glory of the cross

The Westminster Shorter Catechism begins with this question and answer.

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

But what is God’s glory?

Many people think of God’s glory as something that is out there. They may equate it with something like magnificence, or brilliance, or radiance. John Piper defines glory this way.

The public display of the infinite beauty and worth of God is what I mean by “glory,” and I base that partly on Isaiah 6, where the seraphim say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his—” and you would expect them to say “holiness” and they say “glory.” They’re ascribing “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his—” and when that goes public in the earth and fills it, you call it “glory.” … So God’s glory is the radiance of his holiness, the radiance of his manifold, infinitely worthy and valuable perfections.

So God’s glory is primarily an appearance of being something greater than us. When Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the instructions on how to life and worship God, those who had been freed from Egypt turned on God and made their own idol to worship. God planned to destroy them and start over with Moses, but he changed his mind based on Moses’s intervention. Then he told Moses to take the people from the Mountain and lead them to the promised land. Moses begs God to come with them, and he agrees, and then Moses makes a strange request.

”Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.” ” (Exodus 33:18-23, NIV)

Here is Moses, on Mount Sinai, he has been enveloped by the cloud of smoke and the fire rising up from the top. He has been surrounded by the trumpet blasts and the very voice of God. He has experienced a visual and auditory display of the might of God, yet he asks to see God’s glory. Then God complies, and shows him his back.

“Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”” (Exodus 34:5-7, NIV)

What if this speech event, this explanation of the very name of the Lord, is the manifestation of God’s glory? What if God’s glory is not the incredible visual and auditory display but that this almighty God chooses to become a covenant partner of one nation? What if God’s glory is not his greatness, but that his greatness is not considered a barrier to a relationship with us?

But what if the glory of God is not his magnificent presence, or his almighty power, or his awesome authority? What if the glory of God is his service?

What if God’s glory is more like Mother Theresa than the Queen of England?

After all, if Jesus is the ultimate image of the fullness of God, then in Jesus we see glory manifest on the cross. To say that God’s glory is the radiance of his holiness only makes sense if you see the cross as a step toward Jesus’s glory. This is to see the humiliation and sacrifice of the cross as something that had to be endured in order to receive glory, rather than as something that in itself shows God’s glory.

Jesus’s glory did not come from cross, Jesus’s glory was the cross.

Jesus said he came to serve, and to give. We are called to serve, and to give. The trouble with thinking about God’s glory as something that is detached from his service is that we begin to think of our glory as something detached from service.

We begin to think that our service is something to get us glory when really our glory is in our service.

When the song rings out in Revelation that Christ deserves honour and glory and praise it is because he is the lamb who was slain, not because he was the lamb who was slain. The call to die to ourselves and to live to Christ is a call to give up on glory seeking behaviour and to serve.

If we see our service as something that lead to glory, how is that not glory seeking behaviour?

But if we see our service to God and others as full of glory, that brings glory to God because it allows others to see God’s true nature, his selfless, loving, and forgiving nature.

remember the Son

Christmas is coming

Image by just.Luc (just.Censored) via Flickr

For some the thought of Christmas coming brings joy to their hearts. For others, not so much. This time can be especially difficult for those who are away from their families, who have lost ones they love, or who have been unable to reconcile with members of their families.

This is also a time of craziness. (Anybody else starting to feel like they are in the prison of the shopping carts in the picture?) All the different expectations placed on people cause all sorts of stress. We all want to have a ‘perfect’ Christmas that everyone will remember for the rest of their lives. We all want to give the perfect gift that will cause the other to love us deeply.

The problem is, we go about it the wrong way. So many of us have bought into the lie that happiness comes through things. The way to show our love is to buy something for someone. The way to show we love them more, is to give them more. The value of the gift, so our world will tell us, directly corresponds to the value of the love. So we are pressured to work harder, to go into debt, to stress out over sales so that we can get the absolute biggest, best, most incredible thing for others.

 

The problem is, so many of those ‘incredible’ gifts are not really wanted by the other person anyway. Most of the time they are definitely not needed.

