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During our walk-through of the Gospel of John during this year’s Cor Deo Women’s Programme, we were quite moved by the heart of John the Baptist towards Jesus. While he may seem a somewhat enigmatic figure with his clothing of camel hair and diet of locusts (thus our affectionate nickname “Hippy Best Man”), we can learn much from his example.

In the opening chapter, John the Baptist is questioned about whether he is Elijah, or perhaps the Prophet promised back in Deuteronomy, or even the Messiah.  John’s response is that he is none of those, but rather, that he is preparing the way for the one who is coming after him, “the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to tie.”  The very next day, John the Baptist sees Jesus and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”  It’s as if he’s holding up a big neon arrow, pointing at Jesus, and saying, “This is the guy I told you about!”

A few chapters later, in John 3, John the Baptist’s disciples express concern about the fact that people are leaving him and going to Jesus.  Instead of frantically trying to hold onto his waning popularity, John launches into a discourse about weddings.  He tells his disciples that the one who has the bride is the bridegroom.  In other words, Jesus is the bridegroom who has come to claim his Bride, and as the bridegroom’s friend, John the Baptist is happy about that!  Further, in response to seeing Jesus gathering his Bride, he says, “Therefore this joy of mine is complete.  He must increase, I must decrease.”

Imagine for a moment that you are at a wedding.  The bride is dressed in her beautiful gown.  The groom is in his tuxedo, waiting at the end of the aisle for his bride to reach him.  The wedding march begins, and the bride begins to make her way towards the groom.  Then, out of the blue, the best man—the guy who is presumably a good friend of the groom—begins to try to catch the attention of the bride.  Although at first she had her eyes fixed on the groom, they are now being drawn to the best man.  Although he is standing right next to the groom, the best man is now flexing his muscles, winking, and smiling widely, as though to say, “Look at me!  I’m so handsome!  I’m a much better catch than the groom you’re about to marry!”

Now, obviously, that’s an exaggerated picture.  Yet, can you imagine the horror if, even subtly, the best man was trying to attract the attention of the bride at a wedding?  We would consider him a rascal and no friend of the groom at all!  But John the Baptist isn’t like that.  He comes to Jesus’ Bride and says “He is greater than I am.  I rejoice to hear his voice.  He is the one to whom the Bride belongs.  He must be the focus, not I.”  John the Baptist is a noble best man and a true disciple.  As such, his desire is that the eyes of the Bride be fixed only on Jesus.

Even in a Christian context, we can sometimes get caught up in people who seem to have super faith, extraordinary life stories, or apparent celebrity status.  Yet as I consider John the Baptist’s example, I wonder.  Do I live my life in such a way as to point others to Jesus?  Do those who need Christ see in me a neon sign that says, “Look to Jesus!”? For those who are already part of the Bride of Christ, do my words, my relationships, and my priorities, speak of my love for Him and serve as an invitation to others to love Him more?

John the Baptist shows us what it means to be a faithful disciple of Jesus. As he lived out his mission, he was not concerned with his own popularity, his own reputation, or even his own life.  His sole aim was to point others to Christ.  Oh, how I long to be like this “Hippy Best Man.”

The post The Example of a “Hippy Best Man” first appeared on Cor Deo.

Perhaps we have heard counter arguments against our being the seekers.  After all, the great initiative surely rests with Christ in this regard since he came from heaven to earth, from the throne to the manger, from God’s side to ours.  As one of the great punchlines of Luke’s Gospel tells us, “the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” (Luke 19:10) The story of Christmas and the first Easter are conclusive, “while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

Accepting that Jesus moved toward us before we could ever move in his direction, let’s ponder what we might call the encounter.  In John’s Gospel we get the stunning opening prologue that introduces us to the Word of God who is at the Father’s side, but who pitches his tent among us, comes to reveal the Father, full of glorious grace and truth, who comes to his own but they do not receive him, and yet is able to give the right to become the children of God to those who do.

After this prologue the introduction really continues for the first four chapters or so as we are introduced to great themes that will continue to develop under the intense pressure of the tension between Jesus and the authorities.  In these opening chapters we are introduced to themes of belief, of glory, of signs, of witness and more.  And in these opening chapters we get incident after incident of people encountering Jesus.

