Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: 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] Speaker B: Yesterday we were looking at what is the nature of Christian discipleship?
What is the nature of the kind of training that's involved?
Now we need to look at the character of who are the disciples? And again, I want us to focus on Matthew's Gospel as a text. For helping us to understand this question, perhaps we could turn to Matthew chapter 5.
And we read in verse 14 these words at the end of the Sermon on the Sermon on the Mount, dealing with the Beatitudes, you are the light of the world.
A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.
Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.
Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
Then we have these rather disturbing Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets.
I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
For truly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
But he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
There are many more things that we find in this chapter that really concern a manual of righteousness that this teacher of righteousness is proclaiming.
And then we have the climax in verse 48, the last verse of the chapter.
You therefore must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.
Shall we just bow in prayer as we think of these solemn words?
Dear Father, again we come into your presence this morning.
And as we think of these words, disturbing and challenging as they are to each one of us, we pray that your Holy Spirit may illuminate them to us so that instead of being a burden, you have promised that your burden is light.
And yet we ask, O God, that with solemnity the realization of what these things mean for us may be implanted within our souls.
Help us then, in the training as disciples to learn more of the reality of a Christian character in Christ.
So may thy blessing now be upon us in our meditation through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
There are four things we want briefly this morning to look at on the subject of the character of the disciple.
First of all, it's the character of those who are learning to live with the righteousness of Christ.
It's the character of those who are learning to live with the righteousness of Christ.
Then secondly, they're learning to live with a new relationship in Christ.
They're learning to see that this righteousness stems from a new relationship in Jesus Christ.
And then, thirdly, they're learning to progress in their Christian character.
That Christian life is a process.
It requires progress.
Then we shall finally look at the realization that a disciple is one who is learning to test Christlikeness by its humanness. How do we know that traits that we're seeking for of our character are Christlike? Well, the test is how human are they.
And so we want to look at that as well. So these are the four main points that we want to focus on, focus on, and turn our attention this morning.
But first of all, Matthew is emphasizing that a disciple is one who is living or learning to live with the righteousness that Christ has revealed.
Matthew is concerned much more with the task in hand for the disciples than he is about their status or their privilege.
He's not concerned about that latter situation. He is concerned as to how they are to take responsibility.
They have a mission to perform, and it seems almost an idealistic mission, because the last words of the gospel are that they are to go into all the world and to preach the gospel. They are to make disciples in all the earth.
And so the scope is idealistic.
And it seems at the same time that the sad reality is that the church that Matthew is addressing is a confused church.
There's the feeling that here we're dealing with a sad situation.
Ethically, it's a confused community.
It's an adulterated condition.
And I suppose if Matthew was alive today, he would say the same of most of us, that our church life is the same kind of situation.
And no doubt this is the reason why Matthew addresses us in his Gospel.
Perhaps the primary purpose that this writer has in giving us his gospel is because he sees and he gives us some parables which uniquely express this, in fact, parables which are unique to the Gospel of Matthew, that we're dealing with a field that is not only growing wheat but tares.
We're dealing with a situation where when the drag net or the fisherman is brought in, there are both the good edible fish and there are bad fish that as a tree that grows under its branches, there are all sorts of birds that have their nests there.
And so in chapter 13, in these different ways, Matthew is pointing out that when we're talking about Christian discipleship, we're talking about it in a context of an adulterated society and a church, therefore, that's ethically confused.
And perhaps even worse than the wild weeds or the worthless fish or other causes of sin, were those who were seriously leading people astray from the reality of the gospel.
There were those who were actually proclaiming that personal goodness and a simple rectitude of character and a purity of heart and a truthfulness of speech and a fairness of mind and an uprightness and kindness of life had little or nothing to do with the religious life.
What nonsense, says Matthew.
What utter balderdash did you think that?
And so therefore he is concerned to alert us not to be relaxed concerning the law of God.
They had forgotten that the whole purpose of the Christian life is that we should live the Christian life.
It's not a question of having a comfortable insurance policy.
It's a recognition that seriously, we have to take this matter of right living.
In fact, in the 28 chapters of Matthew, there are 35 references to the righteousness of God, that this quality of life is absolutely the heart of what it is to be a disciple. Now, we tend to think of being discipled to do something like discipleship for leadership, or discipleship to teach, or discipleship to learn things.