So how can we make our Christmas giving better? How can we reclaim a cultural practice that actually began in generosity but has become drugery?

We can give more!

But not more stuff, more of ourselves. We can make gifts for one another. We can take some time and go walking with our children. We can visit our grandparents and listen to their stories, even if it is the hundredth time. We can talk to our parents. We can spend a quiet evening with our spouses.

We can give of ourselves.

After all, when God decided to give the best gift he could think of, it was not riches, it was not glory, it was not honour, it was not even wisdom. The greatest gift that God gave was himself in the form of his Son, Jesus Christ.

This Christmas take some time to truly give more. Give more of your time. Give more of your thoughts. Give more of your heart. Give more of yourself.

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freeing speech, learning to lament

Have you ever watched a child who is learning to speak? The grunts, the moans, the groans, the attempts at sign language anything to try to make them understood. The careful attempt to copy the sounds that are being voice around him or her. The child is trying to learn a language, a language that can set them free from the prison of their own small world. A language that can help them engage with those around them.

Language suddenly allows the individual to experience things never before understood. Suddenly the child becomes a part of the family, as words are not only received but returned.

Language reshapes our experience.

As a child begins to develop, even the smallest sound that sort-of, sounds like it might remotely relate to some object somewhere is given the highest praise. As these sounds begin to develop into a more recognised form praise is continually given. Praise simply because the child is learning a skill which will prove extremely useful as they grow up.

Sometimes we think we have to learn a certain language when we approach God. Sometimes we think that there are certain things we should say, and certain things we should not say. Sometimes we consider our problems too small for God, our emotions too erratic, our situations too insignificant.

The Bible calls us to free speech with the Father. Jesus calls us to go to him constantly, asking, seeking, knocking. It was Jesus who told us to call him “Daddy.”

When it comes to learning the language of prayer, there is no better place to go than the psalms. A book chock full of language that moves beyond simple descriptive functions to creative and evocative ones. Our prayer lives can be full of the kind of language that recognises where we are, and where we should be; language that takes fully into account both our rebellion before God AND his promises of redemption.

One of the most powerful images within the Psalms is the image of the “pit.” This is the place of destruction, darkness, silence, death. This, however, is not just an image but always involves movement. There is a recognition that we all stand at some point between heaven and hell; between the realised presence of God and his absolute absence.

Distress, or trouble pushes a person down and away from the realised presence of God toward the “pit.” Salvation is the arm of God reaching down into the pit to pull the petitioner back toward himself. Carl Bosma, from Calvin Theological Seminary, puts it this way:

In both distress and praise the psalmists locate themselves somewhere between these two poles; but, wherever they are, in both distress and praise the psalmist always looks upward toward the God of their salvation (cf. Ps 88:1) never downward in bleak despair.

The act of faith of the lament is to never give in to the temptation to see that there is no one who can or will help. The Devil would like nothing better than for us to believe the lie that we are not worthy of being loved, that there is nothing God or anyone else will do for us know, that there is no use even crying out to God. In the midst of our distress we must resist the urge to turn our back on God and cry out to him. Turn our faces up toward the place where our help comes and rage against the dying of the day.

O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am faint; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are in agony. My soul is in anguish. How long, O Lord, how long? Turn, O Lord, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love. No one remembers you when he is dead. Who praises you from the grave? I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes. Away from me, all you who do evil, for the Lord has heard my weeping. The Lord has heard my cry for mercy; the Lord accepts my prayer. All my enemies will be ashamed and dismayed; they will turn back in sudden disgrace. (Psalm 6, NIV)

Freeing up our language with God brings new depth to the relationship which, in turn, brings healing to our hearts.

May we always look upward at God, from whom our help comes.

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the prodigal god: a review

Cover via Amazon

The story of the prodigal son is probably one of Jesus’s most well known parables. It is a story that is played out again and again all around us. Most of us know at least one person who has refused to tow the line, so to speak, and gone off in search of themselves only to come home broken and miserable.