John the Baptist comes as our first witness to Jesus, declaring that he is not the Christ, but is just a voice preparing the way.  He declares that he is just baptizing with water.  But he points to the coming Christ who is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and the one who will baptize people with the Holy Spirit.  The focus is well and truly on Jesus when he finally walks into the action and starts to meet people.

After a couple of John’s disciples follow Jesus, one of them brings his brother to Jesus.  Jesus seems to already know him.  As soon as they meet, Jesus renames him.  Next verse we have another person being brought to Jesus by the witness of another, this time it is Phillip bringing Nathanael.  Nathanael is understandably skeptical about the idea that the Messiah could come from Nazareth, but as he approaches Jesus he also finds that Jesus already knows him.

What Jesus says to Nathanael seems to stir an extreme change in Nathanael.  Jesus makes one comment about the lack of deceit in Nathanael and he suddenly declares that Jesus is the Son of God and king of Israel.  That is a big shift from his skepticism about Nazareth.  Looking at the clues in the text at this point it feels like Nathanael may have been pondering the story of Jacob as he sat under the fig tree, maybe he was praying about it.  Jesus knew Nathanael.  He knew what he had been thinking or praying and proved it with his deceit comment.  He reinforced it with a reference to angels ascending and descending (but notice who is the connection between heaven and earth – it is Jesus!)

In the second chapter Jesus starts to reveal his glorious kindness, sensitivity and power at the wedding in Cana, before heading for the temple in Jerusalem.  He created a stir there and people started to trust in him at some level.  But interestingly we are told that Jesus did not entrust himself to them.  Why?  Because he knew what was in man.  So we are introduced to an example man – Nicodemus.

Jesus and the teacher of Israel have a conversation in chapter three that again begins with Jesus revealing that he does indeed know what is in man.  Nicodemus comes to Jesus with kind words and Jesus seems to rebuff him by stating that unless he is born from above, then Jesus can’t chit chat with him about the God subject.  Jesus knows that this great teacher is actually still spiritually dead on the inside.  Nicodemus is confronted not by a Rabbi come from God that he can approach, but by someone who sees to the core of who he is and what he lacks.

In chapter four we get another person encountering Jesus.  This time it is a troubled woman shunned by her own peers who meets Jesus at a well.  Not surprisingly it soon becomes clear that Jesus knows what is going on in her life too.  While she is still thinking this is just another man trying to make a connection with her, Jesus tells her about her five husbands and live-in lover.  She is undone.

Just as we cannot take credit for seeking Jesus, nor can we take credit for getting to know him first.  When we meet Jesus we are meeting one who knows all about us.  Maybe this is an aspect of evangelism that we have let slip over the years?  Perhaps we are proclaiming a gospel that focuses too much on the person, and too little on Jesus?  Perhaps as people encounter Christ they will be undone as they come to discover that he already knows them, and yet loves them still!

Maybe this is an aspect of our own relationship with Christ that has slipped from our awareness too?  How easily we can slip into presenting ourselves carefully to Christ as if he does not know all the gritty reality of our inner lives.  How easily we can pray wearing a mask.  How easily we forget that Jesus really knows us, and fully loves us.  We are totally vulnerable before him, whether we know it or not, he knows us.  We are fully known, and yet fully loved!

The post Fully Known, Fully Loved first appeared on Cor Deo.

It’s Elsa’s gloved-life, “conceal don’t feel,” that explodes into a monster on the mountain.

It’s the “earn this” that drives Private Ryan’s response to being saved – two words that drive him to despair and uncertainty.

Conversely, the very best relationships are the ones where we can be ourselves and are still accepted. We can rest only in relationships where we feel truly safe. That’s true in families and churches because it’s true of God. Too often we turn the Christian life into “earn this.” But at the heart of Christianity is a God with a heart, a God whose love spills over and will not let us go!

Think of Jesus after His resurrection in John 20. The disciples gave Him plenty of reasons to be annoyed, but He never once said “prove yourself.” They were (almost) all behind closed doors. Despite hearing news that Jesus is alive their instinct was to hide. Again. So when Jesus walks in is He disappointed? “You idiots what are you doing? You better make sure you never do it again.” No. Jesus stands in the group and says peace. Twice. “You and me isn’t over – as the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Jesus doesn’t give them weights, He gives them Him.

