him’ (v. 22). This man had friends who had obviously heard of Jesus, and the wonderful things he had done. This was in Bethsaida, Peter’s hometown,¹ so perhaps they had even met Peter’s mother-in-law, whom Jesus had healed from a fever,² or one of the many others that Jesus had previously healed there.³ In doing so, they acted in faith, believing that Jesus could heal their friend.

Do you bring your friends to Jesus? If you are a Christian, the best and most important thing you can do for your friends is to bring them to Jesus, making requests on their behalf if need be. I have a good friend who is overseas at the moment, and undergoing an intensely difficult period in his life. Throughout this, I have noticed something disturbing in myself: a frustration that, since he is on the other side of the world, ‘all’ I can do is pray for him, as though that weren’t sufficient. Yet this is the first and most important thing I can do. Were he here, I might run around doing other things, so-called ‘practical’ things, but if I do so at the expense of bringing him to Jesus in prayer then I would be doing him no favour at all.
There is no need that your friend be a Christian for you to bring them to Jesus. There is no indication in this account that the blind man asked to be brought to Jesus, and it is the friends who do the asking. In fact, it is your non-Christian friends who most need the healing that only Jesus can bring! Don’t be timid – these friends ‘begged’ Jesus to heal their friend. Here’s how the conversation didn’t go: “Um, Jesus, if you’re not too busy, could you please, if you don’t mind, give our friend back his sight, or at least some of it.” And it didn’t go like this either: “Oh Lord, who art the Great Physician and healer of all the earth, we humbly beseech the that thou shouldst turn thy healing hand to the restoration of our friend’s ocular faculties…” No, the request was at once both simple and profound: please heal our friend.

Equally important, though, do you have friends who will bring you to Jesus? One of my earliest experiences of the power of this was when I was 10. I had just come to Christ, as part of a Christian holiday camp. About a week later, I was picked up early from vacation care and told that we had to go to Sydney because I had been diagnosed with a life-threatening brain tumour. Whilst what followed should have been extremely traumatic for a 10-year-old, amongst my most precious memories from that period is the feeling of wonder I had at hearing that my church was holding special gatherings to pray for me and my family, and that others were praying for me throughout Australia (and a few in New Zealand). This brought with it a sense of great peace: I had friends – some of whom I had never met, yet friends nonetheless – who loved me enough to bring me to Jesus.

Brothers and sisters, bring your friends and family to Jesus as your first and highest priority – and allow them to do the same for you. The Lord may well have a plan for actioning your prayer that involves you acting, but he is waiting for you to first bring it to him before he reveals what that is. On the other hand, his plan may not involve you at all, as was the case with these friends. Their only contribution was to bring their friend to Jesus. Pray first, then act if necessary – but trust Jesus for the how.

Trust Jesus for the how

What do I mean by ‘trust Jesus for the how’? Consider the specific request these friends made: ‘some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him’ (8:22). They had probably heard stories of people being healed with a touch, and wanted the same for their friend. But when the touch comes, it is not at first a healing touch: ‘He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village’ (8:23).

There may have been a number of reasons for leading the man outside the village. Mark consistently shows Jesus avoiding misguided veneration from crowds.⁴ His mission was to preach the kingdom of God, and healing the sick was secondary to that; and public healings sometimes made it impossible to preach.⁵ This is confirmed at the end of this story where ‘Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t go into the village.”‘ (8:26)
In this case, however, I believe the reason is a little deeper. Jesus touches the man in order to enter into the man’s blind world in a personal way, for where sight is absent sound and touch become more important. He leads the man by the hand in order to engender trust, for a blind man must implicitly trust the one leading him. Up until this point, the blind man has been entirely passive; Jesus is encouraging him to engage his faith and trust in Jesus.⁶ To do this, he must leave the crowds (some of whom, no doubt, hoped themselves to be healed), and so we get a little bit of an insight into Jesus, the Good Shepherd who is willing to leave the 99 sheep for the sake of the 1.⁷

Then Jesus spits on the man. This is, to our minds, strange at best and disgusting and degrading at worst. In truth, it wouldn’t have been much less strange in that culture,⁸ although this is the second time in Mark’s gospel where Jesus employs saliva in a healing.⁹ This is almost certainly not what the blind man or his friends had expected when they approached Jesus for healing. They could have taken offence as Naaman did when Elisha told him to bathe in the Jordan to cure his leprosy.¹⁰ But to do so would have been to miss out on the blessing that Jesus had in store for this man.

We don’t get to dictate terms to God. To do so is a form of idolatry, since we make an idol of whatever it is that we want, and we ask God to serve that idol. Instead, we need to bring our needs to God and leave it up to him to decide how to meet those needs. This means that sometimes the results will be very different to what we might have hoped for.

One of the great joys of being a Dad is that I have a legitimate excuse for reading kids’ books. Many are trivial or mundane, as might be expected, but every now and then you come across one that is beautiful and thought-provoking in its very simplicity. Such a book is Claudia the Caterpillar.¹¹ Claudia the Caterpillar looked out at the butterflies and thought, ‘That’s the life for me – I was born to fly.’ After two failed attempts at flying, she brings her problem to God who leads her to the top of the tall tree she had been trying to fly from, and instructs her to climb into the chrysalis he has prepared. Claudia, dismayed, says to God, ‘If you make me go in there I’ll die.’ She had asked God for wings to fly, and the answer was a closer confinement than she currently experienced. It wasn’t what she wanted, but it was the necessary first step to get there. God knew what was needed, and Claudia had to trust him.

This lesson was brought home to me a couple of years ago. A dear friend of mine had been battling against cancer for some years. One particular day, many of us gathered to pray on her behalf – to bring her to Jesus for healing just as the friends in this story did. Late that night I was reading the scriptures prescribed for that day in my reading plan, which included James 5. I read these words: ‘Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up’ (James 5:14–15). Once again I felt compelled to pray that prayer on behalf of my prayer and did so. After some time, I was overwhelmed by a sense of peace like I have rarely felt before or since; I went to bed rejoicing, convinced that she had been completely healed. The next morning I found out that she had indeed been healed… but not at all in the way I had hoped and prayed for. Instead, the Lord had called her home.

