Should God always heal?

A number of years ago someone gave me a video of an English-based preacher speaking in Uganda.  This man stood before a small congregation and made an outrageous claim.  He said, ‘I have an anointing, and because I have this anointing I can heal you.  I don’t care whether its AIDS or TB, today you will be healed.’

Imagine those dear people putting their hope in him.  Think of those people who stopped taking their medication because of what he said, only to find their condition deteriorating.  I do believe God can, and does, heal today.  But I don’t believe that healing is something that can be presumed upon.  I believe that even the faithful get sick and die.

What is the relationship between sickness and sin? 

Sometimes people are quick to assume that the reason a person is ill is because of some unconfessed sin in their life.  I am not doubting that this can be the case.  In 1 Corinthians 11 the apostle Paul says that there were people getting ill and dying because they had a loveless and irreverent attitude towards the Lord’s Supper.  However, we must not make the mistake of assuming that every illness is the result of some specific sin.

The disciples made this mistake in John 9.  They approached Jesus with a blind man and asked: ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’  Jesus replies that his blindness was not the result of either his or his parent’s sin.  Similarly, at the end of 1 Timothy, Paul tells his young disciple Timothy to ‘stop drinking only water and take some wine for your stomach’ (1 Timothy 5:23).  If Timothy’s stomach problems were caused by unconfessed sin in his life, then Paul would have simply told him to repent.  The whole book of Job deals with the issue of the fact that bad things happen to faithful Christians.

Can we always expect healing? 

More than once, I have witnessed people claim that an ill person would be made well, only to see that ill person die shortly afterwards.  Why weren’t they healed?  Was there something wrong with their faith?  It is interesting that some people who pray for the healing of others will blame the sick person if they don’t get well, rather than assuming that there may be something deficient in their own faith (see Mark 9:14-29).

Contrary to what these people think, the New Testament does not present us with a picture of everyone who was prayed for being healed.  Surely Paul prayed for Timothy’s stomach before he told him to take some wine for his illness.  Paul had to leave Trophimus behind in Miletus because he was sick (2 Timothy 4:20).  Surely Paul prayed for him too.  Indeed, in 2 Corinthians 12 the apostle Paul pleads with the Lord three times that his thorn in the flesh (whatever that was) would be removed.  However, the Lord had a purpose for the thorn and replied, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness (verse 9).  The Lord didn’t remove the thorn but did give him the grace to sustain him and worked out his purpose through Paul’s suffering. 

In the Old Testament, the story of Elisha is very interesting.  Elisha had a significant healing ministry, but then we read that that he got ill and died (2 Kings 13).  He healed others, but a time came for him to get ill and die.    

The mistake of thinking that the prayer of faith will always heal people has lead to needless suffering amongst those who already enduring the pain of watching a love one struggle with terminal illness.  In the first church I worked with, there was a fine Christian man who was dying of a brain-tumour.  The pain his wife was enduring was made worse by well-meaning people promising he would be healed if they prayed with enough faith.

But what about all those promises about the prayer of faith?

For example, in Mark 11 Jesus declares to the disciples, ‘Have faith in God . . . I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain “Go through yourself into the sea” and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.  Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.’ 

I am glad that Jesus healed in situations where faith was far from perfect.  Where our faith seems weak we can pray those great words, ‘I believe, help me in my unbelief’ (Mark 9:24).  But what is going wrong when we pray in faith and a person is not healed?  Why was Timothy not healed of his stomach problems?  Why was Theophimus not healed of his illness?  Why did Elisha die of his illness?  Why did God refuse to remove the thorn from Paul’s flesh?

Jesus’ teaching on the prayer of faith is meant to remind us that God delights ‘to give good gifts to those who ask him’ (Matthew 7:11).  We should not think that he is reluctant to respond.  Jesus is also teaching that we should show confidence in God’s ability to do anything we ask.  However, I think that he assumes what is taught elsewhere: that we subject all our prayers to the will of God (e.g. 1 John 5:14).  Later in Mark’s gospel we see this attitude on the lips of Jesus when he prays, ‘Father, all things are possible with you … Yet not what I will, but what you will’ (Mark 14:36).  Sometimes God’s will is to bring healing for his people as he brings them home through the valley of death.

Am I just dampening your enthusiasm for healing?

I hope not.  That is not my intention.  I actually believe that praying for healing should be a vital part of the life of any church.  James pictures a person calling the elders of the church to pray with them.  I have been a part of a team that was gathered by a church to pray for a particular healing, and it would appear that God responded to that prayer by healing them.

We have the gifts of healing in 1 Corinthians 12.  At certain times God uses particular people as an instrument of bringing his healing.  Notice the plural—it is not ‘the gift of healing’ but ‘gifts of healing.’  That fact the Apostle Paul of ‘gifts’ rather than ‘the gift’ seems to suggest that each healing occasion is the result of a gift being given for that particular situation.  The author Michael Green writes of a man he knows who prayed and laid hands on someone who had been told that they must spend the rest of their life in bed, immediately that person got up and was instantly and permanently healed.  But that man who was only used in that way on that one occasion.

I love the attitude of one person with a notable ministry in this area.  He acknowledged that God does not always heal the way would want him to.  But he said, ‘I’d rather pray with a hundred people and see one healed, than pray with no-one and see none healed.’

