John Wesley (1703-1791)

—Desmond Ford*

John Wesley’s beech trees,
Lambeg Co. Down

During one of his visits to Ireland in the late eighteenth century, John Wesley stayed at Chrome Hill. He twisted together two beech saplings as a symbol of the friendship of the Methodist Church and the Church of Ireland, the trees still stand today.

(Picture© Copyright Alex Cameron and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.)

In the century preceding the Napoleonic wars religion in England seemed extinct. It was truly a post-Christian age. Christianity came near to its death-swoon, says W. H. Fitchett. It was the Cinderella of the centuries. ‘Soul extinct, stomach well alive’, summarized Carlyle.

Every sixth house in London was a gin shop, and gin seemed to have debauched most of London’s inhabitants, but not London alone. Open revolt against religion and the churches existed in both extremes of English society. The historian, Green, tell us that, ‘the poor were ignorant and brutal to a degree impossible now to realise; the rich linked a foulness of life now happily almost inconceivable.’ Judges swore on the bench, and naval chaplains during their sermons. The King and his court were profane to such an extent it was as though they had no other vocabulary. Not only parents, but children, were rendered without ability or hope, because of drunkenness.

Then came the revolution—not one like that of France with its Reign of Terror, but a revolution in religion and morals. Three men found the gospel and changed their world—John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield. Why are religious people in general, even religious leaders, so slow to accept God’s good news? Because every man, regardless of his church affiliation, or lack of it, is at heart a Pharisee. He believes he can establish his own righteousness, and then God will love him. A close study of the diary of John Wesley shows the spiritual pilgrimage of many.

Note his biographer’s comment:

‘He had sat at the feet of many instructors and had read many books. He had been a sacerdotalist, an ascetic, a mystic, a legalist, all in turn, nay, all together! And yet, through all these stages, he had persistently misread the true order of the spiritual world. He believed that a changed life was not the fruit of forgiveness, but its cause. Good works, he held, came before forgiveness and constituted the title to it; they did not come after it and represent its effects. He had, in every mood of his soul missed the great secret of Christianity, lying so near, and level to the intelligence of a child; the secret of a personal salvation, the free gift of God’s infinite love through Christ; salvation received through Christ and by faith; a salvation attested by the Spirit of God and verified in the consciousness.’ (W. H. Fitchett, Wesley and His Century, p. 128).

What had Fitchett read in Wesley’s diary, which revealed the secret of that spiritual giant’s original poverty, and ours? Note the following extracts:

‘[As a child] I was carefully taught that I could only be saved by universal obedience; by keeping all the commandments of God; in the meaning of which I was diligently instructed … but all that was said to me of inward obedience, or holiness, I neither understood nor remembered. So that I was indeed as ignorant of the true meaning of the law as I was of the gospel of Christ.’

‘[As a schoolboy] And what I now hoped to be saved by was: (1) Not being so bad as other people; (2) having still a kindness for religion; (3) reading the Bible, going to church, and saying my prayers.’

‘[In later years before conversion] And by my continued endeavour to keep his whole law, inward and outward, to the utmost of my power, I was persuaded that I should be accepted of him, and thought I was even then in a state of salvation.’

‘[After failure as a missionary] I was strongly convinced that the cause of my uneasiness was unbelief, and that the gaining of a true, living faith was the “one thing needful” for me. But still I fixed not this faith on its right object; I meant only faith in God, not faith in or through Christ. I knew not that I was wholly devoid of this faith, but only thought I had not enough of it.’

Wesley’s mother, Susannah, may have been the most capable woman in England, and the prettiest. She was the twenty-fifth child of Dr. Annesley, and after her marriage brought nineteen children of her own into the world. Her husband Samuel did not have his wife’s uncommon sense, though there can be no doubting the integrity of his faith and life. Susannah knew Greek, Latin and French, and was able to hold her own in any religious controversy. She possessed multifarious talents and virtues, but she did not know the gospel. As religious as she was, as conscientious as she was, as faithful as she was in even that which was least, she lacked the joy of Christian assurance— because the New Testament gospel was still a sealed book to her. Because a child rarely exceeds the religion of its mother, her famous son toiled in spiritual chains until he was thirty-five years of age.

When John was only six-years-old the rectory took fire, perhaps because of unhappy parishioners who thought little of damaging the property of their parson. A tiny face was seen through the window of the upper storey—behind that tiny figure was a wall about to collapse. One farmer stood by the wall of the burning house and invited another to mount his shoulders. So they rescued the endangered lad, and ever afterwards he thought of himself as ‘a brand plucked from the burning’.

At Oxford University, many years later, John became the leading figure of The Holy Club—a group of intelligent, educated and devout men of the university. They were punctilious in all known duties, prayer, fasting, church services and ministry to the poor. But one thing they lacked—the gospel.

After his ordination and early service beside his father, Wesley went to America. He wrote in his dairy that he was going there to convert the Indians and then he added, ‘But who will convert me?’ En route, a great storm threatened to send his ship to the bottom, but a group of Moravian pilgrims sang on, apparently unperturbed. He never forgot the incident and it encouraged him to fellowship with the Moravians back in England. Through that association (after his absolute failure as a missionary) he found himself one evening listening to a reader of Luther’s Epistle to the Romans. In his diary Wesley tells us what happened:

‘About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change that God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.’

This was the moment that would result in the transformation of England. According to historian, Lecky, the event of that hour was more important for England than all her famous victories by land and sea. At approximately the same time his brother Charles was converted, and on meeting, they sang a hymn with great joy and parted with prayer.

Often we use the expression, ‘It is too good to be true’, but in the case of the gospel: ‘It is so good it must be true’. Note this well, what argument cannot accomplish, the Spirit of God can. Millions of Christians can testify that their conversion came by a movement of the Spirit upon them, convincing them of the love of God and the glorious truth that salvation is free. Wesley, the learned reverend minister of the church, who knew not the gospel, received it in a flash from God himself. And so it has been and will continue to be with millions. We cannot hammer a rosebud open, and we cannot argue a person into believing in the love of God. But God can love us into loving him. And that is exactly what he does.

Later, the converted can think on the fact that the good news is such that no one could have invented it. It has to be from God. Who can read the words of Luke 15, ‘When he (the prodigal) was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him’ (verse 20), without sensing that only God could have told that story about such forgiving love. The Bible is self-authenticating to all who have an honest desire to know and do the will of God (John 7:17). As the days go by in the Christian life, the believer is more and more convinced that such a wonderful plan as that of redemption had its origin only in a divine heart.

Marvel at the manner in which the gospel reconciles mercy and justice, and thereby God and man. It would not have been enough for any of us to be merely forgiven. We want to know that our forgiveness is just, that mercy and justice have been reconciled by the intervening act of God on Calvary.

Think how marvellous is the fundamental truth of the Trinity—God over us, God for us and God in us. The Son executes the Father’s plans, but the Spirit applies his saving work to the hungry soul. Then we sense that ‘only one subject should prevail in Christian conversation, and that it should swallow up every other, for it is the sweetest melody from human lips— Christ our Righteousness.’ Surely this is the most amazing truth under heaven, that God should devise a plan whereby he might justify the ungodly.

Tell the world: ‘You don’t have to be good to be saved; you have to be saved to be good.’ ‘It’s not who you are, but whose you are.’ ‘Whosoever will may come,’ and Christ has promised: ‘Him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out.’ Who would invent such words as found in Matthew 12:31: ‘All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men.’?

Wesley went forth from the night meeting at Aldersgate Street to open more tollgates than any man in England. He would travel about 4,000 miles a year [about 6,500 klm] (250,000 miles over his lifetime [about 400,000 klm]—all by horseback until he reached his seventies). Ultimately, his sermons reached the figure of over 44,200. Whitefield’s reached 18,000, but his life was over thirty years shorter than Wesley’s.

What sort of man was Wesley? He was physically diminutive, but compact and sturdy. He was humble but dignified; supremely intelligent, but bowing with tender regard to every member of the human family. He was a God-intoxicated proclaimer of the good news, and neither threats nor illness, nor the peculiarities of nature could hinder him. He personified faith, hope and love. All sensed that here was a truly happy man, not swayed by any untoward circumstance, but rejoicing in the benign sovereignty of God, his friend. Yet Wesley could write to his brother Charles to say that he did not love God as he should.

He was the best-known figure in the land during the last half of the eighteenth century:

‘[He had] a calm intensity of energy, which has been rarely paralleled in any generation. In range, speed, intensity and effectiveness, Wesley must always remain one of the greatest workers known to mankind. He seemed to live many lives in one, and each life was of amazing fullness. He preached more sermons, travelled more miles, published more books, wrote more letters, built more churches, waged more controversies, and influenced more lives than any other man in English history. And through it all, as he himself, in a humorous paradox puts it, “he had no time to be in a hurry”’ (Wesley and His Century, p. 431).

He believed his body to be the temple of God, and throughout his long life he studied the laws of health and obeyed them. He almost spanned the eighteenth century. He gave minute health counsels to his associate preachers regarding sleep, exercise, diet and the like. As with many impressive figures before and after him, he saw advantages in vegetarianism.

‘Wesley was exactly that “most formidable and terrible of all combinations,” a practical mystic. His life thrilled with forces which streamed upon him from spiritual realms; and yet he kept his feet on the solid earth and had the keenest vision for the facts of earth … No man ever moved more quickly and none was ever less in a hurry than he. There was something of the inexorable and unhurrying swiftness of a planet about him; and something, too, of its shattering impact. And yet a strange air of repose—the quiet which is born of problems solved and of victory attained—lay upon him …

Wesley had ideals beyond the reach of other men’s vision, but absolutely clear to himself. He trod with an assured step; he spoke as one who knew. He was absolutely emptied of selfishness. So he became for those about him, in a sense, an embodied conscience. Here was one human spirit, at least, utterly given up to divine things; one human soul in which religion had fulfilled all its offices. And with all his radiant cheerfulness, there was something of the un conscious loftiness of Alpine peaks about him; a remoteness—as though caught from some purer air—from the pursuits and desires of ordinary men. His very face was a rebuke to all mean things …

A sort of perpetual radiance shone in him and streamed from him. … unclouded cheerfulness. Alexander Knox, who knew Wesley well said, … “My acquaintance with him has done more to teach me what a heaven upon earth is implied in the maturity of Christian piety, than I have elsewhere seen or heard or read.” His countenance and conversation expressed an habitual gaiety of heart. Wesley himself declared that, “he had not felt lowness of spirits one quarter-of-an-hour in his life. Ten thousand cares were no more weight to his mind than ten thousand hairs to his head.”…

Dr. Johnson, himself a glutton in talk, complained to Patty Wesley of her brother: “I hate to meet John Wesley,” he said. “The dog enchants you with his conversation and then breaks away to go and visit some old woman.” …

Once, when tempted to linger in a lovely landscape, Wesley cried, “I believe there is an eternity, I must arise and go hence”; and those words express the temper of his life. He lived in the spirit of Andrew Marvel’s strong lines: “Ever at my back I hear Time’s winged chariots hurrying near”’ (Wesley and His Century, pp. 431-434).

