Monthly Archives: March 2022

NO DARKNESS IN GOD

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NO DARKNESS IN GOD

This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness we lie and do not live by the truth. (1 John 1: 6-7)

John did not mess around with theological concepts and abstract ideas. He came right to the point.He assured his readers that the one of whom he wrote was indeed the one who came from the Father, who lived on earth as a real human being and who was the living Word, representing the Father in all He said and did.

John and his fellow disciples were eyewitness of the truth that Jesus was a man and yet more than a man. They had seen, heard and touched Him and their lives had forever been changed because He came, not only because He lived and died as a perfect Son, but also because He had a message from God for them.

What was that message? Jesus reaffirmed the message of the prophets who spoke for God against the backdrop of His people’s persistent disobedience over centuries of calling them back to Himself. Their constant refrain was: God is holy! He has no part with anything that is tainted with corruption or imperfection.

Even the effects of Adam’s sin over which they had no control, like the shedding of blood during childbirth was an affront to Him because any form of bloodshed was the outcome of sin. Every hint of corruption or imperfection had to be atoned for by the shedding of blood. Death was the penalty He demanded for imperfection, the death of a perfect and innocent animal as a foreshadowing of the death of God’s perfect Lamb.

John declared that God is light. Like love, light is the essence of who He is. If God were only love, there would be no guarantee that He would act in perfect justice towards those who transgress His laws. To be love without the balance of light would leave us with a wishy-washy God who would gloss over every infringement of His perfection in the name of “love”.

That’s the way some people want Him to be, and even believe Him to be so that they can continue in their evil ways with the assurance that God will do nothing about it. But where does that leave others who suffer at the hands of the perpetrators of evil?

We do have the assurance, however, from the mouth of God Himself that His nature is in perfect balance. He is both love and light. He loved the world of sinners but He could not pass over their sin without demanding just payment for what they had done. When the time came, He sent His Son into the world to live out a life of perfect obedience to Him, and then to die as a sacrificial lamb to atone for the sins of the world.

Where does that leave us?

He calls for a response from us to what He has done, not only to deal, once for all, with our state of alienation from Him when we respond to His command to believe in His Son, but also to enable us to live in daily fellowship with Him. That means that we remain in oneness with Him by walking in the light of who He is and what He requires of us as His sons and daughters. There is no value in believing that Jesus is the Son of God and that God raised Him from the dead if we do not follow through with a life of transparency with Him and in fellowship with Him and with our fellow human beings.

Unfortunately, so devious is the human heart that we fool ourselves into thinking that we are okay even when we have sinned. Like Adam, we blame others and make excuses for our sin. We may even acknowledge our sin but . . . taking responsibility for it is another story.

That’s where God wants us to be with Him – not just acknowledging we have done wrong when we are caught out but coming clean with God. The Holy Spirit never, let me repeat – never – beats us over the head with our sin. Accusation is the devil’s work. Our conscience, if trained by God’s word, will point out where we have gone wrong. The Holy Spirit points us back to who we are – holy and beloved sons and daughters of God whom Jesus has made righteous by His blood.

We do ourselves a terrible injustice of we insist that our deviation from God’s way are “mistakes” or “indiscretions”. God calls it sin. If we are unwilling to acknowledge that we sinned because we chose to, not because “the devil made me do it” or “because of what my father or mother did to me” or for any other reason, we remain in the darkness of self-deception and self-denial, and forfeit the delight of fellowship with the Father. 

Painful as it is to have to acknowledge that we are deliberately walking in the darkness, and come back to the way of truth, it’s the only way to keep our faces towards Jesus who is the Way, The Truth, and the Life and who will take us to the Father.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

OUR FELLOWSHIP IS WITH THE FATHER

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OUR FELLOWSHIP IS WITH THE FATHER

We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you may also have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. (1 John 1: 3-4)

John makes it clear from the start that he was not propagating another religion in opposition to the religions that were already in the world. He was writing of something far deeper and more real than that. He testified to being an eyewitness of what had happened when God broke into history through the coming of His Son into the world. He had seen, heard and touched the one who had come from the Father. There was no denying the witness of someone who had been that close, especially when there were others to back up his story.

But what was the purpose of Jesus’ coming? Did He come from God to tell the people of the world how sinful they were and to bring judgment on them from an angry God? No way!

