“A Prayer on Ash Wednesday”

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Wyman

“ashes” he will say “and dust” the cross applying

his thumb will mark with soot my head

and for a moment I will bear

the emblem of what I seek so hard to hide from my own self

the burned Palm fronds from last year’s

triumphal entry

will remind me of His triumph

but more so of my distance from Him

the smudge will be removed by my own hands

washed off with a restrained exuberance

trying to conceal from my own self

that I want the emblem gone

and it has nothing to do with embarrassment

or the questions of curious onlookers

but with the homily in ash, the proclamation

stained and screaming the truth to me

i do not want the ashes of repentance

but I do want the cross they form

and I know I cannot have one without the other

so I take the mark…for a moment

then the mask is reapplied

a light brow where the marked and furrowed once was

but the truth of the mark will linger

for it has been marked on my soul

oh God.

help me to embrace both ash and cross

mortality and eternity

repentance and life

from dust I have come

to dust I will return

but never merely and never only

for by the ash and the cross You have made me Thine

John 16:16-33

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Wyman

John 16:16-33

¹⁶ “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.” ¹⁷ So some of his disciples said to one another, “What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’; and, ‘because I am going to the Father’?”¹⁸ So they were saying, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.” ¹⁹ Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, “Is this what you are asking yourselves, what I meant by saying, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’? ²⁰ Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.²¹ When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. ²² So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. ²³ In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. ²⁴ Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. ²⁵ “I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father. ²⁶ In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; ²⁷ for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. ²⁸ I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.” ²⁹ His disciples said, “Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech! ³⁰ Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God.”³¹ Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? ³² Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. ³³ I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

Emily Bronte only wrote one novel in her lifetime: Wuthering Heights. I’ve been intrigued by Emily and her sisters ever since reading Wuthering Heights and her sister Charlotte’s novel Jane Eyre some years back. It was an intriguing, odd and fascinating family. Emily, her two sisters and her brother were all the children of a pastor. They lived a fairly bleak but not unhappy life. Emily died in the mid-19^th century, but not before writing her fascinating novel and also a number of poems. As a matter of fact, she wrote her poetry in secret and, when her sister Charlotte found the poems and demanded that she publish them, Emily was initially very angry at her snooping sister. In time, however, Emily would relent and her poems would be published.

One of Emily’s poems is entitled, “A Little While, A Little While.” It is about the joy of going on vacation and the privilege of getting away from the burdens of life for a little while. The poem begins with Emily recognizing that, for a moment, she has escaped the difficulties of life:

A LITTLE while, a little while,

The weary task is put away,

And I can sing and I can smile,

Alike, while I have holiday.

Where wilt thou go, my harassed heart–

What thought, what scene invites thee now

What spot, or near or far apart,

Has rest for thee, my weary brow?

She then proceeds to talk about where she has gone on vacation. She describes the place she has gone and, in general, rejoices that she has escaped the difficulties of life for a little while. But, alas, it is only for a little while. The poem concludes with these words:

Even as I stood with raptured eye,

Absorbed in bliss so deep and dear,

My hour of rest had fleeted by,

And back came labour, bondage, care.

I understand her sentiments perfectly. Do you? I suspect most of you do. It seems like much of life involves navigating the various challenges and difficulties and cares that present themselves to us on a day-to-day base. Sometimes life can feel like a struggle punctuated by “the little whiles” here and there that we manage to steal from the grind and in which we exult. And, regrettably, like Emily Bronte says, our hour of rest goes fleeting by and back comes labor, bondage, care.

A little while. It seems sometimes like joy lasts just for a little while.

Emily Bronte knew this and she experienced the fleeting joys of “the little whiles.” But I cannot help but wonder if she might have been up to something more with her poem. She was the daughter of a preacher, after all, and had almost certainly heard her father preacher from the gospel of John. Had she heard her father preach from the latter half of John 16? I wonder. I wonder because in John 16, Jesus speaks, enigmatically and provocatively to His wondering disciples, of two “little whiles.” Now, I do not know that Emily had the words of Jesus in mind. If she did, she was possibly turning around in a playful manner the essence of Jesus’ teaching on “a little while.” For whereas Emily Bronte saw joy as “the little while” in a sea of worries and caries, Jesus says that the troubles we face are ultimately “the little while” in a sea of divine joy.

Jesus spoke of “the little while” to prepare His disciples, once again, for what they were about to witness in the final events of Jesus’ earthly incarnation. But I believe He also did so to offer us a context for understanding “the little whiles” in which we find ourselves today. In other words, He spoke thus to comfort His people as they travel the Christian journey. As such, it is important that we listen closely to His message today.

I. The Christian Life is One of Momentary Sorrow Eclipsed By Eternal Joy (v.16-22)

He begins with a puzzling and almost riddled statement:

¹⁶ “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.”

The reaction of the disciples is mildly humorous but also, frankly, comforting to us today.

¹⁷ So some of his disciples said to one another, “What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’; and, ‘because I am going to the Father’?” ¹⁸ So they were saying, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.”

This is mildly humorous because we can imagine them whispering their confusion even as they try to keep up appearances. After all, they only grumble “to one another.” And the last sentence – “We do not know what he is talking about.” – is disarming in its honesty.

But it is also comforting, is it not? After all, have we not, at times, whispered the same to ourselves and to one another? Have we not struggled at times to understand what the Lord Jesus is trying to tell us? Take heart when you struggle to understand the words of Jesus. You are in good company.

Of course, they may whisper this to one another, but the Lord Jesus knows perfectly well what is being said.

¹⁹ Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, “Is this what you are asking yourselves, what I meant by saying, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’? ²⁰ Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. ²¹ When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. ²² So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

Jesus acknowledges their confusion and offers a further explanation of “the little whiles” about which He has spoken. He does this by adding a new dimension to the two “little whiles” He has mentioned.

The two “little whiles” are sequential and chronological: “A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me.” So we have two “little whiles,” the first following the second.

In Jesus’ further explanation, however, He links sadness and pain with the first “little while” and joy and gladness with the second “little while.” Let us consider the attributes He gives to both:

The First “Little While”

“you will not seem me” (v.19b)
“you will weep and lament” (v.20a)
“you will sorrow” (v.20b)
likened to a woman in labor and pain (v.21a)
“you have sorrow now” (v.22a)

The Second “Little While”

“you will see me” (v.19c)
“your sorrow will turn to joy” (v.20b)
likened to a new mother who “no longer remembers the anguish” because of her “joy” (v.21b)
“I will see you again” (v.22b)
“your hearts will rejoice, and nobody will take your joy from you” (v.22c)

So Jesus speaks of two “little whiles” to His disciples, the first of which is marked by pain and the second of which is marked by joy. The dominant “little while” is the second. It will overcome and eclipse the first. That is, the joy will overcome the pain. The first is one of momentary sorrow. The second is one of eternal joy. Whatever these “little whiles” are, this is undoubtedly the nature of each.

I say “whatever these ‘little whiles’ are” because at least one of these, the second, remains disputed to this day. Most interpreters are in agreement that the first “little while,” the one marked by sorrow and pain and sadness and separation from Jesus, is the crucifixion of Jesus. I agree completely. After all, for a number of chapters now Jesus has been repeatedly and through various means preparing the disciples for the coming agonies and horrors of the cross. Of course, they cannot comprehend what is about to happen until it happens, but Jesus prepares them even so.

So this is the first “little while.” In a little while the disciples are going to drink the cup of pain and loss and heartbreak and tragedy. In a little while they will see their Savior and their friend nailed to a cruel cross. In a little while they will watch Him die a horrible death before a jeering mob after being convicted by a kangaroo court. In a little while, these men are going to suffer.

But what of the second “little while?” What is the “little while” that is marked by a restoration of their relationship with Jesus, by joy, by gladness, by a happiness so overwhelming that it drives out their former pain? Over the years, three schools of thought have sprung up concerning this second “little while.” They are:

The second “little while” refers the resurrection of Jesus after the crucifixion.
The second “little while” refers to Pentecost and the joy of the coming of the Holy Spirit.
The second “little while” refers to the second coming of Christ.

To be sure, good cases can and have been made by good Christians over the years for each of these positions. We could spend a very long time weighing the pros and cons of each. In truth, though, I do not think that is necessary. Regardless of whether you see the second “little while” as the resurrection, as Pentecost or as the second coming, we would all agree that each of these three fulfills in powerful ways that hope and joy and gladness that Jesus said would characterize the second “little while.” In other words, in a very real way, the principle of the second “little while” rightly refers to all of these gloriously joyful and cataclysmic events: resurrection, Pentecost and second coming.

Be that as it may, I personally feel most persuaded by the first of these three options. I believe it is most natural to view this second “little while” as a reference to the resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus will come just a little while after the horrors of the crucifixion and it will eclipse and obliterate the despair that gripped the disciples just a little while before at the crucifixion of Jesus.

The resurrection was the rising of the morning sun of joy that drove back the black night of the horrors of Calvary. I agree with A.T. Robertson who defined the first “a little while (mikron)” as “the brief period now till Christ’s death” and “again a little while (palin mikron)” as “the period between the death and the resurrection of Jesus (from Friday afternoon till Sunday morning).”[i]

It is important for us to understand two things when we consider the two “little whiles”: the particular situation about which Jesus was referring and the principle that emanates from these particles now and into eternity.

Specifically, Jesus is telling the disciples before the events play out that the momentary sorrow of the cross will be eclipsed by the eternal joy of the empty tomb. In principle, and on this basis, Jesus is telling us all that the Christian life is one of momentary sorrow eclipsed by eternal joy. What this means is that Jesus speaks to us today about “the little whiles” just as He spoke to His disciples about “the little whiles.” Because the sorrow of Golgotha gave way to the ecstatic joy of Easter morning, so too we may know that whatever sorrows we are suffering under are but temporary in the face of the eternal joy Christ has purchased for us.

Are you suffering this morning? It is just for a little while.

Are you in pain this morning? It is just for a little while.

Are you confused this morning? It is just for a little while.

Are you in tears this morning? It is just for a little while.

It is just for a little while because the resurrected Jesus has driven back the darkness with the glorious light of His triumphant life!

We must understand the temporary and transitory nature of “the little whiles” in which we find ourselves. Some of you are here this morning and you are languishing. All you have is the first “little while,” the “little while” of pain, of sorrow, of doubt, of grief, of fear, of despair, of judgment, of no peace. Your “little while” has become a “long while.” In truth, your “little while” has become “all there is.” This is all there is for you because you have not come to Jesus and accepted Him as Savior and Lord. You are stuck on the dark side of “the little whiles.” You stand yet on the far side of the cross and all you see is the sin within you for which Jesus died.

But if you would come to Jesus, if you would dare to embrace the cross that you think condemns you, you would find that the cross is the gateway to eternal life and to a joy that you cannot fathom. The cross was the road Jesus walked to the empty tomb. The first “little while” of Good Friday gave way to the second and more glorious “little while” of Easter joy!

Do not stay in the first “little while,” believer! Christ is risen and the Spirit has come and Christ shall come again! Let the light of the gospel beat back the darkness of your own pain. Do not stay in the first little while!

And you need not stay there either, unbeliever. Come to the crucified and risen again Christ and enter the joy of the second “little while.” All is not as it seems. The black night has given way before the rising Son. The momentary sorrows of this life have been defeated by eternal joy!

II. The Christian Life is One of Ever-Filling Joy Through an Ever-Closer Walk With Jesus (v.23-28)

And this joy, Jesus says, is ever-growing. The second “little while” will be marked by an ever-closer walk with Jesus culminating in an ever-filling joy from Jesus.

²³ In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.

Do you see? The new life we have through the resurrected Jesus is one in which our wills are increasingly fused. We take on, in other words, the mind of Christ increasingly as we walk with Him. This does not mean that we become Jesus. It simply means that the resurrection of Jesus leads us into certain inescapable conclusions concerning His deity, His mediatorial role of intercessor, the need to begin viewing life through His life and the need to call upon the Lord in Jesus’ name. The result of this deepening relationship will be an ever-increasing joy, a deeper understanding of what was previously mysterious and a greater grasp of just how very much God loves us in Christ. Listen:

²⁴ Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. ²⁵ “I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father. ²⁶ In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; ²⁷ for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. ²⁸ I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.”

