Everyone perfect in Christ - Colossians 1:28

Without necessarily endorsing her politics, the title of Diana West’s book, The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization, is worth pondering. As a baby boomer (just about), one is ashamed of the perpetual adolescence of our generation and the lack of one’s personal development in the matter of intellectual, moral and spiritual growth. Our leading figures today seem to be wanting in gravitas, wisdom, and emotional restraint, and, deficient in good sense, we seem to dote over, pamper, and concede to the current generation of children. They have become the arbiters of our tastes, use of time, our cultural pursuits, and religious practices. We, the escapists and pleasure-seekers of the 60’s, have shrugged off reality and responsibility, and are now reaping the rewards. Our parents used to live on a shoe string and gallantly get by. We strum on a guitar string, create scarcely melodic music, and act crazy. Politics (where are the real statesmen of our era) and culture reflect the moral and aesthetic decline. We are inordinately focused on self, too much self expression, and self gratification. The sanctuary of privacy, modesty, and discretion has been invaded by our “tell-all” self advertising and the “all too open media”. We are concentrated on the cult of the celebrity and many of our icons are abysmal examples of the way to live, and not worth bothering about so far as their contrived images are concerned (their souls are invaluable). While many perish for a lack of the vision of God we are inundated with information about the idols of television. The “mighty” dollar is the standard of success. Appearances are all important. We are appallingly shallow. Mutual respect has waned. And our cheapened, dumbed - down way of life is experienced “in the flat”, in a monochrome world devoid of any true sense of occasion or the aspirations that raise us to nobility. We have become too common and too familiar. Pop culture and trivia are in the ascendant everywhere and the Church of God has bought into the trend and beckons to the world on its preferred level by seeking its approval in worldly terms through the satisfaction of carnal appetites and the demand to soothe and comfort, rather than search and convict.

Our heritage, hard won by saints (eminent and ordinary), scholars, and martyrs is rapidly eroding. We equate seriousness and sobriety with morbidity and dullness, and strenuously avoid them with every possible distraction. Our gadgetry, so ingenious and in many ways beneficial, distracts us from the deep things of life – temporal and eternal. Many have noted our preoccupation to amuse and entertain ourselves rather than train our minds and develop spiritually.  Our world is floating to destruction on clouds of illusion. The Old Testament addressed the times of childishness in Israel through the messages of the prophets but the audiences did not applaud. “Give us no more visions of what is right. Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 30: 10b-11). The glory of God, his weight and worth, are scarcely appreciated in our time.  He is merely the vending machine to supply the satisfaction of our wants and whims, the facilitator of our earthly ambitions and acquisitions. We demand that he should make us feel good, sedate our consciences, and tickle our fancies. The false prophets and the purveyors of religious jingles are there in abundance to satiate our cravings and consequently rake in the profits. The resemblance to the era of Jeremiah warrants a “jeremiad”.

There is an incapacity to appreciate the great themes of Holy Scripture that affect us so momentously and for ever. Someone has likened the church to a famous fast food outlet (Franchising McChurch: Feeding Our Obsession With Easy Christianity – Thomas White & John M. Yeats). It could also be likened to a Christian toy store. Worship time is playtime and the children and youth dictate our behaviour. It is proper to tend to the mental and spiritual capacities of the young in appropriate ways at special times, but it doesn’t hurt for them also to attend gatherings of the whole congregation in periods of worship and teaching, and learn self control, consideration of others, and that there is something above and beyond them that they should aspire to know and understand. The over-catering to children and youth in their fickleness flatters their self-importance and stunts their growth in knowledge, awareness, wonder, humility, and the necessary regard for senior age groups. The fear of the experience of boredom for children in the attendance of adult gatherings arouses apprehension in parents, and forgetfulness of the fact that little sinners (Article Nine, BCP) know how to play the game of suiting themselves facilitates their wilfulness. With proper discipline and the sympathetic cultivation of interest young ones can attune themselves to adult sessions of worship and instruction and actually begin to absorb an appreciation of grown up matters that prepares them for discernment in the faith and reverence towards God. 