But what Matthew is emphasizing is that the primary purpose of Christian discipleship is right living is righteousness.
And today, with our permissive culture, we need, I think, to emphasize that far more solemnly and far more seriously than we do.
And so that's why it's been suggested that Matthew's Gospel is likened to a manual of righteousness, just as the Qumran community, the Essenes, that were contemporaneous or prior to the ministry of our Lord in the desert over the Sea of Galilee, where they lived, over the sea, the Dead Sea rather, where they lived there was likewise in the Qumran covenanters, the same kind of recognition they had their manuals that were written concerning the ascetic life, a life of righteousness as they saw it.
And Matthew sees that the Pharisees had, in fact, for the sake of their own tradition, made void the law of God. In chapter 15, in verse 6, there's reference to it.
And likewise, we find the Qumran writers, the covenanters, also accusing the Rabbis of their society of diluting the law of God, the word of God, teaching smooth things that were expedient to fit in with the cultural norms of their day.
And so Jesus, too, is reminding us that the law is not to be abolished.
Of course, Matthew is not alone in this.
Prior to Matthew's Gospel probably is the Epistle to the Romans. And in the Epistle to the Romans, we find Paul in chapter 5, verse 20, and again in chapter 6, verse 1, saying the same thing, that are we to continue in sin, that grace should abound. God forbid.
This sloppy way of thinking about grace and the life that we have in Christ Jesus is an outrage, and we must never tolerate such low standards, says the apostle.
And so here we find that Matthew's reaction is forthright, as he's told us in chapter five, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter into the kingdom of heaven.
It's so easy for us to think of the need for a Christian character that is nice or that is good or that has attractive qualities.
It's much more abrasive to be told, as Matthew tells us, that we should have a right character, that righteousness should mark our lives.
And it's this that makes us cramp.
Because righteousness is not something that can so readily be squeezed into the norms of our culture.
Because what we're reminded about is that it's not something that's expedient, it's not something that's attractive, it's not something that is able to be fitted into our way of thinking or our way of living.
But righteousness is that which is right in the sight of God, that which is right in the sight of the Lord.
So when we're talking about righteousness, we're not talking about a standard of assessment that is human, we're talking about a standard of assessment that is divine.
It's a way of living that is strictly assessed by its ethical quality.
It has nothing to do with social or individual expediency. What we find attractive, what we like to do.
It's a way of living that is before God, what is right before God.
And it's a way of living, as Micah the prophet reminds us, that involves right doing, to do justly, as Micah puts it, it's what is required to fulfill God's will, conforming to his divine purpose.
And likewise, ezekiel in chapter 18 in verses 5 to 9 puts it like this, that righteousness is that which is lawful and right, that is walking in my statutes, that's careful to observe my ordinances.
And such a one, says Ezekiel, he is righteous.
It's a doing before God.
And of course, when we look to see what this doing is, it really is seeking to have divine conformity, to have what we call godliness.
It's what is a character that describes the character of God in godlikeness.
And so this is what Matthew is insisting on, that a true disciple is one who seeks the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Chapter 6 and verse 33.
Now, of course, it's perfectly true that Jesus did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. But we leave it there. Jesus did not call sinners to remain sinners.
He called sinners to become righteous.
And it's that progress that is the concern of us all as Christians.
And so the very first utterance of Jesus ministry in his Gospel, which we find in chapter three, verse 15, when Jesus himself was baptized, he did this, he says, for it was fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.
So from the very beginning of Jesus own ministry, the proclamation, the expression of it was God's righteousness.
And likewise we find that at the end of his ministry, the vindication of Jesus in his passion and in his trial before Pilate is a recognition that he will be vindicated in the light of righteousness.
For now. And the emphasis upon for now. In chapter 26, verse 64, he tells Pilate, you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven.
That is to say that Jesus was conscious throughout his life that he was doing the righteous will of God.
And so as Peter at Pentecost and later, we find the Apostle John in his Epistles. They describe, if one could summarize, the ministry of Jesus and the life of Jesus. It's the life of the righteous one that is the focus, the life of the righteous one.
Now, what Jesus was saying here was not new.
