Vindictiveness and anger are the playbook of life around us today – in the bedroom, social media and the corridors of power. How can we respond?

Forty-five years ago, the historian and social critic, Christopher Lasch, published The Culture of Narcissism: There he wrote, ‘Our society has made lasting friendships, love affairs and marriages, increasingly difficult to achieve. Social life has become more and more warlike and personal relationships have taken on the character of combat…’ He said this before the advent of social media.

Driven by changing and conflicting world-views, society today has become more and more divided. For centuries, the Judaeo-Christian world-view formed the social bond in the Western world. But these days the progressive world dismisses God: we are now adrift on the ocean of life without an agreed moral compass. Persuasive voices appeal to our emotions. Profounder, wiser voices of experience that speak to the depths of our souls are drowned out.

In his book, God Is Good For You, Dr Greg Sheriden, a respected Australian commentator and author, writes: ‘The primary challenge today is not intellectual but cultural…’

For the last five hundred years or so, Christian theologians and church leaders have seen the need to address people’s intellectual questions – about the existence of God, authenticity, suffering, and science and Christianity. But if Sheridan is right and the challenge now is cultural, we need to ask, ‘how do other people see us?’ Is there any difference in my lifestyle and worldview from people around me?

In chapter 3 of his Letter to the Colossians, Paul the Apostle identifies character changes God expects in his people. In verses 5 through 11 he sets out examples of inner transformation. And, from verse 12 he writes of transformed relationships.

In verse 12 he writes: As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

Changed attitudes. Paul tells us that if we are to experience and enjoy good relationships ourselves, we need to change our attitudes towards others. We need to put off the anti-social vices of indifference and thoughtlessness in our relationships with one another. Paul puts his finger on 3 attitudes that can cause conflict.

Instead of compassion and kindness, it is easy to distance ourselves from the pain and the suffering of others. Instead of humility and meekness, how easily we focus on our own interests and achievements so that we, even unconsciously, look down on others who are not as ‘together’.

And how quickly we become impatient with those around us because we’re not prepared to put up with their faults or failures. Indifference, pride and impatience can lie at the root of violence and hostility in any human society.

Forgiveness. Paul continues: Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you.

Let me ask, have you forgiven in your heart and before God that person who so badly hurt you? Have you let bitterness take root in your attitude towards them? If we know God’s forgiveness because we have turned to the Lord Jesus in repentance, how can we not forgive those who have offended us?

Martin Luther King Jr. echoed Paul’s words when said: “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love”. He also said, “Forgiveness is not an occasional act. It is a permanent attitude”. And he further commented, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools”. “With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope”.

Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you, Paul exhorts us.

Love. And put on love which binds you all together, he continues. Paul knew how easy it is for God’s people, indeed for everyone, to be divided. He understood the corrosive effect of wounded feelings. But he also knew of the one quality that can heal, and enable God’s people to grow into maturity: Love.

He is not speaking of a sentimental, emotional love, but of a love that is grounded in truth and is committed to serving the best interests of others.

This is where we who are God’s people are to be so different from the wider society. For the New Testament insists that God’s people be the one community where the ethics of love and mercy in serving the best interests of others, prevail. As God’s people, we are to pray for our enemies. God expects us to live out the grace of compassion and care for others – especially for one another as God’s people.

How are we to respond to the vindictiveness and division around us? The starting point is to pray that we might live out the life changes that the Lord has brought to bear on us as his people.

Tertullian, the 2nd century church leader commented of the way the wider society saw the communities of God’s people: ‘It is our care for the helpless, our practice of loving kindness that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents’, he said. “Only look,” they say, “look how they love one another”.’

A prayer. Eternal God and Father, by whose power we are created and by whose love we are redeemed: guide and strengthen us by your Spirit, so that we may give ourselves to your service, and live this day in love for one another and to you; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.  Amen.

© John G. Mason

Augustine of Hippo, North Africa, one of the great minds of the late Roman Empire, wrestled with the notion of God and the question of evil, before coming to believe that Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God. He writes in his Confessions that as a young adult his prayer was, “God, give me chastity and self-control, but not yet”.