Think of Jesus the next week – same time, same place, but now with one extra guest. “Thomas you idiot why didn’t you believe your friends? You better make it up to me.” Nope. “Peace… I’m here for you Thomas, and I’m here for those who don’t see me and still believe.”

Think of Jesus in John 21. Some of the disciples weren’t in Jerusalem anymore, they’d gone home to fish. It’s what they knew best. But then the deja-vu kicked in and Jesus began to cook them breakfast – not a hint of “why are you idiots fishing?” Instead Jesus initiates and provides. Again.

Think of Jesus talking with Peter. They must have talked about the elephant in the room before this day, but this is where it gets overt. “Peter didn’t I tell you you would deny me? Don’t you dare let me down again.” Jesus doesn’t say that. He gently reminds Peter that loving Him means following Him. And that’s it. Even when Peter points to John (they’re forever competing, those two!) Jesus keeps Peter’s focus on Himself. Two weeks before, Peter promised he would never leave Jesus. He didn’t make it through the night. But with Jesus, following Him, he remained faithful and many years later was walked out to a Christ-like death.

The point is that Jesus doesn’t ask for you to prove yourself. He doesn’t demand performance in order to be loved and accepted by Him. We don’t need to conceal anything from Him, we don’t need to earn this love from Him. To purposefully misquote a classic hymn, “There is no shadow of earning with Thee.”

If being a Christian feels heavy to you, if you find it exhausting, perhaps you’ve turned Jesus’ love into a never-ending treadmill of performance. Look at Jesus and live. Follow Him, run with Him. He offers peace, He invites you into the safety of His Father’s heart. His love will never let you go.

The post Prove Yourself first appeared on Cor Deo.

This truism will stretch us but, as followers of Christ, we must receive it. And as we explore it we have at least two rails to run on. First we take up the Genesis disclosure that in marriage, by God’s Spirit, two become one—making a single male-and-female human. And, second, we embrace the New Testament disclosure that all who share Christ’s Spirit are one in Christ.

The common point is that the Spirit shares and sustains God’s eternal, invisible, and immaterial relationship and, by the Father’s love, extends that relationship to us and, potentially, through us.

In other words God’s being explains our being. He created us in his image as beings-in-relation. Yet, as an important sidebar, God’s enemy posits just the opposite. He insists that both God and humanity exist as autonomous beings—as individual gods. So we won’t find these relational insights affirmed by any who lack the Spirit’s life—anyone not “born again.” Which is incredible, given that in life we are immersed in relationships.

That warning aside, this relational image—our “likeness” to God—allows us to commune with him once we know him. The eyes of our hearts are opened when we turn away from satanic premises of autonomy and live, instead, by faith in God working through his love.

Love is key. Love is the label for God’s inherent mutual devotion. Importantly, it is not something external to God—some sort of commodity or power. It is, instead, God’s relational bond. The Father initiates love; the Son responds to it; and the Spirit shares it. Or, as Augustine of Hippo summarized it, in God we meet the true lover, his beloved, and the one who communicates their reciprocal love. And salvation is the fruit of the Spirit sharing that love in human hearts.

From the very beginning, then, as relational beings we were made to love and to be loved. And, in human marriage, to be united in the flesh as the male-female who can then bear children in love engendered by the Spirit’s indwelling presence.

The distinctions in God and in us are key. In reading John’s gospel, for instance, the differing roles of the Father, Son, and Spirit are underscored. So, too, partners in a marriage differ in ways that make a whole—not simply in biological distinctions but as whole persons—with differences that attract and intrigue. God means for these wonderful and sometimes mystifying distinctions to complement and fulfill the one-with-another bonding of love.

And even apart from marriage Christians are members of Christ’s body by his Spirit—and, collectively, the bride of Christ. Our being-in-communion is God’s shared love present in us. By his love we are bonded both to him and to each other.

But what does this mean in practice? Much more than any blog entry can explore! But let’s at least start.

I picked up one lesson in a seminary counseling course. “Remember,” the professor told us, “in marital counseling you counsel the marriage, not the individuals.”

