Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] The following is a legacy recording from the archives of the C.S. lewis Institute. While the audio quality of these recordings may vary, the content remains vital to the mission of the Institute to develop disciples who can articulate, defend, and live faith in Christ through personal and public life.
[00:00:24] Well, in the light of what we have been having this week, we do want now to finally look at a passage in 1 Peter chapter 3.
[00:00:35] And just to spotlight on the verse itself, we Read in verse 15 of 1 Peter chapter 3, in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord.
[00:00:48] Or as we read in other versions, sanctify the Lord your hearts.
[00:00:56] And of course, the context of this passage we might go back to verse seven of chapter three, where perhaps it's a jolt to we men folk as husbands to realize we're to be in every way considerate as you live with your wives and treat them with respect, as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.
[00:01:25] And I think what the writer is reminding us is that if our relational life with those with whom we are most intimate is blocked, then it will affect our prayer life with God.
[00:01:40] And this understanding that we are given that as we are relationally with each other, so in a sense it affects our relationship with God is a profound truth.
[00:01:54] And so he says finally, all of you live in harmony with one another, so that not only in the family but also in society, live in harmony with one another and be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.
[00:02:10] Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.
[00:02:19] And then, quoting from Psalm 34, the apostle then reminds us that whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil, his lips from deceitful speech. He must turn from evil and do good. He must seek peace and pursue it.
[00:02:36] For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their prayer.
[00:02:42] Again, we're reminded of the attentiveness of God to our prayer life, when we are also in harmony and in sensitivity to those who are most intimately, closely identified with us.
[00:02:54] But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.
[00:02:58] And we know that in our own lives that if we have repressed anger and an unforgiving spirit, there's nothing more effective to block our prayer life than that attitude within our own being.
[00:03:11] Because the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.
[00:03:16] Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? Well, there is a possibility that although that shouldn't be, it does happen so that even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed.
[00:03:28] Do not fear what they fear. Do not be frightened.
[00:03:33] And then we have this glorious verse again. But in your hearts, set apart Christ as Lord.
[00:03:40] Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.
[00:03:48] But do this not with brashness, self confidence and violence, but do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.
[00:04:08] And of course, one could turn to so many other passages. I just want us to look at one other short section in First Thessalonians, chapter 5:16.
[00:04:19] Here we have all the evidence of that transformed person in Christ.
[00:04:24] All those qualities that really are antithetical to our natural nature are all being expressed here now in such a revolutionary, radical manner.
[00:04:38] Be joyful always, pray continually.
[00:04:43] Give thanks in all circumstances.
[00:04:46] Verses 16 and 17 18.
[00:04:50] For this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
[00:04:55] Do not put out the Spirit's fire.
[00:04:58] Do not treat prophecies with contempt.
[00:05:01] Test everything, hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.
[00:05:06] May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.
[00:05:12] May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:05:20] The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.
[00:05:26] Brothers, pray for us.
[00:05:29] Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. I charge you before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers.
[00:05:36] The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
[00:05:42] One of the things that we find about Scripture is that we read one section and it's all encompassing of so much else.
[00:05:51] It's impossible to grasp it all.
[00:05:53] It's only possible to interrelate with it all.
[00:05:57] And consequently, I don't intend this morning to do an exegesis of these passages, but rather to use them as an introduction for this final talk.
[00:06:08] The reality of a holy life for the Christian today in the midst of all the pressures and the challenges that we face at the end of this century, the context of John Calvin in the 16th century, or the context of Jonathan Edwards and the 18th century that we were touching on in these last two sessions are appropriate, and we understand why they give us the message that they do.
[00:06:37] And so we have to distinguish between what is cultural and what is of lasting significance. And what we've seen is of lasting significance in the great classic of Calvin is that at the Heart of the gospel is God's purpose that we should live holy lives.
[00:06:55] We tend to think of the Gospel as that which saves us, as that which pulls us out of the mess we're in.
[00:07:04] But we don't hear enough.
[00:07:06] And that's why we need to go back to Calvin to hear it again.
[00:07:10] That at the heart of the gospel is God's purpose for the sanctification of our lives. God intends us to be a holy people.
[00:07:19] And that's why the proclamation of the Gospel should be given not just for evangelism, but for discipleship.
[00:07:27] Not just simply because we need to be born again, but by living the gospel, live again in Christ Jesus.
[00:07:38] And so the radicalism of that needs to be reunderstood in the context of psychology in our own generation.
[00:07:46] And then secondly, we saw that Jonathan Edwards is giving us this further truth that in living the Gospel, so that we are evidently aware of the truth that is in Christ Jesus that will be shown by the awakening of gracious affections for him, that our hearts are warmed as like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus when they could say, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us, by the way?
