Jesus Christ

Why “developing a personal relationship with Jesus” might be a bad idea

/ James Pedlar / 2 Comments

One of the most common catchphrases you will hear in evangelical Christian circles is “developing a personal relationship with Jesus.”   It’s a phrase that gets used often as a way to underscore the importance of having a living faith, rather than a faith that is merely based on assent to certain ideas, or participation in certain church practices.   Often it seems, in my experience, that “buidling a personal relationship with Jesus” is the proposed solution to innumerable problems and challenges facing Christians today.

I’m a little bit skeptical of the phrase, because, for starters, I’m skeptical of anything that is proposed as solution for all my problems.   Secondly, I wonder what people mean when they talk about a “personal relationship with Jesus.”  The phrase is so over-used that I think people don’t stop to think about what they are saying.

When most people talk about their “personal relationship” with Jesus, it seems to imply something like a relationship between two best friends.  Often “developing your personal relationship” means “spending time” with Jesus in prayer and personal Bible study.   For most people I think they see this as kind of  like having some “getting to know you” time with God.

If this is a true reflection of what evangelicals mean by “developing a personal relationship with Jesus,” I think it can be problematic.

I worry that evangelicals can let a kind of “works righteousness” in through the back door by placing so much emphasis on personal devotion.   It seems to cast the relationship in a rather one-sided way; it seems it’s up to us to “develop” a relationship with God.  I think the gospel says something quite different: God reaches out and establishes a relationship with us, even while we are rebellious sinners who don’t care at all about him.   If our relationship with God is based on whatever we have “developed,” I think we’re in deep trouble.  That’s far too shaky a foundation.

I think we need to be clear that we do not put our trust in the relationship we have developed with Jesus – our trust is in Jesus himself.  This is another way of saying, we don’t trust our trust, because this comes at the question from the human side, and can end up leaving the impression that our relationship is something we develop and contribute to salvation. Faith is more radically outward-focused than that. We trust in Christ alone. We bring nothing to the table, even if we’ve been a Christian for decades.

So, to have “personal” faith is not so much about being on familiar terms with Jesus, in the way we might conceive of a personal relationship which develops between friends (although trusting in Christ alone will likely lead towards something like that over time); it is personal because we, as persons, trust in the person of Christ.

If our personal relationship with Christ “develops,” it’s not so much that we develop it, but that it develops in us by the Spirit as we put our trust daily in Christ alone – that is, as we continue to trust that Christ will be faithful to us, even as our meagre devotion to him remains tainted by sin.

So, I think, if I was to use this over-used phrase, I would want to be very clear that the personal relationship we have with Jesus is the fruit of our outwardly-focused trust in the person of Christ, rather than the foundation.  This is a subtle distinction, but I think it is an important one.

encountering God in the darkness

/ James Pedlar / 2 Comments

A couple of time a year when I was in seminary we would have “Quiet Days,” which were basically half-day retreats that third year students had to attend.  It was in the music of one of these Quiet Days that I experienced God speaking.

Two different pieces of music were played that day, and we were to meditate or pray while we listened.  I was not particularly connecting with the first piece – a Christian pop song – but the mournful sounds of a choral adaptation of Barber’s Adagio for Strings resonated with me immediately.  There is a certain reverence about the piece, but it also gives you the eerie sense that you are confronting something very dark. I noticed that this feeling struck a particular chord within me, and that I felt a deep connection to God in that confrontation with darkness.  I am talking about a kind of existential moment, a standing at the edge of “the abyss,” contemplating the futility of human efforts, the radical corruption of human desires, the “nothingness” of human existence and achievement.

I have faced depression on a couple of occasions in my life, and I believe that those experiences changed me profoundly.   I am not a particularly mournful or pessimistic person, but, I still pause in those “existential moments,” and feel an incredible resonance within me.  It is very difficult to describe.  The words of Ecclesiastes 1:8 spoke so clearly to my experience at the height of my depression:

All things are wearisome;
more than one can express;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
or the ear filled with hearing.  

While I don’t struggle with that feeling regularly, I have never really left it behind, and the brief moments when that weariness has resurfaced in my life have been some of the most profound encounters I have had with myself, and with God.

Aside from the music, I remember connecting with the Psalms we read that day, and with the practice of praying the Psalms, which I have done since experiencing the daily offices in my first year at Wycliffe.  During my depression, I was comforted to find an expression of my experience in Ecclesiastes, and in a similar way I have found it liberating to be able to pray with the emotion found in the Psalms.  Strange as it may seem to some, I find that I feel closest to God in those moments when I contemplate the loneliness and futility of human life with honesty. Somehow I know that God is there, because, as the Psalmist prayed, Christ also prayed, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In God the Son’s decent into that “abyss” of human darkness, he established his true presence in the God-forsaken places of this world. I am, therefore, surprisingly comforted when I find myself in such a place, knowing that, in spite of the profound sense of darkness I feel, he is indeed there, and I, in Christ, can make the same cry with authenticity.

