Thoughts on Life

I had a read of Tom Wright’s John for Everyone this morning. I looked at John 3:1-13 which is the passage about being born again. As I read it and Wright’s explanation of it, the truth of what the good news really is dawned on me again. We don’t need to be born again so we will get into heaven when we die. Jesus didn’t come down from heaven to show us how we can get there with Him. The good news is that, ultimately, heaven is coming here, and that has already started in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus coming down from heaven was the beginning of heaven coming here, the beginning of the new creation, of the new heavens and the new earth.

This passage has been among the most loved of Christians – particularly evangelical Christians – for years, and rightly so. John 3:3 is one of the verses you learn when you learn the ‘four spiritual laws’ (something else which gives a twisted understanding of the Gospel).

I firmly believe in the need to be born again. After all, Jesus did say it, so we can’t just dismiss it. But we need to understand what Jesus really meant, and in what context He was saying it when He had His famous conversation with Nicodemus. Like everything when we read Scripture, we need to look at this passage in context. The whole context of Scripture is that it is a story, the story of God’s salvation plan, yes, but more than that, God’s redemption plan for, not just humanity, but for the whole of the created order. Jesus said “Behold I make all things new.” (Revelation 21:5, emphasis mine). And so it is in that sense that when Jesus talks about the need to be born again, He is talking about our need to be born of the Spirit of God to be able to do the works of God. This is what transformation is all about.

As well as all this, Wright makes the wonderful point about how Jesus is the ladder between us and God, about He bridges the gap for us. When I learnt the four spiritual laws, we were always shown how, because we were sinners (Romans 3:23 – all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God) and can therefore not save ourselves (read: get into heaven by our own efforts) - Jesus died for our sins in our place so that we can now be saved because of Him (read: we can now get to heaven because of what Jesus has done). But listen to what Wright says about this, about the real, Biblical reason that Jesus is the ladder between us and God:

“he (Jesus) is now the ladder which joins the two dimensions of God’s world, the heavenly and the earthly. If we want to understand not only the heavenly world, but the way in which God is now joining heaven and earth together, we must listen to him, and walk with him on the road he is now to take.”

This is the reason that Jesus is the ladder between us and God. As Wright says elsewhere in John for Everyone, it’s like Jesus is saying, “if you follow me you will see what is like when heaven and earth are open to each other”. Jesus did indeed die for our sins, but not so we could get a ticket to a heaven in the sky. It was so we could indeed be saved, but saved in the sense of being part of the new creation with Him. Our hearts will be transformed, we are no longer condemned, and we are free to live for and with Jesus and His followers to help make the whole created order right again. This includes our hearts, our attitudes, our whole inner being, society, the environment, our finances, our economics, our legal system, everything. As Eden Parris sings, Jesus has come “to banish the night and to make all things right, to colour the earth with his song.”

The Gospel is bigger than we ever thought. Jesus always has something new to show us. It is anything but a dull, boring life. The life of following Jesus is the life of the ages; it is what eternal life really is.

If there were no consequences whatsoever for any destructive behaviour you engaged in, would you want to engage in it? Someone asked me that question once, and its profundity has caused me to think long and hard. If there were no consequences for cheating on my wife, for stealing what wasn’t mine, for taking credit when I didn’t deserve it, would I do it?

The issue here is, where is my heart at? How captive am I to that which enslaves me? Many years ago Gil Cann said in a sermon that when we think of our inner life, the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart. At the end of the day, what we all need is a heart transformation. As U2 sang even more years ago, “a new heart is what I need. Oh God, make it bleed!”

Where is my heart at? Do I want what is right simply because it is right? With God’s help, yes I do. But as Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, there is a line that divides the good and evil in every human heart. In our heart of hearts there is a desire to do good which sits alongside a desire to get whatever we can for ourselves. A heart that is being redeemed by grace is one which wants to become more like Christ, that just wants to do the right thing. It is a heart that is sick of its own selfishness and deception, a heart that confesses it is in need of grace, a heart that cries out for renewal.