Was the Lord playing some kind of cruel joke on me? Of course he was not, any more than he was taunting Claudia the caterpillar by confining her in a cocoon when all she wanted was freedom to fly, or being callous towards Naaman the leper by sending him to wash in the Jordan, or offending the blind man by healing him with saliva. God doesn’t owe us any explanations for how and why he does what he does; instead we owe him our faith and trust because he is a God who cares for us and works all things for his glory and our good.¹²

Brothers and sisters, bring your friends to Jesus (and let them bring you too!), but trust Jesus for the how. And when you do, watch closely, because lives will be transformed.

Watch as lives are transformed

It is at this point that the story gets a little bit strange. Because, having spit and laid hands on the blind man, Jesus asks him what he sees and it becomes clear that the healing is only partial. The man can see, but people look like trees. Has something gone wrong?
The unusual nature of this healing has led many commentators to believe that Jesus is here acting out a parable. If true, this would be in the tradition of many of the prophets who God called to perform specific actions as a means of prophecy. For example, God told Hosea to marry a prostitute¹³ and Ezekiel to lie on his left side for 390 days followed by 40 days on his right side in order to make a point.¹⁴ In this case, the likely target is the disciples, who would likely have been present at the healing, suggesting that they were spiritually blind, have now been given some measure of sight, but will require further intervention from Jesus before they see everything clearly. There is some justification for this as Jesus has just rebuked the disciples for their lack of understanding,¹⁵ and this healing and the healing of blind Bartimaeus form a matched pair framing the journey of Jesus and the disciples to Jerusalem during which he seems to focus on teaching them. However, it is not clear what event the completion of the healing is supposed to refer to: is it Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah in the next section? Christ’s death? Resurrection? Second coming? And so I don’t really think that this interpretation really helps us to understand this healing much better than if we take its plain meaning.

The truth is, I don’t know exactly why this healing took place in two parts. As I said earlier, God doesn’t owe us any explanations for what he does; instead we owe him our faith and trust. What is important to note, however, is Jesus’ patience. He could have sent the man away with his imperfect vision; after all, he is a good deal better off than when he came to Jesus. But Jesus persists, with the result that the man ends up with perfect vision. Mark is at pains to emphasise how well he saw: ‘Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly’ (8:25).
This healing occurred in two stages – and we’re all agreed that it was a miracle. The man couldn’t see, and then he could. But would it still have been a miracle if it took three stages? Or four? What about if it took a day? Or a week? Or a month? The man was blind, right… no matter how long it takes, the result is what counts here! This is an encouragement for us, because whilst some of us may have experienced miraculous healing, chances are most of us will be healed in more ‘ordinary’ fashion… yet does that make it any less miraculous when we are healed? Some of us may be converted to faith in an instant, but most of us awaken to faith gradually… yet does that make it any less miraculous?
Contact with Jesus results in more than just minor course corrections; he does not settle for half-results. His goal is complete transformation. Claudia the Caterpillar asked for her current life to be augmented; God responded by transforming her very nature. This series is about Jesus the life-changer, and we will see the same pattern over and again. Where there is blindness, he brings sight, perfect sight. Where there is darkness, he gives light, light that no darkness can overcome. Where there is death he brings life, and life to the full, life that lasts forever. When he calls, people follow; when he speaks, people are changed; when he touches, nothing can remain the same. He does it in his own time and his own way, but he does it!
Friends, bring your friends to Jesus (and let them bring you too!), trust him for the how, and watch closely as lives are transformed.

Bibliography

Keener, Craig S. The Ivp Bible Background Commentary : New Testament. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993.
Lane, William L. The Gospel According to Mark; the English Text with Introduction, Exposition, and Notes. Grand Rapids,: Eerdmans, 1974.
McDonough, Andrew. Claudia the Caterpillar, Lost Sheep Series 2. Unley, S.Aust.: Lost Sheep Resources, 2006.

Endnotes

1. John 1:44.
2. Mark 1:29-31.
3. Mark 1:32-34.
4. e.g. 1:35-39, 45; 3:7-9; 6:45.
5. e.g. 1:45.
6. William L. Lane, The Gospel According to Mark; the English Text with Introduction, Exposition, and Notes (Grand Rapids,: Eerdmans, 1974), 285.
7. Matt 18:12-13.
8. Craig S. Keener, The Ivp Bible Background Commentary : New Testament (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 156.
9. cf. 7:32-37.
10. 2 Kings 5:11.
11. Andrew McDonough, Claudia the Caterpillar, Lost Sheep Series 2 (Unley, S.Aust.: Lost Sheep Resources, 2006).
12. Rom 8:28.
13. Hos 1.
14. Ezek 4.
15. Mark 8:21.

Over the last 2 weeks, we have considered some of the key anchors that have prevented the Christian church from drifting from its calling over the last 2000 years. Two weeks ago, we found that being a protestant Christian was about being justified by faith alone, and that that faith must be in Christ alone. Last week we explored the concept of being a reformed Christian, and came to the conclusion that it meant being convinced of the sovereignty of God in all things, and consequently that the faith which justifies comes by grace alone and that all things are to be done to the glory of God alone.

This week, we will try to answer the question: What is an evangelical Christian?

We start by looking at the importance of Scripture.

Scripture alone

To get a pilot’s licence, you have to get an “instrument rating”. This means that you understand the instruments that your plane is equipped with – compass, altimeter etc. – and are capable of flying your plane using those and nothing else should the need arise. This is important, because otherwise it is easy to become disoriented when flying through fog or cloud. In some circumstances it is even possible for pilots to suffer what is called vertigo – ‘up’ and ‘down’ become confused, and you feel like you’re upright when you’re actually upside down.