The rabbis have already held to this. They held that in the Messianic age that the divine law would be perfectly fulfilled and made manifest.
Likewise, we find in the Dead Sea Scrolls that the Qumran community saw their hero as the teacher of righteousness.
And so Jesus in Matthew is the teacher of righteousness.
Here is the one who has the highest of Jewish expectations.
And Jesus is proclaiming that he is in continuity with those expectations.
He is not contradicting that kind of hope.
And of course, we know that anything that is divine is intolerable unless it is good, unless it is righteous.
And so there is this fulfillment of the divine purpose in terms of such righteousness.
And that's why the disciples, as Matthew sees them, are those who therefore must be marked by this angst, this longing, this desirous of a righteous life.
The beatitude reminds us that the disciple is one who must hunger and who must thirst after righteousness.
He must be one who is also willing to suffer for for righteousness sake.
He must also recognize that it's impossible to enter into his kingdom unless we exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees in the verse that we read in chapter 5, verse 20, we have either to outdo the righteousness of the Jewish tradition or forever remain outside his kingdom.
That's very solemn.
And so the final charge, the disciples, is to teach whatever I have commanded you.
Solemnity of the disciple of Christ is that he has to live righteously. He has to proclaim righteousness.
And in the process we find that Matthew therefore is stringently concerned about self deception.
That one of the dangers of proclaiming that we are his disciples is the readiness with which we will be self deceived.
Many shall be lost for that reason. Indeed many shall be last who thought they were first, as in 1930 and 2016 remind us, many shall be found not worthy of him.
Chapter 10:34 38 reminds us solemnly of the unworthiness of those who do not follow in the way of righteousness.
So indeed there are many who are called, but few who are chosen.
The Christian life is therefore a heroic life, a life of fortitude, a life that is marked by ascetic discipline.
And the shibboleths of orthodoxy mean little or nothing to Matthew.
If the heart is not obedient to the will of God, then one is not his disciple.
And so in the self deception of doing things, of performing things, of propagating things, the anti professional nominal membership means nothing to Jesus in Matthew's gospel.
So that even the mighty works that we may do in your name, chapter seven, verse 22, are nothing. He says, I never knew you.
And so being in the right circles again means nothing.
Again Jesus is very forthright that even though you may be naturally born to me as brother or sister, if you do not do the will of your Father in heaven, you're not such, you're not in that family.
Those who are truly his brothers and sisters of mother are those who do the will of God.
So even natural relationships are really immaterial when it comes to the righteousness of God.
And so he concludes this section in chapter seven by saying, whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and my sister and mother.
And so to be rightly related to Jesus is not a notional thing.
Rightly related to Jesus requires obedience in righteousness.
So unless we have a right character and a right behavior in the sight of God, we're not his disciples.
Well, we may ask, what is this righteousness then that Jesus is insisting upon?
Yesterday we mentioned that according to the Talmudic tradition, there were 613 commandments. In addition, there were a whole series of other traditions.
There were rules, there were precedents, there were examples that made the sacred Torah, in fact, an intolerable burden for the conscience. Because there were earnest souls, there were simple souls who long to find out how we could distill all of this and say, well, what is the essential thing? I mean, we may miss it. We may miss the essential. In the midst of all this haystack, you see, where is the needle in the middle of all of this? What's the vital thing that is required of a vital righteous life?
So there was a tremendous need for clarification.
What was the great commandment?
What really mattered? What was vital for living?
And this is what Matthew deals with.
And he tells us that it doesn't mean carelessness to the law.
One of the things that we find that Matthew is portraying so vividly about Jesus is that there's nothing careless about Jesus life before all the law, as the Jews themselves had elaborated.
And so we find that if one looks in care that there are many passages where Jesus is explained for what he's doing, it seems to be a flagrant thing against the law to heal on the Sabbath day.
But there's an essential principle that lies behind what he apparently seemed to be doing inconsistently, and that is that mercy transcends legalism. On the Sabbath day or in many other ways, we find that Matthew is describing and putting the spotlight upon Jesus and showing him up with all the scrutiny that attitudes may be revealed.
And always we find that the right attitude that Jesus has to it all.
And so it's only Matthew that quotes in chapter 15, verses 17 to 19.
