I speak in parables, so that, “though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.”  Luke 8: 10

Parables were a strong feature in the teaching ministry of the Lord Jesus.  Indeed many would go so far as to say that parables were his characteristic means of communication, that principally the Lord was a story teller, and that therefore all means of Christian proclamation ought to be story telling.  However, the Saviour employed other means of discourse depending on His purpose and the prevailing circumstances (note his Jerusalem ministry), and the notion that He told parables to successfully reach the populace with maximum effect is to contradict His own statement.  The 'story and drama' school of thought in the modern church is founded on a false premise.  The Lord did not use parables to achieve instant comprehension among the members of His audience, but rather to perplex them, and sift out enquirers as to the true meaning of the narrative. 

Christ's resorting to parables was a judgement upon His listeners, many of whom had already rejected His plainer declarations.  The mass communication of Jesus was not for the sake of crowd appeal, but to call out those who were being prompted to seek “the secrets of the kingdom of God” (v9).  The general public was happy with the mere content of what seemed to be an amusing or moralistic tale.  They admired the Saviour's powers of imagination and His vivid speech.  They might chuckle where they felt it was appropriate, or nod their heads at some example of human folly, but the idea that the Lord was imparting something salvific never entered their heads.  They were spiritually obtuse, which is the abiding principle in natural man until the miracle of illumination occurs by the working of the Holy Spirit.  St Paul confirms this fact in his letter to the Corinthians, and in his very successful and eventful public ministry we have no record of him relating parables:  “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.  The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned”. (1Cor.2:13-14)   It is of value to note that the Lord's ministry was intended to call out the remnant from Israel (“So too, at the present time there is remnant chosen by grace”. Romans 11:5), whilst Paul’s evangelism was the opening essay into the Gentile world which was not under the same specific judgement as Israel, for it had rejected the law of God in the conscience, but not yet the prophetic revelation concerning the Saviour.

  A superficial reading of the New Testament concludes that Jesus set out to be an entertainer as well as a teacher, and that style prevailed over content.  His aspiration was to be broad in appeal rather than deep in meaning.  His quotation from Isaiah, a prophet who lived with rejection and indifference, runs counter to the sentiment that Jesus fostered the favour of the masses.  For the majority of His hearers the enigmatic words of the parables were confirmation of divine displeasure.  God had addressed this nation in the clear speech of the prophets and the stirring warnings of the Baptist.  Now He speaks to puzzle them, and only Jesus' private explanations to those who craved an interpretation made sense of the cryptic tales.  To aver that Jesus spoke in the form of simple tales accessible to all is to defy words that are unmistakably comprehensible.  Not that Jesus was the cause of His hearers’ bafflement; He was simply permitting them to continue in their chosen course of spiritual obduracy and non-receptiveness.  He simply deferred to their self-imposed sentence of spiritual death.  In speaking to them, rather than remaining silent, He left them without excuse, for any concern for their souls should have driven them to Him with urgent questions without delay.  People may admire oratorical skills and displays of brilliant eloquence from the pulpit, they may require amusement and diversion, and retain examples of wit and the gist of anecdotes, but unless the Holy Spirit gives them 'ears to hear' their listening is in vain.

  In every proclamation of the word of God people are listening on two levels.  There are the 'tasters' as John Owen calls them, and there are those gripped by the message of mercy, who seize upon it believingly to the saving of their souls.  Preachers have to choose their audience.  Will they opt for being 'pulpiteers' as Spurgeon called the crowd-pleasers, or will they preach solid divine truth in reliance on the Spirit who will home the Word to those marked out for life:  “And all who were appointed for eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48).  Like everything else in life, preaching must be enterprised in dependence upon the sovereignty of God, and not proceed in confidence upon the wit and winsomeness of man.  You see how the tendency to praise men for preaching, or exalt any to celebrity status, is decried by the Word of God:  “So then, no more boasting about men!" (1Cor.3:21). 