To be able to fly using instruments only, a pilot needs the following:

Good instruments: What’s the point in relying on your instruments if they are telling you the wrong thing? Even a slightly misaligned compass can lead you a long way off course.

Understanding: You need to know how to use your instruments in order for them to be useful. You could hand me a compass, or a GPS device, but unless I had been taught how to use it it would be nothing more than a paperweight to me.

Faith: Sometimes a pilot has to believe his instruments, even when they are in direct contradiction to what his senses are telling him.

I believe that Christians, too, need to get an “instrument rating”. Too easily we can get caught up in what our senses are telling us about the world that we are deceived. This is what happened for John the Baptist, when he sent word to Jesus to ask if he really was the Messiah, or if they should be looking for someone else (Matthew 11:2-6).

Jesus’ response serves to remind John of his instruments. First, he suggests that John needs to consider more than just his immediate surroundings – he tells the messenger to let John know about all the wonderful things that are happening. The things he specifically directs the messengers to take note of, however, are particularly important as they are things spoken of in the scriptures as being indicative of the Messiah. Jesus is commanding, “Go back to your Bible and compare what you find there with what your disciples report – then answer the question for yourself.”

The Bible is Jesus’ answer to not knowing which way is up and which way down. When being tempted in the desert (Matthew 4:1-11), it is scripture which Jesus relies upon in overcoming Satan. If he allowed himself to be caught up in his own situation (I love the subtly understated “After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry” (2)!) then Satan’s suggestions would no doubt have seemed like good sense – after all, how could he possibly be any good to anyone if he starved to death? Perhaps it would be easier to accept the world from Satan’s hand as a gift, rather than pay the price to buy it back. But Jesus knew the scriptures and trusted that the words spoken there were truth, even though his senses and his understanding of the world he was in right then and there were screaming there was a better way.

We need that instrument for ourselves. We need to know what the Bible says in order to know what is right. We need to rely on scripture to navigate us through the fog of this life. We need to trust God’s word, even when it seems totally contrary to what our senses are telling us.¹

Scripture is our authority, and Scripture alone.

The Roman Catholic church teaches, to this day, that the Bible can only be authoritatively interpreted by those members of the church in direct apostolic succession, ultimately embodied in the Pope himself. They take this one step further, holding that the teachings and interpretations of the Popes are themselves authoritative and infallible, and a Christian must obey them as the very Word of God.
This presented a problem for Luther. He was fully convinced from Scripture that the sale of indulgences was not consistent with Christian faith, yet the Pope taught otherwise. So either the Scriptures were wrong or the Pope was. Luther sided with the Scriptures. From that point on, he taught that the Bible is the only inspired and authoritative Word of God, is the only source for Christian doctrine, and should be accessible to all believers. It is this last that inspired Luther to translate the Bible into German – he wanted every German man, woman and child to be able to read it, rather than just those priests and monks who had been specially trained in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. It is in large part because of his example that we can read from the Scriptures in English tonight.

‘Authority’ is a funny thing. Authority comes from influence, and influence comes from time spent. Our worldview is both formed and informed by the people we spend our time with. When we are young, we spend most of our time with our family, and Mum and Dad are the key authorities on everything. Then we start school, and suddenly Teacher knows everything and if Teacher says something contrary to what Mum or Dad says, who do you think we side with? As adolescence draws near, all of a sudden our peers know best, and so it goes.

This is true not just of people, but of other things. Most of us are probably not aware of how much our thoughts on a huge range of subjects are shaped by television, the internet, advertising an so on. In 2004, a study was conducted into how boys and girls in school years 6, 8 and 10 spend their ‘sedentary recreation’. Small screen recreation, by far the largest contributor, includes activities like television watching, video games, computer use and so on.²

Is it any wonder then that when the world goes looking for answers on spiritual matters, they turn to those same people and things? They ask Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Phil and others, whose strategy is always to try and convert time into influence and influence into authority. They surf the internet, because that is where they go looking for other kinds of ‘information’, blind to the bias and colour they encounter there.

Let me ask you: Where is your time spent? What things are influencing you? Who are your ‘authorities’? Where does God fit into all of this? If you are not spending time with God then there is no point kidding yourself that he is an influence let alone an authority in your life. We cannot leave it to our pastors or elders, we cannot rely on ‘professional’ Christians; each of us is responsible for our own relationship with God, and thus each of us must be spending time with him.

Practically, this means reading, meditating on, praying and, finally, living the Scriptures.³

Reading is the first and most fundamental stage. If this does not happen then none of the other stages will happen either. Let me encourage you to make a plan to read the Bible, because I find that unless I plan it it doesn’t happen. Block out some portion of your day or week when you are able to consistently spend time reading God’s word. Try to pick a time when you are at your most alert; give God your best, rather than the dregs that are left over at the end of the day, or post-lunch or whenever.

Meditation is the act of internalising Scripture. Christian meditation is not like eastern meditation, where the goal is to empty the mind and focus on nothing. Christian meditation is about focusing on a particular Scripture. The apostle John gives us an image of this in Revelation 10:9-10, where he speaks of being told to take a scroll containing the words of God and eating it. As Eugene Peterson writes,

the reading that John is experiencing is not of the kind that equips us to pass an examination. Eating a book takes it all in, assimilating it into the tissues of our lives. Readers become what they read. If Holy Scripture is to be something other than mere gossip about God, it must be internalized… The angel does not instruct St. John to pass on information about God; he commands him to assimilate the word of God so when he does speak it will express itself artlessly in his syntax just as the food we eat, when we are healthy, is unconsciously assimilated into our nerves and muscles and put to work in speech and action.⁴

One of the best ways of accomplishing this is through memorisation. I know all too well that some people find this much easier than others – I find it difficult myself. I like to tell people that I have a photographic memory… and no film for the camera! Nevertheless, the Lord amply rewards any time spent in memorising Scripture. We are told frequently in the Psalms, for example, that ‘Blessed is the man… [whose] delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night’ (Ps 1:1-2).