The human heart needs transformation, and it can only be done by the Holy Spirit. Social justice can’t do it, simply reading the Bible can’t do it, and listening to your favourite preacher or reading your favourite Christian books won’t do it. Only a heart open to the conviction of the Holy Spirit of God is one that will change.

Part of the way the world is set up is that there are consequences for our actions. There are good consequences or there are destructive consequences. We reap what we sow. It cannot be any other way. There are some things we just need to accept in life, and this is one of them.

But not only is this the way life works, it is the wonderful truth of the Christian message. There are consequences that go beyond what we experience in this life, but at the same time those consequences are utterly dependent on our actions in this life. The kingdom of God has broken into history and will one day be fully consummated. Things will one day be finally put to rights. There will be a day when the first will be last and the last will be first, when those who constantly suffer now because of injustice will at last get to see justice, when those who are downtrodden will be downtrodden no more. All the suffering that goes on in the world today is not meaningless; it is in fact redemptive. It will be used for good and it drives us toward hope, the sure hope that one day everything will be put to rights and suffering will be no more.

So, in one sense, the question of whether or not my behaviour would change if there were no consequences is a moot one. The fact is there are consequences and we can’t do anything to avoid the fact. It is a bit like asking what life would be like if there were no gravity on the earth. Our existence just isn’t like that.

Yet on the other hand the question is highly relevant, because it is a question that quite literally speaks to our ultimate motivations for doing the things we do in life. It is a question that asks where our hearts are at. Are we altruistic because it makes us look good and holy in front of our Christian brothers and sisters? Or are we altruistic because we really want to glorify God and see his kingdom of love and transformation come on earth as it is in heaven? Truth be told, we spend most of our lives hovering between both. I know I do. As I continue on this journey of life though, I am also more convinced that living a life daily surrendered to the God of Jesus Christ is the only way to find the sense of home that our restless hearts yearn for.

When we think of the secret thoughts that we have, or even the secret actions that we might engage in, what do we think of the consequences? What do you do with those secret thoughts you have that you are too ashamed to admit? For us men it is said that all of us are faced with the temptation at some point in our lives to run away from everything. Women may have similar dark thoughts. The problem is not so much that we have them, but how we deal with them. This is where it is crucial to have a person or people in our lives with whom we can share our darkest thoughts without shame, with the knowledge that we will still be accepted for who we are, and to know that such thoughts and desires can be redeemed.

My heart needs redeeming every day. It needs desperately to be brought in line with the heart of God. I am sometimes tempted to live like there are no consequences to my actions. But when I am deceived by such thoughts, it is then that I need to be reminded of the transforming love of God in Jesus to change me from the inside out, to create in me a clean heart and renew within me a right spirit. God help me to live such a surrendered life.

‘Love rescue me, come forth and speak to me. Raise me up and don’t let me fall. No man is my enemy, my own hands imprison me. Love rescue me…I’m here without a name, in the palace of my shame…Love rescue me’ - U2, Love Rescue Me

Most, if not all, of what we say is spoken out of the deep recesses of our being. Out of the heart the mouth speaks. We are only so good at hiding what is really going on inside. Those with eyes to see however, and with hearts to care, will notice and gently bring to the surface the deep things that are troubling us. We are privileged if we have such friends in our lives.

In this haunting ballad, Bono seems to sing of a deep need for redemption. We are adept at bringing across an image of togetherness, of security. Our greatest fear is that we will be exposed in all our ugliness and as a result rejected - discarded on the scrapheap of life. Every day we bring across an image that all is well with our souls. The reality though is that, as we put on our make-up and get on the bus to struggle through another day, the way we look on the outside often betrays the reality of how we feel on the inside. Struggling through the tiredness as we head towards the office, we know that deep down there has to be more than this.

But love offers a way out, indeed offers and - amazingly - provides a life beyond ourselves. Salvation is the restoration of the image of God inside us, and the glory of God is a human being fully alive, to quote some words of long ago.

The good news is that, as in the last verse of this song, and is in many of the Psalms, all is well that ends well. We can turn the first verse of this song around and sing ‘Love rescued me, came forth and spoke to me, raised me up and didn’t let me fall’. Here’s how U2 put it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68De1d2bJHM