Introduction

On Sunday the 3rd of February, 1788, Richard Johnson preached the very first Christian sermon on Australian soil. Johnson had been appointed as chaplain for NSW and travelled with the First Fleet. His appointment was in no small part due to the influence exerted by two remarkable and influential men, William Wilberforce and John Newton, who believed it very important that the chaplain for this important expedition should be a committed evangelical Christian.But why were Wilberforce and Newton so keen to have an evangelical presence in NSW? And why was Johnson willing to up and transplant himself from a comfortable life in England for the sake of enduring the privations of sailing to the other side of the world?

This week we will explore these questions and more.

However, the evangelical story does not begin with Johnson, nor even with Wilberforce or Newton. Unlike the protestant and reformed innovations, the evangelical movement cannot really be linked to one man in particular. There were so many great leaders: Jonathan Edwards in America; Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine in Scotland; Howel Harris in Wales; and George Whitefield, William Wilberforce and John Newton in England. However, if I were to select one person as being representative of the movement as a whole, it would be John Wesley.

John Wesley

Toward the end of January 1736, the good ship Simmonds, bound for Savannah, Georgia, sailed into a series of violent Atlantic storms. The wind roared; the ship cracked and quivered; the waves lashed the deck.

A young, slightly built Anglican minister on board was frozen in fear. John Wesley had preached the gospel of eternal salvation to others, but he was afraid to die. He was deeply awed, however, by a company of Moravian Brethren from Herrnhut. As the sea broke over the deck of the vessel, splitting the mainsail in pieces, the Moravians calmly sang their psalms to God.

Afterward, Wesley asked one of the Germans if he was frightened.

“No,” he replied. “Weren’t your women and children afraid?” Wesley asked.

“No,” said the Moravian, “our women and children are not afraid to die.”

“This,” Wesley wrote in his Journal, “was the most glorious day I have ever seen.”

At that “glorious” moment Wesley was a most unlikely candidate for leadership in a spiritual awakening soon to shake England to its moorings. He had a form of godliness, but had yet to find its power.¹

John Wesley was born in Epworth, England. He was the fifteenth of nineteen children. At the age of five, John was rescued from the burning rectory where he lived. This escape made a deep impression on his mind; and he regarded himself as providentially set apart, as a “brand plucked from the burning.”² The Wesley children’s early education was given by their parents in the Epworth rectory. Each child, including the girls, was taught to read as soon as they could walk and talk. In 1713 John was admitted to the Charterhouse School, London, where he lived the studious, methodical, and (for a while) religious life in which he had been trained at home.

At seventeen he was off to Oxford University where he studied first at Christ Church and later at Lincoln College. He found little there to stimulate either mind or soul, but took the opportunity to read widely, including such books as Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living, Thomas à Kemipis’ Imitation of Christ and William Law’s Serious Call to a Holy Life. These men, he said, “convinced me of the absolute impossibility of being half a Christian. I determined, through His grace, to be all devoted to God.” So he listed his weaknesses and developed rules to overcome them.

In 1726 Wesley was elected a fellow of Lincoln College. This gave him not only academic standing at the University but assured him of a steady income. Two years later he was ordained to the Anglican ministry and returned to Epworth for a time to serve as his father’s assistant.

When he resumed his duties at Oxford, he found that his brother, Charles, alarmed at the spread of deism at the University, had assembled a little band of students determined to take their religion seriously. John proved to be just the leader they needed. Under his direction they drew up a plan of study and rule of life that stressed prayer, Bible reading, and frequent attendance at Holy Communion.

The little group soon attracted attention and some derision from the lax undergraduates. Holy Club, they called them; Bible moths, Methodists, and Reforming Club. The Methodist label is one that stuck.

The members of that little society were ardent but restless souls. They found fresh enthusiasm when a townsman or new student joined them, such as the bright and brash undergraduate from Pembroke College, George Whitefield. But they were constantly in search of ways to make their lives conform to the practice of early Christians. They gave to the poor and they visited the imprisoned. But John was quick to confess that he lacked the inward peace of a true Christian. God must have something more in mind.

Then came the invitation to Georgia. A friend, Dr. John Burton, suggested that both John and Charles could serve God in the new colony led by General James Oglethorpe. Charles could be the General’s secretary and John a chaplain to the colony. John welcomed a chance to preach to the Indians so the brothers boarded the Simmons in October with youthful idealism and missionary zeal, totally unaware of the storms on sea and soul just ahead.

The whole Georgia episode proved to be a fiasco. John discovered that the noble American savages were “gluttons, thieves, liars and murderers.” And his white congregation were not fond of his strict high church ways and his prohibition of fancy dresses and gold jewelry in church.

John’s frustrations were compounded by his pitiful love affair with Sophy Hopkey, the eighteen-year-old niece of Savannah’s chief magistrate. Wesley was so mixed up emotionally and spiritually that he didn’t know his own mind. Sophy finally resolved the affair by eloping with John’s rival. The jilted lover then barred her from Holy Communion, and her incensed husband sued John for defaming Sophy’s character. The trial dragged out and after six months of harassment, Wesley fled the colony in disgust.

On his way home, he had a chance to ponder the whole experience. “I went to America,” he wrote, “to convert the Indians, but, oh, who shall convert me?”

Wesley returned to England depressed and beaten. On the night of May 24, 1738, at a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate Street, London, in which he heard a reading of Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans, and penned the now famous line “I felt my heart strangely warmed.” This completely changed the character and method of his ministry.

Though his understanding of both justification and assurance matured, he never stopped preaching the importance of faith for salvation and the witness of God’s Spirit with the spirit of the believer that they were, indeed, a child of God. His unorthodox teachings, however, meant that he was excluded from preaching in most parish churches.

Wesley’s Oxford friend, the evangelist George Whitefield, was also excluded from the churches of Bristol. In February of 1739, he went to the neighbouring village of Kingswood and preached in the open air to a company of miners. Wesley hesitated to accept Whitefield’s invitation to copy this bold step. Overcoming his reservations, he preached his first sermon in the open air, near Bristol, in April of that year.

He was still unhappy about the idea of field preaching, and would have thought, “till very lately,” such a method of saving souls as “almost a sin.” These open-air services were very successful, however, and he never again hesitated to preach in any place where an assembly could be gotten together. More than once he used his father’s tombstone at Epworth as a pulpit! He continued for fifty years — entering churches when he was invited, and taking his stand in the fields, in halls, cottages, and chapels, when the churches would not receive him.

Wesley travelled constantly, generally on horseback, preaching two or three times a day. In fact, by Wesley’s own estimate, he averaged 8000 miles of travel per year, most of it on horseback! He rose at four in the morning, lived simply and methodically, and was never idle if he could help it. He formed societies, opened chapels, examined and commissioned preachers, administered aid charities, prescribed for the sick and superintended schools and orphanages. He received at least £20,000 for his publications, but used little of it for himself. His charities were limited only by his means, and he died a poor man.

All of this activity had one cause: Wesley’s renewed understanding of the importance and preeminence of the Gospel.

The Gospel

The partnership between Wesley and Whitefield was a strange one. Although they had similar backgrounds, their theological viewpoints were wildly different. On the one hand, Whitefield was a staunch Calvinist, subscribing to all of the beliefs we learned about last week; on the other, Wesley was an Arminian, believing, for example, that man is capable of overcoming their own sinfulness enough to be able to turn to God – anathema to a Calvinist. They put aside these differences, however, in order to preach the Gospel.

This renewed Gospel focus led to one of the great missionary movements of all time. The Society for Missions to Africa and the East (later renamed the Church Mission Society) was formed in 1799 by a group of activist evangelicals. Other voluntary societies, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) and the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children were also established by evangelicals. Much of the social work that was done by these societies was accompanied by Christian witness and evangelism. In this, they followed Christ’s example – he who preached God’s kingdom come and then worked to see that fulfilled here on earth by caring for the sick, the poor and the outcast.

One of the big battles that evangelicals had to overcome was the perception in society that Christianity was only useful for the purpose of teaching morals (this idea is known as moralism). Most people were baptised as infants, and so considered themselves to be Christians by default. As a result, so it was thought, the Church needed only to preach morality. Wesley, perhaps largely because of his own experience, held to the importance of all people undergoing ‘conversion’ and being born-again.

