Many people reckon church is irrelevant. Indeed, recent research indicates that the majority of people who call themselves Christians think church is unimportant. In fact, they often attend church because of family, because they like the preacher or the music, or because it is good for social networking.
But God doesn’t want us to ‘date’ church – attending when we feel like it. The Letters of Paul the Apostle show us that it was his constant ambition to be involved in the growth of vital churches.
Today and over the coming weeks, I plan to touch on key themes in Paul’s Letter to the Colossians with the title, ‘Life to the Full’. In the first section of chapter 1, Paul identifies features of a church that exemplifies his dream.
Thanksgiving. He begins by telling his Colossian readers how much he thanks God for them. Significantly he doesn’t thank God that they were ‘religious’. Rather, he speaks about them as being characterized by faith, love, and hope.
He writes of their faith in Christ Jesus. The order of the words is significant, Christ Jesus, or KingJesus, indicating that from the first, the followers of Jesus Christ acknowledged him as the Lord, God’s anointed king. People often say they believe in God, but true Christianity is Christ-centered.
Another mark was their love for all the saints. Their faith was not simply individualistic and personal but flowed over into relationships with everyone who shared a common confession in Christ Jesus. They not only knew one another’s names but were committed to serving one another’s spiritual and practical needs. They were God’s new society, bound together across the differences of racial and cultural backgrounds, slaves and free. Vital churches are God’s new society.
A third feature of the church in Colossae was hope. There is something unexpected about the way Paul writes of this; the Colossian’s faith and love spring out of the hope laid up for us in heaven. Furthermore, this hope is not a blind optimism, a leap in the dark. Faith and love spring from the certainty of the return of Jesus Christ, which is a central part of the gospel Paul goes on to write about. It suggests that we need to learn to live now in the light of the age to come.
The themes of truth and growth bubble through these verses. In an age where truth is denied, it is striking the way that Paul speaks of God’s good news (gospel) as the truth. The gospel, he says, is the word of the truth. He could have left out any reference to the words the truth, but he doesn’t. Here is something to challenge and encourage us. Significantly, Paul continues to comment that the gospel is expanding all over the world.
It’s worth pausing to consider the point that God’s gospel is true. As others have noted, the gospel is true in a counter-intuitive sense: the statements it makes about God and men and women are beyond human invention and imagination. Furthermore, it is true in an historical sense: the eye-witness accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus were not a set of myths or lies. They are trustworthy facts. The Christian message is also true in the experiential sense: when we put our trust in Jesus Christ who is at the center of the gospel message, we discover that our faith is not a hoax but a genuine experience.
Growth. Because the gospel is the truth, the church in Colossae had formed and was growing. People had heard and responded to the message in all its truth, preached by pastor Epaphras. And we should also note that God’s Spirit was at work: He (Epaphras) is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit (Colossians 1:8). The work of God’s Spirit is essential if people are to hear and gladly respond to God’s gospel when it is verbalized to them. In 1 Corinthians 12:3b Paul writes: … no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.
So often we forget this necessary work of the Spirit of God in the miracle of conversion – yes, conversion is a miracle. It is the greater work that Jesus spoke about in John 14:12 when he told his disciples that they would be doing greater works than the miracles he performed.
Good churches develop where God’s Word is faithfully announced and lived out – churches where God’s Spirit of love is also at work. For, by God’s grace, the Spirit is at work drawing people of all ages to a genuine faith in Christ, a love for one another (not just their friends), inspired by the hope of the coming reign of Christ. Where lives are being transformed in this way, churches grow in maturity and in number, with their impact spilling over into the wider community and beyond.
No, I am not using the word ‘tush’ in its more recent use, as a reference to the human posterior. Rather I am speaking of a much earlier English usage of ‘tush’ developed from Middle English where it was an exclamation of disdain, dismissal or contempt.
Interestingly, in the 16th century William Tyndale translated Genesis 3:4 into English with these words: Then said the serpent unto the woman, tush, you shall not die. And Melvyn Bragg in his William Tyndale (SPCK: London, 2017, p.61) observes, ‘How wicked, how lovely, how remarkable is that ‘tush’.
He contrasts it with the plainer words of the King James (1611) Version: And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die. ‘Nothing like as vivid or subtly complex in its mix of snake-charm flattery and a lie. ‘Tush’ is a sad loss,’ Bragg comments (M Bragg, p.61).
I draw attention to ‘tush’, because understood this way it delightfully and aptly captures the disdain and the dismissal of the voices today that oppose the God of the Bible.
Consider for a moment the intent of the ancient serpent. In Genesis 3:1 we read: …The serpent said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” ‘Did God really say, any tree?’ he asked.