But the law remains a valid obligation.
There's not one jot, there's not one iota that will be abolished till all is accomplished in him.
And so at the same time there is the recognition that in Christ is summarized what is the essential character of the law because it's in love, that there is a fulfillment of all the law and the prophets, if one is to be able to reduce it all and condense it all. To one thing, it's loving God.
It's the love that we find expressed in Jesus Christ.
Now, at the same time, we may say, well, how does this square with the Apostle Paul's teaching?
Doesn't the Apostle Paul remind us in the Epistle to the Romans and again in Epistle to the Galatians, that Christ is the end of the law, that by his death he's abolished its claims upon us?
Why then is the law only a custodian to lead us to Christ, or a schoolmaster that might direct us to Christ?
Isn't Paul really rather taking a rather different attitude from the writer Matthew?
No, Both writers are consistent about one truth, and that is that the law is no longer the way of salvation.
There's nothing valid about the law and its fulfillment as a way of salvation.
But at the same time, we're not discharged from the obligations of it.
So what really we find that the new covenant, the New Testament is reminding us, is that the law is now shown to be interpreted in a new way, that to be lawful, to be righteous is to be Christlike.
For the law is summarized in him, the law is embodied in him, he is our righteousness.
And therefore, if we are to be Christlike, we are still to be righteous.
In fact, more so.
And so in Romans 3:31, we are reminded we are still to uphold that law.
But what Jesus was saying in Matthew's account in charging the rabbinic authorities is that they were doubly wrong as custodians of the law.
First of all, they were faulted because they were not upholding, they were not keeping the law, they were quibbling about the law, they were casuists.
They were trying to create deviant interpretations to escape from the full implications of it.
So they weren't keeping the law in spite of all their talk about it.
But then also they were not understanding the law.
And so in chapter 16, verse 12 in Matthew, we're reminded that there's a need for us to understand what is the purpose of the law. So Jesus reminds the disciples. In fact, he warns the disciples, beware of their teaching. It's false teaching.
So what then are the principles that Jesus is expounding concerning the righteousness of God?
And it seems that there is a threefold answer that Jesus is giving in the Gospel.
First of all, Jesus is making the demands of the law more radical.
And so we read in chapter 19, in a great elaboration of this, that it's not just simply, as he says elsewhere, the outside of the cup that matters. It's what the inside looks like, whether that's clean too, whether the heart, what is the state of the heart? What's the state of the attitudes, what's the state of the mind?
And so he takes, for example, the acts of adultery and of murder.
And he says, yes, of course, the law says you mustn't be adulterous and you mustn't murder.
But are we in the process of pontificating about these things, forgetting the state of heart and mind?
So really, Jesus is getting to the root of the matter by talking about lust and talking about contempt of other people.
Because if one looks to see what is the source of adultery is lustfulness, and when we look to see what is a source of murder, it's contempt of another person.
And so Jesus is caricaturing the external forms of piety in chapter six, which are not far reaching enough.
The whole problem with legalism is that we can never pontificate about attitudes.
We can only deal with the final fruition of attitudes.
We can only deal, in other words, with the fruit, but not with the root of corruption.
And so Jesus is indicating, as we have to recognize again in our own society, that Christian orthodoxy is woefully in shortcoming compared with the need of attitudes that are right before God. That's why tomorrow we'll be looking at the emotions, looking at the affections, because they are the source, those attitudinal stances that are important for us to allow the Gospel to penetrate into.
The second thing that Jesus is reminding us is that one has to go beyond the demands of the law and see them in terms of regulations and recognize that we have to go back to the original intent of God himself.
And so Jesus says, yes, remember that even the provision that was made in chapter 19 about the situation of adultery and divorce, go beyond what was devised by Moses concerning this matter and realize what was the original will of the Creator in the institution of marriage.
Forget the taboos or the provisions that are made for shortfall and go back to the original purpose of it all. From the beginning it was not so.
And so Jesus is all the time giving us deeper insight, probing more deeply to the original intent of God. Now, why is he going back to the original intent of God? Well, the third thing that Jesus does is to point out that the law of God is the mirror of the character of God.
God is not arbitrary in his rules.
God is, in his ruling, expressive of his character.