His point was that the two spouses share a relationship. And the relationship is what needs the care. It consists in shared values, choices, hurts, hopes, friendships, children, and more. Each spouse brings different qualities to the whole—as complementary distinctions—so any problems will only be resolved when the spouses come to a more profound and effective bond through Christ’s love.

The claim of 1 John 4 that “God is love” sets all this in play. His love in us makes all the difference—something John unpacks in his letter.

Another lesson comes by collating the Bible accounts of Genesis 3 and John 3. The Spirit has been eternally present in the divine communion of the “one” who is also the “us” of the Genesis creation account. Which is to say that the fruit of the Spirit—his sharing Christ’s heart—should characterize growing Christian relations.

This lesson—that the Spirit grows us—was the point Jesus made to Nicodemus in John 3.  At a minimum, knowing God involves a wholehearted response to God’s love as the Spirit shares that love. His voice, offered in the Scriptures, is needed to make salvation—and marriages—work. It also offers the basis for true church growth.

Jesus summarized this in John 13:15—“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” This characterizes his bond with the Father and he treated it as the goal of his incarnation in John 17:22, “that they may be one even as we are one.”

So the practice of responding to God rightly consists in always treating his being-in-the-communion-of-love as the basis for every relationship. He is the ground of every true aspect of creaturely reality. We are, in other words, meant to live in the union and communion of love by always aligning our hearts with God’s heart. There we find shared values and practices.

This isn’t simply a matter of learning truths—though learning is always present—but growing in love. The Father is always initiating in love and the Son is always responding; and the Spirit is always communicating in an eternal swirl of initiative-and-response. And we are invited to join in.

So we are called to be one, just as God is one. This takes place in a progression of heart changes as we have his Spirit working in us. We begin to grasp our own unique distinctions as elements of a whole—as members of Christ’s body—and not as capacities to be used for our selfish ends.

Then in our self-giving we reveal God’s heart—as a holy whole—to the world. And that invites unbelievers—those enslaved to autonomy—to taste and see God’s goodness through our love for each other. His loving kindness lasts forever and we, as his beloved children who are all distinct yet one, offer living samples of what that means!

The post One with Distinctions first appeared on Cor Deo.

In our shared pleasure I realized how rare we seem to be. It’s as if we’re members of a secret society: the “We like God” clan. The society is wide open but, despite incredible benefits, it remains poorly enrolled.

All Christians, in fact, should be members—given the Romans 5:5 promise that the Spirit has poured out God’s love in our hearts. But that love seems muted or missing in too many cases. A key indicator is that many, if not most, professed believers don’t read their Bibles with any delight or sustained devotion.

Some may ask, Why this focus on the Bible as an indicator of our response to God? Isn’t the linkage too narrow? I often hear, for instance, of many non-readers who claim to love God deeply even if they pay little attention to the Bible.

That’s a conversation non-readers can take up with God himself: he alone can process claims with a soul-searching ability we don’t have. Love always finds a way to listen to one who is loved.

We also press this link because of Bible assumptions. Scriptures share God’s character and values—his attractive qualities—in sustained and tangible terms. This is especially conspicuous in the Old Testament periods of Josiah and Ezra where rediscoveries of lost Scriptures led to explosive responses. Bible exposure captivates searching souls.

So, too, in the New Testament Jesus dismissed claims of faith by a group who had “believed in him” but who rejected what he was saying—see John 8:30-59. In that encounter he eventually identified these “believers” as children of the devil! So professions of faith don’t always ensure true faith.

There’s no news in this, of course. Jesus said as much in his parable of the soils: “The sower sows the word” but most of the sown word/seed either fails to germinate or to prosper (e.g. Mark 4). The Word can be stolen, crushed, choked; but in some cases it will be fruitful, with multiplied growth.

By highlighting this reality—that not all professed believers delight in God’s word—we come to a crucial point.

Jesus isn’t angry when he’s ignored. He never begs for attention. In fact there’s nothing pathetic about how he presents himself—no pearls are cast before the crowds. He simply delights in those who delight in him and leaves it at that.

