Mourning with those who mourn

Listening to: Fairport Convention: Leige and Leif

I'm finally reading Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change by Paul Tripp. It is living up to all the hype I have heard. Highly recommended.

These are my notes on Chapter 8 (Building Relationships by Identifying with Suffering) and the third element of four which Tripp identifies a part of a "Loving Ministry Relationship":

1. Enter the person's world
2. Incarnate the love of Christ
3. Identify with suffering
4. Accept with agenda [for their change]

Suffering is common

We are all sinners who suffer. This is something we have in common with everyone. Yet we often respond to sufferers by distancing ourselves from them. We presume that their suffering is something we won't experience, and struggle to relate to them. As a result our ministry often boils down to platitudes, promises of prayer, and gestures.

The bible on suffering:

1. God is sovereign over suffering
2. God is good
3. God has a purpose for our suffering
4. The bible explains the ultimate reasons for our suffering
• Fallen world
• our flesh
• other's sin
• the Devil
• God's good purpose
5. Suffering is real and evil is wrong.

Sufferers usually feel alone, isolated and alienated from others and from God.

If we have suffered to the extent that we know these feelings then:

• This means we can identify with sufferers.
• We are called minister to those in pain.

Hebrews 2:10-12

Christ suffered as our brother. The title "brother" implies:

1. We are in the same family.
2. We are in a similar position in the family
3. We share similar life experiences

This captures our relationship to sufferers. We do not stand above them, as gurus, or those who have arrived. Instead we stand alongside them.

This posture is essential because it recognises that:

1. "God sends people my way, not only so they will change, but so I will too."
2. "We are not what people need. Our purpose is to connect them to a living, active, redeeming Christ. He gives them what they need...I stand alongside you and point you to the Father.
3. It helps to give our stories power, because as we are honest about our failings and sufferings, it shows the relevance of our experiences of God's grace.

Christ was "made perfect" through his suffering. Just as Christ's suffering had a purpose, so our suffering has a purpose. Analogous to Christ, we are sanctified and grow through suffering. We share this with our brothers and sisters who suffer, and it:

• Makes truth we speak concrete, carrying them out of the abstract into the familiar.
• Encourages us to be humble and honest.
• Makes our personal story more about God than me.
• Makes our life a window through which people see the glory of Christ.
• Results in worship of Christ

2 Corinthians 1:3-11

Model of Christian compassion (vv.3-7):

Purposeful suffering --> experience of God's comfort --> ability to comfort others --> community of hope.

• God is the source of compassion. Therefore:
  • God is the comfort we offer people (not 'it will all work out' etc)
  • As God's children we should be marked by his compassion
• The comfort we have received in past suffering is to be passed on in ministry, not hoarded.
• Suffering is how we share in Christ, and so experience his comfort. It is a sign we are in Christ.
• Our suffering belongs to God, and we must put Christ on centre stage as we suffer. "When we feel like dying, he calls us to greater death".
• Purpose of suffering is to fill us with hope.

Method of Christian compassion (vv.8-11):

Practical steps for telling your stories of how God used your sufferings to encourage others:

• Tell a completed story
• It must be old enough to have reached it's ending in how God helped you (not "misery loves company")
• Be honest in describing your struggles and failures
• Be discerning and purposeful
• Limit details.
• Focus on God
• Make God the key actor in the drama
• Tell your story with humility about your continuing need for grace.
• Make it clear that you are not what God needs - God is
• Make the goal of the story worship.

Which antithesis?

I'm reading The Living Word: A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church by Swedish Lutheran Gustaf Wingren. A wonderful £3 buy second-hand. I'm loving it.

It seems a shame to first blog some quotations from it in criticism of Barth, but I think his criticism is of far-reaching proportions. In short he sees Barth as locating a fundamental antithesis between God and humanity that he should instead find between God and the Devil, life and death, Gospel and law. I think this is of enormous importance.

for Barth God and man are opposed to each other, and the question with which he is faced is where the emphasis is to be placed. Liberal theology, against which Barth reacted, emphasized man's significance and put him centre. Barth's alternative is to emphasize God's significance and to put him in the centre. Negatively it is of fundamental importance that Satan and sin play a very uncertain and minor role in Barth's theological system. Thus in no way is the approach of the theology that preceded it corrected, but instead the speculative antithesis between man and God remains unchanged [...] It is striking that time and again in his writings Barth reiterates his criticism, most consistent and clear, of Luther's doctrine of the unity of human and divine in Christ, the doctrine of communicatio idiomatum ["sharing of attributes"].

The meaning of the communicatio idiomatum remains obscure until it is seen against the background of man's subjection to the Devil. God and man do not stand opposed to each other as two incompatible and parallel forms of being, but God and the Devil stand opposed as enemies. Man is God's creation who has been brought into captivity by the enemy of God. Christ's task is to enter human life, destroy Satanic might and free man. Christ's humanity is no limitation of the majesty of God, as Barth argues. Christ's humanity is the conqueror's - God's - presence on the field of battle where Satan is to be laid low in the conqueror's death and resurrection and forced to let go his grip on men [...]