When we commit to meditation, we find that it naturally affects the way we worship, pray and live. As noted evangelical Christian John Stott notes,

God must speak to us before we have any liberty to speak to him. He must disclose to us who he is before we can offer him what we are in acceptable worship. The worship of God is always a response to the Word of God. Scripture wonderfully directs and enriches our worship.⁵

Psalm 119:11 says, ‘I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you’. Another author writes that ‘Throughout Scripture, the word of God is fundamental to a genuine engagement with him.’⁶

These stages of internalising Scripture are described by a 12th Century monk called Guigo the Second:

Reading… puts the solid food in our mouths, meditation chews it and breaks it down, prayer obtains the flavour of it and contemplation is the very sweetness which makes us glad and refreshes us.⁷

Most importantly, at every step along the way, you should always ask: ‘How does this text point to Jesus?’ Jesus rebuked the Pharisees – masters of the Old Testament Scriptures – because they did not recognise that the Scriptures were all about him. ‘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)

So, if we are to be evangelical, then, we must first ensure that Scripture is our prime authority. This requires that we devote time to reading and meditating, because time naturally becomes influence, and influence becomes authority. And when that happens, it will be reflected in changed prayers, worship and lives.

But an emphasis on Scripture is only half of the evangelical story; the other half is the importance of the gospel in all Christian theology.

The gospel is central

How do you think of the gospel? If you’re a Christian, then chances are you fall into one of three camps. The first group think of the gospel as the first step on a staircase that leads to spiritual maturity. You take that first step, master the gospel, then move on to bigger and better things. The second group are a little less linear, rejecting the idea of a sequence of steps to be walked in order. Instead, they think of the gospel as the doorway to a building containing lots of different rooms. After walking through the doorway, you can go to whichever room most interests you: perhaps a little bit of teaching about spiritual gifts; perhaps some church history; go and knock off some of the rough edges in your life through sanctification and so on. The Christian will be mature when he or she has visited all the rooms in the building, but having entered there is no need to re-visit the doorway except to invite others in.

For evangelical Christians the story is different. Rather than the first step or the doorway, they think of the gospel as the hub of a wheel. All other Christian teaching sits around the edges of the wheel, but it relies upon the spokes connecting it to the hub – the gospel. Or, to change the metaphor, the doctrines of the Christian faith are like facets of a diamond, but the gospel is the diamond itself. Christian theology is about expressing the gospel in as many different ways as we can, because all of these ways are necessary to understand the true glory and splendour of the gospel.

What does this mean in practice? It means that you should be able to see the link between what you are being taught – whether by preachers, elders, Bible study leaders or whoever – and the gospel. If you can’t, push your teacher to show how their teaching is connected to the gospel. If they can’t, then it’s time to be suspicious because what is being taught is at best secondary, and at worst un-Christian.

For example, some years ago, I went to see a Christian artist by the name of Steven Curtis Chapman in concert here in Sydney. After he played, the rest of the night was given over to a preacher whose name is well known in Christian circles. At the end of the message, I was disappointed to realise that he had not mentioned Jesus once all night, nor had he connected anything he said to the gospel. In fact, had he substituted the word, ‘nature’ every time he spoke about ‘God’ his message would have been just as valid. This was not an evangelical message – in fact, I would say it was not even a Christian message. It was simply a collection of self-help recommendations. Suffice it to say that I was extremely disappointed that Steven Curtis Chapman only got to play for 20mins (the first time in Sydney in 20 years!), whilst the preacher spoke for over an hour!

So, in order to avoid making the same mistake myself, I would like to spend these last few minutes connecting the ideas we have explored over the last few weeks back to the gospel.
The word gospel is a translation of the Greek εὐαγγελιον (from which we also get the word evangelical!) which means ‘good news’. For a teaching to be connected to the gospel it must first be ‘good news’.

For example, two weeks ago we learned that we are saved by faith alone. This is good news, because it means that we are not reliant upon the things that we are or do in order to be saved. Instead, we need only trust in what God has done for us to be saved. Justification comes by faith alone… and this is the gospel!

The object of our trust is Jesus Christ alone. This is good news because he, and he alone, is the only one both capable and reliable enough to be worthy of our trust. If our faith had to be placed in some lesser object, that would be terrible news because our faith would then be in something either incapable of saving us, or unreliable… or, most likely, both! Christ alone is our saviour… and this is the gospel!

Last week we learned that even that faith in Christ is itself a gift of God. This is great news, because if we had any opportunity to screw up then we could not be sure of our salvation. If the faith came from us, what is to stop it disappearing as quickly as it arrived? And what would be the point in praying for the salvation of the unsaved, since God would be hampered by whether or not that person were able to muster the faith to believe. As it is, faith – and so salvation – comes by God’s grace alone… and this is the gospel!

A consequence of this is that all glory is to go to God alone. This is fantastic news for us, because we know that God’ glory is ultimately found in Jesus’ saving work on our behalf… in our salvation! God will not allow that glory to be lessened by having us snatched out of his hand. Glory is to be given to God alone… and this is the gospel!

Finally, this week we have spoken about authority that comes from Scripture alone. This is excellent news, because in the Scripture God has revealed himself, his son, and the way we can be saved. In short, he reveals all of the other things that we have spoken about over these three weeks. Scripture alone is to be our authority… and this is the gospel!

In other words, these five things – faith alone, Christ alone, grace alone, the glory of God alone, and Scripture alone – are the anchors which have held the Christian faith over the last 2000 years. But they in turn are held by the anchor of the gospel. The gospel is the hub at the centre of the wheel. They are all facets of the same diamond – the gospel. And that is very good news.

That is why I am an evangelical Christian… and why I hope you will be too.

