We often hear the words, ‘God is love’, but what do they really mean? I ask this because too often our understanding of God’s love is shaped more by our culture rather than the Bible. In 1 John 4:10 we read, In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
The New Testament was originally written in Greek. Our English word ‘love’ is used to translate four different Greek words – words for friendship (phileo), for parental and filial, family love (storge or philostorgos as in Romans 12:10), emotional love (eros), and a love that springs from decision within, from the will (agape). This is the word we find in 1 John 4:10.
What is interestingis that eros is a word that could have been used by the New Testament writers to speak about our relationship with God. Plato, for example, used eros to describe the irresistible attraction for the supernatural. Later, the mystery religions in Greece used eros to speak about the ecstatic religious experience they felt. Pagan religions have long had an interest in eros as part of the mystical experience of the supernatural. Indeed one form of yoga exploits sexual intercourse as a technique for achieving spiritual enlightenment.
John’sand, indeed, the New Testament’s choice of the word agape is significant. Agape is a practical and unemotional love. When John says ‘God is love’, he is not referring to an ecstatic experience, but to Jesus on the cross. He speaks of a love that is willing to make sacrifices for the good of others. Eros is a word that seeks self-gratification; it is a demanding, craving love. Agape is about self-forgetfulness. It is a generous, sacrificial love that is more interested in the welfare of the one who is loved. Eros wants to take. Agape wants to give.
John’s language about God sending his Son, indicates that God’s Son has always existed. Here we see that God’s love is seen not so much in the Son’s coming, but in the death his Son died. This was the action of a holy and just God whose love found a way to forgive, rescue and restore men and women who had shown no love for God. God, in his love, was willing to make extraordinary sacrifices for us. Tragically, we too easily miss the significance of this.
In our age of ‘tolerance’ we overlook the reality of our broken relationship with God. We treat God more as a glorified Santa Claus who is always there when trouble strikes. We ignore the fact that, in our natural state, none of us can look God in the eye and expect to see his love. Our lives simply don’t measure up for we are more interested in serving Self rather than God.
It is only when we stop and consider what Jesus’ death meant that we begin to understand. For in Jesus’ suffering we see the outpouring of God’s fierce and just anger, being met in equal measure by the power of God’s love. To use Paul’s words in Romans 3:25, instead of showing his horror of sin by judging us according to his law, God has displayed the same horror, the same pure justice, by putting Jesus to death in our place.
No, Jesus’ death was not child abuse, as some will opine. In John’s Gospel we read that Jesus laid down his life of his own accord (John 10:17-18). He volunteered. Jesus death is, ‘the one perfect sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world’ (BCP, 1662).
Before you go to bed tonight will you consider your response to God’s love: Honesty and humility – thatJesus Christ died the death you deserve? Gratitude – that God was willing to sacrifice his only Son so that you might be forgiven? Love – remembering that God in his love has now made you at peace with him? Loyalty – inspired afresh by God’s unswerving love, will you offer your life afresh to him in love, loyalty and service?
A letter turned up in The Australian newspaper last weekend, reiterating in just a few lines that ‘religion is the problem’ with the world. The myriad cynical voices around us today may tempt us to doubt the truth of God’s gospel. How important it is, not just to be able to remind others of the millions put to death at the hands of ruthless, unbelieving rulers last century (Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin come to mind), but to focus on what it is we do believe.
Central to our faith is that we are not here simply by chance but that we are all personally accountable to the creator God. Tragically, following our own desires and devices, we have turned away from God. Such is the consequence of our decision that we are incapable of doing any thing good enough to restore, or even contribute to restoring, this most precious of all relationships:
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).
The wonderful and unique news of Christianity is that God who is rich in mercy, has stepped in and done what we could not do. As Paul puts it in Romans 3:21,
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law,…
One of the biggest mistakes we make about Christianity is that it is easy for God to forgive. It isn’t. The reason is tied up with the words, the righteousness of God… God is not just awesome in his power, he is not just wise in the way he deals with his world, he is also just in all his ways. His character defines what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong.
