Snatched Away!

  

From time to time I’ll read a story about someone falling onto subway tracks, unable to save himself or herself, when a bystander is transformed from being a bystander to being a savior – jumping down onto the tracks and snatching the person facing death away to safety.

 

Yesterday morning, as I began reading Galatians, I was struck by the word “rescue” in the following: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen.” (Gal. 1:3 – 5).

 

This brought me to Colossians 1:13 -14, “Who rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins…”

 

Also consider what Jesus told Paul about Paul’s calling, that Paul would open the eyes of the Gentiles “so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.” (Acts 26:18).

 

We need to be rescued from the present evil age, which is the domain of darkness, the dominion of Satan…by and to our Lord Jesus Christ. But I don’t think we (professing Christians) believe this, for we live lives of accommodation rather than Gospel proclamation. We fail to recognize the hostility of the world to the Kingdom of God, and we usually seek the path of least resistance in our daily lives rather than obedience to Jesus Christ. Holiness is not something we pursue, and we’d rather convince others of our political persuasions than of their need for Jesus Christ. We are pretty much people of the present evil age.

 

For me, I need constant reminders that I am to live for others and not myself; that there is the quicksand of the temporal all around me; that I must not fall into self-righteousness, the love of money, materialism, or pursue what Francis Schaffer styled, “Personal peace and affluence.” I need rescue from the values of this present evil age – in their apparently “good” forms as well as their blatantly evil forms.

 

Every day I am convinced of my need of Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior.

 

But I want to go back to Galatians and the word “rescue,” for the Greek word for rescue in Galatians is different than the word translated “rescued” in Colossians (I’m using the NASB). The word used in Galatians is seldom used in the Greek New Testament, and the force of the word really means “to pluck” or “to snatch” or “to jerk.” We see this word in Jesus’ command, “If your eye offends you pluck it out.”

 

This is why I began this reflection with a person being snatched away from subway tracks, because this is the image that we have in the Greek verb – that of being snatched away from something. This is something that happens to us, we cannot rescue ourselves, we cannot cause ourselves to be snatched away from this present evil age – only Jesus Christ can do this for us.

 

Note that in order for Jesus to snatch us away that our sins must be forgiven, and in order for our sins to be forgiven that Jesus must “give Himself” for us. All three of the above verses in Galatians, Colossians, and Acts speak of the forgiveness of sins. O that we might see the hideousness and wickedness of sin, of all sin, not so much my neighbor’s sin but my own sin, and not just the sins that I commit, but the sinful person I am outside of Jesus Christ. I not only need my sins forgiven, but I need a change of nature – for without a change of nature I will continue to live the life of a sinner in spiritual death. I need to be snatched away from this present evil age.

 

I can take no credit for having been snatched away from spiritual death, I contributed absolutely nothing to this event – and when a person realizes that he has indeed been snatched away, that person is quick to recognize that he or she had nothing to do with the rescue – all credit, all glory, goes to the Rescuer, the Deliverer.

 

In looking at other English translations and paraphrases of Galatians 1:4 I haven’t seen any that convey the force of being “plucked” or “snatched,” perhaps the idea is too unusual to translate it this way – but we miss something by not considering the force of the word – for I think we can agree than should we ever fall onto subway tracks with a train’s lights coming toward us, that being snatched away to safety is our best hope of survival.

 

A Quote To Ponder On "Accepting Christ"

 

From A.W. Tozer:

“I cannot estimate the number, although I think it is a very large number, of people who have been brought into some kind of religious experience by a fleeting formality of ‘accepting Christ,’ and a great, great number of them are still not saved. The results of this are all around us as people who falsely count themselves saved still behave like the sinners they are instead of behaving like someone who is truly born again. This sad increase of people who are deceived in this way is a direct result of an irresponsible approach to evangelism among evangelicals – an approach that suggests “it is the easiest thing in the world to ‘accept Jesus’” and permits people to accept him simply by a fleeting emotional impulse.