‘Few men have ever been more systematically generous than Wesley. He lived with the utmost economy himself, and gave away the whole surplus of his income. “When he had thirty pounds a year, he lived on twenty-eight, and gave away two. The next year, receiving sixty pounds, he still lived on twenty-eight, and gave away two-and-thirty. The third year he received ninety pounds, and gave, away sixty-two. The fourth year he received a hundred and twenty pounds. Still he lived on twenty-eight, and gave to the poor ninetytwo”’ (Ibid., pp. 436-437).

And what did he preach? We quote from a few of his recorded sermons, though the originals were much more lively.

‘What is justification? … It is not the being made actually just and righteous. That is sanctification; which is, indeed, in some degree, the immediate fruit of justification, but, nevertheless, is a distinct gift from God, and of a totally different nature. The one implies what God does for us through his Son; the other, what he works in us by his Spirit …’

‘Justification is the clearing us from the accusation brought against us by the law, …’

‘Who are they that are justified? … the ungodly …’

‘Faith is the necessary condition of justification; yea, and the only necessary condition thereof … the very moment God giveth faith (for it is the gift of God) to the “ungodly” that “worketh not,” that “faith is counted to him for righteousness,” the very moment he believeth’ (‘Justification by Faith’, Sermons, Vol. 1, p. 56 ff.).

‘But in what sense is this righteousness imputed to believers? In this: All believers are forgiven and accepted, not for the sake of anything in them, or of anything that ever was, that is, or ever can be done by them, but wholly and solely for the sake of what Christ hath done and suffered for them. … and this is not only the means of our obtaining the favour of God, but of our continuing therein. It is thus we come to God at first; it is by the same we come unto him ever after. … and this is the doctrine which I have constantly believed and taught, for nearly eight and twenty years. … the righteousness of Christ is imputed to every believer’ (‘The Lord our Righteousness’, Sermons, Vol. 1, p. 238 ff.).

While justification was Wesley’s main theme, he often preached on other topics pertinent to the Christian life. When Fitchett wrote his chapter, ‘The Secret of the Great Revival’, he included these comments upon the matters preached on by Wesley and his helpers:

‘What are evangelical doctrines? A chain of mountain peaks that pierce to the crown of the heavens, and on whose summits brood perpetual sunshine! They constitute a close-knitted succession of truths that break out of eternity and have its scale—truths that relate to sin, and proclaim its measureless guilt, its hurrying and inevitable doom; but which also reveal an immediate and personal deliverance from sin—a deliverance which comes as an act of divine grace, and on the simplest terms of penitential acceptance. But it is no light and easy deliverance, which costs the Deliverer nothing. It is the supreme miracle of the spiritual universe, made possible only by the mystery of Christ’s redemption. It is brought near by the mystery of the Holy Spirit’s grace. It sets the forgiven soul in a personal and rejoicing relationship with a reconciled and loving Father.

A divine redemption; a realised pardon; a restored relationship to God through faith; the entrance of supernatural forces into the life by the grace of the Divine spirit; the present and perfect attainment of God’s ideal in the character. And all this made intelligible and credible by the redeeming work and offices of Jesus Christ—and by the saving energies of the Holy Spirit in the human soul! This is the evangelical version of Christianity!’ (Ibid., p. 171).

* This article is an extract from Dr. Ford’s recent book, The Coming Worldwide Calvary: Christ verses Antichrist (2009), pp. 126-134, available from Good News Unlimited.

The Time Is At Hand!

—Dr Desmond Ford*

Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein; for the time is at hand. Revelation 1:3, KJV

READ REVELATION CHAPTERS 1-3

All of us have experienced sin as a burden upon us, a tyrant over us, and a traitor within us. Justification deals with the first, sanctification the second, and glorification the third.

In the Book of Revelation, it is promised that our old nature, which was legally crucified at the Cross and subdued in sanctification, is finally to be eradicated. Sinful propensities which afflict us here, causing us to cry out, ‘O wretched man that I am’, will soon be no more. Hereafter there shall be no cruel gap between intention and achievement, between the ideal and the real (Revelation 22:2-4; 20:6; 21:4 and 14:5). No wonder Revelation is full of songs and doxologies. In the very first chapter we are reminded of the One who has loved us and loosed us from the captivity of sin by his sacrifice. Surely this joyous verse is a guide to what we should expect in all that follows.

Attempting to interpret this book is like trying to empty the sea with a teaspoon. To change the figure, Revelation is full of glorious manna, full and pressed down and overflowing in abundant measure. While Genesis is the seed plot. Revelation is the flowerbed. As Genesis spoke of creation, the marriage of the first Adam, the beginning of life, service, marriage, the Sabbath, sin, sorrow, death, Satan, Israel, and the covenant, so here in the Apocalypse we witness the new creation, the marriage of the second Adam, the glorification of life and service, the true fellowship of souls and union with God—symbolized by marriage and the eternal Sabbath rest. As the third chapter of Scripture introduced evil, so the third last chapter bids it farewell. Revelation 20 forecasts the destruction of Satan, sin, sorrow, and death. God’s Israel will enter upon all that the everlasting covenant promised of glory and joy. It is as though we have been travelling on a golden ring and returned to where we started. But it is the return of the octave at a higher, sweeter pitch.

The first section of Revelation has the same relationship to the rest of the book as Genesis does to the whole Bible. Everything to come is present in seed form in these first chapters. If we do our work well here, the way will be paved to understand all the rest. Sadly, the first chain, the letters to the seven churches, reveals a dimming of the gospel flame— an indication of the chief obstacle (sin) hindering the proclamation of the gospel.

What then are the themes of chapters 1-3? Christ, his nature and glory, his work, his salvation, his covenant, his kingdom, his coming, his people— these are the themes of this introductory section. Therefore, let us not look here, nor in the chapters which follow, for that which God has not promised. We shall find nothing here about calendrical dates, or secular powers (see Acts 1:7). There is no allusion to modern inventions or to anything belonging to our materialistic culture.

The opening chapter alludes to the Olivet Discourse, which was given to the miniature Church— the disciples (for example, compare 1:7 with Matthew 24:30). That discourse was a commentary on Daniel 9:24-27, the great Old Testament prediction about Messiah the Prince, his coming, his being ‘cut off’; his city, his people, his covenant and his great antagonist, Antichrist. Daniel 9:24-27 itself is an explanation of the climactic verse of Daniel 8:1-14. Following that symbolism, all that is given to the seer of Babylon, is interpretation (chapters 10 to 12).

This grand prophecy (Daniel 8 and 9) had foretold the undoing of sin, transgression, iniquity, and the bringing in of everlasting righteousness, fulfilling all prophetic vision, in order that God might return to tabernacle once more with his people. This prophecy had promised all that the ancient Day of Atonement prefigured—judgement and abolition of sin and sinners, reconciliation between God and man with all sorrow past. The Sanctuary, as a symbol of the kingdom of God, mirrored in its history the state of the covenant people. Christ, intimating his messianic task, cleansed the Sanctuary at the beginning and end of his ministry. He himself was the new Temple, and because his people are one with him, they too throughout the New Testament are called the Temple of God. With all this in mind, Revelation 1:12-20 and chapters 21 and 22 should be studied as the symbolic expression of the consummation of the Sanctuary’s covenant promises. The whole earth cleansed and renewed becomes the everlasting Temple of God and the Lamb. Even the New Jerusalem is pictured as having the proportions of the Holy of Holies.

In Revelation, the same Christ who came to Daniel in captivity, comes to John in exile in the new Babylonian empire—that of Rome. This first chapter describes him even as he appeared when he visited the writer of the Old Testament apocalypse. See Daniel 10. Now he comes as the Prophet, Priest, and King of that Sanctuary spoken of in Daniel 8 and 9. He is the true Guardian of the temple courts, the Judge as well as the Saviour of all who walk therein. He trims the church lamps, and punishes with the sword of his mouth. He is preparing his people for glory, and those who will not be cleansed must be removed from their place. Judgement begins at the house of God, and this book of judgement upon the world begins with judgement upon the Church. Chapters 2 and 3 find our Priest and kingly Judge examining the professions and walk of his people and proclaiming his verdict. All the promises made to the members of the seven churches are elaborations of the promises of Daniel 8:14 and 9:24. They have to do with the end of sin and the bringing in of everlasting righteousness.

Revelation chapters one to three remind us that trials and trouble are our lot here below. As the Church lets her light shine, opposition automatically results. Christ’s witnesses are called to be faithful unto death; they, like the Messiah, are to be ‘cut off’. Wherever the church is true to its commission, martyrdom ensues and the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the blossoming community until the whole earth is filled with God’s glory. John, in this book (like Daniel in his) is the pattern for all believers. He has been faithful to the Word of God—the testimony of Jesus. At the grand old age of nearly a century, we find the beloved apostle on the barren, rocky isle that was one of the prisons of ancient Rome. But he is not alone; the Christ whom he loves and serves arrives in glory to visit, strengthen, inform and commission him.

Let us not ignore the challenge found in this record. Wherever the Church sits at ease it has ceased to witness. Wherever the Church fulfils her commission, blood will flow. This entire book repeats that lesson repeatedly. A sinful world needs whistleblowers. Let us not ignore that, as though true Christians could be comfortable in this world.

The visit of Christ takes place on the Sabbath—the Lord’s Day. That day symbolizes the rest of Eden, the rest in Christ through dependence on his finished work. It is particularly appropriate that in this context the Sabbath should be mentioned. Over and over, we find reference to the Exodus in these verses, and the Sabbath was the sign of the Sinaitic as well as the Edenic covenant. The Old Testament, like the New, recognizes only one divine everlasting covenant, and the Prince who confirmed it on Calvary, is the giver of the Patmos revelation.

These early verses teach that the New Testament Church is the new Israel, and therefore, any endeavour to read the experience of modern Jewry in this book is misplaced. Modern Jewry is still beloved for their father’s sake, but they are Gentiles, strangers from the covenant of promise and need to be grafted in again to the tree of spiritual Israel, as all other Gentiles must. As a nation, the Jews have no special destiny. This was revoked when they cried, ‘We have no king but Caesar’. Their Messiah previously had warned them, ‘The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a people bringing forth the fruit thereof’—the Christian Church.