Conclusion – ‘Now and not yet’

Finally, some people claim healing on the basis of Isaiah's prophecy that 'he took up our infirmities and carried our diseases' (Isaiah 53:4 and Matthew 8:17).  They say that 'there is healing in the atonement'.  That is true.  The cross is the source of all the blessings we experience as followers of Christ.  But not all the blessings secured by Calvary come to us now.  For example, no-one in their right mind would claim to have their resurrection body already!  God often heals in this life, but we have to wait until the New Heaven and the New Earth for that time when there will be no more sickness for Christ's people (Revelation 21:1-4).

Don’t believe anyone who says that it is God’s will that his people should not suffer illness.  Freedom from illness and an end to suffering is a ‘not yet’ for the Christian.  We experience sickness and death in this life.  In his mercy God often does amazing things, we shouldn’t ignore the role of healing in the Christian life, but we should see these only as a foretaste of what is to come.        

Thank God for healing in whatever form it comes!  Pray with faith.  Be open to the fact that God will sometimes use particular people in certain situations as a channel of his healing mercy.  But these are first-fruits of the healing to come, when we will be given an imperishable body that will never perish or spoil.

How to be right with God (Justification)

I am not very good at sharing my faith.  I often miss the opportunity to tell people what I believe.  I keep quiet for fear of offending people, which is not good.  But one day I was talking to a friend, and the topic of death came up.  So, I asked him, ‘what do you think happens when we die?’  He replied that he kind of likes the idea of reincarnation.

‘Really?’, I exclaimed.  ‘I don’t!  You see I fail my own standards of goodness, yet alone the standards of a holy God.  If the quality of my next life is determined on the basis of my goodness in this life, then I am coming back as a frog rather than a prince.’

What is your standard of goodness?  How good do you think you need to be to be good enough for God?  One politician said that if he found himself standing before God at the end of his life he would say, ‘Here I am.  I did my best.  Let me in.’  But is your best good enough?  Does anyone really do their best?  Can anyone actually say, ‘I never have done or thought anything I knew was wrong’?

What if God’s standard is perfection?  What if God had commanded us to love the him with all our heart and our neighbour as ourselves?  What if God refuses to be indifferent about our sin?  What if he cannot turn a blind eye towards our personal wickedness?  The Apostle Paul declares, ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23).  Solomon claimed, ‘there is no one who does not sin’ (1 Kings 8:46).  The Proverbs ask, ‘who can say, “I have kept my heart pure; I am clean from my sin”?’ (Proverbs 20:9).  We all have a big problem on our hands.

Thankfully Jesus is the solution to that problem.  Justification by grace through faith is an essential Christian doctrine that answers one of the most basic religious questions: ‘How can men and women be made right with God?’  The answer is that men and women can’t make themselves right with God, but God can make them right with himself.  

Is Justification Just? 

Justification is a courtroom verdict or legal declaration, but it means more than simply being declared not guilty.  It actually means that we are declared totally right before God.  But how can God treat guilty people as if they are not guilty?  Isn’t it corrupt to justify the wicked (Proverbs 17:15)?   The answer to these questions is that a ‘Great Exchange’ takes place.  God transfers (or imputes) my guilt onto Christ on the cross and transfers (or imputes) Christ’s life of love and obedience to me.  As one of my favourite verses puts it: ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Corinthians 5:21).  

God does not turn a blind-eye to human wickedness.  He does not lower his demand for perfect obedience.  Instead his Son lives an incomparable life and receives an unimaginable punishment so that we can be right with him.  God is both just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus (Romans 3:26).  Through justification God can be perfectly holy and treat our sin with the revulsion that it deserves, yet lovingly draw people to himself without ever compromising that holiness.

Justification is a gift

The apostle Paul is very clear that justification is a gift (Romans 4:4).  That is why we talk about justification by grace.  The New Testament uses the term grace to refer to God’s free, unmerited, unearned and undeserved favour.  Justification is God’s work not ours.  If justification was the result of anything that we do, then it wouldn’t truly be free.  It would be something that we—at least in part—earn or deserve.  That is why we must be clear that religious rituals like baptism or confirmation don’t justify us.  In the same way, we must never think that God accepts people on the basis of their being good or nice.

Remember my friend who said that he liked the idea of reincarnation.  Reincarnation is based on the idea of karma.  Karma is the opposite of grace.  Karma is getting what we deserve.  Grace involves Jesus taking what our sin deserves and us receiving the blessings his obedience deserves.  U2 wrote a song called ‘Grace’ in which the said, ‘Grace … takes the blame … covers the shame, removes the stain … It’s the name for a girl.  It’s also a though that changed the world.  She travels outside of karma.’

Justification is received through faith

If we are not justified through how we live or by a religious ritual like baptism, then how do we receive this gift?  The answer is that we are justified by grace through faith (Romans 5:1).  Faith is the means through which we receive grace.  But what is faith?  Faith simply means that we come to God admitting that we are morally bankrupt and stretching out a beggar’s hand for the gift of righteousness that Jesus has earned for us.  As one old hymn puts it: ‘Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.’  Indeed, even this faith is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8), for it is God who wakes us up to our desperate need of mercy and shows the way that to Jesus.

