Deep Creek Anglican Church Blog

Well it’s Melbourne Cup day.  The church’s Annual Report is due to be released this coming weekend.  So with seemingly all of Melbourne caught up in Cup fever, I sat down this morning to pen some words on the last twelve months.  Here’s how I began:

“We have just experienced a dramatic year in the life of this church.  There have been many truly wonderful spiritual highlights and blessings.  And we have grieved together at the home call of my wife, Sheryl.  It has been a dramatic year both for our church community and for myself personally.  ”God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble….The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.” (Ps 46:1,11)”

I didn’t get much further.  But I have cleaned out the tear ducts!

Then as I sought to resume my writing, I came across the eulogy given by Steve Jobs’ biological sister, Mona Simpson, at his memorial service held on 16th October at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.  It has just been published in The New York Times.

It is wonderfully written and expresses the deep love that Steve Jobs had for his family and Mona.  Here is a particularly moving and inspiring recollection by Mona:

“…Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.

Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.  Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.

I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.

Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.

“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.

He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.”

Hmm. Still need to finish that Report…..

John Stott, in his interview with Tim Stafford in 2006 commented:

“The invisibility of God is a great problem to people. The question is how has God solved the problem of his own invisibility? First, Christ has made the invisible God visible. That’s John’s Gospel 1:18: “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”

People say that’s wonderful, but it was 2,000 years ago. So in 1 John 4:12, he begins with exactly the same formula, nobody has ever seen God. But here John goes on, “If we love one another, God abides in us.” The same invisible God who once made himself visible in Jesus now makes himself visible in the Christian community, if we love one another. And all the verbal proclamation of the gospel is of little value unless it is made by a community of love.”

I’m really enjoying Christ among the Dragons: Finding our way through cultural challenges by James Emery White.  In the chapter ‘The Mark of a Christian’, White writes:

“At its heart grace is getting what we don’t deserve, and not getting what we do.  It’s something we receive that we do not deserve.  The idea of God’s love coming to us free of charge, without strings attached, seems to go against every instinct within the human race.  The Buddhist Eightfold Path,  the Hindu doctrine of karma, the Jewish covenant, Muslim obedience – they’re all ways of trying to earn approval.  Only Christianity contends that God’s love is unconditional.

This is not only the distinguishing love mark of the Christian, but it is what compels our love for each other.  Our love for one another is based on the realisation that our relationship with Christ is built on grace, and therefore our relationship with others should be as well.”

Chapter Four: A Violin Called Messiah

The focus of this chapter is on God becoming flesh (the Incarnation) and what this means for the follower of Jesus.

The big point of this chapter is that “being a follower of Jesus does not involve imitaiton as much as it does implantation and impartation.”

Our authors describe the Incarnation as “the most shocking doctrine of the Christian religion.  It is the mystery of God’s self-emptying in Jesus Christ so that we could one day be indwelt by the Holy Spirit.”

Sweet and Viola coin the phrase ‘a gotcha moment’ to describe “when Jesus gets you for life.”  How will we know if this has happened?  In the author’s words, “you begin to live out of Jesus-love” – our behaviour is directed and impacted by the presence of the indwelling Christ, and not commandments.  In elaborating this key point, Augustine’s quote: ‘Love God, and do what you will’ is explained as follows:

“If you love God, or love another, the one thing you cannot do is what you will, for love bends the will.  To live in God’s love is not license for hedonism, but liberty for sacrificial living where we’re all working off the same brief, which reads, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another….”(John 13:34)”

The authors state that the theology of becoming “more Christlike” cheapens the gospel.  I don’t think their case is well argued as they put up a strawman of ‘likeness’ (human effort) and then dismantle it.  However Sweet and Viola are surely right when they stress the sharing of Jesus’ resurrection life in His followers and the call on His followers to manifest Jesus’ presence.