The covenant allusions found in chapter one are repeated and multiplied throughout the rest of the book. We shall read of the Ark of the Covenant and its testimony—the Decalogue. The rainbow of the covenant will shine, offering encouragement to those who must live through storm and tempest. The covenant curses of war, famine, pestilence, wild-beasts and death, are the key to the seals. The trumpets, the plagues, and the blessings of life—fruitfulness, joy and rest—will be traced in their fulfilment before we lay the book down. See Deuteronomy 28, 29 and Leviticus 26.

From the opening verses of this book, and repeatedly afterwards, we find legal words such as ‘testimony’. All Christians echo the testimony of their Lord, the truths he testified before men and devils in Galilee, Jerusalem’s streets, the courts of Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod. Christ witnessed a good confession, and it is the Church’s continual task to re-echo that. The proclamation of the gospel, the fulfilling of the Great Commission, is nothing other than telling the story of the Cross (1 Corinthians 2:2 and Galatians 6:14). This task fulfilled brings the Second Advent. Through the proclamation and pilgrimage of the Church, God makes manifest to principalities and powers his manifold wisdom and power (Ephesians 3:9,10). We are now a theatre to the universe, to angels and to men. See 1 Corinthians 4:9 (original).

The Church’s message now is, ‘The hour of his judgement is come.’ The gospel itself, rightly proclaimed, is judgement (compare Revelation 18:10). In the opening chapter of this book we find the word of God symbolized by a two-edged sword proceeding from the mouth of Christ. He promised that his word would judge all men at the last great day (John 12:48). Similarly, his Cross is the judgement of the world (John 12:31). On Calvary he separated the penitent from the impenitent. The word of the Cross does likewise. Men are judged by their response to the sacrificial love of God, and the last great day will declare it. Today is the day of salvation; today is the appointed time for acceptance. Today, if we hear his voice let us not harden our heart, for the hearing of the gospel itself brings judgement. Not so much the sin question, but the Son question, is the issue. What have we done with him?

Those at peace with God do not fear the coming of that Judge who has already absolved them with his gift of the ultimate verdict. Thus there is no need for panic theology such as is found in the work of Hal Lindsey. Believers see the Second Coming only through the lens of the First. When Christ is known as Saviour, his relation as Judge brings no fear. Twenty-eight times in this book our Lord is set forth as the Lamb of God who has taken away the sin of the world.

It is a very profitable study to consider the seven major sections of Scripture that exalt the Lamb of God. In Genesis 3:21 the Lamb is typified; in 22:13,14 the Lamb prophesied; in Exodus 12:13 the Lamb’s blood is applied; in Isaiah 53 the Lamb is personified; in John 1:29 the Lamb is identified; in Revelation 5:6-12 the Lamb is magnified; in Revelation 21 and 22 the Lamb is glorified. And inasmuch as the blood of the Lamb is so prominent in Revelation (1:5; 7:14; 12:11), we should also consider the first seven passages in the Bible where blood is specially emphasized. In Genesis 4:10 the blood cries; in 9:5,6 the blood is sacred; in 37:32,33 the blood is presented to the Father; in 42:22 there is a reckoning for the blood; in 49:11 we have the washing of garments by the blood; in Exodus 4:9 blood is the sign of the wrath of God; and in Exodus 12:13 blood is the only covering in the Judgement.

Before each prophetic chain the eye is made to rest upon Christ, our great High Priest. Only looking unto Jesus steadies us for considering what is to come upon the world. See Hebrews 12:2 and 3:1, Matthew 17:8 and Luke 4:20.

Revelation 1:7 is a key verse in the opening chapter of the book of the Second Coming, for it is this event which brings the end to sin, sorrow, pain and death. The theme of 1:7 will meet us repeatedly throughout the book. To the churches Christ says: ‘If you will not watch, I will come on you as a thief’; ‘Behold, I come quickly.’ The seals climax in the great day of his coming and the question is asked, ‘Who shall be able to stand?’ The trumpets picture the preliminary judgements upon the world, and close with the kingdoms of the world becoming the kingdom of Christ at his coming. In the final chapter of our book, our Lord assures us that he is ‘coming soon’. Contrast the admonition given to John not to seal the book, with that given to Daniel, which was the opposite (see Daniel 8:26 and Revelation 22:10). John is not to seal his book because the Coming is at hand.

If there is no final victory of good over evil, the Kingdom of God becomes an empty dream (T.W. Manson). In the Christianity of preceding centuries, thanatology (the study of death) replaced eschatology. This error the New Testament never makes. It is not death that is ‘the blessed hope’ of the believer. Over three hundred times the New Testament speaks of the Second Coming, and that refrain now reaches a hallelujah chorus in Revelation. The New Testament generation believed they were in the Last Days and that Christ was about to appear. Had Judaism repented and the infant Church done its work, it would have been even so.

Following the prologue of the book, which repeatedly refers to Christ and his two advents, we have the initial vision. This vision is the key to the whole book. As Ariadne supplied Theseus with a thread at the very entrance of the cavern he had to penetrate, so here John places a torch in the hand of the reader at the beginning of his search. The centre and circumference of this vision has to do with light.

We see Christ clothed with the sun, every part of him beaming with celestial glory, he walks among the light holders (lampstands) and holds luminaries (stars) in his hand. The vision, therefore, speaks of the coming of light to displace the darkness—and this is the theme of the entire book. Christ is the Light of the World. He shines through his Church as it proclaims the gospel, which alone can illumine the darkened soul. All that follows in this book will speak of the experience of the light-bearers, their progress, their opposition and their ultimate triumph. The victory of the Light will be imaged by symbols of conquest, such as the white glistening horse. The sacrificial sword will portray the war of darkness against it. Light and darkness will alternate throughout the visions until we come to the city of light where there is no night, and where the Lamb is the eternal Sun.

All the warnings and promises of this book are conditional. The very timing of the Second Advent, viewed from one standpoint, is conditional. ‘Whosoever will may come.’ ‘Whoever is athirst may partake of the water of life freely.’ Christ stands at the door and knocks, but there is something for us to do. As Philippians 2:12,13 tells us, our salvation has been accomplished, but we must work it out. God does everything by way of holiness within our hearts, but we must work. Our destiny is assured if we continue to trust, but we are to fear and tremble lest we be seduced from him by our own carnality. There is no ‘once saved, always saved’ in this book, nor anywhere else in Scripture.

Only acceptance and cherishing of the gospel will bring all things needed, including Christ’s coming. Faith, penitence, righteousness, strength, missionary motivation and skill—all these are his gifts to those who see themselves as wretched, poor, blind and naked, and therefore cry, ‘Even so, come Lord Jesus, come to this troubled heart today’. And he does.

* This article is the first chapter of Dr. Ford’s new book, The Time is at Hand: An Introduction to the Book of Revelation; available from Good News Unlimited.

The Gospel Of John — Part 18

—Ritchie Way

Battles in the Garden

When Jesus had finished his high priestly prayer in the room where he instituted the Lord’s Supper (John 17) he led his disciples out of the city, across the Kedron to a garden called Gethsemane (‘oil press’) on the Mount of Olives.Ancient Olive trees still grow in this area.

Jesus had often taken his disciples to this ‘chapel in the wild woods’ (Luke 22:39), but this particular evening would be his last and most important tryst with the Father in his whole ministry. There he pled with the Father to help him make the right decision. If Jesus saved himself humankind would be doomed forever; if he saved the world, it appeared to him that he would be doomed forever. No greater decision had ever been made before in the history of the universe, and no greater decision would ever be made afterward. The destiny of the human race hinged on the choice that he would make.

So great was Christ’s battle with himself that he was ‘overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death’ (Matt. 26:38). Finally he—the Creator of four hundred billion galaxies and all life—chose to cross the event-horizon between life and death and plunge into the black hole of oblivion on a blood-encrusted cross to save unworthy people like you and me? That choice would have spiralled him into the void of nonexistence then and there had not an angel come and strengthened him to see the battle through to the bitter end. ‘Being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground’ (Luke 22:42-44).

There is a cup of God’s wrath against sin, filled with the undiluted wine of God’s fury (Rev. 14:10). Either Jesus drains that cup, or we do. God hates sin so much because of the damage it does to people and to the world that he created, that he has set a time to destroy both it and all who cling to it. In Gethsemane, Jesus chose to take our sin and be destroyed in our place so that we could go free, ‘for God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ [who] died for us’ (1 Thes. 5:9-10).

ENTER JUDAS

Judas, knowing that Jesus would go to the garden as usual, led some religious officials and a cohort of soldiers there to arrest him. They came carrying torches, lanterns and weapons (John 18:3).

On previous occasions when his enemies sought to take his life, Jesus had moved away to safety. Once he moved to the other side of the Jordan (John 10:39-40), and on another occasion he moved to a village on the edge of the Judean desert (John 11:53-54). This time, however, he elected to stay, because the time had come for him to give up his life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. When he heard the company approaching he did not wait for them to flush him out but boldly stepped into the path of his enemies to confront them.

     Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?”
     “Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied, squinting in the uncertain light of their flickering torches.
     “I am (he).” Jesus said.
     When Jesus said, “I am (he),” they drew back and fell to the ground’ (John 18:4-6).

Jesus identified himself to his enemies as ‘I AM’ (ego eimi), which is the name of Jehovah (Exod. 3:13-14). He wanted these people to know exactly who it was they were coming to arrest so they would be without excuse. And he gave them sufficient evidence for the truth of his words when the authority of his name drove his enemies back and to the ground.¹

But as soon as the sensation passed they got back to their feet and Judas came forward. He had arranged a signal with the arresting party: ‘The one I kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard,’ he told them. Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, ‘Rabbi!’ and kissed him (Mark 14:44-45). ‘Jesus asked him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”’ (Luke 22:48).

Peter, incensed at the impending arrest of Jesus drew his sword and raced forward slashing at the first person he came across, which happened to be the high priest’s servant. Malchus ducked to the left but wasn’t quick enough and lost his right ear to the flashing blade.

Jesus reached out quickly and touched Malchus’ ear, healing him (Luke 22:51). When Malchus returned home with congealed blood on his neck and clothing the high priest would have wanted to know what had happened to him. Through this witness Jesus gave the high priest additional evidence that he was the Son of God. If Caiaphas decided to go ahead and demand the crucifixion of Christ in spite of the evidence, he would not be able to claim that he did it in ignorance.

After healing Malchus’ ear Jesus turned to Peter: ‘Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?’ (John 18:11). ‘All who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?’ (Matt. 26:52-54). The antitypical Passover Lamb must die so those who sought the protection of his blood could escape from bondage and become citizens of God’s kingdom.