The Christian life, then, is one of ever-filling joy through an ever-closer walk with Jesus.

“Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full!” We learn to ask because we learn to trust. We learn to trust because we learn to walk with Jesus. We learn to walk with Jesus because He lives now and forevermore.

Pain lasts for just a little while, but, in Christ Jesus, the pain of life loses its grip because it has increasingly less and less room in the face of greater and greater joy. The ever-filling joy of Jesus, poured into us as we receive the Holy Spirit of God and as we learn to walk in His ways, leaves no crevices for the miseries of the first “little while” to hide.

“That your joy may be full!”

That you may know Jesus!

That you may love Jesus!

That you may learn to think with the mind of Jesus!

That you may learn just how much Jesus loves you!

“That your joy may be full!”

That darkness of the first “little while” is retreating even now in the face of the second. The resurrected Jesus comes carrying a joy that the darkness cannot overcome. Oh come out of “the little while” in which you are stuck and let Jesus fill you with joy!

III. The Christian Life is One of Temporal Defeats Conquered by an Eternal Love (v.29-33)

What this means is that the Christian life is one of temporal defeats conquered by an eternal love. In v.29, the disciples speak:

²⁹ His disciples said, “Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech!³⁰ Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God.”

Let us not judge our brothers, the disciples, for thinking they knew more than they knew. After all, we would not have grasped the full significance of the enigmatic words of Jesus at this point either. We, too, would have been, and are, hard of hearing and learning. But at least they begin to grasp that whatever dark thing of pain Jesus is alluding to, it will not last forever, for Jesus, they realize, “knows all things” and “came from God.”

This is true, but Jesus’ response reveals that they do not understand the battle that lies ahead. He turns on them, as it were, in order to reinforce the fact that while the second “little while” will carry great joy with it, the first “little while” will indeed carry with it a bitter pain.

³¹ Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? ³² Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. ³³ I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

The first “little while,” Jesus reveals, will not just be something that happens to them, it will shame them as well. For while the disciples will “be scattered” at the crucifixion, they will “leave [Jesus] alone” in His time of greatest trial. In other words, the first “little while” is not merely a trial, it is also a personal defeat, a personal failing.

The Christian life is one of temporal defeats. We, like the disciples, are not only victims of the first “little while,” we also contribute to our own shame therein. Who here today has not known the bitter pain of failing in “the little whiles” of life? Who here today has not known what it is to look back on your pain and realize that oftentimes we contribute to the darkness of the bleak “little whiles” in which we languish.

“In the world you will have tribulation.” That is true. And sometimes we invite it. And sometimes we even cause it. And oftentimes we are shamefully weak in the midst of this.

Even so, Jesus does not say this to crush them. “I have said these things to you,” He says in v.33, “that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

Two “little whiles”: the first is one of defeat, the second is one of eternal and conquering love.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, dear friends, listen to me: there are two “little whiles.”

In the first, we weep. In the second, we laugh for joy.

In the first, we fail. In the second, we are victorious.

In the first, we are sinners. In the second, we are saints.

In the first, the Lord is crucified. In the second, He rises again.

In the first, we are on our own. In the second, the Spirit has come.

In the first, we wait. In the second, He comes again.

In the first little while, our hearts give up. In the second little while, our hearts dare to believe.

In the first, I am a worm. In the second, I am a new creation.

In the first little while, I am alone with my misery. In the second, I am forever with my Savior.

Oh come to the Jesus of “the little whiles.”

Oh come to the Lamb of God.

[i] A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testatment. Vol.5 (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1960), p.269.

John 16:1-15

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Wyman

John 16:1-15

¹ “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. ² They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. ³ And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me. ⁴ But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you. “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. ⁵ But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ ⁶ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. ⁷ Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. ⁸ And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: ⁹ concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; ¹⁰ concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; ¹¹concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. ¹² “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. ¹³ When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ¹⁴ He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵ All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

When I was in 8^th or 9^th grade, the French teacher in our school invited me to go with her, her husband, and their grandson, who was a few years younger than me, on vacation to Orlando, Florida. That all sounds unbelievably odd as I say it now, but it happened. If I recall, the French teacher, who was a friend of my mother’s, asked if I would go on the trip so that their grandson would have somebody to pal around with in Disney and Sea World. Furthermore, if I recall, I was informed that I would be going on this trip and, not being one to pass up free vacations, I was fine with that.

Now I had been to Disney a number of times but I had never been to Sea World. Many of you have likely been to Sea World many times, but, to date, this remains the only time I have ever gone to Sea World.

Regardless, I remember it well: the underwater observation tunnel with the moving conveyor belt, the cool activities, the rides, the water stunts. Of course, what I remember most of all – and, I suspect, what most people remember most of all when they go to Sea World – is Shamu, the orca, the killer whale.

Man alive, that was amazing! To sit there and watch this massive black-and-white killer whale do tricks was unbelievable. If you have been there, you know that the whales splash the audience with water, lay on their backs, wave their huge flippers (or whatever you call those things!) and, in general, show off for the audience.

The biggest thrill of all is watching these beasts interact with their trainers. I could not (and still cannot) conceive of these men and women diving into this massive water tank and interacting with these gargantuan killer whales! It was amazing. A trainer would jump on the back of the whale and ride it around. Then the trainer would jump into the water and the whale would come up behind him and pick him up and jet him around the tank at full speed.

The coolest thing, though, was when the trainer would dive into the water and Shamu would dive down behind him. For a moment, they both disappeared under the water. Then, all of a sudden, Shamu came rocketing straight up out of the water with the trainer on its nose and the whale would catapult this little human being straight up into the air, maybe 30 or 40 feet, then the trainer would come spiraling down into a dive back into the water!

Whew! That was an awesome sight, and one I won’t likely forget for a very long time. When you see something like that, you feel a number of things: exhilaration, amazement, disbelief and, in my case, a certain measure of fear. The whole time I watched the interaction between that killer whale and the trainer, I kept thinking, “Not me!”

I want to ask you to think about that image for a moment: a man (small, comparatively insignificant, comparatively weak, comparatively puny) and a whale (huge, comparatively gigantic, comparatively powerful, comparatively awe-inspiring). The man is submerged in water, momentarily drowned, dwarfed by the surrounding expanse of water. Then, all of a sudden, this little man is acted upon by an alien and foreign source: an orca, a killer whale, some wild aquatic behemoth. The whale goes deeper than the man and comes up underneath him. When they connect, the man becomes part of the whale. In doing so, the man receives within himself all of the sheer power, speed, might and awesomeness of the whale. He is propelled upward, like Icharus shooting toward the sun. He emerges from his watery tomb, buried no more. He bursts into the light of day, his figure now animated and enlivened by the shocking power of the whale beneath. Up he comes! Up, up, up! And then he’s airborne, propelled into the sky, shot heavenward as if out of a cannon. He never could have done it on his own. He never will be able to do it on his own. For a moment, he flies – 10, 20, 30, maybe 40 feet into the air – then he returns triumphantly to the water!

The whale has an astounding impact on the man. The whale and the man have an astounding impact on the audience. We watch in disbelief. We marvel. We stand in awe. Then we cheer! We applaud! We celebrate!

Would you like to know what I think about when I think about that whale and that man? I think about the Holy Spirit. When I read John 16, for instance, I see a similar picture of a similar motion and phenomenon: a small human being acted upon by a foreign power, connecting to that power and sharing in His might. Jesus will depict the Holy Spirit in just this way: He is powerful, awesome, life-transforming and capable of more than any human being could be capable of on His own. He is God and carries the authority of God. And this Holy Spirit comes down – down, down, down – to reach us in our submerged and drowning state. When we receive the Lord Jesus, repent of our sins and open our hearts to Him, the Holy Spirit connects with us. He comes, as it were, down from above and up from below. He catches us. Then the Spirit connects with us and we form a bond. In that bond, the power of the Holy Spirit surges through us and He propels us up – up, up, up – until finally we emerge from our watery tomb and shoot up into the air and into the glory of the heights!

Jesus depicts the Holy Spirit like this: an awesome force operating on a frail but willing man or woman. And, like the crowd watching Shamu at Sea World, Jesus told His disciples that the watching crowd would have a reaction to the Spirit’s work in the world. The world always reacts to the work of the Spirit. Unlike Sea World, however, Jesus said that most of the world would hate and resent the work of the Spirit. This is because the Spirit did not come to entertain, to titillate, to exhilarate, to impress. He came to bear witness to God the Son, Jesus. And, when He does that, the world reacts to the Spirit just as it did to the Son: it hates the Spirit and it hates the one through whom the Spirit is working.

What this means, then, is that there is a movement to the Spirit, a kind of grand, cosmic baptism or immersion. It was the same movement Jesus spoke of in John 12:

²³ And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.²⁴ Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. ²⁵ Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Jesus applied this grand movement of immersion and re-surfacing, of death and resurrection prophetically to Himself. He comes down to be lifted back up. Jesus’ entire incarnation was an immersion and raising.

The analogy also fits us. We die to self so that we might rise again. We are crucified with Christ so we might live. As Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 2:11:

¹ The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him

This is the grand motion at the heart of the resurrection: descension, then ascension. It was the grand motion of the Lord Jesus. It is the grand motion of our own salvation. And we find in John 16 that it is the grand motion of the Spirit as well. He descends from glory, is buried within the believer, then begins working back upward to the Father. In doing so, there are three different interactions with three different parties: the believer, the watching world and the Lord God.

I. The Holy Spirit Keeps Us From Losing Heart and Falling Away (v.1-6)

Let us first consider the Spirit’s effect upon believers in Jesus, followers of the Lord God.

The first movement in the great upward motion of the Holy Spirit is His movement in and upon the believer and the believing family of faith. In keeping with the theme of the coming persecution that the Lord Jesus foretold in the latter half of John 15, He points to the comforting and strengthening ministry of the Holy Spirit.

The early disciples were about to undergo terrible persecution. They were about to pay a great price for following Jesus. For instance, John MacArthur has helpfully summarized the persecution that the original disciples faced in this way:

A brief survey of ancient Christian tradition reveals that Peter, Andrew, and James the son of Alphaeus were all crucified; Batholomew was whipped to death and then crucified; James the son of Zebedee was beheaded, as was Paul; Thomas was stabbed with spears; Mark was dragged to death through the streets of Alexandria; and James the half brother of Jesus was stoned by order of the Sanhedrin. Philip was also stoned to death. Others, including Matthew, Simon the Zealot, Thaddeus, Timothy, and Stephen, were also killed for their unwavering commitment to the Lord.[i]

Indeed, the disciples did pay a price. And, as we saw last week, it is a truism that all who seek to follow Jesus will pay a price as well.

One of the crucial ministries of the Holy Spirit is the strength that He offers struggling and suffering believers to endure in the face of trials. His ministry is a keeping, sustaining, strengthening ministry. He whispers assurances to us, hope to us and represents the continued presence of the Lord Jesus with us in the most difficult of times.

The Holy Spirit encourages and equips us so that we will not “fall away.” The fact that Jesus reveals this means that in the Christian life difficulties will sometimes become so great that we will be tempted to abandon the faith.

This reality need not be relegated only to literal, physical persecution or torture and the temptation to recant the faith in the midst of pain. In our context, it may be the more subtle but equally eroding reality of the pressure of living in a secular and anti-Christian society. For instance, we must realize how challenging it can be for believers in our country to face the constant and consistence cultural accusation of being backward, of being narrow minded, of being ignorant and non-progressive. Consider, for instance, the decaying power upon the believer’s resolve of the constant bombardment of television and movies and music in which behaviors and lifestyles that God’s Word reveals to be ungodly and destructive are held up as normative and good. As the culture in which we live increasingly embraces unbiblical lifestyles as normal and normative, it will increasingly view those who hold to a biblical worldview as intolerant, as ignorant and as outright dangerous.

“Indeed,” Jesus says, “the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.”

In our cultural context this may well refer to those who seek to shut down biblical Christianity in the name of a false god who has been fashioned in the likeness of American secularism and sentimentality. As the false god of the age is exalted more and more, the God of scripture will increasingly be caste as an evil God and His followers as likewise wicked.