Assurance of Salvation

Wesley believed that all Christians have a faith which implies an assurance of God’s forgiving love, and that one should feel that assurance, or the “witness of the Spirit”. This understanding is grounded in Paul’s affirmation, “…ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father. The same Spirit beareth witness with our spirits, that we are the children of God…” (Romans 8:15-16, Wesley’s translation). This experience was mirrored for Wesley in his Aldersgate experience wherein he “knew” he was loved by God and that his sins were forgiven.

I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that He had taken my sin, even mine.³

The Bible

Broadly speaking, there are 4 categories of belief about the source of authority for the church:

• The Bible
• Tradition
• Personal Experience
• Reason

Different groups have different emphases on each of these – for example, as we learned when looked at protestantism, the Catholic church emphasises the role of tradition, and the teachings of the church, to be equal with Scripture. Other churches see the personal experience of the Holy Spirit’s work in your life as being the determining force for that life; hence you are encouraged to always seek the Spirit’s leading before taking action.

John Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason. Scripture, Wesley argued, is primary, revealing the Word of God ‘so far as it is necessary for our salvation.’ For Wesley, Tradition, Reason, and Experience do not form additional “sources” for theological truth, for he believed that the Bible was the sole source of truth about God, but rather these form a matrix for interpreting the Bible. Therefore, while the Bible is the sole source of truth, Tradition forms a “lens” through which we view and interpret the Bible. But unlike the Bible, Tradition is not an infallible instrument, and it must be balanced and tested by Reason and Experience. Reason is the means by which we may evaluate and even challenge the assumptions of Tradition.

But for Wesley, the chief test of the “truth and nothing but the whole truth” of a particular interpretation of scripture is how it is seen in practical application in one’s Experience. Always the pragmatist, Wesley believed that Experience formed the best evidence, after Scripture, for the truthfulness of a particular theological view. He believed Scriptural truths are to be primarily lived, rather than simply thought about or merely believed. Thus, how a particular interpretation of scripture is lived out is the best and most viable test of our theology.

This primacy of Scripture is one of the central tenets of evangelical belief.

Conclusion

John Wesley was one of many leading the evangelical charge in the 18th Century, and many have followed in his footsteps since. His great contributions to Christianity were a renewed emphasis on Scriptural authority, and an appreciation for the need for conversion.

Richard Johnson faced a great struggle as the first chaplain of NSW. Governor Phillip demanded that Johnson should teach the convicts and soldiers good morals; Johnson wanted to preach the gospel… and so that is exactly what he did. And that is why Wilberforce and Newton fought so hard to have an evangelical aboard the First Fleet.

And that is why I am an evangelical Christian.

Endnotes

1. Shelley, “A Brand from the Burning” in Church History in Plain Language (2nd Edition, Thomas Nelson, 1995) p. 331.
2. cf. Zech 3:2.
3. Wesley’s Journal

Introduction

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. In French his name is Jean Calvin; in the Latinized form, Joannes Calvinus; but we know him as John Calvin.

John Calvin was born July 10, 1509 in Noyon in Picardy, 60 miles northeast of Paris. Upon reaching his teenage years, he 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. So he transferred to Orleans and Bourges for studies towards becoming a lawyer (1528 to 1532).

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 cautioned 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.

Calvin and Farel immediately began the reformation of the church in Geneva. They proposed a confession and oath for the city and its citizenry. All citizens were required to take the oath of faith or leave Geneva. Virtually all Genevans accepted. But when in 1538 Calvin called for the church to have authority to fence the Lord’s Table by excommunicating all those living in public sin, both he and Farel were exiled by the City Council.

So Calvin went to Strassbourg in southern Germany near France. There he pastored the French-speaking congregation and lectured in the theological academy. He became a close friend of Martin Bucer, who would have a profound influence on Calvin’s theology. Calvin would stay in Strassbourg for 3 years until the Geneva City Council changed its mind and agreed that Calvin and Farel were right after all. Yet it would be nearly 20 years until the church formally had the right to excommunicate citizens living in known sin.

It was in Strassbourg that Calvin met his wife. Actually, Bucer and Farel had twice tried to match Calvin with a prospective wife, unsuccessfully. A certain Anabaptist had converted to Reformed thinking under Calvin’s theology, but he soon caught and died of the Plague. Some time later, his widow would become Mrs. John Calvin. Her name was Idelette de Bure. She brought 2 children with her, a teenage boy and a young girl. John and Idelette had only one child themselves, but he died shortly afterwards. Idelette herself was constantly in ill health, and she died in 1549 after only 9 years of marriage. Calvin never remarried. And he too was in continual ill health.

From 1541 Calvin spent almost all of his life in Geneva. In addition to his preaching and teaching duties he organized a school system for the children of Geneva, a system of charity for the poor and elderly; Calvin even designed the public sewer system of Geneva when the City Council couldn’t agree on a plan.

One of his 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 profligacy; 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.

In 1555, Geneva became the refuge of Protestant refugees from all around Europe, particularly Great Britain. These English and Scottish leaders sat under Calvin’s teaching and brought that theology back with them when they returned to solidify the English and Scottish Reformations. Another major milestone in Calvin’s life was the establishment of the Academy of Geneva in 1559, which later became the University of Geneva. But for all this, his main calling was to be a pastor and a theologian.

The ‘Five Points’ of Calvinism

Whilst he never formulated them in these words, John Calvin’s most famous teachings are traditionally remembered using the mnemonic TULIP: Total Depravity; Unconditional Election; Limited Atonement; Irresistible Grace; and Perseverance of the Saints.

Total Depravity

Man, by his fall into a state of sin, has wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation: so as, a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.²

Total depravity is the fallen state of man as a result of original sin. The doctrine of total depravity teaches that people are by nature not inclined to love God with their whole heart, mind, or strength, as he requires, but rather all are inclined to serve their own interests over those of their neighbor and to reject the rule of God. Even religion and philanthropy are destructive to the extent that these originate from a human imagination, passions, and will.

Therefore, in Reformed Theology, God must predestine individuals for salvation since man is incapable of choosing God.

Total depravity does not mean, however, that people are as evil as possible. As Wayne Grudem points out:

Scripture is not denying that unbelievers can do good in human society in some senses. But it is denying that they can do any spiritual good or be good in terms of a relationship with God. Apart from the work of Christ in our lives, we are like all other unbelievers who are “darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart” (Eph. 4:18).³

This may seem like a harsh call, but Calvin nevertheless taught optimism concerning God’s love for what he has made and God’s ability to accomplish the ultimate good that he intends for his creation. In particular, in the process of salvation, it is argued that God overcomes man’s inability with his divine grace and enables men and women to choose to follow him. After all, “with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”⁴ And this brings us to the idea of election.

For further reading, see:

• Genesis 6:5: “The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.”
• Psalms 51:5: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”
• Jeremiah 13:23: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.”
• Mark 7:21-23: “For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evil things come from inside and make a man ‘unclean’.”
• John 3:19: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved the darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”
• John 6:64-65: “[Jesus said,] ‘Yet there are some of you who do not believe.’ (For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe, and who would betray him.) He went on to say, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.'”
• John 8:34: “Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.'”
• Romans 3:10-11: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one understands, no one who seeks God.”
• Romans 8:6-8: “The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.”
• 1 Corinthians 2:14: “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
• Ephesians 2:1-3: “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. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.”

Unconditional Election

As Scripture, then, clearly shows, we say that God once established by his eternal and unchangeable plan those whom he long before determined once for all to receive into salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, he would devote to destruction.⁵

In Protestant theology, election is considered to be one aspect of predestination in which God selects certain individuals to be saved. Those elected receive mercy, while those not elected, the reprobate, receive justice.

In Calvinism, this election is called “unconditional” because his choice to save someone does not hinge on anything inherent in the person or on any act that the person performs or belief that the person exercises. Indeed the influence of sin has so inhibited our ability to act righteously that no one is willing or able to come to or follow God apart from God first regenerating the person’s heart to give them the ability to love him. Hence, God’s choice in election is and can only be based solely on God’s own independent and sovereign will and not upon the foreseen actions of man.

