A Man in Christ

Greetings All!

     Each Christian has certain authors, preachers, or teachers that they click with.  People who speak to them in a way others do not.  I have many of them just as I am sure you do.  Some of the people who have profoundly affected me range (the list is not exhaustive) from Charles Spurgeon, to J. I. Packer, to A. W. Tozer, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, John Owen, John Frame, Tim Keller, Richard Sibbes, Jonathan Edwards, Jerry Bridges, Wayne Grudem, R. C. Sproul, Ravi Zacharias, Gordon Fee, John Piper and the person you will hear from today -- James S. Stewart.  Some of you may be scratching your heads wondering who some of them are, when they lived, and why I'm enamored with their take on things, just as I likewise have wondered the same thing after reading some authors people gushed about and said, "you just have to read_____________"!

     Anyway, if you do have the time today, maybe you could zip off a quick response telling me your top three authors.  I'd be very interested in knowing which one's "speak your language" and have fed your soul (along with the book titles that helped you most).  If enough respond, maybe I'll share the results.

     Yet, today, you will hear from James S. Stewart, from his book "A Man in Christ."  For me it has been a "go to" book whenever I want something of substance to challenge or feed my soul. These excerpts simply give you the essence of what he fleshes out in greater detail throughout the rest of the book.  Enjoy.

A Man in Christ

     “The evangel of an ethical example (salvation by trying to be good) is a devastating thing. It makes religion the most grievous of burdens. Perhaps this is the real reason why, even among professing Christians, there are so many strained faces and weary hearts and captive, unreleased spirits. They have listened to Jesus' teaching, they have meditated on Jesus' character; and then they have risen up and tried to drive their own lives along Jesus' royal way. Disappointment heaped on bitter disappointment has been the result. The great example has been a dead-weight beating them down, bearing them to the ground, bowing their hopeless souls in the dust.

     One of the vital distinctions between true religion and false, is that, whereas the latter is a dead burden for the soul to carry, the former is a living power to carry the soul… "Christ in me" means something quite different from the weight of an impossible ideal, something far more glorious than the oppression of a pattern for ever beyond all imitation. "Christ in me" means Christ bearing me along from within, Christ as the motive-power that carries me on, Christ giving my whole life a wonderful poise and lift and turning every burden into wings. This is what the apostle means when he speaks of "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27)... This, and this alone, is the true Christian religion.

     To be "in Christ," to have Christ within, to realize your creed not as something you have to bear, but as something by which you are born. This is Christianity. It is more: it is release and liberty, life with an endless song at its heart. It means feeling within you, as long as life lasts here, the carrying power of Love Almighty; and underneath you, when you come to die, the touch of everlasting arms…

     The heart of Paul's religion is union with Christ. This, more than any other conception – ­ more than justification, more than sanctification, more even than reconciliation, is the key which unlocks the secrets of Paul’s soul. Within the Holy of Holies which stood revealed when the veil was rent in two from the top to the bottom that day on the road to Damascus, Paul beheld Christ summoning and welcoming him in infinite love into vital unity with Himself.

     If one seeks for the most characteristic sentences the apostle ever wrote, they will be found, not where he is refuting the legalists, or vindicating his apostleship, or meditating on eschatological hopes, or giving practical ethical guidance to the Church, but where his intense intimacy with Christ comes to expression. Everything that religion meant for Paul is focused for us in such great words as these: "I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). "There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). "He that is joined unto the Lord is one with him in spirit" (I Cor. 6:17)…  Paul declares his conviction that in Christianity the final stress must ever fall on one thing – and on one thing only – union with Christ.  Life in fellowship with Christ.”

     If what is written here resonates with you, or intrigues you, and you would like to go into it further, I would encourage you to pick up the book. I don't think you would be disappointed. God has given the Church gifted teachers and preachers, it is wise to avail yourselves of the things he has laid upon their hearts to share with us.

In His Service, Pastor Jeff

The Trivialization of God

Greetings All,

     This week's 'thought' comes to you from Donald W. McCullough, and is taken from his book, "The Trivialization of God."  It is a perceptive look at the ways that we, or our culture, have "shrunk" God down to make Him more manageable, and comfortable to deal with, or be around.
     This selection has to do with the three popular American deities: The god-of-my-cause, the god-of-my-understanding, and the god-of-my-experience, concluding with the much needed God- beyond-my-view-of-God. By necessity I have tried to shorten one chapter into one page, using the cut and paste method. So, if you get a chance, read it all in his book. It's well worth the time. In fact, it's a must for people who desire to avoid the all-too-easy-trap of trivializing God. Enjoy.

"God Of My Cause

     It's natural to want help... When I was younger, there was a boy named David. He could hit further, pitch harder, and field better than any kid in the neighborhood. We always wanted him on our side; he pretty much assured victory... The challenges may now be greater and the stakes higher, but I haven't grown out of wanting a David on my side. I doubt I am alone in this desire. The bigger the problem, of course, the bigger the help needed, and God is the Biggest Help available.