 

“In previous generations, the call to ‘accept’ Christ communicated the mighty and glorious truth that individuals do not have to earn heaven through good works. However, since that time, the word ‘accept’ has degenerated quite significantly and now implies someone can become a Christian apart from real repentance and spiritual transformation. The call to ‘accept’ Christ has produced a generation of Christians, or so-called Christians, that are impenitent in their heart, frivolous in their spirit, and worldly in their conduct.”

 

“Is justification from past offenses all that distinguishes a Christian from a sinner? Can a man become a believer in Christ and be no better than he was before? Does the gospel offer no more than a skillful advocate to get the guilty sinners off free at the day of judgment?”

 

A Quote to Ponder on the Old Testament

 

“The Old Testament is not to the New like the chrysalis, out of which the living “life” has burst, and is now only a lifeless casement; rather is it like the personal appearance of Him, who has in man’s sight ‘no form or comeliness’, but which, when He appeared in His glory, was transfigured, and shone transparently, with a portion of His Majesty which was veiled within it; or so again, that His risen Body, still bore the print of the nails and of the spear, and could be handled, although it was no longer subject to the laws of flesh, but showed itself to be a ‘glorified Body’, and what before seemed the exception and a miracle, when It walked on the water, now appeared as the rule; and Jesus came and went uniformly after the manner of a Spirit, to accustom us to think on His Body as spiritualized, yea, Deified and yet a Body, so should we regard the Old Testament, not as the dead body of our Lord, to be embalmed with honour, and laid with the dead, but as a living and true Body, which it hath pleased God to take, in order to be accessible to us; and wherein alone we can see Him “Full of grace and truth.”  

Edward Bouverie Pusey, Lecture 24 (Italics mine).

Overcoming – Four Principles in Revelation 12 (Part 10)

  

“And they overcame him because the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even unto death.” Revelation 12:11.

 

What does it mean to overcome “because of the blood of the Lamb”? Let’s begin by noting the connection between “the blood of the Lamb” and “they did not love their life even unto death.” For the Lamb shed His blood in dying, and we are not to spare ourselves from dying; indeed, we are to follow the Lamb wherever He goes (Rev. 14:4).

 

In Revelation 1:5 we see Jesus Christ styled as “the firstborn of the dead.” In 1:18 Christ says, “…I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever more.” In 2:8 we read, “The first and the last, who was dead and has come to life.” Then in 5:5 – 6 we read that one of the elders tells John, “Stop weeping; behold, the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals.” When John looks for the Lion he records, “And I saw between the throne (with the four living creatures) and the elders a Lamb standing, as if slain…” Let us never lose sight of the fact of the Divine principle that the Lion overcomes as the Lamb, that God’s strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). There is no other path in overcoming for the saint in Jesus Christ – it is not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of God (Zechariah 4:6).

 

It is the “marriage supper of the Lamb” that we see in Revelation 19:7ff, and it is the Father and the Lamb that are the Temple and glory of the City (Revelation chapters 21 – 22). The letter of Revelation is particularly the unveiling of the Lamb, containing a call to His disciples to live as He lives, to overcome as He overcame, to die with Him and to live with Him.

 

Overcoming by the blood of the Lamb begins by recognizing that the Lamb lived and died sacrificially and that we are to live and die sacrificially; hence, “they did not love their life even unto death.” Any purported “Christian” teaching that seeks to spare us from the Cross deserves the response of Jesus Christ to Peter, “Get behind Me Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s” (Matthew 17:21 – 23).

 

The letter of Revelation does not teach us how to escape tribulation, it teaches us to overcome tribulation by following the Lamb wherever He goes…including to the Cross.

 

How then, are we to understand overcoming “by the blood of the Lamb”? First and foremost, as we’ve seen above, we are to look to the Lamb as our source of life and our way of life.

 

Next, let’s consider that the Lamb has purchased us, redeemed us by His blood (as we’ll see, there are complementary facets to the blood of the Lamb). If the Lamb has purchased us by His blood then we no longer belong to ourselves, but we belong to the Lamb. We are the property of the Lamb.