One day when he was reading in a garden, he heard a young child’s voice singing, Tolle lege; tolle lege – ‘Take up, read; take up, read.’ He had been reading Paul the Apostle’s Letter to the Romans. Going back to the place where he had left the text, his eyes fell on the words in chapter 13: Let us live honourably as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

As he read, he found the solution to his heart’s longing. “How sweet did it suddenly become to me to be free of the sweets of folly: things that I once feared to lose, it was now joy to put away. You (Lord) cast them forth from me, … and in their stead you entered in, sweeter than every pleasure…” (Confessions VIII)

Paul’s advice in Romans, chapter 13 is similar to what we find in the first section of Colossians, chapter 3. There Paul writes, Since you have been raised to a new life in Christ, set your hearts and minds on the things above…And in verse 5 he says: Put to death therefore what belongs to your earthly nature…

It is because of the new relationship that God’s people have with the risen Lord Jesus that Paul exhorts us to adopt a new lifestyle that reflects the goodness of God. Everything we think and say and do is to be framed by our new identity. Paul touches on three important areas of our behavior: sex, speech and relationships.

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Passions. If you know the Lord Jesus, Paul is saying, then sex is for marriage only. ‘You used to do what you wanted to do,’ he says, ‘but now having linked yourself with the Lord, put to death such behaviour.’ People often argue that they are ‘making love’, but with his reference to greed in this context, he is saying that it is really lust.

In recent years studies suggest that the internet is having a negative impact on marriages. People are so consumed by it, especially pornography, that they have less time and inclination for their marriage partner. What a strange paradox: ogling at pictures more than enjoying the precious gift of the personal, intimate sexual relationship in marriage.

As Augustine came to realize, God is not interested in spoiling our fun. Rather, we are reminded, that as our Maker, God has a good and wonderful purpose for us in marriage. Paul frames his exhortation here in the context that we have died and been raised with Christ. When we feel the impact of this, the desires of our hearts will change. We will see the rightness and true joy in living out the Lord’s good plan for us in a committed and faithful marriage – one where there is forgiveness and renewal.

Paul also speaks about the tongue: But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practicesand have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.

It seems strange that Paul writes about controlling the tongue in the same context as he writes about sex. What we forget is that the New Testament sees the tongue as our most sin prone organ. In his Letter, James says that the tongue is a restless evil.

You may think that to get on in life you need to express yourself with vehemence and an edgy vocabulary. But malice, obscenity and anger constantly damage and destroy relationships.

Sometimes people tell me that nobody likes a saint: they’re so self-righteous. But to say this is to forget what true humanity is. To be truly human is to be like Jesus. Let me ask, ‘Do you get the impression that he was a dull, anaemic personality?’ He was man as men and women are meant to be.

Which brings us to Paul’s further exhortation – about relationships:

In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

Here in Colossians, chapter 3, verse 11 Paul tells us that we need to recognize the unity we have in Christ and, in turn, provide a picture to the world of God’s new society. One of the significant features of New Testament Christianity was the breakdown of racial and cultural barriers – not least between Jewish and non-Jewish Christians.

Paul’s words set the agenda of unity across the social and racial divisions for God’s people. Yes, we’ll disappoint one another, we won’t always be as tolerant as we should be, we won’t always love one another, or forgive one another as we should. But we must try. That should be our goal.

Put to death therefore what belongs to your earthly nature… Paul writes.

You may find it helpful to remember Augustine’s words as he read the Scriptures: “How sweet did it suddenly become to me to be free of the sweets of folly: things that I once feared to lose, it was now joy to put away. Lord, you cast them forth from me, you the true and highest sweetness, … and in their stead you entered in, sweeter than every pleasure…”

Augustine could sum up, “God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.”

Let’s pray. Lord if we are honest, we find our consciences pricked by the lofty standards you have set, of sexual purity, in our speaking, and in our relationships. We know that this failure in us affects the whole world, creating injustice and protest, conflict and war. Lord, please forgive us for our failings. But we also want to thank you for the new world you have made, to which we have title, and upon which you want us to fix our gaze. Turn our hearts to love you and to honor you. Help us to live for your glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

© John G. Mason

In March 1973, Pink Floyd introduced the line, ‘The dark side of the moon’. The album was a great success addressing dark questions about life. The theme of darkness arose again in the 2013 movie, Gravity where Sandra Bullock is left untethered in space. The audience feels the visceral terror of darkness and helplessness. The black hole of depression, the sense of having the light of life sucked out of us, is how many feel.