A brilliant oration may accomplish nothing spiritually and a pedestrian attempt at preaching may be used mightily.  Paul is often glibly referred to as an arresting public speaker; he did not take that honour to himself.  “When I came to you brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony of God.  I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling.  My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with the demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.” (1Cor.2:1, 3-5)  Elsewhere Paul acknowledged that some adjudged him in his person 'unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing'. (2Cor.10:10)  It is not the spokesman or his language that moves the soul Godwards, but the Spirit who wields the instrument and makes it effective in the calling of the chosen.  “For what 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?”  Therefore Paul says in the light of the operation of divine sovereignty in speaker and hearer, “You will not take pride in one man over against another”. (1Cor.4:6-7)

  The inevitable conclusion is that true preaching and genuine hearing are gifts of the Holy Spirit, and therefore the Word is not to be accommodated to public taste on the mistaken basis that the Lord Jesus made concessions to the people's desire for amusement and something light.  His adoption of the parabolic method was not to be jovial or amiable, but to separate the casual and easily satisfied listener from the intent and life-seeking hearer.  The former was moved by natural curiosity:  the latter was prompted by the Spirit.  Hearing the Word of God is always a privilege and a solemn moment, for it reveals the true intent of the heart, and illustrates the necessity of grace, as Isaiah's observation that suggested our Lord's parable of the sower establishes, “So it is my Word that goes out from my mouth:  it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (Is. 55:11)

RJS

Galatians 6:12

  Performance for praise is a strong and inescapable tendency in human nature.  It lurks somewhere in every human heart and drives some people to overt ambitiousness.  The quest for fame is competition with the divine Name.  It is to use his gifts to one's own glory.  The temptation is powerful in the truest hearts.  The disciples of Jesus were afflicted with the quest for honour:  “They came to Capernaum.  When Jesus was in the house, he asked them, 'What were you arguing about on the road?'  But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest'” (Mark 9:33-34).  This was a nagging problem for the followers of Jesus.  There was a recurrence when James and John asked for special status:  “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory” (Mark 10:37).  Again the rivalry was aroused among the men Jesus had chosen.  “When the ten heard about this they became indignant with James and John” (Mark 10:41).

  John's conscience must have registered a twinge when he had to record his Master's rebuke directed at the Jewish leaders:  “How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God” (John 5: 44).  The pursuit of praise is evidence of a puffed up ego, and pride and grace are incompatible.  Grace causes humility and humility receives blessing.  The huge obstruction to the salvation of the Pharisees was their craving for human praise:  “For they loved praise from men more than praise from God” (John 12:43).  They perversely preferred the flattery of their fellows than the approval of God which comes from dependent faith in his way of salvation.

  The quest for praise is a subtly disguised denial of our complete justification and vindication, as a person, by faith alone.  We are seeking glory through our doings whereas we participate in the glory attained by Christ through union with him.  There is no other glory but divine glory graciously shared with men.  He shines it upon us through his favour alone as we reflect the splendour of his image restored in us.

  Baruch is cautioned about bemoaning frustrated personal ambition when it is dashed by the wider purpose of God that brings a close to his cherished dream of social distinction as a member of a noble family.  It is a perennial warning to each of us in our personal desires for advantage of any kind:  “Should you then seek great things for yourself?  Seek them not” (Jeremiah 45:5).  Such self-directed effort in the service of God runs counter to the Pauline principle that we should make our only boast in God.  Our salvation from cradle to coffin – the redemption of our souls and the renewal of our life – is a matter of pure grace.  Even our good works enabled by grace are tainted with sin.  Works in any form do not contribute to salvation pre- or post-conversion.  When we congratulate ourselves we are contradicting sovereign and free grace – that our reliance is utterly upon divine mercy.

  Paul points this out continuously in his letter to the Galatians, chapter by chapter, verse by verse.  There is absolutely no hope in human aspiration or action.  That avenue is forever closed.  The law – right living – and ritual, even commanded by God, do not win his approbation.  Only the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ can do that for those who see that and trust in it.  And that attitude itself is wholly a gift of grace.

  Paul is insistent upon his message of “justification by faith by grace alone”.  “YOU SEE WHAT LARGE LETTERS I USE AS I WRITE TO YOU WITH MY OWN HAND” (6-11).  Its not a matter of the apostle's failing sight.  Its because of the Galatian's blindness to the gospel.  The Galatian folk are falling under the spell of deceivers who don't care for them a bit.  They are simply out to make a good impression (v12).  They yearn for the praise of men and the feeling of superiority.  They want grounds for bragging about the number of their converts.  Appearances are paramount in their estimation.  Score well and swell the figures.  They don't preach Christ accurately because that would be too costly in personal terms.  These liars are merely chasing good statistics:  “Not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh” (v13).  There is no substance to their religion just the attempt to make a jolly good show.