[00:08:17] And so truth burns, conviction celebrates, joyfulness, gives us an awareness of an ecstatic life that we're taken out of ourselves to be occupied with Him.
[00:08:33] So how in the world can we speak of the love of God without being great lovers?
[00:08:38] How can we talk about God's doctrine of reconciliation without being reconcilers?
[00:08:45] And so our affections are stirred.
[00:08:48] Color is given to our world in the light of this reality.
[00:08:53] And so there's nothing that I think is more of a monstrous inconsistency in the Christian life than to have a cerebral, doctrinaire view which may be brilliant and have our PhD to boot in theology.
[00:09:09] And yet it's lifeless because it doesn't touch the heart, because it's obvious that it hasn't really been warmed by those gracious affections.
[00:09:23] And so again this morning, as we think of these two messages that we receive, then I think what we have to recognize is the need for us to go forward, assured of God, for further exploration, and not to be afraid of all the findings and the insights of our generation and the challenges of our culture to live a godly life.
[00:09:49] I was just saying to Dr. Clowney that I just love the man.
[00:09:53] He just expresses all those things that one's pulse beat from the Lord.
[00:09:58] And how wonderful it is, as we've been reminded this morning, that. That the Christian life is a life of contentment in the Middle Ages.
[00:10:08] There was certainly at the breakup of the Middle ages, in the 15th, 14th, 15th centuries, there was a strong emphasis on the motif of the pilgrim, that with the breakup of securities and the dissolving of the familiar landmarks and the awareness that the status quo was no longer anything but sinking sand, the great motif that we find of spiritual life at that time was that we had to leave the city of destruction and to become pilgrims.
[00:10:47] But there's a difference between the tourist and the pilgrim, and the difference is really in the light of what Dr. Kleiny was sharing with us, because contentment, godly contentment, is not sitting on our haunches and saying, you know, everything's just fine and the status quo is wonderful.
[00:11:14] There's no growth in that perspective.
[00:11:17] But on the other hand, nor is there any growth, as we've been reminded, that spirit of inquisitive curiosity or that avaricious spirit that is itching for more, which so mark our generation.
[00:11:35] And so one of the great vices that was recognized at the end of the Middle Ages was curiosidad, that's to say, the spirit of curiosity, the spirit of the tourist has said, We've done 10 countries in Europe, and of course, as a European, one shudders at the thought in two weeks.
[00:11:59] But that's what many are doing today. Even with spirituality, there's an avaricious appetite to read all these new classics or old classics of spiritual life, to seek to have a small magazard of opportunity to read the latest insights of Matthew Fox or whoever happens to be the popular guru in spirituality in our generation.
[00:12:26] And tragically, there are people who have deep desires for a spiritual life.
[00:12:32] But the thing that is so tragic about them is that all the reading that they are doing and all the seminars that they're attending and all the conferences that they go to are not making one whit of change in their person in Christ.
[00:12:51] It simply activates them to have more appetite for more reading, and they need more bookshelves for all that they require.
[00:13:01] Now, that's what was a great concern of Christians at the end of the Middle Ages, that curiosity didn't kill the cat only it kills many Christians as well.
[00:13:14] And therefore, what we're talking about this morning as exploring spiritually doesn't come from that restlessness that has to be cured.
[00:13:25] And so the contentment that Dr. Kleiny was referring to is the contentment with godliness.
[00:13:33] That is to say that one's heart has been healed by God, that the wounds of one's person have been probed gently by his all seeing, healing hand and that he has dealt with us at the core of our being.
[00:13:54] And now we know that we accepted them a lot.
[00:13:58] Now we've learned that our assets are our wounds, that our defects are our blessings, that our weaknesses are the source of our strength and his grace, that we live antithetical lives.
[00:14:14] G.K. chesterton used to say, you know, if you're living in a crazy world, there's only one way in which to see it properly, and that's to stand permanently on your head.
[00:14:23] And that's what the Christian life is. It's a stance of turning things upside down and recognizing that if you are living in tune with what the world is acclaiming and you're popular by the world's standards, there's something fundamentally wrong with you as a Christian.
[00:14:43] And so therefore we recognize that we're fools as far as the world is concerned, and yet as fools for Christ, it's because he's given us a perspective of the eternal and of the lasting and of the intimately healing for our own lives.
[00:15:02] So what I want to share with you this morning is the need for us in that godly contentment, to be pilgrims, to be explorers, not restlessly, not inquisitively, not with curiosity, but with an awareness that that assurance that he gives to us enables us to do great exploits in our own hearts as well as in the world.