     So God naturally gets called in to lend almighty support to various causes -- even good causes -- holding the earth with concern, loosing the bonds of injustice, letting the oppressed go free, sharing our bread with the hungry, and bringing the poor homeless into our houses.

     What could be more appropriate than seeking God's help with these things? Indeed, this must please the God revealed in Scripture -- so long as a subtle shift does not take place. What can happen, though, is this: instead of serving God by working for a just cause, we serve a just cause by using God. The cause pushes God aside; the divine end becomes simply a useful means, and God gets trivialized. With the best of motives, we throw golden rings and bracelets of passionate concern into the fire, and a calf appears to lead the way to the Promised Land of social righteousness...

     If God is brought in secondarily, after the problem and solution have been defined (oppression and political or economic liberation), that will invariably shape our image of God. We may view God, for example, as simply an aid to fulfilling our human aspirations, or simply Big Help for what is essentially a human struggle for self-improvement... Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, 'Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith' -- faith, I would add, in a God who transcends history, who knows the beginning from the end, who holds the truth of any problem in the context of all truth. Seeing salvation from any other god will come to grief, for a god pressed into the service of a particular cause will be a god too trivial to offer significant help.

God Of My Understanding

     A child at the beach digs a hole in the sand and, with her little bucket, busily sets about transferring the ocean into it. We smile at the grandeur of her ambition, but only because we know she will soon mature beyond such pathetic futility. An ocean cannot be contained in any hole of any size on any continent. And neither can God be fully contained within any theological system.

     Yet well-meaning Christians, in seeking to bear accurate witness to God, often become so attached to their formulations they forget the discontinuity between God and what can be said about God. They forget that only in Christ Jesus has there ever been an exact correspondence between God and humanity. Doctrinal lines are routinely drawn in the dirt, enemies named and challenged, and offending notions bombed in 'jihads' of theological self-assuredness... An honest desire to think and speak accurately about God moves, too easily it seems, to a presumptuous conviction that our affirmations contain the whole truth about God, which has the practical effect of confining God to our truth statements....

     The theological enterprise demands humility as much as critical thinking. The best theologians have known this. Thomas Aquinas, after completing thirty-eight treatises, three thousand articles, and the ten thousand objections in his Summa Theologica -- one of the greatest intellectual achievements of western civilization -- abruptly quit his work on December 6, 1273.  He had a profound experience while celebrating mass in the chapel of St. Nicholas, and he announced to his secretary that he would write no more. 'I can do no more,' he tried to explain, 'such things have been revealed to me that all I have written seems to me as so much straw'...

     Our theological systems may succeed in containing the god-of-my-understanding, but never the holy God.

God Of My Experience 

     The things we experience, naturally, are the things of which we are the most certain. So, my form of worship, and my style of prayer, and my focus in service easily shape the pattern into which I squeeze spiritual reality...

     As a boy I attended a Bible camp run by a Pentecostal denomination... The preaching -- filled with interesting stories, as I recall -- aimed for our conversion and baptism in the Holy Spirit (evidenced by speaking in tongues)... One night I knelt for what seemed like enough time for God to turn me into a certified saint, let alone make me speak in tongues. A counselor did his best to help me: he prayed over me, laid his hands on me, suggested syllables for me to mouth, and held up my arms when they got weary. But he himself got tired, I suppose, and at one point I heard him whisper to someone who walked by, "He really doesn't want it." He really doesn't want it? Imagine what those words did to a boy trying his best to please God! How could I not want it? How could I not want the Holy Spirit?...

     I have no doubt that some people have been given the ability to pray in ecstatic utterance as a sign of the Spirit's presence; the New Testament validates this spiritual gift (I Cor. 14), and I have many friends who testify to its importance in their lives. But there is scant biblical evidence for turning this into a necessary proof of the Spirit-filled life. So little, in fact, that most of the church for most of its history, has seen this manifestation of the Spirit as one of the least important (I Cor. 12:31).

     What has happened, it seems, is that some have been so moved and helped by this gift, they have not only wanted others to share in their experience, but have made it normative for everyone. Those who lack the experience must therefore lack the fullness of the Spirit, which is another way of saying they lack the presence of God. The counselor of my youth assumed that the presence of God would always be shown in a certain experience, and thus without that experience, God could not really be present -- at least not fully.

     Not only does this assumption contradict the fact that the God revealed in Scripture seems to love diversity (I Cor. 12:28-30)... it also has the effect of limiting God, setting boundaries on the way God works in this world....  How easy it is to define authentic spirituality according to my particular experience and expression of it. And when I do, I end up with a very different god from the one revealed in Christ... a god, consequently, too trivial to lift me out of my self and beyond the distortions of my flawed experience.

God Beyond My View of God

     ...Concerns held with passionate conviction, theologies that provide a helpful framework, and formative spiritual experiences are not bad. A healthy Christian will have all these things!  They can be lenses through which we see important aspects of the being of God. The problem arises when we forget the vast difference between our view of God and the reality of God...