Becoming a Christian should result in people being both humble and confident.  Those who have been justified have nothing to boast about (Ephesians 2:9).  ‘You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary’ (Jonathan Edwards).  Yet we are confident because if it is God who has justified us then who can condemn us (Romans 8:33-34)?  It would be unjust of God to punish Jesus for your sins and then punish you.  It would be unfair of God to give you Christ’s righteousness and yet treat you as a moral failure.  The person who has received the gift of justification cannot be condemned.  God does not want those he has justified to live lives that are characterised by a sense of regret, guilt or shame.

Conclusion: but what about obedience?

You might be reading this thinking, ‘if being made right with God has nothing to do with any good works or religious rituals on my part, then surely it doesn’t matter how I live?’  That’s a really good question.  That question actually shows that you are beginning to grasp how radical the Christian gospel is.  I want to finish by briefly explaining the relationship between justification and obedience to God.

Obedience to God is not the root of justification.  Obedience to God contributes nothing to your being accepted by God.  But, obedience to God is the fruit of justification.  In other words, experiencing God’s acceptance inevitable changes how we live.  When we experience this love it turns our world upside-down.  ‘We love because he first loved us’ (1 John 4:19).  We realise that Jesus commands are for his glory and our good. We are free to love him and so we desire to obey him (John 14:15).  When we fall, we seek his strength to get up and keep going.  When we fail him, we are grieved that we have let him down but thankful that he goes on forgiving us.  We live with the security that nothing can separate us from his love (Romans 8:39).

Justification by grace through faith has been called the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls.  It is the most remarkable and beautiful of truths.  ‘Justification is away beyond anything that a human court of justice ever realises.  It is putting the sinner in the condition before God as if he had never sinned at all.  It is giving him a standing in the merit of Jesus Christ of absolute innocency before God’ (A. C. Dixon).     

      

Loved by God (isaiah 53)

In Charles Dickens’ novel, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, two men love the same woman.  Charles gets her, and Sydney misses out.  But this story is set during the French Revolution, and Charles happens to be arrested.  It is the night before his execution, and Sydney happens to make his way to Charles’ cell. The two men look alike, and so Sydney has a plan.  ‘You have a family and children, so let me die in your place.’  Charles won’t have any of it.  No way.  So, Sydney knocks him out and has some men take him away.  He then dresses to look like Charles.

As it happens, a young woman who knew Charles was also in prison awaiting execution.  She seeks out Charles (who is now Sydney) and starts to reminisce with him.  She realises this is not Charles!  ‘Are you going to die for him?’  Sydney replies in a hushed tone, ‘Yes.  And for his family and children.’  The woman looks at him and asks, ‘Can I hold your hand, because if someone as brave and loving as you will hold my hand, I think I will be okay?’

Dicken’s has picked up on a gospel theme.  Love that is willing to die for another.  The amazing thing is that none other than the Son of God died that people might be brought into relationship with God.  Theologians call the ‘substitutionary atonement’.  To atone is to make up for a wrong, and it is substitutionary because Jesus does this in our place.  This is what is pictured in the passage before us.

The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is among the most remarkable words ever written.  These words were given to the prophet more than seven hundred years before Jesus’ death, yet anyone who reads the gospels can see that they are describing the crucifixion.  They are words that have offended some and comforted others.  They tell us that Jesus’ death was violent, voluntary and vicarious.

Jesus’ death was violent

These words are about a man referred to as God’s servant.  He is an ordinary man who ‘had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him’ (53:2).  His life was no bed of roses.  ‘He was despised and rejected by people, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief’ (53:3a).  He was a good man who ‘had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth’ (53:9b).  Yet this man was subjected to the most brutal death imaginable!

He was pierced and crushed.  He was ‘disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness’ (52:14).  Read the gospels and you will see Jesus being lashed with a whip that would have had bones or metal inserted into its tip.  His flesh would have been torn off his back.  He was so weakened by this ordeal that he could not carry the beam of his cross to the place of his execution.  Recently, I watched a friend recoil at the sight of blood after a teenager had been hit in the face by a ball; well Jesus became ‘as one from whom people hid their faces’ (53:3b).

The gospels inform us that the physical suffering was not the worst thing that Jesus had to endure.  God the Son, who had enjoyed eternal intimacy with the Father cried out, ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me?’  (Mark 15:34).  It is no wonder that those who saw him considered ‘smitten by God and afflicted’ (53:4).

The was a voluntary death

In the same month that Mel Gibson’s movie ‘The Passion of the Christ’ was released, Newsweek magazine filled its front cover with a close-up of actor Jim Caviezel as the bloodied and battered Christ, with the blaring headline below asking, 'Who really killed Jesus?'  Isaiah tells us that God did!  It was the will of the Lord to crush him, he has put him to grief (53:10a).

People have objected to this.  They have thought it cruel, and unworthy of God.  But you must see how the servant co-operates.  ‘Like a lamb that is lead to the slaughter, and like a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth’ (53:7b).  The servant goes to his death willingly and uncomplaining.  Read the gospels and you will see Jesus standing silent before the Jewish ruling council in fulfilment of these words (Mark 14:61).  Jesus could even say, ‘no-one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord’ (John 10:18).