His words went beyond what God had said. The command related to one tree only – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent’s strategy was to sow doubt. He deftly and subtly did this by misquoting God’s command, altering the focus of the command from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to anytree. The deception was carefully scripted, tempting Eve to think that God must be a spoil-sport, someone who couldn’t be really trusted as having her best interests at heart. She was now open to questioning the rightness of God’s command.
The forces of evil use the same ploy today to undermine our relationship with God and our trust in him. ‘Tush,’ he says. ‘A life of Christian morality. How dull and boring.’
Initially the woman correctly repeated God’s command as referring to just one particular tree. But then she incorrectly added to God’s command: “…Nor shall you touch it, or you shall die”. God had not said, “You mustn’t touch it…”
Clearly Eve is tempted to think that God’s command is restrictive – something she doesn’t like at all. She has become like the sulky teenager who doesn’t like being told by her parents that she has to be home by a certain time.
Wickedness was at work in that conversation. The prince of this world had laid the groundwork for Eve to doubt God’s command and no longer truly trust him. But we see the wickedness of the deception even more with the falsehood that so smoothly slipped from the tempter’s lips. “You won’t die,…” he said. ‘Tush. That’s just hell-fire and brimstone talk. Don’t believe it’.
In one sentence, the wily tempter had undermined God’s command and with it the truth of God’s goodness. He also questioned God’s justice – that God would condemn the woman to death if she disobeyed.
It was the opening ploy in a strategy to deface and destroy humanity as the image of God.
The forces of evil continue to adopt this and other strategies today. By altering God’s words, by taking them out of context (as happened with the temptations of Jesus), doubts are sowed in our minds about God’s goodness and justice – and indeed about his very existence.
When we pause and consider these matters, we begin to see how easily we too can be duped into a false understanding of God and the reality of the deeper truths of the universe.
If we choose to live without God, the day will come when he will inform us that he will respect our choice. He will let us go to live in an eternity without him – a world without goodness and truth, without justice and love, a world without hope, a world where there is only despair.
Let’s pray for the discernment, the wisdom and the strength ourselves to reject the dismissive ‘tush’ of the world around us. Let’s also pray that the Lord, whose nature is always to have mercy, will open the eyes of the blind and give us the words to draw our family and friends to the word of the truth, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Back in the ‘90s the pop singer Alanis Morissette came up with a song, ‘Forgiven’. She sings of her experience as a teenager at a religious high school where she and her friends had ‘no fun with no guilt feelings’. She wandered a long way from the religion she was taught.
Like many who have been put off religion because of its apparent coldness, it seems she made a decision to keep it at arms’ length.
But there’s a twist in her song. In the final verse she appears more thoughtful, even regretful of her past. The song is something that forces her to look at her life in a fresh way. She sings, ‘What I learned I rejected, but I believe again.’ But this raises an uncomfortable question, what she calls ‘One last stupid question’. In the last line of the last verse she yells it out: ‘Will I be forgiven?’
In a suggested ‘Coffee Conversation’ (December 6), we noted Jesus’ words to a paralyzed man who had been lowered through the roof of a house into his presence. Jesus’ words “Man, your sins are forgiven you” (Luke 5:20), and the man’s healing assure us that Jesus wields God’s authority to forgive sins.
However, knowing this as an idea doesn’t answer the question: ‘Does he have the inclination to forgive me?’ It’s one thing for Jesus to forgive a sick paraplegic, but it’s another thing for him to forgive someone who knows they have wandered a long way from the faith. Can someone who has walked away from God return and find forgiveness?
People may ask this because they have experienced condemnation from churchgoers. The condemnation may be unspoken, but the rejection is real.
Consider Jesus’ words at a dinner party where the focus falls on three people – a Pharisee host, Jesus, and an uninvited woman who interrupted the party (Luke 7:36-50). Luke tells us that she stood at Jesus’ feet weeping, letting her tears wash over his feet. Having no towel she let out her hair to dry them, before kissing them and pouring an expensive perfume over them. She couldn’t have attracted more attention if she had burst in screaming and shouting.
Her actions could have easily been interpreted as being sexually provocative – which is what the Pharisee host thought: “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner” – a prostitute (7:39).
However the woman’s actions are open to quite another interpretation. Jesus had the insight of a prophet and knew what his host was thinking. “Simon”, he said. “I have something to say to you..,” (7:40). It is the only time a Pharisee is named in Luke, suggesting that Jesus was concerned for Simon and wants him to understand how God, and others, see him. Interestingly, Jesus didn’t preach a sermon. Rather he told a story.
