IN THE FLESH

God entered our world in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He was in the flesh.

He knows what it is like to be human.

He has participated in our weaknesses and experienced our troubles.

1. IF CHRIST HAD BEEN BORN AT AYODHYA

What if the Kristajanambhoomi was situated at Ayodhya? What would Christians do? Nothing, since they are not in majority. But, what if they had the majority?

A long time ago, some of the people called Christians went to war to free their holy places from Muslim captivity. The Crusades lasted almost 200 years from 1097 to 1291. Tens of thousands of lives were lost and much wealth was spent. There was even a tragic Children’s Crusade. It ended with thousands of children being sold into slavery in Egypt and thousands dying.

The Crusades failed because they did not have God’s blessing. They did not correspond to His purpose in history. The Church was misled because it did not look into the revealed will of God as recorded in the Bible. It failed to consider the question, “What would Jesus do?”

That is why even though Ayodhya is not an issue for us, we must find an answer and be prepared in case we face a similar situation. India is the land of many gods. But in the midst of the religious fanaticism and communal riots, people are heard to plead that God is one and that people should not fight in God’s name; some people call Him Ram and some others call Him Allah. When they say that, it is implied that God cannot be known fully and each religious group has partial understanding of God. But God has revealed Himself fully in the Incarnation, in the person of Jesus.

Walking about in ancient Athens, Paul, a first century follower of Christ, found himself in a situation similar to ours. He observed that Athenians were so religious that amongst all their temples they even had a temple dedicated “to the Unknown God.” They wanted to make sure that they do not inadvertently miss some god and end up reaping his wrath for ignoring him. In the present Indian situation, Paul’s sermon in Athens is very relevant.

God is Stateless

Paul said, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth, and does not live in temples built by hands” (Acts 17:24). In other words, there really are no holy places. There is no Holy Land rendering all other lands unholy. Uganda is just as much holy as Israel. Calcutta is just as much a holy city as Jerusalem. Africa, America, Australia, Burma and India are as much God’s lands as Palestine.

The place of Christ’s birth is not important, though it was at that time and the birth was a momentous event. But Bethlehem was not meant to be all-important from that time on. The Bible does not record that Jesus ever went back to Bethlehem, the place of His birth. He may well have gone there during the three years of His earthly ministry, but the fact that it is not recorded is significant. It does appear that God in His sovereignty wants to de-emphasise the importance of Bethlehem.

The Bible is sufficient for the people of God to be trained in righteousness. It is the Christian’s rule of faith. There is no reference to Jesus going to Bethlehem because there is no real need for a Christian to go there. Nor did the Apostles go on pilgrimages to Bethlehem. The Muslim is required to go on hajj and the Hindu earns merit through pilgrimages. But there is no such obligatory requirement for Christians, because God has not reserved any holy places for them.

God is stateless. “He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him” (Jn. 1:10-11). Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place” (18:36). He said that His kingdom was in the hearts of people, not in this or that location. That is why Jesus stands at the door of every heart to seek admission and start a companionship of faith: “Behold! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20).

God is Self-Sufficient

Paul went on to say at Athens that God “is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives all people life and breath and everything else” (Acts 17:25). People need to agitate about temples and mosques only when they feel the gods themselves are impotent and unable to fight their own battles. In Old Testament history we read about Gideon. When people got ready to lynch him for destroying Baal’s temple, his father told them that if Baal is really a god, he should have been able to prevent the destruction of his temple. When Peter drew a sword in defence of Christ, He put a stop to it saying that He had the authority to summon an army of angels from heaven. In spite of that, He willingly gave Himself up to the Jews to fulfil God’s Word by drinking the cup of suffering given by His Father.

God is all-sufficient. He does not need us to fight religious wars on His behalf. He does not need us to remove obstacles nor to erect a temple in His honour. He does not experience need. He does not need temples.

God is Spirit

“In Him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’ Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill” (vv. 28-30). God is not an idol, but the Living God. Idols have eyes, but cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear; they have hands that cannot touch anyone and feet that will not move (Ps. 115:4-7). Idols have fixed locations. Jesus said that because God is spirit, worship is also a spiritual affair. He does not need holy places like Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim (the Samaritan holy place of that period). Worship would one day be a thing of the heart. That happened when the Early Church began to meet in ordinary homes, and for at least two centuries, no cathedrals or chapels were built. This ordinariness of the Christian faith made it winsome. The secret of the Early Church’s growth was its links with common society. The community of the faith witnessed in neighbourhoods by their acts of worship, a pattern worth emulating. But now in most situations, people withdraw from their neighbourhoods to worship in the splendid isolation of cathedrals and chapels.

God is Saviour

We are all made from one human couple. We are all equally sinful. We are all imperfect and have many imperfections. All need to be saved equally.

God sent a Saviour, His Son Jesus, because we could not save ourselves. We are not capable of lifting ourselves by our bootstraps. That is not only a physical impossibility, but a spiritual impossibility too. That is why Jesus had to come as the Saviour. In sending us His Son, God “commanded all people everywhere to repent. For He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed. He has given proof of this to all by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31).

The place of Christ’s birth is not important, but the day of His birth is eternally significant. The Bible provides the concept of timeliness of events in human history. It was when the time was ripe that “God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law” (Gal. 4:4-5). That is why there could be only one incarnation of God. There are not many avatars. If God had been incarnate several times, the reason has to be His failure in the first incarnation. But God never fails.

When Christ began His ministry, the determined time had come. He read to people, this portion from the Old Testament and told them that the prophecy was fulfilled in His person.

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because He has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to release the oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour (Lk. 4:18-19).

And when He died, it was at just the right time. “When we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6). Similarly, the climax of human history will relate to the revelation of the sovereignty of Christ when the times reach their fulfilment. God has “set a day” for Him to be the judge of all.

Just as God’s acts in human history have all been timely, there is a right time for humans to respond to God. “Now is the day of salvation; now is the accepted time” (2 Cor. 6:2). Even if Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem or Varanasi or Ayodhya or Mecca, it will do no good to a person unless Christ was born in his life as the King. The place of Christ’s birth was never important except for that moment in time. It is a place to live that Jesus sought. It is outside the hearts of people that Jesus stands, seeking admission. And when people open up their lives to Him, He transforms them with His spiritual communion by entering into a personal fellowship.

2. HE WAS NO AVATAR

Since the time, India celebrated the centenary of Swami Vivekananda’s triumph at the World Congress of Religions held at Chicago in 1893, his words have been dominating the columns of religious quotations in Indian newspapers. With all our troubles and failures in a materially progressive world, we have been searching for something to be proud of. And though it happened more than a hundred years ago, we commemorate that triumph to buttress our sagging morale. Swami Vivekananda was applauded for his sophisticated tolerance of other religions and his appeal that all the followers of every religion must learn to accept adherents of other religions.

That was the time when many Christians in the West had succumbed to the assault of Darwin’s theory of evolution, and were filled with awe in the presence of scientists. Liberal theologians allowed science to become a sacred cow. Scientists were to be questioned no more, even when they spoke about things outside the realm of their knowledge and expertise.

The foundations of their faith having been shaken, the thinkers of Christianity stumbled like drunken men into every philosophical path, searching for something to steady them. It was at such a time that Vivekananda appeared on the scene with a message that the only thing one can be sure about is that one cannot be sure or dogmatic. That suited the mood of liberal Christianity and that was the reason for Swami Vivekananda’s triumph.

It is a little known fact that this man who preached tolerance, was himself intolerant. As the leader of the Indian delegation, he would not allow a Christian to be part of the delegation to that Congress. Be that as it may, a number of people in India, even Christians, take pride in the fact that the man acclaimed for religious sophistication was an Indian.

Are all gods one?

In 1993, the TV programme “The World This Week” closed the year with a prayer of Vivekananda addressed to Brahma: “The one the Muslims call Allah…Christians call Heavenly Father…” In 1992 the Synod of the Church of South India prayed in the same vein: “We see your compassion in Jesus. He gives content to the Hindu name for you—Siva the kindly one. He gives significance to the Muslim address of you—Allah, the Merciful. He embodies in the godhead what Buddhists worship in the Buddha—compassion itself.”

Is that all Jesus was—just another avatar? All across the land there are governors and ministers of state who address Christian gatherings on special occasions such as Christmas and Good Friday, and say that Krishna, Buddha and Jesus have all taught us to live in love, etcetera. And some Christians are quite happy that heads of states have recognised our Jesus. However all they will actually say is that Jesus was one of the avatars of human history.

The Enfleshed God

The term avatar is not to be confused with the Christian concept of incarnation. An avatar is only an “appearance.” It is just a case of a god disguising himself or herself. The disguise can even be an animal form. Among Vishnu’s ten avatars, he was

supposed to have appeared once as a fish, once as a tortoise, and once as a boar. In Greek mythology also, the gods disguised themselves in various forms and visited human beings. Avatars were only divine visitors in disguise. They never laid aside their super-human powers. They were never subject to human limitations and experiences. They never really got hurt. They never sorrowed. But when God became incarnate in the person of Jesus, it was not a case of God appearing to be human. He became human. He felt hunger, thirst, weariness and pain. He laughed and cried. He was really human.

The word “incarnate” means “enfleshed”. That is a graphic description of what happened. God who is spirit had taken flesh. He became embodied. He who saw without having physical eyes, heard without ears, and spoke without having a mouth, took on Himself the limits of our physical senses. What was more, He who was so utterly, frighteningly holy, and would not allow any human being to see His glory, or any creature to even touch a place where He had descended, allowed mortals to look on His face and even to touch Him with their hands. As John wrote later, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us” (1 Jn. 1:1-2). “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth…No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known” (Jn. 1:14-18). That is what happened at the Incarnation. God became one of us.

Next, while the Incarnation was unique, there have been many avatars (and there can be many more). There has been only one Incarnation, because the God who is eternal, on inhabiting moments in time, made those moments eternally significant. The God who is almighty, when He broke into the spatio-temporal world, fulfilled His purpose and did not retreat in defeat to return another day. Even when humankind, manipulated by Satan, attempted to finish Him off, He shouted triumphantly from the cross, as though it was His throne, and not the executioner’s territory. He shouted, “Finished!” meaning, “Mission Accomplished!” He had not been thwarted or defeated. He had succeeded. If He had failed, God would have had to return like avatars. Mythological avatars had to come back again and again, because previous avatars had failed. They never finished the task entirely. The God who is really God does not need to reincarnate Himself again and again. Once was enough. There was only one incarnation of God. His name was Jesus.

Not to Destroy

The third difference between Jesus and mythological avatars is that Jesus did not come to destroy those who were wicked. He came to save them. But avatars came to take the side of the good and destroy the wicked. The Bhagwad Gita records that Krishna said to Arjun, “Whenever there is a decline of righteousness, I send forth myself, for the protection of the good, for the destruction of the wicked, and for the establishment of righteousness I come into being from age to age.” On the other hand, Jesus did not come to destroy the erring. Jesus came into the world to incarnate God, to proclaim good news and to redeem people. That is a significant difference between Christ and the avatars. It is the difference between life and death.

With an avatar you have to be on your best behaviour if he is not to send you up in smoke with one blast of his breath. But Jesus kept the company of the outcast of society and came to be known as the “Friend of sinners.” He even allowed a prostitute to demonstrate her love in a physical way. She washed His feet tenderly with her tears, dried them with her hair, applied costly perfumed ointment, and kept kissing His feet. Jesus scandalised all the religious folks by allowing such a flagrant display of devotion. No avatar would have allowed that. But Jesus did, because He came as Saviour, not as the destroyer.

The avatars are very human and they have no plan of redeeming humankind. The World history is replete with instances that prove that humans have no programme to redeem the difficult cases. Human messiahs offer no hope to the weak, whether in body, mind or spirit. Hitler’s interest in producing a super race, for example meant death for those who in his opinion weakened the race. But it is not only a Hitler who has this kind of philosophy and strategy. At a lesser level, today’s educational institutions (not only the elitist ones, but also those that aspire to being elitist) cater to the privileged and keep out the deprived, to ensure good results, and the continuance of their own good reputation. It is always easy to love the lovable—the brightest, the best, the prettiest, the smartest, the strongest, the richest. But Jesus was different. Only He said, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners…” He did not come to condemn. He did not put people into categories of those to be saved and those to be consigned to the trash heap outside His kingdom. That was because He came to save. He looked at impetuous Simon, and believed that He could turn him into Peter, the rock. He did not join the crowd in destroying the life of a woman caught red handed in adultery. He believed He could give her life a new direction by not condemning her and charging her to take a new course in life. “Go and sin no more,” He said to her. He was in the business of saving people from what they were and making them fit for His kingdom.

Not to be Served

Jesus did not come to be served. He was born poor. He had no servants. If He had been born a prince, lived in a palace and was heir to an earthly throne, He would have been served. Instead, He was a working class man who worked with His hands and lived by the sweat of His brow. He was a daily wage labourer—a poor, village carpenter.

Jesus came to serve. But He did not come only to serve. He came “not to be served.” It is important to say that in its negative form. People seeking high office in political, secular and Christian circles, very casually say, “I want to serve people.” It is standard practice to say that sort of thing. It is expected of them to claim “servanthood”. But it is significant that no one seeking or holding high office says, “I don’t want to be served.” That is because they want to be served. They want people to bow and grovel before them. Jesus, on the other hand, came, not to be served, but to serve. Instead of having servants, He Himself was the Servant.

Not to Save Himself

Finally, as much as Jesus came to save others, He did not come to save Himself. Avatars save themselves. Of Jesus Christ, His enemies said, “He saved others. Himself He cannot save.” Those who crucified Him taunted Jesus about His inability to save Himself. What they said in mockery was in fact a profound truth. If He had saved Himself, He could not have saved us.

No one took His life. He laid it down voluntarily. He could have summoned an army of angels to His rescue. He could have refused to drink from the cup of His sufferings, shame and sorrows. All this, He refused to do, because He wanted to save humankind from the punishment that they deserved.

No avatar would have allowed the indignities Christ suffered. All avatars at the end showed off their super-human powers and destroyed those who mocked or tormented them. But Jesus would not save Himself. That was because He had one eternal purpose: to save those who were against Him. He prayed for those who cursed Him. He loved those who hated Him.

The Incarnation is about God becoming human, and not appearing or pretending to be human or donning a disguise. It is about God having an effective once-for-all programme of salvation, a programme to save the wicked and the unlovable. The Incarnation is about God saving us at great cost to Himself. He came not to destroy, but to save. He came not to be served, but to serve. He came not to save Himself, but to save others. That was because the Incarnate God was no avatar. He was Jesus. And He is the same yesterday, today and forever.

3. GOD’S STAR LEADS TO A STABLE

From time to time the Bethlehem star gets into the news. A couple of years ago, American astronomers declared that the Bethlehem star was not a star, but a double eclipse of Jupiter. Maybe. However, the theory that the Bethlehem star was not a star does not create any problems for faith, because the Bible only describes the phenomenon as the ancients perceived it. The Word of God is not written in modern or scientific language.

What the wise men claimed was that they had seen a new sign in the night sky which they said signified the birth of the king of the Jews. Read the story in the Bible (Matthew 2:1-12). They were no astronomers, but astrologers. They believed that the fortunes and fates of humans were controlled by the stars. They did not know any better. But it is amazing how moderns scan and study “what the stars foretell” columns in newspapers and popular magazines.

The Bible is against all divination practices. God told His people that they must not “imitate the detestable ways of the nations…practise divination…interpret omens.” He said, “Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD” and that they would be driven out of the Promised Land (Deut. 18:9-13). Later on He said, “When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God?” The Lord urged His people to turn back to the Word. He said that if they do not turn back to the scriptures they will have no light to guide them (Isa. 8:19-20). The Word says quite clearly and categorically that when God’s people look to the stars, they are out of touch with God.

God Broke Through

But God being God, communicated with those ancient wise men even through their idolatrous practices. Idolatry is no barrier to God when He reaches out to humans. It is a barrier only to humans seeking God. The Lord broke through their idolatry to communicate to those men. The magi, when they looked to the stars, were just like everyone else. They looked for a palace, possessions and power, as signs of the kingdom. This is what everyone is looking for. Even those who are sophisticated enough to know that there is no truth in astrology are no different when it comes to what they want in life. Who looks for poverty and weakness? Who thinks that such qualities are admirable or worthy of a quest? Everyone looks for good fortune.

When the magi came to the palace, they stopped looking to God for guidance. They imagined that they had reached their destination, and did not want to go any further on their journey. We are just like them. We come to a place of good circumstances, and wish that we could settle down and live happily ever after. But as one songwriter put it,

This world is not my home

I’m just a-passing through;

My treasures are all laid up

Somewhere beyond the blue…

This is the attitude of a pilgrim. Such a person journeys through life with a destination in mind.

Abraham was such a pilgrim. He did not follow a star. He followed God’s instructions. He remained a nomad all his life. He was a stranger and an alien in every place he went. He never came to a place where he felt he could settle down. No land on earth is satisfying to a person who views himself or herself as a pilgrim in life. He is always looking for a better country because his citizenship is in heaven (Hebrews 11:6-10,13-16).

The Stables of Life

The star led the magi to a stable. It was the stable where Christ was born. The kings in our Christmas pageants kneel very easily in make-believe mangers. They wear silk saris, the hems of which their mothers lift as they walk the city’s streets to prevent them becoming soiled and frayed. Like the magi, we discover that the stars we follow lead not to palaces, but to the stables of our lives. We expect and hope to find good fortune, but find that life is tough. Some of us had dreams of wonderful careers, but are now bored by the drudgery. Some were starry-eyed lovers, but now feel trapped in their marriages. How many unfulfilled dreams there are among people today! So many started out following a star and find themselves in the stables of life.

The magi initially mistook the palace for their destination; but when God corrected their steps, they found that God had led them to a stable. How do you think they felt when they realised that God’s star had led them to a stable? How will you feel and react when the star you follow leads you to a stable?

God’s Choice

What we need to realise is that the stables of our lives are God’s choice for us. He is the one who has led us to stables. That is life. It is life as He ordained. There are joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats, highs and lows. We are blessed, but we also experience the curse of the ‘Fall’. Yes, that is life after Eden and before Heaven. Like Job, we need to respond, “Shall we receive good from God and not trouble” (Job 2:10). When something is from God, have we learned to accept it for no other reason than that it is from God? The important thing is to recognise God’s hand. We should neither be dazzled by the glamour of our situation, nor be depressed by the gloominess.

The magi were overjoyed when the star led them to the Child. They had set out to worship Him. If they had found Him in a palace, they would no doubt have worshipped Him. But the fact that they found Him in a stable did not change their attitude toward the King. They still worshipped Him. If we worship God only when our circumstances are good, it is not God that we worship, but our circumstances. We have lost sight of God and react only to our situations.

God in the Stable

The magi came to a stable and found God in the middle of it. The message of Christmas is that God has entered the stables of our lives. He is Emmanuel, God with us. He is not a domineering God over us, or a compelling God before us, or an irresistible God invading us. He is God with us. He gets into the poverty, the muck and the grime of our lives.

When God is in the stables of our lives, we will not find satisfaction in the palaces of the world. We will find happiness only in the stable of His presence. Herod had his palace, but what an unhappy man he was! He ranted and raved, and in his rage, hit out and killed innocents. He was in a palace surrounded by all his guards, but he was a frightened man threatened by a mere baby.

There is nothing in a palace to make you happy, and there is nothing in a stable that can make you sad. If God is in a situation, He makes all the difference. And that is the message: God is in, because He wanted to be in. He could have chosen a palace, but He chose the stable. God stays in stables like us. He does not escape from stables. He enters the stable to touch it and make a difference. If God is not in the palace, it is not the place to be in. But if God is in a stable, it is the only place to be in.

Costly Gifts

The magi worshipped Christ in the stable. They offered their costly gifts to Him. They did not say, “Oh, it’s only a baby, and a baby needs only a rattle…a carpenter’s son needs only a wooden toy…if we give Him gold in a stable, we create problems of safety…If we give Him gold, frankincense and myrrh we spoil His simplicity.” That is how we talk. We argue that we should not give more than others to porters at train stations, domestic servants and others who form the unorganised labour force of our cities. If we do, we spoil them. Rather, we spoil it for ourselves, and others of our crowd, because then those who do not belong to our class will begin to believe that they have a right to better working conditions.

If the Lord is the Lord, we must give Him the best. In the Old Testament, God asked His people to give Him the first fruits and the fatlings. He was to have priority and choice. He was not to be offered anything that was deformed or defective. Applying that to our times would mean that we are not to give Him the torn currency note that will not pass in the marketplace. We are not to give Him the leftovers of our self-indulgence and extravagance.

The magi did not say, “We’re going to see a king so let’s get some grand new clothes for ourselves.” Christmas and Easter are celebrated today by getting new clothes, feasting and indulging ourselves. Instead, the magi were lavish in the gifts they gave Jesus.

If the Lord is the Lord, we can never give Him too much. Because the Lord is the Lord, you can never give more than He has given. We need to be lavish in giving to God. Because He was lavish first. Because He is more lavish, we will never out-give Him. Even when we give, we receive. In one sense, we can never give Him anything because He does not need anything. But we give, because we need to give and because there is blessing in giving.

Another Way

Finally, the magi went back another way. Their lives took a new direction. They did not go back to the palace. The old king with his riches did not matter anymore. Gone was the temptation to hobnob with the rich and powerful, which was what had misled them in the first place. From then on, they saw the old king as a mere man, and more than that, as a man opposed to God.

Jesus was in the world, and though the world was made by Him, it did not recognise Him. He came unto His own, and they would not receive Him. If that is the way the world treats my Lord, what do I have in common with that world? John said to the Church, “Never give your hearts to this world or to any of the things in it. A man cannot love the Father and love the world at the same time. For the whole world-system based as it is on men’s primitive desires, their greedy ambitions and the glamour of all that they think splendid, is not derived from the Father at all, but from the world itself. The world and its passionate desires will one day disappear. But the man who is following God’s will is part of the permanent and cannot die” (1 John 2:15-17, Phillips). James put it more bluntly: “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God” (Jas. 4:4).