     Any god I use to support my latest cause, or who fits comfortably within my understanding or experience, will be a god no larger than I, and thus not able to save me from my sin or inspire my worship or empower my service.  Any god who fits the contours of ME will never really transcend me, never really be God.  Any god who doesn't kick the bars out of the prison of my perceptions will be nothing but a trivial god."

     I have to say that as I was reading that section of his book I thought to myself: guilty, guilty, guilty.  In fact, I had written the word "guilty" next to one of his comments in the book.

     After all, it's hard not to want God to be the way I want Him.  It's hard not to want Him to be on my side of any cause, or not want my experience to define how He is. Thank God, though, that He does not comply with my wishes! He is who He is, and remains true to who He is, even if ALL want Him to be different -- and most do on occasion -- myself included. 

     God help me -- God help us all -- to grow to learn and affirm all that you reveal about yourself in Your Word, remembering the need for humility as we try to do so, since there is so much more of You than our finite and limited minds can ever grasp.

In the service of Him who is loving, beautiful, immense, and holy beyond imagination, Pastor Jeff

Liberating

Greetings All, 

     This week's 'thought' comes from James S. Stewart former professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. His name should sound familiar by now since I have quoted him in the past.  It is taken from his superb book, "A Man in Christ."  I cited a condensed version of this selection in my sermon on Sunday, but thought I would send it out in its near complete form for your further examination and contemplation.  It contrasts two approaches to Christianity: one that sees Jesus primarily as our example, and the other which sees Him as the Lord with whom, or to whom, God has joined us, by grace, through faith. 

     As I mentioned in my message Sunday, I embraced (in my early years as a Christian) the concept that the goal of the Christian life was to imitate Jesus example of love, devotion and holiness.  No problem there -- as long as the impossibility of the task is understood from the start. Yet, with the need to follow Jesus example I had also mixed in the idea that the more one did, or the closer one came to doing so, the more God accepted, approved of or loved them (or me) which can only lead to self-righteous pride when one feels they've succeeded, or utter despair when they realize they always fall short of the ideal. I wish I had read these words of Stewart before I ever did so. It would have saved me alot of needless pain and emotional turmoil and despair! 

     Therefore I offer them to you in the hope that if anyone has embraced the same ideas, it will save you from the pain I went through at that time (due to my distorted view of New Testament Christainity and what it is that gains us God's acceptance).  Enjoy.  

"Paul's mysticism... constitutes a very decisive challange to that type of modern religion which is content to regard Jesus merely as example... Now it is perfectly true that the noble ethic Jesus preached, and His own fulfillment of it in life and deed, have laid down the lines for all His friends to follow.  Nor can there be any doubt that this was a real part of the divine plan by which the Word became flesh and dwelt among us -- as indeed the New Testament apostle recognized when he wrote, "Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow in His steps." But what Paul's mysticism [that is, his focus on our spiritual union with Christ] does, is to remind us that the example of Christ is only a part, and not even the greatest part, of the redeeming Gospel.  Were there no more than this, the contemplation of the perfect holiness of Jesus could only breed despair.  For no shining example... can cleanse the conscience that has been defiled, or break the octopus grip sin has upon the soul. 

The evangel of an ethical example is a devastating thing. It makes religion the most grievous of burdens. Perhaps this is the real reason why, even among professing Christians, there are so many strained faces and weary hearts and captive, unreleased spirits. They have listened to Jesus teaching; they have meditated upon Jesus character; and then they have risen up and tried to drive their own lives to follow the royal way. Yet disappointment upon disappointment has been the bitter result. The great example of Jesus [like the law] has been a dead-weight beating them down, bearing them to the ground, bowing their hopeless souls in the dust.  If Harnack's Christ (as ethical teacher and noble example) is all we have, we are left without a Redeemer.  

Yet ever since Isaiah [46:1-4], men have been aware that one of the vital distinctions between true and false religion, is that, whereas the latter is a dead burden for the soul to carry, the former is a living power to carry the soul... "Christ in me" means something quite different from the weight of an impossible ideal, something far more glorious than the oppression of a pattern forever beyond our imitation. "Christ in me" means Christ bearing me along from within, Christ as the motive-power that carries me on, Christ giving my whole life a wonderful poise and lift, and turning every burden into wings.  All this is included when the apostle speaks of "Christ in you, the hope of glory."  

Compared with this, the religion which bases everything on example is pitifully rudimentary.  This, and this alone, is the true Christian religion.  Call it mysticism or not -- the name matters little -- the thing, the experience, matters everything. To be "in Christ," to have Christ within, to realise your creed not as something you have to bear, but as something by which you are borne, this is Christianity.  It is more: it is release and liberty, life with an endless song at its heart.  It means feeling within you, as long as life lasts, the carrying power of Love Almighty; and underneath you, when you come to die, the touch of everlasting arms."

In His Service, Pastor Jeff