Like all Jesus’ parables the story is compelling. Drawing from the language of the financial world, which would have resonated with Simon whose pockets were deep enough to host a dinner-party, Jesus tells of two men who are in debt to a money-lender. One owed fifty denarii and the other one hundred denarii. Neither could pay. Both needed mercy and forgiveness.
And both do receive forgiveness (grace) for their respective debts. Both enjoy the same status as forgiven debtors. The parable challenges the conventions of relationships, but Jesus focuses Simon’s attention by asking, “Which of them will love him more?” Feeling the personal challenge, Simon’s response is indirect: “The one, I suppose, to whom he forgave more.”
Turning to face the woman, Jesus continues to speak to Simon, saying in effect: ‘You call yourself a host, but consider how you have treated me. You didn’t wash my feet when I came in; you didn’t greet me with a kiss. You didn’t even offer to anoint my head with oil as a sign of honor when I came in. You call yourself religious and yet you have not shown to me just one sign of genuine neighbor love.’
In essence Jesus was saying: ‘Simon, from the moment this woman entered your house, she has shed tears of regret, kissed me and anointed me out of a heart-felt repentance for the way she has lived’ (7:44-48). To the woman he said, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (7:50).
It was her faith in him, not works that evoked Jesus’ words of forgiveness. Before she had come to the dinner party, she had understood that Jesus has God’s authority to forgive sins. His words, spoken personally to her, assured her she was forgiven. She could enjoy peace with God and peace of mind.
Because God is, as the Prayer of Humble Access (1662, BCP) puts it, ‘the Lord whose nature is always to have mercy’, we can all enjoy the assurance of his mercy and forgiveness when we truly turn him in repentance and faith.
Let me ask, ‘Do people around us see this reality in our lives and our relationships? Do they see in us a ‘Simon the Pharisee’ or the signs of a truly repentant person? In his ‘model’ prayer, Jesus taught us to pray, “Father, … forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who sins against us…” (Luke 11:4a).
It is sometimes said that the most difficult thing for the Christian church today is to get people to believe. I think the opposite is true. Most people will believe almost anything, providing that what is said is communicated with a voice of authority.
GK Chesterton once observed, ‘When a man (or woman) stops believing in God they don’t then believe in nothing, they believe anything’.
Today we come to the 7th Coffee Conversation based on Luke’s Gospel. In Luke 24 three scenes portray Jesus’ physical resurrection from the dead.
In Luke 24:36-37 we read: …Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them (the disciples),“Peace be with you.”But they were startled and terrified, thinking it was a ghost.
And even when he showed them his hands and his feet – no doubt with the imprints of the nails on them – in their joy they were still disbelieving and still wondering (24:41). These hard-headed men were confused and perplexed, even doubting what it all meant. ‘Is this really Jesus or just a spirit, a ghost?’ they were asking.
Aware of their questions and doubts, Jesus, brilliant teacher and counselor that he is, addressed one issue at a time. “Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones…,” he said. He then asked for food (24:41). They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence (24:42-43).
One of today’s influential voices is that of Stephen Hawking. According to Dr. John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, Hawking says of miracles such as the resurrection: “We either believe them or we believe in the scientific understanding of the laws of nature, but not both” (John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking (Lion, Oxford: 2011, p.82).
Dr. Lennox observes that many scientists would say that, “miracles arose in primitive, pre-scientific cultures, where people were ignorant of the laws of nature and so readily accepted miracle stories”. However, he responds: “In order to recognize some event as a miracle, there must be some perceived regularity to which that event is an apparent exception!” (pp.84f)
We don’t need the benefit of modern science to define an extraordinary event.
Lennox also notes a second objection to miracles is that “now we know the laws of nature, miracles are impossible” (p.86). However, as he observes, “From a theistic perspective, the laws of nature predict what is bound to happen if God does not intervene… To argue that the laws of nature make it impossible for us to believe in the existence of God and the likelihood of his intervention in the universe is plainly false” (p.87).
It’s important we consider these matters. Followers of Jesus Christ accept the laws of nature that science observes. They are observable regularities that God the creator has built into the universe. That said, such ‘laws’ do not prevent God from intervening if he chooses. When he does, we are able to identify the irregularity and speak of it as ‘a miracle’. So, with respect to the resurrection of Jesus, the New Testament does not speak of it as a result of a natural mechanism. Rather, it happened because God intervened, using his supernatural power (Romans 6:4b).
To return to Luke 24. In each of the three scenes, the Scriptures and Jesus’ own words provide an explanation of what has happened. In the third scene, these elements are brought together: “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you”, Jesus said.Everything he had taught and done, had been foreshadowed in the Scriptures – even his death and resurrection.