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. (John 3: 17)

What did He mean by “saved”? Salvation, in modern times has been pared down to mean “saved from hell so that we can go to heaven when we die.” Is that the best that Jesus could do; shed His blood so that we can have a passport to heaven? What about now? Do we just go on living as we have and hold on until we die?

Salvation from God’s perspective is far bigger than that. When Adam and Eve plunged the world into darkness by their disobedience, it affected every part of creation. Every creature, every plant and tree, was doomed to die. Animals turned on each other; humans turned on each other and, worst of all, we turned on God and became His enemies. The fellowship God so delighted in with His children went out the window and the people God created to be His beloved children were thrown out to make their own way in life, which was the choice they made.

However, God didn’t leave it there. He went to enormous trouble to prepare a nation – one He painstakingly built from one childless couple whom He trained to trust Him, to obey Him and to raise their miracle-born son to do the same – to receive His Son when the time came. It took many centuries and much frustration on God’s part to bring them to the point where He could send His Son into the world, born among them into a human family as a helpless infant, raised by a godly couple, to show His people what He was really like.

What was His intention? Just to rescue people from hell so that they could go to heaven? What a pathetic purpose if that was all He could do! No, Jesus came, firstly, to reveal the heart of the Father. Was He the demanding, disciplinarian God His representatives, the religious leaders, made Him out to be? Far from it! He was a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness. The prophets of the Old Testament knew that and taught and wrote about it, but His people ignored what they said because they were bent on rebellion.

Jesus specifically came to show His people that God was a gracious and loving Father. He, Jesus, was the exact replica of His Father. But He did something even more wonderful than that. He lived a life of perfect obedience to the Father and then gave His life as though He were a sinner, so that sinners could be reconciled to their Father.

Why did He do it? Just to save sinners from hell? No, He did it so that sinners could be forgiven, washed clean of all their sin, given a new heart, a new start and restored to God’s family as His holy and beloved sons and daughters. But best of all, from the moment of their “new birth”, their new beginning, they are restored to fellowship with the Father. That was the problem. They were out of fellowship with Him. Despite their rebellion against God, they were still in a relationship with Him as His children, although they were estranged from Him because of sin. This happens in families the world over all the time. Kids rebel, run away and dissociate themselves from the parents. This does not make them “unborn”. It cuts them off from fellowship with their families.

God’s desire, when Jesus did all this for us, was to bring us back into fellowship with Himself, not when we die, but here and now. And He did it! Jesus died to clear away all the barriers to fellowship and to restore everything that we lost through sin so that we can be one with the Father again. Fellowship with the Father has great benefits for us – the more time we spend with Him, the more we get to know Him and become like Him, shedding our old self-centred ways, and learning to do what pleases Him.

But perhaps the greatest benefit of all is learning to do God’s will so that His purposes on earth are fulfilled through us. That’s what fellowship with the Father accomplished for Jesus. John’s gospel is full of assurances that Jesus lived in such harmony with the Father than they did everything in tandem. No one could accuse Jesus of sin because He only said and did what He heard the Father saying and doing. How did He learn these things from the Father? Through many hours of fellowship with Him.

With no more obstacles in the way, John assured his readers that they, and we, can also have fellowship with those who are one with the Father, and with the Father and the Son. And how that delights the heart of God, fulfilling His desire from the beginning!

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

NO THUMB-SUCK

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NO THUMB-SUCK

The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. (1 John 1: 2)

This was no thumb-suck. John was proclaiming to his readers what had actually happened. What if John were making it up as he went along? What if he were pulling off the greatest hoax in history?

But he wasn’t. There were many witnesses to the real Jesus who would ratify what John was proclaiming. If he were making it up, many would have stepped up to declare that he was talking nonsense and spinning lies. Although John wrote his letters years after the other New Testament writers, he was expanding on and recording the truths that had already been disseminated by them.

John equated Jesus with eternal life. No other figure in human history would dare to call himself that – eternal life. Jesus did not give those words to Himself as a title but as a function. He came from the Father to bring life to the world, not only endless life but a new quality of life that belonged to the realm of the eternal.