 

Now I suppose I should point out that we have never belonged to ourselves; we have either been the slaves of sin and Satan and death, or we are the sons and daughters of the Living God through Jesus Christ. Martin Luther had a concept that he termed “the bondage of the will.” He meant that our wills, as much as we would like to think otherwise, are either living under the bondage of Satan and sin and death, or that we have been raised to life in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:1 – 10) and that we now live in the bondage of freedom to Jesus Christ. We are either going to serve God in Christ or we are going to serve Satan – what we are not going to do is to serve ourselves, though serving Satan usually looks like we are serving ourselves because Satan is all about exalting the “self.”

 

When Jesus says that we cannot have two masters (Matthew 6:24), that we will either serve God or the things of this world, He didn’t give us a third option to serve ourselves because that option has never been available to us. I understand that this is offensive to us, as it should be – for the Gospel teaches us that we must surrender our self-righteousness and egos and come to Jesus Christ in confession of sin and repentance and find our all-in-all in Him (ponder 1 Corinthians 1:17 – 2:5).

 

When we realize that we do not belong to ourselves, but that we have been purchased with a price, with the blood of the Lamb, then we can commit our souls to our Good Shepherd, knowing that nothing will come into our lives without first passing through His will, and that He will be with us in all circumstances; furthermore, we can live in the confidence that in all situations we are called to be His witnesses – no matter the outcome to us – for our lives are rooted in eternity and death is but a portal into everlasting glory in Jesus Christ.

 

We have an enigmatic glimpse of the purposes of God in the suffering of believers in Revelation 6:11, “And there was given to each of them a white robe; and they were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been, would be completed also.”

 

While, as we’ll see, the blood of the Lamb cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:5 – 2:2); the idea of redemption, of our being purchased by the blood of Christ, just may be preeminent in the Bible. Consider:

 

“…the church of god which He purchased with His own blood” (Acts 20:28).

 

“…for you have been bought with a price…” (1 Cor. 6:20).

 

“In Him we have redemption through His blood…” (Eph. 1:7).

 

“in whom we have redemption…” (Col. 1:14 – note the connection between redemption and forgiveness in Col. 1:14 and Eph. 1:7).

 

“knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18 – 19).

 

“…You were slain and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9).

 

To teach the cleansing of the blood of Christ without teaching the redemption of the blood of Christ, and what that redemption means in our daily lives, is to give people a partial Gospel – if we call ourselves Christians then we do not belong to ourselves, how much clearer can Jesus be than in Mark 8:34 – 38? “He who seeks to save his soul will lose it.”

 

The man or woman who would overcome the beast in this world must surrender himself or herself to Jesus Christ – he or she must die with Christ and be raised with Christ as a way of life that leads from here to eternity.

 

He that desires to overcome must learn what it means to belong to Jesus Christ, to be the property of Another.

 

What bill of sale has my name on it?

 

What bill of sale has your name on it?

Overcoming – Four Principles in Revelation 12 (Part 9)

  

“And they overcame him because the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even unto death.” Revelation 12:11.

 

To have a testimony that overcomes the enemy, we must be convinced of the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Paul writes to Timothy (2 Tim. 1:12) that in the midst of his suffering he is, “not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him [Paul’s life, his soul, his very existence] until that day.”

 

The context of 2 Timothy 2:12 is suffering for the Gospel, the context of Revelation 12:11 is suffering for the Gospel. If we are convinced of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, then we will not be ashamed of the Gospel or of our Lord. Jesus says that whoever is ashamed of Him and His words, that He will be ashamed of that person when He comes in the glory of the Father (Mark 8:38). There is a reproach associated with identification with Jesus Christ and we do a great disservice if we teach Christians to think that they can escape conflict and reproach if they witness in “such and such” a manner; when in fact Jesus teaches that if the world hates Him that it will hate us (John 15:18 – 6:4).

 

The Gospel is a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others, but to the “called” it is “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 18 -31). We want to persuade others of the Gospel, we want to see others come to know the wonderful grace of Jesus Christ, we want this so badly that we will lay our preferences and agendas and comforts down for others – we will learn to “suffer all things for the sake of the elect” (2 Tim. 2:10), laying our lives down for the brethren (1 John 3:16). We live this Way in Christ knowing that it entails difficulty and rejection and misunderstanding. We do not look for rejection, but if we follow Christ and His Cross we know that rejection will come in any number of ways; we learn to hunger for the “fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (Phil. 3:10). We learn to embrace suffering and death so that others might live (John 12:24).