Bibliography

Booth, Michael, NSW Centre for Overweight and Obesity, and New South Wales. Dept. of Health. “Nsw Schools Physical Activity and Nutrition Survey (Spans) 2004 Full Report.” In Shpn 060056. Sydney, N.S.W.: NSW Dept. of Health, 2006.
Kauflin, Bob. Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2008.
Peterson, David. Engaging with God : A Biblical Theology of Worship. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992.
Peterson, Eugene H. Eat This Book : A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2006.

Endnotes

1. There are a couple of things to avoid when reading Scripture, common mistakes that people make. Firstly, don’t allow yourself to get too bogged down in things that are difficult to understand. The more you read and understand of the things that are clear, and in particular the more you respond in obedience to the things you learn, the more God will reveal of the other things. Secondly, don’t try and shape Scripture to fit your experience. ‘Our experience is too small; it’s like trying to put the ocean in a thimble. What we want is to fit into the world revealed by Scripture, to swim in this vast ocean.’ [Eugene H. Peterson, Eat This Book : A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2006), 68.] Thirdly, let the Bible say what it says, without trying smooth over the ‘rough edges’, the things you don’t agree with, or which don’t fit easily into your world-view.
2. Michael Booth, NSW Centre for Overweight and Obesity, and New South Wales. Dept. of Health, “Nsw Schools Physical Activity and Nutrition Survey (Spans) 2004 Full Report,” in Shpn 060056 (Sydney, N.S.W.: NSW Dept. of Health, 2006), 57.
3. Peterson, Eat This Book, 91.
4. Ibid., 20.
5. John Stott, cited in Bob Kauflin, Worship Matters : Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2008), 91.
6. David Peterson, Engaging with God : A Biblical Theology of Worship (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 286.
7. Peterson, Eat This Book, fn.

Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law?¹

With these words, Queen Elizabeth II was entrusted with the responsibility for preserving the Church and the Gospel within the boundaries of her domain. But what do those words mean – “the Protestant Reformed Religion”?

We looked at what it means to be a protestant last week, and religion seems fairly straightforward, but what does it mean to be reformed?

No, it’s not like being a “reformed prisoner” or a “reformed alcoholic”.

Instead, the word ‘reformed’ in this context has to do with being an heir of the teachings of John Calvin.

John Calvin

When Gerard Calvin and his wife Jeanne became parents of a little boy in northern France in 1509, they could not have known that he was destined to become one of the truly great men of all time. They named him Jean. We know him as John Calvin.

Upon reaching his teenage years, Calvin began formal studies towards becoming a Roman Catholic priest. He studied theology at Paris from 1523 to 1528, and did quite well. But he became increasingly disillusioned with the corrupt Catholicism of the day, and decided to study law instead.
But his heart was still restless, until at last it found its rest in God through true conversion in 1533. He left Roman Catholicism forever. But these were dangerous days for those who left Rome. Heavy persecution dogged the French Protestants, and Calvin himself was imprisoned for a short time from 1534 to 1535. So he decided to leave France.

His goal was to move to Basel, Switzerland, and take up a quiet and secluded life of study and writing. It was never to be. Passing through Geneva, he met the leader of the Swiss French Reformation, Guillaume Farel, who was immediately so impressed with young Calvin that he threatened him with God’s punishment if he did not stay in Geneva to preach and teach. Calvin stayed.

In 1536 Calvin published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion. It was immediately hailed throughout Europe as the finest systematic theology by a Protestant Reformer. It was to be his literary masterpiece and he later edited and expanded it several times through his lifetime.

One of Calvin’s main goals was a truly godly society. He viewed the Church and State on equal levels – separate in some areas, related in others. Before Calvin, Geneva was notorious throughout Europe for its sinfulness; after Calvin, it became one of the godliest cities the world has ever known. Calvin’s theology of the godly society gave rise to the modern ideas of the democratic republic, the Free Enterprise economic system popularly called Capitalism, and the Protestant Work Ethic. They were put into practice in Geneva. The plan worked.

Yet, whilst he accomplished great advances in the relationship between the Church and the State, his most abiding teachings were in the area of grace.

By grace alone

Last week, we learned that justification is the source of peace with God and, ultimately, salvation. This justification comes by faith (and only faith) in Christ (and only Christ). But the question Calvin asked was: where does that faith come from? Does it originate with us or with God? The church of Calvin’s day held that God has made it possible for us to come to him, but that faith is an act of our will by which we accept and appropriate his work. In other words, God’s grace plus our faith leads to salvation.

Calvin challenged this. Like Luther before him, he chose to search in the scriptures for the answers to questions like this, rather than relying upon the traditions handed down to him by the church. And when he did, he found passages like these:

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. (Rom 5:6)
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. (Eph 2:1–2)

Consider the words that the apostle uses to describe men and women before God acts to save them: powerless and dead. If I told you that a dead man must do something to bring himself back to life, you would rightly laugh at me – it is not the nature of dead men to do anything! Paul does not paint a very complimentary picture of us prior to our salvation. He continues in Ephesians 2:8:
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.’ (Eph 2:8–9)

Faith is not from us – it is the gift of God. The very thing by which we can enter into the salvation that he has brought about through Christ – faith – is itself a gift of God. We tend to recoil against the idea that everything is from God, and nothing from us, chiefly because that is the way we are taught and trained to behave. Becoming responsible for yourself is an important part of growing up, and no adult likes to be entirely reliant upon someone else for help. We want to be the ones in control, even if only in some small way.

If you’ve ever spent any time around hospitals, visiting someone you care for, you will know what I am talking about. Most of us – whether we are relative or friend – feel utterly helpless the minute we walk into a hospital. All of a sudden we go from being self-reliant to being utterly dependent upon the doctors and nurses who are providing the necessary care. And so we rush to do whatever small things we can to help: turning down the bed, pushing the wheelchair, sneaking in junk food, decorating the room, and so on.

We think the same way when it comes to our salvation. We want to think of ourselves as grown up, as self-reliant, as at least minor contributors to our ultimate fate. And so we tell ourselves that we have exercised ‘free will’ in coming to Christ. He invited us and we came. He might have done 95% of the work, but that remaining 5%, that was me. Look at me, I’m a grown up!