We humans equate the word “eternal” with “never ending” as though we will just keep on living the same sort of lives we are living now but with no death at the end of it. Our imagination does not stretch far enough to conjure up a real picture of the eternal realm. Eternal life is much more than never-ending. It has to do with a quality of life in a realm that is not ravaged by sin or time, or limited by the limitations of this present world.

What did Jesus mean by “eternal”? He also used the term, “the age to come”. This present age is the age in which we live now, an age of imperfection where everyone and everything in the world is influenced by Adam’s sin. Even the natural world was corrupted by sin and awaits an age when all corruption will be removed and the earth with its plants and creatures will be restored to its original perfection.    

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation is groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Rom. 8: 19-22)

It was sin that brought death to the world. Jesus’ death removed sin and restored the life which God intended for His children from the beginning. When we receive by faith the forgiveness of sin, God removes the penalty, death, and restores us to the realm where there is no death. Although we are still a part of this fallen world and subject to the death of our physical bodies, we are already the recipients of eternal life. When we shed these mortal bodies, we enter the eternal realm where there is no more death.

It is Jesus who brought us the gift of eternal live by removing the penalty of death from us; therefore we can say the Jesus is eternal life.

And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. (1 John 5: 11-12)

The perpetrators of false religions can say what they like and teach what they like but they can never make or prove the claim that those who believe and follow what they teach have the indisputable promise of eternal life. How do we know that Jesus, and those who proclaimed what He taught, was telling the truth? The resurrection!

He claimed to have the authority to lay down His life and to take it up again.

The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father. (John. 10: 17-18)

These are either the words of a madman or the sober words of truth from the Son of God. He proved He was no madman by doing what He said He would do!  Eternal life in Jesus Christ is a free gift on offer to those who believe that He is the Son of God and that God raised Him from the dead and who confess that Jesus is Lord. It’s as simple as that.

If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. (Rom. 10: 9)

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

A WORD ABOUT THE WORD

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A WORD ABOUT THE WORD

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. (1 John 1: 1-2)

There is no testimony more powerful than that of an eyewitness. He was there. He saw it happen and he relates the details of the event with a measure of accuracy as his eyes and ears took it in and his brain processed the information. Of course, not every eyewitness’s story is exactly the same. Each one saw if happen from a slightly different geographical position and each one interpreted the details through his grid of understanding.

Some eye witnesses are more observant than others. They will pick up details which others miss. Others think they saw this when they actually saw that. But when one puts all the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle, a clear and credible story begins to emerge. Most of the details correspond and overlap, making the story realistic and credible and can be accepted as an accurate account of what happened.

Why did the Holy Spirit orchestrate four gospels to be written? Some of the details in their accounts of Jesus’ life overlap; other bits differ slightly or even contradict, but the overall story is accurate and believable. Each of the gospel writers had a different purpose for telling His story and therefore it is understandable that they would have had different emphases and that they would have arranged their material differently.

Matthew presented Jesus as the King of the Jews, the fulfilment of prophecy and God’s promised Messiah. Chronology and details were not as important as his overall purpose and were fitted into the bigger picture. He was careful to record those parts of his information which highlighted Jesus’ identity as the King of the Jews. 

Mark’s message was that Jesus came as the Servant of Yahweh. He included nothing about His birth or early childhood. He told us much about Jesus’ actions and little about His teaching. A servant is busy doing the will of his master, rather than teaching others about him.

Luke, the doctor, focussed on Jesus’ humanity. He was very much the Son of Man. This aspect of Jesus was real but not the only meaning of His identity since Son of Man was also a Messianic title. The Holy Spirit featured prominently in Luke’s story because, as a human being, Jesus did nothing without the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was a real man, hungering, weary at times, eating and drinking and experiencing the whole range of human emotions.

When we get to John’s writings, which include his gospel, his letters and the book of Revelation, a much broader Jesus emerges, a man, yes, but much more than a man. John wrote in later years and had time to process the information he remembered about this Jesus. He could only reach one conclusion – He was indeed the Son of God.

He began his first letter to unknown recipients with words of affirmation and reassurance. What he had to say to them was based on eyewitness facts. He employed words which conveyed the activities of the senses – seen, heard, touched – sensory experiences which registered in his memory indelibly. Was it not John who leaned against Jesus at the supper table, hearing His hear beating in His chest, feeling the warmth of His body against his own?