Jesus’ resurrection has no significance without his death. It cannot point to forgiveness unless sin has been dealt with. The resurrection is a glorious message because it makes sense of Jesus’ death. At first the disciples felt his death was the end of all their hopes. But then they discovered it is the foundation of all their hopes.
Malcolm Muggeridge, one-time editor of Punch, speaker, and author once wrote: ‘Confronted with the reality (death is the one certainty in life), we may rage or despair, induce forgetfulness, solace ourselves with fantasies that science will in due course discover how we came to be here and to what end, and how we may project our existence, individually or collectively, into some Brave New World spanning the universe in which Man reigns supreme. God’s alternative proposition is the Resurrection – a man dying who rises from the dead… I close with, ‘Done’…: Christ is risen!’
Ask questions. Over these 7 weeks I have suggested points inLuke’s narrative to discuss with your friend(s). Luke has introduced us to someone who is like no other. You may want to return to the words of the angel to the shepherds: “…Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (2:10f).
It’s worth observing that if this is true we need to give Jesus the highest level of attention. Ask what your friend believes. If they agree with Luke’s account but find it difficult to take a step of faith in Jesus, suggest that they ask God for help – help to make the step of turning to Jesus, help to ask for forgiveness, help to know the deep joy of knowing the love of Jesus in their life.
‘Money can’t buy life’ were reportedly the last words of the musician Bob Marley.
How can we prepare for life in the hereafter – assuming such a thing exists?
In a 6th Coffee Conversation let me suggest you explore with your friend(s) the question that a young magistrate who lived twenty-eight life spans ago (a life-span being seventy years) put to Jesus: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 18:18).
This young man seemingly had everything – status and success. Matthew and Mark also add that the man was wealthy. If the car you own, the property you hold, or the view that others have of you, have anything to do with life now and in the hereafter, this man had it.
He also had religion. When Jesus quizzed him about keeping the commandments, “…Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,” the man responded he had done so from boyhood.
Furthermore, he showed respect to Jesus. He called him, ‘Good Teacher.’ It would have taken courage for a young ruler to ask someone like Jesus publicly about life matters. Jesus was a nobody: he had no social standing and no formal education. Yet despite the differences, this impressive, self-possessed young man asked Jesus a significant question.
Consider Jesus’ response. ‘You know the law,’ he says. ‘Do you keep God’s rules of neighbor love? Do you respect other people’s marriages, their property, their reputation and, do you truly respect your parents?’ ‘I do all that,’ the young man replied.
Significantly, without commenting on that, Jesus pushes further. This time, drawing on the essence of the first commandment, he says:“One thing you lack. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Luke 18:22).
When we look carefully at Jesus’ words here we see that the key verb is not ‘sell’ or ‘give’, it is ‘follow’. Jesus does not command everyone to sell their property or cash in their shares, but he does demand discipleship. In the young man’s case discipleship meant selling everything. Money dominated his life. He couldn’t follow Jesus as long as he was entangled in his wealth.
Jesus is brutally frank: ‘You really want to love your neighbor as yourself? Sell what you have and give to the poor. How can you say that you love your neighbors while they go in rags and you live in prosperity? Do you really love the Lord your God, with all your heart, mind and soul? Let’s see if you are willing to give up your idolatry of wealth that has gripped your greedy heart.’
Money not only couldn’t buy him life, but ironically it could prevent him from obtaining life.
As the man turned away, Jesus’s comment is graphic: “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:24f).
‘Who then can be saved?’ the disciples asked. And we must ask the same for, generally speaking, most people in our western world have riches that exceed those of the disciples. “What is impossible with men and women is possible with God”, Jesus replies (Luke 18:27).
We need to remember the young man’s question: ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ ‘Do,’ Jesus says. ‘You can’t do anything to inherit eternal life through your own efforts. You simply don’t come near God’s just requirements’.
But there’s another verb in the original question we usually overlook. It’s the verb, to inherit. We usually inherit something through the death of someone with whom we had a relationship.
When we understand this we can begin understand why Jesus says, ‘What is impossible for men and women, is possible with God.’ We can’t inherit eternal life because of what we have or what we have done. The good news is that life is a gift from God. But to become beneficiaries we need to form a relationship with Jesus while we have life now. It means turning to him in repentance and faith, committing to follow him as our only Lord all our days.
C.S. Lewis once observed: ‘All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it… or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.’
PS: You may want to suggest that your friend(s) read Luke 21-24 for a 7thCoffee Conversation.
