The joys, the bustle, the fun, and yes, sometimes the bitter-sweetness of Thanksgiving are once more upon us. Yet when we pause to reflect, it is truly a wonderful season. I find that as a general rule thankful people tend to be happy people. If we understand that we are designed for relationship and therefore community, it means we will be dependent on others for their part in the good things we enjoy. It makes sense that we express our gratitude to those around us.
The same is true of our relationship with God. In our makeup we humans are a good example of something that is greater than the sum of its parts. The complexity of our existence points to something that in our natural state we don’t like to acknowledge: we are the handiwork of a personal God. David the psalm-writer understood this. Consider his words in Psalm 103. He begins as he concludes: Bless the Lord, O my soul.
Significantly, he is not talking to God. Rather, he is talking to himself – to his soul. It’s not the first sign of madness. He’s telling himself things he knows he needs to remember. He knows he could easily forget the good things God has done for him. So, as he reflects, he speaks of God’s goodness and mercy, lest in times of depression – to which he was prone – he forgot the source of his prosperity and success.
THANKSGIVING
It’s something we need to think about – especially at Thanksgiving. God is so good to us in so many different ways: he provides what he knows we need; he chastens us when we deserve it. Above all, his nature is always to have mercy: he alone has initiated and done everything that is needed to restore our relationship with him.
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury at the time of Henry VIII, put it this way: “That all men may the better understand this sacrifice of Christ, which He made for the great benefit of all men, it is necessary to know the distinction and diversity of sacrifices… One kind of sacrifice there is which is called a propitiatory or merciful, that is to say, such a sacrifice as pacifieth God’s wrath and indignation, and obtaineth mercy and forgiveness for all our sins, and is the ransom of our redemption from everlasting damnation. And although in the old testament there were certain sacrifices called by that name, yet in very deed there is but one sacrifice whereby our sins be pardoned and God’s mercy and favour obtained, which is the death of the Son of God our Lord Jesus Christ; nor ever was any other sacrifice propitiatory at any other time, nor ever shall be. This is the honour and glory of this our High Priest, wherein He admitteth neither partner nor successor. For by His own oblation He satisfied His Father for all men’s sins and reconciled mankind unto his grace and favour… another kind of sacrifice there is which doth not reconcile us to God, but is made of them that be reconciled by Christ, to testify our duties unto God, and to show ourselves thankful unto Him. And therefore they be called sacrifices of laud, praise, and thanksgiving. The first kind of sacrifice Christ offered to God for us; the second kind we ourselves offer to God by Christ” (Cranmer Works Vol. 1, quoted in PE Hughes, The Theology of the English Reformers, p.222).
SOLI DEO GLORIA
Because we live on the other side of the cross, we have much more reason than King David to bless the name of God. The cross of Jesus Christ reveals the depths of God’s love that is beyond measure. For on the cross we begin to see the grief that tore the heart of God because of our sin. Through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus our broken relationship is dealt with and we are raised to a new life forever.
Yet it is so easy to go to church, sing songs, say Amen to the prayers, but to have no real sense of thanksgiving in our hearts to God. Like David, we need to talk to ourselves. We need to let God’s truth shine on our innermost soul and awaken us to a living, vital, personal relationship with him, for God has done everything needed for our salvation – Soli Deo Gloria (to God alone be the glory).
None of this means we can now live as we like. Cranmer rightly points us to the new lifestyle God expects us to adopt. Not only are we to glorify God and glory in what he has done for us in Christ with thanksgiving in our hearts, but we are also to honor him in the way we live. In Ephesians 2:10 Paul the Apostle puts it this way: For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
Formerly we walked in trespasses and sins in which we were trapped. Now, in a spirit of thanksgiving, we are to walk in the good works that God has eternally created for us to do. When we wake in the morning we have every reason to ask: ‘Lord, what good works have you prepared for me to do today that I might glorify you?’
Reflecting on the American Presidential election last Tuesday my mind turned to Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal article (11/05/16) that I quoted last week. In particular, note again: But he (God) is an actor in history also. He chastises and rescues, he intervenes in ways seen and unseen…
Perhaps for the first time in Western history, we lightly dismiss the idea of God’s involvement in human affairs. But Peggy Noonan’s words are consistent with how the Bible speaks of God.
In his address to the Athenian intelligentsia Paul says: From one ancestor he (God) made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:26-28a).