David established his kingdom with swords, etc. The kingdom of ‘the son of David’ (Matt. 1:1), however, ‘is not of this world. If it were [Jesus’] servants would fight …’ (John 18:36). As the apostle Paul said, ‘The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world’ (2 Cor. 10:4). The Christian’s weapons are truth, righteousness, readiness, faith, salvation and the word of God (Eph. 6:10-18). In fact, as Jesus said in Matthew 26:54, using the weapons of this world to defend the kingdom of heaven may be contrary to God’s will.

Christ’s kingdom is not extended by the force of arms and not one citizen is incorporated into it against his or her will. Everyone who joins Christ’s kingdom, does so because it is their own personal choice to have Jesus rule over them. Love, not coercion, is what motivates them to ally themselves with the Saviour.

Endnote:
1. On an earlier occasion, when he claimed this name as his own, his enemies wanted to stone him for blasphemy (John 8:58-59).

Consider the Big Picture

—Ritchie Way

Many people condemn God on the basis of something bad that has either happened, or is happening to them. ‘I am a Christian’, they say, ‘so why did God allow me to have this accident? … get this awful disease? … lose our savings in a bad investment? … have a child with Down’s Syndrome? … fail my exam? … etc.

No doubt you could add to the list. If you are someone who feels that God has overlooked your need, or who has let you down badly, please consider the experiences of the three people in the following stories. I want to encourage you to look beyond the present difficulty and consider the big picture that God has for your life. God’s word says, ‘We know that in all things [not some things but all things] God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose’ (Rom. 8:28).

JOSEPH

Joseph’s brothers despised him because of the special treatment their father gave him. And when Joseph was unwise enough to recite his triumphalistic dreams in their presence, they decided the time had come to cut this tall poppy down to size.

The day came when Joseph fell into their hands out of their father’s sight. They sold the seventeenyear-old to a caravan of traders on their way to Egypt. As Joseph was forcefully dragged down to the Nile delta it seemed as though his God had abandoned him.

In Egypt he was taken to a slave-market where he was sold to the captain of Pharaoh’s guard. How humiliating for this lad who had enjoyed a free Bedouin-like lifestyle to be sold as a slave? How could God permit such a thing?

Joseph’s years of slavery concluded when his master’s wife betrayed him in order to revenge herself for Joseph’s refusal to betray his master’s trust in him. For his faithfulness Joseph was given a stiff prison sentence. It seemed to Joseph that his life was plunging into the abyss of increasing darkness. His life, as free as the wind under an indulgent father, was followed by thirteen years under strict authoritarian control.

You might say, ‘But Joseph always knew that his ill-fortune would reverse one day because of the two dreams he had back in Canaan. In those dreams God promised Joseph that he would eventually reign over those who oppressed him.’

Many of us have also had grandiose dreams, but few would lay much store by them. They would have significance only if they came true, which would have seemed a very remote possibility for Joseph the slave, or Joseph the prisoner.

The key thing to remember is that while Joseph may not have had much faith in his dreams, he would have made a huge mistake had he doubted God’s ultimate purpose for his life at any point in his trials, and, as a result, given up in discouragement. He never let go of God, and God honoured him for that.

As we shall see, at no point in our lives—not even when we are drawing our last breath—can we afford to accuse God of failing us. If we do, it’s because we do not see the big picture that God has for our lives. And we can’t see the big picture in this life—only God can—so we have to trust him fully, even when it seems that absolutely everything in our life is turning to custard.

When it comes to your life, failure is not a word in God’s dictionary. God delights in turning every failure into success, every dark valley into a mountaintop and every heavy cross into a glorious throne. He did so for Joseph, and he wants to do so for you, if you will but hold on to him by faith.

MORDECAI

Mordecai was a good man, a bit of a fundamentalist, but a good man. However his unbending religious conservativism affronted the proud Haman. This prime minister of king Xerxes decided to get revenge on Mordecai by exterminating every member of his race in the land—every man, woman and child.

When Mordecai heard of Haman’s death decree against his race, which was to be executed on the thirteenth day of the month Adar, he immediately sought help from Queen Esther. In turn, she took her life into her hands by approaching the king without an official invitation (Est. 4:16). She invited the king and Haman to a banquet that she would prepare. The king was eager to know what she really wanted, but at the banquet she declined to tell him. Instead she invited him and Haman to come to a second banquet.

When Haman travelled home after work that evening he was elated. Nobody gets to be invited to attend a banquet with just the king and queen; but he had been. The sight of Mordecai at the city gates, however, made him seethe with rage. As Haman passed through the gates in his official chariot everyone bowed except Mordecai. That Jew would bow down to no one but the Lord. Well, Haman would see about that.

That evening, with the encouragement of his family, Haman decided to ask the King for permission to have Mordecai executed. In anticipation of the King’s agreement he went ahead and erected the gallows. He would string Mordecai up so high the whole city would be able to see the crows feasting on his corpse.

That night the king, somewhat agitated by what Esther might ask of him, tossed and turned on his bed. Unable to sleep he called for the court secretary to come and read him some boring Persian history. Maybe that would help him drift off into slumber. By Divine Providence the secretary turned to a page that recorded how Mordecai had once saved the king from being assassinated. Xerxes asked what reward Mordecai had been given for his noble deed. ‘Nothing has been done for him,’ his attendants answered.

The king said, ‘Who is in the court?’ Now Haman had just entered the court of the palace to speak to the king about hanging Mordecai on the gallows he had erected for him. His attendants answered, ‘Haman is standing in the court.’

‘Bring him in,’ the king ordered.

When Haman entered, the king asked him, ‘What should be done for the man the king delights to honour?’ Now Haman thought to himself, ‘Who is there that the king would rather honour than me?’ So he answered the king and said the best thing the king could do would be to let this highly favoured person be king for a day. Let him be dressed in the King’s clothing, let him ride on the king’s horse, let him wear the royal crest on his head and let a herald lead him through the streets proclaiming to the citizens of the city, ‘This is what is done for the man the king delights to honour.’

‘Great suggestion!’ exclaimed the king. ‘I made a good choice when I chose you to be my right hand man. Now go and do all these things for Mordecai the Jew, and you be the one to lead him through the streets and to announce that I delight to honour him in this way.’

Haman, momentarily stunned by the king’s request, recovered and did as the king had ordered. Afterward he rode home with bowed head, totally humiliated by the experience of being required to exalt the man he wanted executed.

Hardly had he shared his grief with his family when the king’s eunuchs arrived to take him to the second banquet. There Queen Esther exposed him as the one who had plotted to murder her and all her people. The king, confused by these astonishing revelations, went for a walk in the royal garden to gather his thoughts. When he returned he found Haman clinging to his wife begging for mercy. Now no one touches the queen— no one but the king. Before the night had advanced much further Haman was taken away and executed on the gallows that he had erected for Mordecai.

The royal signet ring that the king removed from Haman’s finger was given to Mordecai, and all of Haman’s considerable possessions were signed over to Queen Esther.

We smile when we read this story, because we know how it ends. Justice is done to the persecuted people of God; their enemies are destroyed and their possessions given to the saints of the most high, just as Daniel 7:26-27 says would happen.

That outcome, however, was not at all obvious to Mordecai when he heard the death decree pronounced against his people. And neither was it obvious to Esther when she took her life in her hands to approach the king unbidden. These were anxious hours for the two of them. And the proclamation of the forthcoming pogrom had every Jew in the kingdom of Persia on his or her knees. It was a fearful and anxious time for God’s people. They had no assurance that God would intervene on their behalf.

And that is the way things often appear to us. Our troubles are overwhelming, they overwhelm us because we can’t see the big picture; we can’t see God working in the shadows behind the scenes for our ultimate good. But his timing is impeccable and the outcome is beyond improvement. In the meantime however, we feel forsaken and all alone. Where is God when we need him? We pray and fast but nothing appears to be happening. The outcome, however, will always glorify God and honour his people. One day we will see the big picture and repent at our impatience and unbelief. So hang fast and never give up!

LAZARUS

Both Martha and Mary knew that Jesus loved Lazarus. Whenever Jesus visited Bethany he and Lazarus always greeted each other enthusiastically and each was genuinely interested in what was happening in the life of the other. So when Lazarus took ill with a life-threatening condition it was natural to expect that Jesus would hurry back from Trans-Jordan to heal him as soon as he received the message from the sisters bidding him to come quickly.

After two days the sisters said to Lazarus, who was now tossing on his bed in a raging fever, ‘Hold on, Lazarus. Jesus will be here soon. He won’t be far away now.’ But that day passed without the Saviour appearing. And the next. By then everyone was asking, ‘Where could he be? Why hasn’t he come?’ What had caused the delay?

The sisters had been hoping that Jesus’ healing of Lazarus would convince their unbelieving friends that he was the promised Messiah. It was with some disappointment and embarrassment therefore, when Jesus still had not turned up when Lazarus took his last breath. Jesus was even too late for the burial. ‘Some friend, this Jesus!’ thought the Jewish relations of Martha and Mary, though they were careful not to say so in the hearing of the two grieving sisters.

Lazarus’s last hope was Jesus, but he died without having that hope realised. Martha’s and Mary’s last hope was Jesus, but it appeared that they had hoped in vain. They had told their unbelieving friends that Jesus would heal Lazarus, but it appeared to them that Jesus didn’t even respond to their request to come. Is that all he thought of them? Were other things more important to him than the life of his friend? They were embarrassed and hurt. They couldn’t under stand why things had turned out so badly for them and felt let down in a very big way.

The lesson we can learn from this story in John 11 is that God himself decides where the finish line will be, not us. What appears to be the end for us, is often a new beginning for God. While that new beginning may not be in this life, it surely will be in the world to come. This life is a preparation for our ministry in the new earth. After the resurrection of God’s people we shall discover that every trial, every disappointment and every apparent loss, was permitted to prepare us for our service in Christ’s coming kingdom. We shall not regret a single one. With Paul we will say, ‘In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us’ (Rom. 8:37).

The Surpassing Righteousness

—Smuts van Rooyen

Jesus has brought us to the foot of a mountain, a mountain of righteousness. Who can climb it?

A friend of mine with a delightful talent for wry humour once said, ‘If you want to see a cat on a hot tin roof then tell a Christian that Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, requires him to be more righteous than a Pharisee.’ He was right. The saying of Jesus, ‘For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt. 5:20) often produces some very fine exegetical footwork.

Isn’t that rank legalism? How is such righteousness possible? Is Christ serious? What does it mean to be more righteous than a Pharisee?