[00:15:31] We're reminded in the book of Daniel that the people who do know their God shall do great exploits.
[00:15:39] But the exploits that we're talking about are not visible.
[00:15:43] They're not necessarily obvious to anyone else, but to ourselves before God.
[00:15:50] And the greatest exploit that we can anticipate is that God is going to totally change our person.
[00:15:57] He's going to make us new creatures in Christ Jesus.
[00:16:01] And it's that that we can be so excited about, and it's that which is so transforming.
[00:16:09] So let us look at the context of where we're living, because it's one thing to look at the New Testament and in a sense to have a crick in our neck, because we're thinking of what wonderful times it must have been to be with the apostle in the first century.
[00:16:22] But here we are living at the end of the 20th century. So what do we face and what are the pressures that we face? And yet in the context of that, to live sanctified lives, godly lives, holy lives for God.
[00:16:35] Well, some of the features that you can think about with me this morning are obvious at first. We are going to see an increasing further growth of technology.
[00:16:46] We're seeing how technique is penetrating in the soul of man so that all our bookshops are full of these how to books.
[00:16:55] And one of the most frightening things is how Mr. Fixit is penetrating the soul of man so that the how to mentality penetrates every aspect of the Christian life. The way we're managed, the way we're institutionalized, the way we're organized, fundamentally, the way we're technicalized in our own souls is a very frightening prospect for us as we face the future.
[00:17:20] And so what that means is that we have increased powers, and yet we live with increased ambiguities in the use of those powers.
[00:17:31] In my class just this last term, I had a pastor from our own city in Vancouver, and he was sharing with us the frustration that he has between the technical competence of the therapist as a secular counselor and his own rather bumbling, simple attitude to his pastoral visitations.
[00:18:00] And he says, I feel like the psalmist who was envious of the wicked because the technician is a wicked man, because the technician who does this depending on the gods of technique is operating in wickedness.
[00:18:20] He says, I am envious of the efficiency with which psychologists and therapists and other people can so enter and get the allegiance and affection and trust of so many today.
[00:18:37] And I'm bumbling and fumbling in the pulpit.
[00:18:41] So that's one of the things that we face.
[00:18:45] And then also we see the further growth of professionalism and in the spiritual life, the professionalization goes on.
[00:18:55] Most of our pastors today are not content with an M. Div.
[00:19:00] They have to have a D. Min. They have to have a DD they have to have doctorate squared, because that's the way of the world.
[00:19:11] And that unless we have those qualifications, nobody will listen to us.
[00:19:17] And so one of the great needs of us to recognize is that there's a tremendous need of lay renewal in the church today.
[00:19:29] My daughter, who is, I suppose, a chip of the old block, when she was about 24, she told her her pastor that she wanted to visit two old ladies.
[00:19:41] And the pastor said, oh, but Penny, you haven't been trained to do that.
[00:19:46] And she said, no, I haven't got my master's degree on friendship yet, but I'm working on it.
[00:19:53] And, you know, many of us are wondering when in this Orwellian society we'll need a PhD in motherhood as well.
[00:20:02] And so what does that mean?
[00:20:04] That the experts do take over.
[00:20:07] And we're seeing that even institutes of spirituality are being set up for yet Further experts of the soul, and that we don't only have physicians of the body, but we need physicians of the heart as well.
[00:20:21] Now, the danger of this is that much of this is done innocently.
[00:20:26] It's done with goodwill and desire, but behind it lies, I think, the subtle temptation of our generation.
[00:20:35] And that is that my identity is in what I do.
[00:20:38] And what I do has to be done professionally.
[00:20:42] And so my identity lies behind those letters.
[00:20:47] And we're going to secularize the faith in the most intimate areas of life in that program.
[00:20:55] One of the most exciting things that's happened to me personally since I was involved in Regent College, which originally I didn't want to go professional, but just to remain a lay institute is something that shows how we can deal creatively with ambiguities.
[00:21:12] I wanted a lay institute. My colleagues wanted to have a professional institute, a seminary.
[00:21:17] So where are we now? Well, God has wonderfully brought about a compromise that I hope will be very creative.
[00:21:23] Because what we're now insisting on is that every M. Div. Student who's going into the pastorate has to be accountable to a group of three to five lay friends.
[00:21:34] And their report of accountability that he has to have or she has to have before she gets her or he gets his M. Div. Degree relates to how he's able to relate to the lay people around him or her.
[00:21:51] So every situation that we face has new dangers, but also has new possibilities, new creative consequences for our life.
[00:22:04] Then a third tendency is the further politicalization of life, which, of course means that we constantly live more ideologically and less with a sense of personal responsibility.