 

Peter writes, “Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of his time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God” (1 Peter 4:1 – 2).

 

“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the degree that you share in the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you” (1 Peter 4:12 – 14). Compare this with Romans 8:12 – 17.

 

We must be convinced of the love of God for us if we are to speak and live the testimony of Jesus Christ, because if we are going to live and speak the testimony of Jesus Christ we are going to suffer – and it is the certainty of the love of God for us in Jesus Christ that will enable us to overcome.

 

Any system or method or approach to witnessing for Jesus Christ that does not emphasize His love for us and others, and does not emphasize suffering for Him, falls short of Biblical teaching – I write as someone who has previously been down this pathway, and I deeply regret it.

 

When Paul writes that we are “more than overcomers” in Romans 8:37, he writes this in the context of God’s love for us in Christ and our suffering for Christ. Consider:

 

“…if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him, and I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us…For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered” (Romans 8:17 – 18, 36 – 37).

 

It is in this context that Paul writes that we are the sons of the living God, that we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that we are coheirs with Christ, and that in all our suffering we are “more than overcomers” or are “super conquerors”. Paul leads his readers to this dynamic conclusion:

 

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angles, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38 – 39).

 

Now that we know what Paul was convinced of: What am I convinced of?

 

What are you convinced of?

Overcoming – Four Principles in Revelation 12 (Part 8)

 

“And they overcame him because the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even unto death.” Revelation 12:11.

 

As I continue to ponder elements of our personal testimony, I keep thinking of Polycarp, who was martyred around 160 A.D. Here is an excerpt of The Martyrdom of Polycarp:

 

…the proconsul asked if he were Polycarp. And when he confessed that he was, the proconsul tried to persuade him to recant, saying, “Consider your age,” and other things such as they are accustomed to say: “Swear by the Guardian Spirit of Caesar; repent; say, ‘Away with the atheists!’ [Christians were considered atheists] … Swear the oath, and I will release you, revile Christ,” Polycarp replied, “For eighty-six years I have been his servant, and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?”

 

I don’t recall when I first read Polycarp’s response to the proconsul (and there is more to this interchange, I hope you will read it), but I have never forgotten those words, “For eighty-six years I have been his servant, and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?”

What spoke to me decades ago, and what continues to speak to me, is a life of faithful friendship between Polycarp and Christ, for while Polycarp styles the relationship as that between King and servant (for the context of standing against imperial Rome demands that Polycarp be perfectly clear as to who is the True King), the words “and he has done me no wrong” contain the sense of “he has always been good to me, merciful, kind, and trustworthy.” You see, a personal testimony is about more than an “event,” it is about the faithfulness of Jesus Christ in relationship.

 

When Paul stood before various tribunals after his arrest in Jerusalem, he did indeed testify about the event he experienced on the road to Damascus, but he did that to lay a foundation for his extended testimony about Jesus Christ. Putting this another way, considering the Parable of the Sower, would it make any sense for the seed which grew up on shallow soil to testify about sprouting up when the final result was that it fell away when persecution came because of the Word? Would it make any sense for the seed which was choked by the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches to testify about an initial event when it was not bearing fruit?

 

I love sharing about how I was drawn to Jesus Christ by His grace, and I love hearing others tell how they came to know Jesus – there is a special joy when I hear about the Good Shepherd bringing one of His own into the fold, and for sure there is joy in heaven. I am not denigrating “personal testimonies,” what I’m trying to do is to get us to think about them in a Biblical context, a context that insists on ongoing obedience, discipleship, and deepening relationship.

 

Is it possible that we do people a disservice when we present a “one and done” Gospel? When we teach that all you need to do is to walk down the aisle and shake my hand and profess Christ and you then have a testimony and your ticket to heaven is punched? This does not seem to be Jesus’ approach in Mark 8:34ff. This is not the material for an overcoming life, and let’s not forget that we are considering a passage in Revelation, the context of which is warfare and persecution.