The chapter finishes with the reminder that the call on us to radiate Christ is an all-encompassing call (ie. regardless of the circumstances of our life).  And in my experience, this radical call is definitely something that requires me to keep in step with the Spirit, through His empowerment and presence (Galations 5:25).  When I step out of His ‘footsteps’ into my own, the radiation of Jesus through me falls away very rapidly.

You can never graduate beyond Christ  - neither as an individual nor as a church.  So begins chapter two of Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ.

And then our authors launch into Paul’s Letter to the Colossians.  My favourite part of the New Testament.  And this is no dry treatment.   Here are some samples:

• In discussing the false teaching in Colossae, “What a unique way to combat error – drown God’s people in a revelation of the image of the invisible God, who delivered us from darkness, redeemed us, and made us part of His eternal kingdom.”
• “The Christ that the Colossians knew was simply too small.  That was why they became susceptible to chasing other things – including religious ones – in the first place.  Sound familiar?”
• On Christ as a creator, “This Christ is not only before all things, but the entire universe is held together in Him.  He is the cohesive force, the glue and gravitational pull that holds all created elements together.  He is creation’s great adhesive, the hinge upon which the whole cosmos turns.  Remove Christ, and the entire universe disintegrates.”
• On Christ’s work on the Cross, “…by His death, He slew all negative things.  He brought the old creation to a complete end.  Better, the old creation died having made peace with its Creator.  And then, by His resurrection, He brought forth from the womb of death an unprecedented creation – of which you are a part.”
• In considering Col 3:11, “In a church that is filled with leader-oholics, justice-oholics, commandment-oholics, and doctrine-oholics, it is essential that we comprehend how Paul (the go-to-guy for all matters “doctrinal”) understood his calling as an apostle.  For Paul, his apostolate was not to advance a defining array of doctrines or a checklist of propositions.  As far as he was concerned, our faith is not even a relationship with a set of doctrines or commandments.  Christianity is a relationship with Jesus the Christ.  When things go wrong….it’s because we have lost our “first love”…or never had it in the first place.”  That’s worth chewing on.  Holding Christ central and the focus of greatest devotion is what the the Ephesian church did not embrace – to its great loss.

This is just a sampling of a truly great chapter.  But better than this chapter is to meditate on the Letter to the Colossians and ask the Holy Spirit to grew your love for the Lord Jesus.

Chapter Four: The Jesus Prayer for our Unity

Chapter Five: Our Greatest Apologetic

Chapter Six: Christ the Center

John Armstrong in these next three chapters of your church is too small starts to explore what is meant by ‘unity.’  And his attention turns to the longest recorded prayer of Jesus: John 17:20-23.

As John states, Jesus is praying for the entire church.  And He is praying for something more than the “invisible unity” of the church (which is already true).  Jesus is praying for relational unity – a unity that is rooted in Christians relationships with one another.  As we share in the divine life of the Trinity; as we live daily with our lives centred on Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit, then “the church will be a visible example of the relational and spiritual unity of the triune God.”

Our author then explores the role of love.  Jesus’ prayer for unity is “really a prayer about God’s love in action” (John 17:23; 1 Pt 4:19-21; 1 John 4:19-21).  Francis Schaeffer believed that the truest identifying mark of Christians was love.  The challenge for all followers of the Lord Jesus is to accept those who are accepted by God and belong to Him.

So how can we work together in Christ’s mission?  John briefly explores models of unanimity, uniformity and union (one visible, united church) and concludes that none of these understandings of unity “truly fit the context of the New Testament.”  The early church was focussed on evangelism in which they cooperated.  What is the means for our cooperation?  Keeping Christ centre.

Our unity is in Christ alone – not in visible structures or particular practices of individual churches.  Our author presents a helpful image: think of the world wide church as a large circle with Christ at the centre.  As we move inward we grow closer to one another.  Excellent!

For John Armstrong, he is seeking to practically live this out by:

• being willing to work with all Christians, including those he does not know well;
• engaging in relational and cooperational unity with Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Here’s a short post on a really helpful section at the very end of:

Chapter Eight: Life Between the Cross and the Coming.

