Month: August 2020

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In Him All Things Hold Together

I have been spending some time in a book by Nick Vasiliades, loved (period). Here’s a quote from chapter 4: 

If there were something you could do (or avoid doing) to increase (or decrease) His love and approval for you, that would make you in control of God. Absurd right? You do not control His love for you because that would require controlling not just His love but God Himself, for God is love. Remember, He doesn’t have love. He is love. We can take great comfort and rejoice at our inability to move the needle of His love for us. It’s always set on maximum—even on your worst days, filled with the greatest failure. Accept that fact. Stand on it. Believe it. And when your mind is being assailed with thoughts that would speak otherwise of His love, fight the good fight of faith. Believe it anyway. Preach the love of God to yourself if necessary.

God is love. Glory, you know, is the manifestation of the essence of someone or something. When the apostle John says, “we beheld his [Jesus’s] glory” he is referring to the fact that in Jesus the life of the Father was on display. If God is love, and if in the earthly life of Jesus the essence of God was on exhibition, then in Jesus his followers saw God’s love. That is, they saw in Jesus that God is love, because the Father with His love lived in the man Jesus. After Pentecost, it was possible for his disciples to see Jesus in each other, because by then they had received his indwelling life.

My point is that in Jesus the Father’s love was on display. People could behold in him all of those features of love that the apostle Paul famously mentions in 1 Corinthians 13. And Jesus told his closest followers, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” One characteristic of love that is not mentioned explicitly in the list that Paul gave to the Corinthians: love holds everything together. This comes out of Colossians 1:15-20, a passage in which Paul is straining to present the all-encompassing greatness of Jesus Christ. Love is the attracting force that brings about unity—the unity that Jesus prayed would exist among his followers (John 17) after he introduced them to the necessity of loving one another (John 13 and 15).

We see in the world around us that where love is not, things fall apart and people separate. We also see Jesus sitting on the Mount of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem. He had just predicted the destruction of the temple. His disciples gathered to him. As they did so they asked him a multifaceted question that he began to answer in Matthew 24:4-14: 

See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, “I am the Christ,” and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. 

This passage begins with groups of people, nations and kingdoms, divided against and in conflict with each other. It continues among believers, in some of whom love grows cold. False teachers, schisms, betrayal, hatred. It ends with the one who endures. Jesus is the Enduring One, and he draws a new humanity to salvation. Because he has risen, we are in him and he is in us. Because we are in him, we too can endure to the end. Because he is in us, we can love one another.

A final point: as the love of Jesus plays out in our lives there may be times when he adopts the posture of an opponent. Remember Peter in the resurrection, asked repeatedly by the Lord whether he loved Him. Peter was grieved, but he didn’t leave. It brings to mind the words that close Paul Simon’s song, The Boxer. 

In the clearing stands a boxer, and a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him
‘Til he cried out in his anger and his shame
I am leaving, I am leaving, but the fighter still remains.

We can feel that way during Jesus’s dealings with us. However, the Christ whose loves envelopes us, and the love of the Christ who indwells us, maintain their connection.

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Looking Back and Looking Ahead

This is my eleventh post. I want to take a quick look back on the first ten, to make sure that I’m staying on course with the purpose of this blog.

The long journey to transformation, with its daunting demands, begins at the trailhead. We have cast in our lot with Christ. We have experienced the free gift of redemption by His grace. We recognize, however, that negotiating the transformation trail will require giving up old ways and patterns of thought to enter into a new reality: bearing the genuine image of the Son of God. We start out toward this tremendous opportunity because we know Him—at least something of Him—and we find ourselves drawn to Him.

The initial posts had to do with prayer, with seeing Christ in everyday events, and with scripture. We start out with these essentials. They will help us “hike our own hike,” following the unique path through life that Jesus has laid out for us. The last couple of posts touched on Jesus as our security. This fundamental understanding will keep us from losing heart when the going is difficult. Much more could be said on these subjects, and I have begun to share some valuable resources that all of us can draw upon. I need to look to other believers who are more experienced, more spiritually mature. Although it may seem to me that I sometimes have to walk alone, I cannot experience the fullness of transformation all by myself.

Likewise, transformation is not primarily about me or for me. Maybe you knew this already, but this concept came to me only recently. So then—why transformation? So that God can have the purpose for which He created. So that we can take our place in that purpose, as partners with Him in achieving that end. 

Now the question naturally comes up—what is my part in this? Jesus was asked about this by a crowd, when he admonished them to “labor for the food that endures to eternal life” (John 6:27): what is this labor?—”what must we do, to be doing the works of God?” The immediate reply of Jesus: Believe! “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:29). Believe in a Christ who will never leave or forsake us. Believe in a Christ who will not compromise. Who brings the dead to life, and calls into existence things that are not. Who is passionate about accomplishing His Father’s purpose. Believe in Christ rather than promises. Keep turning to Him, beholding Him, pressing in to Him. Yielding and surrendering and decreasing in the magnitude of my powers, so that His power can be on display. Persistent believing redirects our attention from “our work” to the work of the Lord. 

This kind of belief leads to active participation instead of passive waiting. Patient endurance without anxiety. Full commitment rather than divided loyalties. In saying this I admit to going well beyond the limits of my own experience. Furthermore I am told (and I believe it is true) that the work can progress only so far in an individual who is living as an individual. Its completion requires community life, in the company of other believers who are on the same journey of transformation. Certainly those of us who want full transformation look forward to this part of the journey.

And what is the work that God has assigned to Himself? The work of conforming us to the image of the Son, producing in us the characteristics of Christ. This reminds me of a couple of things. One is an observation about Daniel’s friends made by Nebuchadnezzar, emperor of Babylon, in connection with the divine intervention that delivered them from the fiery furnace: they “set aside the king’s command” (Daniel 3:28). The other concerns Jesus himself who, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). On behalf of his faithful ones, who mark their determination by setting aside the commands of “king self,” Jesus makes His own determination: once again he sets his face, this time to see his work of transformation accomplished in them.

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