In particular, we need to consider how challenging it can sometimes be for our young people to hold to the faith in the face of the constant secular onslaught to which they are daily subjected. Do not get me wrong: I have every reason to think that young Christians are holding to the faith with more passion, in many cases, than their elders, but that simply proves the point that the Holy Spirit is sufficient to the task. Our young people are faced with anti-Christian forces in ways that some of us never have been, but the Holy Spirit is able to strengthen them in the face of this opposition.

Believer, do you know that the Holy Spirit resides within you in order to help you not to fall away? He is the present voice that whispers in the darkest moments of your life, “Do not give up. Do not quit. Do not stop following. Do not stop believing. The Lord is with you. The Lord loves you. The Lord will see you through.”

II. The Holy Spirit Challenges the World Through the Church (v.7-11)

Like the giant whale coming up beneath the trainer in order to catapult him heavenward, so the Holy Spirit pours His power in and through us to encourage and equip us. Just as this watery marvel causes the crowd the cheer, so too the watching world reacts to the transforming power of the Spirit. But here the analogy breaks down. It breaks down completely. For while we go to Sea World to see a neat trick that titillates us, the world looks upon the marvelous work of the Holy Spirit with anger and resentment. The world does not applaud the Holy Spirit, though the change the Spirit makes and seeks to make in our lives is no less dramatic than the effect of a giant sea creature upon a small man or woman. No, the world hates the work of the Spirit for what the work of the Spirit reveals bout the world.

⁷ Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.

Let us first note Jesus’ proclamation of the coming of the Spirit in the wake of His own ascension into Heaven as a desirable reality, an optimal situation in fact. We oftentimes think that it would have been better if we could have lived in the days of Jesus’ incarnation, if we could have walked with Him and fellowshiped with Him in the first century. Please recognize, however, that Jesus says this is not so. It is better, “it is to your advantage,” that the Lord ascend to Heaven where He intercedes for us at the right hand of the Father and that the Spirit comes to take up His residence within us. This is because the Holy Spirit represents a constant, internal, transforming, life-altering reality within the believer’s life. The Spirit resides within us, bringing all that the disciples saw in the life and teachings of Jesus into our own hearts and minds, altering us forever from the inside out.

Jesus then moves to the effects of the Spirit upon the world and the reaction of the world to the Spirit’s power:

⁸ And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: ⁹ concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; ¹⁰ concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; ¹¹ concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

The Holy Spirit moves up, changing the believer and, through the believer, challenging the world. He does so in three ways:

He convicts the world concerning sin.
He convicts the world concerning righteousness.
He convicts the world concerning judgment.

You will immediately notice the fundamental contrast between the Spirit’s effect on the church and the Spirit’s effect on the world. He strengthens the church and the church rejoices. He convicts the world and the world seethes.

As the Spirit draws the believer further and further into conformity with Christ, He necessarily draws the believer further and further away from the predominant world system: its assumptions, its worldview, its mindset, its behavior, its patterns. When this happens, the world is convicted concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Tragically, the world does not seem to be convicted unto repentance. Rather, it is convicted and shown the truth, but it continues to hate the truth.

This is a vital truth. It is vital because it reminds us that when the world hates us, it is actually hating the Holy Spirit within us. When the world feels threatened by us, it is really feeling threatened by the Holy Spirit within us. The world hates the artwork of the Holy Spirit and the the church is the canvas on which He paints.

The church represents a prophetic challenge to the world as it allows the Holy Spirit to shape it Godward. The Holy Spirit challenges and convicts the world.

III. The Holy Spirit Brings Glory to the Son by Revealing Divine Truth to the Church (v.12-15)

We have spoken thus far about the Spirit’s effect upon the believer and the world. In the final movement of the Spirit, we will not speak of His effect, but rather of His revelation and proclamation. Ultimately, what the Spirit does is bring glory to the Father and the Son.

¹² “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. ¹³ When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide[ii] you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ¹⁴ He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵ All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

The Spirit brings glory to the Father and Son when He declares divine truth to the believer. The Spirit proclaims glory when the Spirit brings revelation to the life of those who know Jesus. When the Spirit reveals divine truth to believers, He is revealing the deepest loving intentions of the Father and the Son: to redeem and strengthen a people.

The Holy Spirit brings glory to God as He teaches us and changes us and shapes us into the image of Jesus. That means that the Spirit brings glory to God not only through what He shows the believer, but also through the life of the believer as it is transformed through this divine revelation.

I have a friend who took on an Associate Pastor position in a large urban church after graduating from seminary. He worked for a pastor who was fond of clichés and cute quips. He and I used to laugh at these clichés in a rather self-righteous manner, I must confess. Truth be told, some of the little sayings really were cringe-inducing even if theologically sound.

For instance, one of these little sayings that his pastor would voice from the pulpit really stands out. His pastor would say this: “Church, let’s be an earthly ad for the Heavenly Dad!”

Now, I do not really like that much, though my reasons are probably pretty subjective. I think it is a bit too cutesy and a bit too trite. But allow me to stop being a snob for a moment and extol the virtues of this tacky little saying.

“Be an earthly ad for the Heavenly Dad” is not something I would say, but there is a profound truth in it. As the Holy Spirit works within us, changing us and transforming us and conforming us into the image of Christ, we do indeed become an earthly advertisement for the glory and beauty and grandeur of our Heavenly Father. The movement of the Spirit works upward through the believer, in the face of the watching world, for the glory of God. This means that we have the distinct and high privilege of getting to say something about God through the way we live.

That fact raises an interesting question: what kind of ad is your life for the Lord God? Have you given yourself over to the transformative and changing power of the Spirit? What does your life say about Jesus and the Father? Does your life reveal that the Spirit of God has control of who you are and is working His work within and through you? Or does your life reveal that you are keeping the Holy Spirit at arms length, not allowing Him to move within and out of you?

Let the Spirit have His way. Do not hinder His great upward motion to the glory of God.

^{^[i]} John MacArthur, John 12-21. The MacArthur New Testament Commentary. (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2008), p.188.

John 15:18-27

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Wyman

John 15:18-27

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. ¹⁹ If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. ²¹ But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. ²² If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. ²³ Whoever hates me hates my Father also. ²⁴If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. ²⁵ But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’ ²⁶ “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. ²⁷ And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.

My friend Calvin Miller once went to speak at a chapel service at Columbia International University, a Christian school and seminary. Down one of the long hallways on the campus there were a number of framed pictures of people. Dr. Miller asked his guide, a student, who the people in the pictures were. The student replied, “All of these people are former students who were killed somewhere in the world for the cause of Christ.”

In telling me this story, Dr. Miller added that at the seminary he was affiliated with at that time the only framed pictures were those of the Presidents of the school. He said, “We frame our Presidents. They frame their martyrs.”

A friend of Shane Clairborne’s once told him, “Our problem is that we no longer have martyrs. We only have celebrities.”[1]

Suffering for the faith, or even dying for the faith (what we call martyrdom) has been a part of Christian experience from the beginning. Tertullian, the 2^nd century African church father, famously said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

We recognize this, especially as a fact of history, but I do wonder if we sufficiently appreciate the fact that there are people who have given their lives for Jesus Christ all throughout the world for two thousand years now? Furthermore, I wonder if we realize and properly appreciate how often people are suffering for the gospel of Jesus in our very own day? The age of the martyrs has not ended. In fact, many suggest that there are more martyrs for the faith today than there ever have been in any other era of Christian history. I wonder if we sufficiently appreciate the honor and sacrifice of martyrdom for Jesus.

For instance, I once pastored a church where I made a very serious mistake. I forgot to acknowledge Veterans Day. Now, I did not do so on purpose. I think we should acknowledge and applaud our veterans. It was simply a mistake, an oversight in the midst of a busy Sunday.

The next Sunday an elderly man in our church, a veteran, was waiting to speak to me. He was visibly moved with anger. He said to me, “I did not think I would ever live to see the day around here when we failed to acknowledge our veterans on Veterans Day.”

Perhaps it was pettiness on my part, or perhaps just irritation at the confrontation and what I took to be an insinuation that I had done so on purpose, but I responded, “You are right. I did fail to honor our veterans. It was an oversight which I regret and for which I apologize.” Then I added, “But you know what I think we should do one of these days in church? I think we should honor our martyrs for the faith. My whole life I’ve seen the church recognize, rightly, those who have served and risked and given their lives for our national freedom. But I wish we would grieve over the oversight of not honoring our Christian martyrs with just as much passion.”

He responded, “Well, maybe so.”

I think we should. We should honor our martyrs and those who suffer for the faith. But there is a lot more to this issue of suffering than our failure to acknowledge and properly appreciate the price that other believers have paid and are paying for the faith. In particular I mean we have not appreciated the inevitability of suffering and persecution and possibly even martyrdom when and if we truly decide to follow Jesus in our own lives.

The simple truth of the matter is that Jesus foretold the opposition of the world against the church as a matter of fact. While Jesus never said that every Christian will be killed, or that every Christian will suffer in the exact same way and to the exact same degree, He nevertheless prophesied the opposition of the world against His people as a standing principle of reality. In truth, He did so clearly, and with such force and reasoning, that we may rightly wonder what it means that so many of us never seem to suffer for the sake of the gospel at all.

I. The World Hates the Church Because the Church is the Presence of Christ in the World (v.18, 20-25)

I would like us to consider, first, Jesus’ words in John 15:18, then follow the train of thought from v.20 through v.25.

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.

Notice that Jesus immediately creates a link and a corollary between His church and Himself. When the church receives the hatred of the world, it should immediately remember the hatred that the world had and has for Jesus Himself. He continues this train of thought in v.20 and following:

²⁰ Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. ²¹But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. ²² If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. ²³ Whoever hates me hates my Father also. ²⁴ If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. ²⁵ But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’

The thought is clear and profound: if the world hates Jesus, then, by extension, the world will hate those who are like Jesus and who follow Jesus. Since the church is the body of Christ that carries on the life of Christ in the world, the hatred of the world against the church is to be expected and is natural. To use the image from the beginning of John 15, if the world hates the vine, will it not also hate the branches attached to the vine that bear the fruit of the vine?

Or, we might put it like this, using the model of , “If A=B and B=C then A=C”:

The world hates Jesus.

Jesus’ presence in the world today continues in His church.

The world will hate the church today.

The Lord Jesus does not make this truth conditional upon geography or time. He offers it as a timeless, transnational, transethnic, rock-solid truth: to be Jesus to the world is to invite the hatred that Jesus received from the world. This is as much the case in North Little Rock, AR, as it was in first century Jerusalem, even though many, then as now, seek to deny that suffering is a part of the Christian life.

For instance, itinerant speaker Richard Owen Roberts once preached on 2 Timothy 3:12. It is a crucial verse, and one I would like for us to note this morning. In that verse, Paul says:

“Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”

Roberts spoke on this verse and on the reality that all who seek to follow Jesus will suffer. Afterward, a man came to him protesting the point. “You were wrong on that point,” he said. “It’s not true that everyone who lives a godly life will suffer persecution. I’m the city attorney, and nobody persecutes the city attorney.”

“Allow me to offer you a syllogism,” Mr. Roberts replied.

“Major premise: All who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.

Minor premise: The city attorney suffers no persecution.

Conclusion: The city lawyer does not want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus.

It is a painful truth, and a crucial one. If Satan opposes Jesus, always and everywhere, will he not oppose those who live the life of Jesus, always and everywhere? R. Kent Hughes put it bluntly: “A Christian who follows Christ mustexpect to be hated. (The form of the Greek word in verse 18 suggests certainty: “you will be hated.”)”[2]

II. The World Hates the Church Because the Church is a Prophetic Challenge to the World from within the World (v.19)

What is more, the hatred of the world is directed at the church for the exact same reason that the hatred of the world was directed at Jesus: Jesus challenged prophetically the very assumptions and foundations of the world order. Jesus’ mere existence, not to mention His incendiary message, was a threat to the world’s comfort and security. Jesus spoke of this reality in terms of being “in” the world but not “of” the world.