The death was vicarious

But why would the Father crush his Son?  The answer lies in the fact that this was a vicarious death.  The word ‘vicarious’ refers to something that is done for another.  Jesus died for us!  He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities (53:5a). 

None of this makes sense if you think of yourself as essentially being a good person.  ‘Why would Jesus need to for my guilt?’, you might ask.  ‘My guilt is no big deal!’, you protest.  The Bible has a more sobering verdict.  ‘We all like sheep have gone astray.  Each one turned to his own way’ (53:6a).  We have rebelled against our creator.  We have thrown off his loving rule.  We offend his perfect holiness.  We have been unthankful and profane.  We deserve to be separated from him forever.  Justice demands that we be punished for our sin.

But God has always reached out to sinful people.  In the Old Testament there was a series of animal sacrifices.  These sacrifices taught the people that our sin deserves death, and that God was willing to have a substitute die in our place.  These sacrifices pointed ahead to the servant, who is our guilt offering (53:10).  ‘The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all’ (53:6b).  Jesus dies for my guilt so that I, the guilty one, can be made right with Holy God.

This little series of talks is entitled ‘who am I?’  If you are trusting your life to Jesus, the answer is that you are someone the Father loved so much that he gave his Son for you.  ‘This is love: not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins’ (1 John 4:10).  ‘The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20).  Scottish theologian, Sinclair Ferguson, writes, 'When we think of Christ dying on the cross, we are shown the lengths to which God’s love goes in order to win us back to Himself.  We should almost think that God loved us more than He loves His son.  We cannot measure His love by any other standard. He is saying to us, “I love you this much.” …  God has done something on the cross which we could never do for ourselves.  But God does something to us as well as for us through the cross.  He persuades us that He loves us.'

This portion of Scripture actually ends with a note of victory.  Death is not the servants end.  His days are prolonged (53:10).  Knowledge of him makes people righteous (53:11).  He is lifted up and exalted (52:13).  The dying Christ was raised from the dead, ascended to heaven, is seated by the right hand of the Father, intercedes for his people, and will return in glory!  

Conclusion

A number of years ago, a famous preacher by the name of Billy Graham was being interviewed on Australian radio.  He was asked, ‘Mister Graham, how confident are you of going to heaven?’  There was absolutely no hesitation in his answer.  ‘I have absolutely no doubts.  I am completely confident that I have a place waiting for me in heaven.’

The telephone switchboard started to light up as people rang in to give out.  Caller after caller expressed outrage at the arrogance of a man who could be so sure that he was right with God.  But those who knew Billy Graham would tell you that he was not an arrogant man.  Billy Graham did not believe that he was going to heaven because he was good enough for God.  He believed he was going to heaven because his best friend, Jesus Christ, had paid the price for him to go.

What does the idea of substitutionary atonement do for you?

Are you like playwright, George Bernard Shaw, who once was listening to a talk about Jesus dying people’s sins and angerly interrupted, ‘I’ll pay for my own sins.’  Those who reject God’s offer of forgiveness and life will one day pay for their own sins.  They will have their way when Jesus comes back as their judge!

Or are you like Billy Graham, humbled, thankful and confident?  Humbled by the fact that my sin is so serious that nothing short of the death of Jesus can make me right with God.  Thankful that this is exactly what God has done for me in love.  Confident because Christ’s death is of an infinitely value that can make the most wretch of us right with God!

Prayer:

Father, these words confront me with an uncomfortable truth.  I am not okay without you.  Without you I am lost and condemned.  But you offer me the death of your Son.  In Him I can be counted righteous and free.  Humble me to see my need.  Give me the faith to trust in you.  Fill me with gratitude for you limitless love.  Amen.

What does it mean to be born again? (John 3:1-21)

Two questions.  First question: ‘are you sure that you have eternal life?’  Second question: ‘if you died, and God said to you, “why should I let you into my heaven?”, what would you say?’  Take a moment and think how you would answer each of these.

In this sermon we are looking at the question of what it means to be born again.  It does not matter whether you call yourself a ‘born again’ Christian or not, but it does matter that you have been born again.  You aren’t a Christian if you are not born again.

Becoming a Christian involves being born again (1-3)

The Pharisees were a religious movement that looked at the religion of their day and believed that it was weak.  They would not only seek to obey the rules, they would add to the rules.

The Pharisees are generally portrayed in a negative light in the gospels.  They try to trick Jesus.  Despite Jesus’ obvious goodness, they accuse him of evil.  Ultimately, they seek to have Jesus killed.

But Nicodemus comes across as a different kind of Pharisee.  He calls Jesus ‘rabbi’ (‘teacher’), although Jesus had not undergone formal training.  He is insightful, recognising that Jesus comes from God.  He is sincere.  He is respected, being called ‘Israel’s teacher’, and is a member of the Jewish ruling council.  He would have been a man of prayer.  He would have regularly been at meetings of worship.  Yet Jesus tells him, ’truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’     

What does it mean to see the kingdom of God?  Well, the Jews were waiting for God’s promised king.  Jesus is that king.  To see his kingdom involves being one of his people.  We might say that is what it really means to be a Christian.  What Jesus says is shocking!  A religious Jew would have expected to be one of the king’s people.  Jesus say only those who are born again are.