Most of us think this story is about the overwhelming love of God for those who have run away from him, but this is only part of the story. Timothy Keller in his book The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith says that the climax of the parable actually has more to do with the elder than the younger son. He notes that this is the third in a collection of parables directed in response to the Pharisees who were criticising him for eating and drinking with “sinners”.

So to whom is Jesus teaching in this parable directed? It is to the second group, the scribes and Pharisees. It is in response to their attitude that Jesus begins to tell the parable. The parable of the two sons takes an extended look at the soul of the elder brother, and climaxes with a powerful plea for him to change his heart.  … Jesus is pleading not o much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders. He wants to show them their blindness, narrowness, and self-righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them. It is a mistake, then, to think that Jesus tells this story primarily to assure the younger brothers of his unconditional love.

This message of God’s love and forgiveness is definitely presented in this parable, but this message is presented more in the previous two parables. This parable is altered from the previous two which end with the finding of the lost article (sheep, or coin) and instead presents another way to be lost.

Interestingly enough, this parable does not end with the elder son being found, but rather with a patient appeal for him to enter into the feast.

The listeners are on the edge of their seats. Will the family finally be reunited in unity and love? Will the brothers be reconciled? Will the elder brother be softened by this remarkable offer and be reconciled to the father? Just as all these thoughts pass through our mind, the story ends! Why doesn’t Jesus finish the story and tell us what happened?! It is because the real audience for this story is the Pharisees, the elder brothers. Jesus is pleading with his enemies to respond to his message.

Keller goes on to explain how this parable redefines sin, what it means to be lost, and what it means to be saved. He shows that we can be far from God by being bad, like the younger son, AND by being good, like the elder son. Keller argues that sin is presenting yourself as your own Saviour and Lord.

Nearly everyone defines sin as breaking a list of rules. Jesus, though, shows us that a man who has violated virtually nothing on the list of moral misbehaviours can be every bit as spiritually lost as the most prolifigate, immoral person. Why? Because sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the place of God as Saviour, Lord, and Judge just as each son sought to displace the authority of the father in his own life.

Salvation, then, is not simply about erasing our moral lapses, but is larger than that. Salvation is about being welcomed back into the Father’s home. Keller notes that the elder brother in the parable did not fulfil his role. In the parables of the lost sheep and coin, the thing that was lost was searched for. The younger son who left home should have been searched for by the elder. He should not have been content that the family was broken, but he should have worked to make it whole again.

Keller notes that Jesus took this role on himself.

Jesus had not come to simply deliver one nation from political oppression, but to save all of us from sin, evil, and death itself. He came to bring the human race Home.

This future is not just some spiritual reality, it is a deeply physical reality.

Our future is not an ethereal, impersonal form of conciousness. We will not float through the air, but rather will eat, embrace, sing, laugh, and dance in the kingdom of God, in degrees of power, glory and joy that we can’t at present imagine.

Keller presents four ways that our lives are shaped by Jesus’s gospel message.

1) Salvation is experiential; “salvation is not only objective and legal but also subjective and experiential.”

2) Salvation is material; “the ultimate purpose of Jesus is not only individual salvation and pardon for sins but also the renewal of this world, the end of disease, poverty, injustice, violence, suffering, and death.”

3) Salvation is individual; “faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world.”

4) Salvation is communal; “Christians commonly say they want a relationship with Jesus, that they want to ‘get to know Jesus better.’ You will never be able to do that by yourself. You must be deeply involved in the church, in Christian community, with strong relationships of love and accountability.

Keller essentially links salvation to the feast of the Father over his lost son, which is a key theme throughout scripture.

While I appreciate Keller’s attention to the detail of the passage and his insistence that the main message of this parable is directed more toward the elder brother than the younger. I wonder some about his interpretation of Jesus as the real elder brother. I agree that this is the case, however I some senses I feel that this interpretation stretched the parable to the breaking point. It feels to me as though Keller is trying to shoehorn the entire message of the Bible into this parable, and it seems a bit forced at times.

Over all, however, I enjoyed the book and recommend it highly to those who think they have everything figured out. A great reminder that we default into distance from God, whether that is in acting out or in strict obedience.

May we all grow in grace and relationship with God.

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