The Reformed position is frequently contrasted with the Arminian doctrine of conditional election in which God’s eternal choice to save a person is conditioned on God’s certain foreknowledge of future events, namely, that certain individuals would exercise faith and trust in response to God’s offer of salvation.

For more:

• John 15:16: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last.”
• Romans 9:15-16: “For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.”
• Ephesians 1:4-5: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.”
• 2 Timothy 1:9: “[God] has saved us and called us to a holy life – not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace.”

Limited Atonement

The doctrine of the limited scope (or extent) of the atonement is intimately tied up with the doctrine of the nature of the atonement. It also has much to do with the general Calvinist scheme of predestination. Calvinists advocate the satisfaction theory (also known as punishment theory) of the atonement, which developed in the writings of Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas. In brief, the Calvinistic refinement of this theory states that the atonement of Christ literally pays the penalty incurred by the sins of men — that is, Christ receives the wrath of God for specific sins and thereby cancels the judgment they had incurred. Since, Calvinists argue, it would be unjust for God to pay the penalty for men’s sins and then still condemn them for those sins, all those whose sins were propitiated must necessarily be saved.

The Calvinist view of predestination teaches that God chose a group of people, who would not and could not choose him, to be saved apart from their works or their cooperation, and those people are compelled by God’s irresistible grace to accept the offer of the salvation achieved in the atonement of Christ. Since in this scheme God knows precisely who the elect are, Christ needn’t atone for sins other than those of the elect.

The Calvinist atonement is thus called definite because it certainly secures the salvation of those for whom Christ died, and it is called limited in its extent because it effects salvation for the elect only. Calvinists do not believe the power of the atonement is limited in any way, which is to say that no sin is too great to be expiated by Christ’s sacrifice, in their view.

On a practical level, this doctrine is not emphasized in Calvinist churches except in comparison to other salvific schemes, and when it is taught, the primary use of this and the other doctrines of predestination is the assurance of believers. To that end, they apply this doctrine especially to try to strengthen the belief that “Christ died for me,” as in the words of St. Paul, “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me“⁶. In fact, contrary to what one might expect on the basis of this doctrine, Calvinists believe they can freely and sincerely offer salvation to everyone on God’s behalf since they themselves do not know which people are counted among the elect and since they see themselves as God’s instruments in bringing about the salvation of other members of the elect.

The classic Bible passage cited to prove a limited extent to the atonement is the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John in which Jesus uses Ancient Near Eastern shepherding practices as a metaphor for his relationship to his followers. A shepherd of those times would call his sheep from a mix of flocks, and his sheep would hearken to his voice and follow, while the sheep of other flocks would ignore any but their own shepherd’s voice (John 10:1-5). In that context, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me,…and I lay down my life for the sheep” (vv. 14-15), and he tells the Pharisees that they “do not believe because [they] are not [his] sheep” (v. 26). He continues, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.” (vv. 27-28). Since Calvinists and nearly all Christians believe that not all have eternal life with God, Calvinists conclude that either Jesus was wrong in saying that he would lose none of his sheep (a conclusion they reject) or that Jesus must not have died for everyone.

Irresistible Grace

According to Calvinism, those who obtain salvation do so, not by their own “free” will, but because of the sovereign discriminating grace of God. That is, men yield to grace, not finally because their consciences were more tender or their faith more tenacious than that of other men. Rather, the willingness and ability to do God’s will, are evidence of God’s own faithfulness to save men from the power and the penalty of sin, and since man is so corrupt that he will not decide and cannot be wooed to follow after God, God must powerfully intervene. In short, Calvinism argues that regeneration must precede faith.

Calvin says of this intervention that “it is not violent, so as to compel men by external force; but still it is a powerful impulse of the Holy Spirit, which makes men willing who formerly were unwilling and reluctant,”⁷ and John Gill says that “this act of drawing is an act of power, yet not of force.

See, for example:

• John 6:37,39: “All that the Father gives me will come to me…. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up on the last day.”
• John 6:44–45: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…. Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me.”
• John 6:65: “[N]o one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.”

Perseverance of the Saints

The perseverance of the saints means that all those who are truly born again will be kept by God’s power and will persevere as Christians until the end of their lives, and that only those who persevere until the end have been truly born again.

The Reformed tradition has consistently seen the doctrine of perseverance as a natural consequence to its general scheme of predestination in which God has chosen some men and women for salvation and has cleared them of their guilty status by atoning for their sins through Jesus’ sacrifice. According to these Calvinists, God has irresistibly drawn the elect to put their faith in himself for salvation by regenerating their hearts and convincing them of their need. Therefore, they continue, since God has made satisfaction for the sins of the elect, they can no longer be condemned for them, and through the help of the Holy Spirit, they must necessarily persevere as Christians and in the end be saved.

Traditional Calvinists also believe that all who are born again and justified before God necessarily and inexorably proceed to sanctification. Indeed, failure to proceed to sanctification in their view is evidence that the person in question was not one of the elect to begin with. The suggestion is that after God has regenerated someone, the person’s will cannot reverse its course. It is argued that God has changed that person in ways that are outside of his or her own ability to alter fundamentally, and he or she will therefore persevere in the faith.

On a practical level, Calvinists do not claim to know who is elect and who is not, and the only guide they have are the verbal testimony and good works (or “fruit”) of each individual. Any who “fall away” (that is, do not persevere unto death) must not have been truly converted to begin with, though Calvinists don’t claim to know with certainty who did and who did not persevere.

• John 6:37-40: “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”
• John 10:28-29: “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.”
• Romans 5:9-10: “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!”
• Romans 8:31-39: “What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
  “For your sake we face death all day long;
  we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
• Romans 11:29: “[F]or God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.”
• 1 Corinthians 1:4-9: “I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way – in all your speaking and in all your knowledge – because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.”
• Ephesians 1:13-14:”And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession – to the praise of his glory.”
• Philippians 1:6: “[B]eing confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
• 1 Peter 1:5: “[The elect] are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.”
• Jude 24: “[God] is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy.”

The Lord’s Supper

The Roman Catholic Church of Calvin’s day (and indeed to this day) had 7 ‘sacraments’ – that is, rites, first implemented by Jesus, which are sacred. They were: baptism; confirmation; the eucharist (what we would call communion or the Lord’s Supper); confession; ordination; anointing of the sick (for those who are terminally ill, you may have heard this referred to as ‘last rites’); and marriage.

Martin Luther, John Calvin and other reformers argued that there was only biblical evidence for 2 of these – baptism and the Lord’s Supper. However, they were by no means in total agreement about what these actually meant. Luther and Calvin, for example, disagreed about what happens when we take communion: Luther believed that, whilst not actually being Christ’s body and blood (as Catholics believe), the bread and the wine by which we celebrate the Lord’s Supper somehow mystically link us to his body and blood, allowing us to participate in his death and thus in his life; Calvin, on the other hand, argued that the bread and the wine were rather a symbol, giving a visible sign of the fact that Christ himself was truly present. This latter view is the one that is held in the Anglican Church:

The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith.⁸

Conclusion

Few men other than the Lord Jesus himself have had a more significant impact on Christian thinking than John Calvin. His influence can be felt every time we take communion. His understanding of God’s Sovereignty was a precious gift to a church infatuated with its own sense of control; it reminds us that the world exists around God, not God around the world. Some of his teachings are hard to understand or accept – yet they ring true with Scripture over and over again.

And that is why I am a reformed Christian.

Endnotes

1. Archbishop of Canterbury to Queen Elizabeth II at her coronation, 1953
2. Westminster Confession of Faith
3. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (IVP, 1994) p. 497.
4. Matthew 19:26
5. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion III.xxi.7.
6. Gal. 2:20, emphasis added
7. Calvin, Commentary on John’s Gospel 6:44.
8. Article 28 of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion.

Introduction

Next year, 2008, the Roman Catholic church will celebrate World Youth Day here in Australia. As a part of this, we can expect to see a massive influx of young people from around the world¹, drawn towards Sydney in particular; the event will climax in an open-air Mass at Randwick Racecourse, conducted by Pope Benedict XVI. On the whole, we can expect the event to be full of life and energy, and no doubt a great witness to Christ… and yet many Christians will feel unable to attend.