So when we look at the Ten Commandments, we're looking at who God is in the first Four commandments, and then recognizing in commandments six, ten, who. Who man is in the sight of God.
This is the nature of who God is. This is the nature of who man is.
And of course, always biblically, we find that it's impossible to have a right anthropology without having a right theology.
It's utter confusion when we try to establish anthropology without theology.
And so likewise in the Lord's Prayer, we find that the first three petitions of the Lord's Prayer are reminding us of who God is.
And in the light of that, reminding us who man is.
And so we find that the whole purpose of the law is to refer back to who is the character of God.
And when we look to see who the character of God is in this context, we can understand how all the 613 commandments and all the other traditions and all the other interpretations of the Talmud are all reduced to one thing.
That is that God is love, and that in the reality of his love, all the commandments are summarized in that thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself.
And so we find that the summary is given to us that it's love that is the canon for the interpretation of the law.
And why is it?
Because that's the character of God. So the whole of this is thrown back in terms of who he is.
And of course, in the process of referring everything back to who God is, Jesus then of course, abolishes all legalism.
Jesus is really a span in the works, and he's demolishing the whole Talmudic framework of society.
As far as the scribes and Pharisees are concerned. The implacable hostility that Jesus represents to the Jewish society is understood in the context of all of this. He's undermined. He's demolished the whole fabric of what they stood for, what they professed. And now we can see, as we were touching on yesterday, why it is that his burden is light.
Because he shows us that the basis of righteousness is as lovers.
And if we love God, then we find that this burden of righteousness is a light one.
And we find it becomes a possibility to think of a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees.
So that's our first point this morning, that true disciples are those who live in the righteousness of the law, but a righteousness that is now interpreted in the person of Jesus Christ.
Now we come therefore to the second point, and that is that disciples, Christian Disciples are those who are learning, therefore, to live now with new relationships.
They are looking at things from a very different mindset than Judaism.
And the word new, as you know, Kainos k a I n o s in the New Testament is referring to that which is of a new kind.
That's why there's a need of conversion. That's why there's a need of a change of mindset. That's why there's a need of new birth, because we're living, therefore, all over again.
And in fact, the story of every Christian, the story of everyone here this morning, is a story really of a new chapter rewritten of Genesis 1.
In fact, the Apostle Paul writing to The Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 4 reminds us that it's just like that. It has the same cosmic significance that the God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
It's only recently that I have begun to have a whole new understanding of the interpretation of Genesis Chapter one. Let me just share with you what I found.
Modern scholarship shows, I think quite suggestively, quite cogently, that Genesis 1. One, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, is in fact not a substantive statement, it's an introductory statement. And it could be interpreted like when God began to create the heavens and the earth, in the process of that beginning, there's already the threat of the chaotic.
That's why we have that very difficult verse, one of the most difficult verses, the most mysterious verse perhaps, of the Bible, that when God began to create the heavens and the earth, then the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
That in the Hebrew, as it puts it, when God began to create the heavens and the earth, there was the threat of tohuboku. And the chaotic is defined in two ways. The chaotic is defined in terms of that which is formless, because the nature of chaos is lawlessness, boundlessness.
That which is unstructured, that's tohu, and bohu is that which is void.
It's empty, it's fruitless, it's unreproductive.
And it's as if creation is an answer to the threat of the mystery of evil.
Now, we're not saying that evil and good are coeval and that there are therefore two principles, that there's an intrinsic dualism. We don't believe that the Bible makes it quite clear that the sovereignty of God transcends.
But The Bible gives us no explanation for the eruption or for the origin of evil.
So that even in the good garden of Eden, there's already the serpent slithering through the glade, ready to tempt Adam and Eve.
Already there's the potential that there's a fruit that can be deadly to the taste in the knowledge of good and evil.
So we're not given any explanation about the origin of evil or the possibility of the eruption of the chaotic.
But really what Genesis 1 is reminding us is the moral sovereignty of God over the chaotic.
And so the first three days of creation are the threat to the potentiality of that which is chaotic, which is boundless.
And so we find that in days one, two and three there is this recognition that God has created bounds.
He separated, he's structured.
And so he's separated light from darkness, he separated land from sea and the sky from the earth.