No longer must the Christian bow and grovel before the power mongers of this world, hanker after their approval or keep their company. Paul wrote to the Church in his day: “Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’?” (1 Corinthians 1:26-28, TM).

When you meet God in the stable, the palace no longer impresses you. You are not drawn to it. You avoid it. You find a new direction for your life. You want to fulfil God’s will for your life. Once you encounter God in the stables, you do not want to retrace your steps to the palaces of the world. Once you encounter God, life takes a new direction.

So open your eyes to catch the heavenly vision that will help you to live in the stables of this life because you find Jesus there.

4. GOD’S TIMING

Do you wish you were born a few generations ago? Well, there was no TV then. What on earth did they do for entertainment? In a moment of idealism, you might say that you could live without television invading the home. But how about living without electricity and running water in the home? When the electricity goes off, we fret and fume about the performance of the government, because we cannot see too well in the dark or we are sweating it out in the heat. Yes, on second thoughts most of us would not want to live in such ancient times.

Have you ever thought about the time when Jesus chose to be born and come into our world? He had all of human history before Him. If we were in His place, we would have chosen the present time, when there are fast cars for quick and easy transportation within city limits, aeroplanes for travel to distant places, computers for storage of information and efficiency in work, telephones and email for communications, and air conditioned comfort for relaxation and recovery. Wouldn’t Jesus have been more effective in our time? Surely mass communications alone would have spread the Gospel rapidly. Why then did God choose that more ancient and primitive time without modern facilities?

Time Fully Come

The Bible has a profoundly simple answer to this mystery. “But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under law” (Gal. 4:4). That moment was the right time. It was the ripe moment. In a sense, any other time would not have been right. Of course, God could have in His sovereignty turned any moment into the right one. But He did not do that. Not choosing a later time probably had to do with God wanting to give humankind maximum opportunity to fit in with His plans (see 2 Pet. 3:8-9).

One message of the Incarnation is that God knows what He is doing. He is the Lord of history. He is the One who created time and He is in control. Our “times are in His hands” (Ps. 31:15).

We have a tendency to regard some periods in our lives as bad. We wonder where God is. We are upset about the way things develop. But the Incarnation reminds us that “in the fullness of time” Emmanuel, the God who is with us, came and still comes to us.

Sacred history gives full evidence that God has a timetable and that things happen in their time: not a moment before and not a moment later.

Biblical History

Noah went into the ark seven days before the rains came as instructed by God. For seven days he waited for God to send the rain. He had warned all the people around him of the impending doom. They must have laughed at him while he was preaching to them. But after he went into the ark their mockery of him would have grown in intensity. Can you imagine Noah’s feelings at the end of the first day after he went into the ark? He went through seven days of it. He waited in faith and patience.

The patriarch Abraham had set out from his home country in response to God’s call. Thus, he demonstrated his faith. Abraham “believed God and it was counted as his righteousness” (Ge, 15:6). He had to believe that one day in the future his descendants would inhabit the land in which he was a nomad. But he and his wife were childless. Then one day Sarah came up with the plan to help God fulfil the promise of children. They decided to speed things up a bit. So Abraham cohabited with the slave Hagar and had a child by her. But God did not agree to this contingency plan. The son of promise came in God’s time. Isaac was born when God set the time.

Joseph had dreams. They were not entirely his fantasies. The first was a dream from God. Of course, the dreams turned his head and antagonised his brothers. Their animosity reached a flash point and they sold him to slave traders. Joseph had to wait in slavery for his dreams to be fulfilled. Then things got worse and he landed in prison. He continued waiting. Hope disappointed him when a fellow prisoner suffered a loss of memory and showed no gratitude for Joseph’s service and encouragement. Joseph waited some more. Then God’s moment came and Joseph was catapulted from prison to the Egyptian king’s palace. Joseph then looked back at all the events of his life and said that even the bad things that happened to him were things that God took and turned around so that he could save his brothers who had done him harm. He had learnt that though the dream came from God, he still had to wait for God’s time.

Israel waited for God to act. For centuries, they groaned and wept and cried out to God. Did their cries fall on deaf ears? Or, had God forgotten about them? God had seen their misery and heard their laments. Years went by. They dreamt of their Promised Land, but they remained in bondage in a foreign land. Israel was enslaved in Egypt for 450 years before God moved and brought them out.

Moses, born a Jew, grew up in the Pharaoh’s palace. He enjoyed the privileges of royalty and was well connected to the powers that be. As he reflected on his unique position, he sensed that God must have a purpose in all that was happening in his life. He concluded that he was meant to be the liberator of his people. That was no jumping to conclusions, but he did jump to action. He would not wait for God’s time to act. He botched his attempts to forge a sense of unity and brotherhood among his people and had to flee from human society and go into hiding in a wilderness. Moses, who would not wait, had to wait for forty years before God reactivated him for the task of liberating God’s people.

When the first king, Saul, turned out to be a disappointment, God chose David to be king. Unlike Moses, his awareness of being God’s choice for the kingship came not from inference, but from the special historical event of being appointed by God’s prophet Samuel and being told in no uncertain terms that he was the chosen one. For all that, David did not immediately become king. Instead, he became the servant of the king, and that too a servant who was not trusted, but suspected of treason. He had to wait until Saul’s death to become a king. Meanwhile, he became a fugitive from the king and a refugee in enemy country. He had a couple of opportunities to finish Saul, which he could have easily justified as fulfilment of his destiny. Instead, he chose to wait for God to act.

The Incarnation

It should therefore not surprise us that Jesus came only “when the time had fully come.” When His mother tried to hurry Him along in His work, He told her, “My time has not yet come” (Jn. 2:4). When He did begin His ministry finally, He announced the good news of God, saying, “The time has come” (Mk. 1:15). Later, when Christ’s brothers tried to get Him to occupy centre-stage by going to Jerusalem and displaying His miraculous powers, He said, “The right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right…for me the right time has not yet come” (Jn. 7:6-8). Earlier attempts to arrest Him failed “because His time had not yet come” (v.30). As the time drew near for Him to die, Jesus said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (12:23). He sent His disciples to prepare the place for the Passover meal saying, “My appointed time is near” (Matt. 26:18). At that last supper with His disciples, Jesus knew that the time had come for Him “to leave this world and go to the Father.” Later, when His ordeal was about to begin, starting with the betrayal by a friend, He told His disciples, “The hour has come” (Mk. 14:41).

The Incarnation is all about God, who is beyond space and time, keeping time. He entered our spatio-temporal world and redeemed time from meaninglessness. The writer of Ecclesiastes views all time pessimistically. There is a time for everything, even for opposite conditions and activities that negate and cancel each other. As he looked at all that went on among humans, he cried out, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity (meaningless)!” Into such a world, the Lord of eternity came as the Lord over time. He redeemed it so that it became a divine moment.

God’s intervention in time did not end with the Incarnation. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to substitute for Him among Christians “when the day of Pentecost had fully come” (Acts 2:1,KJV). The Lord our God continues to work among His people according to His perfect timing. The work that God does in our lives is marked by divine timeliness.

This is our God. He is Emmanuel. He is God with us. As we live out our time, often we forget that God has a time for what is to happen in our lives. But we grow impatient with the God who is so slow and takes forty years to teach a person divine lessons as He did with Moses or takes 450 years to free slaves from their misery as He did with Israel in Egypt. In our impatience, we try to manipulate situations as Abraham did, instead of waiting for God to act as Joseph did.

Not Waiting

All over our country, we have to stand in queues patiently, at the ration shop, at the electricity office, at the post office. In the case of the railways, we wait to make travel reservations and then we wait again for trains to arrive. Similarly, we wait patiently to get our telephone connection, and then wait in line to pay our bills to keep that connection. Have you ever wondered about how much time we as a nation spend just waiting for things?

But there are always some people who think that they are too important to wait. So, when such people arrive where others have been standing in line for an hour or more, they look for a friend in queue who is nearing the counter where they will find fulfilment. They sidle up to him, engage him in conversation, and pass him the money to get them that thing for which others have been waiting so patiently for so long. Sometimes, there are people in queues whose patience has worn thin, and then there can be arguments and even scuffles.

The lack of patience is one of the causes of corruption in our country. When a person does not want to wait his turn, he will offer a bribe to get the service out of turn. Impatience feeds corruption and makes it oppressive for those who cannot or will not pay for speedy service. Patience is one of the hardest virtues to practise, especially for our generation brought up on fast food, instant coffee, quick transportation and brief telephone calls (replacing painstakingly written letters sent by “snail mail”). This is especially true of our relationship with God. Somehow, we who spend so much of our lives waiting, will not wait for God to act.

Waiting Patiently

The Bible says, “God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built” (1 Pet. 3:20). It does not tell us how long Noah took to build the ark. It took seven days for the procession of animals and birds to enter the ark in pairs. It must have taken many days (years?) before Noah was able to finish building the ark according to the specifications given by God. Noah had no lessons in carpentry. How long did God wait for Noah to finish building the ark? Instead of waiting for slow, unskilled Noah to finish the task, how easy it would have been for God to provide a prefabricated boat and get on with His plan. But God waited for Noah. He chose to wait. He, who by His mere word had created whole worlds in space, paced Himself to fit Noah’s pace. What a lesson in patience!

Patience is one of the flavours of the fruit of the Spirit. The King James Version uses the picturesque word ‘longsuffering’. If we have been called to suffer and to suffer long, we must remind ourselves that our God is a longsuffering God, who has suffered long and suffered before we ever knew suffering. How many centuries have gone by without God giving up on the perversity of humanity! Amazing grace! He still has not given up on us.

Patience does not come easily. Patience is often the best index to the state of our souls. When I am impatient, I assert my own importance, and in the final analysis, it is in the presence of none other than the God who waited patiently, that I make all my assertions and claims to importance. I become in the presence of the God who waits, like those impatient people who will not wait in queues. They come after others who have been patiently waiting in line for hours and treat them as fools or a despised lot. That is how I treat God when I refuse to wait for His time. I refuse to wait with Him. That is the enormity of human impatience.

The Waiting Father

A young man would not wait for his father’s death to lay claim to his inheritance. He felt that the father was a slowpoke and would never amount to anything. He was going to show his father how well he could do in life. The young man went off with all that he was given by the father. He had nothing that he did not owe to his father. He entered the fast track, but it was the fast track to ruin. Then one day he came to his senses and thought he would return to his father. When he came home, he found his father waiting. The father had been on the lookout for him all the time. The father saw a ragged stranger approaching and recognised his son’s gait even from a long way off and ran to embrace him. In telling the story of the prodigal son, Jesus showed us what God is like. He is (in the words of the late German pastor-theologian Helmut Thielicke) “the waiting Father.” He waits for us to return to Him from all our wanderings. How very patient He has been with us who are so easily diverted from what is good and virtuous!

God has a time for the incidents and events that shape our lives. He uses everything that happens to fulfil His plans for us. Comforts and hardships, plenty and deprivations, justice and injustice, kindness and unkindness—all can be used by God. “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28).

God inhabited the past when patriarchs and prophets and apostles and giants of faith lived. God will inhabit the glorious future that is coming when He will establish His kingdom on earth. But He also inhabits the present moment, the one in which you and I struggle to live. This is a divine moment. The God who was incarnate is still Emmanuel, the God who is with us. Diane Bell says it well in a song:

In His time, in His time,

He makes all things beautiful in His time.

Lord please show me ev’ry day

As You’re teaching me Your way,

That You do just what You say in Your time.

5. THE SEVEN WHO SAID “NOT GUILTY!”

Who has ever heard of anyone being pronounced “not guilty” and yet condemned to capital punishment? That is the story of Jesus, our Lord.

Caiaphas & Co.

The first to make a move against Jesus was Caiaphas. He was the High Priest. The Sanhedrin (the Temple Council) was in session. The members were upset that the miracles Jesus was performing were eroding their hold over the commonality among the Jews. They said, “This man is doing a lot of miracles. If we don’t stop him now, everyone will put their faith in him. Then the Romans will come and destroy our temple and our nation” (Jn. 11:47-48, paraphrased).

So often Christians in authority imagine that they themselves and they alone have the interest of the church and its institutions. Anyone who challenges their authority is seen to be working against the establishment. When a person is seen in that light, it is easy to condemn him or her.

High Priest Caiaphas provided the solution to their problem. He said, “You people don’t have any sense at all! Don’t you know it is better for one person to die for the people, than for the whole nation to be destroyed” (vv.49-50, paraphrased). He was saying that the individual doesn’t count. Only the establishment does. Therefore an individual is always expendable.

Our Lord Jesus did not share that view. He told the story of a shepherd leaving 99 sheep to search for one lost sheep. According to Jesus’ story the shepherd leaves them unguarded in open country. That story is contrary to the world’s way of doing business. No one leaves 99 sheep unguarded to look for one lost sheep. One per cent loss is an acceptable loss. Not for Jesus.

Those who claim to be shepherds in line with Jesus need to imbibe this philosophy of ministry. People matter more than institutions and projects. The true shepherd cares for one sheep—that is troubled, harassed, ill-treated, victimised. Those who do not care, do not represent Jesus. They are not Christ’s shepherds.

Once Caiaphas and company had decided Jesus had to go, they looked for ways and means to finish Him off. When they managed to arrest Jesus, they tried to find people who would give false evidence against Him. They were predisposed to condemning Jesus. Even in our day, too often enquiry committees and managing boards will not give a person a fair trial. They allow the head of an institution to decide the agenda for their decision-making. People in management should never be rubber stamps n the hands of unscrupulous persons. They are there to provide the checks and balances that make for just and fair administration. When they fail, there is miscarriage of justice. That is what crucified Jesus. All of them knew that He was not guilty. They even admitted it. But they felt that He must go in the interest of the establishment. They had an agenda.

Pilate

The Jews were not an independent nation at the time. They were subject to Roman rule. They had no authority to give capital punishment. Such cases had to be referred to the Roman governor. In Judea, Pilate was the supreme authority. He represented Rome.

When Jesus was brought to him, Pilate examined Him. He found out that Jesus was not guilty of any crimes. He said so. But Pilate had a problem. He loved his position, more than he loved the truth. He had learnt the bitter lesson that for the expediencies of office he often had to compromise the truth. When Jesus said, “ I came into the world to proclaim the truth, and everyone who sides with truth, listens to me,” Pilate disdainfully asked, “What is truth?” But Pilate did not want to hear the Lord’s answer. He walked out before Jesus could confront him with the truth (19:37-38).

When Pilate heard that Jesus was a domicile of Galilee, he immediately tried to pass the buck by sending Him to King Herod, who was in charge of that region. Pilate was an indecisive administrator. People who will not and do not want to act decisively, should not seek high office. Decision-making goes with offices. People should not seek office for the sake of privilege, but to exert their influence for good.

The moment Pilate showed an inclination to do the right thing, the Jewish leaders said, “If you set this man free, you are no friend of Caesar” (v.12). For Pilate his office mattered more than the truth. He was unwilling to risk his calm and peaceful term in office for the sake of truth truth. He backed off.

To absolve himself, Pilate then washed his hands in public He is remembered for that act. All generations after him have used the expression of washing hands to indicate abdication from responsibility. Pilate said, “I won’t have anything to do with the death of this man. You are the ones perpetrating this murder” (Matt. 27:24).

There is a legend that ever since Pilate compulsively washed his hands. He was forever trying to wash the blood of Jesus from his hands. He must have done some good things in office, but he is not remembered for any of them. Instead he is and will always be remembered as the man who allowed Jesus to be killed and then tried to disown his responsibility in letting it happen. History never forgave him. Because human beings are in God’s image, they will always believe that right is right and wrong is wrong. That is why in history books we see good deeds exalted and wrong doings condemned—even the wrong of not taking action to favour truth and justice.

Herod

He was the joker. Herod lived for pleasure. He broke God’s law to taken another man’s wife. Then he gave away a prophet’s head for a dance. There are people like that still. For them, nothing is sacred. Nothing is as important as their own welfare and pleasure. People still sacrifice others on the altars of their personal amusement.

Herod did not find Jesus guilty, however when Jesus was brought to him, all he could think of was the thrill of seeing a miracle performed. But Jesus was not Herod’s court jester or entertainer. He would not jump through hoops because Herod wanted to see Him perform. So when Jesus would not provide the entertainment, Herod joined his soldiers in making fun of Jesus. He was determined to have his fun one way or the other, even if it meant dehumanising treatment of another.

What hope is there for the redemption of an institution where those who are to protect the rights of the defenceless, join in mocking them instead and make them the butt of all their jokes? When power is in the hands of buffoons what a travesty they make of justice.

Pilate’s Wife

When Jesus was sent back to Pilate’s court, he received an urgent message from his wife: “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man. I have had nightmares because of him” (v.19). Pilate’s wife declared Jesus innocent of all crime. She did not stop with telling her husband what she thought, but also told him how he ought to conduct himself in his position.

Sometimes wives (and grown up sons and daughters) are casual about the wrongs done by their husbands (fathers). Their excuse is, “I don’t interfere in my husband’s (father’s) work.” That is no excuse for the simple reason that they do reap the benefits of their husbands’ (fathers’) positions. They are involved.

Sometimes chairpersons of managements also use that excuse for not interfering in the working of those who are in charge. They are for that reason willing to go by appearances. They refuse to look into matters because such scrutiny would disturb the status quo. They do not want to have to deal with problems. “Things are going well,” they say. Well? What they mean is that the institution is giving money to the church’s programme. For them that is the measure of what is good and right. The same was Pilate’s attitude: “As long as the taxes are paid, they can commit murder.”

Pilate’s wife was not a willing bystander. She gave her opinion and urged her husband to take the side of justice. She obviously did not want to be guilty of condemning an innocent man by complacent non-interference. She believed she was involved in her husband’s affairs of state. She would not willingly stand by while he did an injustice. After all she had aided him in reaching his office, and benefited from his being in office. She would pay for the benefits by her intercession for justice.

Judas

Judas believed from the beginning that Christ was innocent. But he was upset about the casual approach of Jesus to wealth. To Judas money was to be hoarded and one did whatever was necessary—even if the means were wrong—to get it. Money-power was so important for Judas that he was ready to betray Jesus for it, and he did.

However it would appear from his reaction, that Judas expected Jesus to arouse Himself, display His power and escape death. But Jesus would not defend Himself. He stood silent before His accusers and judges, and allowed Himself to be condemned. When that happened, Judas cried in despair, “I have betrayed an innocent man!” (vv.3-4) He felt there was no other recourse for him but to commit suicide, even before Jesus was killed, so that he would not have to witness the conclusion to his act of betrayal.

The Jewish Council’s response was, “What is that to us? That’s your problem”

Once someone is betrayed to those in power, there is no stopping the lengths to which the powerful would go. We have to live with those consequences. We may not be able to face them. But that will not stop the powerful in their tracks.

The Crucified Thief

Two robbers were crucified along with Jesus. At first both of them joined in taunting Jesus. They thought that they could somehow lessen their own suffering by the diversion of mocking a religious freak.

As time went by, one of them observed that there was something different about Jesus. He was obviously an innocent man. And for all the noise of the crowds out for the thrill of a public execution, there was a regal calmness about the man. As he watched everything, the robber reached some conclusions and voiced them. He said to the other robber, “Don’t you fear God? Aren’t you getting the same punishment as this man? We got what was coming to us, but he didn’t do anything wrong.” Then he said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus assured him, “I promise that you will be with me today in paradise” (Lk. 23: 40-43).

Even those who do evil know right from wrong. There always comes a time to decide whether you persist in evil or side with right.

The Centurion

The Roman officer had overseen many crucifixions. Executing people was just part of the work he had to do from time to time. Maybe the first time he killed someone in battle, he had felt emotionally upset. But by the time he had become an officer in the Roman army, he had grown callous about death. Taking another’s life no longer bothered him.

The soldiers had already had some fun playing abusive pranks on the prisoner. They had roughed Him up. They had made Him the butt of their cruel practical jokes. He had kept calm through it all. Then they had crucified Him. As they drove the nails into the palms, they expected Him to break down and start screaming curses. The fun went out of the crucifixion. Instead, the Centurion heard Him pray, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing”. That was a new experience. The Centurion stayed close to the central cross. He heard the man say caring words to His sad mother and a grieving disciple. The man even had a kind word for the robber who had joined in the mockery and the cursing, in spite of sharing His lot. In the end, the Centurion heard Him whisper a prayer: “Father, I commit my spirit into Your hands” (v.46). He had talked to God as though He was talking to His own parent. He relinquished His life as though He were choosing the moment of His death. The Centurion exclaimed, “This was a righteous man…Surely He was God’s own Son” (v.47 and Matt. 27:54).

God’s Verdict

Seven had declared Jesus innocent. They said, “Not guilty!”

But Jesus took our sins on Himself. One did say that He deserved His punishment because He was guilty by association. He was not condemned for any crime of His own. His death was substitutionary. “He was wounded and crushed because of our sins…All of us were like wandering sheep. We went our own way, but the Lord gave Him the punishment we deserved…The Lord decided His servant would suffer as a sacrifice to take the sins and guilt of others” (Isa. 53:4, 6, 10).

Thank God for that verdict. Because He bore our sins and the punishment for them, we don’t have to. There is forgiveness even for the heinous crimes that were done against Christ. All we need to do is acknowledge that forgiveness. All we need to do is receive His offer of grace and forgiveness.

6. THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE

Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” (Jn. 14:6). He declared it in the final week of His earthly life. The major events of the Holy Week in a very special way emphasise the Way He lived, the Truth He died for and the Life He empowers.

Way He Lived

On the night before the Lord Jesus was crucified, He washed His disciples’ feet. In a sense that one act captures the essence of His life and what He taught about interpersonal relationships. When Jesus washed His disciples’ feet, it was an act that was in character. For Him the behaviour was not peculiar. When the Lord wanted to give a summary of His life’s purpose, He said, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for others” (Mk. 10:45). That was His mission statement. All the miracles of healing, freeing the demon-possessed, feeding thousands, calming stormy weather, and walking on water to be with the struggling disciples were evidences of His serving people.

Miracles are no doubt signs of God’s power, but they are also signs of His presence with people. When God took the name “Emmanuel” meaning “God with us”, He wanted people to know that He would be with them in their life situations to serve them by being present in His grace and power. The believer in Christ can affirm, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not be afraid. For Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me” (Ps. 23:4).

