Editorial – Cured – by adoption!
All the world’s an orphanage – and there’s a waiting Father…
“I respect your wish to ‘give it you straight’ so … without surgery, it will kill you in about six months, though, if we operate without delay, a complete cure is highly probable. Alternatively you can have lifetime medication to control your symptoms”. Easy choice, one would think. Why then, when it comes to humanity’s terminal condition do so many Christians peddle symptom control instead of the cure?
Any brief reality check will reveal that the ‘message’ many western Christians are sending to their society is that society’s passions are our passions too – only more so… if unbelievers care about human rights, ‘diversity’, saving the planet, global warming, gender issues and the BBC’s version of Middle East ‘reality’, so do we. And just to prove how ‘nice’ we are, we won’t mention ‘offensive’ topics like sin, repentance or… JESUS! Which, being interpreted, means we are just as easily manipulated, just as naïve and just as unthinking as every other creature in the herd.
Is this elitism talking? No, it’s election. The elite and the elect are different groups – the former are delusional about their superiority and supposed ‘right’ to control the masses, the latter are humiliated by their sin and exalted by God’s mercy. Not only so, but they are ‘elect’ – called out of the mass of humanity – for the sake of humanity; not to showcase their morality, but to showcase His mercy.
It’s crucial to understand that, in an age where it’s a colossal offence to claim possession of absolute, changeless truth, there is no access to divine mercy through ‘Christians’ who subscribe to society’s fashionable contradictions of the Bible. When you open a Bible that, in your view, can sometimes be wrong, you never know when you’re looking at God’s Word, or Moses’ opinion; God’s Word or Paul’s rant. A Bible that merely ‘contains’ God’s Word (somewhere, who’s to tell?) is as much use to you as a chocolate teapot – and it’s certainly not the two-edged sword of the Spirit… Think of a modern headline issue – sexuality, gender equality, Brexit, Syria, terrorism, parenting, child protection – when views are shaped more by personal opinion or social media than the Bible, God’s Book has become only one of many ‘truth options’ available and subject to mortal evaluation, acceptance or rejection! How shall we creatures mark the Creator’s report card…? “Assertive, confident of his views, needs to be more inclusive, more respectful of alternate worldviews, moral values need updating… could do better”.
Open to question?
This magazine stands or falls on the authority of the Bible – all of it – as the breathed-out Word of God, the infallible product of an infinite Mind. In consequence, we the readers, not the Word, are ‘open to question’. The notion of a finite mind questioning or contradicting infinite wisdom is self-evidently ridiculous: it’s the clay’s assessment of the Potter, the worm’s evaluation of the horticulturist. Much saner is the scenario where the possessor of the limited mind opens God’s pages with humility: prayerfully seeking not only education but divine revelation, not debate, but infallible direction.
Our headlines are grim in proportion to global society’s estrangement from God. Sadly, this was the default tragedy perhaps three millennia ago when the Psalmist recorded God’s lament over His ‘elect’ nation: “Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways! I would soon subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes. Those who hate the Lord would cringe toward him, and their fate would last forever. But he would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.” (Ps 81:13-16) As it was, the illusory ‘freedom’ of rebellion produced only national futility as God, unwilling to make slaves or puppets of His people, “gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own counsels” (verse 12).
Election is no guarantee of good behaviour, but it does guarantee divine discipline (Hebrews 12:5-7). When God can’t instruct us with His words, He resorts to His works. His method is simple: the fences He erected for our safety, suddenly flatten beneath our next resentful kick and we are free – to experience the consequences. But, like the prodigal’s waiting father, God’s mercy stubbornly scans the horizon…
Hitler + ‘#MeToo’?
Today, as then, the world’s ‘free thinkers’ are not free, because they’re not thinking. Thinking without God is not thinking, it’s rebellion; a mere selfish response to stimulus – and there are plenty of influential stimulators around whose fake news, false victim groups and boardroom rumours treat men and women made in the image of God like a herd of animals to feed upon or drive to the slaughter. What might the mesmerising Hitlerof Nuremberg have achieved if the Nazis’ ruthless control of newspapers and radio had also had access to today’s ‘#MeToo’ social media culture? As Paul observed “…the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (2 Corinthians 4:4).