¹⁹ If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

The church is therefore in the world, but not of the world. It is not of the world because it is of another world, another Kingdom. It represents, then, the foreign interests of a foreign Kingdom within the fallen world. As a result, the world hates the body of Christ because the world is diametrically opposed to the Kingdom that the church represents: the Kingdom of God.

The world hates the church when the church is faithful to Jesus because when the church is faithful to Jesus she holds up the same painful mirror to the world that Jesus held up to the world. The world wants to live in blissful ignorance of God. When the Kingdom of God is brought into the world, it removes the world’s excuse of ignorance and challenges it from the inside.

R. Kent Hughes has passed on a fascinating story that helpfully illustrates why the world hates the prophetic witness of the church:

Once an African chief, in this case a woman, happened to visit a mission station. Hanging outside the missionary’s cabin, on a tree, was a little mirror. The chief happened to look into the mirror and saw her reflection, with its hideous paint and evil features. She gazed at her own terrifying countenance and jumped back in horror exclaiming, “Who is that horrible-looking person inside that tree?” “Oh,” the missionary said, “it is not in the tree. The glass is reflecting your own face.” The African would not believe it until she held the mirror in her hand. She said, “I must have the glass. How much will you sell it for?” “Oh,” the missionary said, “I don’t want to sell it.” But she begged until he capitulated. She took the mirror. Exclaiming, “I will never have it making faces at me again,” she threw it down and broke it to pieces.

Do you see? The church is the mirror that God uses to reveal to the world its fallen state. This does not mean that the church’s primary mission is to point out fault. It simply means that the church, by definition, by its very nature, represents the life of Jesus and His gospel. As it does so, it inevitably reveals the fallen nature of the world by proclaiming a message that contradicts the world’s message and by offering a contrast in the way we live to the dominant way of life in the world.

When the gospel uncovers the fallenness of the world, the world in turn hates the messengers of that gospel. They seek to smash the mirror that reveals its distance from God. They hate the church because they hate the Jesus they see in the church.

What this means, then, is that the church does not have to seek the hatred of the world. It is wrong, in fact, to manufacture suffering, to seek to invite it through deliberate means. For instance, in a telling scene from Dostoesvky’sCrime and Punishment, Porfiry Petrovitch describes to Rodion Romanovitch how some Russian prisoners, especially Christians, invite and seek after suffering:

“Do you know, Rodion Romanovitch, the force of the word ‘suffering’ among some of these people! It’s not a question of suffering for some one’s benefit, but simply, ‘one must suffer.’ If they suffer at the hands of the authorities, so much the better. In my time there was a very meek and mild prisoner who spent a whole year in prison always reading his Bible on the stove at night and he read himself crazy, and so crazy, do you know, that one day, apropos of nothing, he seized a brick and flung it at the governor, though he had done him no harm. And the way he threw it too: aimed it a yard on one side on purpose, for fear of hurting him. Well, we know what happens to a prisoner who assaults an officer with a weapon. So ‘he took his suffering.’”[3]

This is wrong. To manufacture suffering is a kind of pride, like the “Cult of the Martyrs” who used to charge into battle so that they could throw themselves onto the swords of the opposing armies and embrace martyrdom.

No, we do not rush to suffering, we do not seek it, we do not desire it and we will not manufacture it. But the words of Jesus are clear and true: when the church is faithful to Jesus it will receive the same opposition that Jesus received from the world.

At this point, let us raise a very uncomfortable but obvious and crucial Christian: if the church will suffer when the church is faithful to the Lord who suffers, what does it mean when the church does not suffer? To be sure, not all absence of suffering for a season means unfaithfulness. The Lord is faithful to grant seasons of peace and we praise Him for it! But when a church can look over a long history and see that it has never paid a price for following Jesus, does it not raise the question of whether or not that church is really following Jesus at all?

Is this not the reason why we do not quite know what to make of biblical passages that speak of suffering? John Piper has passed on a helpful story from the life of Brother Andrew:

[Some] years ago in Ermelo, Holland, Brother Andrew told the story of sitting in Budapest, Hungary, with a dozen pastors of that city teaching them from the Bible. In walked an old friend, a pastor from Romania who had recently been released from prison. Brother Andrew said that he stopped teaching and knew that it was time to listen.

After a long pause the Romanian pastor said, “Andrew, are there any pastors in prison in Holland?” “No,” he replied. “Why not?” the pastor asked. Brother Andrew thought for a moment and said, “I think it must be because we do not take advantage of all the opportunities God gives us.”

Then came the most difficult question. “Andrew, what do you do with 2 Timothy 3:12 [“Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”]?” Brother Andrew opened his Bible and turned to the text and read aloud, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” He closed the Bible slowly and said, “Brother, please forgive me. We do nothing with that verse.”[4]

Perhaps we do not know what to do with verses like this either. Perhaps we do not know what to do because suffering for the gospel is so far from our actual experience as to make it an utterly foreign concept. Perhaps it is this far from our experience because we are far from the gospel that invites suffering. And perhaps we are far from the gospel that invites suffering precisely because we are so close to the wealth and comforts that shield us from the gospel.

Is it not possible that the greatest coup the devil ever hoisted upon the church was the coup of wealth and comfort? We have become adept at shielding ourselves from suffering. In fact, you might could say that our entire culture is predicated upon a mad and frenzied rush to shield ourselves from suffering. When this kind of mentality seeps into the church, it manifests not in a rejection of the gospel, but rather in a dulling of the sharp edges of the gospel.

So we convince ourselves that we believe, but we shield ourselves from the inevitable results of true belief. We convince ourselves we are following, but we do not follow into those areas that would require of us a price.

The church will be hated when the church is faithful. A church that is never hated is a church that is not being faithful. The great New Testament Greek scholar A.T. Robertson reflected on our text this morning and asked, “Does the world hate us? If not, why not? Has the world become more Christian or Christians more worldly?”[5]

It is a great question.

III. The Church Must Remain Strengthened by the Spirit as It Bears Witness to Christ in the World (v.26-27)

What does this mean, then? Does it mean that the Christian life must be one of misery and pain? No. The inevitability of suffering is not the same thing as the inevitability of misery. In fact, one of the great and grand truths of the gospel is that Christ sustains us through suffering and in the midst of it. We are a people of great joy and of great hope. We are hated by the world, but we do not despair as a result.

This is why Jesus continues thus in vv.26-27:

²⁶ “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. ²⁷ And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.

Jesus points to the Holy Spirit to comfort the believers. In particular, He says:

· The Holy Spirit is coming.

· The Holy Spirit is our Helper.

· It is the Holy Spirit who will speak of Christ through the church.

What suffering the church faces, then, it never faces alone. The courageous message it proclaims that is hated by the world it never proclaims on its own strength.

The church is the vehicle through which God the Spirit points people to God the Father in the name of God the Son. What this means is clear:

To proclaim the gospel is an act of joyful worship.

To suffer for the gospel is an act of joyful worship.

To die for the gospel is the ultimate act of joyful worship.

The greatest act of worship we have is to lay down our lives for Jesus.

I conclude with a story that the late John Stott shared about Dr. Josif Ton, who Stott called “a follower of Jesus Christ, who has shown by his life and teaching that suffering – and even death – is an indispensable ingredient of Christian discipleship. ”

Josif Ton is a Romanian Christian leader, born in 1934, who became pastor of the Baptist Church in Oradea, which today is a world-famous Baptist center. After four years of his faithful pasturing, the curiosity of the authorities was around and he was arrested and interrogated. He was then given the opportunity to leave the country and settle in the United States, where he pursued doctoral studies and was awarded a doctorate by the Evangelical Faculty of Belgium. His research topic was “Suffering, Martyrdom and Rewards in Heaven,” which was later published as a book.

During the oppressive regime of Nicolae Ceaucescu, Josif Ton in one of his published sermons told how the authorities threatened to kill him. He responded: “Sir, your supreme weapon is killing. My supreme weapon is dying.”[6]

Let us embrace this as our great creed when the world hates us: “Sir, your supreme weapon is killing. My supreme weapon is dying.”

It is an honor to suffer for Jesus.

Follow Him in such a way that you attract the devil’s attention. Then cling to the victory you have over the devil in Christ.

[1] Shane Clairborne, The Irresistible Revolution. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), p.27.

[2] R. Kent Hughes, John.(Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), p.369.

[3] Fyodor Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment. (New York: The Modern Library, 1994), p. 522.

[4] John Piper, https://www.desiringgod.org/Resource Library/Sermons/ByDate/ 1992/ 804 _Called_to_Suffer_and_ Rejoice_For_Holiness_and_Hope/

[5] A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament. Vol.V(Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1932), p.262.

[6] John Stott, The Radical Disciple.(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010), p.126-127.

John 15:12-17

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Wyman

John 15:12-17

¹² “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. ¹⁷ These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

In his book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, Ron Sider tells a very interesting story about a man named Virgil Vogt and an encounter he had with a troubled man seeking help:

One day a man with a serious drinking problem dropped in to talk with Virgil Vogt, one of the elders of Reba Place Fellowship in Evanston, Illinois. When Virgil invited him to accept Christ and join the community of believers, the man insisted that he simply wanted money for a bus ticket to Cleveland.

“Okay,” Virgil agreed, “we can give you that kind of help too, if that’s all you really want.” He was quiet a moment, then he shook his head. “You know something?” he said, looking straight at the man. “You’ve just really let me off the hook. Because if you had chosen a new way of life in the kingdom of God, then as your brother I would have had to lay down my whole life for you. This house, my time, all my money, whatever you needed to meet your needs would have been totally at your disposal for the rest of your life. But all you want is some money for a bus ticket…”

The man was so startled he stood up and left, forgetting to take the money. But on Sunday he was back, this time sitting next to Virgil in the worship service.[1]

I find this story compelling because of Virgil Vogt’s claim that those seeking help can a find a kind of help and love within the church that they cannot find in the world.

I find this story troubling for the exact same reason.

It is compelling because what Virgil Vogt told the man is true. It is troubling because the truth of what he told the man carries with it a condemnation of the shallow relationships and lack of love we often find in the church.

The church of Jesus Christ should be a place where shocking, radical, incarnational love is modeled to the glory of God and the winning of the nations.

It should be.

It really should be.

The first mark of the believer is love. It is a love given by, defined by and modeled by Jesus Himself.

Last week we saw Jesus calling His followers to live in an organic relationship with Him just as a branch lives in an organic relationship with the vine to which it is attached. And this relationship will, Jesus said, result in fruit. We considered the fruits of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5 last week. This week I would like for us to consider Jesus’ continuation of His amazing discussion of the fruit-bearing branches. In particular, I would like for us to consider the ultimate fruit of the Christian life, which is love.

I. The Command to Love (v.12)

The Lord Jesus begins with a simple and straightforward command.

¹² “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

Notice, first, the audience to which Jesus commands love. They are His disciples. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” This is spoken to His disciples, to believers in Jesus Christ. This is spoken, therefore, to the church.

This means that the church should possess and model a kind of love that neither believers nor the world can find anywhere else. This is so, as we will see in a moment, because of the example of love we have been given. But, for right now, please notice that this is so because of a command from Jesus.

You are commanded by your Savior to love fellow Christians.

I repeat: You are commanded by your Savior to love fellow Christians.

Let me anticipate two questions you might be asking at this point.

1. Does this mean that we are only to love Christians?

2. Is love really love if it is commanded?

To the first question, no, the command to love fellow Christians does not mean that we love Christians exclusively or only. For instance, in the most beloved verse in all of Scripture, John 3:16, we find:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

God does not limit His love only to His people. Neither did the Apostle Paul. In the beginning of Romans 9, Paul speaks of his love for his non-believing fellow Hebrews in a way that is powerful and convicting:

¹ I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— ² that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. ³ For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. ⁴ They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. ⁵ To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

While Paul does not use the word “love” in that passage, it runs all throughout. If that is not love – a willingness to take on damnation for the sake of another’s salvation (were it possible to do so) – then I do not know what is.

So, no, the fact that Jesus commands His disciples to love one another does not mean that He is telling us not to love lost people. Far from it! But, as we will see, there is a unique quality to the love between believers that cannot be experienced until one steps into the fellowship of faith.