 

I came to initially know Jesus Christ over a period of months, I know others who initially came to know Jesus at a fixed point in time and space. Whatever the case may be, we want to encourage others in Christ, whether they are in the process of coming to initially know Him or have experienced an “event” in which they met Him – we want to encourage the laying of a firm foundation and to encourage Biblical construction on that foundation. Let’s not forget that many disciples of Jesus turned away from Him during His earthly ministry (John 6:66).

 

Polycarp’s testimony was about Jesus and His goodness. It is well and good that I share about how my life changed in coming to know Christ – but the essence of what I testify to must be Jesus Christ. We are told that we are to share our personal experience, our “testimony,” because people can’t argue with our experience. But if that is all we share then we fall short of testifying to Jesus Christ, because we want to point to Jesus and not ourselves…and let’s be clear about this, if we point others to Jesus they WILL have something to argue about, they WILL have a decision to make about the Person of Jesus Christ. Can we really say that we have testified to Jesus Christ if people never have to make a choice?

 

Let’s make no mistake about this, when we come to know Jesus Christ our lives will change, and they should keep changing. Nicodemus was told that we must be born again from above (John 3:1 – 21); Paul tells us that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17);  Peter writes that we have been “born again, not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Peter 1:23); James teaches that, “in the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the world of truth, so that we would be the first fruits among His creatures” (James 1:18); John writes, “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (1 John 4:13).

 

Coming into a relationship with Jesus Christ is an experience that we ought to talk about, to give witness to – after all, it is the most critical thing that has happened, or will ever happen, to us. Living in a relationship with Jesus Christ is something that we ought to also talk about as a matter of course, it ought to be as natural as breathing. Jesus Christ ought to be our Way of Life (John 14:6; 15:4 – 5).

 

We live in an increasingly hostile world. In America our prosperous society is opposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ – forget the lip service given by political parties, political and economic leaders, and other power brokers and people of worldly influence; forget much of what passes for popular “Christian” leadership; we live in a hostile world and there are enormous pressures against the true Church and the faithful Bride. (How can we read Revelation Chapter 18 and not see the values and activities of our own nation?)

 

Do not make the mistake of thinking that the “mark of the beast” is futuristic, every generation has seen varieties of this mark, and in our own generation people accept this mark every day, even many who should know better within the professing church rationalize their acceptance of it; as Paul writes, our consciences are seared as with a hot branding iron (1 Timothy 4:2). Sadly, we offer our children up to the beast at young ages, teaching them to reject the image of God as a matter of education – and we salve our consciences by thinking that we have to “go along” in order to survive.

 

I’m going to pick this focus up in the next post.

 

 

Overcoming – Four Principles in Revelation 12 (Part 7)

  

“And they overcame him because the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even unto death.” Revelation 12:11.

 

We’ve seen that there are three aspects of “the word of their testimony”; that which Jesus Christ testifies about Himself, that which the Church has historically confessed about Jesus Christ – particularly as expressed in the Nicene Creed, and what we personally testify about Jesus Christ. While my “personal testimony” is important, it is important that it be faithful to Jesus’ testimony about Himself as contained in the entire Word of God, and that it also be faithful to what the Church has held to be the core of the Gospel and the truth about Jesus Christ, and which has fundamental expression in the Nicene Creed.

 

The creeds provide us an opportunity to catechize our people and to model clear Biblical thinking – thinking that is confident, sincere, orderly, and succinct. The creeds train us to do sound Biblical theology.

 

As we think about what we often term our “personal testimony,” I struggle with how best to approach the subject, because while I deeply hold to a personal and intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, and while I passionately believe that, in Christ, we are called into a koinonia (communion, fellowship) with the Trinity (the depths of which are beyond our comprehension), I also recognize that personal testimonies today are often far afield from the confession of Jesus Christ about Himself, and from the confession of the historic Church about Jesus Christ.