God’s righteousness. If God overlooked evil, calling what we say or do to one another, misdemeanors, he would be saying that there’s no such thing as good and evil. But he can’t allow that. It is essential for the preservation of morality in his universe that God’s righteousness is evident, that justice is done. Deep down we know how true this is, for when we see injustice we cry out for justice. If this matters to us, how much more will it matter to God. If he didn’t care, if he didn’t stand against it, goodness itself would lose its meaning.
How then does God uphold the good? One way is to be a judge. The problem here is that God would have to condemn us all. But, there is another way that God can uphold the good and offer forgiveness and reconciliation, and that’s what Paul writes about in Romans 3.
In Romans 3:21 he says, But now… Following the tragic events of Genesis 3 when men and women first turned their backs on God, another side to God’s character emerged— mercy. God did not cut off Adam and Eve; he did not even kill off the Babel tower builders. Rather, with his promises to Abraham he set in motion a plan that makes reconciliation possible.
JUSTIFICATION
Now in Romans 3:21 Paul tells us that something has happened that provides new hope for a world hopelessly in the grip of its own wickedness. ‘There is a righteousness of God apart from the law,’ Paul is saying, and Romans 3:22 tells us that this has come, through the faith of Jesus Christ. Our translations imply that Paul is referring to our faith in Jesus Christ. But it fits the syntax and suits the context better to translate this, through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.
The righteousness of God has come, not by means of the law, but rather through the perfect obedience of Jesus to the mind and will of God. Jesus is the one person who has kept God’s law. His relationship with God remained pure, and because of this he introduced a new way whereby God could reconcile us to himself. God is both just and the justifier, Paul says in 3:26.
How can God justly do this? Romans 3:25-26 is the key:
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 – he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
We are justified by faith in Christ alone. Article XI of the 39 Articles says,
We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Savior 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.
One of the questions I am often asked at present is ‘Why doesn’t God stop the terrorists?’ While there are no simple answers to this question, we need to remember that it is not God who has carried out these acts or even encouraged them. Indeed, Jesus taught “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9).
JUSTICE
Furthermore, the evils of every age will be brought to account. Of this we can be sure. In 2 Peter 3:5 we read: By the same word the present heavens and earth have been reserved for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the godless. In the flow of his Letter, Peter says that just as Noah’s flood occurred – and there is good historical evidence for this – God will bring about a final day of accounting. If God has brought judgement on his creation once, why shouldn’t he be capable of doing it again? Everyone of us has been put on notice.
If we believe this, our question becomes ‘When?’. We cry out with Psalm 13:1: How long, O Lord? Again, Peter helps us by saying, The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance (3:9).
MERCY
We must not confuse God’s slowness with insensitivity, indifference, or slackness. He could, if he chose, burst in on the world right now. We mustn’t mistake his non-return for apathy. ‘No,’ says Peter, ‘He is just being patient, giving people time to repent’. Jesus himself indicated this when he implied that he would rather leave the ninety-nine on the hill in the wind and rain, to make sure that the one who is lost is safe. Our problem is that we feel the cold and the discomfort while we wait. In his goodness and mercy God is being patient.
Knowing God. To understand this about God is most important, for it impacts on our relationship with Him and our outlook on life.
It is one of the strengths of The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church that they identify and set out the substance of biblical teaching about the nature and work of God. For example, Article I speaks of God’s ‘infinite power, wisdom and goodness’. Unlike the gods of ancient Greece or Rome, or other religions, the Bible teaches us that God is infinitely wise and good in the way he exercises his power.
Understanding this is essential for the way we live. We see it for example, in the life of Joseph. His complete trust in God’s power and goodness prevented him from being resentful and bitter in the face of the appalling treatment he received from his brothers. Unlike most of us, Joseph was ready to forgive because he understood that the final word lay, not with his brothers, but with God. He therefore knew that God was working out a bigger and better purpose through his brothers’ actions: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive,…” (Genesis 50:20).
While most who read this are not living in fear of their lives, we all need to ask what our faith means to us. How dependent are we on our physical security for our spiritual well-being? We will only know true courage, perseverance, and even joy when we know deep in our hearts that an all-powerful, good, wise and merciful God is in control. He is patiently and persistently working out his ultimate good purposes for his people.