A CREATED UNIVERSE
The universe did not come into existence by random chance, Paul is saying. It’s a rather frightening thought, for it reverses what we want to think about our existence. If God exists, we would rather he did our will, and turned up only when we wanted him.
Furthermore, it’s too easy to say that God is distant or uncaring. ‘Not so,’ says Paul. ‘God is near you – nearer than you think. Quoting from a 6th century BC Greek poet, he points out: ‘In God we live and move and have our being.’ When events in our lives turn out very differently from what we expect, we need to pause and ask, ‘What should I learn from this?’
A MORAL UNIVERSE
Paul concludes his Athenian address with: ‘In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now God commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all people by raising him from the dead’ (Acts 17:30-31).
Yes, many today have a problem with the idea of God as judge. However as Winston Churchill observed, there has to be a hell to bring the likes of Trotsky, Stalin and Hitler to justice. And we could add to the list. Paul is saying that in appointing a day of reckoning for us all, God is being just. Indeed, without God’s moral constancy we have no hope of a future of perfect peace.
Elsewhere Paul sums up our human condition: We were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.But that is not the end of the story for Paul continues, But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us… (Ephesians 2:3-4)
Furthermore, he goes on: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).
SOLA GRATIA
How easy it is to gloss over familiar words such as grace and faith. What Paul is saying here is complex, profound yet very simple. For in tying grace and faith tightly together, he is saying that God has done absolutely everything needed for our salvation. God’s grace, and the faith we come to have are divinely initiated and gifted. Our salvation, our reconciliation with God, is God’s work through and through.
This was something men like Luther, Calvin and Cranmer rediscovered in the 16th century. For centuries these truths had been overlaid by the doctrines of merit and good works, penances and payments (indulgences as they became known). It was taught that through these means people might be able to gain some acceptance with God.
But Paul’s, and the Scriptures’ clear teaching is that even the faith we have, is God’s gift alone. Every generation needs to grasp this vital wonder. In our human pride we like to think we can contribute to or offer something in the cause of our salvation. Ironically, this offers us no assurance of salvation.
With Reformers like Thomas Cranmer, we today need to be vigilant, ensuring that liturgies we promote are clear with respect to The Lord’s Supper, for example. Yet in many American churches, Cranmer’s second prayer book (1552 / 1662) is overlooked or simply ignored. Yet, it is this second prayer book – the one for which he died – that clearly and unambiguously sets out the central gospel truths of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, inChrist alone, revealed in the Scriptures alone.
In his Homily of Salvation (Works, Vol. II, p.130),Cranmer wrote: “Our justification doth come freely by the mere mercy of God, and so great and free mercy at that, whereas all the world was not able themselves to pay any part towards their ransom, it pleased our heavenly Father, of His infinite mercy, without any of our desert or deserving, to prepare for us the most precious jewels of Christ’s body and blood, whereby our ransom might be fully paid, the law fulfilled, and his justice fully satisfied”.
Let’s pray for the Spirit of God to awaken us afresh to heartfelt thankfulness to our God whose nature is always to have mercy.
Writing in The Wall Street Journallast week (Nov 5, 2016), Peggy Noonan concluded an article on the election with: A closing thought: God is in charge of history. He asks us to work, to try, to pour ourselves out to make things better. But he is an actor in history also. He chastises and rescues, he intervenes in ways seen and unseen. Or chooses not to. Twenty sixteen looks to me like a chastisement. He’s trying to get our attention. We have candidates we can’t be proud of. We must choose among the embarrassments. What might we be doing as a nation and a people that would have earned this moment?
While it is always disappointing – even shocking – to become acquainted with failings of leaders, we should not be surprised. To quote Malcolm Muggeridge, ‘Christ and the Media’: The depravity of man is at once the most unpopular of all dogmas, but the most empirically verifiable. It is easy to be obsessed with the failures of others while overlooking our own.
Yes, it is encouraging when leaders exhibit a godly integrity, but the reality is, as Paul the Apostle puts it: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).
THE GREAT NEWS
The great news is that the living God designed a way to release us from our human tragedy. In Romans 3:21-22 we read, But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it – the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
The words, But now… speak of a great contrast. What the Law and the Prophets foreshadowed, God has now done: he has provided the way for our relationship with him to be restored. God himself has done it through the faith (or better, the faithfulness) of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the one and only person who has perfectly kept God’s law, provided the means whereby we can be forgiven.
Romans 3:21-27 goes to the heart of what God has done once and for all for us through his Son, Jesus Christ. In verse 25 we read: God presented Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left sins committed beforehand unpunished.