 

When I first came to know Jesus Christ, there is no doubt that the seed of the Word was planted in me and was working in me; however, I was anything but a cultivated plant, a plant being formed in a deliberate fashion; in many respects I was more a wild weed than a plant with purpose. Even though I came to know the Bible as a young adult, my knowing the Bible was more on my own terms than on God’s terms, I was more about the Bible submitting to me rather than submitting myself to the Word of God. I didn’t realize this at the time and I don’t pretend to understand all of the dynamics involved; I have often written and said that one of my great regrets, and I have many, is that I didn’t have older men to mentor me and help form me as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

 

Sadly, my “personal testimony” was all that seemed to matter to my first pastors and other adults when I came to know Jesus as a teenager. As I write this, I am reminded that in my last pastorate some people were surprised when I insisted on meeting with prospective members (along with other church leaders) to listen to them tell me about their relationship with Jesus Christ, including what they believed about Him. There were prospective members who were advanced in years who said, “Pastor, when I’ve joined churches in the past no one has ever had a conversation with me like this.”

 

Now I don’t want to offend anyone, because I know there are traditions in which you simply walk down the aisle to join a church, but I want to respectfully ask, “How can it be that no pastor or church leadership group ever had a dedicated discussion with these dear people, who were then in their 60s and 70s, about the nature of their faith in Jesus Christ? With all respect, I don’t see how this is responsible to Christ or to people. And let me sadly say, that I have known many dear people, well – advanced in age and who have been “in church” all their lives, who know little of the truth of the Nicene Creed and to whom the Bible is pretty much a sealed book.

 

A personal testimony not formed into the image of the Creed and the Bible can be a dangerous thing – dangerous to the individual and dangerous to others. In my own life I think there were times when I was more poison ivy than a fruit tree – because I was living what was supposed to be a Christian life of discipleship on my own terms, and while there may have been times I was a blessing to others, I was often a discredit to Christ and hurt others. All that mattered to my first pastors and churches was my personal testimony, it didn’t matter whether or not that testimony was being formed into the image of Jesus Christ. Practically speaking, this attitude may be less of a problem with people who tend to be conformists, but it is highly volatile with those who are accustomed to going their own way. (Naturally, it is still a problem with conformists which is why I write “practically speaking,” in other words, it may appear less of a problem on the surface, but it is still a problem, as my last pastorate illustrates).

 

When I write about my first pastors and the first churches I attended, I am simply making observations and I hold no ill will toward them, they were only doing what they had always done, they were only living in their particular church cultures. They certainly loved me and accepted me and made me feel welcome, and without that acceptance I have no idea the direction my life would have taken. They took the Bible seriously, and while they framed the Bible in the context of their denominational traditions, in this respect they were pretty much like all other denominations. 

As I was coming to know Christ, I first gravitated toward the denomination in which I was nominally raised, but when it became apparent to me that the Bible was not held in high regard, I was blessed to be introduced to the tradition in which I spent the first few years of my Christian life. I will always be thankful for those two pastors and churches – they did the best they could.

 

What is a testimony? What is a personal testimony? I am not sure that this is a simple question with a simple answer. Yes, at times it can be as simply reduced to Peter saying, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68 – 69).

 

But let me suggest that Peter and his fellow disciples came to this realization through a process and that the process was continuing. Later Peter would say, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), and he would say this because the Father revealed it to him (Matt. 16:17); but even then, as we see in Matthew 16:21 – 23 and 26:69 – 75, Peter’s testimony was still in process.

 

If our personal testimonies carry with them the aspect of relationship with Jesus Christ; if an element of them is, “I know Him,” then let me ask if intimate relationships are simple – I have not found them to be simple, have you?

 

When I say, “Where else would I go? Jesus Christ alone has the words of eternal life,” I am making a statement based on years of experience and relationship with Jesus Christ in and through His Word, and in and through His Church. While I may have made this statement as a young Christian, and while I may have made it twenty or thirty years into my Christian life, it has a far more seasoned ring to it today, and I trust the seasoning will continue until I bow before Him face to face. “Where else would I go?” is not a slogan, it is not something to be degraded to a bumper sticker or put on a coffee mug, it is the ground of reality, the core of who I am in Christ – in this respect it is my testimony; it is the fruit of a relationship with Jesus Christ that is anything but simple, yes, it has fundamental “grounds” (think Nicene Creed), but it is not simple…no matter how simply stated it may be at times.