Jesus came to earth and took upon Himself our humanity to serve us. He did it to be like us in our weakness and to feel with us all that is involved in being human—to suffer deprivation of food, drink, rest and peace, to be denied justice and human rights, to enjoy momentary passages of joy that alleviate our suffering. Everyone who has worked to help others has only imitated His spirit of service and sacrifice. When India talks of the “missionary spirit”, it pays homage to this spirit that has motivated all humanitarian works.

When Jesus called His disciples to learn from Him, He said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me…” As Christians we have focused on coming to Christ to find rest, because this call to learn is prefaced by the invitation, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Without doubt we will find rest for our souls in coming to Him, but we need to understand that He does call us to learn His way.

Being a disciple involves learning. A disciple is a learner and a follower. No wonder then that Jesus taught in the passage that is known as the Beatitudes, that disciples are those who do not manifest arrogance of spirit, but show humility of spirit, are penitent, meek, long for righteousness, are merciful, have integrity of heart, and work for peace, even at the cost of being ill treated. Their sense of righteousness takes them further than the Pharisees and they excel all the different peoples of the world. They will want to be like God—impartial, fair and kind.

One lesson that Jesus taught His disciples again and again was about becoming servants instead of seeking prominent positions. The desire for positions of power and privileges was so stubborn that it resisted all His attempts to teach them His way. In the end, Jesus had to subject them to a bit of shock treatment to cure them of this malady. It happened on the eve of His crucifixion. Jesus stripped down, and tied a towel around his waist, dressing like a slave. Then Jesus knelt in front of His disciples, took their dirty feet in His hands, washed away the dust from them and gently wiped them with the towel. He did the work of a slave to teach them about being servants to one another.

While Jesus is our example in practising the devotional life of studying the Scriptures and praying, corporate worship and godly living, the only time He said that He was setting an example was when He told His disciples at the end of this object lesson in serving one another, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you” (Jn. 13:15).

This teaching and this example came at the end of all that He taught in the three years or so that He went about ministering to people. He was saying in effect, “Here’s my last lesson.” The way He lived is the way we are to live. We are to follow Jesus not merely to spout the jargon of a life of devotion.

Truth He Died For

John said that God—the Word—became flesh, set up His dwelling among us and was full of grace and truth. That passage captures the essence of the incarnation— God experiencing our humanity, and sharing His divinity with us. Jesus made it possible for us to experience the truth of the words of God. “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another” (1:16). That is the difference between Jesus and Moses (who also represents all other promoters of religion). The Old Covenant given through Moses was only a piece of legislation. It was good but could not make anyone good as the power to do good was lacking in it. When Jesus came with the truth, He also gave people grace making it possible for us to change and do what pleases God.

Jesus told His audience, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”. He also said, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (8:31-32, 36).

There are 73 statements of Christ that He prefaced with the words “Truly, truly” Though the gospels are written in Greek, the authors preserve the Hebrew word “Amen” in the text in all of these statements. “Amen, amen, I say to you…” is how Jesus put across these sayings.

We cannot study all the 73 truth statements here. However, since it is the Gospel according to John that records Christ’s claim that He is the truth, it would do to look at some of the truths that John has preserved for us because they form the context of Christ’s truth claim.

The first statement is: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you are born again you cannot enter the Kingdom of God”(3:3, 5). The term “born again” gained popularity among Christians after Billy Graham used it to invite people to commit their lives to Christ and experience transformation in their lives. Not everyone was familiar with the term. That is not surprising since the Bible itself uses the term in just two places. It was not the common way to describe the Christian experience. When Jimmy Carter became the president of the United States of America and confessed to being a “born again Christian” the term gained greater exposure, and there was even a music group that sang, “I’m born again” without meaning the same thing as the Bible. Today once again the term has received wider circulation, but in a negative sense. When the Hindi film director Mahesh Bhatt was invited to attend President Bush’s prayer breakfast, he turned down the invitation saying that accepting the invitation would amount to condoning “born-again-Christian Bush’s terrorism of demonic proportions” (Hindustan Times, Feb. 3, 2003, p.1). There have always been Christians who did not truly represent Christ and gave His teachings a bad name, but that does not invalidate His statement that people need to be born again. What Jesus meant was that it is essential for one to have a new beginning spiritually to enter God’s kingdom. No one can enter heaven with a damaged-and-repaired life. We need a new start where the failures and the disqualifications of the old life do not stand against us. Such a new life comes to us not by our efforts at self-improvement, but by putting our faith in Jesus. We are not good enough, but His life and death were good enough to purchase heaven, and all we have to do is to simply trust Him to save us.

In this connection we need to note that He said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; the believer has crossed over from death to life” (5:24; cf. 8:51). People who put their faith in Christ are assured of heaven. This is not arrogance. Only the humility of a spiritual beggar will say, “I’m no good, but the death of Jesus saves me from my sin and its consequences.” Not to have such assurance is in effect to say that one is not sure whether the sacrifice of Christ Jesus was good enough to purchase our salvation. In fact, not being sure amounts to a lack of faith in Christ. Let me put it another way: You cannot say, “I’ve put my faith in Christ” and at the same time say, “I don’t know if Christ’s death will save me.” You can only say, “Christ died for me. That is my salvation.”

Many will not put their trust in Christ, because they are chasing after the things of this life. To such people Jesus still says, “Amen, amen, I tell you that you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed His seal of approval” (6:26-27). Life is not about possessions. None of the things of this world have any enduring value. When we tire of life, we will also tire of them. We need something of lasting value, for we will last and go into a life beyond this life. In our hearts, we know that we are of more significance than can be satisfied by mere things. As the writer of Ecclesiastes says, “God has set eternity in our hearts” (Eccl. 3:11). With those kinds of dimensions to our inner lives, we are unable to find any satisfaction in the things that exist “under the sun.” Instead we find that everything is “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!” That writer counsels that to find satisfaction in being human, we need to look beyond the sun: “Remember now thy Creator…Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all” (12:1, 13, NKJV). “This is the whole [duty] of man” is how the old American Standard Version and the New International Version put it, supplying the word “duty” to make sense in English. The original Hebrew text indicates that aligning our lives with God is the entirety of being human.

Jesus said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep” (Jn. 10:7). This is similar to His statement, “I am the way, the truth and the life: no one comes to the Father but by me”. We can enter God’s Kingdom only through Christ, but when we enter through Him we find pasture and safety because He is there to shepherd us as the Good Shepherd.

In the end, Jesus was crucified for claiming to be God’s Son. He did not die for suggesting that God could have a Son. The charge was that He had committed blasphemy, that He had claimed divinity. John records three occasions when He did this (5:19; 8:58; 10:30). The Jews understood Him to be claiming divinity and got ready to stone Him to death when He answered the question whether He was older than Abraham, by saying, “Amen, amen, I say to you before Abraham was I AM” and when He said that the Father and He were one. No, there can be no doubt that Jesus made a claim to being divine. That was the truth He died for.

Who is Jesus? Jesus claimed that He is uniquely the Son of God, that His death was atoning and that by his sacrificial, vicarious death we are saved. These are either the claims of a liar or a lunatic or He is really the Lord God Himself. What will you do with Jesus who makes these claims?

Life He Empowers

When the name “Christian” was first coined, it was a nickname. The ancient people of Antioch used the term to mock the followers of Christ. No doubt, they got the name because whatever they did was done in the name of Christ. They kept saying, “In the name of Jesus…be healed…be saved”

Paul described believers as people who are “in Christ”. If you were to take a pen and mark all the times when Paul used the phrase “in Christ” or “in Him” and study every occurrence you would begin to have an understanding of what God does in the lives of believers in Christ.

In Christ we have “every spiritual blessing” and “have redemption through His blood” and “the forgiveness of sins” and because we are included “in Christ” we are “marked with the Holy Spirit, who is a down payment guaranteeing our final inheritance” (Eph. 1:3, 7, 13).

Even though we live our lives on earth, because we are in Christ, it is as though we have already taken our seats in heaven: “And he raised us up with Christ and gave us a seat with him in the heavens. He did this for those in Christ Jesus” (2:6, NCV)

In Ephesians Paul argues that as a consequence we have been given:

• The power of unity

The Jewish law had many commands and rules, but Christ ended that law. His purpose was to make the two groups of people become one new people in him and in this way make peace. ^It was also Christ’s purpose to end the hatred between the two groups, to make them into one body, and to bring them back to God. Christ did all this with his death on the cross (vv.15-16, NCV).

• The power of the Spirit

Yes, it is through Christ we all have the right to come to the Father in one Spirit.

Now you who are not Jewish are not foreigners or strangers any longer, but are citizens together with God’s holy people. You belong to God’s family. You are like a building that was built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Christ Jesus himself is the most important stone in that building (vv.18-20).

• The power of prayer

In Christ we can come before God with freedom and without fear. We can do this through faith in Christ (3:12)

• The power of love

 I pray that Christ will live in your hearts by faith and that your life will be strong in love and be built on love. And I pray that you and all God’s holy people will have the power to understand the greatness of Christ’s love—how wide and how long and how high and how deep that love is. Christ’s love is greater than anyone can ever know, but I pray that you will be able to know that love. Then you can be filled with the fullness of God (vv.17-19)

Thus we are given the power to live. “Live a life worthy of the calling you have received” (4:1). Called by Christ to follow Him, we must be like Him. “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (vv.2-3).

When the whole world is in disharmony, Christians need to show their oneness in Christ by (vv.14-15)

• affirming their oneness in faith
• recognising Christ’s sovereignty in administering grace
• having one goal: building the body of Christ, and
• and growing up into Him

We are to (v.17; 5:2, 8, 15)

• live unlike the people of the world
• live in love
• live as children of light, and
• live wisely recognising that life is short.

In the end, being in Christ gives us the power to take a stand (6:10-20)

• We are at war spiritually. This world is a war zone.
• The Devil fights dirty.
• Therefore, stand your ground. Fight armed by God, and
• in total reliance on God through prayer.

7. RAISE THE LIVING

Easter is the Christian festival of eternal life and hope. It points to a life beyond life, death and the grave. That is the hope of Christians. Or, is it?

When the New Testament uses the word “hope”, it speaks of certainty. To live in hope is to live believing in a future that is certain. But the modern use of the word has overtones of hopelessness. It certainly is true of our conception of eternity. Many people only hope hopelessly. They do not view resurrection and eternity with any certainty.

As Christians, we do preach about the life beyond the grave. But the Resurrection appears to find affirmation in the modern church only at funerals. It is in the face of death that we hear all the assertions that the Lord Jesus is risen from the dead and alive and that there will be life eternal for those who put their trust in Him.

People are curious about this after-life. Many people resort to speculation about what heaven and the after-life will be like. They just have vivid imaginations not based on any information they have received from some reliable source from the other side. In the end, there is just a sense of uncertainty. Those with less imagination, feel that because their curiosities are not satisfied, there cannot really be a life after this life. Others will run after anyone who will come out with a curious teaching.

A lot of modern Christians are like the ancient Sadducees, who posed hypothetical problem situations as their excuses for not believing. The simple answers of the Bible are unsatisfying to them. In their quest for hidden knowledge, they make no effort to know what has already been revealed in God’s Word.

Jesus told the Sadducees, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” The same word needs to be heard by modern Christians who affirm the resurrection of Jesus only when they bury their dead. Jesus says to us, “Do not make me the Lord of the dead. I am the Lord of the living.”

Of course, the dead who die in the Lord are no longer dead. Jesus has raised them to life, so that He can be their Lord.

But, what of us who have not passed on? Is this Lord of the living, our Lord now, or must He wait till we die before He can raise us to life to be our Lord?

The sad fact is that many who are alive, are not alive to the Risen Lord. They are unresponsive to Him—as if they are dead. Many Christians live without reference to Jesus. He is treated as a non-entity in their lives.

Imagine the Early Christians living the way we do. What if Mary Magdalene had sold herself to the Devil again after meeting the Risen Lord? How would it have been if Matthew and Zacchaeus had returned to taxing people with a vengeance to make up for opportunities lost while they were following Jesus? Or, Nicodemus began to manoeuvre for power in the Sanhedrin by compromising and allowing injustices to be perpetrated? Or, John sent Mary away, though his dying Master had entrusted him with her care? Or, Peter went back to fishing even after seeing Jesus alive again?

Imagine Paul denying that he had met the Risen Saviour and Lord on the road to Damascus. Imagine him asserting that it was not a real life experience, but a trance by which he had learnt the spiritual significance of the Cosmic Christ. Imagine him declaring that the Resurrection was not a physical event, but that the stories of the Resurrection point to Jesus living on in His ideology (like “Gandhi amar hai” and Gandhianism lives on)?

Would such behaviour on the part of Early Christians not be the greatest disproof of the Resurrection, though the grave itself remained empty and the soldiers who had guarded the grave claimed that an angel had come to discover that it was empty? Thank God that those Early Christians were themselves the best evidence of the Resurrection. They were transformed people. They manifested changed behaviour. They showed faith, courage and holiness that gave the evidence of their having been changed by the power of the Risen Lord. But there were also some who by their lifestyle and conduct were the ultimate disproof of Christ being risen and alive.

As Christians today rewrite the gospel according to their own lives, we need to ask whether we ourselves offer proof that Jesus has risen from the dead with all His power to touch and change lives. In my opinion, the lifestyle of modern Christians points to a lack of commitment to Jesus as the living Lord. Today there is a need for the living to experience the power of the Resurrection. They need to be raised to being sensitive to the living presence of Jesus.

If Jesus is not risen, by all means we should follow Paul’s advice. It is foolishness to permit the dead Christ’s ideals enslave us and prevent us from living the life of a libertine. Moreover, our honesty is in question. We are hypocrites to pretend belief. We deceive people. But if Jesus is risen and we believe that, then there ought to be some proof today that He is risen and still has all His power.

Living is Christ

If Jesus is indeed risen, then we are called to live for Him, instead of ourselves. We need to discover that “to live is Christ, to die is gain” (Phil.1:21). Living is Christ. Because He lives, the Christian lives. Thus, Christian living is Christ living in and through the Christian.

The first step in experiencing the power of the Risen Christ is to live for Him alone. Paul discovered that for Christ’s sake he had to give up everything that was valuable from a human point of view. Earthly possessions and values are to be given up in order to possess Christ. Nothing else matters. Only Christ does. Jesus calls people to deny themselves in order to follow Him. The way of the cross is one of total denial and alienation. To be able to receive the life that is more than abundant, we have to give up on the life that we now have. To connect with the Lord of life, we need to submit our lives to His lordship.

To possess Christ and the abundant life He offers, we must first be dispossessed. But what does possession of Christ mean? Possession indicates relationship. Both “possess” and “know” are words that the Bible uses to describe the marriage relationship.

It is not enough to be in possession of information about Christ Jesus, as is the case with many Christians today. They are not personally acquainted with Him as a person. Their knowledge of Him is not a firsthand experience of His person. But if Jesus is alive today, it should be possible to relate to Him, to know Him and to possess Him: just like in the marriage relationship. That is the depth of the intimacy that can be attained in one’s relationship with Christ.

This intimacy does not come by compulsive self-effort in meeting the requirements of some spiritual code of conduct. It is the product of faith. Faith is neither lip service nor intellectual assent to a creed. It is total reliance on Jesus. It responds to redemptive grace by obedience and submission to His lordship. When faith exists, such a response is the natural outcome, because faith makes a difference to lifestyle. Intellectual assent can be sterile and unproductive, while faith expresses itself. Such a faith possesses Christ because Christ is the be all and end all of its existence. And, because it is about a living relationship, Christ Himself takes such faith captive and possesses it.

All this would be make-believe, if Christ Jesus is Himself not alive. The difference in lifestyle must be a response to reality and experience. Is Christ only amar like Gandhi, or is He really alive? Can we experience Christ as a living person, and have an active relationship with Him?

The Holy Spirit makes the presence of the Risen Christ real to us today. Jesus sent the Spirit for the express purpose of taking His place. The presence the Holy Spirit of Christ is the mark of a Christian. The question, “Do you have the Holy Spirit?” is not for the Pentecostal branch of Christianity alone. It should be the concern of the entire body of Christ. If the Church today is dead, it is precisely because it has ‘given up its Ghost’. Just as much as Christ’s dead body was raised from the dead by the Holy Spirit, the deadness in His body today can be removed only by the presence of His Holy Spirit. This is the “power of the Resurrection” (3:10) that we need to know and experience.

Cost of Resurrection

But the resurrection follows suffering and crucifixion, which is why we are called to give up everything to gain Christ. Or, as Paul puts it elsewhere, the world is crucified to us and we to the world. If we are raised to a life with Christ, our affections ought to be captive, not to the world or to the things of the world, but to heaven. That is why Christians are called to know not only the power of the Resurrection, but also the fellowship of His sufferings. Even though the Crucifixion came before the Resurrection note that Paul spoke first of the power of the resurrection and then of the fellowship of suffering. The significance of this reversed order is that after we experience Resurrection power, we need to continue to be dead to the world and to all its attractions in order to be alive to Christ. The Resurrection experience is a costly one. The question is, who is willing to pay such a cost?

This sensitivity to the Living Christ’s presence is missing in the Church today. Christ will certainly raise our dead. But raising the living is also an aspect of His work. He will do this work only as Christians manifest openness toward the power of His presence. But if we are insensitive to Christ, who will raise us who live?

Today, there is impatience with calls to holiness. Ours is an activist generation. But without holiness, all we may generate is a lot of feverish activity that does not touch our world. We could even make tremendous sacrifices that are large on a quantitative scale without manifesting any compassion at all. Undoubtedly we are called to raise the living needy who inhabit our world, but before we can raise them in love, we need to be raised ourselves to be channels of the holy compassion of Jesus. We are to be the Jesus of our situations, and that not by mere imitation, but by allowing Him to make us the instruments of His compassion. The world has enough of cheap imitations of love and kindness. What it needs is a manifestation of Calvary Love. No one has this kind of love in himself or herself. But Jesus living in the person can show that love through that person.

It is a fact of history that many of the social reforms the world has seen were initiated by men and women deeply committed to the Lord Jesus. The fight against slavery, for instance, was a lifelong struggle for William Wilberforce, from the time of his conversion to Christ.

Lord Shaftsbury was another who was moved by the compassion of Christ. He came to Jesus at the tender age of fourteen. From then on, he manifested compassion that led to his being instrumental in a number of social reforms. Boys under ten and women escaped being employed in mines. He crusaded against the insane at Bedlam being exhibited for a fee to the curious. Because of his insistence, crowded lodging houses, the breeding grounds of disease and immorality, had to be shut down.

John Howard influenced by John Wesley and the Quaker Elizabeth Fry were the ones to initiate prison reforms.

Wesley himself was noted for his insistence on the need for the gospel to impact society. The Wesleyan revival saved England from the likes of the bloody French Revolution. In the first ever church he established, John Wesley started a school for poor children, provided free boarding and lodging for destitute women, children and blind people. The first free medical dispensary in England operated in that church and it served about a hundred people every month. That church organised a savings scheme by which help was extended to the poor in financial straits.

And in India, it is undeniable that Pandita Ramabai was motivated by her commitment to Christ Jesus to establish Mukti Mission for the care of child widows and orphans, or that, in our day, Mother Teresa cared for the dying destitutes out of love for Jesus.

Example follows example. True holiness manifests the compassion of Christ. That is the aim of all true holiness. To be holy is to have the concern of Jesus on our hearts. His concern was for people in need.

When one has experienced the power of Christ’s risen-ness, in his or her own life, that power cannot be contained. It breaks out to transform the people among whom such a person lives.

Paul described the Church as the body of Christ, the vehicle of Christ’s activity today (1 Cor. 12:12-27). But before he did that, he told Christians that they should realise that their bodies are God’s temple. He urged Christians that their life on the physical plane should manifest godliness (3:17; 6:15-18).

It is the holy presence of the Living Lord in His holy temple that energises His gathered people, the Church, and makes them His one body. Thus, if the body of Christ is weaker or manifests deadness today it is because His holy energy does not find release in haunts of wickedness. The need of the hour is holiness in the lives of Christians.

Godliness and compassion are the distinctive marks of those who have been raised to new life in Christ. Godliness is inseparable from compassion, and compassion is the outcome of our godliness. In a word then, it is all godliness or “Godward-ness.” The Christian is finished with the world. He is dead as far as the world is concerned. But he is alive toward God. He is finished with the old. The new has come.

ONLY ONE WAY

God doesn’t offer us multiple choices.

He offers us only one way for everything from belief to conduct.

The Lord Jesus said,

“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me.”

8. REVELATION OF THE TRINITY

There are some people known as “the Jesus Only group.” They are mistaken for Christians, but they are in fact heretics. They believe that God is not a Trinity of three persons and that Jesus is the only person in the Godhead. What is the basis of their belief?

In the Acts of the Apostles, Early Christians are described as having baptised people “in the name of Jesus” (Acts 2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5) There are no references in these verses to the Trinitarian baptismal formula given by Jesus (Matt. 28:19). They do not deny that Jesus did say this. They simply argue that it proves that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three persons but merely the titles of the one person of Jesus. There is only Jesus. Sometimes He is Father; sometimes He is the Son and sometimes He is the Spirit.

Many Christians may think that this is a wonderful way to explain the difficult doctrine of the Trinity. After all, the doctrine makes no sense to human minds. However, if God is infinite, and He is, then it should not surprise us that He is essentially incomprehensible to us humans. On the other hand, any view of God that makes Him totally understandable and explainable ought to be suspect for this very reason.

What then is the explanation for the scriptural record showing that baptisms were in the name of “Jesus only”? The book of Acts does not state the formula used at baptism in the Early Church. Instead, it asserts that those people underwent Christian baptism. Many groups of people performed baptisms in those times. It was not an exclusive Christian rite as it is today. Ceremonial washings and initiation rites using water were common among various Jewish groups that practised proselytization. In the New Testament itself, we have the case of John the Baptist and his followers practising the rite. So, when a person was described as having been baptised in the name of Jesus, all it meant was that the person had not undergone one of those other baptisms, but the baptism that identified the person as a follower of Jesus. He or she was identified with the name of Jesus, and was willing to pay the cost of such identification. That this is the sense in which the writer of Acts uses the phrase “the name of Jesus” becomes clear in the instance of the Ephesian believers (Acts 19:3-5) It also refers to the practice of converts “calling on the name of Jesus” at the time of baptism (22:16).