It is a fact that no Anglican Archbishop of Sydney has ever attended mass. At the installation of Cardinal Pell as a cardinal, the service was planned with a deliberate pause midway through to allow Archbishop Peter Jensen to withdraw before the commencement of the mass part of the service.

The question must be asked, of course, what kind of issue or issues could be worth splitting the Church over? How can we justify one Christian parting ways with another? Didn’t Christ command unity? Wasn’t Paul’s vision for one Body, rather than many smaller bodies?

In this course it is my aim to explore some of the issues that have split the Church over the years, and tonight we start with the issue of the Roman Catholic/Protestant divide.

History

Martin Luther

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 ened 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.²

Martin Luther (November 10, 1483 – February 18, 1546) was a German monk, theologian, and church reformer. He is generally considered to be the founder of Protestantism.

Luther’s theology challenged the authority of the papacy by emphasizing the Bible as the sole source of religious authority and all baptised Christians as a general priesthood. 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.

Luther’s translation of the Bible into the vernacular, making it more accessible to ordinary people, had a tremendous political impact on the church and on German culture. The translation also furthered the development of a standard version of the German language, added several principles to the art of translation, and influenced the translation of the English King James Bible. His hymns inspired the development of congregational singing within Christianity. His marriage to Katharina von Bora set a model for the practice of clerical marriage within Protestantism.

Early life

Luther was born to Hans Luder (or Ludher, later Luther) and his wife Margarethe (née Lindemann) on November 10, 1483 in Eisleben, Germany, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. He was baptised the next morning on the feast day of St. Martin of Tours. His family moved to Mansfeld in 1484, where his father was a leaseholder of copper mines and smelters, and served as one of four citizen representatives on the local council. Martin Marty describes Luther’s mother as a hard-working woman of “trading-class stock and middling means,” and notes that Luther’s enemies would later wrongly describe her as a whore and bath attendant. He had several brothers and sisters, and is known to have been close to one of them, Jacob.

Hans Luther was ambitious for himself and his family, and was determined to see his eldest son become a lawyer. He sent Martin to Latin schools in Mansfeld, then Magdeburg in 1497, where he attended a school operated by a lay group called the Brethren of the Common Life, and Eisenach in 1498. The three schools focused on the so-called “trivium”: grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Luther later compared his education there to purgatory and hell.

At the age of seventeen in 1501, he entered the University of Erfurt — later describing it as a beerhouse and whorehouse — which saw him woken at four every morning for what Marty describes as “a day of rote learning and often wearying spiritual exercises.” He received his master’s degree in 1505.

In accordance with his father’s wishes, he enrolled in law school at the same university that year, but dropped out almost immediately, believing that law represented uncertainty. Marty writes that Luther sought assurances about life, and was drawn to theology and philosophy, expressing particular interest in Aristotle, William of Ockham, and Gabriel Biel. He was deeply influenced by two tutors, Bartholomäus Arnoldi von Usingen and Jodocus Trutfetter, who taught him to be suspicious of even the greatest thinkers, and to test everything himself by experience. Philosophy proved to be unsatisfying, offering assurance about the use of reason, but none about the importance, for Luther, of loving God. Reason could not lead men to God, he felt, and he developed what Marty describes as a love-hate relationship with Aristotle over the latter’s emphasis on reason. For Luther, reason could be used to question men and institutions, but not God. Human beings could learn about God only through divine revelation, he believed, and Scripture therefore became increasingly important to him.

He decided to leave his studies and become a monk, later attributing his decision to an experience during a thunderstorm on July 2, 1505. A lightning bolt struck near him as he was returning to university after a trip home. Later telling his father he was terrified of death and divine judgment, he cried out, “Help! Saint Anna, I will become a monk!” He came to view his cry for help as a vow he could never break.

He left law school, sold his books, and entered a closed Augustinian monastery in Erfurt on July 17, 1505. One friend blamed the decision on Luther’s sadness over the deaths of two friends. Luther himself seemed saddened by the move, telling those who attended a farewell supper then walked him to the door of the Black Cloister, “This day you see me, and then, not ever again.” His father was furious over what he saw as a waste of Luther’s education.

Luther dedicated himself to monastic life, devoting himself to fasts, long hours in prayer, pilgrimage, and frequent confession. Luther tried to please God through this dedication, but it only increased his awareness of his own sinfulness. He would later remark, “If anyone could have gained heaven as a monk, then I would indeed have been among them.” Luther described this period of his life as one of deep spiritual despair. He said, “I lost hold of Christ the Savior and Comforter and made of him a stock-master and hangman over my poor soul.”

Johann von Staupitz, his superior, concluded that Luther needed more work to distract him from excessive introspection and ordered him to pursue an academic career. In 1507, he was ordained to the priesthood, and in 1508 began teaching theology at the University of Wittenberg. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Biblical studies on March 9, 1508, and another Bachelor’s degree in the Sentences by Peter Lombard in 1509. On October 19, 1512, he was awarded his Doctor of Theology and, on October 21, 1512, was received into the senate of the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg, having been called to the position of Doctor in Bible. He spent the rest of his career in this position at the University of Wittenberg.

Indulgences

In 1516-17, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar and papal commissioner for indulgences, was sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences to raise money to rebuild St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. In Roman Catholic theology, an “indulgence” is the remission of punishment because a sin already committed has been forgiven; the indulgence is granted by the church when the sinner confesses and receives absolution. When an indulgence is given, the church is extending merit to a sinner from its Treasure House of Merit, an accumulation of merits it has collected based on the good deeds of the saints. These merits could be bought and sold.

On October 31, 1517, Luther wrote to Albert, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, protesting the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his “Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,” which came to be known as The 95 Theses. Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of confronting the church, but saw his disputation as a scholarly objection to church practices, and the tone of the writing is accordingly “searching, rather than doctrinaire.” Hillerbrand writes that there is nevertheless an undercurrent of challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks: “Why does not the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?”

Luther objected to a saying attributed to Johann Tetzel that “[a]s soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs,” insisting that, since forgiveness was God’s alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances.

According to Philip Melanchthon, writing in 1546, Luther nailed a copy of the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg that same day — church doors acting as the bulletin boards of his time — an event now seen as sparking the Protestant Reformation, and celebrated every October 31 as Reformation Day.

The 95 Theses were quickly translated from Latin into German, printed, and widely copied, making the controversy one of the first in history to be fanned by the printing press. Within two weeks, the theses had spread throughout Germany; within two months throughout Europe.

On June 15, 1520, the Pope warned Luther with the papal bull (the one about the boar in the vineyard, already mentioned) that he risked excommunication unless he recanted 41 sentences drawn from his writings, including the 95 Theses, within 60 days.

That fall, Johann Eck proclaimed the bull in Meissen and other towns. Karl von Miltitz, a papal nuncio, attempted to broker a solution, but Luther, who had sent the Pope a copy of On the Freedom of a Christian in October, publicly set fire to the bull and decretals at Wittenberg on December 10, 1520, an act he defended in Why the Pope and his Recent Book are Burned and Assertions Concerning All Articles.

As a consequence, Luther was excommunicated by Leo X on January 3, 1521, in the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem.

Reformation Teachings

Whilst Luther’s objection to the sale of indulgences was the initial spark that set the flame of the Reformation, it was not the most significant of his teachings. This distinction, in my view, belongs instead to what are referred to as the five solas.

Five Solas

The five solas are five Latin phrases (or slogans) that emerged during the Protestant Reformation and summarise the Reformers’ basic theological beliefs as compared to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church of the day. The Latin word sola means “alone” in English. The five solas were what the Reformers believed to be the only things needed for Christian salvation. They were intended to highlight the absolute (and only) essentials of Christian life and practice.

The five solas are:

• Sola gratia (“by grace alone”)
• Sola fide (“by faith alone”)
• Sola scriptura (“by Scripture alone”)
• Solus Christus (“In Christ alone”)
• Soli Deo gloria (“Glory to God alone”)

Sola gratia (“by grace alone”)

Salvation comes by God’s grace or “unmerited favor” only — not as something merited by the sinner. This means that salvation is an unearned gift from God for Jesus’ sake.