 

We’ll pick this up in the next post.

 

 

 

Jim is Gone - Baseball is Dead

 I started writing this a few days ago and concluded it this morning. As many of you know, my brother Jim went to be with Christ on Thanksgiving Day 2020.

The Major League Baseball season begins three days from now on April 1, and I don’t care. I confronted this realization last week, and it has been working its way within and without since then, the baseball thing is over for me. I’m not saying that Vickie and I may not attend a game or two, I image I’d still enjoy a minor league game; but the myth is over, and since Jim is gone there is no reason to cling to the myth – after all, it was our shared memory of baseball that made it enjoyable – even when we both knew that we were creating our own fictional world, one that easily rivaled anything that Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones inhabited.

I peer into the bottom drawer of the desk and take out a cellophane package of cards. When did Jim give me these for Christmas? Five years ago? Ten? Fifteen? Twenty? I should have kept a journal. Well, there are a lot of things I should have done, or wish I had done. I remove the twenty-four cards; twenty-three of them have photos on them of individual baseball players, the twenty-fourth card is a team picture.

I’m looking at baseball cards containing the 1963 Washington Senators, that was fifty-eight years ago. I was thirteen that year, Jim would have been around eight.

While I don’t recall what Christmas Jim gave me these cards, I do recall how pleased he was when we talked about them on the phone. He mentioned Chuck Hinton, Don Lock, Eddie Brinkman, and Jim King; each name invoked a memory that needed no articulation. Yes, we could talk details about these players in our shared mythology, but we didn’t need to, just saying each name carried a story and often a long-vanished hope. These players were not so much about the Major Leagues, as about boyhood, brotherhood, and the mythical fabric of baseball.

It was divinely poetic that the Washington Nationals won the World Series just over a year before Jim left us. While there was a baseball season of sorts in 2020, it was pretty much an abomination and it was not something that Jim and I spoke about much – it was too deplorable, too disgusting, too sacrilegious. It requires an asterisk beside that year and all the statistics associated with it; but it doesn’t matter to me now, Jim is gone and baseball, in the dead of night, has left my soul. This is akin to returning home and finding that someone has removed all the furniture from a room in your house, the furniture of baseball, which was extensive, is gone. It isn’t that Jim took it with him when he left, it is that I have no use for it anymore, not even a mythically aesthetic use.

I began writing this before the start of the baseball season, it’s now April 5 and there is yet more poetry to mention. The first series that the Washington Nationals were to have played, against the New York Mets, was postponed due to covid-19. This makes sense to me, since there is no Jim there is no reason for the National’s to play – they should take the season off in memory of Jim. But then, these are no longer the Nationals, not the Nationals who won the World Series in one of the most improbable of baseball seasons ever; many who were on that 2019 team are now playing for other teams.

You really do have to suspend common sense, and a sense of fair play if you are going to be a Major League baseball fan; after all, how can virtually an entire team cheat at baseball and win the World Series, as the Houston Astros did, and not be meaningfully punished? Jim was pretty disgusted with the hypocrisy in this – had Jim been the commissioner of baseball those players would have paid a price and also had the Series title stripped from the team. Go Jim!

When Bill and Jim and I were kids, it was nice when the lowly Senators won a game here and there, but it wasn’t integral to our enjoyment of the game, we just loved baseball and our local baseball players – every baseball game was an opportunity for us to exercise modest hope that the Senators just might win one. I still recall a team slogan from 1964, “Off the floor in ’64!”. The “floor” of course means last place in the standings, the perpetual dwelling place for the Washington team; as the saying went, “Washington, first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.” For a Major League team to simply want to not finish in last place is a modest hope indeed.

What to do with these baseball cards? I think I’ll send them to Jim’s grandson with a note, maybe I’ll enclose what you’re reading. I don’t know if he is a baseball fan or not, but maybe he’ll treasure these, as much as baseball cards can reasonably be treasured, knowing that they meant a lot to his Grandpa when he gave them to me.