The doctrine of the Trinity has always troubled Christians. In order to understand this doctrine, we need to first ask the question: How can we know God? Paul drew a parallel between how we know a person’s mind and how we know God. We can know a person’s mind only when he or she talks (1 Cor. 2:11). Similarly, God can be known only by His self-revelation (vv.11-13) God cannot be discovered or known through human speculation. There is only one way to know God. We must find out what He has said about Himself in the Bible.

The biblical revelation of God is in three phases.

The Transcendence of God

The first phase of the revelation shows that God is transcendent. This becomes clear from the very first chapter of the Bible. It is revealed there that God is not part of creation. God is the Creator. He is above creation. He is apart from it. In the ancient world there were many religions that viewed God as part of creation. The Bible goes against this notion and declares that God made the world and it does not exist as a part of Himself. The world did not come into existence out of His being and God does not exist as the fabric of His creation.

As the story unfolds, we are given a vision of God as the Sustainer, the Protector, the Guide. What comes through very strongly is the sovereignty of God—that He is over all and above all of the created world.

The Presence of God

In the second phase of the divine revelation, Jesus came. Who was Jesus? He was the Son of God. He was God’s equal. He was God-incarnate. He was God with us: Emmanuel. In earlier periods of God’s self-revelations, He sent His representatives to talk about Him. In this phase of the revelation, God spoke directly and in person.

The Gospel According to John uses the Greek word Logos while referring to Jesus. In the Early Church there were people known as Gnostics (the “knowers”). They claimed to have secret knowledge about God. Actually, they borrowed heavily from Greek philosophical thought. According to the Greeks, the world is evil because matter is evil. Therefore, God, the Absolute One, could not have created it. (How differently the Bible views the created world. God created it good (Gen. 1:4, 10, etc.). According to Greek philosophers, instead of God creating the world, He had an intermediary to do the dirty work for Him. The intermediary was a demigod known as the Logos. The Gnostics said that that was who Jesus was: not quite God.

John counters this view by saying that Jesus is indeed the Logos of God. He reveals God in person to people. Human beings cannot see God and therefore need to have God revealed to them. John affirmed that Jesus is that revelation, but the revelation is not less than God. Jesus is the full revelation of God (Jn. 1: 1-4). In Jesus, God was present. That is why He was called Emmanuel.

The God Who is Near

Jesus told His disciples that He would send the Holy Spirit. During the Incarnation, Jesus was bound and limited by the flesh of His incarnation. The Holy Spirit is God unbound, yet inhabiting human lives.

When we talk of the immanence of God, we must be careful to distinguish the Christian view from the pantheistic view of God as being part of creation. India’s Advaita Vedanta similarly belongs to this category. Advaitism can be crudely translated as non-dualism: that is that the world is not other than God. The created order is an extension of God. The sansar (world) is caught in a maya (illusion) about its existence. So salvation lies in the atma (soul) coming into the realisation of Ahm Brahm (I am god). In other words, a person is saved when he comes to the understanding that he is in essence God. This is just the philosophical form of the first temptation to become like God (Gen. 3:4-5).

Humans love this kind of philosophy. There is nothing logical about this reasoning though. If salvation lies in our realisation that we are God and that our own existence is not real, then it means that God had to be the one to first suffer the illusion that we exist.

When Christians talk of God’s immanence, we do not however mean that God indwells all creation, though we do believe that “in Him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). God will indwell some humans, the only creatures whom He made in His image. Nothing else can bear His image. We believe that God’s Spirit will come into a human life that is open to Him and make it into a temple of God (1 Cor. 3:16). He will come into such lives and make them into one body for His activity (12:1-31).

Discovering More of God

Each phase of the Divine revelation discloses more of God to us. Human beings understood that there is not only the Father, but there is also Jesus, and then, that there is the Holy Spirit also. Though the doctrine of the Trinity is not clearly stated in the Old Testament, there are hints of it. No human mind could have conjured up this doctrine, because it is simply beyond human comprehension. All we can say is that the Bible declares that there is only one God (Deut. 6:4). Jesus subscribed to that view, but declared that He and the Father are one (Jn. 10:30) and that the Father and He would together send the Holy Spirit to Christians as the Substitute Advocate (14:16-18). Confronted by the apparently conflicting data of the oneness of God and Christ’s reference to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, heretics down through the ages have suggested that there is only one person who appears in three different modes from time to time. However, there is no denying that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons. The Bible records one instance of all three persons of the Godhead appearing together. At the baptism of Jesus, the Son underwent the baptism, the Father proclaimed His love for the Son, and the Holy Spirit descended on the Son (Matt. 3:16-17).

The doctrine of the Trinity fits in with the definition of God as love. The word ‘love’ is not a word that describes a condition of isolationism, but one of relationships. How could God be love, if there was only one person in God before the created order began and there were others to love? That would be as unrealistic as a reclusive hermit cut off from all social contact declaring, “I’m in love.” The statement “God is love” implies plurality of persons in the Godhead.

Importance of the Doctrine

Some Christians dismiss doctrines as unimportant. They feel that doctrines only divide Christians from those who hold differing views. However, we must know the difference between us and those who do not believe in the Christ of the New Testament. We must differentiate between the Gospel of Christ and “different gospel[s]” (Gal. 1:6-9). We must affirm the truth and deny all falsehood.

We may never be able to comprehend the doctrine of the Trinity, but we must affirm the doctrine and defend it against all attempts to modify it. This tenet of our faith is not only essential to our understanding of God, but also to our understanding of our humanity. When God revealed Himself as the Trinity, it was as though He proclaimed to us, “We are a family. We invite you into a family relationship.” The doctrine tells us that being human is being in the image of the God who is love.

Selwyn Hughes, who authors the daily devotional Every Day With Jesus, quotes the Anglican theologian D. Broughton Knox: “We learn from the Trinity that relationship is the essence of reality…and therefore the essence of our existence…We learn from the Trinity that the way relationship should be expressed is by concern for others. Within the Trinity itself there is concern by each member for one another.”

Hughes quotes another author whom he does not name: “If we believe that God exists eternally as three Persons, who are distinct enough to relate to one another, then it becomes clear that somehow final reality is wrapped up in the idea of relationship.”

The Welsh theologian Cynddylan Jones, is another that Hughes quotes: “The best way in which we the people of God can reflect the nature of God here on earth is in the way we relate.”

Hughes himself wrote, “Truth is propositional; relationship is personal. When you touch the heart of the universe, you touch not simply an idea, a law, or even a thought. You touch a God who relates. There is warmth, not just wonder, at the heart of the Trinity…God experienced love within Himself before the world was created. The doctrine of the Trinity establishes the fact that relationship is not simply the essence of God’s Being, but the foundation for everything…Clearly then the energy and power that pulses in the heart of the Trinity is other-centred…This is why self-centredness is such a heinous thing; it violates the very order of the universe. God created (and then recreated) us to relate well to Him and relate well to others. He meant us first to enjoy Him and then to reflect His character by giving ourselves unselfishly to one another” (Every Day With Jesus, Oct. 6, 7, 8, 1995)

The three phases of the divine revelation show us the transcendence of the God above us, the historicity of the God who came into our world to be with us, and the immanence of the God who indwells us. The revelation also shows us that in order to relate to the God who is a family, we must ourselves have family feelings. The doctrine of the Trinity is all about love and loving. How can we ever say that this is not an important doctrine to know?

9. MARY’S FAITH

In August 1997, while browsing at a bookshop, I came across the Newsweek story of how more than four and a quarter million Roman Catholics from 157 countries were petitioning the Pope to exercise his power of papal infallibility to declare Mary, the mother of Jesus, “Co-Redemptrix (Co-redeemer), Mediatrix (Mediator) of All Graces and Advocate for the People of God.” Sadly, even the much idolised Mother Teresa was one of the signatories. At least 20,000 people signed petitions from South India.

I was distressed by this piece of news. I had been following the developments within Roman Catholicism. The Charismatic Movement had brought a breath of fresh air into the Roman Catholic Church. All over the world, many Catholics had been turning to the Bible as the authoritative source for belief and practice. Many had even left the Catholic Church finding its dogmas incompatible with their newfound biblical faith. In view of all this, I cherished the hope that one day Roman Catholic Charismatics would be in the majority and that there might even be a Charismatic Pope.

However, the cult of Mary has grown steadily, not just in numbers, but also in increasing Mary’s role in the salvation of the faithful. If the Pope proclaims the dogma that Mary is Co-Redemptrix, Roman Catholics would from then on be required to believe “that Mary participates in the redemption achieved by her Son, that all graces that flow from the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ are granted only through Mary’s intercession with her son, and that all prayers and petitions from the faithful on earth must likewise flow through Mary, who then brings them to the attention of Jesus…In place of the Holy Trinity, it would appear, there would be a kind of Holy Quartet, with Mary playing the multiple roles of daughter of the Father, mother of the Son and spouse of the Holy Spirit.”

The day may not be far when the cult may insist that “in the beginning was Mary, and Mary was with God and Mary was God.” They already claim so much for the Mary of their traditions. What the Bible says about Jesus alone, they say about Mary, and are bent on attributing more and more of what is divine power to her.

My hope that there might one day be a Charismatic Pope has been shattered. Newsweek reported that “many Catholics who were once in the Charismatic Movement have migrated to Mary as the Holy Spirit’s more interesting spouse.” In a way this was to expected. The Charismatic Movement, by emphasising experience and downplaying the authority of the Scriptures in matters of faith, allowed Roman Catholic Charismatics to drift into such an error. Other Charismatics and any other denominations that accept the validity of all experiences without cross-checking what the Scriptures teach, need to learn from the Roman Catholic experience and avoid such pitfalls.

Perpetual Virginity

An examination of the cultic beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church will show how far they have gone away from the revealed truth of the Bible. The Marian dogma of her “perpetual virginity” is one that gained early acceptance. The belief had begun about the middle of the Second Century. At that time, there was growing asceticism which considered the celibate state to be holier than marriage. Once this notion got hold of people, it was only a matter of time that it was connected to the virgin birth of our Lord. It was imagined that the reason for the virgin birth was that all sexual relations were impure. From that view, it was easy to conclude that Mary, having been the mother of the Lord, could not have entered into sexual relations after that holy experience.

The idea that “sex is evil” in itself is not a biblical one. God was the one who created sex and ordained marriage. The Bible therefore categorically affirms that “marriage should be honoured by all, and the marriage bed kept pure” (Heb. 13:4). Therefore, forbidding marriage (by profiling celibacy as nobler and more desirable) is a heresy (1 Tim. 4:2-3).

The Bible also clearly teaches that Mary had no sexual union with Joseph only “until” she gave birth to Jesus (Matt. 1:20-21). To say that the mother of Jesus was a virgin even after His birth is to deny the plain meaning of that Scripture. The sacred historian could have plainly said, “Mary never had any sexual relations.” Linking the matter of Mary and Joseph’s sexual activity to the time of the birth of Jesus clearly indicates that her virginity was limited to that event.

Moreover, the Bible refers to the brothers and sisters of Jesus (Matt. 12:46-47; Mk. 3:31-32; Lk. 8:19-20). The Roman Catholic position is that the reference is to the cousins of Jesus. But the Greek Bible uses a different word for cousins and relatives (Lk. 1:36). Not only that, since two of these passages refer to the Lord’s carpenter father and His mother Mary together, it can only mean that His own brothers and sisters, the children of Mary and Joseph, are the ones being talked about (Matt. 13:55-56; Mk. 6:3-4).

Despite the biblical data, the Mariolators pushed ahead and defined Mario Semper Virgo (Mary always a virgin) in AD 533 at the fifth general council in Constantinople.

Immaculate Conception

The next dogma to be approved was that of the Immaculate Conception. It does not teach that Mary was born supernaturally, for Mary had a human father. What it does teach is that Mary was born without “original sin.”

Adam and Eve had a supernatural grace, which they lost with the Fall. All their children are thus born with the tendency to do evil. Only Mary, according to this dogma, was born in the pre-Fall state of Adam and Eve. She had no tendency to do evil. She was without sin, says the Roman Catholic Church.

The feast of the Immaculate Conception was celebrated for the first time ever in AD 1140 at Lyons, France. Before that, there was the Feast of the Conception in the Eastern Orthodox churches, which believe that Mary was conceived miraculously because her mother had been unable to have any children before Mary was born.

Before the notion of Immaculate Conception was suggested, Church Fathers such as Eusebius of Caesarea (260-339), Ambrose (339-397) and Augustine (354-430) taught that Mary was born with sin. Augustine, for instance, whom Church History reckons to be the theologian next to Paul, who influenced Christianity most, said, “Mary, the daughter of Adam, died because of sin, and the Lord’s flesh, born of Mary, died to erase sin.” Later on, when the dogma was put forward, Immaculate Conception was specifically opposed by those whom the Roman Catholic Church today deems to be saints: Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). It is no wonder that this dogma took a long while to be defined. There was controversy surrounding it. It was only in 1854 that the dogma was defined by Pope Pius IX.

There is nothing in the Bible either about Mary’s miraculous conception or of she being sinless. The plain fact is that the Bible pays absolutely no attention to her personal history. By herself, she is of no consequence. She has significance solely as the mother of Jesus, and finds mention only in the context of Jesus’ history. Her own story begins with the announcement about Jesus’ birth (Lk. 1:26-38) and ends with her joining the church in obedience to the command of the Risen Christ (Acts 1:14). Nothing else that happened in her life is considered a fit subject for study and reflection by the followers of Christ.

Bodily Assumption

After the acceptance of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, it was inevitable that the belief should arise that Mary was too good to be left in the grave. Roman Catholic tradition says that when Mary was an old woman of seventy, she asked her Son to take her. All the Apostles came riding on clouds to her home in Bethlehem to be present at the time of her death. After she had given a farewell speech, the Apostles saw angels coming to her and then finally Christ Himself came and carried her soul to heaven. On the third day she rose from the dead, and her soul was conducted to heaven by her Son.

By the way, note how the Apostles came riding on clouds. The New Testament does not depict the Apostles thus. They were not supernatural, nor did they lead fantastic lives. They were ordinary men and led ordinary lives by ordinary means. But Roman Catholic traditions are filled with such fantasies as that of the Apostles riding on clouds.

Just as with Mary’s imaginary Immaculate Conception, the New Testament does not anywhere affirm Mary’s bodily assumption. Instead, Mary’s death is of no account and is ignored because of its irrelevance to sacred history.

It is obvious that the Mary of Roman Catholic tradition is a rival for the devotion of Roman Catholics. Whatever happened in the life of our Lord has, as it were, a counterpart in the life of Mary. He was born of a virgin; she is said to have been immaculately conceived. He was celibate; she is perceived as a perpetual virgin. He rose again and ascended to heaven; it is claimed that she rose again and the assumption of her body followed. We call Him, “Our Lord”; they call her “Our Lady.”

The dogma of Mary’s bodily assumption was approved on November 1, 1950. The assumption is celebrated on August 15^th and one week later on August 22^nd, the coronation of Mary as the Queen of Heaven. She is said to occupy the throne right next to our Lord Jesus.

Mary is virtually a goddess in popular Roman Catholic understanding. But only pagan religions have goddesses, not the Christian faith that is described in the Bible. Mariolatry, which describes Mary as the “Queen of Heaven”, cannot ignore the denunciation of the prophet Jeremiah: “Do you not see what they are doing…? The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes of bread for the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger. But am I the one they are provoking? declares the LORD. Are they not rather harming themselves, to their own shame?” (Jer. 7:17-19).

The Scriptural Record

It is therefore not surprising that the Roman Catholic Church is about to promote another dogma that has no biblical basis, but is a popular belief. Many of their doctrines have been approved on the basis of consensus. But it is absolutely wrong to think that doctrinal issues are settled by a democratic vote. Doctrines are among the givens of a faith. They have to have objective reality. Scripture alone (incidentally, a watchword of the Reformation, Sola Scriptura) provides the objective index for doctrine. The Bible is the only valid source of information on Mary (Lk. 1:20; 28, 38, 46-50: Matt. 1:18-25; Lk. 2: 1-40; Matt. 2:1-3). It records the angel’s announcement to Mary that she would conceive Jesus, her submission to God’s will, her song of joy anticipating the birth of her Son, Joseph’s doubts about her chastity, the journey to Bethlehem, the birth of her Baby in the stable, the visit of the shepherds, the presentation of the Baby in the Temple, the visit of the Magi, the flight to Egypt, and the return. Most of what the Bible has to say about Mary has to do with the birth of Jesus. After that, there are only occasional references to her. That concentration shows that Mary’s role in the plan of God was confined to being just the woman who happened to bear the baby Jesus. Her significance began and ended with that aspect of the Incarnation.

The other references are to Mary’s disturbed feelings about the boy Jesus being lost in the Temple (Lk. 2:41-52), coming to see Jesus along with His brothers (Matt. 12:46-47), the wedding at Cana (Jn. 2:1-11) and Christ’s charge to His disciples John about caring for Mary as his mother, and to Mary about regarding John as her son (19:26-27), and lastly in the upper room waiting along with everyone else for the coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14).

Some of these later references are significant to understand Mary’s relationship with Jesus. When Jesus was lost at the Temple, Mary, as His mother, scolded Him for causing worry. To this, our Lord’s response was that both Joseph and Mary should have known that His agenda would match His Heavenly Father’s and not theirs. It needs to be noted that Christ’s reply clubs His mother Mary with Joseph, who was not His father, and distances Himself from them equally and was not understood by either of them. In the same way, Jesus distances Himself from Mary referring to her as “woman” at the wedding at Cana and at Calvary. The Creator was addressing the creature then. The Lord was defining His mission and distinguishing it from His mother’s concerns, interests and desires.

The dialogue between Mary and Jesus at Cana is particularly important in evaluating Mary’s mediatorial role. The New Testament records only this instance of Mary making a request to Jesus on behalf of someone else and serving as mediator in a crisis situation. Jesus very definitely denied her the right to do that. His word to her was, “What have I to do with you?”

When Mary and His brothers came visiting, how it must have hurt them to hear Jesus say, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” (Lk.8:19-21). Then Jesus said that all who do God’s will are His mother, brothers and sisters. On that occasion, Jesus denied the validity of claiming physical relationship with Him and instead emphasised the spiritual. Another time when a woman remarked that it must be blessed to be His mother, Jesus countered, “Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and obey it” (11:27-28). He specifically devalued the physical relationship that His mother had with Him. He designated the spiritual relationship that anyone can have through obedience to God’s Word as the one that is more blessed than that of being His mother.

The last glimpse we have of Mary in the New Testament is of her presence in the upper room, where the followers of Jesus are gathered to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. She was there as one among the believers. She had no leadership role and she dropped out of sight after that. Quite obviously, the Early Church did not venerate her, assign her a special role, recognise her authority (spiritual or otherwise) in the Church, or even consult her as the source of knowledge about Jesus. Certainly, they did not regard her as the mediator between them and Jesus.

Mary’s Theology

It will be relevant to ask, “What did Mary believe about herself?” Her theology is preserved for us in her own words (1:38, 46-55). To the angel of the Lord she said, “I am the Lord’s servant” She identified herself with earlier servants of God, the prophets of the Old Testament period. But it is in her song of joy that her theological viewpoint comes through most clearly.

The angel Gabriel had told Mary that she was “highly favoured”. He reiterated that she had “found favour with God” (Lk. 1:28, 30). A favour is undeserved. It is grace. That sense of her being a recipient of grace dominates Mary’s joyful response in song.

Mary regarded God as her Saviour. God can be a saviour to someone only when the person is aware of both the need for salvation and of a total inability to save oneself. Mary had to feel that way to regard God as her Saviour. She had to be filled with a sense of inadequacy. She had to feel deficient in holiness and unable to change her spiritual status and condition. She considered herself to be a person in need of the Saviour. She remarked on His mercy extending to “those who fear Him from generation to generation”. She definitely included herself in the generations of those who receive divine mercy and among the descendants of Abraham. People need mercy only when they are deserving of condemnation and punishment. So when Mary thought that she was receiving mercy, she was accepting that she was a condemned sinner worthy of receiving punishment from God unless the Lord intervened to save her (vv. 47, 50, 55).

When she sang, “…God my Saviour…has been mindful of the humble state of His servant”(v.48). Mary was saying that God, her Saviour, would make His temporary abode in her lowly flesh. She confessed then that the Son of her body would be her own Saviour.

Mary’s angel visitor had told her, “You will give birth to a Son…He will be called the Son of the Most High” (Lk. 1: 31-32, 35). When Mary wondered how that could be because she was a virgin, the angel Gabriel clarified by saying, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God”. She was told first that she would mother God’s Son and then that her son would be fathered by God.

Church Fathers such as Origen (185-253), Eusebius (260-339) and Athanasius (300-373) referred to Mary as Theotokos. In English, that Greek term has been translated as “mother of God.” However, it precisely means “who gave birth to God” or “God-bearer”. Nestorians opposed the use of the term Theotokos for Mary, suggesting that she gave birth only to the human nature of Jesus. In 431, at the Council of Ephesus, the term Theotokos was affirmed, but it was not to deify Mary. Rather, it was to safeguard the truth of the incarnation that God did become fully human taking birth from a mortal woman.

Vatican II & the Pope

For a long time the terms “mediatrix” and “co-redemptrix” have been used by some Roman Catholics. There were some attempts to make their use official at Vatican II. There were, however, dissenting voices raised against that. Ariano Djajesepota, then Archbishop of Djakarta, on behalf of twenty-four Indonesian bishops said, “The text (Mark 3:31) affirms that Mary appears in a significant manner in Christ’s public life; it would be better to say that she disappears, for the Synoptic Gospels speak no more of her, and such a silence in this period has its meaning. It would be convenient to avoid the term ‘Mediatrix’. Strictly speaking, only Christ, who is true God and true Man, can mediate. A title like this applied to our Lady makes it more difficult to preach to those who are not Christians.”

