Chapter 10
I love knowledge. To learn new things about God, myself and his universe is so stimulating. I love to re-learn old, beneficial lessons. Today I have been reading a really thought-provoking and stimulating book by John Ortberg [I have never been disappointed by anything he has written.] I felt really challenged today to be more grateful in my life and to express and not just feel that gratitude. My challenge today was to take time to write to different people and to tell them how grateful I am for their input in my life – to thank them for their friendship and for the different ways they have had an impact on my life. Now that is knowledge – knowing something good. But that knowledge has got to be transformed into action. How easy it is to become so busy that we forget to do these good things that we are challenged by God to do:
- I promised to pray for someone who needed help and guidance. I was really sincere at the time and knew that this was the right thing to say and do. But did I do it – even imperfectly? Jesus would have promised to do it and we could have trusted him to carry out his promise. If what I “know” is to become real it has to be patterned after the image of Jesus, who never broke a promise.
- I know that I need to spend more time each day in reading the Bible, good theological reading and in prayer. I know that is right for me. I always feel the positive benefits of carrying this out with consistency, however when I get caught up in the business of a day or week, good intentions often slip. Sadly I end up spending more time watching and reading the news than immersing myself in the good news. I know Jesus would have done this differently despite his busy life – he did not neglect his relationship with his father.
- I know the difference between right and wrong. As I grow in my understanding as a Christian I am become more defined by what I am against than what I am for. I know certain things are wrong, and make clear public stands on some of the great moral issues facing our generation – people within and even out-with the church know where Iain Greenshields stands on abortion, sexual sin, environmental issues, social injustice and third world issues. But there is a gap between knowledge and practice in Iain Greenshields. Talk is cheap!
- As I said in the last paragraph it is easy to be defined by what we are against, yet not live it consistently. If I am for Jesus, I am for people whoever they are and whatever they are doing or have done. I am for forgiveness. I am for compassion. I am for kindness. I am for grace and understanding. I am for embracing the lost and the defiled and the broken and the despised. To become like Jesus is not just to “know” what is wrong and stop doing these things. It is to “know” what is right, good and positive and to live these things out with consistency in the lives of other people. I do not know why it is the case, but I am not good at wanting to spend time with people. Something inside me holds me back, yet when I spend time visiting, connecting and getting to know other people it is so rewarding and I feel so much better. Jesus always made time for people and part of living in the “knowledge” of his image, is to connect in positive, godly ways with people.
I suppose the list could go on, but I feel that I have to examine not only the things I am doing but what I am not doing, and asking myself if this is living in the image of the Son of God. My father was a very quiet, generally shy and unresponsive man. Meaningful conversations did not come easily to him, until he was angry and then his opinion was only too clear!! What did stand out about my father was the fact that he lived a life of consistent quality and goodness – something that was expressed by Glasgow Police after 30 years of “exemplary service”. People at his funeral, both family and friends, spoke of the quiet consistency of his life, and when I spoke a few words at that service, I could only confirm that he had taught my brother and myself about what a real man should be and how he had given us clear standards, not just by what he said but by how he lived his life. When he died, I felt that I stepped out from his shadow and was passed the gauntlet for the next generation – I had to try and live in his image, example and values. To a greater extent as I look at Jesus, I “know” how to live, but I must go beyond that to living it with consistency.
Verse 11 is a significant spiritual and social statement. Whatever our past or our background, who we are in Christ is now what defines us. As this is being written a wave of persecution has been sweeping the Christian Church in India. Why? Because countless thousands of “untouchables” have been coming to Christ. In their culture, they will always be untouchables, but when they come to Christ that definition is abolished – they are men and women in Christ, and any past definition has been abolished. They stand in their new humanity in equal status to every other brother and sister in the Lord. The persecution [quite severe in some areas] exists because these former outcasts are now upsetting the whole infrastructure of Indian society by insisting that because of their new identity in Christ they are no longer “untouchables.” Christianity, because of its powerful insistence that all people are equal in Christ is causing a revolution.
Paul’s thinking in Colossians was entirely revolutionary – the Jew was no longer superior to the Greek, and the Greek was no longer superior to the barbarian. The slave was not inferior to the free man. The very nature of who these people now are in Christ has created a new society. The society of the Church is now a company of people who are citizens of the Kingdom of God, who are essentially the children of God, brothers and sisters of that one heavenly family.
Perhaps we need to recover this sense of equality in the church. To say that all people are equal is not to say that we are all the same. There is a diversity of gifts and responsibilities within the family of God. But we are using all of these gifts to the one end – the up-building of the Body of Christ to present to the world a wholesome image of Christ and bring glory and honour to his name. There is no room for social snobbery in the church because everyone, though different, is of equal value and is equally loved by our Father. All of the old social distinctions have to be set aside in the Church and everyone has to be treated as of equal worth. Our education, birth, social standing, wealth – all of these things have to be set aside in the church and everyone is embraced by one another in the same love with which we are embraced in Christ. The great challenge to the Church in Scotland is for it to lose its sense of being for a certain class of people. The average Christian in the world today is poor – that is not true of the average Christian in Scotland. We need to shed some of the social snobbery which does exist, in particular in the established churches, in order to embrace all people in Christ. One of the most striking statements I have heard recently is that if the Rich Young Ruler from the Gospels, came to the established church today, he would be enthusiastically embraced. That same man who walked away from Jesus would probably be made an elder and treated with more respect than he deserved in our churches. Why? Because sadly we are still making the wrong distinctions about what makes a person significant in the Kingdom of God. The problem the Pharisees had with Jesus was that he did not appear significant in terms of how they determined significance – social and religious standing. The rich young ruler would have been their man ahead of Jesus.
