Category: Monthly Message

“Called to belong to Jesus Christ”.    Roman 1:6

Dear friends,

Just under seven weeks to go before Bible Focus Number 5 on September 11th!   I do hope you have booked or are planning to do so shortly (swbible.focus@gmail.com).  We praise the Lord that so much uncertainty about this year’s event has cleared away, though we still have to be prepared for a change in the Covid situation that might necessitate a change in our plans.  But we press on in faith, believing that it was the Lord who brought SWBF into being and he will sustain it for as long as it is his will to do so.  It is he, too, who has called us (and that includes you!) to be partakers of this work. That is why I find the fourfold call of God in Romans 1:1-7 so encouraging.

Firstly, we are called to serve (v1)

“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, and set apart for the gospel of God.”

Paul’s apostleship was unique, but the underlying principle applies to all believers; all of us are, in some way or another called by God to serve him.  We are, as Peter writes: “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that (we) may declare the praises of him who called (us) out of darkness into his wonderful light”.  And if we are called we can rest assured that, by his grace, God will enable us for that service.

 

Secondly, we are called to obedience (v5)

Paul had “received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.”

Is not this the heart of the church’s mission, so to preach the gospel that the disobedient might become obedient? Obedience is not a cold adherence to some ethical or legal code, but rather the warm response of a heart touched by God’s grace – transforming every part of life, and every act and attitude.

 Thirdly, we are called to belong to Jesus Christ  (v6)

“And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ”.

Jesus described himself as the good shepherd who knows his sheep and whose sheep know him. (John 10:14-16).  How the world longs for such a sense of ‘belonging’, and for such a sense of deep security!

But it offers all manner of false substitutes for true belonging is only to be found in Christ. 

Fourthly, we are called to be saints (v7)

The word ‘saint’ means one who has been set apart.  In that sense all believers are saints for we have been called by God to be his holy, set apart, people; set apart from sin for God’s service – thus we are a holy (sanctified, separated) people.  Why have believers been ‘set apart’? For no other reason than we are “loved by God and called to be saints”. It is futile to try to be holy in our own strength. But how different when we desire to be holy in response to God’s love, his call upon our lives and the work of the Holy Spirit, and simply because, by grace, we “belong to Christ Jesus”.

Called to serve – called to obedience – called to belong to Jesus Christ – called to be saints.

What a God of grace we worship and serve!  And what noble callings!

Yours, in Christ,

“You must follow me”.  John 21:22

 

 

Dear friends,

My last two ‘monthly messages’ were reflections from John 21, where Peter is restored and commissioned afresh to serve and follow the risen Jesus.  They were under the titles: “The test of love is a searching of the heart” and “The cost of love is a surrendering of the will”.  This month my third and last meditation from this chapter is entitled:

“The fruit of love is singleness of mind”

Peter still didn’t quite grasp all that Jesus meant about discipleship.  He starts to follow, then John joins them and Peter wants to know what’s in store for him. How easy it is to divert ourselves from this all-important matter of following Christ. We want to be sure that, if we are prepared to follow Jesus totally even to death, that that is also what awaits our other Christian brothers or sisters.  We would like to think that, if we leave everything that is dear to us in order to follow Jesus, if needs be to the ends of the earth, then those we leave behind would at least do as much.   Jesus is saying here that none of that is our concern. Our concern is obedience.

In I Corinthians 12 Paul lists various ways in which the ‘manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good^’, then he says: “All these are the work of one and the same Spirit,  and he gives them to each man, just as he determines”.    In his infinite and sovereign wisdom God knows exactly what he is doing with his church!  He knows what he is doing when he calls you to your ministry and me to mine.  He knows what he is doing when he calls that woman to her particular form of discipleship, and that man to his.  It is not only futile for us to concern ourselves with what is entirely God’s business, but it is sinful as well, because it is usually born of jealousy or fear.  We are to be content with loving God, obeying him and trusting him.

Commenting on John 21:22 (and echoing I Corinthians 12) Bishop Lightfoot wrote: “The arrangement of the various parts in the whole body of the Church does not concern men.    That rests with the divine will, and the divine will is unfolded in the course of life”.  To ask too often the question: “Lord, what about him?” is to be deaf to the searching question that the Lord would put to us: “What about you?”

The fruit of love is a singleness of mind that does not look over the shoulder in curiosity about others, but which makes Jesus himself the focus of love, of worship and service.

Your brother in Christ,

PS  We press on, in faith, with plans to hold Bible focus in-person this year.  That will, of course, be subject to government regulations obtaining at the time But do not fear!  Bible Focus will happen (God willing) either in person or via YouTube so do put the date (September 11^th) in your diary and remember to book (essential this year, I’m afraid) on swbible.focus@gmail.com

 

“Follow me”    John 21:19

 

 

The cost of love is a surrender of the will

Dear friends,

Last month we reflected on Peter’s restoration and recommissioning after he had denied his Lord. This month, continuing in that passage in John 21, we look at the cost of following Jesus.

To be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ involves surrendering one’s will to his, and what Jesus said next to Peter is quite staggering in its implications. He reminded him that when he was younger he was free to dress himself and go wherever he wanted.  Then he warned him that when he became old someone else would dress him and lead him where he would not want to go. In saying this, Jesus was indicating the kind of death Peter would die, and by which he would glorify God. An early church father tells us that Peter was crucified head downwards, and another wrote: “At Rome Nero was the first who stained with blood this rising faith. Then is Peter girt by another when he is made fast to the cross”.

Then, after that solemn and truthful warning so that Peter could be in no two minds about the cost of discipleship, Jesus said to him, “Follow me!” No longer would that mean physically following Jesus, for he would soon be exalted to the presence of God the Father; but now discipleship would clearly mean to live as Jesus’ lived: by service, by suffering, and, if needs be, by death. So it is that Peter’s impending death can be said to have ‘glorified’ God, for a death met at the end of the road of obedience does surely glorify God.

I have no doubt that, on reaching heaven, I will find that I understood the way of salvation aright.  But I do wonder sometimes if I’ll discover that I got the way of discipleship all wrong.   The joy in the hearts of impoverished believers in the two-thirds world contrasts starkly with the lacklustre, cosy compromise that passes for so much modern western Christianity.  In those parts of the world where it costs comparatively little to be a Christian, we have hardly begun to grasp the radical nature of the gospel.  The gospels have a great deal to say about denying oneself, about taking the narrow road, about following Christ who went the way of being misunderstood, the way of suffering and of death.  Yet I find myself practicing my discipleship so cheaply, and living it out so comfortably.  Have the few years we have on earth come to mean so much to us, that the glories of the heaven that awaits us have almost lost their appeal?

But there are signs that change is afoot.  God forbid that the day will come when evangelistic preaching or counselling will be branded ‘conversion therapy’, or that teachers lose their jobs for encouraging their students to think independently ‘outside the box’ and come to conclusions that are not ‘politically correct’ (according to whose politics?). But our nation, and our children and their children, are in need of fervent prayer. Yet we are not alone, and there is hope for the repentant. Even to the lukewarm church in Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-22) this promise was given, and can we not claim it for ourselves? – “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches”.

Your brother in Christ,