The possession of any talent or ability is a gift from God. Be it a skill of brain or body its source is God. The capacity “to do” is a donation from God and the energy we employ emanates from him. We are his servants and instruments designed to advance his purposes and glorify him and so he equips and resources us. Created holy we were intended to work harmoniously with him. Co-operation was our calling and in concert with him all our aspirations and actions were to be pleasing to him and profitable for us. He endowed us with so many wonderful capabilities and even in our degraded condition the traces of our former nous and nobility are conspicuous in our creativity and accomplishments as a fallen race. God bestowed powers upon mankind that are marvellous but which are now menacing because of our moral disorder. The disharmony between God and man makes many of our actions harmful through evil choices. Our ingenuity is ill used. The divine supply of extraordinary human capableness is still maintained and superintended by God but our vision for its purpose and potential is lost. No doubt, as a consequence of our Fall, many of our powers have waned or been withdrawn. Much that was granted to us in our original state probably lies dormant in our severely weakened state. Limitations and impediments have been imposed upon us through our moral collapse and severance from God from whom all wisdom and ability flows. Our faculties function with less reliability, our view of reality is distorted, and our goals are suspect. Yet God is involved in the chaos and unruliness of our sinful endeavours, distributing his gifts and guiding events toward the glorious culmination that will vindicate his wisdom and sovereignty. Skilfully he steers our evil designs and deeds in the direction of his perfect will and to this end the bestowal of his gifts upon men in the natural sphere continues even when they deny him or are deprived of knowing him. Our dependence upon God is complete. He informs, influences, and energises us, and even wicked thought and action borrows from the bounty of his provision and is not independent of his providence. Our wills may comply with or contradict his ways, but we cannot act without him, using or abusing the competence he extends to us. Most of the great ones of this earth appear to have been graceless in a redemptive sense, unless grace has worked within them at mysterious levels or near to death. But every talent they had, or power they exercised, was given by God and they will answer to him for their performance.

  Men can so easily forget or ignore their utter dependence upon God. Yet our frailty is evident in so many ways and at so many times. Reason, imagination, memory so easily become defective. Physical abilities and attributes fade sooner than we expect. The simplest tasks mental or corporal may become difficult or impossible. The ease with which we take competence for granted is forgetful of the divine enabling to cope with each day and rise to the routine tasks of our calling in life. To ponder the range of human ability and action is awesome. Simple or complex our attainments and achievements are wrought through divine enduement and assistance. It is he who made us and not we ourselves (Psalm 100:3).

  If “normal” competencies are supplied by God how much more are the capacities of the spiritual life to be attributed to the supreme Doer and Donor who works in and through his recreated people with purifying power and salvific purpose. Our natural talents remain effective to some degree or other, in spite of our degradation, and we recognize them to be the gifts of our Creator. It is imperative that we acknowledge that our spiritual qualities and capabilities are the consequences of special grace poured out upon us continually. We are vessels of the virtue and potency of God brought into concurrence with his will and work. Freed form self we are free to act with him and for him and so he resources and replenishes us with his knowledge and strength as we labour in his cause. Natural talents are co-opted and sometimes elevated in his service and new skills are given and developed. Because they are graciously bestowed human boasting is excluded. The folk God uses must rely upon him constantly. When they fail to do so their effectiveness ebbs to emphasise the necessity for humility and recumbency upon him. We live and lean.

  When Paul eyed the aspects of his multi-faceted ministry and all its demands he expressed the opinion that no-one was equal to the task (2 Corinthians 2:16). Our insufficiency is indisputable. Those who seek to maintain the Christian walk and witness through efforts they call their own, who seek to maintain their own competence through pride or competitiveness, are out of touch with grace and will soon be out of the race. We run our course through divine ability and energy. Thus says the apostle: “To this end I labour, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me” (Colossians 1:29). Paul doesn’t hesitate to allude to his hard work (2 Corinthians 11:23, 27). As the self-confessed “least of the apostles” he doesn’t hesitate to claim that he worked harder than them all, but he takes no personal credit – “yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). His confidence was lodged in Christ and was nourished through Christ and any competency he possessed or displayed was from Christ:”Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5). Paul’s testimony amounts to the saying of Jesus himself: “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Grace does not eliminate work but enables it. Failure and disappointment remind us that we can never proceed in any venture without prayer and the power of God, which must be consciously sought and patiently awaited.