[00:22:18] And one of the things that's making Washington almost ungovernable today is the fact that you now govern by computer.
[00:22:26] That when it comes to a lobby and a decision for this or that bill, then how many supporters and lobbies do you have on the one side over against the other side? It becomes a game of statistics.
[00:22:40] And so the result is that in the midst of the blandness of the bureaucratization of government, is the recognition and the need and the fragmentation of life today that the individual needs to stand up more than ever.
[00:22:56] So one of the new cries of our society today is, oh, we need authenticity. We need integrity. We need a new form of leadership that will provide just those qualities to see stand up against the blandness of corruption in our culture and in our government.
[00:23:16] We also see, fourthly, that we live with a loss of authority.
[00:23:20] That both in public and private life there is such a diminution, wilting away of authority.
[00:23:30] And so for the Christian, when there's a prevailing gale blowing, we have to lean against it.
[00:23:38] And so it may be that this, for us, means that today, as Christians, we need more awareness of spiritual discipline than ever before.
[00:23:47] The sloppiness, the moral laxity, the lack of commitment in our culture means that we need, therefore, to stand up against the gales that are blowing of dissolution.
[00:24:06] Fifthly, we see the invasion of privacy so that even our own children are being robbed of childhood because at age 5, they're witnessing and hearing communication that belongs to the bedroom of adults.
[00:24:23] And so we're destroying childhood.
[00:24:26] And the shelter and the nurturing that should take place on the mother's knee is being communicated directly from the telly in a soulless, loveless fashion.
[00:24:38] And so we are destroying the emotional fabric of what belongs to childhood.
[00:24:47] And therefore, there's a need for us to have much more of the altar in our homes and not in the church.
[00:24:56] What happens is that if we depend upon the altar being in our church and our church services, and that's the only place where there's an altar, ultimately there's no altar in the church because the people who come together are secular and secularizing what should be a house of worship.
[00:25:19] So unless there is family prayer, unless there is intimate communion within the family of the things of God, we will not have any shelter anywhere against the secular gales that are blowing in our culture.
[00:25:39] And also, we see that there is also the loss of commitment and loyalty in life today.
[00:25:47] Family breakdown, wife swapping, all the rest of the tragedies that we see.
[00:25:54] And then when this is condoned by the church and Christian leadership is doing exactly the same thing, then what in the world are we talking about? The covenant of God.
[00:26:07] If those who are teaching our seminarians about covenant theology, who are themselves divorcees, what credibility is there for the communication of commitment and loyalty and covenant in our lives today?
[00:26:26] And so it simply means that as Christians, we need to see the far deeper foundations of what loyalty, what hesed love, covenant love, what the Authorized Version consistently speaks of as the kindness of God in the Old Testament.
[00:26:46] Also, we see the further frenetic activity and activism of our society.
[00:26:56] As I think I've shared with some of you before, the Desert Fathers interpreted busyness as moral sloth, that it's a narcotic of the soul.
[00:27:07] And busyness and the active use of reasoning faculty are often both anodynes to repress the basic fundamental symptoms of moral disease, soul disease.
[00:27:26] And so what we need to recognize is that what is a recovery for the Christian life today is that ultimately God calls us to be contemplatives.
[00:27:39] You know, when you think about it, if everything around you is expressive of the Word of God, so that in springtime and the early summer that we're now enjoying, all the flowers are expressive of God's creative word, the birds and the trees and the beauty of the landscape are all expressive of the finger of God, or rather the Word of God and how he brought all things into being.
[00:28:03] Then to live in creation is to be a listener.
[00:28:08] When we think of how our salvation has been revealed to us by the Word of God who became flesh.
[00:28:15] And we realize again, as we read His Word and understand what are indeed the the guidelines for this saved life redeemed by him, we're listeners.
[00:28:30] So no wonder the biblical model in the Old Testament of a godly person was one whose ear was pierced as that slave was pierced to hear the commands of his master.
[00:28:44] Therefore, there's no more basic stance in creation redeemed by God than to be listeners, to be contemplators and live a prayerful life of listening before Him.
[00:29:00] The reason why most of us have unsatisfactory prayer lives, I'm sure, is because we chatter too much in our shopping list of requests, and we don't listen enough so that we allow him to pray through us, rather than for us to pray on our own, as we think we're doing in a kind of ventriloquism.
[00:29:22] And then, too, we see that we can anticipate the further autonomy of man, the pride of man, so that we face this ghastly prospect of being technological dinosaurs and moral pigmies.
[00:29:40] And the consequence of such a way of life is, of course, that it's the antithesis of the beatific life of being poor in spirit of being, as Dr. Clowney was sharing with us this morning, the need for us to live with that attitude that where I'm weak, there am I made strong.