Amongst the Christmas gifts I received is a book by Michael Horton, Christless Christianity. In it Horton presents a hard-hitting analysis of churches in America, arguing that many present a faith that is ‘trivial, sentimental, affirming and irrelevant.’ A preponderance of churches, he says, are presenting a message of ‘moralism, personal comfort, self-help, self-improvement, and individualistic religion, trivializing God, making him a means to our selfish ends.’
SUPERFICIALITY ABOUNDS
Horton quotes the response of the late John Stott in 2006 when he was asked his view on the state of evangelicalism: “Growth without depth”.
How different this is from Jesus’ commission: ‘Go and make disciples…, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you’ (Matthew 28:19f). In Colossians 1:28, Paul says he was committed ‘to teaching and warning everyone so that they become mature in Christ’. Being well grounded in the faith not only draws us into a richer, more trusting relationship with God, but also impacts our attitudes and relationships – something others discern.
Writing in The New York Times back in April, 2011, David Brooks observed: Rigorous theology delves into mysteries in ways that are beyond most of us. For example, in her essay, “Creed or Chaos,” Dorothy Sayers argues that Christianity’s advantage is that it gives value to evil and suffering. Christianity asserts that “perfection is attained through the active and positive effort to wrench real good out of a real evil.” This is a complicated thought most of us could not come up with (let alone unpack) outside of a rigorous theological tradition…
So, where do we begin? As we start a New Year, I plan to identify some key teachings we find in the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church. No, this will not be a doctrine series but rather reasons and illustrations of why we need God’s truth and love.
What then has God done? He has revealed himself, for Christianity is a supernatural faith. Its truths cannot simply be found by our observations of the world around us, or by merely applying our mind or conscience. We need not only God’s actions but also his explanation of what he has done. This revelation, the Thirty-Nine Articles tell us, is to be found in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible (Article VI). Indeed, Article XX says that the Bible as a whole is ‘God’s Word written’. 2 Peter 1:19-21 sets out the grounds for this truth.
SUPERNATURAL FAITH
What then should we do? Read. We come to understand the revelation the Bible brings us by reading it, looking for the plain meaning of ‘text in context’, and by making deductions from the statements it makes. There is nothing surprising in the fact that God expects us to use the minds he has given us. In fact, it would be most surprising if God, having given us minds, would expect us to ignore them when it comes to reading and understanding his revelation.
And pray. Our problem, more often than we care to admit, is accepting the truth we find revealed in the Scriptures. So, we need to pray. We need to ask God that his Spirit, who caused the Scriptures to be written (2 Peter 1:21), will help us understand the meaning of the Bible with our minds, and to feel the impact of its truth upon our hearts.
God’s promise. The Bible is where we learn of God’s salvation. When we think about it, we see why this is most appropriate, for salvation comes to us as a promise. It is a promise that is verbally expressed in the context of the explanation of God’s acts in history. As Article VII puts it, Both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man.God offers men and women, by way of promise, the gift of salvation in and through Jesus Christ.
Jean Paul Sartre, the French existentialist, once said, That God does not exist, I cannot deny. That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.’ The great news is that God not only exists but has, in fact, stepped into our world and revealed himself.
All too frequently we have been reminded of the fragility of life – through the actions of political power play by Russia over Crimea and the shooting down of a passenger airliner in Ukraine; there have been the actions of religious fanaticism at the hands of ISIS in Iraq and Syria; and the abduction of teenage school girls in Nigeria (some two hundred and nineteen of whom are still missing) at the hands of Boko Haram; and the lone-wolf Islamicist action in Sydney this month.
Our world. In 1932, John Buchan (created Lord Tweedsmuir in the year he was appointed Governor-General of Canada) wrote a perceptive book entitled, A Prince of the Captivity. As the narrative develops Buchan identifies the political and economic complexities of Britain and Europe in the aftermath of the First World War. At one point he prophetically touches on the rise of German nationalism at the very time Hitler grabbed power. Using the language of the ‘Iron Hand’, his hero said: “The Iron Hand movement was on the face of it just an organization of ex-soldiers,… partly benevolent and partly nationalist. There were thousands of members who only joined to keep up the fellowship of the trenches. But there was an inner circle to it which was playing a bigger part in politics, and an innermost circle which meant real mischief… Peace in the world was the last thing they sought, for their only hope lay in a new and bigger ferment…” Buchan clearly understood the world in which we find ourselves – a world where we find enormous good, but where extraordinary evil wants to do its worst.