Did he not see miracles happen,; deaf ears opened, blind eyes seeing, paralysed limbs functioning again and even the dead coming back to life? Did he not hear the resounding cries of his dying Lord from the cross? Did he not look with horror on the one who was pierced with a Roman spear until the last drops of His blood spilled on the ground? Did he not hear the words of the Roman centurion who pronounced that his Master was dead? Did he not gaze in wonder at the gaping wounds in the hands and feet of his risen Lord?

No one could deny what he had seen and heard and, on the solid foundation of eyewitness facts, he made his declaration to his readers. If Jesus said what He said, and did what He did, and then He fulfilled His predictions about His own death and resurrection, who could contradict what He taught about Himself and His mission?

No other human being in history who created a religion around himself or out of his own imagination could back up the ramblings of his mind with indisputable historical fact. Many skeptics have tried to disprove the resurrection of Jesus on legal grounds and have come away convinced of the truth of the Biblical record.

The bottom line is: Jesus was the Son of God. He came from the Father. He was God’s complete and final Word to humanity. Everything He said and did confirmed His identity. He brought us life through His death and resurrection. Those who believe in Him have eternal life and, though they die physically, they live eternally in the fullness of God’s presence and glory. 

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

DOING LIFE TOGETHER

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DOING LIFE TOGETHER

“Greet all God’s people in Christ Jesus. The brothers and sisters who are with me send greetings. All God’s people here send you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar’s household.

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.” Philippians 4:20-23.

After all that Paul had written about, perhaps some of his most significant words come at the end of his letter in his “signing off” statement. Once again he gives us a glimpse of the true meaning of “Christian” – people who belong to Christ – family! Paul was a catalyst – keeping people in touch with one another and fostering the family spirit by connecting the people in the churches and by constant interaction with them.

Paul was in prison in Caesar’s palace awaiting trial and possible execution, but that did not deter him from keeping the family together and urging them to support one another. He was the one who initiated the collection of money to help believers in Judea who were suffering because of famine in their area. He urged the churches in Greece to show their love by helping them in their need.

He constantly sent fellow workers to check on the believers in other places when he was unable to go himself. He often concluded his letters with greetings from individuals and church groups even though they did not know each other personally. Paul was a family man. He understood how important it was for God’s family to stand together because it was them against the world.

How many churches today are run more like a business than a family! We live in our little isolated islands, meeting together on a Sunday and perhaps once during the week, but for the most part not really involved in the lives of the other members of the family of God. Of course, the church is now worldwide and too big and scattered for us to be connected across the board. But what about the local congregation of which we are members?

Not all churches are groups of impersonally disconnected individuals. Thank God for those who take their responsibility of doing life together seriously! Jesus said that the mark of true discipleship that will convince the world far more than doctrine or success is the love of the disciples for one another, and the unity that bonded them together.

“One another” is a recurring phrase that sets the church apart from the world. That does not mean that life in the body of Christ is idyllic – far from it. We still drag our old fleshly nature around with us and will do so until we shed this body and step into the presence of Jesus. In the meantime, we learn to overcome our natural selfishness and self-centredness by serving one another. We learn to love by loving. We learn to give by giving. Little by little, deed by deed, we subdue our old “man” by putting on the new man.

Doing life together can be messy at times. Conflicts will happen, but how we deal with them reveals how real our determination is to follow our Master. That’s why we forgive – four hundred and ninety times a day if necessary. Who is going to keep a record, anyway? Jesus’ prescription for harmony in the family is very simple – die! Dead people don’t quarrel. Dead people are not selfish. A truly “dead’ believer has no personal agenda because his life is inextricable intertwined with his Lord’s.

How we do life together in our church family is a good test of how dead we really are. We can either withdraw and distance ourselves from the mess, even if we are part of it or we can get in there, get dirty and help clean it up. Paul put it in a nutshell:

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with one another and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Colossians 3:12-14.

Did you get that? Put on these attitudes as you would put on your clothing in the morning. Keep putting on the behaviour until you become what you do. Why must we do that? Because we may! We are no longer the slaves of our old sinful, selfish selves. We are free to love, and loving is the most liberating way to live. Loving our brothers and sisters in the Lord by meeting their needs at our expense moves us closer to the image of Jesus….

…and that’s what it’s all about!

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.