Graham Cole highlights three ‘commissions’ that Christians are to obey, as we live for Jesus in the world:

1. Creation Commission (Gen 1:28).  Our exercise of dominion is one of both care and control (eg. Gen 2:15).  I would put it this way: care for the environment is one aspect of being a follower of Jesus and a citizen of God’s Kingdom.
2. Discipling Commission (Matt 28:18-20).  God calls His people to make disciples – of all nations.
3. Moral Commission (Matt 22:37-39).  The Creation and Discipling Commissions are “to be shaped by love of God and love of neighbour.”  Indeed, as Graham rightly concludes: “Without love, creation care and discipling others become vacuous.  We gain nothing (1 Cor 13:1-3).”

Chapter Twenty Two: 1 Timothy 2:15: Salvation through “the Childbirth”

¹⁵But women will be saved through childbearing-if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.” (NIV)

How should this verse be understood, coming at the end of 1 Tim 2:11-15?  It has generated some amazing interpretations, and not just by so-called ‘liberal scholars.’  The author of Man and Woman, One in Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Paul’s Letters, Philip Payne, tackles this challenging verse in the same way he has done throughout the rest of the book – with very detailed exegesis (with focus on immediate context, broader context of book and author, and canonical context), careful and close scrutiny of alternative views and an eye to historical interpretations.

Key points include:

• Verse 15 stands in direct contrast with the negative statements about woman’s deception and transgression in verse 14
• “be saved” refers to spiritual salvation with God as the agent of salvation.  Its future tense points forward beyond Eve to the Promised Saviour
• Eve is treated as representative on women in general
• Salvation from the fall (appealed to in v15) is that same salvation through the seed of the woman identified in Gen 3:15b
• “The terrible consequences of Eve’s deception highlight the seriousness of the deception of women in Ephesus.  Yet the story of Eve also offers women hope and dignity.  Although women experience pain in childbirth as a result of the fall, a woman gave birth to the promised Seed who will destroy Satan and overcome the fall.  Not only was woman the vehicle for the entry into the world of sin, dearth, and the power of Satan, she was also the vehicle for the entry into the world of the Savior who delivers people from sin and death.” (422)
• “though childbearing” (NIV) is literally “through the childbirth”: ‘through’ indicates the means, instrument, agency through which salvation came; ‘the childbirth’ refers to a specific childbirth – that of Christ.  Payne comments, “Paul evidently chose the particular expression “the childbirth” (as opposed to simply “Christ”) in order to highlight the positive role of woman in salvation and to counterbalance his immediately preceding citation of her negative role in the fall.” (437)
• v15 is not simply a call to a role; it is a call to the Saviour.
• v15b shifts to the plural – Eve’s descendants, to experience the salvation that Christ provides, must abide in faith, continue in love (defining mark of a Christian) and holiness (inevitable result of the work of the Holy Spirit).
• Paul is not advocating legalism to the women of Ephesus: bear children, be good.  Instead he is pointing them to ennobling life in Christ, who alone saves.” (441)

The Lord Jesus, in John 13:35, states, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  Tragically the Body of Christ in the 21st century often falls far short of this instruction.  The Australian Church struggles in this area, but certainly not more than evangelicals in the U.S. where tribalism has developed into an artform.

John Piper, a significant leader in American Reformed circles and particularly the somewhat recent movement, dubbed The New Calvinists, has invited Rick Warren to speak at a Desiring God conference.  The blogosphere has exploded!

Much of the discourse is distasteful and certainly not building up of the Body.  Tragically this is not an isolated incident.  Christians behaving poorly is not limited to those who associate themselves with one particular theological system.  However the Reformed movement has hardly distinguished itself historically (and particularly in the last decade) in its embrace of all who love the Lord Jesus.  I find this increasingly sad, and it leaves a bitter taste.  Not to mention the impact on a watching world!

Scot McKnight offers some insights here that I resonate with.

The challenge for all of us is to continue to grow in Christlikeness. To be progressively formed into the image of the One who is full of grace and truth (John 1:14).