  The craving for success on this selfish basis is alien to salvation without works and hazardous for perpetrators and those they have duped.  God doesn't care about our works (they have been forgiven) but Christ's works for us and in us.  All his righteousness becomes ours.  We are recipients of favour because of his qualifications on our behalf and the quality of his life within us.  We can do nothing without him.

  This so hard for us to learn.  In our flesh we still strive to establish a righteousness parallel to the Saviour's.  Here is the temptation to meritorious performance.  Luther admitted it after a lifetime of seeking and preaching justification by faith alone.  Karl Barth admitted the tempting notion of appearing before God with his barrow load of books, and jettisoned it, declaring the only hope that he elsewhere expanded into Luther's exact conviction – Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

  We are so addicted to attaining our own success in “the things of God” and thriving on it in self-admiration and public notice.  It is too easy to mouth the mantra, “to the glory of God”, without examining our own true motives in any enterprise.  We overlook true opportunities for service in the search for the sensational and gratifying.  What is the purpose of our architectural achievements all over the world and in all ages, our loudly announced activities, and ambitious aspirations? Kingdom or kudos?

  To make a good show, create outward impressions, crow over converts, exult over achievement, is an ever present tantalization sneaking up within the minds of Christians and the programmes of the church.  Nothing is more pleasing than to devise a project and mark our progress.  It is easy to forget that God must do it all, yes, through us, but not in conformity with presumptuous proposals and ambitious aims.  John and James show that the most audacious aspirations and requests can be made to God in unguarded, self-regarding, moments.  We need to enquire of him our true vocation at his bidding, seek clean and humble hearts, and his sovereign provision of required resources.  Our hunt for accomplishment can be hurtful in so many ways, and even inadvertently a nullifying of the gospel we profess.  Always we will be reminded that our acceptance with God is not through works, so that no one may boast before him.  Obedience is self-effacing and self-forgetful (Matthew 25: 31- 46).  Our consideration of good works is prefaced with the question, “when?”  Our care is for the “little ones' in the sense that fame is not the reward.  To emphasise that our works are not deserving or meritorious it seems that sometimes God even blocks our way to self-satisfaction and a sense of our sufficiency.  Perhaps this is what is meant by Gerhard Forde when he quotes Luther, “Whoever has been emptied through suffering no longer regards himself as the worker but rather God, who works and does all things in him”.  And then he (Forde) adds, “The point here is that the obsession for works as the basis for self-reliance is to be extinguished. God can even go the whole way. He can bring on the ultimate suffering of doing no works through believers in order to bring them lower still!”

On Being A Theologian of the Cross, Wm B. Eerdmans, 1997.

RJS

  The term Anglican is of comparatively recent origin (19th C), but it identifies the world-wide family of churches that sprang from the Ecclesia Anglicana, reformed in the 16th century, and which spread throughout the nations with the advance of the British Empire.  Anglicanism may be considered as a distinct communion or denomination within the wider Body of Christ, and many would point to characteristics and features that are uniquely its own.  But in essence, in its origins, in the teaching of its founding exponents, Anglicanism is simply the revival of biblical religion on English soil, exported to wherever its members happened to have settled during the long period of English overseas settlement.  Of course, the Established Church of England and its offshoots have by no means always exhibited the evangelical faith in which Anglicanism was rooted and by which it was shaped through the guiding hands of the Reformers, but authentic Anglicanism must be gauged by the twin ideals of Scriptural teaching and Reformational confessionalism.  Much else has been imported into popular Anglican belief and practice and embraced by its leaders and members, but according to our doctrinal and liturgical standards, and the expressed convictions and intentions of our Fathers, many of these elements (Roman, liberal, skeptical) are alien and inconsistent with authentic Anglicanism.  Anglicanism is an earnest attempt to present genuine biblical religion, so that essential saving belief is derived from the Scriptures, human reasoning is governed by Scripture, and all traditions of the church are in accord with Scripture.  Whenever Anglicanism is appreciated, or commended, it is not to promote a crusade on behalf of a mere institution, communion, or denomination as in any way rivalling other forms of Christian belief, practice, and discipline, but to advocate Biblical Christianity so beautifully, wisely, and faithfully exemplified by several generations of English Reformers and their heirs.  History, The Thirty-Nine articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal combine to show that Anglicanism is nothing more than an endeavour to reproduce the faith of Sacred Scripture in witness, worship, and pastoral care.