Cardinal Silva Henriquez of Santiago, Chile, was another who protested. He said, “It is very important for preachers to abstain from any exaggeration, even oratorical, regarding the problems of the Virgin’s mediation; it is a problem which the Council should face with much seriousness and sobriety. Many preachers speak too much about Mary’s mediation and not enough about Christ’s: this causes trouble among the faithful and also among those who are outside the church.”

Pope John Paul II must be blamed for the present resurgence in Mariolatry, His devotion to Mary is reflected in his papal motto, Totus tuus, which means “all yours” and is a reference to Mary. He almost never delivers a talk or issues an encyclical without praising Mary and regularly uses words such as “mediatrix”, “advocate” and “co-redemptrix” for her. In May 1997, he contradicted the Scriptures again by saying that Mary was the first to encounter the Risen Christ.

The Pope had asked a commission of twenty-three Mariologist scholars to study the proposal for the new dogma. As those who focus on Mary in all their theological reflections, they were most likely to approve the matter. Instead, by a vote of 23 to nothing, the commission unanimously advised the Pope not to do it. The French theologian and specialist on Mary, Rene Laurentin strongly opposed the dogma for being unscriptural and offensive to the doctrine of Christ’s uniquely redemptive death. There is a battle going on for the souls of Roman Catholics. Whom will they choose? Will they choose Jesus or Mary?

Let’s Follow Mary

More important than these opinions is the teaching of the Scriptures that the dissenting Mariologists refer to. The Bible says, “There is one God, and one Mediator between God and humans, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:5). Our Lord Jesus Himself taught, “I am the way, the truth and the life: no one comes to the Father but by me” (Jn. 14:6). If Jesus is the only way to the Father, using Mary (not the Mary of the Scriptures, but the Mary of Roman Catholic imaginations and traditions) as the way would not lead to the Father, but elsewhere. Mary needed God, whom she called Saviour, to save her. Mary cannot save you or me.

However, she is an example to all of us. Her response to God’s initiative in calling her is what we must imitate. She accepted that God was her Saviour, and that she was one among the generations of those who benefited from His mercy.

Mary is also our example in our continuing walk with God. Mary “treasured up all” that happened in her life and reflected on them in her heart (Lk. 2: 19, 51). Soon after the birth of our Lord Jesus, she was told that “a sword would pierce [her] soul”. This too was subject for her meditation. For thirty years, she thought about it. When her firstborn was treated cruelly and killed unjustly, a sword entered her heart, but she remained faithful. She had said, when she was selected to bear the Son of God, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said” (1:38). That remained her lifelong attitude.

Mary’s humility is something all of us need to emulate. In a world where relatives of government ministers and officials become centres of extra-constitutional power, Mary’s example is noteworthy. Though the mother of the founder, and that too when the founder was no less than the Son of God, she did not arrogate any position or power for herself. She definitely did not function as mediatrix between Jesus and the disciples, neither during His life on earth nor after the Resurrection.

Let us remember Mary as she was, not as some want her to be imagined, because they have an ungodly agenda to convert the Church into a kingdom of the world with hierarchical offices, priestcraft and abusive power. Let’s be like Mary, just Christians, followers of Christ.

10. HEARING GOD TODAY

At the end of a conference where I was teaching the inductive Bible study method, a participant asked, “How can we hear God speak to us personally when we study in this mechanical way?”

Most people think that when God speaks, He does so only through supernatural means such as visions, voices, signs and angel visits. Some claim such experiences as the regular fare of their lives, giving others a complex by creating the impression that they are specially connected to God.

Judging by the scriptural data, those who claim to have visions frequently are only suffering from the delusion that all their mental pictures have divine significance. Those who had visions in biblical times had few of them. They were neither given visions daily, nor even too often. The Twentieth Century Prophet Tozer once wrote of “the dangerous logic of the gullible Christian who does not realise that it may be fatal to believe everything that happens to come along…they feel that every man who claims to have had a revelation from God must be accepted as a prophet…faith never means gullibility. The man who believes everything is as far from God as the man who refuses to believe anything. Faith engages the Person and promises of God and rests upon them…Credulity, on the other hand, never honours God, for it shows as great a readiness to believe anybody as to believe God Himself!” (Renewed Day by Day, Feb. 29)

People’s experiences are not normative. Nor are we to derive our understanding of the biblical view of visions and signs (or any other Christian doctrine) from the experiences that people boast of. The basic question must remain, what does the Bible teach about visions and signs.

Biblical Data

Some people think that there is a distinction to be made between visions and dreams. They say that visions are “experiences” that happen while people are awake, whereas dreams occur while people sleep. “It is impossible to draw a sharp line of demarcation between dreams and visions. The Hebrew and Greek words all have to do with seeing” (“Vision”, New International Bible Dictionary, p. 1052).

Peter was in a “trance” state when he “saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet” coming down (Acts 10:10-11). He had experienced a “vision”, but it was not a hands-on kind of experience in which he could have actually killed an animal and eaten it. It was just something that he “saw”.

The best evidence that visions and dreams are the same is in Joel 2:28:

“Your young men will see visions,

Your old men will dream dreams.”

Hebrew poetry is not rhymed verbally, but rhymed in thought. It is called parallelism. The same thought is conveyed in another line using different words. The point of Joel’s prophecy was that in the era of the Spirit, sex and age would not disqualify people from experiencing the power of the Spirit. If “visions” and “dreams” are different things, then that prophecy would mean that the experience of the Spirit would differ according to age, for young men would see one thing, and old men another thing. But that is the exact opposite of what the prophecy asserts.

Few Visions Today

Why doesn’t God give as many visions as He did during biblical times? When we study Scripture we can observe a pattern to God’s revelations. First there were “theophanies”. God “appeared” to Abraham (Gen. 18:1). Afterwards there were visions/dreams through which God communicated with His people (e.g. Jacob and Joseph). Then came Moses with whom God held face-to-face encounters (Num. 12:6), while conveying the Word of God to His people. God then told His people that they could thereafter discover His guidance by using the method prescribed in the Word, that of using the Urim and Thummim (Ex. 28:30), which were probably used like lots. From time to time God did send prophets who saw visions/dreams, but all through the Psalms, the people of God sing of being guided by God’s commandments and testimonies.

Similarly, during the period of the New Testament there were a lot of visions/dreams attending God’s new work in human history. After that there was a waning of visions/dreams as apostolic teaching was formulated in written letters. In any case, even in that period when they occurred more frequently than today, visions/dreams were not commonplace. They were given only as a means of special guidance.

Today in lands where the gospel has not been preached freely, there are people who have seen dreams of the Lord Jesus. Many in Muslim countries, where evangelism is banned, have come to Christ because of such visions. Similarly, there are people in remote, unreached villages in India who have been motivated to look for the Saviour whom they saw in vision. Sooner or later God brings the Word into their lives to clarify their faith.

God is sovereign in imparting visions. He doesn’t give visions on demand. Any study of the circumstances surrounding the visions recorded in the Bible would show that none of the people were praying for one, nor were they even expecting one. We are not to set our hearts on seeing visions, nor are we to seek them in prayer. No one is to think that if he or she doesn’t have visions, then it is because of some spiritual deficiency. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may follow all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29). We are to be satisfied with what has already been revealed and we are to act on that. If God chooses to go beyond what has been revealed it will be entirely His decision, and it will not be because we have prayed for it.

Not Always From God

Biblical data indicates that not all the dreams or visions that even the godly have are necessarily from God.

Joseph saw in a dream that he and his brothers went to harvest crops. When their bundles of grain were made up, the brothers’ bundles bowed down in front of the one Joseph had made. He was thrilled by the dream and told his brothers about it (Gen. 37:7). That dream was from God. Years later his brothers did have to prostrate themselves before him. However, at the time when he saw the dream, he had no idea it was God’s message to him.

Joseph also had a second dream in which he saw the sun, the moon and eleven stars bow to him. Again, he told the dream to everyone. When his father got to hear about it, he was scandalised and asked Joseph whether he knew what he was saying. Jacob told him that according to his dream, not only his eleven brothers, but also his father and mother would bow down to him. Mind you, his mother Rachel was already dead at the time. Scripture records no other dream of Joseph.

Obviously, Joseph gave up talking of his dreams. He realised dreams were not a good way to know what the future held for him. So called visions may well be nothing more than daydreaming. Some dreams can be the product of an overactive imagination, as in the case of Joseph’s second dream. For instance, if we think a lot about something during the day, it is most likely that we will have a dream about what preoccupied our thoughts.

Both in the Old and the New Testaments we find prophets disparaging dreams, because they realised that not everyone who claimed a vision from God, did necessarily represent God or have knowledge of His plans (Jer. 23:25; Jude v.8.

Personal Obedience

Many today claim visions to tell others how to live their lives. I recently heard of a few persons getting together and praying that God would reveal to them the weaknesses of the people they were praying for! It could be said that they were seeking the “gift of fault-finding”.

There are those who clearly have a prophetic role in turning the whole community of God’s people back to God. Such persons may at times have to confront those in leadership because it would be one way to turn the whole group to God. Thus Nathan was shown David’s sin and he confronted him.

Those who do not have such a role of turning a whole people to God, should not take it on themselves to claim to see visions to tell others what to do with their lives. There is only one answer for those who claim to have a revelation for what others are to do: “God told you. He didn’t tell me.” A man once sent me a photocopy of a page from his devotional reading and said that he had read it that morning and immediately thought it indicated what I needed to do. I pointed out that it was part of his devotional reading, not mine.

When God reveals something to someone, it is neither for flaunting the gift nor for lording it over others. Essentially, God’s revelations call for a personal response.

The Revealed Word

If after all that God has revealed in His Word, Christians wait for visions and signs, they are virtually saying that they have no joy in God’s Word. Some may be refusing to obey God, if they are not given the thrill of fantastic experiences. Such people do not live for God, but their own thrills.

God said to Israel, “Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for your or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, ‘Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so that we may obey it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so that we may obey it?’ No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so that you may obey it” (Deut. 30:13-14).

Centuries later a prophet of God did tell God’s covenant people, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it’ ” (Isa. 30:21). If taken out of context, that passage would imply that God’s people should be hearing God like that. If they don’t, they do not have a dynamic relationship with God. However, that passage is not about God giving His people extraordinary guidance about what to choose at turning points in life. Rather, when people turn their backs on God’s Word, then the voice of God is behind them, recalling them to God’s way. The prophet then foresaw God’s wayward people, responding to the voice that called to them and turning their backs on idolatry.

Love with the Mind

Most people think that insistence on the Word of God being the norm is what kills spirituality. When Paul wrote “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6), he was not denying the power of the Word, but affirming that the Spirit writes God’s Word on our hearts.

Those who emphasise spirituality are often suspicious of the intellect. They point out that Paul said, “It is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’ Where are the wise? Where are the scholars? Where are the philosophers of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Cor. 1: 19-20). Paul was opposing those who relied on human skills instead of trusting God. He did affirm that there is a higher wisdom—one that is divine.

We must not forget that the intellect is the creation of God. It is not the product of any diabolic power or activity. The above scripture is not opposed to the use of the intellect. Instead, it is against the idolisation of intellectualism and other aspects of aristocracy that human society esteems and uses in order to put down others. It was not against the use of the intellect that Paul wrote, but against taking pride in the intellect.

God expects us to use His gifts. Jesus told the parable of the three persons whom their master entrusted with resources that they may do business with them and add to his investment. The one condemned was the person who had failed to make full use of what had been committed to him (Matt. 25: 14-30).

Jesus added to the Old Testament’s teaching about how we are to love the Lord. While the Law required that God should be loved with all the heart, and all the soul, and all the strength (Deut. 6:5), Jesus added one more dimension by saying that people are to love the Lord with all their minds (Matt. 22:37). God does not reject the mind, but finds it an acceptable offering. The coming of the Spirit does not displace the mind, but sanctifies its use. Paul said, “I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind” (1 Cor. 14:15).

Relevance of God’s Word

The real reason for the suspicion of study and reflection is impatience with the old Word. Many are always hankering for a new or out of the ordinary experience. They think that the mark of the Spirit is extraordinariness.

Christians today need to recognise that Scripture is God’s provision for us. The Bible stands as God’s eternally relevant revelation to His people. Even Jesus did not say that we will not need the old revelation and that He will give us something new instead. Rather He upheld the validity of the old Word of God. He clearly said that His mission was not the abolishment of the Word of God (Matt. 5:17). Our Lord was tempted to listen to a new voice trying to interpret what the spiritual life of God’s Son ought to be like, but He countered that temptation with the Word of God (4:3-10).

Following in Christ’s footsteps, the Apostle John indicated that for the Christian the new Word is still the old Word of God. “Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command: its truth is seen in Him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining” (1 Jn. 2:7-8).

Source & Standard

There is a need to understand the full significance of confessing that the Bible is God’s Word. The Bible alone is the source book for all we know about the Christian faith. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that God’s servant may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). That means that what we have is sufficient and comprehensive. What God has recorded in the Bible serves as examples by which He teaches and guides us (1 Cor. 6:10-11; Rom. 4:23-24). The thrust of the teaching of the Bible is that Scripture is the primary medium that God uses to communicate with His people.

Paul told the Corinthian church, which was full of problems, that the lesson they needed to learn was that of adhering to the command, “Do not go beyond what is written” (1 Cor. 4:6).

Scripture is the objective standard of truth, or we would be swept along by subjective experiences and feelings. Peter said, “Above all you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:20-21).

Christian Ministry

Peter and Jude wrote letters to “remind” Christians in their day of the basic tenets of the Christian faith already known to them. They did not perceive their work as that of coming up with the stuff of new revelations (2 Peter 1: 12-15; 3:1-2; Jude v. 5). Jude said that the disciple’s responsibility was to “remember what the Apostles taught” (Jude v. 17). Paul said that what he had “received” is what he “passed on” (1 Cor. 15:3).

Christian ministry is essentially one of reminding people of the truth once revealed. The tasks of the Christian minister in a new generation are (2 Tim. 1:13-14; 2:2)

• first to “keep the pattern of sound teaching with faith and love in Christ Jesus”
• second to “guard the good deposit” and
• third to hand down what has been received.

That is what Christian ministry is: faithfulness in handing on what has been received.

Christians need to remember that our Lord said that anyone who undermines or diminishes the authority of God’s Word by their teachings or practices is working against God’s kingdom (Matt. 5:18). Personal experiences such as visions and signs cannot be considered to have greater significance or relevance than the Word of God. They do not replace the Bible as God’s new revelations. When anyone’s visions divert people’s attention from the Word and its teachings, they bear the responsibility of having worked against the kingdom of God.

Hearing God

God has spoken. We are to hear Him. We are to discern His voice in what He has authored and given in writing. Those who do not want to hear Him in the word of God would not be inclined to walk in the way of God even if someone rose from the dead and spoke to them (Lk. 16:31).

11. THEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES

The wedding took place in a Protestant church. The minister prayed, “Father in heaven, You have made the bond of marriage, a holy mystery, a sacrament, a symbol of Christ’s love for the Church…”

It sounded really profound, but the minister compromised his theology by describing marriage as a “sacrament.”

By definition, a sacrament is a ritual practice instituted by the Lord Jesus Himself. I learnt that in the Anglican Church where I came to the Lord. Walter Stan Skillicorn, my pastor, was careful to explain to the Confirmation Class that only baptism and the Lord’s Supper qualify as sacraments by that definition.

It is true that Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches count seven rites among the sacraments: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, extreme unction (anointing the dying), ordination and marriage. All these rites are regarded as sacraments by these churches because a sacrament is loosely defined as “a religious ceremony or act of the Christian Churches regarded as an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 9^th Ed.). However, it is important to remember that only rites instituted by the Lord of the Church can have the status of sacraments.

Root of Confusion

[You may want to skip this indented portion set in a smaller font and brackets, unless you have an interest in etymology—the study of the source and development of a word].

The confusion about what constitutes a sacrament has risen from the fact that the word “sacrament” is derived from the Latin word sacramentum. This word is derived from sacrare meaning “hallow”, which in turn had its root in sacer meaning “sacred”.

When the Bible was translated into Latin, the word sacramentum (meaning “solemn oath” or “thing set apart as sacred”) was used to translate the Greek word musterion (mystery), but the rites of baptism and the Lord’s Supper were themselves referred to as sacramenta. That is, there was a separate word for sacraments.

Paul was the New Testament writer who spoke of the “mystery” of

• The Gospel of the Incarnation (Rom. 16:25; Eph. 1:9; 3:3-5, 9; 6:19;

Col. 1:26-27; 2:2; 4:3; 1 Tim. 3:16)

• The inclusion of Gentile believers (Rom. 11:25; Eph. 3:6)
• The relationship between Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:32)
• The transformation of believers alive at Christ’s return (1 Cor. 15:51)

During the New Testament period and for some time afterwards, there were mystery religions in the Greco-Roman world. People found the gods of the myths irrelevant to life. The mystery religions offered deeper knowledge through secret rites that satisfied an individual’s desire to be among the initiated.

What Paul did was to proclaim that the Incarnation was the revelation of the greatest mystery of all time.

Since baptism and the Lord’s Supper were the only rites instituted by the Lord Himself, it was appropriate to call them sacraments, signifying that the outward rituals had deeper significance. They were the visible enactment of what the Gospel proclaimed.

The proclamation of the Gospel was not regarded as the mere recitation of words. It had the power to impart life to the one who “received” it (accepted or believed that the death of the Lord Jesus was the only adequate price for the salvation of believers). In the same way, those who truly “received” the sacraments found that the rites have the ability to communicate the power of the spiritual.

It was from this definition of the sacrament as an outward act with deeper meaning that the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches began to define other rites of the Church as having the status of sacraments, departing from the original meaning of a sacrament being a rite of the Church instituted by the Lord Jesus Himself.

Praying for the Dead

Protestant ministers in recent times have become careless about how they practise the Christian faith. They do that by not paying attention to the history of the theology of Christian rites. The words we use in rituals communicate beliefs. That is why we need to be careful about how we “re-present” the faith in our generation.

For instance, over the years I have heard several Protestant ministers say at funerals, “Let us pray for the salvation of the soul of our dear departed brother/sister…” (or some equivalent of that). But we do not believe in praying for the dead. We can pray for people only while they live. Once they die, they are beyond help through prayers because “people are appointed once to die, but after this the judgement” (Heb. 9:27). To pray for departed souls or to invite prayer for them is to communicate to the living that they can be rescued even when they end their lives without committing themselves to following Christ in life.

Our Lord taught in parable that to escape ending in hell, people must follow God’s teaching in life and once they die they cannot transfer from hell to heaven (Lk. 16:26-31).

No Altars, No Sacrifices

Some Protestant churches practise genuflection or bowing before the “altar”. Firstly, bowing to a cross or garlanding a picture of Christ breaks the second commandment about not bowing or worshipping anything handcrafted (Ex. 20:4-5).

Thinking of the communion table as the altar is derived from the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox view that in the Mass the Lord Jesus Christ is offered up in sacrifice. The death of our Lord was historical. It happened “once for all.” We cannot re-sacrifice Him again. If we think we can re-sacrifice Jesus that would mean we believe that the Lord’s historical sacrifice was insufficient for our salvation. The Lord Jesus is not like the priests of other religions. “Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when This Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God” (Heb. 10:11-12).

No Priests

This is the reason that in Protestant churches we have “ministers” or “pastors”, not “priests”. We believe in the “priesthood of all believers” (1 Pet. 2:9) but do not believe that we need to have any special person function as a priest on our behalf. We have only One Mediator (1 Tim. 2:5) and do not need anyone else to serve as mediator between God and us. All have equal access to God and His grace. “Therefore, beloved, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, His body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith” (Heb. 10:19-22).

[While in community a Protestant minister is not a “priest”, in the context of non-Christian society it may be necessary to describe oneself as “priest” because the word “pastor” is not understood by non-Christians, and the word “minister” can be misunderstood because of its political connotation].

Sign of the Cross

As a rule, Protestants do not cross themselves, while Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians do.

It is almost certain that making the sign of the cross was a secret sign among believers in the age of persecution by the officials of the Roman Empire. This was probably one of the means by which Christians identified one another. When the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, the Christian faith became the state religion of the Roman Empire, and the persecution of Christians ceased. Christians remembered that the sign of the cross was what had protected them from discovery by those hostile to their faith. So they began to use the sign of the cross to ward off evil. When they felt that they were in the presence of demons and liable to spiritual attacks, they crossed themselves. But they also used the act of crossing themselves in worship because that was how Christians had indicated to each other that they belonged to Christ.

In recent times, sports persons from South Korea and other South East Asian countries have powerfully told the watching world that they are followers of Christ by crossing themselves at international meets in public view and before television cameras I think it would be a wonderful tool for witnessing if Christians began to publicly cross themselves, drawing attention to their identity. However, this suggestion of crossing ourselves is not to deny the importance of maintaining our Protestant characteristics.

The Apocrypha

One distinctive that has often been compromised by many Protestant ministers is in failing to teach that the Bible we have is complete. Many believe that Roman Catholics have more books in their Bibles and that Protestants have on our own cut out some books because it didn’t suit the Protestant agenda.

It is important to teach our people that the Old Testament we have is “the Law and the Prophets” that Jesus referred to as God’s Word. As such, our Old Testament is exactly what our Lord regarded as Scripture.

Jews, both ancient and modern, never regarded the extra books, known collectively as the Apocrypha, as inspired by God because they were written in the period when there were no prophets. The prophet Amos had prophesied that there would be a famine of God’s Word: “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it” (Amos 8:11-12).

Attending Church

Sometimes Protestant Christians on going to a place where there are no Protestant churches have attended services in any church, even if the only one was a Roman Catholic one. They think that attending any church is better than attending none. They forget that Roman Catholic churches are dedicated in part to the worship of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the veneration of saints. There would be as much value in going to a temple dedicated to gods and goddesses. Churches that practise the veneration of Mary and the saints are no different and no better.