While gathering crowds wasn’t his aim he did, because of his compassion, feed thousands on a pair of occasions: one of these is reported in John 6. Yet even then some of the more vocal figures in the crowd tried to use his compassion as a lever: “We’ll follow you and even make you a king if you promise to feed us like this all the time!” Jesus responded by telling them to focus on his life as spiritual food rather than making physical food their big ambition. So the crowds soon evaporated.

There’s a lesson here. Jesus knows how attractive love is. He came to offer us his Father’s love, and to share that love in all he did. And if someone doesn’t find that love attractive it doesn’t change the reality that God’s love is, in fact, incredibly attractive! It only tells us that whatever a person or a crowd loves instead of, or in place of, God’s love is blocking their affective “heart-gaze” on Christ and his Father.

This brings us back to our secret society. Some of us have been stunned by God’s beauty revealed in Christ and presented in the Scriptures. Our faith is now working through love—with love being a response to his prior love for us. Nothing . . . absolutely nothing! . . . is more captivating than seeing and hearing Jesus saying, “Come to me, all you who are tired—who long for the real freedom of my embrace.”

We somehow were blessed with an insider’s awareness of his love and loveliness. Everything else is sawdust and popcorn by comparison.

So the invitation still stands: “Oh taste and see, the LORD is good!”

The post A Secret Society? first appeared on Cor Deo.

So who invites even more attention? Perhaps the God who created the God particle? Certainly, when God speaks we will want to listen, right?

That, in turn, raises a question about God speaking: will he be offering a talk or a speech at a conference in days to come? Do we have an auditorium we can visit or a channel to watch?

I don’t ask this to be careless or absurd but to try to build a bridge between the real world and a premise of faith that God is the ultimate communicator. As a Triune God he has always been in a communion of conversation. And he is still speaking today, even if he doesn’t come to us in the ways we might desire or expect.

So our underlying question is this: When God speaks today, where, and how does he do it? This brief blog can only tease the question, but here goes.

First, God sets a platform for his sharing by what he does. I mentioned the God-particle in opening. Recently I listened to an audiobook on Europe’s Hadron Collider and the hunt for the predicted Higgs boson. One feature stood out: the overall orderliness and symmetry of nature allows scientists to make such predictions. My own response was to credit an intelligent design to a Designer who stands above nature and rules it in ways we can see and admire.

Second, and more to the point of communion, God wants to share himself with us in Christ. John was sensitive to this as he wrote his gospel. Jesus was introduced as God’s “Word”—who is “the only God, who is at the Father’s side, [and he] has made him known.”

John goes on to report how the Spirit takes what Jesus reveals of the Father and shares it with the disciples: “All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he [the Spirit] will take what is mine and declare it to you” (16:14).

Here is a pattern: whatever the Father offers belongs to the Son; and his Spirit, in turn, declares it to his disciples. Then in John’s next chapter this self-giving of the Father, Son, and Spirit is carried forward through the disciples to our day—and “also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (17:20-21). In effect, divine union and communion breeds human union and communion.

So this word-based communion—“that they may all be one”—points to God as its source: “just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you.” A relational bond in an alienated world is a compelling signal of God’s presence in us. It helps others to hear what God is saying when they see him acting in and through us.

We know, too, that God shares himself in a fully accessible form: in writing. The apostles, with the Spirit’s oversight, recalled what they learned from Jesus as they wrote the New Testament. Jesus also reassured his disciples of the reliability of the Jewish Canon—the Christian Old Testament—as the Spirit’s disclosing ministry. It’s available to any and all readers.

As for the Spirit’s unique place in the Trinity one roles stand out: he is the active voice in sharing God’s heart to all who will hear. And this is crucial—and the reason for Christ’s warnings not to dismiss the Spirit. To hear God we must have his Spirit.

Listen to 1 Corinthians: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (2:14). The Spirit-to-spirit ministry calls for a new heart, attuned to God’s heart. Our sole role is to repent of our old hardness of heart.

A person’s not hearing God, we learn, comes from distaste, not disability. In John 8 we read of the deceit of the great Liar—the devil—as the reason people do not hear God’s voice. As Jesus put it, “my words find no place in you” and “you cannot bear to hear my word.” These comments followed his premise that only authentic believers will know “the truth” that comes by “abiding” in his word.