As the human mind is by nature at total enmity with God there are a thousand ingenious and plausible ways that we can find to avoid confronting him. The world lives by producing them, and the church has its share in manufacturing them. We circumvent the plain truth to win friends, adherents, members, and the approval of society. But what is the result in terms of the eternal destiny of souls? Our minds need to be turned to grander things. The catastrophe of the Fall. The plague of sin so deeply ingrained within us as to be indelible; a condition that is incurable; a heaven sent Saviour who rescues us and an atonement that restores us to divine acceptance and fellowship; the gift of the Holy Spirit who inspires us to holiness; final division of mankind that welcomes some to heaven and assigns others who forget God to abandonment. Anglicanism has been bequeathed with a wealth of doctrinal exposition and understanding that anchors us firmly in the full recognition of human helplessness and the sovereign efficacy of divine grace. We have a lineage that traces back to the evangelical awakening of the 18th century, the Reformation, Augustine, Paul, and all the Scriptures. It has been largely forsaken and needs to be retrieved. We have a form of worship that derives from the word of God and honours God. Our forbears have cultivated devotional observances that nourish the soul and bring God vividly near to us. 

Along with the other great Biblical traditions in Christendom we seek to lift souls from earth to heaven and assist them on their pilgrimage with the gospel and ongoing guidance of Christ. We cannot trivialize the predicament of man and dilute or distort the message of salvation. We cannot pipe to the world’s tunes. Paul tells us that the role of the church is to perfect the saints as individuals and bring the company of God’s people to completeness. It is our apostolic commission to bring believers to maturity: “When I was a child, I talked like a child; I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child”. It was a stage of ignorance and inadequacy. “When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me” (1 Corinthians 13: 11). May the church not continue in this sorry age of “the death of the grown –up”. May we grow apace in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18).  The pains are worth it.

I am slow of speech and tongue. Exodus 4:10

Scholars have speculated as to Moses’ admitted problem with his speech. Most seem to conclude that he was a stammerer, though it is by no means certain that Moses was afflicted with an impediment. It has been suggested that forty years shepherding in wilderness-like country and mingling with ordinary folk had diminished his powers of ready, quick-witted, conversation and confident communication, especially with the sophisticates of Pharaoh’s court where God had summoned him to appear on behalf of Israel in its plight. Others conjecture that he was required to speak in a language or dialect in which he had not spoken since his flight from Egypt. Moses complained that he was “heavy of mouth”, but it may have simply been a cover up or excuse for his slowness of heart to respond to the divine call. In his unbelief and fear he was anticipating perhaps an uncomfortable hesitancy before the Egyptian court. Whatever Moses’ actual condition, it is clear that he was not disposed to obey the Lord and was looking for excuses not to comply with the divine command. Speech was not the real problem, but lack of speed in God’s service.

In Moses we see displayed the weakness of the flesh to an extraordinary degree, even in those saints that are considered the most eminent. It is quickly apparent that the people of God do not labour in their own strength and courage. The most famous are equally as feeble as those who are obscure. Grace, not natural greatness, comes to the fore in the great things achieved for God. The incidence of doubt-filled dialogue, on Moses’ part, after the Burning Bush, tells us about the roles of God and man in the proclamation of truth.

When confronted with his call Moses is filled with a sense of his inadequacy. That sense overrides the awesome authority of a divine commission and the accompanying signs wrought by God to convince Moses of supernatural aid. How bold our weakness is in asserting our unbelief. Ironically, it causes us to dare God with a brazenness that is shameful, but how strong the dominion of sin happens to be in the human heart. No man is fit for the task of speaking the Lord’s word. But did Moses protest because he was afraid of having his pride wounded before Pharaoh or was it genuine humility that overwhelmed him? Did he think that he had to perform according to his own ability, conjuring up a persuasive message and delivering it impressively? Did he experience that tension of knowing that he had to rely on God but wondering if God would let him down at a critical moment?

He had the word of God and the wonders wrought by God to back him up but he argued that neither nature nor the knowledge of God made him eligible for the mission to Egypt. “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant.”  Moses was radically unsure of God. He wanted proof in himself that God would support him before he set out, whereas God distributes his talents to his servants as they trust him in the moment of action. We are never to fall into the error of believing that God’s gifts to men operate automatically. Each occasion requires its own enduements in emphasis upon God’s sovereignty.  

God’s reply to Moses is explicit and unanswerable: “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak, and will teach you what to say”.  Yet Moses is still not satisfied. We marvel at his reluctance: “O Lord, please send someone else to do it”.