Instead, a believer is better off praying in the solitude of his home, a mountaintop, in a garden or in the woods. For fellowship, the believer can (and must) seek other believers and meet in non-formal settings because, as the Lord said, we do not need holy places to worship God, for He is spirit, and those who worship Him will worship in spirit and in truth (Jn. 4: 21, 23-24). If a Protestant church or group does not exist in a city or town, Protestant believers must think of themselves as having been sent to such a place on the mission of starting a fellowship of believers.

Church History and theology are important subjects for Christians. We must study them to know who we are and what we are to stand for. In the post Apostolic Age, the Reformation was the most defining moment in the history of the Church. We dare not forget the Reformation for we will lose our very identity. Protestant ministers need to study what sets us apart from Roman Catholics and teach believers the biblical basis of doctrines.

A lot of the compromise we witness today occurs out of a desire for Christian unity. Our Lord did pray for the oneness of His followers. Therefore, we must seek Christian unity, but it must be a unity defined by the Word of God. We must indeed share one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father to be one Body (Eph. 4:4-5). If anyone will say, “Jesus is Lord!” that person shares the faith with us. But if they say that Jesus is one among the gods or that we must have Jesus plus Mary and the saints, we have nothing in common for that Jesus is not the historical Jesus—the Jesus of the Bible.

12. NOTHING GAY

English is probably the only language in which good words are hijacked by groups and given twisted meanings. “Gay” is such a word. It is now the word that homosexuals prefer to use to describe themselves. The word “gay” used to denote a person who was carefree, cheerful, jolly, light-hearted, mirthful…

Most mainline denominations in the West face major schisms over the issue of the rights of homosexuals in the churches. There’s nothing gay about the schisms that threaten them.

Those who are homosexual should not be oppressed or denied their human rights. They do have the right to life, sustenance, shelter and employment. For the love of God, they must be shown kindness. They are to be shown compassion, and not to be hurt.

Conditions Apply

However, in any situation, there are restrictions about who can participate. This is especially true in the matter of employment or membership in an interest group. For instance, if a women’s hostel requires that only a woman may be the warden, denying the position to a male does not constitute a violation of his human right. If the army requires that a recruit must be not less than a certain height and weight, one who does not meet those standards cannot complain about discrimination.

Universally the Church has had rules of conduct that do not permit homosexual activity within the Church. It was not bigotry that instituted such laws of behaviour. They were derived from the absolutely clear, indubitable teaching of God’s Word.

The Word of Truth

Gareth Moore, a Dominican priest, has authored the book A Question of Truth. He wrote, “Use of Genesis 19 and Leviticus 18:22 may run into problems about the applicability of Old Testament law to Christians, and indeed to anybody since the coming of Christ.” How can any follower of Christ Jesus say that? The Lord said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:17-19).

Moore refers to Romans 1:26-27, which reads, “God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.” He argues that though the passage seems to prohibit same-sex activity, it is not about sexual activity, but about Gentiles rejecting God’s revelation and turning to idolatry. Very true. But it takes an enormous amount of linguistic gymnastics and contortions to construe from the context that the actions that are described as “degrading”, “shameful lusts”, “indecent acts”, “what ought not to be done”, “every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity” are not proscribed by God (Rom. 1:18-29).

I am not qualified to discuss the pathology of homosexuality. But this I know from the Bible: just as the heterosexual must practise chastity, so too must the homosexual. I do admit that it is somewhat easier for the heterosexual, in that he or she may end the single state and enter into a sexual relationship through marriage. According to the Bible, that is not an option for the homosexual. The only answer for that is the Lord’s saying, “Some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:12).

Think of the homosexual condition as a handicap. Just as the physically disabled are kept out of participation in certain forms of physical activity specific to a particular ability, the homosexual must consider himself or herself disabled from engaging in sexual activity. Admittedly, the homosexual is different from other categories of disabled persons, in that it is possible for the homosexual to abuse himself or herself, and abuse the homosexual partner, by engaging in sexual activity that is abnormal. That such behaviour is abnormal and abusive is proved by two facts: one, homosexual activity can never be procreative, and two, the activity far too often results in physical trauma of one kind or the other.

I want you to look at this from another angle. If homosexual conduct is okay, who is to say that paedophilia and rape are not? I am sure that we can find any number of weird psychologists to justify their “condition” as something that they have no control over and that their conduct must be accepted as legitimate behaviour for them.

God Has Spoken

In the end, the whole question revolves around whether or not God has spoken. If God has revealed His will, then this is no matter for debate or amendment.

The Apostle Paul wrote, “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9-10). The very basis of the Church’s existence depends on the belief that God has revealed Himself in no uncertain terms. The prophets proclaimed His Word. The Lord Jesus incarnated Him. The Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets and the Apostles. Those who want to change these foundational truths should have the honesty and integrity to quit the churches they belong to. They should say that they are unable to continue to be part of something that they perceive to have no basis in truth and fact and history.

What is Christian?

In 2003 when the Church of England was on the verge of a major split over the matter of consecrating a gay bishop, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, came out in favour of going through with the consecration at the risk of dividing the church. He pleaded that this controversy should not divert the church from the “priorities of our mission.” I would think that the priority of Christian mission is to make Christ known—the historical Jesus with all His teachings as they are preserved for us in the Bible. There can be no derivation of mission apart from the givens of Christ and His Spirit’s Word.

At its General Conference in 2004, the United Methodist Church in the US by majority vote rejected homosexuality because it is “incompatible with Christian teaching”. In the opinion of Barbara Wendland, who brings out Connections, a monthly letter sent to Methodists and others, Christians ought to stop describing homosexuality as a sin and should accept homosexuals as one would accept a minority/dissenting group. She joined the gays in deploring the fact that the gay wing was bulldozed by the majority vote.

Allowing dissent and the minority view is of course essential in a democracy, and sometimes history does prove that the minority had it right while the majority didn’t.

But the question that must be asked is whether theology and ethics (the theology of conduct) are to be determined by vote? If that is how these matters are to be decided, then because there may be a day when the majority becomes the minority it is perfectly alright today for the majority to manoeuvre to safeguard their position. Having tried to change the church’s theology by their machinations, why do homosexuals and their supporters complain when they lose the vote?

That aside, I want to get back to the question of whether theology and ethics are things one can vote on? Are they safeguarded or jettisoned by whatever group that has the majority vote? Are there no givens, an objective standard, which determines Christian belief and practices?

The Christian Church is built around the concept of the lordship of Jesus: that He was God-incarnate, that He died as the only Saviour of all humankind, rose to physical life again, and will one day return to judge the world. Deny these tenets of faith and all you have is a fan club, no better than those who believe that Elvis Presley lives and is worthy of worshipful adoration. If we accept Jesus Christ’s lordship, then we must accept His view of Scripture (Old Testament) as something that is not to be tampered with, and His promise that the Holy Spirit would remind His followers of His teachings (which is what the New Testament constitutes).

Coming as Believers

What you or I write, what Mother Teresa wrote, what Billy Graham or the Pope writes, is not at par with the Scriptures. We don’t come then to the Scriptures as judges who will decide what stays and what goes. We have to come to the Scriptures as believers and servants.

If the Bible is not God’s Word, why refer to it at all? If Jesus is not God, what foolishness it is to be part of a group that keeps referring to Him as though He mattered 2000+ years later!

It has been argued that just as the Church was wrong about race and the status and rights of women, the Church could well be wrong about the homosexual issue. No doubt, sections of the Church were wrong about race and women (and a host of other issues). But their errors don’t disprove the Bible. In fact, we can all see that they took portions out of their context to justify the positions they took. But Galatians 3:28 and other passages are there from the other side of the issues to show that they were wrong to give the Scriptures such a twist about the submission of slaves and wives that the equality that the Bible teaches was denied. However in the case of homosexuality, it cannot be said that any passage has been taken out of its context, or that some other passages that countenance and favour homosexuality have been ignored/suppressed to arrive at the position that according to the teachings of the Bible it is a sin. Is there any passage that anyone can point to and say that here is the other side to this issue?

I am not saying that homosexuals don’t have a right to life. They do. But they cannot insist that they have a right to enter the Church of Christ and throw out His teachings.

The Intolerance of Jesus

Some have tried to portray Jesus as being the type of person who would be tolerant of homosexuals and accommodate them in the Church if He were in charge. How tolerant would Jesus be? Would He accept homosexual conduct as just an alternative lifestyle that must find a place in His Church?

It must first be understood that sinful deeds are not alternative lifestyles. The term “alternative lifestyles” should rightly be applied only to cultural differences such as those between Easterners and Westerners. It is not immoral if people eat with their fingers in one culture or use cutlery in another. Concepts of what is hygienic can differ from culture to culture. Such things can be deemed alternative lifestyles. Or, if in an affluent society, one chooses to live simply that would constitute a case of having a different lifestyle. But sinful deeds are different. Sin is plainly the transgression of the law of God (1 Jn.3:4).

Jesus was intolerant towards sin. That is why He forgave sins. When you forgive someone, you are saying that the behaviour cannot be overlooked, excused, or condoned. Forgiveness says that a deed is wrongful and deserves punishment. Forgiveness is not tolerant of sin. It deals with sin graciously, but doesn’t allow it to continue. Jesus said to the woman caught in the act of adultery, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more” (Jn.8:11).

The hymn is right in claiming that I can come to the Lamb of God “just as I am”, but I must come to “rid my soul of one dark blot” and the Lamb of God will welcome, but it is to “pardon, cleanse, relieve.”

Just as I am, and waiting not

To rid my soul of one dark blot,

To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,

O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

Just as I am, though tossed about

With many a conflict, many a doubt,

Fightings and fears within, without,

O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

Just as I am, Thou wilt receive,

Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;

Because Thy promise I believe,

O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

Is there any place for the homosexual in the Church of God? Yes, as a sinner seeking grace and forgiveness. But while he or she continues in the sin of homosexual activity, they are not to be given the rights of members or allowed to hold offices.

When the debate about a homosexual being consecrated as bishop in the Church of England was going on, the Nigerian Archbishop Peter Jasper Akinola said, “We cannot continue to be in communion with people who have taken a step outside the biblical boundaries.” Sadly, the Anglican Church in India did not voice an opinion, maybe because of the vested interest in keeping the foreign aid flowing in. They sold their birthright as Christians for their begging bowl to be filled.

What happens in the Western Church will sooner or later infect the Church in India. It is important that the Church maintains the “biblical boundaries” that separate the Church of Christ from conduct that is unacceptable. Let us recognise that some ideas, beliefs, actions and practices are prohibited according to the proclaimed teaching of Christ Jesus, the Lord of the Church.

13. MADE FOR EACH OTHER

Many people in this generation derive all their notions of marital compatibility from a cigarette company that markets a particular brand of cigarette as having tobacco and filter that are “made for each other”. A contest is held annually to decide which two persons are the ideal couple. Those who are chosen are good looking, smartly turned out, upwardly mobile, have expensive tastes and exhibit pleasure in living well.

The prophets of this generation are admen. People do not pause to think that basically they are con artists. It is their business to fool people into thinking that life is not complete without the particular products that they promote. They are in the business of creating needs where there were none at one time and once we are hooked on the products, we wonder how we ever lived without them.

Serious Business

When life is patterned after fads and fancies, there is an air of artificiality about it. Today, courtship and honeymoon periods largely have this unreal quality, which is why many marriages end disastrously. The marriage partners imagine that the artificial conditions of the idyllic courtship and honeymoon periods constitute the essence of the marriage experience. When the soft lights and music are turned off, and the cosmetic beauty is wiped off, they discover the need to settle down to the serious business of life, but are ill prepared for it. They discover that they cannot eat out all the time, but have to sometimes cook their own food and wash the dishes afterwards. They will not always be able to buy new clothes, but sometimes must mend old clothes and wear them. There are so many chores to ordinary living. There is so much endless routine, so much that is not exciting.

Paul wrote that ecstatic states do not always make for love. Human eloquence, angelic ecstasy, visions, secret knowledge, mountain-moving faith and sacrificial asceticism do not necessarily imply the presence of love (1 Cor. 13:1-3). Instead love has the quality of patience. The King James Version uses the picturesque words “suffereth long” instead of “is patient”. That old version suggests that love suffers, it suffers long, “and is kind”. When life does not seem exciting, but is full of the commonplace, love is patient and kind. It has this enduring quality. It is always there—protecting, trusting, hoping, persevering, never failing. Love has an abiding quality. It remains (vv.4, 7-8,13) It is firmly there through all of life’s experiences—storms, depressions and tranquillity.

Growing To Be

The slogan of our false prophets would have us believe that some are “made for each other,” even before their relationships begin. It conveys the idea that such a couple does not have to work at their relationship. No two are made for each other in that sense. In the providence of God, He has ordained that a husband and wife are to be for each other. It is not a state of existing, but a phase of becoming.

No relationship is static. Relationships are dynamic. They are experiences of growth in one direction or the other. The slogan needs to be changed. “Growing to be for each other” is what it ought to advocate and promote.

The moment we talk of growth, we admit imperfection. It would be an outrageous thing to say to a couple at their wedding that theirs is not the perfect marriage. But no marriage can be perfect at the outset. Two imperfect persons who come together at a wedding cannot make a perfect marriage; there is room for growth and improvement.

The concept of husbands and wives being “made for each other” is rooted in the biblical Creation story. God brought the animals to Adam for him to name them. But they could not give him companionship. So God made Eve for Adam. She was his suitable partner. God ordained that “two shall be one” (Ge. 2:18-25). He gave them rules to live by, and when they broke God’s rules, they experienced alienation between themselves. Adam, who had earlier regarded Eve as “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh”, then thought of her as the one God had thrust upon him and accused her of causing his fall (3:12).

God, a Partner

The creation story makes it very clear that two can be one, only when there is a Divine Third to make them one. God is the cementing bond in the marriage partnership. A plait looks like it has only two strands of hair intertwined. But try to make a plait with just two strands of hair. They will unravel. A third strand is needed to hold them together, and make a plait. Yet, the third strand is invisible in this intertwining.

In a marriage, unless God is an active partner, two cannot be one. Human marriage is not mating. The story of Adam and Eve shows that baring of bodies is not enough. They were gloriously naked and perfect in physique. But when they went away from God, their marriage experienced strain and they were alienated from each other.

Baring bodies will not make a marriage. It involves baring the souls. The problem with modern marriages is that all the attention is on bodies and life in the material world. Physical marriages are taking place, but not spiritual ones.

The spiritual aspect is not being considered most of the time when people contract marriages. Looks, positions, and possessions are all that are being considered. But there is a spiritual dimension in marriage because human beings are spiritual in nature. That is why the Bible counsels that believers should not be “unequally yoked with unbelievers.” This insistence is not a case of narrow-mindedness.

The Unequal Yoke

Because marriage is not mating, as in the case of the animal world, it involves the deepest part of humans, their souls. Marriage is discovering one’s soul mate. That is why Paul says, “Don’t become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That’s not partnership, that’s war. Is light best friends with darkness? Does Christ go strolling with the Devil? Do trust and mistrust bold hands? But that is exactly what we are, each of us is a temple in whom God lives” (1 Cor. 6:14-18, TM).

This was not a new doctrine that Paul formulated. God instructed His people that they were to be distinctive from other people in the land. “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same” (Ex. 34:15-16). God considered this ban on intermarriage with people who did not worship Him so important that it was one of the most oft repeated prohibitions, and the theme of many prophetic denunciations (Deut. 7:3-5; Jos.23:12; Mal.3:11; Jer.3:6-9). The prophet Malachi described those of other religions as children of a foreign god. Paul said that marriage to an unbeliever is an attempt to link Jesus with the Devil. Those are provocative and offensive words. But that is how grave the whole matter is.

God’s reasons for calling for such distinctiveness are two. On the positive side, it is a question of our identity. “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession” (Deut. 7:6). On the negative side, God foresees that compromise in this area leads to abandoning the faith. He equates it to adultery and prostitution (Ex. 34:15-16).

Two Fools

Samson was a man of God. But, when he compromised in the matter of choosing a life-partner, it eventually led to breaking the very vows that were integral to his being God’s man for the period. He became so insensitive that he was not even aware when God had left him (Judg. 14:1-3, 9-10; 16:17-19, 16:20).

Then there was the wisest man who made a fool of himself and it all started with choosing pagan women as wives. Mind you, they were good diplomatic alliances, and according to the world’s scheme of statesmanship, Solomon had made some wise moves through his marriages that would gain his kingdom political advantages and benefits. But they were spiritually disastrous. They “turned his heart after other gods and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God” (1 Ki. 1:1-16). The story of Solomon is one of the saddest stories of the Bible. He started so well and ended so badly. Probably, Solomon rationalised his choice of women, who worshipped other gods, imagining that he was spreading the name of God among others. But that was not what happened. The women did not give up their gods. Instead, they made Solomon give up the one, true God.

Compromising Christians

Paul challenges those who fool themselves by thinking that they could be instrumental in saving non-Christians if they marry them. “How do you know wife whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?” (1 Corinthians7:16)

When a Christian and a non-Christian marry, only the Christian compromises. For non-Christians, there is no compromise because they are not commanded by their scriptures not to marry anyone outside their faiths. But, for the Christian, there is a commandment: “Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers.”

Compromise is like cancer. It goes on eating away at the vitals. People who think that after one “little” compromise they will arrest it, discover that they are unable to stop. There is always one more compromise to be made. The last compromise never arrives.

When the Christian compromises in marrying an unbeliever, a sense of insecurity coils itself around the heart and has a stranglehold on the believer. In my pastoral experience, I have observed that a number of Christian women, when they married non-Christian men, brought up their children to practise the faith of their non-Christian partners. Though mothers have more to do with the upbringing of children, especially when they are young, these mothers fail to mould their children’s lives. The reason that they fail to exert their natural influence is that they are afraid that if they practise their faith, they will lose their husbands. So, they suppress their own faith and try to win their husband’s confidence and favour by bringing up their children in the non-Christian faith. Oh yes, the compromise never ends.

Believers & Partnerships

Of course, the teaching that believers should not be unequally yoked with unbelievers is more than a question of marrying non-Christians. Among the official adherents of Christianity, there are those who are only nominally Christian. They are not followers of Christ. They are not believers. Those for whom belief in Christ goes beyond ritual to love and commitment, cannot expect to find marital bliss with someone who is totally at variance with their faith and practice. Such unequally yoked persons discover that their agendas for life do not match. For a yoke to function efficiently, the two yoked animals must be matched. If one partner pulls in one direction and the other in an entirely different direction, there is either a stalemate or the stronger one overcomes the weaker one. Either way, there is unhappiness.

Incidentally, it is certain that Paul meant this principle to be followed not just in marriage, but also in all partnerships. Sometimes Christians think that they can have business partnerships with non-Christians. Too often, the partnership fails because the partners have different business ethics that bring them into conflict. Moreover, those who do not have any qualms about sharp business practices will not hesitate to extend the unethical behaviour to the treatment of their own partners. I know a number of people who have gone into business with those who have been their friends from childhood onwards and regretted their decisions because they were cheated by their trusted friends.

For believers, all partnerships, especially marriages, should be between believers. Compromise does not lead to compatibility.

Shall I tell you where the adman’s kind of “made for each other” quality of marriage leads? It leaves the tobacco burnt and the filter stained. Do not let the prophets of the modern world fool you. There is more to human marriage. Look for a soul-mate, who will walk with you in your journey through life “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.”

TIME & ETERNITY

There is a time for everything.

Today is the day of salvation.

This is the accepted time.

After this, there’s all eternity in God’s presence.

14. GOD IS OUR REFUGE

September 11, 2001. All who could, watched the telecasts of planes crashing into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon with horror and fascination. We were horrified because so many thousands of lives were taken so heartlessly and cruelly. We were fascinated because we were watching history happen before our very eyes.

The World Trade Centre was a symbol of wealth and the Pentagon a symbol of might. Our world has always believed in safety being found in wealth and might. People everywhere seek Utopia, the imaginary land of health, wealth and security. Thomas More coined the word “utopia” in 1516 to give a title to his book. He took two Greek words to do that: ou’ meaning “not” and topos meaning “place”. In effect his word tells us that this imaginary land of health, wealth and security is not a place. It does not exist. What the events of 9/11 have shown us is that there is no safe place anywhere in the world. We think that some places are safer than others. That is a myth. There are no safe places.

Why?

The horrors of planes with people on board crashing into buildings with people in them, have raised a lot of questions. The biggest question most will ask is, Why did God allow some thing like this to happen. People who never had time for God, and who do not have the time or patience to wait for God’s answer will be the most vocal ones.

However, God is not the author of evil. The Bible says that God is not tempted by evil (Jas.1:13). Evil does not fascinate God. It holds no attraction for Him. He is repulsed by evil in any form. Then, why does evil occur in God’s world? The Bible has an answer to that question. It is a consequence of the Fall. When our first parents deliberately chose to disobey God’s commandment, they opened the door to evil. Ever since the Fall, evil in its various forms is part of our common lot.

We must however note that neither illnesses nor disasters are to be viewed as punishments for individual sins. When our Lord Jesus was asked whether a man’s blindness was caused by personal sin or the sin of his parents, He categorically answered, “No!” He said that it was an opportunity however to display God’s glory and went on to heal the man (Jn.9:2-3). Another time when people told Jesus that Pilate had sent in his troops and killed people at worship, Jesus said that they had not died because they were more sinful than others, but that those who are spared in such disasters are given an opportunity to accept God’s grace (Lk.13:2-5). We must distinguish between the things that happen as a consequence of the Fall and punishments that come in the wake of wicked actions.

The Way of Christ

One of the consequences of the Fall is the hatred and vengeful feelings that we witness among people. Most people live by the ethic of “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth”. It was to people like us that our Lord said, “You know that you have been taught, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you not to try to get even with a person who has done something to you. When someone slaps your right cheek, turn and let that person slap your other cheek…You have heard people say, ‘Love your neighbours and hate your enemies’. But I tell you to love your enemies and pray for anyone who mistreats you. Then you will be acting like your Father in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both good and bad people. And He sends rain for the ones who do right and for the ones who do wrong” (Matt.5:38-45, CEV).