  Our capacities are not our own. They are on loan. They were apportioned to us and cannot be attributed to us as accomplishments of our own. Their initiation and improvement come from God. We are presumptuous when we expect them to be effective at will or without reverence and preparation before God. We are to blame when they are obstructed and become obsolete or are abused. They are gifts that must be fostered in the care of the Lord as our souls are entrusted to him with frequency.

  Pharaoh requested Joseph for an interpretation of his puzzling dreams. Joseph did not assume this competence even though it had previously been granted to him. He acknowledged that a pastoral resolution to Pharaoh’s perplexity came from God: “I cannot do it, but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires” (Genesis 41: 16). Daniel ascribed his gift of interpretation not to himself but to his Lord: “There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries” (Daniel 2:28). At every level of our existence and performance we are cast upon God for our competence. John Witherspoon the only clerical signatory to the Declaration of Independence is not the only minister of Christ to declare his ordinariness and the elevation of his powers by Grace. Asahel Nettleton, the great and nearly forgotten American evangelist, is in the same category. God energizes and enhances the efforts of his people and all their competencies come solely from him. 


RJS

The Ordeals of Jacob – Genesis 32

  The pattern of our lives is not always pleasant. Jacob is a vivid example of that fact. This utterly unworthy man of God is exposed to a trial that is almost intolerable. He has to face who he really is and his record of deceit, craftiness, and trickery. His past ambition and sly and slippery ways loom before him as the victim of his cruel scheming gradually approaches. Esau his duped and despised brother who could prove to be Jacob’s nemesis in a final encounter between the two brothers – the injured and injurer – steadily draws ominously near with 400 men. Jacob is overwhelmed by dread and filled with fear. He rehearses the promise that returns him to home ground but he is still quaking. He apprehends truth yet, being human and in the midst of a crisis, he still trembles. He is the cheat who faces payback.

  In waiting for Esau Jacob takes what preparatory measures he can, he prays and pleads with God but the tension almost breaks him. He knows he is in line with God’s revealed will but his emotions take control. His situation is grim. He alternates between panic and hope. Who can tell what the meeting between himself and his wronged brother will bring? “For he thought, ‘I will pacify him with these gifts I am sending on ahead; later, when I see him, perhaps he will receive me.’ ” Jacob has to hold his breath and wonder. His gifts were a gamble.

  Our future is often threatening. We cannot dare to think about it, but the worry won’t recede. It keeps intruding upon our mind, it jangles our nerves and robs us of rest. Jacob is in for an anxious night. It is terrifying to face a nagging conscience and its indelible memories. It is shattering to confront who and what we really are when there is no distraction. We are worn out by the internal conflict and anxious about the conflicts without. If we are perturbed about an enemy or a hostile situation with our foes we can feel their hot breath and imagine their hate-filled stare. Sin and accusations have to be dealt with and it all contributes to a state of war that terrifies us. Jacob is deeply disturbed and uncomfortably alone. He endeavours to hold on to the promise of God and has had his seasons of certainty, but when he most needs confidence he is not sure and he cannot help himself to stand firm.

  Human nature is constitutionally weak (as God intended). When we are vulnerable the assurances we receive are not always effective of pacifying. Besides, Jacob recognizes that he was a man who couldn’t be trusted. His accustomed behaviour made absolute trust difficult. Our natures make us hesitant in areas where we are most at fault for we know the possibilities that may occur. We are saddled with suspicions caused by our own basic tendencies and Jacob was haunted by his habitual unreliability. He was an unprincipled man who lived by his own wits and ability to outwit others. Human unreliability sets us at odds with God and not only our fellows whom we let down. We are fickle and that is our barrier to the exercise of faith.

  Life is perpetual conflict in some form or other. We battle in our souls. We differ with others. We contend with adverse circumstances. It is all so gruelling and it depletes our energy and diminishes our hope. Jacob faced more than he could handle. But his greatest ordeal was about to engulf him. It was his Jabbok experience that most sorely tested him, and it swiftly leapt upon him. He did not expect a near and unknown assailant to attack him in the night, who struck at a moment when Jacob craved for peace and was storing what meagre strength he had for the morrow and its climactic event.