To the second question – “Is love really loved if it is commanded?” – I want to acknowledge that that is a reasonable and good question to ask. We are unaccustomed to think of love as a commandment, but consider the following:

· The fact that love is commanded does not mean that this love should not be sincere.

· There are times when love must begin with the commandment and then grow into sincere love. The commandment, then, may be viewed as prodding for us to take the initial step towards something that God will cause to take root within us as we obey.

· I do not mean this in jest (though it may sound like it), but there are likely people in the body of Christ that you would not love were you not commanded to do so.

· The command to love removes our hiding places, strips us of our excuses not to love and leaves us with no option but to love! Jesus commands His church to love one another because it is so fundamentally vital to the very essence of our relationship with Him and our mission as His body that He does not want us even to entertain the possibility of claiming to be a disciple without walking in love.

We are commanded to love every believer in Jesus Christ. This means that the refusal to love your brother or sister in Christ is nothing short of high treason against our King. The refusal to love is an act of disobedience.

J. Brown said the following about the necessity for Christian love:

“Every poor and distressed man had a claim on me for pity, and, if I can afford it, for active exertion and pecuniary relief. But a poor Christian has a far stronger claim on my feelings, my labors, and my property. He is my brother, equally interested as myself in the blood and love of the Redeemer. I expect to spend an eternity with him in heaven. He is the representative of my unseen Savior, and he considers everything done to his poor afflicted as done to himself. For a Christian to be unkind to a Christian is not only wrong, it is monstrous.[2]

It is monstrous…and it is disobedience…and it is sin.

Can you think now of fellow believers you do not genuinely love? Are you willing to love that person? Are you willing even to entertain the notion of loving that person?

You are commanded to love one another.

II. The Example of Love (v.13)

Thankfully, this command is not issued in a vacuum or as an arbitrary and unrealistic command. Joined with the command to love is a startling example of love. Jesus says:

¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

Jesus will never command what He does not demonstrate. He calls us to love one another, and He does so on the basis of the great love He showed for us on the cross. And what is this great love Christ has shown? It is this:

He has laid down His life for His friends.

The cross is the greatest expression of love the world has ever seen.

Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” This actually is not the first time that Jesus uses this image. In John 10:11, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

Jesus calls us to that which He does. It is as if He says, “I command you to love one another. But I do not command you to do something I myself will not do. In fact, I will show you the greatest expression of love on earth: I will lay down my life for you. If I will lay down my life in love for you, can you not do lesser acts of love for one another?”

Jesus has set the standard. Jesus has raised the bar. Jesus has demonstrated the love that is willing to die for another.

It is on this basis and in this context that we are called to love. We love each other because we all stand in the face of the shocking love of the cross.

In Romans 12, Paul gives a very moving description of what our lives together should be like:

⁹ Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. ¹⁰ Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. ¹¹ Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. ¹² Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. ¹³Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. ¹⁴ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵ Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. ¹⁶Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. ¹⁷ Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. ¹⁸ If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. ¹⁹ Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” ²⁰ To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” ²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

My immediate response to this? How? How can we love one another like this: with genuine love, with affection, with love that honors, with zealous love, with fervent love, with love that rejoices, with patient love, with constant love, with hospitable love, with forgiving love, with harmonious love, with humble love, with love that turns the other cheek, with peaceable love and with victorious love?

How can we do this? How can we love one another like this?

Jesus tells us how: by looking at and living in the shadow of his cross, by considering the staggering love shown to us and for us on the cross of Calvary.

You can love one another because He was crucified.

You can nail your bitterness and resentment to the cross because He was nailed to the cross for us. You can open your heart to love precisely because He opened His body to be crucified for us.

III. The Basis for Christian Love (v.14-17)

But there’s even more. His example of love on the cross is not merely there for us to observe. As a matter fact, on the basis of His demonstration of love, we are called into a relationship with the crucified-and-resurrected Jesus. Consider:

¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. ¹⁷ These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

We can love one another, then, not only because Jesus has offered us an amazing example, but more so because the example He set is the means through which we are brought into a relationship with Him as friends. If we know anything at all about friends, we know that friends affect one another for good and for bad. The nature of true friendship is reciprocal. We are therefore affected by the characters of those with whom we become friends.

When it comes to Jesus, friendship with Jesus means that His unbelievable, incarnational love – the love that He demonstrated on the cross – should “rub off on us,” so to speak. As we walk with our friend Jesus, we become more like Him. He influences our behavior with His…and His behavior was exemplified on the cross.

We love one another because we are friends with the Savior who loves. This means that the closer we walk with Jesus, the more natural this kind of love will feel. The further we move away from Jesus, the more unnatural this kind of love will feel.

I think one of the greatest examples of this truth came from St. Dorotheos of Gaza, from the 6^th/7^th century. St. Dorotheos depicted the Christian life using the image of a circle, a center, and rays moving either out from or into the center.

This is what he wrote:

Imagine a circle with its centre and radii or rays going out from this centre. The further these radii are from the centre the more widely are they dispersed and separated from one another; and conversely, the closer they come to the centre, the closer they are to one another. Suppose now that this circle is the world, the very centre of the circle, God, and the lines (radii) going from the centre to the circumference or from the circumference to the centre are the paths of men’s lives. Then here we see the same. Insofar as the saints move inwards within the circle towards its centre, wishing to come near to God, then, in the degree of their penetration, they come closer both to God and to one another; moreover, inasmuch as they come nearer to God, they come nearer to one another, and inasmuch as they come nearer to one another, they come nearer to God. It is the same with drawing away. When they draw away from God and turn toward external things, it is clear that in the degree that they recede from the central point and draw away from God, they withdraw from one another, and as they withdraw from one another, so they draw away from God. Such is also the property of love; inasmuch as we are outside and do not love God, so each is far from his neighbour. But if we love God, inasmuch as we come near to Him by love of Him, so we become united by love with our neighbours, and inasmuch as we are united with our neighbours, so we become united with God.[3]

What a beautiful and helpful image this is. Let me ask you to consider this image and place yourself within it.

Right now, where are you in relation to the center of all things, to the Lord God? Are you moving further away from the center or further into it. If you are moving further away from God, if, that is, you are not walking with Him and abiding in Him, do you not find that you find people harder to love? And if you are moving further into the center, do you not find that people are easier to love?

Now the church lives when all of the rays move into the center, becoming one, as opposed to moving out of the center, becoming many, becoming further from the center and becoming further from the other pilgrims on the journey.

The Lord Jesus has called us to love…deeply…profoundly…sincerely…radically…wondrously….and with all honor and glory to the Father.

The Lord Jesus has called us to love because the Lord Jesus has loved, because the Lord Jesus loves, because the Lord Jesus is love.

We will not live as a church until we love. We will not know the joy of the gospel of Jesus until we love. We will not see the church alive until we love.

Do you know the love of Jesus? If not, come to Him now and accept His love.

Do you know the love of Jesus? If you do but you have not been walking in it, return now to the love of the Lord.

[1] Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.(Dallas, TX: Word Publishing, 1997), p.209-210.

[2] Quoted in Timothy George, Galatians. The New American Commentary, vol.30 (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1994), p.425.

[3]https://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=15-05-030-f

John 15:1-11

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Wyman

John 15:1-11

¹ “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. ² Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. ³ Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. ⁴Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. ⁵ I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. ⁷ If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸ By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. ⁹ As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹ These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

A number of years ago Mark Noll wrote a very important book entitled The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. In that book, Noll argued that evangelical Christians are failing to value the mind properly and, as a result, are not thinking as well as we should. It was a troubling book and made a number of very important points. Even more troubling was a more recent book by Ron Sider that played off of Noll’s title. Sider entitled his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience. Mark Noll’s basic thesis was that Christians are not thinking well. Ron Sider’s basic thesis was the Christians are not living well.

In an interview about the book with Christianity Today, Sider said:

“The heart of the matter is the scandalous failure to live what we preach. The tragedy is that poll after poll by Gallup and Barna show that evangelicals live just like the world. Contrast that with what the New Testament says about what happens when people come to living faith in Christ. There’s supposed to be radical transformation in the power of the Holy Spirit. The disconnect between our biblical beliefs and our practice is just, I think, heart-rending.”

Sider went on to say that poll after poll demonstrates very little difference between Evangelical Christians and non-Christians in areas of divorce, pornography consumption and adultery. He points to John Green’s research and notes that “about a third of all evangelicals say that premarital sex is okay. And about 15 percent say that adultery is okay.” He also pointed to a Gallup poll which asked Christians of various denominations this question: “Do you object if a black neighbor moves in next door?” The responses showed that Catholics and non-Evangelicals had the least objection. Guess who had the greatest objections: Evangelicals and Southern Baptists.

On the issue of abuse, Sider said:

“Several studies find that physical and sexual abuse in theologically conservative homes is about the same as elsewhere. A large study of the Christian Reformed Church, a member of the nae, discovered that the frequency of physical and sexual abuse in this evangelical denomination was about the same as in the general population. One recent study, though, suggests that evangelical men who attend church regularly are less likely than the general population to commit domestic violence.”[1]

Sider is not the first person to point to the bad fruit so many Christians produce. In his wonderful book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, Philip Yancey wrote that while “Christians profess ‘family values’…some studies show that they rent X-rated videos, divorce their spouses, and abuse their children at about the same rate as everybody else.”[2]

Furthermore, in Dallas Willard’s poignant book, The Great Omission, he writes:

“We have counted on preaching, teaching, and knowledge or information to form faith in the hearer and have counted on faith to form the inner life and outward behavior of the Christian. But, for whatever reason, this strategy has not turned out well. The result is that we have multitudes of professing Christians who well may be ready to die but obviously are not ready to live, and can hardly get along with themselves, much less with others.

Most statistical measures and anecdotal portraits of evangelical Christians, not to mention Christians in general, show a remarkable similarity in the life-texture of Christians and non-Christians.”[3]

Heartbreaking: “The result is that have multitudes of professing Christians who well may be ready to die but obviously are not ready to live…”

That stings me. It stings me because when I step back and look at my life I guess I have often thought of Christianity in terms of its benefits after death and not in terms of its benefits in life. In fact, to generalize, maybe unfairly but not completely so, I think we Southern Baptists are bad at doing this. We speak of the gospel as if all Jesus came to do was help us to get ready to die. But we know that is not the case.

In fact, when Jesus spoke of the Christian life, he spoke of in terms of a vine bearing fruit. The image of the vine was a very popular and frequently used image in the ancient world because, as Craig Keener has pointed out, “the only fruit trees widely planted were the fig, olive, and vine, which could resist drought.”[4]

It was a popular image among the Jews in particular because of its status as a national symbol. The vine was frequently used to speak of the nation of Israel. For instance, in Psalm 80, the Psalmist writes:

¹ Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel,
you who lead Joseph like a flock.
You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth.
² Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh,
stir up your might
and come to save us!

³ Restore us, O God;
let your face shine, that we may be saved!

⁴ O LORD God of hosts,
how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers?
⁵ You have fed them with the bread of tears
and given them tears to drink in full measure.
⁶ You make us an object of contention for our neighbors,
and our enemies laugh among themselves.

⁷ Restore us, O God of hosts;
let your face shine, that we may be saved!

⁸ You brought a vine out of Egypt;
you drove out the nations and planted it.
⁹ You cleared the ground for it;
it took deep root and filled the land.
¹⁰ The mountains were covered with its shade,
the mighty cedars with its branches.
¹¹ It sent out its branches to the sea
and its shoots to the River.
¹² Why then have you broken down its walls,
so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?
¹³ The boar from the forest ravages it,
and all that move in the field feed on it.

¹⁴ Turn again, O God of hosts!
Look down from heaven, and see;
have regard for this vine,
¹⁵ the stock that your right hand planted,
and for the son whom you made strong for yourself.
¹⁶ They have burned it with fire; they have cut it down;
may they perish at the rebuke of your face!
¹⁷ But let your hand be on the man of your right hand,
the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself!
¹⁸ Then we shall not turn back from you;
give us life, and we will call upon your name!

¹⁹ Restore us, O LORD God of hosts!
Let your face shine, that we may be saved!