During the Reformation, Protestant leaders and theologians generally believed the Roman Catholic view of the means of salvation to be a mixture of reliance upon the grace of God, and confidence in the merits of one’s own works performed in love. The Reformers argued instead that salvation is entirely found in God’s gifts (that is, God’s act of free grace), dispensed by the Holy Spirit according to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ alone. Consequently, they argued that a sinner is not accepted by God on account of the change wrought in the believer by God’s grace, and indeed, that the believer is accepted without any regard for the merit of his works—for no one deserves salvation. The responsibility for salvation does not rest on the sinner to any degree.

Sola fide (“by faith alone”)

Justification (interpreted in Protestant theology as, “being declared guiltless by God”) is received by faith only, not good works, though in classical Protestant theology, saving faith is automatically accompanied by good works. Some Protestants see this doctrine as being summarized with the formula “Faith yields justification and good works” and as contrasted with the Roman Catholic formula “Faith and good works yield justification.” However, this is disputed by the Roman Catholic position as a misrepresentation; it might be better contrasted with a comparison of what is meant by the term “justification”: both sides agree that the term invokes a communication of Christ’s merits to sinners, where in Protestant theology this is seen as being a declaration of sinlessness, Roman Catholicism sees justification as a communication of God’s life to a human being, cleansing him of sin and transforming him truly into a son of God, so that it is not merely a declaration. This doctrine is sometimes called the material cause or principle of the Reformation because it was the central doctrinal issue for Martin Luther and the other reformers. Luther called it the “doctrine by which the church stands or falls”. This doctrine asserts the total exclusion of any other righteousness to justify the sinner other than the “alien” righteousness (righteousness of another) of Christ alone.

Sola fide is different from Sola gratia because faith alone is considered either a work or is insufficient for salvation which can only be granted freely by God to whom He chooses. This doctrine is especially linked with Calvinism’s unconditional election and predestination, which we will explore more next week.

Sola scriptura (“by 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 (called the Magisterium), ultimately embodied in the Pope himself. They take this one step further, holding that the teachings and interpretations of the Magisterium are themselves authoritative and infallible, and a Christian must obey them as the very Word of God.

Luther and the Reformers, however, took issue with this. Instead, they taught that the Bible is the only inspired and authoritative Word of God, is the only source for Christian doctrine, and is accessible to all believers. They held that to add to the Gospel is actually to subtract from it.

Solus Christus (“In Christ alone”)

Some of you will be aware of Pope Benedict’s recent comments to the effect that any church that is not Roman Catholic is not truly God’s church. Because other churches, in his view, are not based upon apostolic succession – that is, they cannot trace a line of successive bishops all the way back to the apostles – their priesthood is invalid, and thus they cannot truly be a part of the Church. This includes the Anglican church, of which we are a part.

According to the Reformers, however, Christ is the only mediator between God and man, and there is salvation through no other. This principle rejects sacerdotalism, which is the belief that there are no sacraments in the church without the services of priests ordained by apostolic succession under the authority of the pope. Martin Luther taught the “general priesthood of the baptized,” which was modified in later Lutheranism and classical Protestant theology into “the priesthood of all believers,” denying the exclusive use of the title “priest” (Latin, sacerdos) to the clergy.

Soli Deo gloria (“Glory to God alone”)

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 canonized by the Roman Catholic Church, the popes, and the church hierarchy—are not worthy of the glory that was accorded them.

Summary

These teachings can be summarised as follows:

Category	Roman Catholic Church	The Reformers
Salvation is offered…	by grace to those who do good works.	by Grace alone.
Justification is received…	by faith and good works.	by faith alone, but leads to good works.
Authority is found…	in the Scriptures and the (Roman Catholic) Church.	in Scripture alone.
Access to God is obtained…	through Christ and his appointed Church.	through Christ alone.
Glory is due…	to God, Mary and the saints.	to God alone.

Endnotes

1. The official World Youth Day website estimates that “500,000 participants are expected to attend at least one event during the World Youth Day week.”
2. Bruce L. Shelley, Church History in Plain Language (2nd Edition, Thomas Nelson, 1995).

(This message was preached at St John’s on the 19/8/07, and the audio may be found here. )

The tale of the Good Samaritan is one of the most famous stories that Jesus told. Most Australians, even those with limited exposure to Christianity and Christian teaching, will have heard some form of this tale. The term ‘good samaritan’ has passed into our everyday vocabulary¹.

Countless variations have been told and retold, for many different audiences, with the only consistent message that “it is good to be good”. Or perhaps more accurately, “it is good to do good”.

Prime Minister Howard, in his recent address to Christians across Australia² cited this parable (along with the parable of the talents, which he called a “model for a free market” – a sermon in its own right!) as being influential for him as a Christian in politics. His exposition of the parable was twofold: everyone is valuable; and thus everyone deserves compassion.

Whilst these two things are unquestionably true, and can clearly be inferred from this parable, are they an adequate summary of Jesus’ message? To find the answer, let us turn to the text.

A story of doing

This episode in Luke’s narrative opens with a man questioning Jesus. This man, a lawyer, asks “What must I do to inherit the kingdom of God?” (25). He is asking Jesus’ opinion on one of the hot topics of the day, in the same way that we might quiz Mr. Rudd and Mr. Howard about their stance on refugee policy, stem cell research or abortion.

Jesus, in typical rabbinic fashion, answers with a question of his own: “What is written in the Law?… How do you read it?” In doing so, he not only turns it back on his questioner, he signals that his teaching is not something new, but something old; it is from the scripture that he is drawing his response.

The lawyer, of course, is delighted. After all, the Law is his specialty, and this gives him a chance to demonstrate his prowess in a very public setting. He quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” – and Leviticus 19:18 – “Love your neighbour as yourself.” To which Jesus responds, “You have answered correctly… Do this and you will live.”

Let’s pause, for a moment, and consider this. The lawyer asked what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus answers exactly that question: love the Lord your God and love your neighbour. Elsewhere, Jesus says that “[a]ll the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments,”³ and “[t]here is no commandment greater than these.”⁴ That’s what you have to do to inherit eternal life. Sounds simple, right?

Wrong. What Jesus doesn’t say is that you have to do those things perfectly. Every minute of every day. No breaks, no lapses, no rest, no mistakes, no errors of judgment. Perfectly.

Not going to happen.

Sorry, not a chance.

Can you imagine what it would be like to live like that, even if you could do it? Knowing that, even if you have somehow managed to live perfectly up until now – that is, you have done everything the Bible commands without fault – but slip up today, or tomorrow, or next week… all of your efforts will be lost. Or what if, like the rich ruler of Luke chapter 18, you can say “[a]ll these [laws] I have kept since I was a boy”⁵ and then Jesus goes and asks something more than what you’re willing to do? Perfect record… gone.

Paul takes up this theme in his letter to the Galatians:

All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law”.⁶

I think it safe to say that Paul does not believe this is a ‘winning’ tactic. In fact, in all of history there is only one man who has ever lived up to that standard, who has walked that path all the way into eternal life: Jesus himself.

But at least our lawyer now has the answer to the question that he asked. Had he asked a different question, he might have received a very different answer.

The lawyer’s second question, together with Luke’s commentary, reveal his motivation: “But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?'” (29).

I was never a good student at school. Don’t get me wrong, I always did well, but this was more by luck than good management. I knew every trick to maximise my marks, took every short cut in order to minimise the amount of work I had to do. As a result, twice a year at exam time I found myself praying for mercy and not justice! One of my most common techniques in preparing for an exam would be to pay very careful attention to what the teacher indicated as being most important. Quite often they would volunteer this information, but even when they didn’t they would usually give some guidance when asked. As a result, I would study those things in detail, sometimes to the exclusion of other material, on the assumption that their priorities would be reflected in the allocation of marks in the exam.

I hear something of the same attitude in the lawyer’s questioning. “What is the minimum that I have to do in order to gain eternal life?” Or perhaps, if we are to give him the benefit of the doubt, “What should be my top priorities?”