But God doesn’t call us to be grown ups! Instead, he calls us to receive the kingdom, to accept our salvation, like children. ‘I tell you the truth,’ he says, ‘anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it’ (Mark 10:14).

Let me tell you a little about ‘free will’. Imagine that I have two balloons: one is filled with air, the other with helium. (If you’re under the age of 20, ‘imagination’ is kind of like green screen animation, only much better!) Whilst I hold on to them, neither balloon is ‘free’. But once I release them, they are indeed free – free to act according to their nature. Though they may be temporarily affected by external forces such as the wind, overall one will float up, the other down.

The unregenerate human will is like the balloon filled with air: when left to its own devices, it will over time sink into sin. As Paul puts it, ‘All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts’ (Eph 2:3). Whilst there may be brief periods when a wind will pick it up and carry it along and up, it is destined to end up on the ground. Nothing save a transformation of nature – replacing the air with helium for example – will change that. And that kind of transformation is a thing that we cannot achieve by ourselves; it requires the gracious act of God. It requires that we who are dead be made alive! Fortunately, God has done just this:

‘Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved.’ (Eph 2:3–5)

Calvin himself wrote:

Ought we not then to be silent about free-will, and good intentions, and fancied preparations, and merits, and satisfactions? There is none of these which does not claim a share of praise in the salvation of men… When, on the part of man, the act of receiving salvation is made to consist in faith alone, all other means, on which men are accustomed to rely, are discarded. Faith, then, brings a man empty to God, that he may be filled with the blessings of Christ. And so he adds, not of yourselves; that claiming nothing for themselves, they may acknowledge God alone as the author of their salvation.²

As we know, faith is necessary for salvation, and this faith comes only by the gift of God – which we call grace. It is grace, and grace alone that brings about salvation. And, according to both Paul and Calvin, this is necessary otherwise God will not receive all the glory.

To God’s glory alone

Glory is an attribute of a person or thing that merits praise, honour, appreciation and respect. So, the glory of a day might be its blue sky, or the glory of a song might be the mad guitar solo in the middle of it. But the word is also used to denote the praise, honour, appreciation and respect that is given. So we can give glory to something that is glorious.

In God’s case, we rightly say he is glorious in every way. In fact, everything that God does or creates is intended by him to bring glory to himself. He is jealous of his glory, saying ‘I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols’ (Isa 42:8).³ And since he is the creator of all, and sovereign over all, this means that everything is supposed to bring glory to God alone… including us.

Former generations of Christians, before they could be baptised, would have to memorise a long series of questions and answers, known as a catechism. They would then be asked these questions, and give the answers, at their baptism, as a sign that they knew what they were ‘getting themselves into’. One of the most famous of these catechisms starts out with this question: ‘What is the chief end [or purpose] of man?’ to which the response is ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever’.⁴ The prayer our Lord taught us to pray begins: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name’ (Matt 6:9) – this is a prayer of glorification. Our primary responsibility as men and women is to give glory to God – and only God. But how do we do this? Let me give you three ways.

The first and most important thing we need to do to give glory to God is to acknowledge that he is sovereign over everyone and everything. Everything we have comes to us as a gift from God. Everything that we achieve, we do so by God’s grace. In particular, as we have already seen, he is responsible for our salvation; 100% God, 0% us. When we claim responsibility for our salvation, when we pretend that it is our faith that has brought us to him, we are claiming some portion of the glory that is God’s alone. So, give thanks for the things that God has given you, and acknowledge that they are gifts from him.

Another way we give glory to God is by making requests. Imagine you are paralysed, but you have a strong friend who helps you and looks after you. Someone else comes to visit. How can you glorify your friend? You would make requests. “Your visitor would learn from your requests that you are helpless and that your friend is strong and kind. You glorify your friend by needing him and asking him for help and counting on him.”⁵

When we ask God to provide, and then trust him to do so, we bring him glory. When we acknowledge his grace to us before others, we encourage them also to give glory to God. On the other hand, when we try to do things ourselves, and particularly when we try to do things that only God can do, we are taking away from the glory that we owe to God.

In John Calvin’s day, Christians used to present their prayer requests, not to God, but to the ‘saints’. These were dead Christians who, it was believed, could intercede with God on behalf of the one praying. Calvin rejected this idea, because it dishonoured Christ, and obscured the glory of his the cross, by which Christ himself became the mediator between us and God.⁶ Jesus, as we learned last week, is the only mediator required, and trying to put anyone or anything in his place is to detract from the glory of God.

The third way in which we give glory to God is in our worship. As Mark McCrindle put it last Sunday morning, we drink deeply upon the ‘spring of the water of life’ (Rev 21:6), and when we do we give an ‘ahhh’ of satisfaction – and this ‘ahhh’ is worship.

John Piper takes it a step further, when he writes:

[W]orship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of His worth… If we do not gladly reflect God’s glory in worship, we will nevertheless reflect the glory of His justice in our own condemnation… But this unwilling reflection of God’s worth is not worship.⁷

One way or another, all people and all things will give glory to God. The question is, will it be by their worship… or their judgment?

All glory is due to God alone, since salvation is accomplished solely through his will and action—not only the gift of the all-sufficient atonement of Jesus on the cross but also the gift of faith in that atonement, created in the heart of the believer by the Holy Spirit. The reformers believed that human beings—even saints canonised by the Roman Catholic Church, the popes, and the church hierarchy—are not worthy of the glory that was accorded them.

Conclusion

It is somewhat ironic that Queen Elizabeth should have been charged with upholding the ‘Protestant Reformed Religion’, for it is that very Reformed religion that proclaims that it is God alone who can do this. To be a reformed Christian means to proclaim that God alone is sovereign over all, that he is the provider of all grace and so the only one to whom glory is due.

That is why I am a reformed Christian… and why I hope you will be too.