Before answering some of these questions let’s address a more practical matter. How would these words of Jesus, if they did apply to Christians, help the Christian community? First, let’s take the conservative Christian with a nomistic life-style. (By nomistic lifestyle is meant a life-style that is law-oriented.) This Christian has allowed Christ to shape his theology, but not his way of life.

Before accepting Christ he carried a grievous burden of works on his shoulders in order to be saved. Now having accepted Christ, he carries a grievous burden of works on his shoulders in order to show that he has been saved. But the load is still as heavy. He gathers rules from the New Testament as the Pharisee did from the Old. Without realising it he tries to baptise Christianity into Pharisaism. He does not know that one cannot pour the new wine of the gospel into the old wine skin without making a mess of Judaism and Christianity. Yes, it is true theologically he believes that in Christ he is freed from condemnation—freed from sin—but, he is not yet free from moralism. For him the use or non-use of meat, drink, lipstick and movies is of crucial importance.

Now what can Christ’s saying do for him? It can remind him that being a Pharisee, even a Christian Pharisee, is not enough. It can lead him to a higher, truer form of morality. It can free him from a load that is oppressive. It can lead him from hypocrisy to honesty. It can make him care about people and this world again.

But Christ’s demand that the citizens of his kingdom be more righteous than the Pharisees also helps the Christian libertine. Such a Christian, too, has not let Christ have an impact on his life-style. This person is right in seeing that Christ stands in culture. Everything human is not wrong. He allows for Christ to be in human art forms and at human functions. He has seen Christ with the publicans and the sinners. But he has not seen that Christ also stands against culture. Much in human culture is wrong.

Immorality, violence, theft, unbridled power, war and discrimination are utterly wrong. To the Christian who no longer sifts his environment, Christ says, ‘You must be more righteous than the Pharisees.’And what can these words do for him? They can protect him from wrong. They can make him salty in a flavourless world. They can make him speak-up on society’s ills.

IS THIS SAYING BINDING ON US?

Dispensationalists hold that the Sermon applies only to a future Davidic kingdom. God postponed the Davidic kingdom when the Jews rejected Jesus. That kingdom is yet to come and its constitution, according to them, is still to be implemented. The Sermon must be seen for what it is, namely, a legal system of works for a future Jewish age. Therefore, the legalism of the Sermon should not surprise us, because it was meant for Jews who are saved by a covenant of works and not of grace. In short, the Sermon does not belong to our dispensation of grace.

I believe this stance taken toward the Sermon on the Mount and the kingdom of God to be incorrect. When Jesus the Messiah came, the reign of God on earth began in a special way never experienced before. His kingdom came. The proof of this is seen in the fact that he drove out demons. ‘If I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God is upon you,’ he said (Matt. 12:28 see also 4:23).

His favourite name for himself was the Son of Man. And who was the Son of Man? He was the One who would be given a kingdom and authority. In fact almost every chapter in Matthew deals with some aspect of Christ’s kingship. When he came the kingdom came, although not in its fullness.

This being the case, it is obvious that the Sermon on the Mount does apply to us. On that mountain the Messiah-King who had just overwhelmed Satan, the impostor to his throne, gives the constitution of his new kingdom. So the saying, your righteousness must surpass the Pharisees, still hits home.

THE SURPASSING RIGHTEOUSNESS

We come now to the heart of the matter. What exactly is greater than Pharisee righteousness? What is Christ’s idea of a truly good person? To help us understand this Jesus does a shocking thing. He takes six biblically-based ideas held by the Pharisees (and by us) and declares them to be not good enough. Then he extends and reshapes those old ideas until they come up to his liking. But he does more than play around with ideas. Jesus takes us on an inward journey to the depth of our minds. He probes our priorities, our motives, our inner will, our state of being. He explodes our thinking and revolutionizes our attitudes.

I have tried to distil this one section of Christ’s Sermon into six principles of morality. It has been for me a profoundly moving and humbling experience.

THE PRIORITY PRINCIPLE

(Matt. 5:21-26 cf. Exod. 20:13)

Jesus moves with the quickness and competence of a top-rate surgeon. It’s almost unfair to discuss ethics with him. In less than a minute the discussion moves from, ‘What is murder?’ to, ‘Are people a top priority with you?’ His argument runs like this:

God cares when you murder someone. You’d expect him to notice something that drastic.
But God cares even when you simply call someone a fool. You didn’t think he cared about that small a mistreatment, but he does.
So if God cares about people that much, shouldn’t you? Shouldn’t they be your top priority?

The illustration that drives home the point is deeply unsettling. Jesus asserts that if I should be in church praying for the forgiveness of my sins, worshipping God with all of my earnestness, and then remember that my brother has anything against me, I must then get up from my knees and immediately go to him and make things right. Can this be right? Surely religion, prayer, worship, sacrifice and confession, are more important than a paranoid neighbour. But according to Jesus, people are more important than a Pharisaical religion. Next to God they are our top priority. Pharisees sacrifice people for the sake of religion. Christians value people more.

THE COMMITMENT PRINCIPLE

(Matt. 5:27-30 cf. Exod. 20:14)

This principle calls us to a total, unblinking commitment to stop sinning altogether. Jesus uses the issue of adultery to show us our shallowness, our superficiality of commitment.

The golf balls of yesteryear consisted of three layers. On the outside there was a hard white casing. This casing enveloped a layer of elastic twine which was wrapped around a tiny pouch of fluid. Many a stray golf ball underwent a radical dissection in my childhood surgery and did not survive. Jesus does the same to the layers of the human psyche. He moves from the outward action, to the inner thought, to the inmost will. Adultery is not merely the failure to act correctly, it is not merely the failure to think correctly. It is basically the failure to will correctly. To drive this point home Jesus uses two draconian figures of speech. ‘Poke out your eye,’ he says, ‘Cut off your hand but don’t give in to sin. Avoid hell at all costs.’ It is, to say the least, a staggering call to commitment. How shall we survive?

THE LONG-SUFFERING PRINCIPLE

(Matt. 5:31-32 cf. Deut. 24:1-4)

This principle deals with our reaction to the genuine wrongs others do against us. A Pharisee could forsake his wife for a very small cause. His hand was quick to give her a bona fide certificate of divorce. Christ tells us to bear with others until their wrongdoing becomes extreme. Divorce, for example, is to be considered only when an act as serious as adultery is involved. When people are of value to us, we do not discard them simply because they no longer suit our fancy. This principle of long-suffering flies in the face of our modem conventions. It cries out against the casual way in which we dispose of people. It calls us to experience pain for the sake of others.

THE HONESTY PRINCIPLE

(Matt. 5:33-37 cf. Num. 30:2, Deut. 23:21)

Here the matter of oaths is used to emphasize simple, internal honesty. The Pharisee needs an external object to make his word stick. He swears by heaven, or by God’s throne, or by earth, or by Jerusalem to become believable. Something ‘out there’ is the basis of trust. Not so for the children of God. They can be trusted for what they are within themselves. Honesty is their core. They are not kept honest by contracts. Fairness is as basic to them as a right angle is to geometry.

THE NON-RESISTANCE PRINCIPLE

(Matt. 5:38-42 cf. Exod. 21-23f, Gen. 4:23f.)

The Old Testament did not allow for unlimited revenge. If someone knocked your tooth out you were not to respond by chopping off an arm. Revenge was legitimate, but only as long as it did not exceed the provocation. Exodus 21:23f gives us the lex talionis (principle of revenge). An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This principle seems fair enough. But not in Jesus’ view. He turns the principle of revenge into the principle of cooperation. If a Roman soldier forces you to carry his equipment for one mile, don’t plan a revenge in which you can somehow force him to carry your equipment for an equal distance. But rather, carry his equipment for two miles. If someone sues you, don’t counter-sue. Give him twice as much as he wants. When struck on the cheek, turn the other, but don’t strike back. But there is more. Kingdom people give of their possessions to others without pause or discrimination. Revenge becomes non-resistance and finally becomes giving. Who does not stand in awe?

THE LOVE PRINCIPLE

(Matt. 5:43-48; cf. Lev. 19:18)

G.E. Ladd writes, ‘It is one of the deepest mysteries of human personality and character that a man can deeply and earnestly desire the best welfare of one who would seek to hurt him.’ (A Theology of the New Testament, p. 129). The call of Jesus to love our enemies is a call to mystery. Here our minds struggle to get around the ultimate psychological contradiction—love for an enemy. This is perfect love. If one can love in this way, then any other love is not only possible, but easy. Christ calls us to discover this love.

The pragmatic Westerner views this concept as an impracticability that approaches near madness. This kind of thing cannot work in modern society. But Christians who have suffered in Russia and elsewhere would disagree. They would see it as the only practical way to bring about change. Anatoli Kusnyetsov, a former editor of the Gorki Institute of Literature, Moscow, said: ‘If in this world you are confronted with absolute power, power unmitigated, unrestrained, extending to every area of human life—if you are confronted with power in those terms, you are driven to realise that the only possible response to it is not some alternative power arrangement, more humane, more enlightened. The only possible response to absolute power, is the absolute love our Lord brought into the world’ (The End of Christendom, by Malcolm Muggeridge, p. 40).

Several crucial questions still haunt us: 1. Are we really expected to attain to this righteousness? 2. Is this not pure and simple legalism? We take them in order:

1. Can It Be Done?

Jesus has brought us to the foot of a mountain, a mountain of righteousness. It is higher than Sinai by far. We stand in its shadow and look up and up then wilt into deep despair. Who can climb it? We long for the lowlands of Pharisaism. Who really puts other people first? Who has a total commitment against sin? Who puts up with the genuine sins of others? Who is honest to the core? Who cooperates rather than take revenge? Who knows the mystery of love for our enemy? Can it be done?

The answer is yes and no. In what sense yes? Yes, we must now begin to climb the mountain although we may not reach its summit. Jesus told us to be salt of the earth, light on a mountain in order to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom. We can do neither if we do not take his ethical system seriously. We must pray the kingdom prayer every day: ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ The kingdom of God is already here, but not in its fullness. We can already attain to the principles of the kingdom, but not in their fullness. But this fact remains, that God in Christ has invaded our history and this makes an enormous difference in our ability to do what is right.

No, we cannot do all of God’s will. Not yet. We wait for the final consummation, for the adoption of our bodies, for the Second Coming. Then, when we see him as he is, we will be like him (1 John 3:2). It is no accident that the Sermon on the Mount is immediately followed by the story of the leper who cried, ‘Lord, if you are willing you can make me clean’ (Matt. 8). Standing before the Christ of the new righteousness we are filthy lepers. But there is a hand that reaches out to touch us and a voice that says, ‘I am willing, be clean!’