The centre of gravity of the preaching of the Early Church was in Christ's death and resurrection, not in the incarnation [...] If the cross and the resurrection are to retain their New Testament position at the centre of the message, then a revision of the opposition between transcendence and immanence must be brought about. The Lutheran dualism of law and Gospel in the Word performs just that very revising, anti-speculative function. God's work meets us, sub contraria specie ["under contrary appearances"], hidden under the work of death. It must be so, since we are in thrall to sin; when our sin, which insists on ruling in our being, is killed, we receive life but it seems as though it were death. The lifegiving function of the Gospel is indissolubly bound up with the condemnatory and punitive function of the law; the cross is fast bound with the resurrection. If this intrinsic duality of law and Gospel is abandoned and replaced, as in Barth, by a single 'Word' above the law and the Gospel, then there follows also a new metaphysical cleavage, so that within the single Word we discover a higher, transcendent sphere, the Word of God (Gottes Wort) and a lower sphere, the word of man (Menschenswort). Thereby the Platonic doctrine of two worlds becomes supreme in theology. What is specifically theological and Christian is introduced later in the thesis that 'God' and 'man' meet and are brought together in the Incarnation. But in that case the mere meeting between God and man becomes the centre of the New Testament, while struggle and victory in the death and resurrection have lost their place as the centre of the kerygma. This is the chief accusation that must be brought against Karl Barth's theology.

(pp. 31f, 92, 1949, The Living Word)

Any thoughts on whether Wingren is reading Barth rightly?

I think that even if the critique doesn't stick to Barth, it sticks to much less sophisticated theology.

Water and the Spirit in the Gospel of John

"for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel...I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.'" (1:31-33)

"When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, 'They have no wine.' ... Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, 'Fill the jars with water.' And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, 'Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.' So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, 'Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.'" (2:3-10)

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." (3:5)

"A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, 'Give me a drink.' ... The Samaritan woman said to him, 'How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?' (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, 'If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, "Give me a drink," you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.' The woman said to him, 'Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.' Jesus said to her, 'Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.' The woman said to him, 'Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.'... God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." (4:7-24)

"Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, 'Do you want to be healed?' The sick man answered him, 'Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, 'Get up, take up your bed, and walk.' And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked." (5:2-8)

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him....It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life." (6:53-63)

"On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, 'If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, "Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."' Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified." (7:37-39)

"[Jesus] anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing." (9:6-7)

"He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, 'Lord, do you wash my feet?' Jesus answered him, 'What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.' Peter said to him, 'You shall never wash my feet.' Jesus answered him, 'If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.' Simon Peter said to him, 'Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!' Jesus said to him, 'The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.'"(13:4-11)

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth (14:15-17)

"After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), 'I thirst.' A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, 'It is finished,' and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit... one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water." (19:28-34)

"Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.' And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'" (20:21-22)

A few things to notice:

• The connection between water, wine, blood, thirsting and washing with Spirit and life.
• Jesus gave up his Spirit and his life in order to give us both. He became thirsty so that we may never have to thirst again. He gave up his Spirit so he could baptise us with it.

"There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins..." (Cowper)

A brief thought on fasting

Most conservative evangelicals functionally believe that we shouldn't fast, even if theoretically they think it is appropriate in the church age. This is probably due to the lack of interest in the physical and (not unconnected) right suspicion of justification by works.

God is not pleased with fasting in and of itself (Is 58:3), and it is not something that he needs to receive from us. Fasting is not something with inherent worth that we can present to God, although he does respond to his people fasting as he does to prayer.

However, I think evangelicals would be more likely to give it a place as a discipline which bears on us rather than God. I think it is often seen as a way to develop self-control, holiness and a desire for God (ala John Piper?). However, this seems to ignore that the Bible seems to see it as a response to felt need, practised irregularly in order to obtain a particular blessing from God.

Perhaps, it is better to see it joined with prayer as an expression of need. Like donning sackcloth and ashes it is not something we offer to God as some 'thing' but an expression of how empty we are before God.

We feel we need God's blessing, so we express that in words by prayer. But as psychosomatic beings we should express particularly serious awareness of need physically as well. It is not uncommon for those suffering from depression, and other mental illnesses, to suffer a loss of appetite. Even if we haven't experienced that most of us know what it is like to be sufficiently preoccupied or stressed to 'not feel like eating'. Fasting in the Bible is tied to these extreme times of mourning or crisis where food should be the last thing on our mind.

This does not mean that we should just fast when we feel like it though, just as we should not only pray when we feel like it. It is good to fast when we know we should fast even if we don't feel like it; just as it is good to pray when we know we should pray even if we don't feel like it.

I hope that makes sense.

What I've been up to

Sorry for the lack of blogging recently. I've been busy, not reading enough weighty books and simply not in the mood. But I'm still alive and well so don't worry. Here are a few things I've been thinking about that may possibly interest you.

• Just finished What Kind of God? Responding to 10 popular accusations by Michael Ots and it is really great book. Winsome, brief and thoughtful. I now finally have the giveaway book for non-Christians with moral objections to the Christian faith. It can go alongside Real Life Jesus: meaning, freedom, purpose which is my book for non-Christians interested in what Christianity is all about. Now 'all' I need is a giveaway book for people with scientific/historical objections to Christianity. Any thoughts welcome.
• The Temple and the Church's Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God by Greg Beale has picked up on reaching the NT, and if I was in the mood I'd be blogging loads of reflections on it.
• I've been reminding myself how great Lesslie Newbigin and Martin Luther are.
• Daniel Montgomery of Sojourn Community Church has been thinking about exactly what Tim Keller was talking about in my last post on triperspectival application and communicates it nicely in this video:
• I've said it before, but listen to these Tim Keller/Ed Clowney lectures if you are thinking about applying the Bible to people's lives in a Christ-centred, grace-filled and culturally sensitive way. Counterfeit Gods is a good example of the principles being put into practice.
• This may also be a good point to remind people that I keep trying to keep a post with links to Mike Reeves MP3s up-to-date. I've just added links to talks on Aquinas. Mike Reeves' passion for the Gospel, God and historical theology is infectious. He is a uniquely gifted man.
• Oh, and I had the honour of doing a couple of blog posts in Glen's Exodus series on Bezalel and Oholiab and the Priests' Garments.

Hopefully things will get more interesting around here soon.