In his Letter to the Colossians Paul takes us beyond the world of music and science-fiction into a realm beyond the universe itself. He tells us that in Jesus Christ, God the creator of the universe, has entered our world and opened the way for us to be transferred from this present world of disappointment and despair, darkness and death, to the kingdom of his beloved Son.

Back in chapter 1, verse 13 Paul put it like this: God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves...

In the first two chapters of his Letter, Paul tells us that when Jesus came a dislocation in human history occurred. In Jesus, God’s rule over the cosmos took on a new form: a new world order began, and that new world now co-exists with the one we see around us.

Paul awakens us, not just to the notion of a creator God, but to one who is also working out his cosmic strategy in world events and in the arena of our lives. The key element is now in place: it involved his one and only Son, Jesus. It required Jesus, who is truly God and truly human, to offer his life as the one perfect and sufficient sacrifice to satisfy all God’s just requirements for the sins of humanity. In an extraordinary act of generous love, Jesus freely volunteered to do this, giving his life, the just for the unjust.

But Jesus’ death was not the end. Rather, it was the end of the beginning — the end of the first stage of God’s cosmic plan. It also marked the beginning of the last stage of God’s plan for the cosmos as we know it. For now, a new era has dawned.

How can we be sure of this? Jesus’ physical resurrection from the dead is the key.

The opening lines of Colossians chapter 3 form a turning point to the Letter. We read: So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, …

Jesus’ resurrection was not simply a satisfying ending to a unique life. It reveals that all that Jesus tells us about God, the world, and us, is not science fiction. An eternal realm exists outside of space and time. Furthermore, his resurrection points to a new era in God’s great purposes – an era which we can experience, and in which we can personally participate.

Two great realms now co-exist: the dominion of darkness and the kingdom of God’s Son. In other words, into the dark scene of a world of seeming hopelessness, the light of Jesus has shone.

The dominion of darkness, we could say, is centred around a black hole. It is a shrinking world, shrinking to eternal destruction. But the other world, the kingdom of God’s Son is centred around a bright nova, and it’s an expanding universe, expanding to eternal glory.

For the present, there is an interface between these two parallel worlds, and a door in time allows people to pass from one world to the other. For the present everyone who turns to Jesus and gives him their allegiance has an identity in both worlds. Physically we are still in the old order but our names are registered in the new.

From God’s perspective, everyone who may be healthy and enjoying life but chooses to live without him is dead. However, when we truly turn to Jesus Christ, God raises us up into a new life with Christ. In his mind’s eye we are alive with the risen Christ.

Paul carries this forward in verse 3 where he says, For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. If we are one of God’s people, we exist in two worlds: we have a visible identity in this world, and at the same time an invisible identity in God’s new world.

For the present others only see our physical bodies. The reality of our new and eternal life is hidden. Indeed, because those around us cannot see, let alone understand the new life we now have, there will be misunderstanding, mockery and even anger at the views we hold, and the lifestyle changes they observe.

But, because our faith is grounded in the God who keeps his promises, what is now hidden will one day be disclosed. Everyone will see it.Paul puts it this way in verse 4: When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

In today’s world the idea of Christ bursting through the skies in a blazing display of power and glory, seems pure science fiction. But the Bible leaves us in no doubt. From cover to cover it tells us that the world is going somewhere, and the final outcome will involve the return of God’s king.

When we think about it, the events of the life, death and resurrection of God’s Son occurred only some twenty-eight life spans ago – a life span being 70 years. During the course of his public life Jesus predicted the events of his death and resurrection. He also spoke of his return. His words about his unexpected death and resurrection were fulfilled. Is it not conceivable that his third prediction will also take place?

And when he returns, what a day that will be! This present age will be seen for what it is – a time that is a strange mixture of good and evil. However, with the manifestation of the new era in its awesome power and perfect justice, the pure joy and glory of God’s people will be revealed. We will experience life in all its fullness and joy, love and laughter for eternity.

Paul’s words in the opening lines of chapter 3 awaken our hearts and minds to see life now through the longer lens of a time without end – the glory of God’s country. In this troubled world, shrouded in so much darkness, let’s live in the light and hope of the glory to be revealed with the return of God’s King.