Later in John, as Jesus spoke to Pilate, he returned to the appetite for truth as the basis for hearing and responding: “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (18:37).

His final line brings weight to our question. Hearing God is truth-defined. And some are drawn to the Truth; many are not. And in John 8:42 we read that the Father stirs a love for Jesus in the soul; then in John 14:6 Jesus is personified as “the truth.”

But how much truth will we find in a world that dismisses God? Are we likely to hear the Spirit’s whispers as we spend most of our time listening to the world’s entertainments? Or to worldly politics, counseling, leadership, or to any other realm where God is ignored?

Christ’s invitation to “abide in my word” takes time and quiet. Yet once we get a taste for truth nothing else satisfies. So perhaps it’s time to “be quiet” and enjoy!

The post Quiet, Please! first appeared on Cor Deo.

“I want to reside in your home and for you to treat me as your daughter in every way, as if I were married to your only son. But with the stipulation that I don’t have anything to do with your son! I really don’t like him . . . I want to live my life here.”

I don’t know about you, but I doubt any of us would be surprised to hear a wrathful response full of jealousy for his son.   The audacity to demand the rewards of being his son’s wife without any real connection to him, even blatant hostility against him, would deserve her immediate removal. Even by force if necessary!

Another reason that we’d expect a response like this is that we understand there’s only a few ways to enter into a family. We don’t question that the way into a family is either by birth, adoption, invitation, or by marriage. To say it doesn’t offend any of our sensibilities. Family by definition is exclusive. Some are part of your family and others are not. That’s the way it goes.

With that in mind, have you ever been asked, or have you ever asked, a set of questions like this:

“How can you believe that God is good when he offers only one way to heaven? Don’t you think it’s cruel to keep so many good people from entering into heaven?”

Either as the questioner, or as the one asked the question, I’m sure that the answer included Jesus’ words “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and that apart from him no one can get into heaven. While these words are absolutely true, it doesn’t seem to reflect the tone or the nature of Jesus’ last words to his disciples in John 14.

Now in our post-modern western culture it’s apocryphal to claim any views on the nature of truth and goodness that may be exclusive in anyway. The logic goes, “Truth is relative, your truth can be your truth and my truth can be mine. And as long as nobody gets hurt, goodness is relative too.” Although the irony isn’t lost on me – the intolerance of perceived intolerance – the context of John 14:6 may allow for a more effective method for engaging objections to the exclusivity of the Christian faith (as well as honoring the intention of Jesus’ words and the nature of God).

Jesus, to comfort the hearts of his disciples, tells them that they shouldn’t be troubled by his coming departure (14:1-3).   Instead, they should believe that he’s going away for their benefit that he may prepare a place for them in his Father’s house. All the disciples would have noticed the obvious betrothal imagery. At this time in a Jewish culture, a man would propose to a woman (which would be treated just as legally binding as marriage) and return to his father’s house to build an addition to the home for the new couple. After his father approved the addition he would then go and retrieve his bride.

And Jesus tells his disciples that they should feel about the news of his departure just as a new bride would respond to her betrothal (14:28). Think about the thrill that the bride would feel as her bridegroom left to prepare a home for their new life and the all-consuming anticipation of his return. This would not have been lost on Jesus’ disciples. They should rejoice and be excited that he’s leaving to go to his Father!

It’s easy to see why Jesus says to his disciples that they know where he’s going (14:4). As they have seen Jesus, they have seen the Father, because he and his Father are one (14:10ff). And to believe the words of Jesus, to follow his way (13:34-5), and to believe on him for life, are the very fruit of abiding in Christ. To love Jesus is to love and know the Father. Therefore, just as the Father has loved the Son, so too the Father loves Jesus’ disciples, his “bride” (14:18-31).

Jesus’ words then, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” make perfect sense. There’s no way to enter into the relationship with the Father and Son apart from being united to the Son because the Father and Son are one. To know the Father is know Jesus. To love the Father is to love the Son. This is heaven!

Heaven is to participate, to join the family of the Trinity by the Spirit who has been in the business of communicating the depths of the Father and Son’s love for each other for all eternity (1 Cor. 2).