Bibliography

Calvin, Jean. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Edited by John T. McNeil. 2 vols. Louisville: John Knox Press, 2006.
Calvin, John. Calvin’s Commentaries. Translated by Rev. William Pringle. 22 vols. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005.
Piper, John. Desiring God : Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. Updated [i.e. 3rd] ed. Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 2004.
Schaff, Philip. The Creeds of Christendom. 6th ed. 3 vols: Baker Books, 2007.

Endnotes

1. Archbishop of Canterbury to Queen Elizabeth II at her coronation, 1953.
2. John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, trans. Rev. William Pringle, 22 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005), XXI: 227.
3. cf. Isa 48:11.
4. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 6th ed., 3 vols. (Baker Books, 2007), III:676.
5. John Piper, Desiring God : Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, Updated [i.e. 3rd] ed. (Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 2004), 160-1.
6. Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeil, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols. (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2006), III.xx.21.
7. Piper, Desiring God, 84.

Hi, my name is Tim, and I am a Christian. But what kind of Christian am I? Are there different kinds of Christians? And if there are, is there value in knowing what the differences are? I believe that there is, because it helps us to identify the things that we have in common with each other, thus bringing us closer to one another. It also helps to anchor our beliefs to what is important, and thus stop us from drifting.

Over the next three weeks, I hope to explore three of the most important anchors of the Christian church over the last 2000 years, and in the process explain to you why I am a protestant, reformed, evangelical Christian.

What is a protestant?

‘Protest’ is a funny word much abused in our culture. When we hear on the news about protests, it is usually people protesting against something. But the root meaning of the word is more about being in favour of something. Thus people don’t protest against war they protest for peace; not against abortion but for the foetus’ right to live… and so on.

In Christian circles, to be a ‘protestant’ means to be a ‘protester’ for a specific set of beliefs, and it is these beliefs that I hope to survey this week.

The birth of protestantism

In the summer of 1520 a document bearing an impressive seal circulated throughout Germany in search of a remote figure. “Arise, O Lord,” the writing began, “and judge Thy cause. A wild boar has invaded Thy vineyard.”

The document, a papal bull – named after the seal, or bulla – took three months to reach Martin Luther, the wild boar. Long before it arrived in Wittenberg where Luther was teaching, he knew its contents. Forty-one of his beliefs were condemned as “heretical, or scandalous, or false, or offensive to pious ears, or seductive of simple minds, or repugnant to Catholic truth.” The bull called on Luther to repent and repudiate his errors or face the dreadful consequences.

Luther received his copy on the tenth of October. At the end of his sixty-day period of grace, he led a throng of eager students outside Wittenberg and burned copies of the Canon Law and the works of some medieval theologians. Perhaps as an afterthought Luther added a copy of the bull condemning him. That was his answer. “They have burned my books,” he said, “I burn theirs.” Those flames in early December, 1520, were a fit symbol of the defiance of the pope raging throughout Germany.¹

Martin Luther² was a German monk, theologian, and church reformer. He is generally considered to be the founder of Protestantism.

Luther first came to be famous when he vocally opposed the sale of ‘indulgences’, a kind of pardon for sins that one could buy for themselves or for a dead relative to escape purgatory. According to Luther, salvation was attainable only by faith in Jesus as the messiah, a faith unmediated by the church. These ideas helped to inspire the Protestant Reformation and changed the course of Western civilization – and it is these ideas that we will explore tonight.

Whilst Luther’s teachings on indulgences were the spark that set the fire of the Reformation, they are not his most important teachings. Rather, his most abiding legacy is his recovery of a teaching long lost to the church: that faith – and only faith – is the means by which justification (and hence salvation) may be achieved.

Faith alone

This revelation came to Luther whilst he was meditating on and wrestling with a particular word of Scripture. The Scripture was from Paul’s letter to the Romans, and it goes like this:

I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” (Rom 1:16–17)

Luther himself writes:

I hated that word “righteousness of God,” which… I had been taught to understand philosophically regarding the… righteousness… with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner.³

To Luther, then, the gospel was that God punishes sinners, and by punishing removes guilt. The only way out, then, was to be as good as one could in doing good works, to confess and do penance, and thus ‘pay for’ bad works, and if all else fails, purchase indulgences to make up any shortfall. Since Luther had become convicted that indulgences were not biblical, this meant that he was left to his own devices; and, though he thought of himself ‘as a monk without reproach’ he nevertheless felt himself a ‘sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience’.⁴

The turning point came when he considered the words surrounding this phrase, ‘the righteousness of God’. In his own words:

At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, “In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.'” There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.” Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me.⁵

Here is the lesson that Luther had learned, the teaching that had been lost by the church for centuries: justification comes by faith alone. This is crucial to protestantism and, indeed to Christianity… but to understand it we need to know what those key words, ‘justification’ and ‘faith’ mean.

Justification is interpreted in Protestant theology as, “being declared righteous by God”. Only those who are righteous may have a personal relationship with God and thus enter eternal life. In all of history there has ever and will only ever be one person who is righteous on their own account, Jesus Christ; for the rest of us, we rely upon justification. So you see, this is a big deal. But how does justification happen? What must happen in order for justification to occur? The answer is: faith.

Faith is another word for ‘trust’. But faith needs to have an object. The sentence “I have faith” is not complete; you need to say “I have faith in something”. You wan this object to have two qualities. Firstly, it needs to be reliable in proportion to the amount of trust you place in it. Second, it needs to be capable of achieving the thing(s) for which you trust it. For example, I have faith in my car. It is generally reliable, and it is capable for the task of getting me to and from work each day. But if I needed to get across the Gibson desert, or up the Oodnadatta track I would be in real trouble because it is not that reliable, nor is it that capable.