This guy knew the law. He understood the implications of being under the curse of the law. But he had a plan; reduce the law to the absolute minimum that was required and live by that. He is asking Jesus for a manageable ‘neighbourhood’ – not too big, and not too small, but just right. One common interpretation of the law was something like this: “love your neighbour, the Jew.” Some among the Pharisees went further and, reasoning that they were the only ones who followed the law they should be the only ones to benefit by it, narrowed it to “love your neighour, the Pharisee.”⁷

Jesus has other ideas. God is not in the business of minimising problems, but rather of maximising solutions. Can you imagine Jesus saying, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, not to send such big crops in future”? Of course not! Instead he says “Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”⁸

And so Jesus tells the well-known parable, to enlarge the lawyer’s vision:

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

At this point, the lawyer is thinking to himself, “OK, I must be more compassionate than priests and Levites,” a task in itself, as these were the people most entrusted with helping people; perhaps modern day equivalents might be a rescue worker or a Salvation Army officer. The lawyer has already, in his mind, passed judgment on these two, and does not want to identify himself with them. Jesus continues:

But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

The Samaritans were traditionally enemies of the Jews. They claimed to worship Yahweh, but chose to do so in their own way, rather than in the way God had commanded; they set up their own temple at Mount Gerizim in opposition to the temple at Jerusalem. Whilst they were descended from the Jews, they had also intermarried with the nations around them. Jewish historian Josephus accuses them of being fair-weather friends, willing to identify themselves as Jews when the Jews were prospering, but distancing themselves whenever they saw the Jews suffering, so as not to share their fate⁹. For these reasons and more, they were held in utter contempt as a cowardly, mongrel, half-breed nation. John is not kidding when he says “Jews do not associate with Samaritans”¹⁰. In fact, in the chapter preceding the one we are concerned with today, James and John were ready to “call down fire from heaven” to destroy a Samaritan village for a minor snub¹¹.

For a Samaritan to overcome social taboo, then, and help a Jew in such a sacrificial way was a powerful statement of compassion. Perhaps the traveller was so badly beaten as to be unrecognisable. The point was that it didn’t matter; the Samaritan’s compassion gave him no choice but to set aside his own journey, his own priorities, his (no doubt) urgent business and turn aside to help a neighbour in need. “When he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine [costly!]. The he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him [even more costly!]. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'”¹²

It all depends on your outlook. To the thieves, this traveling Jew was a victim to exploit, so they attacked him. To the priest and Levite, he was a nuisance to avoid, so they ignored him. But to the Samaritan, he was a neighbour to love and to help, so he took care of him. What Jesus said to the lawyer, He says to us: “Go and keep on doing it likewise” (literal translation).¹³

Up until this point, I think most people would be willing to agree, no matter what their background – Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, atheist or any other. It is a suitably moral story, appropriate for the instruction of children and adults alike, exhorting us to have compassion and kindness on all. To hear him talk about it, this is what Prime Minister Howard would take away from this parable. But to stop there is to miss the point; it is like giving up a deep drink from the spring of living water and taking instead a sip from broken cisterns that cannot hold water¹⁴.

As Carson writes, in answering the lawyer’s query

Jesus does not supply information as to whom one should help; failure to keep the commandment springs not from lack of information but from lack of love. It was not fresh knowledge that the lawyer needed, but a new heart – in plain English, conversion.¹⁵

A story of being

Let’s back up a bit. The very first question that the lawyer asked was, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”¹⁶ One commentator notes that

[e]ternal life is something to be inherited. And to receive an inheritance, you have to be an heir. No amount of doing will make you into one. Keeping the law is a way of life; it is not a way to life. It is only when by God’s grace we have become the right sort of people – his people, by new birth – that we begin to do the right sort of things.¹⁷

There are two things to dwell on here: if we wish to inherit eternal life we must first become an heir; being an heir will lead us to act righteously. Let’s explore these.

Becoming an heir

In telling the tale of the Good Samaritan, Jesus laid a subtle trap. By the time the Samaritan appears on the scene, the actions of the priest and the Levite have already been heard and, in the lawyer’s mind, judged. In the same way that you and I might expect an “And they all lived happily ever after” ending, so he would have been expecting a role model character to come along, someone he could look up to and emulate. I can just imagine him recoiling in revulsion on hearing that it was a despised Samaritan. Many Jews would rather have died than thought of themselves in the same mental ‘breath’ as a Samaritan. But that only leaves one other character to identify with: the traveller. And this is exactly what Jesus intended, for the only difference between the lawyer (or you or me, for that matter) and the perilous pilgrim is that the pilgrim was only “half dead” (30). The Apostle Paul writes:

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.¹⁸

We need the ministry of a Good Samaritan to restore us to life or, more accurately, give us new life. Fortunately we have such a Saviour, and his name is Jesus. He offers the only alternative path to eternal life; one based not on doing but on being sons and daughters of God, and thus heirs together with Christ. Those are your two choices: try to earn your way to God, by living under the ‘curse’ of the law; or accept the free offer of God, by acknowledging his Lordship over you. As we’ve already seen, trying to earn your entrance into heaven, trying to cut the task of living righteously down to manageable proportions is chancy at best, even if your salvation isn’t riding on it; on the other hand, relying on the promise of God and the work of his Son is a sure thing.

I know which one I have chosen, and I hope that you have chosen or will choose the same.

But if the important thing is who we are, not what we do, why does Jesus command “Go and do likewise”?

Acting like an heir

Being children of God does not absolve us of responsibility to act. On the contrary: part of being an heir of God is acting like one.

Members of royal families are always under the microscope; every action is analysed, every comment studied and every slip-up proclaimed. We expect them to act in accordance with the dignity of their family, and are scandalised when they do not. How much more then should we who are royal heirs of the living God act in accordance with our parentage?

It’s fairly obvious, from Christians that I know and from my own life, that this does not happen instantaneously. There is a process involved, and that process centres around the work of the Holy Spirit. He works in us to change our hearts and minds and to conform us to the image of Christ, because this is God’s will for us¹⁹. Michael Wilcock puts it well:

It is much less important that [disciples of Jesus] should rush out doing the things they believe he wants, than that they should let him make of them the kind of people who inevitably will do such things.²⁰

Do you struggle to give generously when the Salvo’s come to your door? When someone at the train station approaches you for money, is your first reaction one of compassion or of cynicism? When a single mum is struggling to shepherd 3 kids, do you grin and bear it, perhaps with a sad smile of sympathy, or do you offer to help? Perhaps participating in the 40 hour famine too much effort, or too inconvenient?

God says:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.²¹

We must continue to pray for the truth of this promise to be revealed in us.

So will you do or will you be?

Jesus offers us two paths to eternal life. The first involves living under the ‘curse’ of trying to live up to the law. Like the lawyer, you can seek to cut the law down to make it manageable, to carve out a neighbourhood for yourself and do your best. If this is your current strategy, however, I urge you to reconsider because it does not work. God’s way is not to reduce the problem; he wants instead to increase the solution!

The alternative is to accept the Good Samaritan’s help, to allow him to bring life through new birth into his family, and to thus become heirs together with him of eternal life. And if you choose this, he will make you into the kind of person for whom there is no neighbourhood too large.

Endnotes

1. Even such a militant atheist as the celebrated Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins unblushingly uses the language of this tale to describe the presence of altruism amongst humans and other species (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion [Bantam, 2006] p. 215.).
2. 2007 Make it Count, organised by the Australia Christian Lobby, and webcast to hundreds of Australian churches on the 9th August, 2007.
3. Matthew 22:40
4. Mark 12:31
5. Luke 18:21
6. Galatians 3:10
7. Similarly, at Qumran the scope included only the “sons of light” – i.e. other members of the Essene community. “Sons of darkness” – anyone else – were to be hated! (1QS 1:9)
8. Luke 10:2
9. Josephus, Antiquities IX.xiv.3.
10. John 4:9
11. Luke 9:51-56
12. Luke 10:33-36
13. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary (Cook, 2001) p. 213.
14. Jeremiah 2:13
15. D. A. Carson et al, New Bible Commentary (21st Century Edition, IVP, 1994) p. 998.
16. Luke 10:25, emphasis mine
17. Michael Wilcock, The Message of Luke (IVP, 1997) p. 123.
18. Ephesians 2:1-2
19. Romans 8:29
20. Michael Wilcock, The Message of Luke (IVP, 1997) p. 121.
21. Ezekiel 39:26

Yet, O LORD, you are our Father.