What follows is remarkable in God’s accommodation to Moses’ craven obduracy and as God supplies him with an ally to lean on he affords us an insight into the nature of revelation. Aaron, the brother of Moses, is already on the way to support him and speak on his behalf. Moses was permitted to persist in his prevarication so that God could establish a vital point. Though man may be the audible voice in the preaching of God’s word the main speaker is God who moves his chosen men to speech. True prophets do not originate the message they deliver and God causes them to articulate effectively whether it is with eloquence or plainness. The word comes from God and homes in on the human heart by his power. Man is not meant to take any credit. We may appreciate the efforts of men, but the church is not meant to manufacture celebrities in the way that arouses ambition, pride, rivalry, and flattery. God gives the mouth, the message, and the results. Calvin warns us that praise may not be given to men: “We must always speak of the efficacy of ministry in such a manner that the entire praise of the work may be reserved for God alone . . . . We ought not to extol the persons of men so as to obscure the glory of God”.

God’s reunion of the two brothers is warm and timely. He ensures that it is a happy event. Moses is to put “the words in Aaron’s mouth”. It is clear, however, that Moses has no part in the composition of the speeches to be delivered in Egypt before the world’s mightiest despot. Moses is God’s mouth to Aaron. He will be taught by God and he will convey that teaching to Aaron. “It will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him” (4:16). But Aaron is only Moses’ mouth because God instructs Moses’ ear: “I will help both of you to speak and will teach you what to do” (4:15). In fact Moses himself is enabled by God to address the ruler of Egypt when the plagues upon the land are enunciated. 

We may infer from the God-ordained partnership of Moses and Aaron, and the way in which these brothers relate and function, that the word is central to and superior in ministry. The signs shown to Moses are to point to the word so that hearers may believe (4:8-9). Sacramental observance, symbolized in the priestly ministry of Aaron, is subservient to and confirmatory of the word. The modern emphasis on wonders in some quarters is a distraction from the doctrine of the word and the primary ministerial task of teaching and preaching. Sacramentalism has had a baneful influence in the life of the church. G.A. F. Knight observes, “The Christian sacraments have at times in history sunk to the level of mere magical acts (in the eyes of simple folk) when they became divorced from the preaching of the Word” [Theology as Narration, The Handsel Press Limited, Edinburgh, 1976]. Calvin concurs in even stronger terms, “The devil has introduced the fashion of celebrating the Supper without any doctrine, and for doctrine has substituted ceremonies”. The primacy of the word was even threatened in Israel when the priests of the temple, who were also charged with its proclamation, crowded it out with greater time devoted to liturgical practices. God chose Moses (and Paul) as someone lacking natural eloquence to emphasise that he is the only effective Preacher. We are prone to make much of talents without attributing them to grace alone. This is robbery of the glory due to God alone. Moses was selected to instruct Aaron to illustrate the fact that ritual and liturgy are appointed for the service and presentation of the word and must comply with its teaching.

Faith is confidence in God. But that is an insufficient definition. Faith may also be placed in an object, a fact, or a force in the sense of reliance which is devoid of personal relationship. Christian faith constitutes union with God as well as a leaning upon him, and in its fullness and maturity it is communion with God. It is not simply trust or perception but intimate communion. The connection with God is inter-personal as described in the liturgy: that he may dwell in us and we in him.
The interior link with God begins with an ardent longing for him. A desire is kindled in the heart by God himself and the soul’s yearning cry is to “know God fully even as I am known by him” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

The author of the psalm, by virtue of his exile from the temple, typifies the grief of a believer who has an uneasy sense of distance from God whatever the cause. The soul that is dry mourns his absence and thirsts for his gracious presence. Our poet shares the longing of the apostle Paul and confesses: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. He wants to be replenished not just with ideas and memories of God. He must move beyond concepts to companionship: My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. He doesn’t want a head filled with facts alone, but a heart filled with feeling. He has known barrenness for too long. He knows that revitalized faith restores the soul. God is present in the means of grace: “I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God”. However he is now deprived of attendance at the festive occasions that afforded him such strength and joy, but he recollects the promises heard and sung in the assembly of God’s people and finds God, and reassurances of his goodness, in the word he has retained and taken with him into the exile he must endure. The recollection of promises converts to prayer: “I say to God my Rock”. He pours out his woes and then preaches to himself: “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, My Saviour and my God”. His reliance on his Rock is renewed. The God whose face he wanted to see has revivified his hope at last by the revelation of his face which glows with divine favour and pledges deliverance. He enjoys or anticipates a countenance to countenance encounter. All the help he needs is signalled in the smile of his God.