And then we find that days 4, 5 and 6 are the answer to Bohu, to emptiness. He populates the heavens with the stars in the firmament, he establishes the reproduction of fishes in the sea and of birds in the air.
In day five, in the processes of replication and fertilization, he populates the earth with land, with plants, animals, and man himself.
So Genesis 1 is God's sovereignty over the threat of the chaotic.
Now, likewise, each of our lives is a replication of that story that the God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shone in our chaotic hearts, in our chaotic temperaments, in the boundlessness of our self will, in all the threat of destruction that we have innate and intrinsic to our own being.
And so there's the possibility of a new creation.
So every Christian story is a re understanding of that amazing insight.
And so we find that the same parallel that we find in Second Corinthians chapter 4, and which we find again repeated in Second Corinthians chapter 5, when Paul says, if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation, all things are passed away.
Behold, all things are become new and all things are of God.
Anything that is lasting, that is structured, that is the antithesis of the chaotic in our lives. These are the things of God, says Paul.
And we find the same parallelism springing up in Peter's mind in 1 Peter 2, chapter 9, verse 9, where he of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, you've been summoned.
That is the nature of a disciple.
You've been summoned out of chaos, you've been summoned for newness of life.
And so when we think of the Christian life We have to think of it therefore, in these radical terms of new creation. Re creation.
That's what's envisaged. And that's why the weakness of so many of us as Christians is because we haven't seen the radicalism of our life in Christ in the same categories as Genesis chapter one.
If we did, we would take it far more seriously, we would see it far more radically, we would see it as a far greater upheaval in the whole nature of our formation of character.
In Christ Jesus, says Paul, writing to the Galatians 6:15, There is neither circumcision that avails anything nor uncircumcision. None of this ceremonial, this cultural definition of the religious life really matters.
But in Christ Jesus, says Paul, there's a new creation find of the way in which we have therefore to learn new relationships is that Christ is represented to us as a new Adam.
The second Adam, or as the Alexandrine fathers used to speak about, the replication has been provided in Christ, as Paul says in Romans 5, verses 12 to 19, as in Edom all died, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
The first man Adam was made a living soul.
The last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
The first man is of the earth earthy, the second is the Lord from heaven.
There's a hymn that sometimes beautifully expresses this reality when we're reminded, O loving wisdom, of our God. When all the sin and shame a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came O wisest love. That flesh and blood which did in Adam fail Should strive afresh against the foe.
Should strive and should prevail.
A third imagery, new creation is one, the new Adam is two. A third that we find is the idea of a new image.
As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:47, as we are born the image of the earthy, so we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
Why is the image so important? Because God created man in his own image and likeness.
That's the very first reality that we find concerning man in Genesis 1:26 28.
We find therefore that again and again in the New Testament, there's this echo that the Christian character is really the bearing of the image of God, bearing the likeness of God.
And research, archaeological research, has explained to us what this image bearing means.
It's not so much physical likeness, it's not that, but it's a moral depritizing for God.
On the frontiers, for example, of the Egyptian civilization, the bounds of that empire were marked by statues that bore the image of the ruling Pharaoh that was as far as the territory of that Pharaoh went.
And God has intended that the realm of mankind is within the bounds of his kingdom, that man should be his deputy, that man should be his viceroy, his vicegerents that represent him in a life of holiness and righteousness.
And so Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:23, that the new man is one who is created in righteousness and true holiness.
That to bear the image of God is to express the righteousness of God, to show the reality of a godly life.
What are the marks then of such newness of life that the discipleship involves?
Well, we find that there's in the New Testament two foci on the newness of this new creation that we represent in our discipling.
One is the imagery of the start of its newness.
The start of its newness is therefore communicated to us by John and Peter as new birth.
Or Paul more emphatically speaks about this newness in terms of co creation.
That just as Christ has been risen from the dead, so we are risen again from the dead. Yesterday we were touching on the reality that the mark of the Christian life is that we've seen a transformation of some of the traits of our character, things that were antithetical, things that were impossible for us to once be.
We find that the reality of this newness of character is in terms of the way that God is changing us in our temperaments.
And then we find that in addition to the idea of a start for his newness, there's also a continuity, there's a process, there's a progress in its newness.