In the light of our Lord’s teaching, the Apostle Paul said, “Dear friends, don’t try to get even, Let God take revenge. In the Scriptures the Lord says, ‘I am the one to take revenge and pay them back.’ The Scriptures also say, ‘If your enemies are hungry, give them something to eat. And if they are thirsty, give them something to drink. This will be the same as piling burning coals on their heads.’ Don’t let evil defeat you, but defeat evil with good” (Rom.12:19-21, CEV).

National Compulsions

That is counsel for the individual believer, but nations have their own compulsions. This is why we heard the rhetoric of war from the President of the US of A. Every nation must safeguard its citizens. It must protect its borders and preserve its integrity. Recognising this, the Apostle Paul went on to talk of rulers and their duties. When rulers take up swords, they take them up as servants of God doing their God-given duty to uphold law and protect people (Rom.13:3-5). Individual morality and national morality must not be confused, but kept distinct. What is right or wrong for an individual must not be imposed on a nation. What is right for nations must not be viewed as the sanction for individual conduct.

The compulsions of nations it was that made the free nations try to contain repression of free peoples. There are two sides to the matter of the West having armed Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laaden once and created the monsters that they are today. The debate about the rightness or wrongness of that will go on indefinitely. The fact still remains that the use of passenger planes to hit people at work is a cowardly and dastardly act, and the US and its allies were compelled to retaliate. Those were their compulsions as nations.

However every nation is a human society, and as such is corrupted by human fallenness. Sooner or later innocents become the victims of just wars, turning a just war on its head. Civilians are targeted, women are raped, prisoners are tortured, whole villages of ordinary farmers are looted and burnt.

Humans in every generation think that their war will end all war. Humans cannot end wars. Jesus said that wars and rumours of war will go on being there until His return. They will characterise the end time. Bush’s war against terror will not end all wars. Other wars will be fought as a result. They will be fought because nations believe in the ethic of “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth”. The humiliated enemy is not a conquered enemy. Sooner or later such an enemy will rise to strike back. Then it will be the turn of the other, and it goes on and on. This is especially true when dealing with Islamic jehadis. The war cannot end, unless Americans are contemplating committing genocide in Iraq, and surely they are not thinking of that.

End of Pain and Tears

Only Jesus can end all wars. When He returns all suffering and sorrow will end. The Apostle saw in vision that at His return, there will be a proclamation, “God’s home is now with His people. He will live with them, and they will be His own. Yes, God will make His home among His people. He will wipe all tears from their eyes, and there will be no more death, suffering, crying, or pain. These things of the past are gone forever. Then the One sitting on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new…Everything is finished! I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will freely give water from the life-giving fountain to everyone who is thirsty. All who win the victory will be given these blessings. I will be their God, and they will be my people…’ God’s curse will no longer be on the people…He and the Lamb will be seated there on their thrones, and its people will worship God and will see Him face to face. God’s name will be written on the foreheads of the people. Never again will night appear, and no one who lives there will ever need a lamp or the sun. The Lord God will be their light, and they will rule forever” (Rev.21:3-7; 22:3-5, CEV).

As long as we live on earth, there will always be pain and suffering and tears. We may have a parent, a sibling or a friend, who wipes away our tears for us, but those hands cannot wipe away tears for good. Tears will keep coming to our eyes. Only when God wipes away our tears in heaven will they cease forever. Only His hand can wipe away our tears in such a way that they do not return.

Until Then

Until Jesus returns to end troubles and wars, God is our refuge. He is the only safe refuge we have on earth. “God is our mighty fortress, always ready to help in times of trouble. And so, we won’t be afraid! Let the earth tremble and the mountains tumble into the deepest sea…Nations rage! Kingdoms fall! But at the voice of God, the earth itself melts. The Lord All-powerful is with us…Come! See the fearsome things the Lord has done on earth. God brings wars to an end all over the world. He breaks the arrows, shatters the spears, and burns the shields. Our God says, ‘Calm down, and learn that I am God!’ ” (Ps.46:1-2, 6-10, CEV).

When three young men were threatened with being burnt alive, their response was, “Our God is able to save us from the fire”. They said that even if He chose not to save them they would not stoop to what was wrong but remain faithful to Him, and they went on to discover that God was with them in the fire (Dan.3:17-18, 24-25). The faithful have no promises that they will not walk through the valley of the shadow of death. What they do have is the promise that they will not walk that valley alone. The Lord will walk that valley of death with them (Ps.23:4).

There are no safe places on earth in this life. But the Lord is there with us when we have to walk in the valley of the shadow of death, and in the end He will wipe our tears away forever. With that promise a believer can face all that life may bring—war or peace, sickness or health, sorrow or joy. You “can do all things through Christ who strengthens” you (Phil.4:13)

15. GOD-SENT?

Early in 2002 there was a terrible earthquake that hit Gujarat. A few weeks after it occurred the only Christian minister in the Karnataka Government, made a public statement that the earthquake was sent by God to punish the people of Gujarat for their persecution of Christians in the state.

Immediately after this a pastor in a church in Bangalore preached about how wrong it was for Christians to think that way, and that they needed to distinguish between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. He was gleeful that the Karnataka Government minister had provided him with this terrific opportunity to spout his views.

It needs to be stated categorically however that neither the government minister nor the pastor represented the biblical viewpoint.

Creator of Good

Genesis tells us that God created a perfect world. As He ended each phase of creation, God looked at what had been done, and expressed satisfaction about it being good. At the very end of all His creative activity during that period, He reviewed everything and found everything to be good (1:31).

God is the Creator of good. It was not only then at creation that He created what was good. His continuing activity is equally good. He goes on doing good. Not only so, He even takes what has been marred and remakes it into something good.

When Moses asked to be shown God’s glory, God revealed Himself to Moses with these declaratory words: “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin, yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished…” (Ex.34:6-7, NASU). If you can shut out all sensory perceptions and imagine the powerful voice of God making this categorical proclamation about Himself, you would never again think that God could be the author of unkindness.

The Created Order

Everything that has been made by humans, has within it built-in consequences to improper use. That is why electrical appliances, machines, and even readymade garments come with the makers’ instructions about what to do and what not to do, and how to troubleshoot malfunctioning. Once we admit that nothing in this world can exist without there being a Creator, we would be willing to find out from the Creator’s manual the consequences and remedies for the world’s ills.

The Bible tells us that at the root of all the evil in the world is the Fall of Adam (Gen.3:1-24). Hardship and sorrow and a cursed earth are all the consequences of that fall (vv.16-19). It tells us further that all creation groans because of that fall. “Creation is confused, but not because it wants to be confused. God made it this way in the hope that creation would be set free from decay and would share in the glorious freedom of His children. We know that all creation is still groaning and is in pain, like a woman about to give birth” (Rom.8:20-22, CEV).

Though we live in a fallen world, we still have access to God’s providence. It has been called “common grace”. As our Lord said, God makes His sun to shine on all people and His rain to come down on both the good and the bad (Matt.5:45). Good weather conditions and bad weather conditions, natural order and natural calamities, come to all without discrimination. God is no respecter of persons (Rom.2:11).

There are no guarantees that those who obey God and commit their lives to serving Christ will be kept safe from disaster. While there are no guarantees of exemption from troubles and sorrows, those who put their trust in the redemptive power of Jesus have an inner strength that helps them face trouble and overcome evil. “In certain ways we are weak, but the Spirit is here to help us. For example, when we don’t know what to pray for, the Spirit prays for us in ways that cannot be put into words” (8:26, CEV).

The Divine Goal

As we try to discern what is God’s role in calamity, we need to understand that God’s ultimate goal is the salvation of all. God is involved in redemption. That is His “business”. Destruction is not what He is engaged in.

When God sent His Son, it was with the intention of saving the world. Avatars and incarnations of the gods of other religions are shown as coming for the express purpose of destroying evildoers. Though God our Father is against evildoing, His aim was to change the world by an act of redemption. That was the purpose of the Incarnation. Jesus said, “God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending His Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again” (Jn.3:17, TM).

The Word of God clearly says that destroying people is not God’s will. God does not will or wish the destruction of people. Reflecting on why God delays the Final Judgement, Peter said, “God isn’t late with His promise as some measure lateness. He is restraining Himself on account of you, holding back the End because He doesn’t want anyone lost. He’s giving everyone space and time to change” (2 Pet.3:9, TM). That is God’s goal right until the end. His desire is that all should be saved and that no one should perish. “Do you think, asks the Sovereign LORD, that I like to see wicked people die? Of course not! I only want them to turn from their wicked ways and live” (Eze.18:23, NLT).

People have usually thought of unnatural deaths as indicative of divine judgement. Our Lord’s disciples thought that way. They told Jesus about some people who were slaughtered as they were offering sacrifices to God. Jesus said, “Do you think that these people were worse sinners than everyone else in Galilee just because of what happened to them? Not at all! But you can be sure that if you don’t turn back to God, every one of you will also be killed. What about those eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Do you think they were worse than everyone else in Jerusalem? Not at all! But you can be sure that if you don’t turn back to God, everyone of you will also die” (Lk.13:2-5, TM).

We who have escaped such calamities and disasters are not spared because we are righteous and do not deserve to be brought under judgement. The thrust of Scripture is that we are spared only to give us time to repent. “You may be saying, ‘What terrible people you have been talking about!’ But you are just as bad, and you have no excuse! When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you do these very same things. And we know that God, in His justice, will punish anyone who does such things. Do you think that God will judge and condemn others for doing them and not judge you when you do them, too? Don’t you realise how kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Or don’t you care? Can’t you see how kind He has been in giving you time to turn from your sin?” (Rom.2:1-4, NLT).

Godlike Compassion

Did the Orissa flood come because it was there that Graham Staines and his sons were assassinated and martyred? Did the Gujarat earthquake come because poor, defenceless Christians were relentlessly persecuted? It is perverse to even suggest that because whoever does that misrepresents God. He is not petty and quarrelsome.

God does not enjoy human sorrow. Rather, He Himself is sorrowful about people’s situations and prospects. Jesus wept over Jerusalem saying, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a HH

hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me. And now look, your house is left to you, empty and desolate” (Matt.23:37-38, NLT).

If the Church today fails to recognise that this is what God is like, it will once again be setting itself up to manifest feelings similar to the anti-Semitism of yesteryear. The Church justified its anti-Semitic stance on the grounds that the Jews in our Lord’s time callously said, “His blood be on our heads and our children’s!” (Matt.27:25). Offering such a provocative affront to God deserves to be punished, said the Church, and took it on itself to play judge and executioner. On the other hand, when Peter boldly accused Jews in his day of crimes against the Son of God (Acts 2:22-24, 36), it was only to confront them with the enormity of their sin and to motivate them to get back to God. He did not charge them with the sin of crucifixion to condemn them or to arouse hostility toward them. Instead he offered them salvation through the very Saviour they had crucified (v.38), and led more than 3,000 to Jesus. He even offered an excuse on their behalf. He said that they had not known what they were doing when they attacked God’s Son (3:17).

Christian Affirmations

We must not thrust our personal feelings on God. We must not attribute to Him our own animosities and hostilities and vengeful feelings. God has revealed Himself in His Word. He is explicit about what His thoughts about the world and its people are.

Based on what God has revealed of Himself, as Christians we must therefore affirm that our God is not a vengeful God. He is good and does good. When bad things happen in this life, they are merely the consequences of the Fall. Even when life in this world is plagued by the ill-consequences of the Fall, God’s providence is at work in our fallen world, so that all humans receive sunshine and rainfall from God, without discrimination and favouritism. Above all, our God is in the redemption business.

Since that is what God is involved in and does all the time, as Christians we can offer only the good news of God that is called the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We do not gloat over calamity. We sympathise with people in their sufferings and sorrows. We reach out to them with the compassion of our Lord Jesus. We make life more bearable by our acts of love and kindness done in the name of Jesus and for His glory.

That is why Christians go to disaster areas with gifts of love. We are moved by the Spirit of Jesus our Lord. Where there is cruelty, we offer love. Where there is disturbance, we offer peace. Where there is despair, we offer hope. What we give is only the overflow of what fills our lives. Jesus is there. Can anything but love and compassion flow from the wellspring of the life that is truly committed to Christ?

16. FEAR OF TOMORROW

For many people in India and around the world, America was the ultimate desirable place to live. The affluence, conveniences and safety were the reasons for wanting to be there. However the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon have taken away people’s sense of security about life, and filled them with fear. If terrorists can strike at America, are there any safe places?

Dreamers vs. Prophets

One of the first things that some people did was quickly search Nostradamus’s predictions for anything that he may have said that would indicate that long ago he knew that these things would happen. He has been credited to have said, “In the City of God there will be great thunder, two brothers torn apart by chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader succumbs…the third big war will begin when the big city is burning…On the 11^th day of the 9^th month…two metal birds would crash into two tall statues…in the new city…and the world will end soon after.” Some who have researched the subject pointed out that the date when these predictions were supposed to have been made was after the death of Nostradamus and therefore he could not have made these predictions. That may well be true, because people have been known to manufacture evidence to support their beliefs. However, from a Christian point of view that is not the basic way to evaluate the predictions of Nostradamus.

The Old Testament prophets called people back to God. Their foretelling (prediction) of future events was incidental to their primary task of “forthtelling” (proclamation) of God’s call to repentance. Nostradamus (and others like him, e.g. Jeanne Dixon) never called people to return to God.

Another difference is that Nostradamus and others practising divination do not offer any hope. They simply predict doom. They cater to people’s fascination with horror, without giving them a way of salvation.

A few years ago the cult of Nostradamus got some favourable review in a TV documentary entitled the “The Man Who Saw Tomorrow.” It depicted him as a man who was simply wonderful in being able to predict the future of nations and world leaders. Anyone who takes the trouble to scrutinise the so called predictions will discover that they are vague and therefore open to a wide range of interpretations. In fact two commentators Erica Cheetham and Henry C Roberts interpret several predictions differently.

Cheetham Roberts

I/26 President Kennedy’s assassination Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia

I/87 San Andreas fault and NY City US and USSR at war

II/6 Hiroshima and Nagasaki Divided Berlin

IX/36 Kennedy Louis XVI

X/26 Kennedy’s death Britain and France in conflict

Of course, it could be argued that Nostradamus cannot be responsible for the faulty interpretations of others. Did he foresee? Could he have foreseen events of a distant future? Maybe. The Bible recognises that there are people who have the power of divination by which they are able to predict some things. But the Bible also categorically condemns the practice of divination as an abomination in God’s sight. It is connected to pagan, idolatrous cultic practices and therefore prohibited (Deut.18:10-12).

Not all powers to divine the future are inspired by God. It can also be the work of the Devil (Acts 16:16-18). When something is the result of activity that God has prohibited, it cannot be of God. The soothsaying of Nostradamus, Jeanne Dixon and others is not God’s revelation. Soothsaying is not only deceptive, but those who open their minds to it, are in grave danger of being enslaved by the Devil, who inspires that kind of foretelling. There is such a thing as spiritual bondage. We must remember that, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, authorities and power of the dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph.6:12).

A King’s Dream

However, if you are keen to study the work of someone who was shown the future by God Himself, then the Hebrew prophet Daniel is the one to study. He was more “the man who saw tomorrow” than Nostradamus ever was. Daniel saw visions of the future of kingdoms and nations.

The book of Daniel first records the dream seen by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (chapter 2). The king was troubled by it and wanted to learn its meaning. His astrologers and magicians were summoned to give its interpretation. They asked the king to tell them his dream. He refused. He said that only if they could tell him the dream, would he know that they had the right interpretation. The astrologers protested that no king had ever asked such a thing. They said, “What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among men” (v.11). In his frustration and anger, the king ordered the execution of all the wise men in his kingdom.

When Daniel heard of what had happened, he asked the king for more time. Then he asked his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah to pray with him for God to discover to him the meaning of the king’s dream. When the interpretation of the dream came to him, Daniel praised God for the revelation that He is the One who “changes times and seasons” (v.21).

Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was about four successive kingdoms. Each succeeding kingdom would be inferior to the earlier one. In the end would come God’s everlasting kingdom.

A Prophet’s Revelation

Daniel recorded his own vision in chapter 7. His vision corresponds to the king’s dream. There is one difference though. While the king saw the kingdoms in a vision of glory, the prophet saw the same kingdoms in vileness. In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream he saw the kingdoms as an image of glory. It would not be wrong to say that as a result of being told that his own reign was represented by the head of gold, he erected an image of glory to be idolised (chapter 3). In terms of worldly power, the kingdoms were definitely represented by gold, silver, bronze and iron. But the prophet saw things from the divine perspective and he saw the kingdoms of the world as vile and vicious animals. In our time, it is good for us to be reminded that in the final analysis, which is God’s analysis, all forms of government and all political parties are just that. They are all vile and vicious. One beast replaces another, but it is also a beast. Sometimes we in India think that if the BJP could be replaced by the Congress, then we will be saved from injustice. That simply is not true. The Bible rightly says, “Put not your trust in princes” (Ps.146:3,4). Our happiness lies only in our hope in God (v.5).

God’s Reign

As Daniel looked on in his vision, he saw God, righteous and eternal, taking the throne (7:9-10). The throne was ablaze. Fire represents the utter holiness of God. When Moses went near the burning bush, God told him to take off his shoes, because the ground he stood on was holy. God was a pillar of fire that guided and protected His people during their wanderings in the wilderness. He is a “consuming fire” (Deut.4:24).

Curiously, what Daniel sees in his vision is that the throne of God is on wheels that are on fire (7:9). The thrones of earthly kings are never on wheels. They have stationary thrones to show that their rule is established and their kingdom stable. However the throne of God is on wheels, because His kingdom is not static, but one that is dynamic. Just as iron wheels spark against metal roads when moving at a furious speed, the wheels of God’s throne are on fire because His throne is moving quickly. Once God has taken His seat with a view to bringing closure to history, things are going to move quickly and furiously to a conclusion. We may be tempted to think that the likes of Nebuchadnezzar and others who wield power will go on indefinitely in their rapacity and cruelty, wreaking terrible devastation everywhere. As those who hope in God, Christians should be assured that God’s throne is moving all over our land swiftly. God is not unmoved by what He sees in our land. He is moved and He moves quickly to put into effect His rule over our land. We need to see that with eyes of faith.

Daniel saw that there was coming a day when millions will serve God (v.10). After that there is the Judgement and that is by the books. One book that will figure in the Judgement is the Bible. It is God’s standard of truth. God has no other standard. All behaviour will be measured against the truth that is revealed in the Bible. In Daniel’s vision of the Judgement, he saw that the last human government is destroyed. It is the kingdom of the Antichrist, who defies God’s holiness and justice (v.11).

Jesus Will Reign

As Daniel observed, in prophetic vision Jesus took up government. He sat on the throne given to Him by God. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power (vv.13-14). This is the final Kingdom. It is the everlasting Kingdom. All peoples will serve Him is the promise. The vision ends with all beastly kingdoms passing away and the saints of God receiving God’s Kingdom as their own possession (v.18).

Even though Daniel saw this vision of the future Kingdom of God, typical of humans, he was curious about the interim kingdom of the Antichrist. The terror of that kingdom held some kind of horrible fascination and he wanted to know more about the interim picture even after seeing the final frame of the picture. He saw that the Antichrist’s forces would wage war against the saints of God and overpower them (v. 21). He still noted that it would be only until God came and “judgement was passed in favour of the saints of God” and “the saints took possession of the Kingdom” (v.22).

Who are the saints? The word simply means “the sanctified ones”. In the New Testament the ordinary members of the churches were addressed as “saints” when the apostles wrote their letters. That is who you are: a saint. If you have placed your trust in Jesus as Saviour and are cleansed by faith in Him, then you are a saint. The promise is that the Kingdom of God belongs to you (see Matt.5:3,10).

Oppression of Saints

Daniel did see that the saints will be attacked and even defeated until the time to possess the Kingdom comes (vv.21-22). We have seen some terrible things happen to Christians in every land. Just as Christians have been attacked by Communist atheists in China, and by Islamic fundamentalists from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, Hindus in India have attacked the most peace loving people of the land, without fearing vengeance and retaliation. Our persecution will go on till Jesus returns. It will not end now. There is no use trying to reason with those who do not believe in justice for all.

According to Daniel’s vision, the oppressive forms of human government will culminate in the final totalitarian kingdom of the Antichrist. It will be more oppressive than every other form of government. It will oppose God. It will continue to trouble and persecute the saints. It will change laws (v.25). Is it any wonder that those who subscribe to Hindutva talk of changing fundamental rights so that the minorities do not have protection?

When we think about what is happening in the realm of human governance we are disturbed and sometimes terrified by what is coming. If one side claims total moral rightness, the other side says that theirs is a jihad. Saints cannot trust either side to do God’s will. Whatever they do, they do for power and profit. The consolation is that all such human governance will come to an end and God’s Kingdom of righteousness and peace will be the one that lasts.

In summary, what Daniel tells us is that the Kingdom belongs to the Father and it has been given to the Son and in the end will be given to the saints of God, and that is the end of the matter.

17. EXPANDING HUMAN FRONTIERS

After sixteen days of space travel without problems, the families of the space travellers were gathered to welcome them back. With only 15 minutes left for a touchdown, who would have imagined that anything could go wrong? In a moment, a moment of human triumph was turned into a moment of human tragedy.

As people tried to make sense of the disaster, Abu Hamza al-Masari, the imam of the Finsbury Park Mosque in North London crowed that the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed by God to teach a lesson to infidels. The shuttle was destroyed because it was a vehicle for a “Trinity of Evil” carrying an Indian-born Hindu, American Christians and an Israeli Jew.

Obscurantist View

Such a view is not the private domain of Muslim fanatics. I am sure there are Christian preachers in the Bible belt of America and in other parts of the world who think that such human explorations and achievements fly in the face of God. That is because they think that with each successive achievement humans on the whole have adopted a more arrogant attitude toward God.

Scientific knowledge and technology have often prompted humans to denial of God—either that He isn’t there, or if He is there, He isn’t relevant to human existence. I suppose this is especially true in certain sciences more than in others. For instance in the life sciences that deal with origins and maintenance of life, human advances in medicine have often promoted such arrogance on the part of many. Artificial means in controlling birth (prevention and conception) and cloning have given rise to the thinking that humans are involved in the very creation of life. The quality of health and the longevity of life have improved because of such techniques as organ transplants. Cracking the DNA code was touted as gaining the knowledge of the “Creator’s alphabet!”