[00:30:00] We eclipse God by our abilities.
[00:30:04] We forget, profoundly dependent we are upon him now, as we face all these modern features which are simply all expressive of what is nothing else but sin, and which is therefore simply the reaping of a whirlwind of what's already accumulated from past ages.
[00:30:26] We also, as Christians, need to recognize that there's a new perspective on man, which is also costa, a biblical perspective, as old as the garden and the expulsion of man from the garden.
[00:30:40] But feudal man certainly had to be spoken to and related to in the context of the Middle Ages.
[00:30:50] Rational man had to be spoken to and related to in the context of the 17th and 18th centuries. In other words, the age of Newton and the mechanistic universe and the age of the Enlightenment and the impact of Kant.
[00:31:06] But today we live with psychological man.
[00:31:11] And simply to preach and to teach is not touching. Psychological man may help, may be important, but that's part of it.
[00:31:23] But perhaps there needs to be in our generation a new role of listening to the hurts of individuals.
[00:31:33] And so perhaps what the Reformation did in exalting the pulpit because it lived with the printing press and it lived with all the discoveries of new forms of knowing that were controversial and then elaborated at that time.
[00:31:51] Today we live with a new understanding of the emotions, of the need for much deeper awareness of relationships, and certainly of the profound need of sharing more community in our culture.
[00:32:11] As we read of Robert Bella and others who have spoken of the habits of the heart and of the need in our narcissistic culture to live with more awareness of fellowship and community, we recognize what those challenges are.
[00:32:27] So what it does mean for the Christian servant of God is that we look and see what the therapist is doing, what psychological counseling is doing.
[00:32:38] But we recognize that in those insights that we may be given if they're living with a secular perspective, we have to outflank that. We've got to penetrate that. We've got to recognize that the relevance of the gospel is far more profound than anything psychology can contribute to modern man.
[00:32:58] But the self consciousness that that's given means that we have to be aware of that and live with that in our generation.
[00:33:06] And now also we're beginning to recognize, as I had the privilege many years ago of meeting Sir John Eccles, who was one of the great pioneers after the war in the investigation of the relationships between brain and mind, as a Nobel Prize winner.
[00:33:22] And then more recently, Dr. Sperry, who has made exploration of right and left hemispheres and their functions and our personalities, and Herbert Benson of Harvard and the work that he's doing too in the whole area of stress and meditation, and David Gazzaniga and his work in these areas.
[00:33:46] We're beginning to recognize that a whole new world is opening to us about consciousness and the brain and the mind.
[00:33:57] It's, for example, becoming recognized that when we operate too strongly, we're right handed people with our left brain, that we can live with a much more structured, more kind of tramline kind of behavior and mental attitudes.
[00:34:18] And we know how many Christians are so logical and so rational that they're totally blind about the personal life.
[00:34:27] And it's those who live with that kind of left brain focus that can often find themselves imprisoned with various phobias.
[00:34:39] And so what is becoming recognized is that a much more expanded and enriching life of consciousness is open to us when there is closer interconnectedness between right and left hemispheres.
[00:34:59] That is to say that in our right hemisphere we will have more awareness of insight, intuition, imagination, openness to a range of things that our left hemisphere would never give to us because it transcends the rational and the logical and the linear in its thinking.
[00:35:30] T.S. eliot in his Four Quartets, describes something of this experience of opening up more of the possibilities of the right brain. A mountaintop experience. He describes it.
[00:35:44] Words strain, crack, and sometimes break under the burden, under the tension, slip, slide, perish, decay with imprecision will not stay in place, will not stay still.
[00:36:00] And it's been suggested by some that there is new merit. And this is totally on a secular basis. It's not something that is being considered in terms of Christian values, but it just shows you how ironic it is. If you're suffering from cancer and, and you're afraid to die, then why not go to a contemplation clinic and discover by more of the exercise of your right hemispheric activity to be open to thoughts that are positive, that come to you, and by positive or cognitive therapy begin to imagine that you're actually fighting the disease with battalions of good cells against the infected cells.
[00:36:48] And faith itself is something that can be, as it were, viewed upon as something that one can generate.
[00:36:57] Well, we may laugh at that, but that's very serious for some people today.
[00:37:01] I don't know statistically how many people are truly spending their life in prayer before God.
[00:37:07] But it could be that we are outnumbered before the end of this century by people who are meditating and who are finding a meditative life an alternative to jogging or running.
[00:37:23] Why is it that some people are so crazy over marathons?
[00:37:27] Well, because they discover that after 20 minutes of hard running, they switch into another gear.