This image of the vine bearing fruit was therefore a sacred and treasured image that spoke of Israel’s past deliverance out of Egypt, its present standing before God and its future hope. R. Kent Hughes has explained:

The grapevine was a symbol of national life. That emblem appeared on coins minted during the Maccabean period, their regard for it resembling our regard for stars and stripes. So precious was the symbol to the Jews that a huge, gold grapevine decorated the gates of the temple. The famous ole Calmets’ Dictionary says:

In the temple at Jerusalem, above and around the gate, seventy cubits high, which led from the porch to the holy place, a richly carved vine was extended as a border and decoration. The branches, tendrils and leaves were of finest gold; the stalks of the bunches were of the length of the human form, and the bunches hanging upon them were of costly jewels. Herod first placed it there; rich and patriotic Jews from time to time added to its embellishment, one contributed a new grape, another a leaf, and a third even a bunch of the same precious materials…this vine must have had an uncommon importance and a sacred meaning in the eyes of the Jews. With what majestic splendor must it likewise have appeared in the evening, when it was illuminated by tapers![5]

These cultural and contextual details add a dramatic element to this scene. Some have suggested that as Jesus spoke the words we find in John 15, he did so with the Temple as his physical backdrop. If this is so, it is possible that the disciples could see the carved vine and branches around the gate as he spoke.

We have no way of knowing whether Jesus literally stood in front of the Temple or not, but this much is sure: His proclamation of Himself as the true vine would have been taken by the Jews as a startling claim. When Jesus says, “I am the vine,” He is saying, in essence: “I am Israel. All of the hopes of Israel find their fruition in Me. All of the promises pointed to Me. All of the covenants were for Me. I am the true vine!”

So there is a powerful Messianic claim in the words of Jesus. There is also a powerful explanation in these words concerning our relationship with Jesus and our life in Christ. Let us consider what it means for us and Jesus that He spoke of Himself as “the vine.”

The Organic Design of our Life in Jesus (v.1-3)

Jesus begins with a straightforward pronouncement of a fascinating metaphor:

¹ “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. ^2a Every branch in me…

In v.1 and v.2a, Jesus lays out the three key figures in the Christian life and where each fits in the vine imagery:

· The vine = Jesus

· The vinedresser = The Father

· The vine branches = believers in Christ

God the Father, then, tends to the vine. God the Son is the life-giving vine. The believer is the branch through which the life-giving and fruit-producing power flows. Furthermore, though it is not explicitly stated here, John 15’s proximity to Jesus’ amazing Holy Spirit discourse in the latter half of John 14 makes it reasonably clear that God the Holy Spirit is the life-giving, fruit-producing power flowing from the Father, through the vine and into and through the branches.

Please notice that Jesus depicts the Christian life as an organic relationship. Meaning, the Christian life is not staid, inactive or sedentary. By its design, it is a living, relational reality.

It is very important that we hold on to this image and this metaphor. Sometimes we speak of the Christian life with a strong emphasis on the legal imagery. To be sure there is a legal reality in our salvation: the guilty sinner is declared right before God the Judge and the penalty for our crimes is paid by another. There is also strong familial image in scripture. Paul, for instance, says in Romans 8:15 that we “have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’”

The various images used in Scripture to communicate the reality of our salvation are all important, for they all bring to light certain important truths about what it means to be a believer. That being said, this image of the vine truly must be reclaimed in our day if we are to live the types of lives were called to live in Christ. This is because the vine image, perhaps more than any other, calls to our minds and our hearts the great truth that we were made to bear fruit. This organic relationship means, necessarily, that we should and must bear fruit.

Jesus continues:

^2bthat does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. ³ Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.

So crucial is the fruit we are called to bear that Jesus reveals two realities in our relationship with Him, both of which involve our fruitfulness:

· Non-fruit-bearing branches are taken away from the vine.

· Fruit-bearing branches are pruned back so they may bear even more fruit.

This is a daunting but necessary reality. Branches that do not bear fruit reveal that they are not a part of the vine. I believe it is best to see these branches as never having been part of the vine. They are imposter branches, dead branches, branches that had the appearance of union with the vine but never had the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit flowing through them.

It is absolutely essential at this point to ask yourself whether or not you have truly accepted Christ and come to Him in faith, whether or not you are joined to the vine in truth. Being close to the vine in proximity does not mean that you are joined to the vine in reality. Growing up around the vine does not mean you are part of the vine. Knowing a lot about the vine does not mean that you are joined to the vine. No, the true branches, those that are not taken away and cast into the fire, are those that exist in organic union with the vine and that, as a result, bear fruit.

Those that bear fruit are pruned. This means they are cut back so that they may bear even more fruit.

When I was a boy, we would go “to the country” to see our grandparents. Perhaps many of you say the same thing: “We are going to the country to see our grandparents.” Perhaps you are the grandparents in the country!

My paternal grandparents lived in a small house, though I certainly did not know it at the time. It was a wonderful place to visit and I relished my time there. I recall two things about the yard: a large pear tree that we used to climb and a grape vine.

Now, my whole life that vine was huge. I do not really recall ever getting grapes off of it, though I’m sure there were grapes to be had. It always seemed fairly overgrown, a large tangle of branches and vines that stretched up the posts and across the crawlers in one, big, tangled mess.

Well, the old house is gone now. It has been torn down. My grandparents are both with the Lord and I miss them dearly. My dad now has a little workplace there on the old lot where he builds doghouses and picnic tables on the side. His only sister, my Aunt Judy, leaves on the adjoining property behind their parents lot. The country has now become his place to relax and get away.

The last time we were home we drove out to the country. The pear tree is now gone. As for the vine, I was startled by what I saw when I looked at it. It looked gone. It looked decimated. The big, tangled vine that I recalled from my youth had been stripped back. Now there was just one or two little vines crawling along a wire.

I asked my dad about this recently. He explained to me that the vine had not been pruned in so long that it had grown out of control. Yes, it was smaller, he explained, but it could now breathe and it was now healthier. He told me, to my amazement, that this little vine was producing more fruit than the big vine that I recalled ever produced.

He also told me that when he went to prune the vine, he pulled masses of tangled branches out and burned them. Then he cut the overgrown vine way back. He said for a moment he was afraid he might kill it, but that a friend who knew how to work vines had encouraged him to continue the work because it was necessary for the health of the vine.

Friends, Jesus prunes the fruitful vines so that they might bear more fruit. To be sure, this is a pretty scary process for the vine! Perhaps vines initially resent the pruning. Perhaps they question why the vinedresser would treat them thus. But soon they realize (if you’ll allow the image) that the vinedresser never prunes except in love and care and anticipation of a greater yield of grapes.

God prunes because God loves. God prunes because God cares. God prunes because God wants you to know the joy of a greater yield.

Do not begrudge the pruning hand of God. Do not resist His pruning.

Could it be that we often complain about realities in our lives, begging God to take this or that painful reality away from us, without realizing that it is through these circumstances that God prunes the branches? Is it not possible that we might miss the blessing of more and better fruit because we are too busy complaining against the God who prunes us so that we might produce this fruit?

Jesus is the vine. We are the branches. The Father tends the vine. What He does He does only for the health of the vine and the fruit of the branches.

This is the organic reality of our relationship with Jesus.

The Fruitful Intent of our Life in Jesus (v.4-7)

We were made to bear fruit. It is the intent of the Father that we bear fruit by abiding in the Son. Jesus continues:

⁴ Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. ⁵ I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. ⁷ If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

Jesus introduces a new word into this fascinating picture: “abide.” We bear fruit as we abide in Christ, as we live in Him, as we draw nourishment and sustenance from Him. You can bear fruit in no other way.

I ask you: are you abiding in Christ?

Oftentimes people complain about a lack of success in their Christian lives. “I do not have any joy. I do not have any victory. I do not have any peace.”

Then you ask, “Are you abiding in Christ?”

Oftentimes people will reveal that, in point of fact, they are not. They are not walking with Jesus in daily prayer. They are not consistently nourishing themselves on His Word. They are not living out His teachings. They are not, in short,abiding.

Do not bemoan something that you have never really tried. Do not write off a truth you have never really walked in. Perhaps this is what G.K. Chesterton meant when he wrote that Christianity had not been “tried and found wanting, it had been found difficult and left untried.”

You were made to abide and, by abiding, to bear much fruit. What is this fruit? Perhaps the greatest expression of the fruit we are designed to bear can be found in Galatians 5.

²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. ²⁴ And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

What a beautiful list! I suspect all of us desire to bear this kind of fruit. The problem is we have failed to appreciate the reality of this great image. As a result, we come to Jesus for salvation then try to produce these virtues on our own. In other words, we externalize Jesus to such an extent that we do not abide in Him.

But “as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” (v.4) Do not expect fruit outside of abiding. Do not expect the presence of these great virtues outside of discipleship with Jesus.

Jesus did not come simply to punch your ticket. Jesus did not come simply to get you to Heaven. Jesus came to equip you, through abiding life in Him, to bear much fruit. You cannot do it otherwise.

The Glorious Result of our Life in Jesus (v.8-11)

When we abide and bear fruit, much happens.

⁸ By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. ⁹ As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

What are the results of fruit-producing abiding?

· God is glorified. (v.8a)

“By this my Father is glorified.” God gets the glory when you produce fruit. Jesus said the same in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5, Jesus said:

¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Fruit brings glory to God. As you abide in Christ and the Holy Spirit brings forth fruit, the watching world marvels and God gets the glory.

· Our relationship with Jesus is proven. (v.8b)

Jesus has called us to “bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” Do you wonder about your relationship with Jesus? Do you have doubts whether or not you are saved? Do you question your love for Him or His love for you?

Abide in Christ consistently, walk in His ways, bear much fruit, and you will be strengthened in your understanding of who you are in Christ. Fruit not only blesses those around you, it blesses you as it proves your relationship with Jesus.

· We receive the joy of Jesus. (v.11a)

The next result of abiding in Christ is as surprising as it is wonderful: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you.” Before we consider the second part of that sentence, let us marvel at the first: Christ was joyful. He was the joyful Christ, and we may be sure that the joy of Jesus was just as complete and perfect as all of His other attributes.

But then the second part: that joy is given to us. Note that a non-abiding person cannot receive this joy. It is only when we abide in Christ that our hearts are opened to receive the joy that He longs to pour into them. We often speak of the “imputed righteousness of Christ,” the idea that Christ’s righteousness, which is alien to human beings who are by nature children of wrath, is imputed to us and reckoned to us when we receive Him. We receive, in other words, a righteousness we do not natively have. But should we not also speak of “the imputed joy of Christ”?

Christ’s joy is reckoned to us and given to us. It is alien to us. We do not, by nature, know anything like it. It is outside of us. When we are redeemed, however, it is given to us as a free gift. When we abide in Christ, we receive the joy of Jesus!

· Our joy is filled up and completed. (v.11b)

And there is a quantitative component to this joy: it fills us up to completion. Imagine the great joy of abiding in Christ! He pours His righteousness and joy and peace into us…we who do not deserve any of it!

Abiding in Christ is not, therefore, God’s way of working us for more. He is no slave master. No, it is God’s way of saving us, of transforming us from doom to hope, from despair to joy, from heartbreak to gladness.

Are you abiding in Christ?

Are you a branch of the vine?

Come to Jesus the Vine, this day, and let Him pour His joy into your life.

[1]https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/april/32.70.html?start=1

[2] Philip Yancey. What’s So Amazing About Grace. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), p.203.

[3] Dallas Willard, The Great Omission. (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2006), 69.

[4] Craig Keener, The Gospel of John. Vol.2 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), p.989.

[5] R. Kent Hughes, John. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), p.351-352.

The Modern Tragedy of the Shop-Keeping Pastor

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Wyman

I’m always trying as a pastor not to lose my soul, not to let the ministry morph into what it was not intended to be, not to take any dead-end exits off of the road to which pastors have been called as pilgrims and shepherds. The congregational realities that seek to woo pastors to this or that alternative preocuppation (alternative to the gospel) are various and sundry, and they are oftentimes not unimportant and not unnecessary. But they are not as important or as necessary as our primary calling: the preaching of God’s Word and the care of God’s people.

These words from Eugene Peterson’s book, Working the Angles, have longed haunted me. I just read them again and was struck once again by their poignant truthfulness:

“American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationery, and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.