  Our greatest ordeal comes when we are forced to grapple with God – to confront the realities of our own undiscovered personal self and its past and also address the lurking fears concerning the future. Yet for all the seriousness of the struggle God confronts us in sweet condescension, as if a man, fully cognizant of our humanity and sympathetic with our predicament. Jacob was attacked by the Lord as a man (how prophetic!) Though all powerful and sovereign God allows our persistence to come to terms with him to prevail (cf “Come, let us reason together” Isaiah 1:18). His grace is prepared to make concessions and modify his majesty before us so that we might approach him, although actually his majesty is magnified in mercy. Wrestling with God in prayer for our very lives is ordained to be a blessing. The struggle and sweat of the soul is God’s means of wresting us from our delusions about sin and self and enabling us to see that perseverance with himself is the way to deliverance.

  But there is always a reminder of our inward woundedness and frailty. “When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man” (V25).  That act brought combat to a conclusion. The break came at daybreak. It was the beginning of a new era for Jacob, signalled by his new name – Israel. Jacob clung to his mysterious assailant for as long as he could; no longer to fight but to obtain a blessing he sensed that his opponent was more than human. He grasped the fact that he was wrestling with the divine. The awful ordeal was meant to bring him to the point of urgent request.  “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (v26).

  Jacob encountered God, the author of the promise he had received, and which would save him. Only in an intense struggle with God himself would Jacob be brought to a solid faith in God’s word. But once again Jacob is brought to self-identification, an act of concise candid confession: “The man asked him, ‘What is your name?’ ‘Jacob’ he answered”. It was the name of the sinner that grace had claimed – the name God held dear in his heart from all eternity – the name indicative of the vile, grasping, greedy, ambitious nature that God had resolved to change, and because of that change the Lord himself would re-name Jacob just as he renewed him and call him Israel – the man who persevered in the struggle for safety and found it in the God who understood the plight of man.

  But fighting with God at close quarters, and the closing of conflict through faith, do not bring us to cheap familiarity with God or presumptuousness as to his favour. Our relationship is intimate but there is always a clear distinction between God and man. In Christ he came to us on a human level. But the lord is always lofty and not accessible to our curiosity. He sovereignly reveals himself and delights to do so in mercy. But we must not get above ourselves and pry where he draws the boundary to our understanding. We are to trust and adore and be grateful for his blessing so freely bestowed. To keep us humble he leaves us with an awareness of our weakness. The Sun of righteousness may graciously shine upon us and treat us with his favour but he will leave us with a reminder that though truly blessed we are still lamed by our sinful nature. We shall limp from the hip or sense the thorn in our side. Our pride needs the restraint of some kind of spiritual handicap that will always bring us to our knees for forgiveness and mercy. The gospel assures that we are healed by wounds – the wounds of the Redeemer and the wounds to the old Adam within.                       


RJS

  The believer can never boast in self. Boasting is a human tendency hard to resist. It almost accompanies everything we do. If we can’t excel at least we have to keep our end up because in some way we have to measure up to the expectations of ourselves and others. We have to advertise our attainments to be accepted or admired. Even in the church of God where acceptance is meant to be unconditional and mutual respect and cherishing universal there is a premium on distinction that elevates some above others in terms of knowledge, power, and status. These things are of great importance in some congregations and membership becomes exclusive and selective. Postcode, power, possessions, and prestige become pre-eminent in weighing the worth of an individual. There may not be a notice in the foyer to this effect, its just that members don’t notice those deemed to be undesirable until they depart. They would lower the tone of the car park and the dress code and sully the indulgence of mutual flattery and not contribute to beneficial commercial arrangements.

  There will always be “people of quality” who are drawn to Christ but their most usual qualities are humility and amicableness simply because they do indeed know Christ. They are not puffed up. But the socially conscious church is repudiated by the Saviour. Human standards do not prevail in the divine society. They are in direct and dangerous opposition to the preference of God. He withdraws from pretentious gatherings that pamper themselves with self praise. That is precisely what Paul teaches in 2 Corinthians 1: 18-31. Yet we see churches fawning over the rich and the great, and taking pride in social standing and impressive accomplishments.