Can you see that your background, your baptism, your first communion, your reputation, your prayers or your church attendance don’t make you right with God?  Nicodemus was religious and devote.  Yet Jesus says, ‘truly, truly I say to you, unless you are born again, you will not see the kingdom of God’ (3).

Being born again is a work of God (4-8)

It is the most important thing in the world to know what it means to be born again.  Nicodemus doesn’t have a clue what it means.  He thinks that Jesus is speaking about physical birth.  ‘How can a man be born when he is old?  Surely, he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born?’ (4).  

Jesus explains, ‘truly, truly I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit’ (5).  These words might seem confusing to us, but Nicodemus should have known what they mean.  You see Nicodemus was an expert on what we call the Old Testament.

In the book of Ezekiel God declares that a time is coming when, ‘I will sprinkle clean water and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws’ (Ezekiel 36:25-27).

Water is a picture of cleansing.  God promises to wash away all your sin.  When you are born again the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in your heart.  The Holy Spirit changes you from the inside out.  He causes you to desire to follow God and he enables you to live a life pleasing to God.  Being born again involves knowing God’s forgiveness and transformation.

A business man went to his pastor and said, ‘my wife is glad I have become a Christian.  My kids are glad.’  They saw the change that Jesus made in his life and they were impressed.  Forgiveness and change are the results of being born again.

A girl was always in trouble at school.  Her name was always being brought up at staff meetings.  But over the holidays she attended a Christian camp, where she was a handful for the leaders.  Yet she heard the good news about Jesus and it impacted her.  When she returned to school her name came up in the staff meeting.  However, this time the principle exclaimed, ‘what has happened to that girl?’  Forgiveness and transformation!        

Before we move on to see the role of the cross in all this, I want you to see the words the Spirit gives birth to spirit (6).  It is saying that just as we contributed nothing towards our physical birth, neither did we contribute to our spiritual birth.  We didn’t make our mother pregnant.  We didn’t produce our own food in the womb.  We didn’t do all the pushing and shoving of labour.  We were born by the efforts of another.  Similarly, it is the Holy Spirit who shows people that they are dead in rebellion and sin, who tells them that Jesus has taken the punishment for their sin, and who raises us from spiritual death.  If you are born again then you should be among the most grateful people in the world.

Being born again is a result of what Jesus did on the cross (9-15)

Nicodemus still doesn’t understand. ‘How can this be?’ (9). 

‘You’re Israel’s teacher and you don’t understand these things’ (10).  ‘Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life’ (14).  This is a reference to our Old Testament reading (Numbers 21:4-9).

In the reading from Numbers, the people were dying as judgement for their rebellion against God.  Yet God graciously gave Moses a rescue plan.  All the people needed to do was look at the bronze snake that Moses lifted up and they would be healed.  That bronze snake pictured Jesus being lifted up on the cross.  We are dying in our sins but look to the Saviour.  Put your trust in him.  He died for people’s guilt.  He is the rescue plan we need.  He is the only way to we can have eternal life.

So why not choose life? (16-21)

Then comes what one of the most famous verses in the Bible.  ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life’ (16).   The amazing thing about this verse is that in John’s writings the term ‘world’ doesn’t mean the planet or even people in general.  For John ‘the world’ specifically refers to society in rebellion against God.  God sent his Son for rebellious people like us who had done nothing to deserve his favour.  

‘Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God’ (18).  You are presented with a stark choice!  Jesus spoke plainly about the righteous and eternal judgement of hell.  You are invited to come to Jesus for life or you will spend eternity apart from him and all that is good.

So why aren’t people flocking to Jesus to experience forgiveness and transformation?  ‘This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed’ (19-20).  By nature, we are rebels who don’t want to face the reality of our guilt.  We need to be asking God to change people’s hearts.  We should be thankful for the grace that ‘taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved’ (John Newton, ‘Amazing Grace’).   ‘But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be seen clearly that his works have been carried out in God’ (21).

Conclusion

I began by asking you two questions.  Let’s take them in turn.

‘Are you sure that you have eternal life?’  You can be sure!  ‘God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.’  Later in this gospel, Jesus will promise that he will not turn away anyone who comes to him (6:37)..  There is nothing in your life that he is not willing to forgive if you will bring your life to him.

‘If you died and God said to you, “why should I let you into my heaven?”  What would you say?’  Can you see that any answer that depends on you is the wrong answer?  ‘God, you should accept me because I am a nice person, because I pray, because I was baptised, because I go to church, because I have never been in trouble with the law.’  All the wrong answers!  Nicodemus was a nice, respected, religious, man and Jesus said, ‘you must be born again.’

If you are not sure that you are right with God, why don’t you pray with me?

‘Lord God, I offer no excuse for all the wrong that I have done.  I realise that there is a problem with my heart.  But I now see that you are a God who delights to forgive and want people to experience your mercy.  Please forgive me for trying to justify myself.  Please make me sincere as I ask you to take my past, present and future sin.  Please give me a heart that longs to follow you.  Please let me not be ashamed to tell people that I am born again.  Thank you. Amen.’