A few of us are angry about it. We are angry because we have been deserted. Most of my colleagues who defined ministry for me, examined, ordained, and then installed me as a pastor in a congregation, a short while later walked off and left me, having, they said, more urgent things to do. The people I thought I would be working with disappeared when the work started. Being a pastor is difficult work; we want the companionship and counsel of allies. It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of people whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of pastoral work and find within ten minutes that they most definitely do not. They talk of images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not grist for their mills.

The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper’s concerns – how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.

Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists. “A walloping great congregation is fine, and fun,” says Martin Thornton, “but what most communities really need is a couple of good saints.”

So here’s to being a pastor and keeping the primacy of example, proclamation, edification and mission at the heart of our calling.

Psalm 139

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Wyman

Psalm 139

¹³ For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.

¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.

On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court handed down its infamous “Roe v. Wade” decision. That decision struck down a number of state anti-abortion laws, elevated the issue of abortion to the federal level and essentially made abortion legal in the first trimester anywhere in the United States. That was thirty-nine years ago today. As a result, especially for the last thirty-nine years in our country, the issue of abortion has been one of if not the most contentious, divisive social issues on the scene.

I suppose I personally have been interacting with the issue of abortion off-and-on for my whole life. My mother was cautioned against having a third child, being warned that it could be dangerous for her if she did. When she became pregnant with me, the doctor shared with her that he had a legal obligation to offer abortion to her as an option given that the pregnancy could be dangerous. She refused.

That was in 1974, a year and four months after Roe v. Wade. My wife was born in January of 1972, a year and two days before Roe v. Wade. She and I talk on occasion about the fact that she legally could not have been aborted in the first trimester and I legally could have. That’s how momentous the events of January 1973 were.

I remember as a student in high school when a teenage girl in our church became pregnant. Her father, a member of our church, was pressuring her to abort the child. I well remember the day when my parents informed my brothers and me that they had decided to offer to adopt the baby if she would refuse to abort the child.

Ultimately, she chose not to have an abortion, much to her father’s chagrine, and went on to raise her baby. But I’ll never forget my parents’ offer. It made quite an impact on me, especially as we were all in high school and would, in a matter of a few years, be out of the house.

In some way or other this issue has touched me as a pastor as well. I well recall, early in my ministry, my naivete concerning how widespread abortion was. I discovered the reality of the pervasiveness of abortion early on after preaching a sermon against it only to find that, to keep it vague, it was a present and painful reality in our church. Coming face to face with abortion has happened all along the way of my pastorate. I have seen grieving faces repent over abortion and I’ve seen angry faces stay defiant on it. I do not think I’ve seen any faces that are indifferent on it.

Of course, none of this is unique. Abortion has touched every one of us in some way or another. It is a painful and touchy subject. Quite honestly, it makes you want to avoid the issue altogether, the way many of us avoid the issue in company where we’re not sure of a shared opinion.

In fact, I have once or twice talked myself out of this very sermon. Would you like to know why? Well, honestly, it’s because things are going pretty well. We’re growing, there’s peace in the family and I have no desire to threaten peace. Furthermore, I am not a political preacher. That’s not because of cowardice. That’s because of priorities. I don’t endorse politicians and I would oppose anybody endorsing any politician from our pulpit. That’s because I believe the only thing we should endorse from our pulpit is Jesus and His gospel.

And yet, we all somehow know that the issue of abortion isn’t just a political issue, don’t we? Somehow we know it’s also an ethical issue, a moral issue, a spiritual issue. After all, we’re talking not just about a legal reality, we’re talking about the very definition of life…and that is a very biblical kind of topic.

I’m tempted by another way out too: the ugly way that some people oppose abortion. First of all, there are, tragically, extremists who, in the name of “Pro-Life,” actually murder doctors. Well, that seems very wrong to me and also hypocritical. And then there’s the whole stereotype of the red-faced, screaming, attacking Southern Baptist preacher who bears down on some terrified young woman at her wits’ end. I don’t feel like that and I don’t want to be that.

The greatest temptation for avoidance is also the most awkward reality: the almost certain-fact that some of you have been directly touched by this. I have no desire to drag up old sins that have been repented of and are covered by the blood of the Lamb and make somebody feel terrible. On the other hand, I have no desire to be silent on sins therefore paving the way for somebody else to commit them.

It’s all very difficult…but only to a degree. For against all of those reasons not to preach on abortion, there’s one compelling reason to preach on it: the church of Jesus Christ commits treason against her Lord if she does not speak prophetically against crimes that dishonor Him, that take human life and that wound those who commit them. In other words, I do not exaggerate when I say I think that we simply must speak.

But how? How should we speak about abortion? On an issue which seems to generate much more heat than light, on an issue that is so polarizing, so emotional, so divisive and so painful, I believe what we desperately need right now is a clear, simple, straightforward examination of what Scripture says concerning God, concerning creation and concerning God’s creation in the womb. So this will be my intent: to examine what, if anything, God’s Word might say about this issue.

I. God’s Sovereignty Extends to the Womb

Let us begin with the most fundamental question: does God’s authority and rule, God’s sovereignty, extend to the act of procreation and to the inner workings of the womb? Here we find ample evidence in the affirmative. The Bible is crystal clear: God’s sovereignty extends to the womb. Let us consider three ways in which it does.

· God Opens Wombs

Scripture is abundantly clear that God is the God who has the authority to open the womb and that all life in the womb must be attributed to His greatness. For instance, in Psalm 17, the psalmist asks God to protect him from wicked men. In the process, he notes that even the wombs of the wicked are filled by God:

¹³ Arise, O LORD! Confront him, subdue him!
Deliver my soul from the wicked by your sword,
¹⁴ from men by your hand, O LORD,
from men of the world whose portion is in this life.
You fill their womb with treasure;
they are satisfied with children,
and they leave their abundance to their infants.

Notice that the filling of wombs with treasure is not an impersonal act of nature. It is rather an act of God. To be sure, there is a natural process, but let us remember that Christianity is not deism. God does not wind the world up like a clock then stand back in dispassionate observation. There is no conflict between natural processes and the sovereign hand of God. Nature, of course, is not God. Nature is fallen and awaits its own redemption when the Lord restores a new Heaven and a new earth. But God is present and work in the cycles and “laws” of nature and is the Lord of Heaven and Earth. Procreation, therefore, is no mere act of nature. It is an act of God, for the just and the unjust.

· God Closes Wombs

In Genesis 20, after Abimelech, King of Gerar, took Sarah, Abraham’s wife, into his household (after being told that Sarah was Abraham’s sister), God struck all of the wombs of Abimelech’s house shut. Then we read this:

¹⁷ Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. ¹⁸ For the LORD had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

God closes and opens wombs. And this is but one of many biblical examples of this truth. The Lord is the Lord of the womb and He opens and closes it.

· God Knows and Commissions Us in the Womb

Furthermore, God is not disinterested in that which He creates in the womb. In fact, Scripture is abundantly clear that God knows the unborn child. He knows and commissions us in the womb.

For instance, in Psalm 22 the Psalmist writes:

⁹ Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.
¹⁰ On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
¹¹ Be not far from me,

for trouble is near,
and there is none to help.

“From my mother’s womb you have been my God.” I do not know where you stand on the issue of election and predestination. I believe many people speak of it and few people understand it. Regardless, it is biblically established that God knows His people from the womb. Now, you can work that out with the rest of your theology, but the biblical fact stands either way.

Furthermore, in Psalm 71 the Psalmist writes:

⁵ For you, O Lord, are my hope,
my trust, O LORD, from my youth.
⁶ Upon you I have leaned from before my birth;
you are he who took me from my mother’s womb.
My praise is continually of you.

This is a term of relationship: “Upon you I have leaned from before my birth.” It is reminiscent of the upper room scene in which John leans on the breast of Jesus. God knows us and, in retrospect, we see that we have leaned on Him all along.

In Isaiah 49 we find the great prophet saying:

¹ Listen to me, O coastlands,
and give attention, you peoples from afar.
The LORD called me from the womb,
from the body of my mother he named my name.

The Lord knows us, calls us, commissions us and knows our name…in the womb! What an astounding thought!

In the New Testament, you may perhaps remember the beautiful meeting between the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth recorded in Luke 1:

⁴¹ And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, ⁴² and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!

Ah, I am so glad that a modern person did not write this, or they might have written, “And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the fetal tissue spasmed in her womb.” No, no, no! This is no spasm of tissue, this is a celebratory exclamation of praise from within the womb. Worship in utero!

Thus we see that God’s sovereignty extends to the womb. But His sovereignty is no vague reality. On the contrary, God’s sovereignty is creative in its intent.

II. God Creates Within the Womb

That which grows within the womb grows under the hand of a sovereign God. He creates life in the womb! In Job 31 we find Job speaking of God’s creative activity in the womb as the great equalizing force among all of humanity:

¹³ “If I have rejected the cause of my manservant or my maidservant,
when they brought a complaint against me,
¹⁴ what then shall I do when God rises up?
When he makes inquiry, what shall I answer him?
¹⁵ Did not he who made me in the womb make him?
And did not one fashion us in the womb?

Yes! Yes, Job! The same God that made you and fashioned you in the womb made and fashioned your servants as well. From the highest to the lowest, all must recognize that they are created by an awesome God!

Our key text this morning from Psalm 139 bears repeating here:

¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.

Truly astounding! Notice the creative terms: formed, knitted me together, fearfully and wonderfully made, I was being made, intricately woven. God creates that which is within the womb.

Again, Isaiah says the same in Isaiah 44:

¹ “But now hear, O Jacob my servant,
Israel whom I have chosen!
² Thus says the LORD who made you,
who formed you from the womb and will help you:
Fear not, O Jacob my servant,
Jeshurun whom I have chosen.

And five chapters later in Isaiah 49

⁵ And now the LORD says,
he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
and that Israel might be gathered to him—
for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD,
and my God has become my strength—

Isaiah says that the Lord God “forms” and “makes” life within the womb. Jeremiah says the same in Jeremiah 1:4-5:

⁴ Now the word of the LORD came to me, saying,

⁵ “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Interestingly, the Preacher in Ecclesiastes 11 speaks of the animation of the bones in the womb:

⁵ As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.

And that is precisely the point: “God who makes everything.” God is Creator, Lord and King. He is sovereign God. Every sphere of life is touched by His creative power, no place more miraculously than the womb. As amazing as this is, it is not even the most amazing aspect of God’s creative work in the womb.

III. What God Creates Within the Womb, He CreatesIn His Image

In Genesis 1, we read:

^26a Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… ²⁷ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

The biblical doctrine of the imago Dei, the image of God, is the fundamental theological foundation for a high view of life. What it asserts is mind-boggling, for it asserts nothing less than that that which God in His sovereignty creates in the womb He creates in His image.

This does not mean that man is a reflection of corporeal God. God does not have a body. God is spirit and those who worship Him worship Him in spirit and in truth. Furthermore, if the image were physical it would create real problems since v.27 says, “male and female he created them.”

No, the fact that God creates man and woman in His image means that he endows them with divine reflections of His own character. He gives us the capacity to love, to self-sacrifice, to think intelligently, to reason and, maybe most of all, to share in the act of creation. The doctrine of the image of God is that which makes man unique from animal life and so gives us a sanctity that is Heaven born.

R. Kent Hughes put it nicely when he said:

So consider this: Though you could travel a hundred times the speed of light, past countless yellow-orange stars, to the edge of the galaxy and swoop down to the fiery glow located a few hundred light-years below the plane of the Milky Way, though you could slow to examine the host of hot young stars luminous among the gas and dust, though you could observe, close-up, the protostars poised to burst forth from their dusty cocoons, though you could witness a star’s birth, in all your stellar journeys you would never see anything equal to the birth and wonder of a human being. For a tiny baby girl or boy is the apex of God’s creation! But the greatest wonder of all is that the child is created in the image of God, the Imago Dei. The child once was not; now, as a created soul, he or she is eternal. He or she will exist forever. When the stars of the universe fade away, that soul shall live.[1]

What this means for the abortion debate is significant. Man is created in the womb, by God, and he is created in God’s own image. I oppose the wanton destruction of life in the womb because life in the womb bears the very imprint of God. In this sense, abortion is always and ultimately an atheistic act, for it seeks to deny the reality of God as creator as well as the reality of the image of God within human beings. Perhaps this is why Dorothy Day said, “The true atheist is the one who denies God’s image in the ‘least of these.’”[2]

We dare not deny God’s image in the least of these. And, God help us, we dare not destroy that life which bears that image!