In the context of justification, the object of your faith refers to who or what you are trusting in for justification. Here’s a quick test to help you determine where your faith for justification lies. Complete this sentence: “I have a relationship with God because…” Whatever the next word is, it is likely that that is the object of your faith. Here are some examples of ways people today might finish that sentence:

• I am basically a good person, or at least I’m better than average;
• I do good things – I give to charity, serve in a soup kitchen etc.;
• I hang with the right crowd;
• I prayed the ‘sinner’s prayer’ when I was young;
• I read my Bible and other Christian books, and I pray every day;
• I go to church, have been baptised and take communion every week.

Do you notice the theme here? If your answer to why you have a relationship starts with “I…”, then you are probably relying on works – things that you do or are. But this is not very reassuring, because if you are anything like me you have good and bad days; what happens if you have too many bad days? And that is assuming that even on your ‘good’ days you are ‘good enough’, which the Bible tells us is not true: ”There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one’ (Rom 3:10–12). Your own works – you yourself – are neither reliable nor capable, especially when it is eternity on the line!

It is important to understand the relationship between justification and works. Justification is received by faith only, not good works. Having said that, in classical Protestant theology saving faith is automatically accompanied by good works. As one theologian puts it:

[T]hough we are justified by faith alone, the faith that justifies is never alone. It produces moral fruit; it expresses itself “through love” (Gal. 5:6); it transforms one’s way of living; it begets virtue.⁶

The point is this: our faith requires an object much more constant and effective than us or our works. So if our faith is not to be in “I”, who is worthy of our faith? Who is reliable and capable enough to be trusted? The answer is Jesus Christ, and him alone.

Christ alone

We know that Jesus is reliable because he was sent by God to accomplish the very thing we rely upon him for.⁷ The Bible assures us that God is ‘not a man, that he should change his mind’ (1 Sam 15:29).⁸ Having sent Jesus to save us, then, he is not going to turn away and do something else.

If Jesus had simply declared these things then we could possibly dismiss him as all talk and no action. He demands attention, however, by the miracles that punctuated his ministry speak for both his authenticity⁹ and his power; or, to put it another way, his reliability and his capability.

For these reasons and more, the apostle Paul speaks of our salvation as an accomplished fact when he writes:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. (Rom 5:1–2a)

It is Jesus Christ who makes us at peace with God if we have faith in him. We know that he is reliable because he has already died in our place.¹⁰ And we know that he is capable, because God has honoured him by raising him from death!¹¹ As Paul argues:

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Rom 5:9-10)

If Jesus was willing to go to the cross for us, do you think he will now let us slip through his fingers? That would be like someone studying really hard for their HSC and then not bothering to show up to their exam! Or getting engaged, buying the ring, doing pre-marriage counselling, planning the wedding… and then not showing up on the wedding day!

But just because Jesus is one capable and reliable object for our faith, that doesn’t mean that he is the only such object does it? Could there be another?

We should take Jesus very seriously when he says ‘No one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14:6b). He is the only one who knows the Father, and has always known him, since before the creation of the world.¹² He is the only one who has ever lived entirely without sin, and thus can come into the Father’s presence based on his own righteousness.¹³ The entire letter to the Hebrews is intent on showing how far superior Jesus is to any other ‘alternative': he is superior to prophets¹⁴ (including the greatly revered prophet Moses¹⁵) and angels;¹⁶ he represents a greater salvation,¹⁷ for he is a greater high priest¹⁸ who serves in a greater tabernacle¹⁹ as mediator of a New and better Covenant,²⁰ offering a greater sacrifice for sins.²¹ The old ‘is only a shadow of the good things that are coming – not the realities themselves’ (10:1) and that ‘what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear’ (8:13). If you place your faith in something that ‘will soon disappear’, then you are in a lot of trouble!

The church in Martin Luther’s day thought to place itself between people and Christ, as though to say: ‘No one comes to the Son except through us’, much like the disciples who thought to control access to Jesus by preventing children from coming to him.²² What things do we put between us and Jesus today? Do we feel closer to God when we sing the right songs, pray the right prayers, hang out with the right people, go to the right camps or conferences? But with these people and these things, Jesus is just as furious as he was with the disciples those many years ago, saying ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these’ (Mark 10:14).

What is a protestant?

So we finally have an answer to the question we started with: ‘What is a protestant Christian?’ A protestant Christian is a person who, with Martin Luther (and the apostle Paul), proclaims the great truth that the only means of achieving justification, peace with God and, ultimately, salvation is faith. And the only object of that faith is Jesus Christ, for he is the only one who is both reliable and capable of accomplishing that justification.

That is why I am a protestant Christian… and why I hope that you are too.

Bibliography

Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works Vol. 34, Career of the Reformer. Saint Louis: Philadelphia : Concordia Publ. House ; Fortress Pr., 1960.
Packer, J. I. Concise Theology : A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1993.
Shelley, Bruce L. Church History in Plain Language. Updated 2nd ed. Dallas, Tex.: Word Pub., 1995.

Endnotes

1. Bruce L. Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, Updated 2nd ed. (Dallas, Tex.: Word Pub., 1995).
2. b. November 10, 1483. d. February 18, 1546.
3. Martin Luther, Luther’s Works Vol. 34, Career of the Reformer (Saint Louis: Philadelphia : Concordia Publ. House ; Fortress Pr., 1960), 336. The immediate context of this quotation refers to the death of Johnn Tetzel, the indulgence hawker, which occurred in 1519. This would put Luther’s ‘conversion’ some two years after his posting of the 95 theses.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 337.
6. J. I. Packer, Concise Theology : A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1993), 160.
7. John 6:57; 10:25-30.
8. cf. Num 23:19.
9. See especially Matt 3:16-17 par.; John 10:25.
10. Rom 5:6.
11. 1 Cor 15:17.
12. John 1:1; 10:15; 14:9.
13. Heb 4:15; cf. 1 John 1:8.
14. 1:1-2
15. 3:3
16. 1:4
17. 2:3
18. 8:1-2
19. 9:11
20. 8:13
21. 9:14
22. Mark 10:13-16 par.