Discernment. It is into such a world that Jesus enjoins his followers, “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents andharmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16). Jesus wants us to be aware of the nature of our world. He wants us to be discerning about the motives of people around us, especially those who might seem to be with us and yet who, deep down, are utterly opposed to peace and goodwill.
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION
At the end of Matthew’s Gospel we have his statement, “All authority has been given to me…” and his commission: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them… and teaching them all I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:16, 18f). “Go and make disciples…” – not simply converts, but men and women whose lives are being enriched and honed by God’s Word in the cause of Jesus Christ. Governments, economics, education and the rule of law have their place, but the call that transcends all is the challenge to change minds and hearts – to address the soul. For, we are more than the sum of our parts. We are spiritual beings, created with the potential to know God and glorify and enjoy him forever.
This is the challenge the Anglican Connection has taken on – one, by God’s mercy, we will continue to develop in 2015.
Never alone. The great thing is that we are never alone. Jesus said, ‘I am with you the whole of every day, until the end of the age’ (Matthew 28:20). In his Christmas Speech in 1939, as Britain entered a year of fierce onslaught, His Majesty, King George VI concluded with this quotation:
“I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be better than light, and safer than a known way.”
Writing in the Weekend Australian Magazine eleven days ago, Nikki Gemmel noted that Christmas carols are slipping away from our culture. She commented that this is a loss, for ours is ‘the age of loneliness; of fear and flinch’. Significantly, she further noted, ‘There’s a spiritual hankering that will always persist. The hankering for guidance to raise children within a moral framework is deep within the human spirit, and the atheists haven’t provided anything substantive to step into the breech. Religion will not disappear. It still shapes our world.’ (Weekend AustralianMagazine, December 13/14, 2014)
Assuming Nikki Gemmel’s observation is correct, a question worth asking ourselves and others, especially at Christmas, is this: ‘Is there a stand-out religion?’ If so, what is it like?
TRUTH
Writing in his Letter to the Colossians, Paul the Apostle commented on the way that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ had changed the lives of his Colossian readers, as indeed it was changing lives and growing throughout the world. Significantly, he wrote of the gospel as the word of the truth. ‘You Colossians came to know the grace of God in all its truth’, he was saying. He could have left out any reference to the word truth, but he didn’t.
As we think about this, we can say it is true in a counter-intuitive sense – the statements it makes about God and men and women are beyond human invention and imagination. No one of us would have invented a God who was prepared to come as a baby, born into a humble home for our benefit. None of us would have dreamed of a God who, in the cause of rescuing a faithless world, would die an unjust and awful death. Nor would we conceive that such is God’s justice that the death of his one and only Son was the only way he could break the bonds of sin and death for us. A gospel like this can’t be contradicted. Christianity is a good example of GK Chesterton’s observation that ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’.
Furthermore, the gospel is true in an historical sense – the accounts of the birth, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus are not an invention. Luke is insistent he was accurately narrating events witnessed by eye-witnesses (Luke 1:2), events that fulfilled promises made by prophets over a period of five hundred years (for example, 2 Samuel 7:12-13; Isaiah 9:2-7).
Third, the gospel is true in an experiential sense – when we put our trust in Jesus Christ who is at the centre of the gospel message, we discover that our faith is not a hoax. It is a genuine experience.
WHY WAS JESUS BORN
The answer is found in the names and titles given in the announcement at Jesus’ birth: “To you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour, who is the Christ, the Lord.” We might like the titles, Christ and Lord, but we baulk at Savior. ‘We don’t need saving,’ we say. But the fact is we do. Here is the heart of Christianity. This is the religion we all need.
Carols. And when we know this Christ, the Lord, as our Savior, we will want to sing the great music of Christianity – including the carols. Indeed, we will want to hear again and sing out the majestic words of the ‘Halleluiah Chorus’ of Handel’s Messiah: ‘King of kings, and Lord of lords, and he shall reign for ever and ever… Halleluiah! Halleluiah!’
May you know the rich joy of the coming of Jesus Christ, our Savior this Christmas.