     We are the clay, you are the potter;

     we are all the work of your hand.

- Isaiah 64:8

After reading through Isaiah 64 together, a friend shared this image with me.

When you work with wood, there is usually some measure of imperfection in each piece of timber that you use. Some will try and avoid that imperfection, or perhaps cover it up; others will stubbornly work in spite of that imperfection; the sign of a master woodworker, however, is that he or she is able to take that imperfection and incorporate it into the beauty of the overall design.

God is the ultimate master craftsman. He takes our weaknesses and turns them into his strengths; he creates beauty out of ugliness; he uses our imperfections to accomplish his perfect will. And in doing so, he demonstrates his glory. Paul knew this:

But [the Lord] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

- 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Don’t be afraid of your weaknesses; pray that God will use them as an opportunity to show his power. Don’t pray for the removal of hardships, persecutions or difficulties (Paul tried this – read 2 Corinthians 12:1-10); instead, pray that God will bring glory to himself through them.

And he will make a thing of great beauty out of you.

Anyone who has suffered devastating grief or dehumanizing pain has at some point been confronted by near relatives of Job’s miserable comforters. They come with their clichés and tired, pious mouthings. They engender guilt where they should be administering balm. They utter solemn truths where compassion is needed. They exhibit strength and exhort to courage where they would be more comforting if they simply wept.

- D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? (2nd edition, Baker Academic, 2006) p. 221.

Over the last two posts, we have looked at some of the ways in which people understand and explain the presence of evil, pain and suffering in the world. Initially I was planning to leave it at that, but the more I thought and prayed about the issue, the more I was convinced that that was not enough.

No matter how thorough your understanding of these ideas, there will still be times when explanations and theories are not enough. Platitudes about building a better character will sound hollow in the ears of a date-raped woman; explaining God’s higher purposes for creation will probably not comfort a man who has just lost his family in a car accident. In this post, then, I wish to offer some suggestions about comforting those who are grieving, ill or suffering.

At this point I should offer a brief disclaimer: I am neither a trained nor an experienced grief counsellor. I debated about whether to write this article at all, given my lack of qualification, but came down in favour of doing so in order to bring a necessary balance to the last 2 articles. Much of what I will offer here, then, is drawn from the experiences of others and as a result your mileage may vary.

The first thing that you need to know about counselling those in grief is that it is not your job to ‘fix’ them. Your chief allies in such a situation will be your ears, not your brain or your mouth. You do not need to have all the ‘answers'; you do need to have a compassionate heart and listening ears.

Frequently in the midst of suffering the most comforting “answers” are simple presence, help, silence, tears. Helping with the gardening or preparing a casserole may be far more spiritual an exercise than the exposition of Romans 8:28. The Scriptures themselves exhort us to “mourn with those who mourn” (Rom. 12:15).

- D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? (2nd edition, Baker Academic, 2006) p. 223.

The second thing I would say is this: don’t be afraid of, or embarrassed by, strong emotions. Unless you are able to accept the tears, the uncomfortable silences, and even the anger, you will not be able to meaningfully share in the journey. By being embarrassed, you add to their burden because (naturally) they then feel they have become an embarrassment to you – and hence they won’t want to be around you. Consider these words from C. S. Lewis, written in the period after his wife died of cancer:

An odd byproduct of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. At work, at the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll say something about it or not. I hate it if they do, and if they don’t… Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers.

- C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001) pp. 10-11.

There is no such thing as ‘normal’ grief. There will often be common areas, but no two people will grieve in exactly the same way. Some people will want to talk about things, to remember the good times out loud with you; others will not, preferring to process these things privately. Some will want to have others around; others will not cope with being around people. Some will turn to God for comfort; others will rage against him.

This last, by the way, does not necessarily signal a loss of faith. Even a man like C. S. Lewis, so greatly respected for his faith, may have severe doubts in the midst of trials.

Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms [of grief]. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be – or so it feels – welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is in ruin, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be and empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this meani? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?

- C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001) pp. 5-6.

All of these preferences and emotions are valid – there is no such thing, in my view, as a ‘wrong’ way of expressing grief. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to tell your friend how they ‘should’ feel or act. In other words, share their journey without dictating the destination, or even the mode of transport.

I am sure that there are many more things to be said than these brief cautions, but I don’t have the experience or wisdom to know what they are. Perhaps you have some suggestions, based on your own experiences… why not leave a comment to share them with us?

(This article is a continuation of an earlier one. If you haven’t read it yet… read it now!)

Last time we looked at the questions of pain and suffering from the point of each of the world’s main religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and atheism. The treatment of each was necessarily brief, partly because I was trying to boil it down to the core ideas so that we could readily compare, and partly because I am in no way qualified to discuss any more than the basics of any of those world-views.

There was, of course, one notable exception from our list of religions – Christianity. The rest of this article will be devoted to redressing that imbalance.

Before we start, let me offer an apology: If you are expecting to find here the answers to all of your questions how and why God allows pain and suffering to occur then I am afraid you are going to be sorely disappointed. I am not presumptuous enough to think that I have answered all of my questions, let alone yours as well! My aim is much more modest. I have attempted to pull together some (but by no means all!) of ways the Bible treats suffering. I hope that this will be a useful starting point for you as you wrestle with God’s Word yourself.

Because this is both an important issue and a complex one, I would really appreciate any feedback that you have to offer – either questions or comments. You can do this either by emailing me, or leaving a comment here. I will do my utmost to respond to all questions as best I am able.

A result of sin

Key to any Christian’s understanding of the presence of pain and suffering in the world is a correct understanding of sin. As we read through the first three chapters of Genesis, we understand that God created the world, that he created mankind “and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Gen 2:15). Adam and Eve, however, were not satisfied with the role that God had set out for them, and took matters into their own hands; as a result both mankind and the earth itself were placed under a curse (Gen 3). All suffering since is a result of that sin of rebellion, and millions just like it, subverting God’s plan for creation.

One thing that it is important to note, however, is that this relationship between sin and suffering is a causal one, but not a mathematical one. That is to say that more sin does not necessarily mean more suffering on an individual basis. Otherwise why would the psalmist write:

I envied the arrogant
    when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
They have no struggles;
    their bodies are healthy and strong.
They are free from the burdens common to man;
    they are not plagued by human ills.

- Psalm 73:3-4

On the surface, this does not seem at all ‘fair’. Why should it be that “only the good die young” (as Billy Joel would put it)?

[W]e must always remember that the Bible does not present us with a God who chances upon neutral men and women and arbitrarily consigns some to heaven and some to hell. He takes guilty men and women, all of whom deserve his wrath, and in his great mercy and love he saves vast numbers of them. Had he saved only one, it would have been an act of grace; that he saves a vast host affirms still more unmistakably the uncharted reaches of that grace. From a biblical perspective, hell stands as a horrible witness to human defiance in the face of great grace.

- D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord?, (Second Edition, Baker Academic, 2006) p. 92.

Don’t fall in to the trap that Jesus’ disciples did, of trying to trace individual afflictions back to individual sins (see John 9:1-2). God doesn’t work that way – at least not in the kind of time frame we can see. Ultimately, of course, God’s justice – his ‘fairness’, if you like – will be revealed in his final judgment of the entire earth.

A signpost to God

[E]verything I have learned in my seventy-five years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or obtained. In other words, if it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo jumbo… the result would not be to make life delectable but to make it too banal or trivial to be endurable. This of course is what the cross [of Christ] signifies, and it is the cross more than anything else, that has called me inexorably to Christ.

- Malcolm Muggeridge, Homemade, July 1990, cited in John Piper, Desiring God, (3rd Ed., IVP, 2003) p. 266.

As I mentioned in another place, I believe that God sometimes uses suffering and pain to point us to himself.

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

- C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (HarperCollins, 2002) p. 91

We have a God who invites us to come to him and express our doubts, to question God and to plead with him for some kind of response. Consider the start of Psalm 22:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
    by night, and am not silent.