Faith affords a vision of the face of God which is mirrored in his word. The word is sufficient to delineate the principal features of God and guarantee his presence and assurances to his people. Yet language cannot fully display him and our understanding cannot fully apprehend him. But, as with Moses, we see him partially which is enough for us to claim that he is there. His presence means that his face shines upon us and so we know the kindness of the face even if we are sheltered from the full exhibition of his glory. The dimmed down reflections communicated to our knowledge (cf Paul’s ancient and inadequate metal mirror) still enable us to be sure that our knowledge of God is good and true for the time being. We are in communion with the living God and our fellowship with him is real and personal. It is fellowship through Christ and by his Spirit.

The One whom Paul wishes to see face to face is Jesus Christ. By grace he knows much of the Lord already, for to focus on Jesus believingly is to gaze on God. Indeed, “The light of the knowledge of the glory of God (is seen) in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). But we need keener more penetrating sight to look into the face of Jesus with complete appreciation of whom he represents. The gist of Holy Scripture is that we show our faces to God by entering his presence and he appears to our faith through the witness of the word made effectual by the Spirit. We read and reflect while the Spirit works within – indwelling and illuminating. The living God meets with us. We read, ponder, and remember the text and the Lord himself teaches us (John 6:45). Ours is not a solo exercise of the mind or imagination and prayer is not a soliloquy. We are enjoying a rapport and relationship with God which is as “face to face” possible under present conditions and definitely face to face (as he is) prospectively, according to unchangeable promises. Word, Spirit, and the pledge of future fulfilment delight us in our acquaintance with God.

The name “Jesus Christ” is more than a slogan, a slick expression from the tip of the tongue, or even the central theme of formal theology that helps us organize our thoughts of God and his purposes.

Jesus Christ is risen, alive, and regnant over all reality and the believer has access to his presence through mutual approach and appointment (Hebrews 5:14-16, Revelation 3:20). “The Lord be with you” is the very greatest blessing we can convey upon another. Beyond words, notions, and emotions, to fasten upon God firmly by faith in his word, and confidence in his reliability, is the greatest benefit granted to us. To linger with him, converse, with him, and ruminate upon him, sure of his closeness and care, is the ultimate enjoyment on earth and a foretaste of all that is to come. He communicates through canonical revelation and confirms our association through his ordinances. Thomas Aquinas came to the summit of his spiritual experience, after long labour in the word, in the observance of the Lord’s Supper. The Lord touches us and reaches us through his means of grace. It is always a moment of sovereign self disclosure and we possess his personal invitation to come and try his promises any time - to quietly wait.

It is the reality and cultivation of the presence of God that is our main preoccupation. It is this engagement that our flesh and deadly foe most assail. The lapses, interruptions, and separations are the causes of our keenest woe: “Why are you downcast, O my soul? My soul is downcast within me.  Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?” We are not alone in the fluctuations of our spiritual wellbeing and the saints of Scripture and subsequent Christian history rally to support us. We have all things in common: our dark nights of the soul, Luther-like periods of languor, John Newton-like seasons of neglect, times when our exile seems irreversible. But pining is the agony of love, not the evidence of abandonment. Longing, says St. Augustine, makes the heart deep. The deeper our heart the deeper our relationship with God will be, for in our hearts he can store more of himself. The emptiness is preparation for fullness.

Face to face! The words themselves compel us to recognize that the culmination of the seeking after God is to know him, as well as to know that he is, and to know about him. To echo the psalmist, this aspiration is ever with the believer: “When can I go and meet with God?”

“This happiness, my dear Sir, is open to you – to all who seek. He is enthroned in heaven, but prayer will bring him down to the heart. Indeed he is always with us; and if we feel one desire towards him, we may accept it as a token that he gave it us to encourage us to ask for more” (John Newton).

Grace is the message of the church that is meant not only to characterize its mission to the world but determine its own mode of life. The apostle Paul describes the features of life in a believing community that has been graced in an authentic way by the graciousness of God: Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity (Colossians 3:12-14). Conceptually the passage has great charm but in reality Paul’s exhortation can only find fulfilment by the exercise of amazing grace through a deeply humbled people. The demands of grace upon its recipients are colossal. The virtues delineated by Paul run counter to natural tendencies. Their motivation requires a genuine and mature self knowledge (Forgive as the Lord forgave you) that erases pride and self-righteousness, and also an adequate comprehension of the scope of divine mercy to the unworthy. These “awarenesses” begin to provide a platform for the demonstration of attitudes and actions that are truly, deeply, Christian. It is necessary for the Holy Spirit to create a concerted effort towards holiness among the people of God. It is the responsibility of the people of God to cultivate the principles of godliness imparted to them by the indwelling Spirit. The means of grace and the power of God are available to transform Paul’s ideals into the actual identification marks of the folk who belong to God and represent his character to the world.