A Prayer: O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: do not leave us desolate, but send your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to where our Savior Christ has gone before, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for evermore.  Amen.

© John G. Mason

There are times when we feel we are not spiritual enough. God seems distant. Our faith feels cold. We go to church, but we don’t read the Bible or pray from one week to the next. What’s to be done?

Some of us set ourselves a rigorous program, especially during Lent – perhaps rising extra early, fasting on Fridays and following a strict code of rules. Others of us feel we need new spiritual experiences. But in Colossians, chapter 2, verses 16 through 23 Paul the Apostle makes some salutary observations about what we can identify as legalism, mysticism, and ascetism. He challenges us to consider who Jesus Christ really is and the perfection and completion of his necessary work for us.

In verses 16 and 17 he writes: Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths. These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

Legalism. Having a rigorous calendar of saints days and food ritual and ceremonies will not add to what Christ has done for our salvation, he is saying. Yes, the Old Testament had many laws and ceremonies concerning sacrifices and sabbaths, fasting and washing, but that’s all over now. Going back to that type of religious legalism is like people in the 21st century going back to the horse and buggy days of the 19th century. The Old Testament rules and regulations were shadows of the reality that was to come.’

Yes, as we all know, there is wisdom in washing before meals and having a regular break from work. But Paul is saying, don’t think that by making this a legalistic ritual you are going to be more spiritual or more godly. Spiritual legalism received its death knell when Jesus nailed it to his cross (Colossians 2:14).

In chapter 2, verses 18 and 19 he continues: Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking,and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.

Mysticism. Oriental religions have always thought that people can penetrate the cloud that veils our view of God by participating in occult practices. But Paul says otherwise. Reciting mantras, practising yoga or looking for mystical experiences, won’t work. You lose contact with the real source of life. Mysticism – the occult, drug induced experiences will not help us find God.

Consider what Paul says in verses 20 through 23: If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch” (referring to things which all perish as they are used), according to human precepts and doctrines? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting rigour of devotion and self-abasement and severity to the body, but they are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh.

Asceticism. This third group tries to be more spiritual through a program of self-discipline and self-denial. They fast and will eat only certain foods. Diet and physical discipline can become an obsession.

But says Paul, severe self-discipline isn’t going to help you live morally or spiritually better lives. For starters, it’s a human invention. We may give the impression of being pious or wise, but it’s nothing more than a self-imposed religious asceticism.

So, if legalism, mysticism and asceticism won’t help us live better moral or spiritual lives, what will? Paul is telling us that we need to go back to the one who is the only source of true liberation: Jesus Christ. He is the solution to our longing for deeper spiritual experience.

Paul was convinced the Colossian people needed to focus their thinking on Jesus. They needed to ask again: Who is he? What has he done? Back in Colossians chapter 2, verse 9, Paul writes: For in Christ the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness of life in him,…

Most people find this hard to believe. Yet the evidence of Jesus’ life was that he is both man and God. Think of the miracles he performed – controlling nature, healing the sick, feeding thousands, even raising the dead. He didn’t do these things because he was a man of great faith. He did them because he was both one hundred percent God and one hundred percent man.

If the fullness of God dwelt in Jesus, then he is all we need. To know Jesus, says Paul, is to have God; one hundred percent of God; the fullness of God through his Spirit in your life. When we grasp this, then all the pseudo-ideas of a spiritual life that might seem attractive, will lose their appeal. When people turn away from a professed Christian faith, their decision often begins with their denial of the incarnation and their denial of the deity of Christ.

You, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, having cancelled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross (Col. 2:14).

Prayer. Almighty God, you wonderfully created men and women in your own image and have now more wonderfully rescued and restored them. Grant us, we pray, that as your Son our Lord Jesus Christ was made in our likeness, so may we share his divine nature; we ask this through Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Suggested reading – Colossians 2:8-23

© John G. Mason

Today is known in the church calendar as Ash Wednesday – the first day of Lent. Traditionally it is an important time of preparation for the events that we remember and celebrate at Easter – ‘The Last Supper’, Jesus’ crucifixion (Good Friday) and his resurrection (Easter Day).