The Corinthians craved to be spiritual “yuppies and toffs” (snobs) and judged others accordingly. Paul mocks their self esteem and rivalry: “Already you have all you want. Already you have become rich. You have become kings . . . (4:8). Paul teaches that no endowment, natural or spiritual, is to be the cause of boasting, superiority, or rivalry within the people of God. “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” (4:7). Grace levels people to humbleness of heart and mutual high regard. The church becomes classless and the relationships courteous. All are recipients of divine favours sovereignly dispensed. All occupy the status of dependants and each one survives and thrives on divine welfare that may be maintained or withheld.
  The Corinthians are Exhibit A as to the occurrence of the very worst form of human arrogance. Pride may transfer from natural abilities, attainments, and acquisitions to spiritual over-confidence and contempt for those deemed not so spiritually developed. Knowledge, real or pretended, can give rise to dominance and elitism in the church. This knowledge is not gained through passion and love for truth in itself, or for usefulness, but for self elevation and distinction. The gifts of God are abused in a spirit of personal grandiosity. The church becomes a sphere in which people of ambition seek to reign. It is relatively easy, if one is thrusting enough, to gain influence in a community where trust and self-effacement constitute the atmosphere and general attitude, and where folk are willing to give way out of modesty. The apostle John identified one such self-promoting personality in Dioterephes, “who loves to be first” (3 John 9). Eager volunteers need to be vetted. Their nature might be wolfish. “Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1). “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands” (1 Timothy 5:22).

  The foundation for the avoidance of boasting is the recognition that the cause of all capacities and favourable circumstances is God. It is by his cause that that we receive or perform any good. When we look to the source of all we have we are disinclined to avow self-sufficiency, and Paul takes us back to the very origin of faith and our position in Christ. That itself is due to God and we are deprived of any grounds whatsoever for boasting or becoming bloated with self importance.

  It may be that some believers, aware of their blessings in Christ, trace their happy condition to the sensible decision to place themselves in his care. It may not be a conscious cause of self congratulation but there is an assumption that grace began the moment they chose to believe. The emphasis in their experience of conversion is on their acceptance of the gospel offer.  They begin their account with “I” rather than with God, and in doing so they actually have themselves to thank as well as God. It is a false commencement to an acquaintance of the realities of which a Christian ought to be conscious. We did not begin the process of seeking or knowing the Saviour. “It is because of him (God)”, avers the apostle, “that you are in Christ Jesus.”

  We were marked out for that destiny, and, characteristically in his work of mercy, God made the first move, which wasn’t slight, but all- powerful and purposed from eternity. He initiated a transformation that could only be achieved through the exertion of his great might and the allurement of his great love. Nothing human or created causes us to be found in Christ. It is because of Him. All boasting is excluded at the outset of our life in fellowship with God. We have no one to thank but him. We didn’t make a smart choice, humanly speaking. We made a choice enabled by God and we made it through his gift of a renewed faculty of choice. We were already touched by grace before we knew it. God had already grasped us before we reached out to him. It is no wonder that Paul advises, “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord” (1:31).  It is a marvellous realization to capture the thought that God’s advance toward us preceded any desire for him. It leaves us lost in wonder and amazement. Paul knew a lot about human boastfulness. He was an inveterate practitioner of the obnoxious art. He didn’t give it up. It became a healthy habit because he found he would rather boast in the Lord. It was merited.

  But Paul does not only, and surprisingly, attribute the start of our life in Christ to God and not our own wise discernment, he continues to ascribe the whole course of salvation until its completion entirely to the Christ the Father has given. We live on divine charity from start to finish. Christ has become for us, “wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption” (v30). Nothing in the nature of godliness or the securing of our eternal goal is self produced. It is caused through Christ. We are given the wisdom to recognize no good thing in ourselves. All our boasting has been a futile lie. He confers his own worth and merit upon us which is why God so instantly and eagerly receives us. He made us accepted in the Beloved. We cannot boast. And the holiness that makes us fit for the friendship of God is caused by the Holy One indwelling and working within us. It is not a matter of self improvement but supernaturally wrought resemblance to Jesus. We cannot boast. And our final redemption or deliverance from our wretchedness and this foul world is because of Christ’s amendment and atonement on our behalf, and because he has stuck fast to us until the end. We have no cause to boast about anything.

RJS

  Wherever Christianity is merely nominal or notional there is a “missing link”. It is possible to entertain the assumption that one is a Christian, and even to experience something of the power of the gospel, and yet fail to be a true believer. Environment, upbringing, and association with the confessing community may encourage a participant in these influences to believe that the faith they possess is genuine. It is a familiarity with the things of God but not a grasp of them. Habits are formed, behaviour and language imitated, but there is no interior apprehension. A certain mental persuasion prevails but there is no personal possession of the realities of the gospel. It is a mimicry of customs and conversation of folk around them that cannot truly say that “Christ is mine”. Christianity is about Jesus without a vital attachment to him. The facts are believed, or at least acknowledged, but a union with the Saviour has not been formed. The brain may pursue a Christian track, and the body conform to Christian observances, but the heart is strangely alien to all these things. Truth has not touched the core of one’s being. Attitudes have been inherited, the intellect has been informed, action may be unimpeachable, but the adherence to the propositions of the gospel is not affective. It is mental without being moved to trust, affection, and adoration. The Litany of the BCP 1662 pleads that the monarch , “may evermore have affiance in thee”, and the rather archaic term ‘affiance’ suggests a pledge to know and trust another in the most intimate manner (cf fiancé).