I have to beware as a Christian and a minister of treating people unequally in the Church. Here are bound to be people that I get on better with, than others, but that is a matter of interests and taste – that does not make me a better Christian. I was just thinking the other day of how I felt within the Christian ministry – something I have been a part of for nearly 25 years. I was the outsider, who did not grow up in the church, who came from a poor area and who did not have an outstanding educational or social background and who had to fight against prejudice because of disability. I never felt I truly belonged amongst my ministerial peers [I acknowledge that much of that was and is my personal perception] because there was a degree of snobbery even in the ministry – the one place it should have been absent. It stands as a warning to me to be careful about how I treat people within the church – written large over everyone in my mind should be “Fragile, Handle With Care” – why? Because that is my brother and sister in the Lord, precious in the eyes of Jesus – the very apple of his eye.
In verse 12 Paul begins to ask us to clothe ourselves in a whole range of Christian virtues. However, even before he starts listing those virtues he prefixes the list with definitions of who we are in Christ and why we should have such virtues.
When I first became a Christian, I was nurtured in a church that loved the Gospel – defined as, “You can only be right with God when you come to faith in Jesus Christ, and good works will never save us.” That was ingrained into my thinking and there was always a suspicion of “good works.” When I think about it now, it was absurd. A person who is a Christian should have an overwhelming desire to be good and do good. A concern for the people of the world and the world itself should be at the heart of who we are – it is part of what defines us as the Lord’s people. I even remember a long debate about whether or not Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a true believer because of his insistence on the works of discipleship – a man who laid down his life for the sake of the Gospel in Germany in his stand against the evils of the Third Reich. How absurd can one get, but this is often what happens when one facet of the Christian message is absorbed at the expense of the whole.
Paul tells us that we are “God’s chosen ones”. He is not entering into a speculative debate about election or predestination. He is merely stating a fact. The fact that we are chosen has nothing to do with our inherent virtue. As new people in Christ we now have a renewed purpose. That purpose is to express to the world, the nature of God. There is a great clamour for the church in the West to find new and innovative ways of expressing the Gospel message in order to attract men and women to Christ from our secular culture. All that is need is for us to be who we are as believers. We are chosen by God to show to the world that in negative ways [the shedding of sin] and positive ways [the acquiring of virtue] that Christ makes a difference. That difference seen to be working itself out in the life of the believer should be sufficient to impress upon people the message of the Gospel. Words alone are cheap – they must be backed up by action.
We are not just chosen by God – we are also purified, holy and well beloved. It is this new definition of who we are that should be the stimulus that drives us forward with a new determination to be changed more and more into the image of Christ:
I am a purified person. I have been washed clean and forgiven by Jesus. Every sin, past, present and future has been removed by God because I came to him, through Christ and asked Him to apply to my life, the benefits of the Cross.
I am a holy person – not in the sense that I am completely a virtuous person. I am holy in the sense of being set apart by him for a purpose [the word holy means to be separated or set apart]. What is the purpose that I am set apart for? I cannot better the question in the Shorter Catechism and its answer: “What is the chief end of man? The Chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” That is what I am set apart for. That is why I now exist as a new person in Christ. My life has now been set apart to tell a story to the world around me. It tells of the great mercy, grace and patience of God to a sinner. It also tells of the great power of God to change a person and remake them with a new hope, purpose and nature. I am a holy person – set apart to live my life with a new purpose.
I am a well-beloved person. How I love to hear those words. I am not just doing all of this new life because I have a duty to do it. I am not just obligated to serve God because of the Cross. I do it all from the perspective that I am well-loved by the Trinity. It is the knowledge of this love, even in my darkest and hardest of times that sustains and strengthens me. I have to admit that at times [especially when I am at my most sinful] I find it difficult to believe that God’s love for me is as great as it is said to be. But his love is a stated and everlastingly true fact and not a feeling I must experience.
It is on the back of all this – this new definition of who I am that I now turn away from all that is unworthy, and look at my new clothing and start to put them on with a renewed enthusiasm.
Where am I in all of this truth? I must admit that I feel a real sense of regret as I read the beginning of verse 12. If I have been chosen for this great purpose of glorifying God in and through my life, I feel that I have not come close to doing that. I grieve over the lost possibilities to make a difference and to be different. But there is no point in lamenting what might have been. God is pointing me towards the future and asking me to embrace this new life with a new enthusiasm and sense of purpose for what is left of the rest of my life. I cannot change the past, but I can influence the present and the future and ask the Lord to help me.
Do I feel well-beloved by God? No, is the answer to that. Why? To be honest, I just do not feel well-beloved by anyone. Indeed, I am always surprised if people like me, because I never really feel as if I belong. That is not a “poor me” statement, just an honest sense of what I feel. I had this really challenged the other day as I was meditating on part of Romans 8 where it speaks of being God’s child by adoption. As I was sitting and trying to allow this to sink in, my mind turned to Eilidh, our youngest daughter. I find this difficult to put into words, because words can never adequately explain feelings. We adopted Eilidh from China when she was only one year old. We have 3 birth children, all older than Eilidh. At the time of writing, Eilidh is four years old. I love her to bits. There is no distinction between how Linda and I feel about Eilidh, and how we love our other three children. When I think of her, I do not think of her as my adopted daughter – she is just my wee girl and well-loved. If therefore, as a very inadequate, sinful father I have the capacity to love like this, how much more can God love me. Still I don’t feel it – the best I can do, is know it and hope one day in eternity, I will feel it.