In the northern hemisphere it is a time of seasonal change from the darkness of winter to the delights of longer days and the new life of spring. Many of God’s people use it as a special time to reflect on what God has done for us to bring us from the winter of life without him, to the new life in Jesus Christ through the events of the first Good Friday and Easter Day.

Some find it helpful to make Lent a time of going without (fasting), enabling them to be more focused on their relationship and life with the Lord Jesus. Lent begins with Ash Wednesday and continues through to the day before Easter.

Doubts. That said, do you ever have doubts about your faith? The world is full of ideas about where we find the meaning of life. Richard Dawkins and others tell us that physics will explain the universe. Books about mysticism and eastern religion tell us of the advantages of meditation and spiritual experiences. And there are work colleagues who tell us to forget all the religious nonsense and to come and have a drink with them.

However, when we look into the subject of faith, we find that some of the finest scientific minds insist that the universe is the work of a supreme intelligence. In his book, Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence? Professor Henry F (Fritz) Schaefer, one of the worlds leading quantum chemists, writes that Dr. Allan Sandage was a brilliant cosmologist. He ‘is responsible for our best values for the age of the universe, something like 14 billion years’ (Apollos Trust: Third Edition, 2013, p.71). Dr. Schaefer notes that when Sandage was asked ‘how one can be a scientist and a Christian, he didn’t turn to astronomy, but rather biology: “The world is too complicated in all its parts and interconnection to be due to chance … I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order and each of its organisms is simply too well put together”’.

So, what does the Bible reveal concerning the real problem with the world?

Captivity. Writing in his Letter to the Colossians, chapter 2, the Apostle Paul says: And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, having cancelled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him (Col. 2:13-15).

The Bible sees history as being divided into two great eras. Before Jesus came there was the present age: ‘the world’. Now that Jesus has come a new era has begun: ‘the age to come’ or ‘the kingdom of God’. God was in sovereign control of the first era, but it was a world in the grip of the elemental principles of the natural world. We were captive to laws we couldn’t keep – and even when God’s law was revealed, we found we couldn’t keep it. Furthermore, we found we were in bondage to a supernatural prosecuting power – Satan.

This supernatural power has set himself up as the prosecutor for our failures. And such is the nature of our failures to love God and to love our neighbors that God that must condemn us. As a result, we are subject to death because our transgressions are, in God’s eyes, a capital offence. Moreover Satan, being the implacable prosecutor he is, insists that the penalty must be paid. And so, what seems an irony, God in his justice cannot refuse Satan’s demands.

C.S. Lewis captures these elements in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Because Edmund betrayed Aslan the white witch demanded Edmund’s life. ‘He has broken the laws of the deep,’ she shrieks. ‘His life is forfeit.’

This is the natural condition of everyone of us. There are laws we cannot keep, we are in the power of spiritual forces we can’t defeat, and we are en route to a grave we cannot avoid. This is what Paul means by captivity.

Liberty. But with the coming of Jesus, God in the flesh, the bars of our spiritual prison have been smashed. For he has paid the moral debt of the laws we couldn’t obey. Furthermore, he disarmed the demonic powers that we couldn’t overcome. As for the death we couldn’t escape, he abolished it. For when you were dead in your sins, he made you alive with the risen Christ, Paul writes.

How is this extraordinary freedom achieved? Paul tells us twice so that we don’t miss it: By the cross. In verse 14 he says that God took it away, nailing it to the cross of Christ … And in verse 15 he says that God triumphed over them by the cross. For Paul, the world that was, gave way to a new and everlasting world.

The Cross is where Jesus paid the death penalty for our sinful human race, turning our captivity into the glorious liberty of the children of God. The invoice, the bill of debt? It’s nailed to the cross stamped, ‘Paid in Full’. The demonic forces who held us in their control? ‘They are publicly humiliated’, declares Paul.

The cross of Jesus Christ lies at the heart of the season of Lent – indeed, every day of our life. So Lent can help us re-set our relationship with Christ and enable us to re-frame our lives throughout the year.

Prayer – for Ash Wednesday. Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing that you have made, and you forgive the sins of all who are penitent: create and make in us new and contrite hearts, so that we, lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain from you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Suggested reading – Colossians 2:8-15

© John G. Mason