2. Is This Legalism?

The fact that Jesus asks that our righteousness surpass that of the Pharisees is disturbing, but it becomes doubly so when he ties this to entrance into the kingdom of heaven. On the surface at least it seems that this is outright legalism. Do such and such, be such and such, and the door of the kingdom will be opened to you. This, however, is not seen to be the case when the overall shape of the Gospel of Matthew is brought to bear on the issue.

Matthew simply was not a legalist and did not use the Sermon on the Mount for legalistic purposes. The evidence that would soften the apparent legalism in the text we are discussing is as follows:

The righteousness which Christ speaks of is a gift bestowed on man. Earlier in the Sermon he spoke this encouraging beatitude, ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled’ (5:6). God is the one who satisfies that hunger. Righteousness is a gift from him.
The whole book of Matthew is a devastating argument against the Pharisees and their legalism. No one can read chapter twenty-three, for example, with its seven terrible, doom-filled woes against the Pharisees and not sense the writer’s and Christ’s revulsion against their legalistic practices. Nowhere else in scripture, even in Paul, is there anything quite as anti-pharisaical as this. Moreover, this gospel contains two accounts of Christ’s feeding of the masses. The crowds involved are five-thousand and then four-thousand in number respectively. These stories are retold with the expressed purpose of warning against ‘the leaven of the Pharisees’ (ch 14-16). Bread enough for every body and baskets and baskets of leftovers, show God’s extravagant grace, in contrast to the beggarliness, the miserliness, the abject poverty of pharisaical religion.
If we were to ask Matthew if people are rewarded with heaven for their good works he would answer with a number of parables. He would tell of labourers in a field who were not paid according to the work they had done, because God does not pay us according to our work (Matt. 20). He would tell of the fantastic invitation to a feast by a king, and about the free robe he gave to the guests (Matt. 22:1-14). No, for him, it was all of grace and not of works.

I remember the time as a child I almost died of dehydration. It is a memory of a terrible, almost overwhelming thirst. We left home early in the morning, without our water, for a long hike across the African veld. The yearning and the agony of it is easy to recall. I had visions of water in every shape and form it takes and will never forget the green, creaming soda that finally quenched it. ‘Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled.’

Am I in Adam or in Christ?

Because it’s Very Important

—Santo Calarco

In Romans 5:14 Paul tells us that Adam was a pattern of Jesus. This suggests that there are strong parallels between the two. Everything Paul says about Adam however is negative, so how can a man who disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden be a pattern of a Man who never disobeyed God? The answer to this question is so important that it undergirds the very foundation of Paul’s doctrine of salvation.

Why does Paul call Jesus ‘Adam’? He wrote, ‘The first Adam became a living being, the last Adam a life-giving spirit’ (1 Cor. 15:45). Earlier he had said, ‘For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive’ (1 Cor. 15:22). To be ‘in Adam’ means eternal death; to be ‘in Christ’ means eternal life. Paul calls Jesus ‘Adam’ because he wants us to see him as the new head of humanity. What both heads of humanity did had consequences for us all.

What does it actually mean to be ‘in’ Adam or Jesus? A good illustration of what it means is found in Hebrews 7:9-10: ‘One might even say that Levi, who collects the tenth, paid the tenth through Abraham, because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body [literally loins] of his ancestor’.

Levi was the great grandson of Abraham and here we are told, that not only Levi, but all his descendants were in the loins of Abraham their ancestor. This meant that when Abraham tithed all the Levites tithed as well—even though they were not yet born! To be in Abraham in this instance means that he was the representative head of the family of Levi. What Abraham did as representative head was imputed to the Levites. When Abraham tithed the Levites were credited and imputed with tithing as well. So to be in Adam or Jesus, means that we are in the same relationship with God that our representative was in.

As Adam was cast out of God’s presence because of his rejection of God, so all who are in Adam live outside of God’s presence. As Jesus was taken into God’s presence after his resurrection, so all who are in him live in God’s presence (Eph. 2:6). According to Paul, the concept of corporate imputation (crediting what the representative does to the entire group) forms the very basis of the gospel.

Federal headship it not really so strange to us; it is the basis for government in Australia. In Australia we operate under a system of federal government, which simply means that we have individuals and parties who make decisions that affect the whole nation. When the federal head of government makes a decision that involves war with other nations, then it is viewed that the whole nation has also made that decision—regardless of their active participation in that decision! In the same way, those who are in Adam share in the consequences of his choices; so too those who are in Christ.

Do we die the second death because of our sin in Adam, or for our personal sin, or both? Admittedly the phrase ‘through one man sin entered the world because all sinned’ can be understood either way. But as we have already seen, in 1 Corinthians 15:22 Paul tells us that it is not only ‘through’ one man that humanity dies, but because they are ‘in’ that one man.

Since we sinned in Adam, death reigned over us all personally as a result. The remainder of the passage bears out this very point. In Romans 5:15 Paul says ‘many died by the trespass of the one man’. He does not say that death reigned because of the many sins committed by many people; rather, it reigned through the one sin of one man! ‘By the trespass of the one man death reigned through that one man’ (Rom. 5:17). That is clear; death reigned over all Adam’s offspring from the moment Adam sinned. Paul reveals that death reigned over all Adam’s offspring, even though they did not exist at the time of his sin.

Conversely, Paul reveals that death reigned over humanity from the moment Adam sinned, not from the moment each son or daughter of Adam individually sinned. Not once do we read in this passage that humans die because of their personal sins. We are told repeatedly that we die because we are in Adam and are therefore partakers of his sin. A careful reading of Romans 5:12 reveals this.

The idea of federal representation and imputation forms the very fabric of the gospel for Paul. If we question that we die in Adam, then we must also question that we live in Jesus. If Adam is not our representative, then neither is Jesus our representative! We were in Adam when he sinned, as much as we were in Jesus when he died for our sins. ‘If one died for all then all died’ (2 Cor. 5:14)! This idea of federal representation and imputation applies equally to Jesus and his offspring, as it did to Adam and his offspring. To call one into question is to call the other into question as well.

Paul says ‘Death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the One to come’ (Rom. 5:13-14). Most people quickly gloss over these verses, but they are critical to Paul’s argument here about whether or not we die because of Adam’s sin or ours, or both.

The implications of this passage are radical. In the previous verse Paul described the one sin of Adam and its consequences for humanity. He now explains why people, who did not have the law, died immediately after the time Adam sinned. He admits that ‘before the law was given sin was in the world’ but he is careful to say that God was not crediting these sins to the people who committed them, because he had not given them specific commands to break as he had done for Adam. The Bible says, ‘Sin is not taken into account when there is no law.’ This seems very clear.

People sinned after Adam and before the giving of the law but since these people never had a specific law given to them to break, God did not hold them accountable for their sinning. ‘Nevertheless,’ Paul says, ‘death still reigned.’ This begs the question: Why then did death reign over people if God was not holding their personal acts of sin against them? This question is what this whole passage is about: our death is a result, not of our sins, but of Adam’s.

What Paul is saying here is crucial—he is laying a foundation for the way we are to understand what it means to be in Jesus, ‘the last Adam’. Just as all the curses of judgement, condemnation and death were imputed to Adam’s offspring on account of his one sin—even though we do not deserve them. So too all the blessings of justification, acquittal, righteousness and eternal life are freely imputed to those who put faith in Jesus—even though we don’t deserve them. This is in essence what federal headship is all about. It is the heart of the gospel for Paul. Being in Jesus or Adam has nothing to do with good works or bad works—the issue is over who we choose as our representative, Adam or Jesus.

The fact of the matter is this: No human being will ever receive eternal death because of their own sins, or eternal life because of their own acts of righteousness. Paul makes it clear in Romans 3:25 that God punished Jesus for the sins committed by humans—all of them! People are not punished for their acts of sin because they have already been paid in full, people die the second death because of Adam’s sin, the sin of choosing to live without God! The burning issue is simple: Are we in Adam and share in his sin and death, or are we in Christ and share in his justification and life? The wrath of God remains only for those who, like Adam, reject the Lord (John 3:36).

The system of federal headship and imputation was established by God, in Eden, on purpose, so that Jesus, the last Adam, could impute his righteousness to the believer. Just as I receive death simply through my union with Adam, without any personal input of my own, so too, I receive life simply through my union with the last Adam, without any input of my own! It is mine by faith alone. What a blessed arrangement that God established! We serve a marvellous God.

The Gospel Of John — Part 17

—Ritchie Way

Jesus and the Holy Spirit

John 14:15-31; 15:26; 16:5-15

JESUS PROMISES THE HOLY SPIRIT

Jesus, limited by his human body, could not be with everyone at the same time, so he promised to send ‘another Counsellor to be with you for ever— the Spirit of truth’ (John 14:16-17). God, invisible and unlimited, would replace God, visible and limited (John 16:7). The omnipresent Spirit would come:

To be the disciples’counsellor forever (John 14:16).
To teach the disciples everything they needed to know for their mission (John 14:26).
To remind the disciples of everything Christ had said to them (John 14:26).
To testify about Jesus (John 15:26).
To convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgement (John 16:7-8).
To guide the disciples into all truth (John 16:12).
To bring glory to Christ through making his sacrifice known (John 16:14).

The ministry of the Spirit should never be divorced from the ministry of Christ. The Spirit’s ministry is but the next phase in the plan of salvation— the application of the benefits Christ won by his life and death for all mankind. His work would be primarily through the twelve apostles, counselling them, teaching them, reminding them and guiding them, as they grew in understanding of the truths of salvation.

Slowly, but inexorably, the Spirit led the Twelve to the understanding that the kingdom Christ established by his death, was a spiritual, and not a literal kingdom. And slowly but surely the Spirit led the Twelve to understand that the gospel had to be proclaimed to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews. Both these issues were major obstacles for the infant Church, but led by the Spirit they overcame them and went on to fulfil ‘Mission Impossible.’

It is a sad fact that new churches grow rapidly under the guidance of the Spirit, but soon become locked into a static state by leaders who wrest control from the Spirit and take over the ‘steering wheel.’ We have seen this in the Luthern Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church, the Salvation Army, etc. No denomination is exempt. The same thing happened within the early Church.

THE WORLD WOULD BE DIVIDED INTO TWO

Jesus went on to say, ‘Before long, the world will not see me any more, but you will see me … he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.’
Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, ‘But Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?’
Jesus replied, ‘If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him’ (John 14:19-23).

In these verses Jesus points to the great division that would be created in the world by his death; his cross would be a sword that would cleave the Earth in two: Believers in Jesus and non-believers. This was foretold in the destinies of the two men who were crucified with Jesus—two men who typified every person on Earth. They were both great sinners, one repented and accepted Jesus by faith; the other, refusing to repent, rejected Jesus. And, under the ministry of the Spirit, all mankind will be divided on the same basis.