The most important doctrine you have not heard of (Union with Christ)

Do you realise that the Bible’s favourite way of describing our relationship with Jesus is one that we hardly ever use?  All over the pages of the New Testament there are references to our being ‘in Christ’ and Christ being ‘in us’.  It is called the doctrine of 

‘Union with Christ’, and it is the most important doctrine the church has forgotten!

Why don’t we think of this doctrine much?  Possibly because it is a little complicated.  Does it matter whether we understand this doctrine?  Absolutely!  One theologian said that this idea of Union with Christ ‘is the Christian life’.  It effects how we understand the past and present work of Jesus.  It shapes how we think of our relationship with God.

This idea of Union with Christ has many dimensions, so we are going to look mainly at how Christ represents us before the Father, how Christ resides in our hearts and how Christ relates us to each other.

Christ represents us before the Father

The Bible says that we are born ‘in Adam’.  He was our representative, or what theologians call our ‘federal-head’.  When he rebelled against the loving rule of God, we sinned in him.  Human life has never been the same since.  That doesn’t sound fair in our culture of extreme individualism.  But we must not let our culture be the sole determinate of what is fair in God’s eyes.  Most cultures throughout history have accepted that people are interrelated.  When a king says, ‘we are going to war’, the nation gets ready for battle.  

The good news is that Jesus has restored more than Adam lost.  He is the new Adam, and he offers to our federal-head.  We can have him as our representative instead of Adam.

One writer points out that because we are ‘in Christ’ ‘whatever is true of him is now true of us.  He died, we died. He is raised, we are (and will be) raised.  He is vindicated, we are vindicated.  He is loved, we are loved.  And so on, all because we are in him’ (Rory Shiner).  ‘God thought of us going through everything that Christ went through, because he was our representative’ (Grudem).

Jesus is our representative before the Father.  This means that God accepts us as perfectly righteous, because he was perfectly righteous.  His obedient life is transferred to my account.  Even though we let God down every day, the Father accepts me as the most deserving of children.  Your place in his family is not destroyed by your failures and shortcomings.  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we could be made the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).  So, when you read the gospels and see Jesus act with compassion, sacrifice, love, grace and delight to obey God you should be filled with gratitude.  You have benefitted from his perfect life.  Shortly before his death the theologian, Gresham Machen, sent a telegram to a friend saying, ‘I am so thankful for the active obedience of Christ.  No hope without it.’  ‘By one man’s obedience many will be made righteous’ (Romans 5:19).

Not only did Jesus represent us in his life, he represented us in his death.  Looking ahead to the cross, the prophet Isaiah declared, ‘the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all’ (Isaiah 53:6).  Peter explains that ‘he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree’ (1 Peter 2:24).  We were buried and raised with him (Romans 6:4). When Jesus died, our old self died.  When Jesus was raised from the dead, we were raised to new life.  In Christ our sins have been washed away and we are new creatures.

Are you ‘in Adam’ or ‘in Christ’?  You don’t end up being ‘in Christ’ against your will.  You are not ‘in Christ’ by birth.  Going to church, praying, being baptised, having first communion or confirmation will not bring you into Christ.  God draws people to his Son.  Christ will never turn anyone who comes to him to be their king.  But you have to be willing to have a new identity and become a new person.   

Christ is resident in our hearts

Now I suspect that most of you have not visited the website, ‘Royal Central.’  It will tell you all that you need to know about the British Royal family, including how to know when the Queen is resident in Buckingham Palace.  It used to be simple.  If there were no flags flying, then she was not at home.  If there were flags flying then ring the doorbell, she’s in.  Now you know she is out if the Union Jack is flying and is in if the Royal Standard is flying.  I tell you that because it explains why some of grew up singing a children’s song, ‘There is a flag flying high in the castle of my heart … because the king is in residence there.’  Through the Holy Spirit, the very Christ who is now seated at the Father’s side, dwells within you.  The king is in residence there.   

Paul tells the Galatians, ‘I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (2:20).  The fact that Christ lives in you is not shown by a flag, but by a life that he is transforming! 

Our old self died with Christ and so we are no longer slaves of sin (Romans 6:6). Christ now lives in you and he enables you to live the Christian life.  Apart from him you can do nothing (John 15:5).  While sin promises freedom, it leaves us ashamed and full of regret.  We need no longer need live a life of defeat.  ‘I can do all things in him who strengthens me’ (Philippians 4:13).  One of the reasons we fall in the face of temptation is that we depend on our own strength rather than lean on Jesus.  When we sin, we think, ‘I am better than this’, but we are not.  We are helpless without Christ.  Only in him we can live the godly life (2 Timothy 3:12).  Change comes through humility: when we accept that we are helpless and rely on his strength not ours.

What difference does it make to you that Christ is in you when you are tempted?  What difference does it make that he has brought you at the price of his own blood?  What difference does it make that he sees what you see, hears what you hear and knows how you feel?  What difference does it make that God promises that you will never be tempted beyond what you can bear, and that when you are tempted, he will always provide a way out (1 Corinthians 10:13)?                      

