Making Sense of Scripture

Anyone who has read the Bible thoughtfully at times will wonder, "What does that mean?"  I must admit, when I was younger I would plow through chapters without even thinking!  But times of quality, prayerful reading trumps quantity every time.  We should open the word with a humble heart seeking to learn from God.  It is good for us to read again and consider even well-trod passages, for within them many priceless gems are hidden.  Sometimes our questions generated from a text are clearly answered later in the text if we would only keep reading.  Last night was one of those times, when reading a little further clarified with precision what Jesus meant.

As I read John 15, I came to verse 9:  "As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love."  I stopped there and asked my family, "What does Jesus mean that we are to "abide" in His love?  How do we do that?"  Blank looks from my sons made it evident they had no idea what I was talking about.  This should be expected:  who uses the word "abide" in common conversation anymore?  After I explained that abiding means to remain, continue, or stay, I asked "How can we abide in Christ's love?"  Again, no answer was promptly given.  I continued in verse 10:  "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love."  We abide in God's love by keeping Christ's commands.  When we kept reading we learned the result of obedience and what command Jesus is talking about:  John 15:11-12 says, "These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. ¹² This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."

Jesus loves us, and Christians ought to abide in His love.  We abide in His love by keeping His commandments.  His commandment is that we love one another as He has loved us!  So we abide in Christ's love when we love one another.  Had we stopped reading at verse 9, the abstract language Jesus uses could have kept us in doubt as to what He specifically meant.  But when we continued to read, the logical progression makes perfect sense.  This was a good illustration to our family that when we are stumped by a scripture, we should pause and pull it apart into bite-sized pieces.  No one would think to shove a 72oz. steak into their mouth without first cutting it up into manageable pieces, and it would be presumptuous to think we can understand in one quick read everything contained in a single statement made by Christ.  When we read in context, reading many verses on each side of a verse we don't comprehend, often the Bible will explain itself.  This is especially true when reading parables told by Jesus.  If you're not sure what He means, keep reading!

Reading the Bible is not merely an intellectual or literary exercise.  We need the aid of the Holy Spirit to comprehend and properly apply the truths of scripture.  Anyone can buy a pallete, oil paints, brushes, and a canvas, but that does not mean he can paint!  Owning a Bible does not mean that you can make any sense out of it without divine aid!  When Phillip overtook the Ethiopian eunuch who was reading in Isaiah, Phillip asked him if he understood what he read.  He wisely replied, "How can I unless someone guides me?"  The Holy Spirit has been sent by the Father to guide us into all truth.  We need to be born again and ask God to do for us what Jesus did for the disciples who were spiritually blind in Luke 24:45:  "And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures."  Even as Christ opened the eyes of the physically blind, He can open the eyes and ears of our heart to receive His Word in truth if we humbly ask Him.  God has given us His Word, not so He might cleverly shroud Himself from plain view, but so we might intimately know Him.  As the old song says, "Open our eyes, LORD.  We want to see Jesus, to reach out and touch Him, and say that we love Him."  This is God's will for all people!

Work of Faith with Power

"Therefore we also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power, ¹² that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ."

2 Thessalonians 1:11-12

If I was asked for a prayer request of late, these verses convey it well.  Clear and concise, these words sum up my desire to walk worthy of God for His glory.  My heart is also in agreement with verse 10 because I desire for Christ "...to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe, because our testimony among you was believed."  Man loves to be admired, but as a Christian I desire that Christ be admired in me.  Any admirable qualities I possess I do only by God's grace, for within my flesh no good thing dwells.

I do pray that God would count me worthy of this calling, that I would fulfill all the good pleasure of his goodness, and this last part strikes me with renewed freshness:  that God would display in me "the work of faith with power" so that He would receive the glory and admiration.  I was thinking yesterday:  are all my words and deeds empowered by faith in God?  I can't say that God's power is so revealed in my lifestyle that people can only say, "God is awesome!"  An example of this work of faith with power is when Peter and John were heading towards the temple and they walked by a lame man who was begging.  The cripple looked at Peter, thinking to receive something from him.  Peter said:  "Silver and gold I do not have.  But what I have I give unto you:  in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk."  The man was miraculously healed and entered into the temple, walking, leaping, and praising God.

This work of faith in power attracted the attention of the people.  Acts 3:11-16 relates, "Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch which is called Solomon's, greatly amazed. ¹² So when Peter saw it, he responded to the people: "Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Or why look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? ¹³ The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go. ¹⁴ But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, ¹⁵ and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. ¹⁶ And His name, through faith in His name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all."

I will someday leave this body in physical death, but the works of God endure forever.  We might not leave a legacy of miraculous physical healing or have thousands of souls for Christ attributed to our testimony.  The work of faith with power is not only displayed in dynamic events, but also in mundane routine.  It takes many days and weeks to slowly scale the great mountain heights, where rarefied air and freezing cold must be overcome with every upward step.  It is God who makes a man strong through faith and reliance upon Him.  Faith is no walking stick or crutch for a Christian:  it is our lifeblood.  In Christ we find life:  a life of love, forgiveness, grace, and yes - power.  God has granted us freedom to live a life girded by divine power so that Christ might be glorified in us and we in Him.  The dynamic power revealed in Christ resurrection is the same power that is infused into every Christian right now.  Pretty awesome!

Let us be ever thankful that God has given us all that pertains to life and godliness.  In Christ we find life everlasting and mercies that are new every morning, for great is His faithfulness!