And we find that when Paul speaks about restoring God's image in our lives, that is a continual process, that we are to become more and more conformed to the image of His Son, that we are in the process of this transformation to his likeness.
So there's a restoration of image as a continuous process.
And also we find that both John and Paul speak about this continuous process as an enabling for righteousness, so that there is this awareness of progression in righteousness.
And we find that there's two specific rules that the New Testament seems to circumscribe about this nature of newness in our discipleship.
One is that we can have no true response to God without regeneration by God.
That it's not just simply a cynical joke, that the born again movement is something that's become very silly in our society. It has become very inconsistent in our society, certainly. But the reality of new birth is biblically established for Us, we must be born again.
There has to be a recognition that we live by a new principle, that we live with a new outlook, that we live with a new mindset, that in fact, just as in the threat of the chaotic, there has to be creation.
So this is true of our lives.
So there is no true response to God without regeneration by God.
This means that without the grace of God, without the call of God for our lives, all that we can do is futile.
So we need his grace, we need his power, we need his salvation for our lives.
But then secondly, the New Testament is making it very clear that there is no true regeneration without our response to God.
How do we know that we're born again?
How do we know that we are called of God only by our response?
So that we have the solemn responsibility of recognizing that latent regeneration, the potential for this regeneration is not a biblical idea.
So that without our responsiveness there's no evidence of that new birth.
Then we look to see what in this discipling are the marks of the newness of this life within us? What is the evidence that we do have this new character?
Well, there are 10 things perhaps that the Bible, the New Testament tells us about this. Let me just, without elaborating on them, just give them to you.
Generally, of course, we have a new orientation.
Our lives are no longer self centered, they are Christ centered.
And Christ centeredness in our life means that we have a new appetite for God, that we do hunger and thirst for this new awareness of righteousness in Christ.
We have new energies that indicate that we're being empowered by the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Just as we have new insights that give us a new mind in Christ Jesus.
So generally speaking, we see the reality of newness, of love, newness of joy, newness of an imitation of Christ, newness of humility before Christ.
All of these are general traits that mark our lives broadly.
But specifically, the new man in Christ has 10 qualities.
First of all, the reality of this newness is that we know God and we long to know him better.
We're living today in a society where so many Christian leaders have become so sterile and so empty in their ministries because they don't know God well enough.
They're talking too much about him, they're acting too much as his representative without knowing him personally well enough.
Some of my friends and I myself are finding that we were prepared to throw all this aside. All this paraphernalia is nonsense and unnecessary in comparison with knowing Him.
So those who are truly his disciples are those who long to know him better.
And the reason why we want to long to know him better is because we know him already sufficiently to long for more.
That's why.
So this angst is the great thing. One of my friends who gave up his professorship in public health and epidemiology in our university in British Columbia, a brilliant man and with great academic distinction. And yet, now that he's a pastor, he seems to be really doing nothing other than pastoring the sheep in his little flock. And he's got a small church. And I said to him, I'm curious to know why it is that all your abilities and all your ambitions and all the striving that you once had, you no longer seem to be harnessing in the church.
And he said, well, the reason for it, Jim, is that I have realized that to know God is so overwhelmingly significant in my life that nothing else will do, nothing else matters. All the organization, all the energy, nothing compared with the knowledge that I need now to know Him.
So that's the first thing that we seek to know the truth in God.
Secondly, we find that the mark of this newness of life in Christ is that we're trusting Christ with such a conviction that we find that the progress of our life is an increasing dependence upon God.
One of the things that we find in Matthew's gospel, and it's only unique to Matthew, is that five times he uses a technical word that is translated as little faith. But it's in the Greek. It's one word.
And tragically, this word little faith is referring not to those who are in the periphery of the Christian community, but those who are Christ's disciples.
And perhaps this is the mark of a true disciple that woefully we realize how inadequately we trust Jesus Christ, how inadequately we really commit our lives in trust to Him. But again, just as we woefully don't know God well enough, so we are sensitive that we don't trust Christ deeply enough.
And we therefore, in our discipling, long to know how to trust him more deeply.
Thirdly, we find that all our hopes are now in God.
That when we live in the light of an eternal dimension for our lives, we realize that we have a new purpose because we have great hope.