[00:37:34] They then begin to discover that there's a new sense of consciousness that takes over mind over body. So in spite of the pain, in spite of the fatigue and of the energy that they're involved in, their spirit is conquering and controlling their body and the activity of their running.
[00:37:56] Well, we can't turn the clock back. All of these things are upon us.
[00:38:01] And it's in the consequence of this that it's very foolish for us Christians to assume that our smug understanding of Christian doctrine is going to be of lasting relevance if it's something that's only rational and that we don't in fact, listen to the word of the apostle in Colossians 3:16. Let the word of God dwell in you richly.
[00:38:28] That in all the insights and all the pressures and all the challenges that our culture give to us in all these areas, we need that for further understanding.
[00:38:40] Another thing that we're also finding that is part of our life today, and of course, moral values, education, and various theories of the moral growth of a child into adolescence and maturity, giving us new awarenesses.
[00:39:00] What the Apostle John reminds us of is that he says, I write unto you children, because your sins are forgiven you. And I write unto you young men because you have overcome the evil one. And I write unto you fathers, because you have known him. It is from the beginning it is appropriate for us to reflect upon the stage of our life where we are in the stages of faith, in our pilgrimage, and to recognize that there will be associated with those stages new challenges, new reflections, new insights that we need for our life.
[00:39:37] A little child lives with both the need to trust and the wounds of distrust, of inconsistency that can be so wounding on our psyche.
[00:39:50] As the child grows, it lives in the oscillation between autonomy and shame, between initiative and guilt, between industry and inferiority, between identity and confusion.
[00:40:05] And so through the teenage years, we see these changes taking place.
[00:40:10] And then in our 20s, we begin to recognize the distinctions between our desire for intimacy and the isolation that we live with.
[00:40:19] And when we're after 35, we're certainly thinking about, are we going to stagnate now, or are we going to continue to grow?
[00:40:28] And for many Christians, there is only stagnation carrying on with the status quo.
[00:40:35] And what happens to such people is that they reach the age of 60, and then, despairingly, they begin to be faced by the challenge of is there deepening, enriching integrity, oneness of life in this freedom and this divine contentment that Dr. Cluny has just been sharing with us?
[00:41:00] Or are our lives at the end of life, despairing lives, empty lives, inconsistent lives, hollow lives?
[00:41:11] So we recognize that these insights, too, have to be incorporated into all the challenge of where we are in our behavior.
[00:41:21] And then we go back over history and we think of all the quality and richness that we have of perspectives on the historic past, the way that God's people have lived, of the changes that they have made, the models that they have had, even models of sanctity.
[00:41:44] I'm beginning to question them.
[00:41:48] In the last century, we had these two camps, we had those on the Catholic and Anglo Catholic side that took the communion of saints in a very literal way, that's to say sanctity by popular acclaim.
[00:42:05] And so we just simply accepted that in the canon of the canonization processes that the Church had, in its own wisdom, established that we could look to these people as models.
[00:42:18] Now, with more historical perspicuity, we're saying, how come that between the 11th century and the 18th century, only 13% were women and 87% were men?
[00:42:35] Is that how God carves out sanctity?
[00:42:40] Or how come that even the 19th and 20th century up to date, the figures are 25% women and 75% men? There's a bit of pressure going on there, isn't there?
[00:42:54] Or how come that the great majority are celibate from monastic traditions and are not coming from the lay movements of the church. And so we begin to recognize that historical sense gives us new critical values.
[00:43:14] And, of course, if we read about the Reformation, we can understand why Martin Luther just threw the whole thing up and said it's all corrupt.
[00:43:24] And that the biblical understanding of sanctity is different from the way that we see it in our own culture.
[00:43:32] Or indeed, what's more important, how the Bible sees, because in Scripture, sanctity is the call of all Christians to be saints, is evidence of those who receive the gospel, that in fact, this discrimination and these criteria by which we have canonized are totally false in terms of biblical standards and understanding of what God's purpose is for us to live a holy life.
[00:44:07] And as we read the Scriptures, we realize that none of us are a holy people unless we're God's people.
[00:44:14] That holiness does not belong to man, but to God.
[00:44:18] It's God who's holy.
[00:44:20] It's God who sanctifies.
[00:44:23] And so it's only as our lives are identified with him that in a sense, we might say that holiness rubs off.
[00:44:32] In the Old Testament, there were those holy vessels because they were consecrated. They were set apart for the service of God in his temple, the worship of Him.
[00:44:44] And so our lives, as they are set apart for God, they're committed to God, they're in tune with his spirit.
[00:44:52] To that extent, we can say we are a holy people.
