Month: September 2020

What are the most wonderful words in our vocabulary? There are many to choose from, but among them must be Grace, Faith, Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Fellowship—all of which are ours in Jesus and completely out of reach without him. Here are a few observations on the first two of these.

Faith and grace complement each other. On one hand, grace is God’s enabling power toward us, the source of which is His love. Grace empowers us to be and to do that which would otherwise be impossible. On the other, faith grows out of a favorable response to God and enables Him to do that which would otherwise be a violation of our free will. 

Faith begins as a seed that comes from God. It settles in a human heart that has responded to the outreach of the Holy Spirit. That response may be provoked by life circumstances or prompted by observing others who happen to be faithful Christians. No matter what, right from the start faith is a gift from God to a human heart—really, a kind of grace. Even the smallest spark of a response gives God something to work with. Ultimately, the apostle Paul points out, “…faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). Our walk with Him starts in faith (Galatians 3:2) and proceeds by faith (Galatians 3:5). Our initial belief in God establishes a bond with Him, because the life of Christ comes to dwell in us and that life is unbreakably bound to God Who is all around us.

In the nativity hymn, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” we sing:

How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.

Faith comes to our hearts just like Jesus came to Bethlehem—small, weak and apparently insignificant. Yet it is the occasion for new life as the life of Christ is imparted to us. Everything is changed! It is the beginning of a relationship in which, by grace, faith can develop and mature.

Faith can grow to the point that “you want God and want to want nothing else” [Brennan Manning, Ragamuffin Gospel, chapter 9]. Manning continues: “It always means a profound dissatisfaction with our present state. In faith there is movement and development. Each day something is new. To be Christian, faith has to be new—that is alive and growing.” 

Faith is an inclination to say “yes” to God. It is an inner disposition to turn to Him and away from everything that holds us back: complacency, fear, personal failings with their guilt and shame, and distractions of every kind. Faith also has the dimensions of trust in God and loyalty to God. They come into play when external circumstances contradict the truth that He has revealed to us, and when we encounter human opposition or betrayal.

Our transformed lives are a miracle of His workmanship; ongoing faith on our part gives Him the opportunity to work that miracle. Where He encounters hardness of heart, however, He withdraws His hand out of respect for our free will. “And he [Jesus] did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief” (Matthew 13:58). Even when we find ourselves in such a condition, He keeps looking to us for a renewed response of faith so that He can resume the work of transformation.

This great exclamation of the apostle Peter in his first letter (1 Peter 1:3-9) illustrates the ongoing interplay between what God has accomplished through Jesus and what God brings home to us through faith. The outcomes are, for Jesus, praise and glory and honor and, for us, the salvation of our souls—

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 
Though you have not seen him, you love him. 
Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

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Allow me to share something of our Lord Jesus Christ. It comes from Isaiah 11:1-3. 

1 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. 2 And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3 And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear….

The first verse in this passage establishes that it refers to the Messiah, who is to come from the same lineage as David, son of Jesse. In the next verse, the prophet foretold that the Spirit of God would rest upon him. Here is how the New English Translation presents verse 2:

The LORD’s spirit will rest on him—
a spirit that gives extraordinary wisdom, 
a spirit that provides the ability to execute plans, 
a spirit that produces absolute loyalty to the LORD.

The third verse begins with an expression that is commonly translated, “And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.” The Hebrew text reads literally, “and his breathing (or smelling) is in the fear of the Lord.” The expression suggests a lively perception of the Lord and a loving response to His presence. Robert Alter, in his recent translation of the Hebrew Bible, renders the expression, “his very breath in the fear of the Lord.” Alter notes, “The Hebrew here is literally a verbal noun that has somewhat perplexed interpreters, but the context indicates a sense like the one proposed in this translation. One should note that this verb reflects the same root as the reiterated word for ‘spirit.’” (He is referring to the reiterated word “spirit” that occurs in verse 2.) This man’s wisdom, ability and absolute loyalty to his heavenly Father would be the outcome of a constant connection to the Spirit of the Lord. 