The Pilgrim's Regress

I recently acquired a copy of a C.S. Lewis book I had never heard of:  The Pilgrim's Regress.  It is an allegorical cousin of Bunyan's classic, and I found it very interesting indeed.  As I read it cultivated in me a fresh appreciation of the literary skill and depth of thought of Lewis, and made me in turn wonder if my limited faculties have the capacity me to grasp all that he intended.  The book is honest and true.  In the preface on page 19 he writes concerning the suggestion of supplying a "key" to the allegory:  "It may encourage people to suppose that allegory is a disguise, a way of saying obscurely what could have been said more clearly.  But in fact all good allegory exists not to hide but to reveal; to make the inner world more palpable by giving it an (imagined) concrete embodiment."  This he does immaculately, and Lewis has few rivals.

I do not think it right to compare The Pilgrim's Progress to this work, and I don't believe C.S. Lewis wrote it for that purpose.  But it would be a worthy appendix because it puts in a different light the path of the genuine seeker of God and His eternal kingdom.  The pilgrim in Lewis' book, John, may take a path more often traveled than Bunyan's Christian.  Instead of a scrip in hand and a road stretching before him, John is without any direction.  He is confused with hypocrisy in the church and at a loss to know what he should believe.  The idea of God and hell bothers him, and the chance that God does not exist and therefore the lack of accountability is a great delight which quickly erodes into lust, loss, and pain.  His wandering leads him into all sorts of error.  He is confounded on every side, seeking as a phantom the Island he so desires.  Every philosophy and humanistic mode of belief proves empty and unsatisfying.  Though very prejudiced against Christianity at first, Wisdom, History, and Reason compel him to submit.  His view of everything is changed as he heads for home.  As he arrives at end of his journey, he realises he is right back where he started:  God was there all along.

It is a great irony that God gave men minds so He might reason with us, yet humans can be most unreasonable.  The very thing God provides is what Satan labours to prejudice against Him.  Of all creation, what is a more deluded and insensible creature than man?  Lewis quotes Bacon at the beginning of book four:  "Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like:  but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things:  full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?"  The world's philosophies are all from the same corrupt source, while the wisdom which comes from God alone revealed in His Word is eternal and without flaw.  Those with a prodigious ability to reason have a great scope of temptation to entertain vain philosophies which oppose scriptural truth and lead to eternal ruin.

Christianity is logical and reasonable.  A scientist will carefully cite his sources for his claims, and is not considered foolish for doing so.  It is actually proof he has studied.  He must exercise faith, trusting the data of previous studies.  Philosophers follow the rivers of thought which have been discovered and discussed since the very beginning.  Christians are not ignorant for choosing to follow Christ and believe the scripture, even as men sought the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle.  Darwin never claimed to be God - but Jesus did.  His claim of divinity and resurrection is what sets His claims apart from all other men.  The fact that He has confirmed them only adds to His credibility!  Christianity to you may appear like Mother Kirk did to John:  an old, plain woman.  For all of John's searching, he limited his search by his prejudices.  He would not consider taking Mother Kirk's hand unless he had no other choice.  Have you considered that the old woman may be right?  Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  No one comes to the Father except through Him.

When Walking Hurts

Yesterday morning God prompted me to go on an early morning walk.  I woke up with expectancy, believing God would teach me something.  It was chilly and dark as I set out around 5:30am.  Every time I stepped on my right foot, I winced because of sharp pain.  The day before I had strained or sprained part of my foot, perhaps while lifting weights.  It made walking very difficult without a pronounced hobble.  But I gritted my teeth and kept on, thinking the foot simply needed to be stretched out.  The pain was still there.  It grew to the point of being almost unbearable.  "I don't know that I can do this," I said to God.  Because walking hurt, I didn't feel like doing it.  I could only maintain a decent pace with great effort.

It was in this moment that it dawned on me.  Following Jesus isn't easy.  In fact, the Christian walk can sometimes be downright painful.  In the painful moments we face the temptation to quit.  We are not to tempted necessarily to quit believing in Christ, but to abandon tasks which seem to stretch before us for miles.  I found that when I focused on the pain, it felt worse and worse.  But when I thought about why I was walking - because God told me to - I was able to slowly walk through the pain.  When Jesus is our pursuit and passion, even the hurts of this life won't prevent us from pressing on with Him.  He won't leave or forsake me, and I've decided never to quit on Him.

My walk didn't last very long, maybe 10 minutes.  But in that time I learned something I hope to remember for the rest of my life.  The pain people experience takes many forms, and pain can be a big distraction that takes our focus from God and places it on ourselves.  Let us be moved with compassion for those who are in pain.  In a spiritual or emotional sense they are hobbling on, or perhaps even collapsed by the footpath in tears.  In their pursuit of Christ their pain has knocked them off their feet and they are confused and feel forsaken.  We do not lose valuable time in our race to lift them up with our hands, lend a shoulder for support, or offer a kind word of encouragement.  Let us not pass by those who are struggling for life, looking upon them with disdain as the Pharisee and Levite did in Christ's story of the Good Samaritan.  Do not be repulsed by what you perceive as weakness.  If we are strong then our weakness remains.  God's grace is sufficient for us:  when we are weak we are strong (2 Cor. 12:9-10).  When we bear one another's burdens we fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2).

Are you in pain?  Keep on following Jesus.  Even as a good shepherd will notice when his prize sheep walks with a limp and will investigate for the purpose of treatment and restoration, so Christ does for us.  May we do so for one another, following the example of our loving Saviour!  Christ makes the blind to see and the lame to walk, leap, and praise Him!