Oh God give us a love for the unborn and an understanding of the great miracle of life!

[1] R. Kent Hughes. Genesis. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p.36-37.

[2] Shane Clairborne, The Irresistible Revolution (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), p.79.

Further Resources (Some Surprising) For Defending Life

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Wyman

Early Christian Opposition to Abortion

“You shall not kill the child by obtaining an abortion. Nor, again, shall you destroy him after he is born.” (Barnabas, 70-80 AD, 1.148)

“You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill one who has been born.” (The Didache, 80-140 AD, 1.377)

“We say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder. And we also say that we will have to give an account to God for the abortion.” (Athenagoras, 175 AD, 2.147)

“In our case, murder is once for all forbidden. Therefore, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier way to kill a human. It does not matter whether you take away a life that has been born or destroy one that is not yet born.” (Tertullian, 197 AD, 3.26)

“Indeed, the Law of Moses punishes with appropriate penalties the person who causes abortion. For there already exists the beginning stages of a human being. And even at this stage, [the fetus] is already acknowledged with having the condition of life and death, since he is already susceptible to both.” (Tertullian, 210 AD, 3.218)

“Are you to dissolve the conception by aid of drugs? I believe it is no more lawful to hurt a child in process of birth, than to hurt one who is already born.” (Tertullian, 212 AD, 4.57)

“There are some women who, by drinking medical preparations, extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels. So they commit murder before they bring forth.” (Mark Minucius Felix, 200AD, 4.192)

“The womb of his wife was hit by a blow of his heel. And, in the miscarriage that soon followed, the offspring was brought forth, the fruit of a father’s murder.” (Cyprian, 250AD, 5.326)

“The soul is not introduced into the body after birth, as some philosophers think. Rather, it is introduced immediately after conception, when the divine necessity has formed the offspring in the womb.” (Lactantius, 304-313AD, 7.297)

“You shall not slay your child by causing abortion, nor kill the baby that is born.” (Apostolic Constitutions, 390 AD, 7.466)

Early American Feminist Opposition to Abortion

“The murder of the innocents goes on. Shame and crime after crime darken the history of our whole land. Hence it was fitting that a true woman should protest with all the energy of her souls against this woeful crime.” (Paulina Wright Davis, The Revolution, January 20, 1870)

“The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism. That the honorable term ‘female physician’ should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women.” (Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell [1821-1910], diary quoted in Child of Destiny: The Life Story of the First Woman Doctor, New York: Harker and Brothers, 1849, p.88)

“We have not such an amount of inherent depravity, nor such a degree of reckless daring to our composition, nor such a deficiency in the motherly instinct and other elements that go to make up the true woman, as to lead us into the commission of this most deadly crime realizing it to be so.” (Dr. Anna Densmore French, The Revolution, March 19, 1868)

“Life must be present from the very moment of conception. If there was not life there could not be conception. At what other period of a human being’s existence, either pre-natal or post-natal, could the union of soul and body take place? Is it not plain that the violent or forcible deprivation of existence of this embryo, the removal of it from the citadel of life, is its premature death, and hence the act can be denominated by no more mild term that murder, and whoever performs the act, or is accessory to it, is guilty of the crime of all crimes?” (Dr. Alice Bunker Stockham, “Feticide” in Tokology: A Book for Every Woman, 2^nd ed.,

Chicago: Sanitary Publishing Company, 1887, 245-51)

“In a populous quarter of a certain large Western city it is asserted, on medical authority, that not a single Anglo-American child has been born alive for the last three years. This is incredible; but, making all due allowances for exaggeration, it is plain enough that the murder of infants is a common thing among American women.” (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Infanticide and Prostitution”, in The Revolution, February 5, 1868)

“Guilty? Yes, no matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh! Thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime.” (Susan B. Anthony, “Marriage and Maternity”, The Revolution, July 8, 1869)

“Can any apology be offered for a woman who commits the crime of ante-natal murder, after she has voluntarily yielded to the relation that leads to maternity?” (Anonymous, The Unwelcome Child, or, the Crime of an Undesigned and Undesired Maternity, Boston: Bela Marsh, 1858, 101-104, from the Department of Special Collections, University of Chicago Library)

“[Abortion] is a crime in the fullest extent of the term, because it is murder, just as much as though the mother took her new-born babe and plunged a knife into its bosom, or cast it away from her, and refused to nourish it. Is there a woman not driven to the last depths of despair by wounded love and impending disgrace, who could do that to the little, soft, helpless thing, that is laid in her bosom so soon after its first cry has appealed to her heart? Yet the abortion-seeker regards with satisfaction the means to kill the little creature that has nestled so confidingly beneath her heart, as if it were the safest place in all the world for it.” (Eliza Bisbee Duffey, The Relations of the Sexes, New York: Wood and Holbrook, 1876, chapter thirteen)

“Scores of persons advertise their willingness to commit this form of murder, and with unblushing effrontery announce their names and residences in the daily papers. No one seems to be shocked by the fact…” (Sarah F. Norton, Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, November 19, 1870)

“We are aware that many women attempt to excuse themselves for procuring abortions, upon the ground that it is nor murder. But the fact of resort to so weak an argument only shows the more palpably that they fully realize the enormity of the crime. Is it not equally destroying the would-be future oak, to crush the sprout before it pushes its head above the sod, as it is to cut down the sapling, or cut down the tree? Is it not equally to destroy life, to crush it in its very germ, and to take it when the germ has evolved to any given point in its line of development?”

(Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, “The Slaughter of the Innocents”, Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, June 20, 1874)

Foundational Medical Statements Against Abortion

“I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; furthermore, I will not give to a woman an instrument to produce abortion.” (Hippocratic Oath, 1st c. BC)

“I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception.” (The Declaration of Geneva, September 1948, adopted by the General Assembly of the World Medical Organization)

Secular Statements Against Abortion

“Whoever would have guessed that the incorrigible deconstructionist Stanley Fish thinks abortion is wrong? And not only does he think it wrong, he also thinks the logic of the pro–choice side is both flawed and flimsy. And all it took was a little prodding from Princeton’s Robert George for him to come out. George challenged Fish during a debate sponsored by the American Political Science Association over the pro–choice claim to have science on its side. Fish immediately conceded, “Professor George is right. And he is right to correct me,” to the astonishment of all present. “I should have known better,” Fish said later. “Pro–life arguments are now based on scientific evidence and the pro–choice arguments are not. That is a cultural, historical fact.” He recognizes the irony of the intellectual role reversal in the abortion debate: “Nowadays, it is pro–lifers who make the scientific question of when the beginning of life occurs the key one in the abortion controversy, while pro–choicers want to transform the question into a ‘metaphysical’ or ‘religious’ one by distinguishing between mere biological life and ‘moral life.’ . . . Until recently pro–choicers might have cast themselves as defenders of rational science against the forces of ignorance and superstition, but when scientific inquiry started pushing back the moment when significant life (in some sense) begins, they shifted tactics and went elsewhere in search of rhetorical weaponry.” Although Fish openly opposes so–called abortion rights, he’s still hesitant to call himself pro–life. One step at a time.” (First Things, 1999)

We have no hard data on the question, but suspect that few of our readers also read Rolling Stone. For which reason we are indebted to John Farrell of Braintree, Mass. Who does. A recent issue featured rock star Dolores O’Riordan, a lady from Limerick who wears about twenty earrings and is lead singer of the Cranberries, a group that is, says Mr. Farrell, on its way to becoming No. 1 on some chart or the other. She appears to be a person of definite views, including this from the article: “And don’t count on O’Riordan as an ally in defending abortion: ‘I’m in no position to judge other women, you know? But, I mean, “Idiot-why didn’t you not get pregnant?” It’s not good for women to go through the procedure and have something living sucked out of your bodies. It belittles women-even though some women say, “Oh, I don’t mind to have one.” Every time a woman has an abortion, it just crushes her self-esteem, smaller and smaller and smaller.’” Rolling Stone yet. How au courant dare we be? (First Things, October 1995)

Sources

The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson;1885-1887; repr. 10 vols. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994.

Rachel MacNair, Ed., Prolife Feminism. New York: Sulzburger & Graham Publishing, Ltd., 1995.

William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Wyman

Last year I saw a notice that a fortieth anniversary edition of William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel, The Exorcist, would be released. I struggled a bit with whether or not read it, mainly because my dad had read it shortly after it came out and he tells the story of waking one night with a strong sense that he needed to get the novel out of the house immediately. He did so immediately. Of course – and this is no credit to my generation – the novel, while certainly terrifying, is in some ways less jarring to those of us who have grown up under its shadow (the movie was released in 1974, the year I was born) and who have been vaguely familiar with the basic gist of it than it was to the generation on which it was dropped. Quite honestly many of the elements that scandalized the public in the 1970’s are pretty much available to all on prime time TV any night of the week now and have been for years. This numbing, I repeat, is nota compliment to today’s culture!

If this story is less jarring to my generation, it is only just so (and I would love to know if others around my age even agree). It truth, it remains a deeply unsettling and profoundly disturbing read. It is not without merit that The Exorcist has been called the most terrifying novel ever written.

At the outset, let me address any who think it is unwise for a Christian to read something like The Exorcist. To put it simply, it could be that no work of fiction has so shaped the spiritual psychology of a generation as this novel. My friend Calvin Miller has told me of the paranoia that gripped the culture when the movie came out and of the floods of people scared of possesion who flocked to the offices of ministers and psychiatrists at that time. Furthermore, this novel remains a widely read novel that has taken its place in the canon of truly culture-shaping works over the last half a century.

Is there a danger in reading too much on a subject like this? To be sure, if one dwells too much on it. I have read a number of books on demon possession over the years, but I have always managed to spread them out and never do so back-to-back. That’s just my personal approach, though I do not deny there are believers who study the issue consistently with profit.

Furthermore (and, frankly, I do not offer this as an apologia for my reading habits, but just as an observation), Blatty’s work, whatever it may be, is certainly not cheap horror. It is actually a very insightful and thought-provoking consideration of a very real issue. Are there problems presented in the spirituality of the book? Yes, at points, but may I point at that the book takes the reality of the devil, the danger of occult dabbling, and the power of God over evil very seriously?

As for the novel itself, it is a very well written story and very well developed. The success of the novel is not merely because of the shocking nature of the tale. It is also in no small part due to how successfully Blatty draws you into the characters and their individual plights. Father Karras and Father Merrin in particular are developed with real sympathy and with a compelling kind of appeal that deepens their encounter with the possessed girl in profound ways. Oddly, their characters are more intriguinging than even poor Regan’s. Of course, Merrin surmises to Karras at one point that perhaps demons possess their victims less because they are interested in the victim than because they want, through the victim, to destroy everybody in their sphere of influence. Blatty’s development of the characters surrounding Regan certainly bears that out.

Are there objectionable elements? Absolutely. Ragan’s speech and actions while possesed are truly disturbing and blasphemous, but Blatty is not presenting these for exhibition nor is he reveling in them. In fact, you will find a genuine shock at blasphemy in this book that our culture has long forgotten. Her actions (or, more accurately, the demon’s) are presented as tragic, as evil, as demonic and as the result of malevolent possesion. They are not celebrated or exalted. When the demon is vanquished, so are these profane fruits of his presence.

Would I recommend The Exorcist? Hmmm, that’s tough. I would not recommend it indiscriminately, nor do I think I would really recommend it per se at all. What I would say is that here is a well-told story concerning some very dangerous themes but presented within the broad contours of a Christian paradigm. It should be read, if at all, carefully and with discretion…if one feels that they can do so without causing themselves undue spiritual or psychological damage (i.e., there are likely dispostions that would not be well acclamated to reading or watching The Exorcist).

Walking Together Ministries

A Resource for the Pilgrim Church