The crucified criminal who accepted the Lord said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ Jesus answered him, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise’ (Luke 23:42-43).

By his death Jesus established his kingdom (Paradise) on Earth that very day. His death opened the door to his kingdom for everyone who wishes to be a citizen of it (Rev. 5:9-10), and the repentant criminal became the first to cross the threshold. All believers can boldly enter, because Jesus’ blood has paid the price of their entry (Heb. 10:19-20). There is room there for everyone whose robes have been washed in the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 7:9-10, 13-17).

A SPIRITUAL KINGDOM

The kingdom Jesus established at his first advent is a spiritual, concealed kingdom. It will become a literal, revealed kingdom when Jesus returns on the clouds of heaven, but until that time—as Jesus told his disciples—the King will remain concealed (2 Thes. 1:7). The world would not see him anymore (John 14:19) until it says, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’ (Matt. 23:39). The spiritual citizens of that kingdom would also remain concealed until they are revealed at the coming of Jesus (Rom. 8:18-19). There are many citizens of Christ’s kingdom among Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Shintos etc., just as there are many non-citizens in churches and cathedrals all around the world. The Day of Christ’s coming will reveal who among the people of Earth are citizens of heaven (Rom. 8:19).

Christ’s kingdom is not a visible place on Planet Earth to which we can go, for here we do not have an enduring city (Heb. 13:14). Christ’s kingdom is life in the presence of the Father and Jesus through the Holy Spirit (John 14:23-24; Heb. 12:22-24). The ‘mansion’ or ‘dwelling place’ for those who love and obey Christ is the presence of God himself. He alone is our tabernacle (Rev. 7:14).

Only those who love and obey Christ will see him who is invisible (Heb. 11:27); the One who dwells in the midst of his people (Matt. 18:20). To the rest of the world he will remain invisible, working through his Spirit on Earth, until he returns in glory.

Salvation is a Two-Edged Sword

—Ritchie Way

Salvation is a two-edged sword—a sword that not only slew Christ on the cross; it’s a sword that must also slay us. Jesus said, ‘Anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me’ (Matt. 10:38). When someone takes his cross it is because he is going to the place of crucifixion. Jesus says we are only worthy of him if we follow him to the place of crucifixion bearing our own crosses.

What did Jesus mean when he said we have to take our cross and follow him? When Jesus took his cross and went to the place of crucifixion, it was so he could die for everything that came between God and us. He died to remove the barrier of our sins. Likewise, we must crucify everything that comes between Christ and us, so that his free gift of eternal life is not blocked from reaching us.

In Jesus’ day there was great respect for parents. Children were taught to obey their parents even when they didn’t want to. Jesus said, however, ‘Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me’ (Matt. 10:37a). If a man’s parents forbade him from following Christ, then their will came between Christ and their son. If the son wished to be saved, he had to crucify his strong cultural proclivity to put his parents’ will ahead of Christ’s will. It is far better to have a division between you and your earthly parents than between you and your heavenly Parent; the former division is only temporal; the latter is eternal. There can be no compromise here because Jesus demands nothing less than radical discipleship of his followers.

In Jesus’ day a man’s children were his future security. A man with no children had no one to care and provide for him in old age. No parent, therefore, wished to create a division between himself and his children. What should a parent do then if their child demanded that they give up their faith in Jesus? Jesus said, ‘Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me’ (Matt. 10:37b). If the parents wished to be saved, they had to crucify their desire to put their child’s will ahead of Christ’s will. It is far better to have a division between you and your child than between you and Christ. Your child may care for you in this life, but the Lord will care for you through all eternity. Put your faith in Christ rather than in your offspring. There can be no compromise here, because Jesus demands nothing less than radical discipleship of his followers.

Do not underestimate the depth of Christ’s words in Matthew 10:37. ‘Father or mother’ in this verse covers every authority-figure in your life: Your school teacher, your employer, your government, your religious instructor—everyone to whom you give authority over your faith and actions, and everyone who assumes authority over your faith and actions. If they require you to take a stand contrary to Christ and his will, then your choice will determine your ultimate destiny. Even clergyman, through the ages, had to choose whether or not they would stand for the Church or for Christ. No one is exempt. Anything and everything that comes between Christ and you has to be crucified. Jesus died on the cross to remove the barrier of our sins between God and us and he expects his followers to do likewise.

When Jesus said, ‘Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me’ (Matt. 10:37b), his words cover everything we are relying on that will keep us from him. It could be the opportunities opened to us or to our children by an antichristian government, or by a university that demands we teach or support concepts that are antichristian. It could be wages paid by a denomination that upholds teachings that are contrary to Christ and the gospel. It could be our rejection of Christ in order to be included in the will of a wealthy relative. Whatever we uphold in the place of Christ has to be crucified if we are to receive eternal life.

While we cannot earn salvation, we can block it. The conduit of God’s free grace, flowing from the cross, can be plugged with things that we consider to be more important than salvation, e.g. the refusal to forgive someone (Matt. 6:14-15), or the refusal to break off an immoral relationship (1 Cor. 6:9-10). Unless we destroy these impediments to eternal life by crucifying them, salvation will not reach us.

THE PERFECT CANDIDATE

One day a man ran to Jesus and asked what he needed to do in order to inherit eternal life (Mark 10:17). This man was young (Matt. 19:22), he was a ruler (Luke 18:18), ‘he was a man of great wealth’ (Luke 18:23), he was committed to his faith (Luke 18:21), and he was keen to know how he could improve his relationship with the Lord (Matt. 19:20). Furthermore, the Scriptures reveal that Jesus loved him (Mark 10:21).

How many pastors today, would delight to have their baptismal classes full of such people—young, very wealthy, community leaders and hungry for the truth? They are dream candidates for church membership; the answer to many a prayer. Churches eagerly accept such people as members, oblivious to the fact that they worship something else more than they worship Christ.

Jesus loved the rich young ruler, and saw in him great potential for the kingdom of Heaven. What a blessing such a talented person would be to the early Church! Jesus, however, saw something that would have escaped our gaze in our enthusiasm to get this man baptised. He saw that this young man had a significant barrier between himself and the Lord, a barrier that no one else, except this man, could remove. That barrier was the young man’s great wealth; he trusted it more than he trusted the Lord; it was his prime security. Jesus told him to get rid of that barrier to his salvation (to crucify it), then to come and follow him. ‘When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth’ (Matt. 19:21-22).

‘Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this they were greatly astonished …’ (Matt. 19:23-25).

The Jews believed that wealth was an indication of God’s blessing on a person’s life. And it was! Wealth, however, was not an indication that person was in a correct relationship with God. God sends his blessings on the just and the unjust, but different people treat these blessings in different ways. The rich young ruler made the fatal mistake of putting his faith in the blessing, rather than in the God who gave it to him. Jesus told him to remove the barrier between him and God—to crucify his faith in his wealth—and to come and follow him. The man declined Jesus’ offer and walked away.

‘He went away sad’ (Matt. 19:22), and it was sad that he went away, because a few years later, when Rome came against Israel with its destroying legions, that young man with so much potential for good would have lost everything, and ended up with nothing, perhaps not even his life.

SELF-CRUCIFIXION

Crucifixion was the most barbaric means of execution ever invented. Going to the dentist in the days before water-cooled turbo-drills and the use of anesthetics was terrifying, but crucifixion was much more terrifying. Imagine, if you dare, the pain of having great steel spikes pounded through your wrists and feet, and then being hung up from them to die by degrees, tortured by the sun, thirst, flies and every movement. It would be excruciating to say the least.

When Jesus tells us to take up our cross and follow him, he is not asking us to do something easy, or something he wasn’t prepared to do himself. When Jesus was crucified he gave up eternal life so we could have it. All he asks us to do is give up our trust in things that offer us temporal life in exchange for the eternal life he provided at such great cost. We are to crucify anything that is dearer to us than Jesus; anything that comes between him and us.

The free gift of salvation is ours when we do.

Paul and the False Teachers

—Santo Calarco

God is looking for believers with enough spiritual fortitude to stand and directly oppose the deception of legalism with humility.

When it came to certain non-essential matters of faith Paul called for tolerance. For example, in Romans 14:1 he says ‘Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgement on disputable matters.’ His attitude changed however whenever he detected that the integrity of the gospel of grace was in jeopardy. ‘But even if we, or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!’ (Gal. 1:8).

The church at Galatia had been infected by legalism; the purity of the Gospel had been compromised. ‘Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ’ (Gal. 1:7).

Verse 7 tells us a number of important things. First, it tells us that this false gospel had its origin from within the community of believers, not unbelievers. Secondly, it tells us that the content of the message of the false gospel includes a message about faith in Jesus for salvation. How do we know that? Paul says that the false teachers were ‘perverting the Gospel of Christ.’ So it was still a message claiming to be a gospel about Jesus, albeit a perversion! For the Galatian believers to get confused about this there must have been a certain amount of truth and similarities with the message that Paul preached. If these false teachers had told the Galatian Christians to totally abandon faith in Jesus altogether, they would not have attracted a credible following. This means that the message had to sound orthodox enough to be taken seriously.

So what is a perversion? The New American Standard Bible calls it a ‘distortion’ of the Gospel. The New Living Translation says that the false teachers at Galatia were ‘twisting’ the Gospel of Christ. So this begs the question: how did these false teachers twist and distort the gospel of Jesus in such a way that they confused believers at Galatia? Does Paul tell us exactly what the nature of this perversion was? He surely does! He discusses and clearly defines this false Gospel in the remainder of the book. As we read on in this letter we will find that the false gospel had something to do with God’s law being mixed together with the message of grace and faith.

In Galatians 3:1-3 Paul gives a clear description of the legalism, the false gospel that had infiltrated the Church at Galatia. As we look at these verses carefully we will note that the false Gospel was not simply ‘salvation by obedience to the law’. The false teachers were believers in Jesus (See Gal. 2:4 cf. Acts 15:1,5,24). The false gospel, the legalism Paul was facing, was a mixture of faith in Jesus, plus obedience to the law. Look at what Paul says: ‘After beginning with the Spirit [by believing as the previous verse points out] … you are now trying to attain your goal by human effort.’ The New Century Version puts it like this: ‘You began your life in Christ by the Spirit. Now are you trying to make it complete by your own power? That is foolish.’ So the false gospel doesn’t advocate that faith in Jesus is not necessary. It is saying that faith in Jesus is not enough.

The false gospel of Christ, the false message of salvation is faith in Jesus plus something else! The false gospel is not salvation by works, as many believe but salvation by faith plus works. This means that the true and only gospel of Christ is faith alone in the doing and dying of Jesus. Any message about faith in Jesus’ death for salvation, that adds human efforts into the equation, according to Paul ‘is really no gospel at all’ (Gal. 1:7).