Paul’s language is that of the law court – words like righteousness, justice and just. Because God is righteousness and true in every way, he must judge, and judge justly. He has to do something about the breakdown of the relationship between us and him. If he didn’t he would leave himself open to the charge of moral indifference. He couldn’t do that. So, instead of showing his horror of sin by judging us according to his law, he has displayed the same horror, the same pure justice, by punishing Jesus in our place. Here is the heart of Christianity.
How then do we receive God’s offer?
In Romans 3:25f Paul tells us that faith is the way we take hold of this gift. For some this is the hardest of all ideas to grasp. ‘It’s too easy. Faith alone simply can’t be sufficient.’ But thinking this dishonors God and fails to grasp the seriousness of our need. It also has the potential to turn faith itself into a good work.
‘Where is the boasting?’ Paul goes on to ask. ‘It is excluded’. Faith is not something we offer to God, something he rewards. Rather faith is receiving the gift God offers us through what Jesus has done. Our problem is pride. We don’t like being ‘charity cases’. But that’s just it. We need God’s love, his charity so that we can be forgiven and become his friends.
Article XI of the Thirty-Nine Articles puts it this way: We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings: Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.
Because of Jesus’ death, Charles Wesley could sing: No condemnation now I dread, Jesus and all in him is mine; Alive in him, my living head, and clothed in righteousness divine. Bold I approach the eternal throne, And claim the crown through Christ my own.
This is the greatest of all news – something we will want to share. But responding to God’s free gift is not all. Once we put our faith in his promises, it will be our joy to grow in his love and live in his ways.
Let’s not just pray for ourselves, our families and our friends, but also for our country, including our leaders.
Solus Christus (Christ alone) or Solo Christo (through Christ alone) is the phrase the 16th century Reformers used to speak of the unique and necessary work of Christ in reconciling us with God. Yet how often do we glibly pass over the reality and significance of our separation from God?
A central theme bubbling through the Scriptures is that our broken relationship with God lies at the heart of our human dilemma. Too often we align our thinking with our culture, putting our trust in other remedies – thinking better government, better education, better laws, more acts of charity, more equal distribution of wealth, as the solution to our human dilemma. While these things are useful they can never rescue us from our deeper problem: vain-glory.
I am not saying that we should give up on the political process of our democracies – voting for governments that enact laws protecting Christian values. But the Bible tells us we need a radical remedy – not just band-aids.
On March 23 this year I quoted a New York Times article (03/15/2016) where David Brooks wrote of the way a ‘shame culture’ is replacing a ‘guilt culture’. ‘In a guilt culture’, he wrote, ‘people sometimes feel they do bad things; in a shame culture social exclusion makes people feel they are bad’.
Paul the Apostle sees our deeper problem: ‘You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else’. (Ephesians 2:1-3).
‘Nonsense!’ may be our first thought. But Paul sees our inner being, our hearts, through God’s lens. He says that God views us as dead in our relationship with him because of our trespasses and sins. Trespassis a false step – crossing a boundary and stepping away from ‘the right’. Sin speaks of missing the mark – falling short of God’s standard.
‘We have followed the course of this world…’ We like to think we are ‘free’, yet ironically we tend not to have a mind of our own. We are slaves to pop-culture, political correctness, and social trends.
Paul identifies another slavery – theprince of the power of the air. It’s not fashionable these days to speak about the reality of evil, but this ignores the plain teaching of Jesus. All injustice, terror, and violence can ultimately be traced back to an evil power at work.
And there’s a further slavery –the passions of our flesh,…This refers to our flawed, inward looking vain-glory. Paul has in mind, not just sexual lust, but intellectual pride, false ambition, the rejection of truth and vengeful thoughts.
In our natural state we are subject to oppressive influences. Outside us is the world – the prevailing secular culture and its political correctness. Inside us is the flesh – our flawed, self-preoccupied, twisted nature. And, beyond both, but working through both, is the Ruler of the kingdom of darkness who holds us captive.
What then is the solution? ‘We are by nature children of wrath,… But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us…’ (Ephesians 2:3b-4).
We might struggle with the idea of the anger of God. However, careful reading shows us that God’s anger is not like ours. He is not subject to fits of bad temper. His anger is not spite, animosity or revenge. It is his response to evil.
But God who is rich in mercy… made us alive together with Christ. Consider the scene of Jesus’ cross. He was innocent of all charges laid against him; even Pilate agreed. But when Jesus died he didn’t curse. Rather he prayed, “Father, forgive them”.