Christ relates us to each other
When Saul of Tarsus persecuted the church, the risen Christ asked him, ‘why do you persecute me?’ (Acts 9:4).  Jesus identifies himself with his people.  We are ‘one body in Christ, and individually members of one another’ (Romans 12:5).  Just as my mother expressed her one wish for her children was that we would get on with each other, Jesus prayed to his Father that ‘they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they may be in us’ (John 17:21).  Do you want to please the one who lives in you?  Then love his people and be a part of his church!  Indeed, love for his people is one of the strongest evidences that Christ lives in you (1 John 4:20).
Because we are one in Christ there can be no place in the church for sexist jokes, racial prejudice or class snobbery.  ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28).  Jesus promises that whenever we help the neediest brother or sister in Jesus, what we do we do for him (Matthew 25:40). 

Conclusion
The great London preacher, Charles Spurgeon, said, ‘there is no joy in this world like union with Christ.  The more we can feel it the happier we are.’  But how can we feel our union with Christ?
The one who dwells within us is called sympathetic (Hebrews 4:14-16).  He was a man of sorrows familiar with grief (Isaiah 53:3).  He knew what it was to learn obedience through suffering (Hebrews 5:8).  He was tempted in every way, yet without sin.  He knows what it is to feel guilt, for he took our guilt upon his shoulders.  He was forsaken, so that we would never be forsaken (Psalm 22:1).   While he is not pleased when we fall into sin, his heart reaches out to us, he feels compassion for us, and he wants to help us get to our feet.
Finally, because in Christ not hopeless.  I was reading a short biography of the Yugoslavian dictator, Tito.  It said that in his latter years he was aware of his mortality but could not face going to funerals.  He was scared of death.  As I pass through my middle-age I am trying to come to peace with the idea of one day I will die.  But we have nothing to fear if we are in Christ.  What shall separate us from the love of God that is ours in Christ Jesus?  Not even death (Romans 8:38).  We die ‘in Christ’ and we shall ever be with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:14-17).
One theologian exclaimed that union with Christ is the Christian life.  It is here ‘is no truth … more suited to impart confidence and strength, comfort and joy in the Lord than this one of union with Christ’ (John Murray).

The Practical Doctrine of the Trinity

When Ronan was about five he asked something like this: ‘If God is God and Jesus is God, does that mean there are two gods?’  I answered, ‘one day I am going to tell you something called the facts of life, but your mum is responsible for explaining the doctrine of the Trinity.’  It takes a child’s question to remind us how complicated the Trinity is!

The word I most commonly use when trying to explain the Trinity is ‘mystery’, but one of the words I want you to associate with the Trinity is ‘practical’.  I want you to see that the Trinity is the most practical idea in the whole world.

One God in three persons

We are not polytheists.  We do not believe in three gods.  We believe that there is only one true and living God.  This truth is expressed in what is called the shema: ‘Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God is one’ (Deuteronomy 6:4).  The Hebrew word translated ‘one’ actually refers to a unity rather than simply to a singularity.  This word is used of a bunch of grapes, and when Adam and Eve become one flesh (Genesis 2:24).  Hints of this idea of Trinity are found in the very first chapter of the Bible, when God says, ‘Let “us” make man in our image’ (Genesis 1:26).

No-one denies that the Father is God.  After all the apostle Paul uses the word ‘God’ as shorthand for the Father.  He writes about the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (e.g. Romans 15:6, 2 Corinthians 1:3, Ephesians 1:3).  But there is a long history of denying that the Son is God.  The Muslims claim that he is just a prophet and the Jehovah Witnesses actually think that he is the archangel Michael.

There are five New Testament texts that explicitly claim that Jesus is God (John 1:1, Romans 9:5, Titus 2:13, Hebrews 1:8 and 2 Peter 1:1), the most famous being in John’s prologue, where he says, ‘in the beginning was the Word [Jesus], and the Word was with God and the Word is God.’  Unfortunately, the Jehovah Witnesses will debate each of these texts.  But there are a number of other ways to show that Jesus is God.

Staying with John’s Gospel, you could point them to Jesus’ use of the term ‘I am’.  This goes back to the famous incident of the burning bush, where Moses asks God who he should say has sent him to the Israelites.  God responds, ‘I am who I am.  This is what you are to say to the Israelites, “I am has sent you”’ (Exodus 3:14).  To the Pharisees, Jesus declares ‘before Abraham was born, I am’.  We can see that they knew what he was claiming by the fact that they responded by picking up stones to kill him (John 8:58-59).  At the climax of John’s gospel, Thomas looks at the risen Jesus and proclaims, ‘My Lord and my God’ (John 20:28).

It is not just John’s gospel that shows that Jesus is God the Son.  We can see it in all the gospels.  In Mark, the earliest gospel to be written, we see Jesus do things that only God does.  So, when a man is lowered through a roof to meet Jesus, Jesus tells him ‘your sins are forgiven.’  This leads the religious leaders to rightly observe, ‘who can forgive sins but God alone?’ (Mark 2:7).  Jesus calms a storm (Mark 4:39), and in the Psalms God asked the rhetorical question, ‘who stilled the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves…?’ (Psalm 65:7).   Jesus walks on water, and the careful reader of the Old Testament might have recalled the following verse from Job: ‘he [God] alone stretches out the heavens and treads the waves of the sea’ (Job 9:8).