  There had always been a healthy movement of dissent in England throughout the long period of the domination of the Church of Rome.  Celtic Christianity did not easily submit and held out for several centuries.  Traces of the Augustinian emphasis on grace could be found in figures such as Alfred and Bede, and Augustinianism was very strongly advocated by Thomas Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1349.  The first credible movement back to biblical religion occurred with the ministry of John Wycliffe and the phenomenon of Lollardy, his band of followers that continued to adhere to a simple gospel until the advent of the Reformation.  Wycliffe was England's first reformer, and in many ways a promoter of Continental reform through Jan Hus and his influence on Luther.  Wycliffe was the man who began to steer the Ecclesia Anglicana back to the Word of God, Gospel, and Grace.  His importance is variously estimated and discussed by modern historians but the foundation he helped to lay meant that the Reformation in England had native origins as well as external influences.  An English Reformation occurred.  There were strong stirrings for renewal before King Henry VIII encountered and began to handle his marital difficulties, to which his political manoeuvres gave greater impetus and eventual success.  Among those engaged in the purification of the church was William Tyndale, seemingly affected by Wycliffe almost as much as Luther.  The reformation of the church in England sprang from the Book of God, and the wave of Reformers contemporaneous with Tyndale, and successive to him (epitomised by Cranmer), were all profoundly Biblical men dedicated to the restoration of evangelical and apostolic Christianity.  They had no other brief than to be loyal to Christ and his revelation in the Word of God.

  Believingly, learnedly, humbly, and courageously, these men set about establishing the basis for a Biblical and godly community of faith in England.  Their endeavours would alter forever the character of the Ecclesia Anglicana.  The catholic (universal) church in the realm of England would be reformed, and the Word of God determinative in all things.  The best of the ancient post-apostolic inheritance would be gratefully retained.  The Church Fathers were carefully studied and their Scriptural teaching admired and passed on.  The Ecumenical Creeds were conserved and declared as fundamental statements of belief.  Cranmer, with all his theological, liturgical, and literary skill reworked the choicest elements of traditional piety for the benefit of the English people at worship, and with his colleagues produced a manual of doctrine and devotion in the Book of Common Prayer, that is nothing else but Scripture rearranged for corporate confession and the adoration of God.  Anglicanism at the outset was simply Gospel Christianity for the English nation, not an artificial construct built from abstract dogma and speculation.  It had come to the people gradually through a series of historical developments and the influence of great Christian thinkers concerned about right doctrine for the knowledge of God.  The work of the Reformers was not complete.  All their aspirations were not satisfied and many of their aims were retarded and frustrated by various forces and circumstances.  For example Archbishop Cranmer never completed his revision of canon law.  The objective of the Reformers, unified in Scripture, but each with individual insights and ideals in detail, was the establishment and preservation of a truly Christ-Centred church, boldly and clearly proclaiming the Lord Jesus in his Saviourhood and Lordship.

  Anglicanism, then, shares and cherishes the heritage of the Reformed family of churches.  It is Protestant and Evangelical by nature and at its core, in spite of Laudian manoeuvres in the 17th century, and Romanizing tendencies in the 19th.  People speak of an Anglican spirituality or ambience, and they do so in a variety of ways, but to use “Bunyanesque” terminology, Anglicanism is purely and simply, at its heart, “Bibline”. Embellishments and trappings are associated with it in the public mind, some innocuous and perhaps helpful, but these are non-essential, superficial, accretions magnified out of all proportion in describing Anglicanism.  Article 20 states that Anglicanism is not open “to prescribe anything contrary to Scripture, or to enforce anything not found in Scripture to be believed as necessary to salvation”.   Indeed, it is one with all who seek to be loyal to Scripture and worship the Lord worthily.  Its doctrinal “distinctives” in tone and nuance, actually merge with the “distinctives” of universal Biblical belief adhered to by the people of God everywhere.  We may sum up Anglicanism as being Biblical, Liturgical, and Reformational.  It was founded as the expression of Scriptural Christianity in the English kingdom of the 16th century.  In spite of English style it is not a unique genus of faith or spirituality, but partner with all who love the Word of God to the advancement of the kingdom of Christ.  The claim to be Anglican is not pride of denomination but perseverance in the Reformed Catholic Tradition.  It is simply to acknowledge participation in the benefit of a work of divine grace that came to a culmination in the Ecclesia Anglicana at a specific time in its history, a work which continued with fluctuation until this day, and which, hopefully, will see a mighty resurgence in the future.

RJS