There’s no other way to reside in the Father’s house apart from his Son, because they are one. Anything else, any other way, is no different than a random woman breaking through the window and demanding all the benefits of the house without any love for the members of the family that live there. Even in our post-modern western culture the exclusivity of the family remains the same. Forcing one’s way into the family apart from accepted modes only leads to removal and maybe even restraining orders.

The post Exclusive first appeared on Cor Deo.

But their mindset of what all this meant was turned on its head.  Jesus in John 12 said, “the hour has come that the Son of Man (who was given by the Ancient of Days glory and authority over all creation) to be glorified.”  But this glory isn’t the glory they were expecting, it was the time where he would lose his life and be lifted up on the cross, so that he might draw all people to himself.  That is, the glory of God was seen with the Son of Man dead, naked on the cross.

Now this didn’t go well with their expectations, how could this possibly be?  The Son of Man was to have power, dominion; the Christ was to live forever.  The idea that glory could be connected to death was absolutely impossible. Death is weakness and defeat.  It didn’t compute, and even the disciples didn’t understand Jesus until he was glorified.

This doesn’t usually sit well with us either.  How could glory be connected to the humiliating cross? How could this be the hour that God is most clearly revealed?

There are many reasons for this, but let me offer two.  First, we tend to make glory about power, strength, dominion, pageantry, and a majestic brightness. Second, we see humility as weak, low in status and condition, and modest in spirit.  Yet, God doesn’t seem to define humility or glory exactly like that.  Don’t get me wrong, there are elements of these ideas in the Bible, but at mountain peak moments in the Bible these two words are dramatically redefined.

John 12 is one of these mountaintop moments, and Philippians 2 is another.  Paul defines humility as “counting others more significant than yourselves.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” After his instruction he offers the greatest example of humility by describing God’s humility.   Now we are all fairly comfortable with Jesus’ humility, but it’s the Triune God’s humility on display.

You might object: how could it possibly be about God’s humility when the hymn ends with all tongues confessing and knees bowing to Jesus because “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”?

That’s a great and perfect question to ask.   We see that God the Father exalts Jesus by giving him the name that is above all names.  That name is Yahweh, and all that goes with that name is synonymous with the name Jesus of Nazareth. Yes the God who said, “I am Yahweh and there is no other” and “every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance” (Isaiah 45:19, 23), has equated himself with Jesus of Nazareth, the poor, unnoticeable, suffering servant, who died as a criminal.  Yahweh’s glory was displayed with death, even death on the cross.

Most importantly we see the ethos of the Father-Son-Spirit revealed by Christ on the cross. The glory they had before the creation of the world.  The Father delighting in and giving to his Son; the Son responding to his Father with the same other-centeredness; with the Spirit as the Uniter of the two.   The Triune God is humble, he isn’t self-concerned but elevates the other above himself.

Therefore, elevating self isn’t godly, nor is it glorious (Prov. 25:27). Jesus similarly states that “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing” in the context where the Father glorifies the Son and Son glorifies the Father (John 8).  There’s no self-seeking in God’s glory.

So what should our response be to Christ’s gospel?

Paul invites the Philippians to live out the attitude of Christ, to humbly esteem others more than themselves, which will unite them as one body.   This isn’t a pragmatic suggestion, but an ontological reality for any person who is one with Christ.  The heartbeat of the Trinity is the heartbeat we have in Christ, a selfless love for the other.

Therefore, Paul would say, do nothing out of competiveness or conceit, which contradicts the mindset of Christ.  I think we get that competiveness, seeking to be better than someone else, will lead to fissures in a community.  But maybe we miss the contrast between God’s nature and a conceited community.   Conceited could be translated as “vainglory” or even “empty-glory.”  In other words, if you are focused on what satisfies self, over and against someone’s interests, you lack the character of godly glory.  God’s love humbly looks to the other, anything else lacks glory.

Jonathan Edwards says this better than most in his Treatise on Grace, “God’s love is primarily to himself, and his infinite delight is in himself, that is, in the Father and the Son loving and delighting in each other.”  Without the last section Edwards would be describing a God who only thought of himself and would be empty of biblical glory.  Instead we see a God who has existed since before the creation of the world in a selfless and giving ethos that Edwards invites us to worship.