Unfortunately this is what many sincere Christians are taught and believe today. They believe that a person is saved when they come to faith in Jesus, but then they must obey God in order to maintain and keep that salvation. This has been the cause of much despair, guilt and condemnation. We may think that we are not deceived by this false gospel, but consider this; how is your connection with God when you have blown it? Can you boldly and joyful enter into his presence, or do you feel distant? If it is the latter, then maybe the false gospel is more real to you than what you are willing to admit.

Whenever we read of Paul’s attitude and reaction to this false gospel we see another side of him emerge. The Paul who calls for tolerance, forgiveness and mercy becomes a lion. Let’s look at some of Paul’s reactions. In Galatians 2:11, 13-14 Paul tells us that even the great apostle Peter was influenced by this false Gospel. When Peter had met up with Paul in Antioch, he called him a hypocrite to his face, because he had not been straightforward about the truth of the Gospel (Gal. 2:11, 13-14). Imagine that! Peter himself had been affected by this false teaching. How would you feel about the idea of confronting the apostle Peter and calling him a hypocrite? Remember, this was the guy who carried a sword with him and cut off a man’s ear. This was the guy that Jesus called the rock! This was the guy whose shadow healed a multitude. Yet when Paul heard that the Gospel was compromised by Peter, he directly and passionately opposed him and called him a hypocrite.

Now let’s notice the way Paul speaks about the false teachers themselves. The false teachers called for faith in Jesus, plus obedience to the law in general, and circumcision in particular, as a means of gaining and maintaining salvation.

The Jerusalem council faced the same situation addressed in Galatians by Paul. It seems the false teachers claimed that their message represented the message of the apostles at Jerusalem (See Acts 15:1, 5, 10, 24 cf. Gal. 1:7; 2:4). Now look at the way Paul speaks about those advocating ‘circumcision’ [a catchphrase including obedience to the law in general] plus faith in Jesus. In Galatians 5:12 Paul calls them not to stop at circumcision but to go the whole way and castrate themselves. The New King James Version says ‘cut themselves off’. The marginal reading informs us that this means to ‘mutilate themselves’. The New International Version reads: ‘I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves’. The Contemporary English Version graphically and accurately translates the Greek by saying: ‘not only get circumcised but would cut off much more!’ The Greek actually means to castrate.

This is embarrassing for western Christians today. This seems very brutal, crude, uncaring, insensitive and impolite. Any pastor who would stand up against legalism today in such graphic terms would be labelled, and would possibly lose credibility or even be sacked. Nonetheless, under divine inspiration Paul felt free enough to record, in graphic terms, his holy hatred towards any perversion of the Gospel of grace. And this is Scripture. While this may be embarrassing for us today, it certainly was not the case for Paul. His explicit language has become part of our New Testament and God has not seen it fit to change his word in any way regards this matter.

This is not the only place where Paul speaks out aggressively against legalistic teachers. In Philippians 3:2 Paul refers to these false teachers as dogs! ‘Watch out for those dogs.’ As we read further in this chapter Paul identifies ‘those dogs’ as false teachers who distort the gospel. He tells us that they were putting ‘confidence in the flesh’, that is, in human works (Phil. 3:4).

So that we don’t misunderstand what ‘confidence in the flesh’ means, Paul tells us in verses 6 and 9 that he himself had been guilty of this same thing: ‘… as for legalistic righteousness, [he was] faultless [when it came to earning] … righteousness that comes through the law’. In retrospect and in commenting on legalistic righteousness Paul employs even more graphic sanctified language. After having abandoned the law as a means of gaining and maintaining acceptance with God, Paul can say, ‘But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ … I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes through the law, but that which is through faith in Christ’ (Phil. 4:7-9). The New International Version has politely translated the Greek word skubalon as ‘rubbish’ however, the word is more graphic than this and has been accurately translated ‘dung’ in the King James Version. Strong’s Enhanced Lexicon informs us that this word means, ‘any refuse, as the excrement of animals.’¹

We need to understand that Paul was very passionate and protective about the pure message of the grace of God. He was a patient, humble and merciful man. As we saw in Romans 14:1 Paul made room for alternate theologies and called for tolerance. However, as soon as Paul detected the presence of legalism in the Church he was quick to assertively confront it, defending the Gospel and jealously protecting the flock. He wrote: ‘Some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. We did not give in to them for a moment so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you’ (Gal. 2:4-5).

Legalism is still rampant today. Jesus plus, is still the catchphrase preached in many pulpits: Jesus plus the sacraments; Jesus plus baptism by immersion; Jesus plus speaking in tongues; Jesus plus holiness; Jesus plus the Sabbath. Where are the ‘Paul’s’ of our day? Where are the believers who will humbly, yet directly and passionately preach the purity of the gospel of grace: faith in Jesus, plus nothing?

Endnote:
1. Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1995.

h1>The Gospel of John — Part 16

—Ritchie Way

Jesus’ Return

John 13:33-14:13; 16:17-22

Remember that we stated earlier that everything from John 12 forward points to Jesus’ death and resurrection. The two passages under consideration in this issue (John 13:31 14:13 and 16:17-22) are no exceptions.

JESUS SPEAKS OF HIS GOING AND COMING AGAIN

After Judas had left the upper room to go and betray Jesus, Jesus spoke the following enigmatic words to his disciples:

     ‘Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek me; and as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, “Where I am going, you cannot come ….”
     Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?”
     Jesus answered, “Where I go, you cannot follow me now; but you will follow later.”
     Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow You right now? I will lay down my life for you.” Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, a rooster will not crow until you deny me three times.”
     Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also’ (John 13:31 14:3 NASB).

This whole section is a single unit in which Jesus seeks to prepare his disciples for his impending death and resurrection. After he had told them that he was going to a place they could not then visit (the place of martyrdom), Peter sought more specific information about this un-visitable place, ‘Lord where are you going?’ he asked. In reply Jesus said, ‘Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.’ By these words Jesus indicated to Peter that he, too, would one day give his life as Jesus was about to (John 21:19; 2 Pet. 1:13-15).

Peter protested, ‘Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.’ Jesus then stated that Peter wasn’t yet ready to lay down his life for him. The day would come when he would be ready to make that sacrifice, but that wouldn’t happen this time round. Instead of Peter laying down his life for Jesus, Jesus would lay down his life for Peter.

Then, to comfort his disciples who believed that he was immortal and couldn’t die, Jesus said, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled [when my body is taken from the cross and placed in the grave]. Keep your faith in me as you keep your faith in the Father.’

There is more than sufficient room for all of you in my Father’s house. I am going to the cross to prepare a place for you there. The shedding of my blood on the cross will open the way for you to the Father’s presence (Matt 27:50-51), and make it possible for you to approach his throne with confidence (Heb. 4:16; 10:19-22).

Jesus then said, ‘If I go and prepare a place for you’ (John 14:3)—he had not, at that point made the final decision to go ahead with his sacrifice—‘If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back.’ In these words Jesus was promising his disciples that he would ‘come back’ to them from the grave. Furthermore, when he returned they would be the first to be received into the kingdom that he would have established by his death. This kingdom would be a spiritual kingdom, and would remain a spiritual kingdom until the Lord returned in the clouds of heaven (Heb. 12:22-24). And Jesus promised he would be present with his disciples at all times in this kingdom (Matt. 18:20; 28:20). Heaven is where the Lord is.

In verse 23 Jesus reinforces this in the following words: ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.’ The word translated ‘abode’ is used in only one other place in the Bible, John 14:2. What is the ‘abode’ where we will dwell with the Father? It is the presence of the Father and the Son with those who love and obey them.

JESUS’ DEATH AND RESURRECTION FORETOLD

     ‘A little while, and you will no longer see me; and again a little while, and you will see me.’
     Some of his disciples then said to one another, ‘What is this thing he is telling us, “A little while, and you will not see me; and again a little while and you will see me”; and, “because I go to the Father”?
     So they were saying, “What is this that he says, ‘A little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.”
     Jesus knew that they wished to question him, and he said to them, “Are you deliberating together about this, that I said, A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me? Truly, truly, I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will grieve, but your grief will be turned into joy.
     Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you”’ (John 16:17-22 NASB).

With hindsight we know what Jesus was telling his disciples in this passage. Here Jesus speaks of ‘a little while’ (micron from which we get our word micro). He was telling his disciples that they wouldn’t see him for the ‘little while’ that he would be in the grave, but after this ‘little while’ they would see him again. This ‘little while’, for them, would be a time of weeping and lamenting while the world rejoiced, but after that ‘little while’ their grief would be turned to joy, and no one would ever take that joy away from them.

We, too, have our ‘little whiles’ in which we weep and lament, but they too won’t last long, because Jesus has conquered mankind’s greatest enemy—death. The day will come when our weeping and lamenting will be turned to joy, and no one will be able to take that joy away from us, for death will have been abolished forever.

In the meantime we are both ‘in the world’ and ‘in Jesus’. In Jesus we have peace (that’s a promise), but in this world we will have trouble (that also is a promise). But if we identify with Jesus the world will never overcome us (that too is a promise) (1 John 4:4) because Jesus has overcome the world (John 16:33).

John Wesley (1703-1791)

The Time Is At Hand!

Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein; for the time is at hand. Revelation 1:3, KJV

The Gospel Of John — Part 18

Battles in the Garden

ENTER JUDAS

Consider the Big Picture

JOSEPH

MORDECAI

LAZARUS

The Surpassing Righteousness

Jesus has brought us to the foot of a mountain, a mountain of righteousness. Who can climb it?

IS THIS SAYING BINDING ON US?

THE SURPASSING RIGHTEOUSNESS

THE PRIORITY PRINCIPLE

THE COMMITMENT PRINCIPLE

THE LONG-SUFFERING PRINCIPLE

THE HONESTY PRINCIPLE

THE NON-RESISTANCE PRINCIPLE

THE LOVE PRINCIPLE

1. Can It Be Done?

2. Is This Legalism?

Am I in Adam or in Christ?

Because it’s Very Important

The Gospel Of John — Part 17

Jesus and the Holy Spirit

JESUS PROMISES THE HOLY SPIRIT

THE WORLD WOULD BE DIVIDED INTO TWO

A SPIRITUAL KINGDOM

Salvation is a Two-Edged Sword

THE PERFECT CANDIDATE

SELF-CRUCIFIXION

Paul and the False Teachers

Jesus’ Return

JESUS SPEAKS OF HIS GOING AND COMING AGAIN

JESUS’ DEATH AND RESURRECTION FORETOLD

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