Regarding the remainder of verse 3, Robert Alter writes: “This is reminiscent of God’s words to Samuel, which have to do with making the right choice, that is David, for the kingship: ‘For man sees with the eyes and the Lord sees with the heart’ (1 Samuel 16:7). The ideal king breathes the spirit of the Lord, and that, rather than appearances, guides him in judgement.”

Old-fashioned diving suits had a long tether to the boat at the surface, along with an air hose. Now underwater divers carry tanks of compressed air, but that air came from the atmosphere above—as it were, a different realm. This provision of air is necessary to sustain human life in a hostile environment. Jesus drew His life from the Father through the Holy Spirit. In the same way we can draw upon him, our crucified, risen and ascended Lord. His life dwells within us. The Spirit of God sustains that life. We need only to be open and breathe. 

When God created the first human, He breathed into him the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). Human life was of His making, His craftsmanship. Our new creation life also originates in Him, as Paul points out in Ephesians 2:10, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works…”

Breathing in the life of Christ keeps our spirits alive and keeps our focus on Him rather than ourselves. He protects us from becoming preoccupied with our past, present and future. In Him we have wisdom, ability and loyalty to God. He is our complete provision. He directs us in good works. He keeps us on track.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Fill me with life anew, 
That I may love that which You love
And do what You would do.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Until my heart is pure,
Until my will is one with Yours,
To do and to endure.

(Edwin Hatch, “Breathe on me, Breath of God” verses 1 and 2.)

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Every Christian leads a double life. One of the two is fading away, while the other increasingly comes to the forefront. 

Consider Adam, the first human, the progenitor. This is the man who was placed in a perfect environment, who lacked for nothing, who had access to the Tree of Life but never drew from it, and who chose as the source of his life the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He turned his back on God and God’s plan, exchanging allegiance to God for allegiance to himself. 

His legacy was the desire to be a god unto himself, to live independently of the only true God. This kind of humanity, naturally speaking, is our inheritance. The old man, the natural man, the old creation, the Adam in us, is not in right standing with God (here I’m drawing on a series of recorded messages by T. Austin-Sparks entitled “Right Standing with God”). He is the “wrong man”. He is by his own choice estranged from God’s family. In seeking freedom from the authority of God he falls into slavery to invisible forces of evil and has no power to liberate himself from them. In fact, in many cases, he lacks the awareness of his state of bondage. He is incapable of appreciating the things of God, and actually hostile to the life of the Spirit. This humanity is ingrained in each of us. The apostle Paul refers to this person as “the man of dust.” God’s decision regarding this man: he came from the dust and to the dust he would return. And He turns his attention to a new humanity. 

The new humanity owes everything to Jesus. In the gospel of John, Jesus “is presented to us as God’s thought concerning man.” He is, by God’s reckoning, the Right Man. The incredibly good news is this: “What is true of the Lord Jesus as man is to be made true of all the children of God.” This is our new inheritance as believers, our right standing with God. God has made Jesus to be, according to Paul, our wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Jesus took our old nature with him when he went to the cross. As Paul writes elsewhere, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (1 Corinthians 5:27). The term “sin” here refers the old humanity. The resurrection of Jesus brought the new creation to the light of day. This is the new humanity that, in Christ, is in right standing with God. As this new creation in Christ, we have the right to stand in the presence of God. 

However, the old creation does not disappear from view for a long time. “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven (1 Corinthians 15:49). As T. Austin-Sparks puts it, “We are to be made according to God’s Right Man.” This is one way of describing our transformation: the process of coming into conformity with the image of Christ and relegating the image of the man of dust to the dustbin of our personal history. Transformation takes a long time. God knows me and He knows you. He sees how the process will unfold in each of us. More than knowing us, He loves us. He has a deep interest in our transformation. He knows how to intervene in each segment of the journey, to keep us on track and guide us back to the trail after every wrong turn. 

This being so, what would be an appropriate response?

Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee. 
Take my hands and let them move at the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee. 
Take my voice and let me sing always, only, for my King. 
Take my lips and let them be filled with messages for Thee.
Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold. 
Take my love, my God, I pour at Thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.
(After Frances Ridley Havergal)