But there is enough sin and temptation in Christian experience to counter the development of the grace-filled community. Believers are retarded by much that remains of the old self-serving nature. Paul’s encouragements are aimed at the battleground of the heart where contrary principles are in intense conflict with each other (Romans 7). He is not prescribing an easy course of action among believers but a goal that necessitates struggle, self denial, and discipline – an earnest exertion that derives its energy from grace present, promised, and sought through continual prayer. To say that Paul’s instruction is aspirational is not to deny that it is also obligatory as a spontaneous expression of the new life. Reliance and responsibility are concurrent in the lives of the regenerate. There is a “must” that must be met by supernatural enabling. Grace is a gift that generates desire, volition, and action. The impossibility of perfection here in this life does not nullify the divine imposition upon us (Colossians 1:28). Failure drives us to the all-sufficient Saviour, deprives us of the right to boast, and discloses the marvellous forbearance of God in the forgiveness and assistance he bestows. Law or commandment is never intended to suggest any capacity within us to comply. It is meant to be a compulsion that causes us to resort to the Redeemer because of the startling discovery of our absolute impotence. Grace makes law both duty and delight.  Grace affords us the perception that law (protective and life enhancing) emerges from divine love and expresses human love. Paul expounds the essence of law which, if operative as love for God and neighbour, precludes every breach of the moral law. The renewed believer eagerly complies with the behavioural norms of the Lord Jesus through likeness to him. Love is the fulfilment of the law of Christ – his disposition and deeds, his habits. We are given a care for what God cares about and a care for those who are his concern. Love of law consists of personal rectitude, generous compassion, and social justice: “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). In exercising obedience we are given the guidelines of Scripture and the guidance of the Spirit and between the two there is no variation. If our sense of “right” conflicts with Scripture it is not of the Holy Spirit.

There are several powerful influences within the life of the Church that are corrosive of the law of love and disruptive of genuine harmony, mutual acceptance, and sincere fellowship.

a) The first amounts to a disregard of morality on the basis of a perverted view of grace (antinomianism). There is a casual approach to the Decalogue and Biblical ethics on the basis of a presumption that bad behaviour can be condoned and easily forgiven because grace is indulgent towards our peccadilloes. This is a view that does not assess sin with gravity, misunderstands our calling to holiness, and cheapens grace horribly. It is a travesty of the gospel and a serious misreading of the nature of salvation as deliverance from sin, not safety in it. Paul stalwartly repudiates this brazen attitude: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? (Romans 6:1-2). James endorses Paul’s statement with the observation that justification is proven, not attained, through holy living: “A person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone” (James 2:24). Our profession of faith is vindicated by a transformed life and a struggle against sin, not a compromise with it.

b) The teaching of James has often been characterized as moralistic and works based. Luther deemed it a “right strawy epistle”. But James’s instruction is firmly grounded in a rich appreciation of grace – i.e. enabling grace that is evident in Christian character and conduct. He starts with the full recognition of supernatural empowering through the implanting of the soul saving word and the wondrous fact of regeneration (1:18). There is a vast distance between moralism and the morality of the born again, both in kind and motivation. Moralism emerges from a self-righteous confidence in one’s own competence to abide by the law. It does not appreciate the spiritual depths and requirements of the law and is content with a decent external conformity to it. It is harshly critical towards the flaws of its fellows, grimly, relentlessly, judgmental, and forgetful of our common unworthiness and wretchedness which is healed through the extravagant generosity of God alone. God’s gracious reinstatement of the penitent sinner is hardly conceded and yet Biblical examples abound (David, Jonah, Peter, Mark, etc). Moralism holds grudges, and intends evils alien to the mercy of God.

c) James tackles another issue that must have been prevalent in the early church or he would not have addressed it. He poses a test as to the graciousness of every congregation in the reception accorded to strangers – a rich man and a shabby man (2:1-13). James deplores partiality towards the rich and seemingly significant and the discrimination against the poor and uninfluential. James Adamson describes this kind of behaviour as maintaining “pernicious distinctions”. It does not accord with the poverty and humility of the Lord Jesus whilst with us on earth. Christians are not to be esteemed according to worldly standards. Snobbery and the snubbing of others is nothing less than a gross evil, especially if we explore at depth the humbleness and compassion of God as principally exhibited in the Saviour.