[00:44:56] And so what I'm saying in all of this this morning is to indicate how vast, how mind stretching, how deepening, how radical is the need for us in our generation to reinterpret the Scriptures.
[00:45:18] The same Scriptures, the same injunctions, same basic Principles God's people always have had, always will have, because the Word is a living word.
[00:45:33] But how, in the context of the pressures, the problems, the new insights, new forms of consciousness that we may have, that this becomes for us a living reality.
[00:45:48] I sometimes wonder whether in the early church, and certainly this is typical of the Desert Fathers and the beginning of the monastic movement, that there was the great model of the Abba, of the one who acted as a father that gave counsel, so that literally he expressed the presence of Christ in walking with his disciples, and how the printing press and the rise of rationalism that developed with Rene Descartes atrocious and misleading statement. I think, therefore I am.
[00:46:41] We have a new agenda with the exploration of the self, the psyche, and of the profound needs, therefore, that we have once more to allow God's Holy Spirit to indicate that it's his presence that is the presence that will be with us always.
[00:47:07] And so may God grant that in the times in which we live, to recognize profoundly that God calls us not to be dismayed, to be overwhelmed by all these precious, but to recognize again the vitality of these words. Let's look finally once more on these thoughts that we've had at the beginning.
[00:47:38] Don't be afraid, he says, don't be overwhelmed.
[00:47:45] But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord.
[00:47:51] Let the sovereignty of God in Christ dwell in us.
[00:47:59] Why is Christ so precious to us as Lord?
[00:48:04] Because he too has been a man.
[00:48:08] He understands deeply, fully the human condition.
[00:48:15] There's not an emotion that we suffer.
[00:48:18] There's not a thought that plagues, there's not a loneliness that afflicts, there's not a passion that threatens to overwhelm.
[00:48:31] But he has already suffered and understood and shared with us.
[00:48:36] It's because he is most personal that he can be most Lord in my life, because he has been most human.
[00:48:49] He alone can make us more human.
[00:48:55] And yet God and therefore mediator.
[00:49:02] So in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord.
[00:49:10] And in the consequence of that and the reality of that. And so, as we said in our first evening, one of the things that we need to reinterpret is the nature of sin in our personalities, that all that we've inherited from our parenting is a fallen condition is a sinful existence.
[00:49:35] The radicalism of the Christian Gospel is that even when we are nice and polite, that which we inherited from our breeding, sometimes also an anxious niceness, an anxious, pleasing, or more violently, the vices that we've inherited, that we know full well of anger and of hatred and of Avarice and jealousy and all of those things.
[00:50:06] We recognize that there has to be a reconstitution, a reconstruction of the whole thing of the person.
[00:50:16] And that obviously is implied in these verses in 1st Thessalonians 5. Be joyful always. Can you imagine always being joyful?
[00:50:26] Sometimes it's intolerable to live with saints. You know how Corrie ten Boone found that her sister had a fortitude and seemed to have a transcendent freedom that Corrie didn't have at the time in the concentration camp.
[00:50:42] She once challenged her sister with real anger and frustration with her sanctity. And she said, you tell me how I can be thankful for being in this concentration camp.
[00:50:53] And she said, my dear, the prayer meeting and the Bible studies that we have with these women are only possible because it's such a flea infested hall. The guards daren't come in because of the fleas. Thank God for the fleas.
[00:51:09] Or again, as we were hearing yesterday, Dr. Cloudy's illustration of having inscribed upon that oar that it's with Christ bonds that that slave was there.
[00:51:24] So this transcendent joyfulness is not human.
[00:51:31] In our fallen state.
[00:51:34] This being always joyful can only be the spirit of God in us.
[00:51:39] Can only be that transcendent transformation that I can say, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
[00:51:50] Pray continually.
[00:51:52] This drove some of the saints in the Eastern Church crazy. The Mesollanians were a group of people that started to specialize in praying continually.
[00:52:02] They counted the Jesus prayer 5,000 times a day.
[00:52:10] Lord Jesus. The prayer of Bartimaeus, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.
[00:52:17] You say that 5,000 times? No. Some said we did it 10,000 times, 15,000 times a day. So our very breath, the pulse beat of our breath becomes our breath.
[00:52:29] Is that praying continually as Paul means it? I'm sure it isn't.
[00:52:35] It means that one's whole life is so dependent upon God for the maintenance of one's whole person, of all one's emotions, all one's behavior.
[00:52:47] That prayer continually is really expressing the reality of his Spirit and his life.
[00:52:55] It was a great insight and encouragement to me some years ago when I discovered that there was an ambiguity about the rendering of Galatians 2:20. I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
[00:53:07] And the life I now live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Yes, it's true that we need to use our minds and to understand the Scriptures. And to recognize that live by my faith in the Son of God.