When one of the criminals near him said, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom”, Jesus responded, ‘Today you will be with me in paradise’. Today. Not after years of purgatory or some future time. In Romans 3:21-26 Paul sets out the unique significance of Jesus’ death.
In his Homily, On Salvation, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer wrote, ‘there are three things “which must concur and go together in our justification: ‘Upon God’s part, His great mercy and grace; upon Christ’s part, justice, that is, the satisfaction of God’s justice, or price of our redemption, by the offering of His body and shedding of His blood, with fulfilling the law perfectly and thoroughly;… So that in our justification is not only God’s mercy and grace, but also His justice, which the Apostle calleth the justice of God; and it consisteth in paying our ransom, and fulfilling of the law’…”’ (Philip E. Hughes, Theology of the English Reformers, 1965: p.49)
When we turn to Jesus in repentance and faith God promises to pardon and absolve us from all our sins – no matter what we have done. In the richness of his mercy, God in Christ has done, once and for all, everything that is needed to satisfy his perfect righteousness, enabling us to enjoy life with him forever. Hallelujah!
Next Monday, October 31, is the four hundred and ninety-ninth anniversary of the day Martin Luther posted his ninety-five theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. The door served as a university notice board.
Papal indulgences, designed to raise money for the renovation of St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, offered a pay-plan for the ‘satisfaction’ element in the church’s teaching on salvation. Grounding his theses on the unique and supreme authority of the Scriptures for our knowledge of God and salvation, Luther questioned the pope’s authority and the abuses in the sale of indulgences.
Today and over the next four Wednesdays I plan to touch on key elements of what is known as the five ‘solas’ or ‘alones’ of the Reformation: ‘Scripture alone’, ‘faith alone’, ‘grace alone’, ‘Christ alone’, ‘to the glory of God alone’.
SOLA SCRIPTURA
‘Scripture alone’ or ‘Sola Scriptura’. Consider Paul’s words to Timothy: But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man and woman of God may be complete, equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:14-17).
With these words, Paul the Apostle urges Timothy to remember what he was taught as he grew up. Earlier in this Letter Paul has spoken of Timothy’s mother and grandmother. Clearly he respected these women, not least because they had taught the Scriptures to Timothy.
The word inspired translates the Greek word, ‘breathed out’. We speak of Shakespeare as inspired in his writing, or Bach in his music composition. But this is not how Paul is using the word here. He is telling us that God has breathed out, spoken his mind, enabling the writers of the Scriptures to write his words. God is the author, the writer or composer of this particular ‘music’.
THE HOLY SPIRIT
God didn’t impose his thoughts on the writers’ minds. Rather, through his Spirit he equipped them to pen his words. The Bible is not God’s ideas put into human words, nor is it human ideas enhanced by God’s assistance’. In 2 Peter 1:20f we read: You must understand this, … no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation. No prophecy was ever produced by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. The Scriptures are God’s ideas expressed in God’s words.
God respected and used the personality of every writer. The writers of the Bible were not human typewriters putting God’s words into readable form. God used their personalities to unfold progressively his story. This is why we have such diversity of writing – narrative and history, parable and poetry. We also find the more colloquial Greek of Mark and the more complex literary forms of Luke and Hebrews.
The Scriptures truly are a miracle. But we need always to remember Paul’s words: All scripture is inspired by God…
It may seem rather circular to use the Bible to defend the Bible. However, if indeed the Scriptures are God-breathed, there isn’t any higher authority to affirm this. Furthermore, we have Jesus’ own attitude towards the Scriptures. He regularly quoted them, speaking of them as the Word of God.
We also have Jesus’ promises to his disciples concerning the work of the Holy Spirit: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26).
GOD AT WORK
What the disciples said and what they wrote, comes with this authority. They were promised accurate recall and accurate interpretation. Their preaching, their teaching, their writing, is true because the Spirit of God was at work within them. He was inspiring them – breathing into them God’s Word of truth.
The Spirit makes sure that we have what we need. This is enormously encouraging, for it means that I am being brought into a true, an authentic relationship with the living God. My faith is not about some vague, mystical experience that may or may not be true.
All Scripture is inspired by God… And as the Word of God it gives us exclusive information about salvation – making us wise unto salvation.
This is one of the great truths that Martin Luther and the sixteenth century ‘reformation’ church leaders rediscovered.