If the ‘thinking’ that steers your life is blindness, you don’t want to reach your destination… ever.
There’s only One Way to end the fatal estrangement – and the true Church is permanently commissioned to target the gap: “…in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:19) Is this hitting home? We, the followers of Jesus and children of God are entrusted and charged with reconciling blinded men, women and children to their Creator. Yet it is estimated that only 5% of all Christians ever bring a single soul to Jesus in their lifetime! Since it is Satan who has imposed this blindness on unbelieving minds, we may be sure that they will not be saved without a fight – are 95% of us exempt from this conflict? The consistent message of the New Testament writers is that Jesus is the nemesis who alone empowers His Church to bind the ‘strong man’ and plunder his house: “…he who is in you is (1 John 4:4).Immense power is available to us for this ministry of reconciliation.
Estrangement reversed
Let’s be clear what God means by reconciliation: the reverse of estrangement is not ‘nodding acquaintance’ – the complete cure is called ‘ADOPTION’! John the apostle affirmed Jesus’ unique power to end the estrangement: “to all who believed in His Name, He gave the power to become the children of God”. In confirmation, Jesus declared: “I am the way, the truth and the life – no-one comes to the Father [emphasis added] but by me”.
It has been said that evangelism is simply beggars telling other beggars where to find bread. The more staggering reality is that God makes us His children, not his paupers. We are not beggars, but former orphans joyously telling today’s orphans how to find Father! (John 1:12; 14:18; Romans 8:15)
While it is likely that aggressive secularism will put Christians to the test over so-called ‘diversity’, the real test issue for all human society (no-one ‘excluded’!) will be the uniqueness of Jesus Christ:“…there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12) Paul,writing to Timothy,some three decades later, reinforced Peter’s message: “… God our Saviour … desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all”. (1 Timothy 2:4-6)
Here’s the politically incorrect glory of the Gospel: Jesus is exclusively Saviour and Lord because He inclusively “died for all” (2 Corinthians 5:14). Sin has every mortal – even whole nations – on a default course to total loss. Jesus is God the Father’s one answer to the terminal problem. To serve this unique and uncompromising message, the early Church undeviatingly preached Christ. They did not permit the secular headline issues of their day to set the agenda. The church is charged to preach the remedy, not quash the rebellion.
And such a remedy! As truly holy God and truly perfect Man, Jesus alone can end the spiritual orphanhood of human beings and provide access to the Father. The enemy of souls hates and fears only one thing: the preaching of Jesus Christ – crucified, risen, ascended… and returning in judgment.“Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God”. (1 Peter 3:18) But the generosity of God goes far beyond ‘cancelled sin’…
Deficit reversed
Heaven’s spotless remedy has not merely ‘balanced our books’ before God. Amazingly, the Judge has credited His Son’s righteousness to all who believe in His Name, so that our accounts are not
merely balanced, they are extravagantly in credit – to the glory of Jesus. And if that were not enough, God has guaranteed our inheritance in Christ by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in every believer (Ephesians 1:13-14).
Even as He insists on holy living and teaches us obedience, the Holy Spirit guarantees our inheritance because He never ceases to attest our adoption (Romans 8:15). Those who teach that Christians can lose their salvation are focussed on the lifetime struggle we call sanctification. The apostle is focussed on the believers’ RELATIONSHIP: God is their Father! God’s call and election are secured by His unchanging character (Romans 11:29; Malachi 3:6). Once a son or a daughter, always a son or daughter. Once adopted, always adopted. This is pure, irreversible GIFT. The inheritance can only be cancelled if the relationship can be annulled – but God, who personally initiated our transformation, continues the work through our lifetime and will Himself complete it (Philippians 1:6). FELLOWSHIP with God can be, and often is, broken from our side, by our wilfulness. But the RELATIONSHIP is a fixed reality – this is precisely why the prodigal could be restored. If any of Jesus’ parables illustrates the joyful irreversibility of the Father’s cure in adoption, it’s this one…
It was not an enemy, not a stranger who abandoned the father and wilfully chose the world for a time. It was a son, a member of the father’s household. The son left the father, but the father waited and watched – then ran, embraced, rejoiced, restored… Even at his lowest, the prodigal was still… a SON!