- Psalm 22:1-2

It is OK for us to be baffled when a father is taken away from his family by a fatal car crash; it is right for us to be outraged at the rape of a young woman; it is proper for us to pour out our anguish when those we love are struck down with cancer. We should, like so many of the psalmists, bring those things to God, because it is in doing so that God promises to act.

No temptation [the Greek word here could also be translated testing/suffering] has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted [tested] beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted [tested], he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

- 1 Cor 10:13

God offers us comfort in two facts: he knows you, and will not let suffering increase so much that you cannot bear it; and he will give you the strength and courage (“a way out”) to “stand up under” suffering when it comes.

Jesus was and is certainly no stranger to strong emotion. The gospels record him as being tired (so tired, in fact, he fell asleep in a fishing boat in the middle of a storm! See ); grieving at the death of his friend; indignant at his disciples ‘shielding’ him from children; angry at the immense corruption in the temple; and desperately afraid as he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane. He suffered agony on the Cross for our sakes – and when he did so, in his hour of greatest suffering and torment, he turned to the very words of Psalm 22 above (see Mt. 27:46; Mk. 15:34).

This is not a cry of self-doubt from Christ’s lips, as if he is here questioning his identity and mission. It his [sic. is] deliberate and agonizing identification with the suffering poet of Psalm 22 and therefore, with all those who have cried out to God ‘Why?’. There on the cross, so the Bible insists, God intentionally enters our pain and misery, getting his hands dirty and even bloody. This is God at his most vulnerable and yet at his most glorious.

- John Dickson, If I were God I’d end all the pain (2nd ed. Matthias Media, 2002) p.66.

Jesus chose the way of suffering, so that he could understand our pain.

For we do not have a high pries who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have on who has been tempted [tested] in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

- Heb. 4:15-16

A cause for hope

Hard as it might seem to believe, God also permits suffering in order to bring us hope. James, the brother of Jesus, puts it this way:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

- James 1:2-4

So, in other words, trials of many kinds help us develop perseverance, which is required for us to be “mature and complete.” Paul fleshes this out a bit more in his letter to the Romans:

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. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

- Romans 5:1-5

The hope, then, is this: through our sufferings, God is making us more and more like his Son every day, in accordance with his will (Rom 8:29). And because of this, we have a hope that is eternal:

Praise be to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this we greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

- 1 Peter 1:3-7

My prayer, then, for me and for you, is the same one that James recommends:

If any of you lacks wisdom [to be able to rejoice when facing trials; see v. 2], he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.

- James 1:5-6

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

- Declaration of Independence

“I wonder how Jefferson knew to include the word ‘pursuit’?”

So ponders Chris Gardner (ably played by Will Smith) in the 2006 movie The Pursuit of Happyness.

Tracing the journey of a struggling salesman with a product few want and nobody needs, The Pursuit of Happyness is a tale of courage and determination. In the face of his difficult life, Chris has the desperate inspiration to try for a stockbroker internship where one in twenty has a chance of a lucrative full time career. Even when his wife Linda (Thandie Newton) leaves him because of this choice, Chris clings to this dream with his son – even when the odds become more daunting by the day.

For me, one of the most poignant scenes sees Chris and his son Christopher playing basketball.

Christopher: “Look at me, Dad, I’m going pro!”

Chris: “Well, actually, son, you have my genes, so it’s not terribly likely.”

Seeing the slump of his son’s shoulders on hearing that, however, Chris repents.

Chris: “Never let anyone tell you you can’t do something – not even me!”

It is this gritty determination that pervades the entire movie and ties it together. It is a true “pursuit of Happiness”.

All in all, The Pursuit of Happyness is an enjoyable film. Will Smith is a revelation as a dramatic actor, and his performance delivers on an excellent script. Whilst I can’t agree entirely with the content of the film (the pursuit of money is not the same as the pursuit of happiness in my book), nevertheless I heartily recommend it as a film of great humanity and emotion.

Temptation. Lust. Masturbation. Sensuality. Sex.

A code of silence has grown up in the church around these issues – many hoping that if we don’t talk about them, they will just go away. And yet men of all ages continue to struggle to attain the standard of Ephesians 5:3 – “there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality”. How is this possible in an age where we are constantly bombarded by sexual images that open the door to temptation – TV, magazines, music, the Internet?

Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker shatter this code of silence in the “Every Man” series. The latest installment, Every Young Man’s Battle, addresses “the challenge every man faces… the fight every man can win” from the point of view of single Christian men. (The original book in the series, Every Man’s Battle, is more geared towards married men) It explores how our thought lives control our actions, and are in turn controlled by what we allow in.

I found one of the most potent images was one of doing battle with a sumo wrestler. In one corner is Mr Sex Drive – fed up on “a billion meals of lust and fantasy”. In the other corner… you. Things don’t look good – he’s many times bigger than you, and consistently, effortlessly, sends you flying out of the ring. The book goes on to explain that the only way to overcome is to “Starve the sumo”. By cutting out the sumo’s food – sexy movies, TV, music, websites etc. – you can reduce his power over you, even the odds in those contests in the ring.

Every Young Man’s Battle is a highly practical book, and “will show you how to train your eyes and your mind, how to clean up you thought life, and how to develop a realistic battle plan for remaining pure in today’s sexually soaked culture”. Personally, I found it very encouraging for two reasons: a) I’m not the only one who struggles (nor are you!), and b) the battle can be won! I highly recommend Every Young Man’s Battle to any man who is committed to sexual purity God’s way, and would be happy to lend my copy to anyone who wants to have a read.

The following is the content of a sermon I preached in January 2005, and is reproduced here for posterity… or something

• Luke 2:1-20
• Revelation 12:1-12

“What is the Matrix?” This was the question that formed the basis of a series of movies, about a world within a world. As the lead character pursues the answer to this question, he is suddenly taken from his “World”, that which he believes to be reality, and forced to completely re-evaluate it. Everything that he knows is shown to be false, a “prison for the mind”.

For Neo and the millions of other people blissfully unaware of the existence of the Matrix, life inside the Matrix was the only reality they knew. People lived and died, got married, had children, made friends, ate & drank. They experienced love, grief, joy, peace, anger, laughter, sadness and any other emotion known to man. Life was, so far as they were concerned, complete.

Yet, when Neo sees his life from a different perspective, when he understands that his “life”, as he knows it, is nothing more than a computer simulation, he is suddenly empowered to do all kinds of things – he jumps off 30-storey buildings and is not hurt, he learns skills in an instant, simply by having them ‘loaded’ – he even dodges bullets! The life that he thought he knew so well is completely changed through a new perspective, a different understanding.

Tonight, however, the question is not, “What is the Matrix?”, but “What is Christmas?”. I have entitled tonight’s sermon “Christmas Reloaded”. It is my hope that, through gaining a different perspective on what is arguably one of the best known stories in the world, we might, like Neo, see our lives transformed. Not that I recommend you run out and try dodging bullets after this sermon!

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. Indeed this is what we find in our reading from Luke. 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 – it’s all so dull!

Then we turn to Revelation 12. The same event becomes so much 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.

To understand Revelation 12, we must first understand something of its context. The book of Revelation was written by the apostle John, somewhere between 20 and 60 years after the death of Christ. He writes of a vision that he had whilst on the island of Patmos, a vision that God intended for him to share with seven gentile churches around Asia Minor. This kind of writing is often referred to as apocalyptic literature, which simply means writing that is prophetic in nature, often referring to the end of the world. If you’re interested, another example of apocalyptic writing in the bible may be found in Daniel 7.

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, 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.

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 represents 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”¹. Jesus himself does not dispute Satan’s claim when he offered Him the “kingdoms of the world” and the glory of them.

The line, “His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky,” (v.4) probably refers to the angels that Satan deceived, and who were cast out of heaven with him.

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. The “iron scepter” 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.

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.

Two weeks ago, Dave shared with us about two people who had been waiting for Jesus to appear – Simeon and Anna. Their waiting would have been characterised by longing, a massive desire to see the promised saviour. For them, 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. 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”². In Israel’s history, the desert was traditionally a place of refuge – God took care of Israel whilst they wandered through the desert for 40 years. 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.’

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 in answer to the question, “What is Christmas?” 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:

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. John 12:31
2. 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.