May we gaze upon and know God’s glory that shines out by his humble character displayed for all to see on the cross.

The post Empty Glory first appeared on Cor Deo.

A man bought an industrial grade mobile magnet—a smaller version of what one sees in the auto crushing business.  He was proud of himself for being both noble and practical. He was noble because he planned to use the device to clean up his town.  It was practical because the soda and beer cans he planned to collect all had value: each included a small deposit in the purchase price that could be refunded once it was returned.

With his magnet the man was certain that he could collect hundreds of cans in the time it took others to collect them one at a time.  He also knew of a number of littered roadways and overflowing trash bins that were certain to generate quick cash.

But it didn’t work!  As he drove around with the magnet head hung out over the side of his truck all it ever attracted were bits of scrap—leftover fragments from auto accidents, screws and bolts, nails and wires—but not a single beer can. This was an absolute mystery because he made sure to let the magnet hover over the conspicuous cans.  But even then they never moved!

Finally it dawned on him that the magnet wasn’t strong enough: he needed an upgrade.  The problem, however, was his cash flow.  It had taken all his spare money to buy the first system so any upgrades would have to wait.  Next then, in order to rebuild his cash reserve, he adopted a new approach: adding heavy-duty glue to the face of the magnet.

Before long he put out his sticky-glue-swabbed-magnet and it worked.  Wherever he found cans by the road he pulled his levers in the truck to manoeuvre the magnet over the can and lowered it until he made contact and the aluminium can was his!

The modification had its drawbacks, though.  For one, it wasn’t easy to remove the cans from the magnet because of the glue—they all needed to be done by hand, one-by-one.  And, even more, he had to pull off the grass, mud, plastics, and ceramics that the glue also collected.  And then the recycling stores didn’t welcome the sticky cans!  So it wasn’t long before the mucky magnet was sold on eBay—at a huge loss—and the project came to an unhappy end.

A question, of course, is why the man ever thought magnets would attract aluminium—the stuff such cans are made of—since magnets only attract the ferrous metals like iron and steel.

You also might be wondering, why such a nonsensical parable?

Here’s why.  Because God has given us a similar principle: he will be attractive to some people but not to all.  And we can’t tell beforehand who will be drawn to him and who won’t be, but the difference can be discovered in time by the principle of spiritual attraction.

The principle is made explicit in John 8 and 17—to name just two spots—so that we know that God’s word is attractive to those who will join his eternal family.  In fact there’s a sorting process going on right now: his teaching is attracting God’s family but not everyone finds that family attractive.  So when Christ’s words are offered in a given setting some will respond like a steel bolt drawn to a magnet, but others won’t be stirred in the slightest.

The attraction is God’s love.  In John 8:31 Jesus said as much to a group of erstwhile disciples.  The basis of true discipleship is a spiritual kinship birthed by God’s work in hearts—a point made in John 3 and elsewhere.

The process is always word-based.  Listen to Jesus: it is only by abiding in “my word” that someone becomes a disciple.  He went on: “If God were your Father, you would love me” and “The reason you do not hear [my words] is that you are not of God” (John 8:31, 42, 47).

In John 17 Jesus spoke to the Father with the same principle in mind: Jesus offered the word the Father sent him to share and it produced two opposite responses.  Some came to him and believed; but others hated him and his disciples.  “I have given them your word [speaking of the disciples] and the world hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” (17:16).

What was Christ’s aim in offering his divisive word—a word that attracts some and not others?  To identify those in the world who love him: “that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (17:26).

What, then, can we take from our parable?

This much at least: some churches today have replaced Christ’s word with swathes of attractive activities and it seems to work.  Lots of people can be collected.

But what defines such churches?  A love for Christ and for neighbours?  Or a love for the lively enjoyments being offered?  From our gospel principle we learn that the latter—those who aren’t captured by Christ’s love as expressed in his word—are being collected for all the wrong reasons.

So let’s get out the divine magnet of God’s love as revealed in his word and see what happens.  I predict that the glue-covered folks won’t be impressed, but the real children of God will leap to the source and clamour for more.  Try it and see!

The post The Magnet Parable first appeared on Cor Deo.