Expanding the frontiers of human existence through space explorations seems to many like an invasion of God’s space. There is the classic apocryphal story that made the rounds in Christian circles that Uri Gagarin, the first man in space, shouted, “God, if you are there, where are you?”

Many Christians will support such obscurantist views by turning to the biblical story of the tower of Babel.

“At one time the whole world spoke a single language and used the same words. As the people migrated eastward, they found a plain in the land of Babylon and settled there. They began to talk about construction projects. ‘Come,’ they said, ‘let’s make great piles of burnt brick and collect natural asphalt to use as mortar. Let’s build a great city with a tower that reaches to the skies—a monument to our greatness! This will bring us together and keep us from scattering all over the world.’

“But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. ‘Look!’ He said. ‘If they can accomplish this when they have just begun to take advantage of their common language and political unity, just think of what they will do later. Nothing will be impossible for them! Come, let’s go down and give them different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.’

“In that way, the LORD scattered them all over the earth; and that ended the building of the city. That is why the city was called Babel, because it was there that the LORD confused the people by giving them many languages, thus scattering them across the earth” (Gen.11: 1-9, NLT).

From reading this story one gets the impression that God is opposed to human achievement. Studying the context will however reveal that their resolve to build a city and a tower opposed God. At Creation God had commanded, “Fill the earth” (1:28). This command was repeated after the Flood (9:1). In taking a decision that they would take precautions to ensure that they would not spread all over the earth they acted in defiance of God. Their opposition to God’s plan for humanity was what put God in opposition to them. God then regards them as those who would stop at nothing in their defiance of Him. God was not opposed to human achievement per se. He was against their arrogance and defiance.

Though there have been rumblings of denial and defiance by modern scientists and technologists we must not view God as opposed to human achievement. Instead much of our human progress has been the fruit of the labour of Christians working in the laboratories of Creation. For instance, Dr Francis Collins, the director of the Human Genome Research Institute in the United States of America, is a believing Christian. He said, “I think of God as the greatest scientist. We human scientists have an opportunity to understand the elegance and wisdom of God’s creation in a way that is truly exhilarating. When a scientist discovers something that no human knew before, but God did—that is both an occasion for scientific excitement and, for a believer, also an occasion for worship. It makes me sad that we have slipped into a polarized stance between science and religion that implies that a thinking human being could not believe in the value of both. There is no rational basis for that polarization. I find it completely comfortable to be both a rigorous scientist, who demands to see the data before accepting anybody’s conclusions about the natural world, and also a believer whose life is profoundly influenced by the relationship I have with God. Science is our most powerful tool for studying the natural world, but science doesn’t necessarily help us so much in trying to understand God; that’s where faith comes in” (“The Genome Doctor”, Christianity Today, October 1, 2001. Visit www.christianitytoday.com for the full article and related materials).

Biblical View

The Bible views all knowledge as having its source in God Himself. In a sense there is no human knowledge that has not come without revelation from God. The Bible says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Pro.1: 7).

The book of Proverbs has much to say about wisdom coming from God and the value of obtaining wisdom. There is one passage that personifies wisdom as Co-Creator:

The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works,

before His deeds of old;

I was appointed from eternity,

from the beginning, before the world began.

When there were no oceans, I was given birth,

when there were no springs abounding with water;

before the mountains were settled in place,

before the hills, I was given birth,

before He made the earth or its fields

or any of the dust of the world.

I was there when He set the heavens in place,

when He marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,

when He established the clouds above

and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,

when He gave the sea its boundary

so that the waters would not overstep His command,

and when He marked out the foundations of the earth.

Then I was the master worker at His side.

I was filled with delight day after day,

rejoicing always in His presence,

rejoicing in His whole world

and delighting in the human race (8:22-31 NIVI).

This song on wisdom must be seen as a reference to the Lord Jesus, just as in the New Testament, there is the passage about the Word being with God at creation (Jn.1: 1-4). Paul was without doubt borrowing from the wording of this song when he described Jesus as the one by whom God created (Col. 1: 15-17) and when he proclaimed Christ as the embodiment of all wisdom and knowledge (2:3).

The book of Proverbs eulogises all wisdom and says that there is nothing of greater value than wisdom (3:14-15). Life itself flows from wisdom (vv.16, 22). Wisdom is supreme: therefore get wisdom (4:7-8).

However all our human wisdom is nothing in comparison to God’s wisdom. If there is such a thing as God’s foolishness, it is wiser than the greatest human wisdom (1 Cor. 1: 25). Human wisdom considers the cross of Christ as folly (v.18). No human being would think of saving people by means of the sacrificial death of all power. That is why all humans in their human wisdom regard the cross as foolishness and find it unacceptable. They would rather do something great and wonderful to obtain salvation. And so not many wise and noble and great people inhabit the Kingdom of God (vv.26-29). People would rather rub shoulders with the rich and the famous than follow Jesus, the foolish man who died on a cross to save the world.

When humanity considers itself to have grown wiser and more knowledgeable and skilled, it is good to remind ourselves that all we have, has come to us from God. “What are you so puffed up about? What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if all you have is from God, why act as though you are so great, and as though you have accomplished something on your own?” (1 Cor 4:7, LB). When humans do organ transplants or crack the DNA code they do not work from scratch, but have to work with the basic materials already existing by the will and power of God.

That is why the appropriate attitude of humans engaged in discovering the secrets of God’s world should be that of Isaac Newton after discovering the force of gravity: “I felt like a child playing with pebbles on the shore when the ocean of truth lay all around me.”

Alienation of Science & Religion

There has no doubt been a continuous erosion of foundational beliefs and values from the time when modern scientific thought was born. The Church had grown so identified with power structures in society that it felt threatened by new thinking in science.

When the Church opposed Galileo, philosophers and rationalists argued that the opposition was due to science not being compatible with faith. That impression grew as more and more unscientific views were demolished by new discoveries. The unscientific views were not essential to the faith, but had been held for so long that the erroneous views were regarded as sacred to world order. The Church’s close identification with power structures meant that it fought against all such new trends—not only in the realm of science, but also in social order. It fought a losing battle. New thinking changed all areas of life. By the time the Church began to reconsider its views on science and social order, it was seen only as a hidebound establishment that was no more than a reluctant entrant forced to accept what it could not defeat or control or change.

In the process, one essential fact was forgotten. Modern scientific discovery was possible only in a Christian climate. It took a biblical worldview for ancient peoples to give up their belief that gods and/or demons inhabited the created world. As long as people believed that gods and demons could be disturbed when the earth was probed, they could not dare to discover the properties of trees and rivers and stones. They could not do experiments that would dissect and analyse the habitation of the gods and demons.

The biblical worldview is that though God dwells with people, divinity does not inhabit the physical world. God does not indwell trees, animals, rivers and mountains. He stands outside the created world as the Creator, and He has given all of creation to humans for supervision and use (Gen. 1: 28-30). Galileo and everyone else who followed him were able to experiment and discover the secrets of the world only because of the liberating knowledge that there were no gods and demons they had to contend with.

However given the early opposition of the Church to innovation, the scientific community rejected the alternative of faith and many debunked the very idea of God being the originator and prime mover behind physical reality.

Bitter Fruit

Godlessness spawns ungodliness. Disbelief in God has resulted in unethical practices. If God isn’t there humans lose the reason for right living, because they no longer consider themselves spiritual. They are then only pure physical beings for whom all that matters is their physical pain or pleasure.

What reason is there for loving others and caring for them? In fact, love could not even exist in the hearts of people if all they are is just a pile of chemicals that breathe and move.

Weapons of mass destruction exist today because science cut its godly ties. If life is purely the survival of the fittest, rich and powerful nations have the right to exploit and destroy poor nations. They are free to dump their toxic wastes in the lands of the poor and loot their resources. They are uncaring toward the poor and the hungry of the world. A significant lack of a sense of proportion is required to justify space travel, which costs such a humongous lot without serving any significant purpose while millions starve to death on earth.

Our trouble is that humans have learnt to fly like birds in the air, and swim like fish in the water, but haven’t yet learnt live like humans.

The destruction of Columbia is not the punishment meted out by God angry with humans for invading His space. Rather it is a reminder that as humans we are mortal and limited in power.

Human

What are humans? They are created in God’s image. They are meant to be like God by imitation, but when they tried to be like God by aggressively desiring and seeking equality with God, the Fall occurred. So now human beings are both in God’s image and fallen. We aspire to reach the heavens, but our fallen-ness plagues us. Our highest aspirations can end in ashes.

The Lord Jesus came from beyond space into our world to save the creatures made in God’s image. He is in the end the only hope we have of making it to the heavens.

18. LIFE AFTER LIFE

“How sad that mother did not live long enough to see her first grandchild!” I have heard so many people say that sort of thing when a loved one dies. They feel sorry that a birth, a graduation, a marriage, a promotion or some other cause for rejoicing did not occur while a particular loved one was still living. They think of the departed as those who no longer see or hear or feel. They are regarded as totally incapable of sensation and knowledge. They are dead to our world. Believing that they can’t see or hear what’s going on in our world suggests that they are not alive in their world either.

When my mother was dying, my sister was in the US of A, and not in a position to return to India. I told my mother that though she could not see Sheila and her children here, she would see them from the other side.

F W Boreham, an old English writer, told a touching story. An old county cricketer had lost his sight. He was sad most of all that he could not see his own son play the game he had once played. In time the son became the ace batsman of his school team. When he played he used to bring his father to sit in the stands. The father never saw him play but had to satisfy himself with hearing what other spectators around him said about his son’s playing. Then one day the man died. The following Saturday there was to be an important match. Everyone thought the boy would not play so soon after his bereavement. On the day of the match, the boy was there and he played better than ever before. A teammate said to him, “You played as you’ve never played before. You excelled yourself.” The young lad replied, “How could I not? It was the very first time my father himself could see me play.”

The Big Picture

The Bible reveals very little about the hereafter. There is a reason for that. It is a book about how to live life with a view to eternity. It is a “how to” book, more than it is an advertisement for an exotic destination.

We know from the Bible that there will be a Final Judgement and that there’s heaven for the saved and hell for the unsaved. Apart from this “big picture” that we can only “see as if we are looking into a dark mirror” (1 Cor. 13:12, NCV), we don’t know the details, and wonder about life after death. We especially want to know what happens immediately after death while the dead wait for the Final Judgement to take place.

Such interest is permissible and beneficial if it is with a view to preparing for death and the life hereafter. Unfortunately, often the interest develops into trying to do something to ensure the salvation of loved ones who have passed away. People hold prayer services and light candles seeking the peace of the departed souls.

Evangelical Theology

The reason there isn’t much in Evangelical theology about the intermediate state is that the Reformers were allergic to anything that appeared to give a soul more time to make amends for a lifetime of ungodliness. The doctrine of justification by faith swept away all the teaching about the intermediate state along with the wrong practices such as the sale of indulgences for the salvation of the souls of the departed.

Limbo was invented for those who died unbaptised in their infancy and purgatory was “a place of temporal punishment in the intermediate realm…[where] those who die at peace with the church, but who are not perfect must undergo penal and purifying suffering…The great mass of partially sanctified Christians dying in fellowship with the church but nevertheless encumbered with some degree of sin go to purgatory where, for a longer or shorter time, they suffer until all sin is purged away, after which they are translated to heaven…Gifts or services rendered by the priests, and Masses provided by relatives or friends in behalf of the deceased can shorten, alleviate or eliminate the sojourn of the soul in purgatory” (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 1984, p. 897).

It is clear from that last sentence that the release from purgatory was not thought to be paid for by Christ’s death, but is something in the control of the church, and therefore negotiable or purchasable. Any notion of salvation through human efforts of one kind or another is heresy that must be rejected outright.

In the story of Lazarus and the rich man the Lord made it clear that when the dead are consigned to their respective places, there can be no transference from one side to the other or alleviation of conditions. “A great chasm is fixed…nor can anyone cross over…” (Lk.16:26).

Angels at Death

Our Lord drew aside the curtain to give us a glimpse of the afterlife in this story, which many think is about real characters (vv.19-31). When Lazarus died, angels carried him to “Abraham’s side” (v.22, NIV; “Abraham’s bosom” – KJV, NASB). When the Lord’s people die angels are there at their deathbeds. That’s what the Lord Jesus said. He said it in a matter of fact way. There is no implication that what happened was peculiar to Lazarus.

My parents were not those who were given to talking of angels and never had any visions all the time they were hale and hearty. Yet, a few days before their deaths, both talked of seeing angels. But we knew of it only because we asked what they were saying. Father had only said, “Thousands upon thousands…” It could have easily been dismissed as the nonsensical mutterings of a wandering mind in delirium. Most of the time we think that whispers and mumbles of the dying are just the products of fevered minds. So we ignore them and go on chattering among ourselves, while they may be communing with angels.

Abode of the Dead

The rich man’s brothers were still alive on earth (vv.27-28), when Lazarus and the rich man died, and were taken to different destinations. Lazarus was transported to “Abraham’s bosom” while the rich man was in “hell”. The actual Greek word is hades, which translates the Hebrew word sheol—the abode of the dead.

The concept is not well-defined in the Old Testament. Sheol was the world below (Pro.15:24). It was a place of darkness, where one is forgotten by God (Ps.88:5,11-12; 94:17; Isa.38:18). Old Testament saints dreaded going into sheol. On the whole they did not express belief in a life beyond this earthly one. They did think that in death one was gathered to one’s ancestors (Gen.25:8). A few times some did remark that sheol was not outside God’s reach (Ps. 139:8; Amos 9:2), and expressed the hope of an eventual resurrection (Job 14:13-15; 19:25-27; Ps. 49: 15; 73:23-24).

In the intertestamental period the abode of the dead began to be viewed as having separate sections for the godly and the ungodly. The Persian term “Paradise” was used to designate the place for those whom God redeemed. Our Lord said to the dying thief, “Today, you shall be with me in Paradise” (Lk.23:43).

Our Lord’s story of Lazarus and the rich man makes it clear that at death there is a distinction made between the godly and the ungodly, even though they still await the Final Judgement. They are already as it were ushered into the reception rooms of their final destinations.

Paul located Paradise in the “third heaven” (2 Cor. 12:2, 4) indicating there is a definite connection between the intermediate and final states. Paradise is a part of Heaven, and hades a part of Hell. The dead are already either in a state of comfort or of torment.

Conscious State

In the afterlife people are definitely not in the state of soul sleep. They are conscious, have feelings and desires. Lazarus felt comforted. The rich man felt tormented and wished that Lazarus his erstwhile neighbour, whom he had ignored while alive, would bring him relief (Lk.16:24).

The rich man was in torment after death not because he was rich, but because he had been uncaring toward his neighbour. Lazarus would have liked to feed on the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table, but he was not allowed inside the gate. He was kept outside, and had only dogs for company (vv.19-21).

Abraham asked the rich man to remember the past (v.25). Memories will be very much alive. Not only so, but those who are dead even think of their loved ones on earth. The rich man who was selfish in life didn’t want his brothers to come to the same end as he (v.27).

The Scriptures tell us that we are surrounded by a crowd of witnesses cheering us on as we run the race of life (Heb.12:1). That crowd surely includes our own loved ones. They watch what we do. They take an active interest in what we do. They laugh when we win. When a sinner repents there is rejoicing in heaven (Lk.15:7, 10). Would it be wrong to think that all heaven grieves when we dishonour God? Dead parents, friends and other loved ones who’ve gone before and exult when we triumph in grace, must also pray for it to happen. As much as they pray for justice (Rev.6:10), they must join the Lord as intercessors on our behalf, or their praying would be nothing more than an expression of vengeful feelings.

The Lord’s Presence

Many people think that those who die are in a dormant state, until they are awakened to face the judgement. The notion of soul sleep has gained some currency probably on account of the fact that the Bible does so often talk of death as sleep (Acts 7:60; 1 Cor. 11:30). This description of death as sleep however does not suggest that the departed remain in a state of unconsciousness until judgement. Rather the Bible wants believers to know that death is not traumatic for those who die in the Lord. They only sleep. They rest from their earthly labours. They are at peace.

Paul said that absence from the body immediately transports one to the state of being present with the Lord (2 Cor.5:8). The earthly life is spent in handmade tents, waiting for the permanent solid building that is not made with hands (v.1). When the garment of mortality is laid aside, the better and fuller life is what covers people who believe in Christ (vv.2-4). They find fullness or wholeness.

When we pray for healing for people, we need to remember that at times the healing will come only in God’s immediate presence. That’s what I prayed for when Mother was diagnosed with a brain tumour. I prayed for her healing—either here on earth, or the final healing in God’s presence. I just didn’t want her to go on suffering.

Those who die in the Lord find healing such as the world could not give them (Rev.7:16). Knowledgeable doctors, skilful nurses and caring family members cannot take away all the pain or stop the tears. There are no healing hands on earth that can wipe away tears once and for all. Our eyes will fill with tears again and again. When people enter God’s presence only then will they know the hand that will wipe tears away forever.

Instead of being dead useless, in their new wholeness they serve God more zealously and actively (v.15). My mother had led a life of busyness, visiting the sick, comforting the bereaved, and encouraging the troubled. Her remedy for those in trouble was to make them a bottle of pickle or jam and show them she cared. But she was bedridden at the end. Today she runs around all over Paradise serving God. That’s what I believe because that is the picture the Bible has drawn of the life and activity of those who pass from our world into the realm of God’s immediate presence.

Lord of the Resurrection

At the end of the story about Lazarus and the rich man, the latter asked that Lazarus be sent to earth to warn his brothers about the realities of the afterlife. In reply Abraham said that all they needed was to pay attention to the Scriptures. The rich man then said that they would pay more attention to a warning from a man who returns from the dead. What Abraham said could be paraphrased as, “No they won’t because those who don’t listen to God won’t believe in the resurrection” (Lk.16:27-31).

That’s exactly what happened when Jesus rose from the dead. There were people who didn’t believe that He rose from the dead. And there are still those who won’t believe that God raised Him from the dead.

Those who won’t believe in Christ’s resurrection have nothing to look forward to. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all other people” (1 Cor. 15:17-19)

Humans are not just masses of physical awareness and animal instincts. A human being is a creature that is conscious of the existence of the self. The ego says, “I am…” Those who say, “I am…” cannot believe that everything will end in the grave. They keep on wishing that there is something more. They keep trying to part the veil to discover what the other side is like. But Jesus did come to tell us about the world beyond ours. Not only so, He Himself pierced the veil and then returned to tell the tale. He is the Resurrection and the Life. Those who believe in Him never die (Jn. 11:25-26).

Life beyond this life can be spent in the company of Jesus. That’s the message.

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Additional reflections that were not included in the book:

FAIR JUDGEMENT

Abraham asked, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen.18:25). He was pleading that a whole city be spared in order to save the few righteous living in it (vv.22-33).

God not only allowed Abraham to voice that question, but He had it recorded in Scripture for all succeeding generations to read and know that a mortal dared to challenge God’s sense of justice. That question finds its echo in our hearts when we wonder about the fate of those who never had the opportunity to hear the gospel.

When considering the plight of the un-evangelised, we must have a proper perspective on matters. Can we be more compassionate than the God who is love? We need to remind ourselves that you and I would not know what love is, if God did not fill us with His love. He cares more about the unsaved than we ever could.

Romans gives us some glimpses of God’s criteria for judging those who have not heard the gospel.

God judges people for rejecting what is plain:

• God is not an idol. He is the Creator (1:18-23).
• God does not show favouritism (2:11).
• People will be judged according to the light they have received (2:12)

Abraham, the “non-Christian”, did not hear the gospel or “accept Jesus as Saviour”. Abraham was justified because he put his faith in God, and not in his self or his own works of righteousness (4:1-5). In every land, in every generation, there are those who turn from trying to earn salvation by their works, to cast themselves on the sheer grace and mercy of God. All those who follow in Abraham’s steps of putting faith in God’s grace alone will be counted among the faithful (4:12, 16-17).

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GOD’S HELL

Heaven and hell do not belong to the earthly plane, but are however described in earthly terms. So heaven is paved with gold, and hell burns with fire. But will there be any gold in heaven? Gold is material and perishable. Only the spiritual and eternal will inhabit heaven. Just as there’s no gold in heaven, hell has no fire. Hellfire is just a graphic description of the nature of hell. It will be a tormenting place just like fire is in the realm of the physical.

God is sovereign and His sovereignty includes hell. It is not out of bounds to God (Ps. 139: 7-12). God will be there in hell. That’s what makes it hell. When someone has spent a lifetime grieving the love of God, to spend eternity in the presence of that love is hell.

L A King, an English professor wrote the article “Hell: The Painful Refuge” (Eternity, January 1979) which I think is the best explanation of the frightful phenomenon. King drew on literature to explain the scriptural doctrine of hell as a place of eternal punishment.

God does not torment the soul. The soul is tormented by itself. Some of the litterateurs understood this very well.

Marlowe, in his play, The Tragical History of Dr Faustus, said,

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d

In one self place; for where we are is hell,

And where hell is there must we ever be (Scene V:121-3)

Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost cries,

Which way I fly is hell; myself am Hell (IV:75)

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novels The Great Stone Face, Rappacini’s Daughter, and Ethan Brand has characters becoming what they admired, cultivated or experimented with.

Dante in The Inferno sees sinners suffer what they have made themselves to be. They are tortured by their very nature. What people are is hell and what hell is that people must ever be.

Dante has hell saying,

Justice moved my Creator;

The divine power made me,

The supreme wisdom, and the primal love (Scene III:1-9).

God created hell out of His justice, wisdom and love! It’s not love for the righteous, but love for the impenitent that moved God to create hell. It’s the “painful refuge” (V:16) from the incandescent love of God.

A refuge is an asylum that offers shelter and even hospitality to the one who seeks sanctuary. Dante pictures God as Himself providing a protective wall so that the soul in hell is not exposed to the consuming fire of His unveiled presence. (It’s like God hid Moses in a recess in a rock, and covered him with His hand until He had passed by so that Moses saw only the retreating glory of God when the hand of God was removed – Ex.33:19-23).