One of the most fruitful ways to show that Jesus is God is to look at the titles given to him.  He is Immanuel, meaning ‘God with us’ (Isaiah 7:14).  He will be called ‘mighty God’, said the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 9:6).  Jesus said that he was the good shepherd (John 12:11), yet in Ezekiel it is God who says, ‘I myself will tend my sheep and make them lie down’ (Ezekiel 34:15).

In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John is given a wonderful vision while he is in exile on the island of Patmos.  Near the end of this, John gets carried away and falls down to worship the angel who is speaking to him.  The angel responds, ‘don’t do that!  I am a fellow servant with you with your brothers and sisters who hold the testimony of Jesus.  Worship God’ (19:10).  We are only to worship God, yet in the same book of Revelation we see Jesus being worshipped as the Lamb of God.     

So, God is God the Son, but is the Holy Spirit God.  It actually follows naturally that if the Son is God then the Spirit is too.  The most famous text to show the existence of the Trinity is when Jesus commission the disciples and tells them to baptise people in the ‘name’ [singular] of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:18).

Texts showing that the Holy Spirit is God are less numerous than those demonstrating that the Son is.  Two are often cited.  The first comes from the incident with Ananias and Sapphira, where Peter accuses them of lying to the Holy Spirit and then immediately declares, ‘you have not lied to men but to God’ (Acts 5:3-4).  The apostle Paul implies the divinity of the Holy Spirit when he asks the Corinthians, ‘Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and God’s Spirit lives in you?’ (1 Corinthians 3:16).

The Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t even believe that the Holy Spirit is a person, yet alone God.  They think of the Holy Spirit as a kind of impersonal force, like electricity.  However, the apostle Paul warns us not to grieve the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30).  How can you grieve something that has no personality of feelings?

If we see that Jesus is God the Son, then the natural logic is to realise that the Spirit is God the Holy Spirit.  It has often been noted that Jesus commissions his disciples to baptise people in the name [singular] of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Before I attempt to show you that the Trinity is the most practical doctrine in the world, I want to clear a possible misunderstanding.  There is a heresy called ‘modalism’ which says that there is simply one God who consists of one person who appears in various forms.  So, the Father becomes the Son who becomes the Spirit.  We actually get close to teaching this when we tell children that the Trinity is like water that appears in three forms—water, ice of steam.  The Trinity is actually the mystery of one God yet three persons of Father, Son and Spirit.  The Father is God, the Son is God and the Spirit is God, but the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Spirit.  It really is a mystery.

The Trinity is Practical

However, it is also the most practical doctrine in the world.  It changes how we see God, how we see being rescued by God, how we pray and how we live.

The Trinity means God is love.  In Islam, Allah is one god consisting of one person.  How could Allah be love for all of eternity past?  Before he created anything or anybody, who did he love.  He could only have spent all of eternity loving himself.  But God is love (1 John 4:8).  It is a part of his very nature.  If there was no creation, he would still be love.  For all eternity past, the Father has loved the Son and the Spirit, the Son has loved the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit has loved the Father and Son.

The Trinity means salvation is wonderful.  One theologian asks, ‘Why did the Father send the Son?  Because the Father so enjoyed loving the Son that he wanted his love to be in others!’  God comes to broken, rebellious people and invites us to join in the dance of delight.  God didn’t create humankind because he was lonely.  He was not like the ancient gods who created people to serve them.  He created because his loves overflows and he wanted to share it.  He wants us to enjoy the love he enjoys.  

The Trinity should shape our prayer.  We can pray to the Son or the Holy Spirit, but the most of all we should pray to the Father.  Jesus showed us the pattern of prayer by teaching us to say, ‘Our Father.’  But how can we come to the Father confidently?  We come ‘in Christ’.  Christ’s death and resurrection means that we are washed and pure.  We are received with the welcome that Christ has one for us.  We come in Jesus’ name.  But the Holy Spirit is also involved.  He empowers our prayer.  When we become to think that we might be unwelcome at the throne of grace, the Spirit reminds us, ‘God is your Father, who loves you and delights to listen to you.’  When we are apathetic in prayer, he makes us restless.  When we don’t know what to pray for, he guides us.  He even takes our frustrated groans and says to the Father, ‘if Paul knew you the way I know you, and Paul understood the situation that way we can see it, this is what he ld say.’   

Finally, as Christians we are told to submit to the state, to our employers and to our church leaders.  Children are told to obey their parents.  Husbands are told to be servant leaders of their wives.  Wives are told to submit to their husbands.  We are commanded to submit to one another in love.  All this submission is countercultural in our culture of self-assertion.  Gentle, delighting, loving authority is such a contrast to the common abuse of power.   But the Trinity magnifies the beauty of loving authority and glad submission.  The Son gladly submits to the Father and the Spirit gladly submits to the Father and Son.  When Jesus walked on the earth he allowed himself to be led by the Spirit.  There was no manipulation or bullying, no self-assertion or resentment.

It is said that when Saint Patrick came to Ireland he used the shamrock to teach about what the Trinity is like.  I don’t know if the shamrock is a particularly good picture of the Trinity.  In truth I can’t think of any object that illustrates the Trinity well.  It is a mystery to us.  But just because it is a mystery does not mean that it isn’t the most God-honouring, glorious and life impacting truth the world has ever been confronted with.