  The believer is joined to Christ, spirit to spirit. The believer is married to Christ in the body of the church, his bride.  The bond is faith which is a response to the prior embrace of the Redeemer. He reveals himself and reaches out to the sinner who then takes hold of the One who enfolds him. It is a spiritual connection based on the promise of the word and the call of the Spirit. The link is mutual love. Jesus Christ is understood to be trustworthy and the believer becomes trusting. A real and living heartfelt rapport is established. There is a meeting of minds, a harmony of wills, where faith is accompanied by feeling, a keen sense of the relationship that grasps the objective fact, which in turn engenders the subjective enjoyment of his fellowship. The experience is best summed up as, “he in us and we in him’, a warm and intimate communion of persons, two entities in unity. This union with the divine was described by the puritans as, “closing with Christ”. This is to know him rather than to know of him. It springs from an encounter that becomes an enduring kinship and a permanent tie of association and access. Faith is the means of contact with this inestimable privilege – being joined to God in Christ. This is the goal of all gospel endeavour. But its realization is the work of God.

  Faith is wrought through miracle and it is a gift of grace. It is a supernatural creation within the human soul, the first evidence of regeneration, and token of our election. It is not a phenomenon that can occur through the effort of man. It is given, and the concurrent and instantaneous cause of dependence upon Christ for salvation. The initiative is the Lord’s: the instinct to believe is the expression of the new nature of man. True faith in God is the precious donation of God himself, the result of his self-giving and gracious saving action. He works of his own sovereign will and we respond of our own renewed and liberated will. The wills coincide but God must first decide. His choice of us enables us to choose him. “You did not choose me but I chose you” (John 15:16) and, “Without me you can do nothing” (John15:5). All spiritual life, which begins with faith, and all fruitfulness proceeds from him. “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing” (John 6:63).

  So faith is not fruit of the flesh. The capacity to believe is furnished by God. The gospel invites us all and it is our responsibility to obey God’s gracious command which man’s nature tends to reject, as Paul and Barnabas discovered in their preaching to the Jews. “We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. For this is what the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth,’ When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honoured the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed” (Acts 13: 46-48).

  This belief of the Gentiles is tantamount to deliverance from spiritual death and inertia (cf Lazarus-John 11:38-34). Hence Paul is able to declare, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ (shared life) . . . . For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast . . . . For we are his workmanship” (Ephesians 2:4-10). God remakes and renovates those who are going to be joined with Christ. We are made fit for the union. Grace effects the transformation and faith expresses the commencement of a new principle of life divinely bestowed. “For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” (1 Corinthians 4: 7).

  Faith as a gift is echoed throughout the Pauline letters to the churches. It accompanies the movement of grace within the believer’s soul. “Peace to you brothers” Paul addresses the Ephesians, “and love with faith from God” (6:23). Faith towards God is coupled with the love of God towards fellow Christians. The donation of faith, that personal link with God, causes the disposition to love as God loves. In Romans 12:3 Paul exhorts his readers to humility and sobriety of judgment , “in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you”. God not only determines to whom he shall grant faith but also in what measure. The exercise of sovereignty always precedes the recipience of his goodness. “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but to suffer for him” (Philippians 1: 29). Faith is a divine grant to us and believers are a grant to Christ, a reward for his obedience. “For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him” (John 17:2 cf Isaiah 53:10, “He will see his offspring”. Also see John 6: 39-40.

  The evidence of the word of God and genuine experience of grace emphasises the truth that faith is not simply assent to historical fact and theological concepts. It is not to be merely conversant with the Christian faith but to possess communion with God through faith. Faith is action and not attitude alone. It leans toward God and reposes and relies upon him rather than learn of him without yielding to his authority and mercy. Saving trust is not a human talent. It occurs because of divine inducement and enabling.

  Faith issues from the Lord’s strong grasp of us and its first stirring is to clasp the Saviour in return. It takes a hold on Jesus and clings to him to the end. It is a sovereign bestowal that is sustained by God unfailingly. What a prize!

RJS