[00:53:23] But it could be a subtle form of good works, that I live by my faith in the Son of God.
[00:53:30] And so the alternative rendering is, I live in the merits of Christ's faith in His Father, that it's in the reality of his relationship that my whole life is lived.
[00:53:44] So, as the hymn puts it, so near, so very near to God I could not nearer be.
[00:53:51] For in the person of the Son I am as near as he.
[00:53:55] So dear, so very dear to God I could not dearer be for the love wherewith he loves His Son, Such is his love to me. I live by the faith of the Son of God.
[00:54:09] And when one lives in that reality, then life is a continual prayer. It's the breath of the spiritual man or woman.
[00:54:20] And give thanks in all circumstances.
[00:54:25] The triumphant life of the Christian is that we're always winners, because we discover that all the things that people are afraid of, all the things that we ourselves have repressed in our own inner being, are precisely those things that we cannot cope with but for the grace of God.
[00:54:53] And so secular man finds that there's a vast territory he can't cope with, and therefore he has to suppress.
[00:55:01] Could it be that that 75% of illness that we call psychosomatic is evidence of man's lawlessness and independence of the grace of God in his own emotional life? But if Christ is set as Lord of our emotions, then we have rest, we have contentment, we have that peace that passeth all understanding.
[00:55:27] And then we can give thanks.
[00:55:30] Thank God that God clobbered me when he did.
[00:55:34] That got my attention.
[00:55:36] Thank God I'm a bankrupt.
[00:55:39] I was just saying yesterday, and I see the truth of it so deeply in my own soul.
[00:55:45] There are two classes of people in our society here in Washington who are bankrupt.
[00:55:50] The homosexuals, not always do they recognize it, but they are bankrupt.
[00:55:56] Their sexual life is all distorted and warped.
[00:56:02] And those with broken marriages have faced bankruptcy in personal life.
[00:56:09] And they feel so devastated, so inadequate, so overwhelmed by it all.
[00:56:18] Thank God for the homosexual.
[00:56:21] Thank God for the divorcees, because they are far more likely to see how radical the gospel is for the need of their life.
[00:56:36] But all of us are neurotic, all of us are abnormal, all of us are sinners.
[00:56:48] And so we need to recover the poignancy, the intensity and the reality of sin, the impairment of all relationships in our lives, so that we give thanks that where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.
[00:57:10] So sometimes when people come to me with their tears and their brokenness. And they may seem. It's as if one was mocking. One is not, God forbid, but one is simply saying, rejoice.
[00:57:24] What a privilege you have to be declared bankrupt.
[00:57:30] And it's fundamentally only when we are declared bankrupt in our relational life before God that we begin to rejoice and to give thanks that he's brought us through these things.
[00:57:45] The pain that is born of God has an effect too salutary ever to regret.
[00:57:52] It's the pain of man that brings death.
[00:57:56] Thank God for sufferings which are exposed to God.
[00:58:00] Thank God for brokenness that is given to God.
[00:58:04] Thank God when he helps us to be specialists in a way that the world knows nothing about.
[00:58:11] And that specialist in leaning on his bosom.
[00:58:16] Paul says to Timothy, young man, young woman, be strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus.
[00:58:27] What God in his kingdom wants are experts in dependence.
[00:58:33] He wants the reverse.
[00:58:36] The experts expertise of independence that is so much part of our culture.
[00:58:43] That's the way of health, of healing and of salvation.
[00:58:49] Shall we just close in prayer? As we think about these things, O God, we realize that even to hear from your word and the challenge that you give to us in its application today, things that we have not thought about before, things that we have not seen or heard, is difficult.
[00:59:12] And so we pray, O God, that your Holy Spirit that enables us to know the truth will also be the spirit that gives us an open ear and an open heart and a courage to accept the radicalism of what lies beyond this privileged experience that we've had of being born again.
[00:59:39] How you want us to live again, oh God, is so transforming that it's frightening.
[00:59:48] It's something that we feel utterly destitute of having resources for.
[00:59:54] Help us to believe, O God, that when we're out in that deep blue, in that F, and have no parachute, nothing to cling to, that we really do discover that underneath are the everlasting arms.
[01:00:08] We ask this through Christ our Lord.
[01:00:11] Amen.
[01:00:15] The proceeding was a presentation of the C.S. lewis Institute in the legacy of C.S. lewis. The institute endeavors to develop disciples who can articulate, defend and live faith in Christ through personal and public life. For more information, please visit our website at www.cslewisinstitute.org. thank.
[01:00:44] You.