And then we find, therefore, that as travelers on the way, that all our hopes are not pinned in the past and our achievements or on our ambitions, but only in God.
Fourthly, we will find that as disciples that there will be new tensions for our life.
There will be far more tension about the Awareness of sin.
One of the progresses that marks the life of the disciple, is becoming increasingly more sensitive to our sinfulness.
And I look back and I am shocked and horrified at the smugness of most of my Christian life.
And we discover that we get an appalling sensitivity. So we end up life as the chief of sinners. Whereas when we started our life, we thought we weren't too bad.
There's a progress in sin sensitivity.
And therefore we live with this tension that intensifies. Don't think there's any let up. The intensification of the battle against good and evil grows in our Christian life.
So don't think you're going backwards when you feel the battle is more hot than when you started.
Then fifthly, we find that loving God is what now centralizes what empowers what focuses our life.
Just as those Jews long to find some synthesizing principle that gave integration to their life.
As we go hither and thither with this or that interest, and we wonder which one we should choose of them all.
The discipleship of Jesus Christ simplifies it all by saying, there's only one thing that's necessary and that is to love him.
And so, really, the progress of discipleship is becoming overtly a lover of God.
That we really discover that this intensification of our Christian life is that we become lovers of God.
Then sixthly, we will discover that this newness of life involves a new love of our neighbor.
That there's a much more realistic relationship that we have that we didn't have before.
We find it in the home between spouses. We find it with our children, we find it with our friends.
We find that really the heart of the Christian life must be at the heart.
Now, one of the things that makes so many of our lives bogus is that we leave our broken relationships in shambles and we just try and suppress and forget them. And in the consequence, we live hollow lives for the rest of our existence.
And so true discipleship means going back and doing as much reparation as possible and beginning if God in his forgiveness gives us a new start.
That nevertheless, we do this in a much more realistic way than we've ever done before.
I've come to believe that the heart of the Christian life must consist in the way as husbands and wives, as parents and children, as masters and servants, we treat those relationships.
If we forget that as the hearth of discipleship, as the very heart of our existence, then our discipleship is always a sham.
So there's a more realism about our social obligations.
Seventhly, we find that our prayer life becomes a prayer life more increasingly as a gift of God's spirit.
We will be touching much more deeply next week on the subject of prayer. But just, just mention that now that we find that our prayer life becomes a more gifted life, not a doing life, but receiving a gift of God. We see prayer really as God's great gift to us.
And we respond to that gift in calling him Father and knowing the intimacy of him as our Father.
We also find, eighthly, that our Christian lives will have are growing downwards.
We become less successful, we begin to have more open hands, we begin to give things away.
We no longer seek a possessive spirit, we are more surrendered.
And therefore we discover that our progress is not upwards but downwards.
We begin to discover that humility has a value that we never thought it had.
We begin to discover that repentance is intensified.
We begin to discover, as John the Baptist discovered, that if he is to increase, I must decrease.
And so the extolling of God therefore means more humility on our part.
Then we will discover what we've been talking about this morning, that righteousness is pleasing God, righteousness is loving God.
Righteousness is the expression of gratitude.
There's so much being given to us in the context of that. We are therefore grateful. And finally we will discover that the Christian life consists therefore more richly of praising God.
Our lives will be filled with praise.
We will be giving God thanks for everything at all times.
And we'll therefore discover that true biblical spirituality consists of living out this new life and thanking God for saving us from the chaotic that indeed he's spoken to us out of darkness and he's communicated the reality of these things. Well, I was too ambitious this morning because, as you see, we haven't got through the last two points.
We'll have to leave that.
But the consequence then of such discipling, that we see that there's a progress in holiness, we see that sanctification is our task and our privilege.
That therefore we begin much more openly, unashamedly to recognize that godliness is what it's all about.
Well, it's already 5:2, so we have to stop there. Perhaps tomorrow, when we're dealing with the affections, we'll have an opportunity to touch at least on those last two points, and especially the one that I'm sure is intriguing to some of us, how it is that the Christlikeness that we're looking for will therefore be all the more human, make us more genuinely human than we were when we started this pilgrimage.
[01:01:21] Speaker A: 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.
[01:01:50] Speaker B: You.