I do connect with God in feelings of joy and thankfulness, of course.  Often, however, the shallow “happiness” that is sometimes characteristic of evangelical worship fails to resonate with my experience.  There is an unfailing optimism (“Christians should be happy people!”) among many which is only possible when the problem of sin and suffering is gravely underestimated.  Coming to terms with human depravity was a watershed moment for me, not only in terms of understanding myself and God, but also in terms of understanding the broken world in which we live.  I am not in any way discouraged by the profound brokenness of the world, or by my own depravity, given the sufficiency of Christ’s work.  Rather, I feel a great sense of freedom in resting my hope in him alone.

I was particularly thankful during that Quiet Day, that I could experience that dark encounter once again, and still feel that powerful resonance within me.  I am thankful that I have not left that experience behind, though I am no longer confined by it.

What does it mean for the church to be one?

/ James Pedlar / Leave a comment

In John 17, Jesus prays the following prayer for the church:

I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

This text has always been foundational for Christians who are concerned about the unity of Christ’s church.  But there are a broad variety of perspectives on what unity should be all about.  As a kind of follow up to my post on the limits of legitimate diversity, I’m going to summarize six dominant visions of unity that cut across the denominational spectrum.  They aren’t mutually exclusive, though some are definitely in tension with one another.

Spiritual unity:  Evangelicals in particular have often emphasized that Christian unity is primarily a spiritual reality.  This emphasis developed in response to the Catholic and Orthodox emphasis on “organic” unity as the goal toward which all churches should move, and also a way to bolster the legitimacy of protestant denominations as bona fide churches.  This is a basic concept underlying denominationalism – the idea that the existence of separate church bodies is not contrary to God’s will, but an acceptable form of diversity, because underneath all our divisions we are spiritually one in Jesus Christ.

Visible unity: the call for visible unity has been paramount in the ecumenical movement.   The call for unity to be “visible” stresses the fact that unity is not merely spiritual (i.e., “invisible”).  In other words, our unity should be something that can be seen by those outside the church (obviously there’s a clear connection to Jesus’ prayer here – “so that the world may believe”).  Some people equate visible unity with “structural” unity (below), or a denominational mega-merger, but that is not necessarily implied in the concept of visible unity.  But real, shared fellowship, worship, and ministry are certainly part of any concept of visible unity.

Structural unity: Catholic, Anglo-Catholic and Orthodox visions of unity typically include a structural component, although none of these traditions would want to emphasize the structural aspect of unity as paramount.   They would, however, insist on the idea that unity must include structures of authority, notably the historic episcopate.  Other protestant traditions might also envision some structures of unity as being highly expedient or functionally important for the maintaining of unity.

Doctrinal unity: The spiritual unity perspective is often accompanied with some sense that there needs to be a baseline agreement on doctrinal “essentials.”   For many, this means affirmation of the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed.  Others might draw up a list of basics – the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, inspiration of Scripture, and so on.  The flip side of this perspective is that anything that goes beyond the “essentials” is non-essential, and therefore disagreements on non-essentials are not church-dividing.

Unity in service: Another approach has tended to be characterized by the slogan “doctrine divides, service unites.”  People promoting this vision of unity are wary of doctrinal dialogue between churches, and would rather focus on working together on practical issues such as social justice.  The thought here is that most of our divisions are rooted in theological differences, and there isn’t much prospect of convergence on those differences.

Mutual Recognition: Some people feel that the church would be one if we could all recognize one another as legitimate Christian churches.  This might not seem like a big deal for some Christians, but historically many of our churches have condemned each other and declared one another to be outside the boundaries of the church (think Luther calling the Pope the anti-christ).  Some churches also have convictions about what it means to be the church which do not allow them to fully recognize other denominations as legitimate churches. Full recognition, of course, would involve recognizing one another’s ordinations and sacraments as valid.  Great strides have been made towards mutual recognition, but there are still many Christians who do not recognize one another.

Koinonia: A growing number of ecumenical thinkers are focusing on the concept of koinonia as  the best way to think about Christian unity.  This biblical term carries a rich breadth of meanings, including communion, fellowship, participation, and sharing.  The koinonia approach to unity begins with a conception of the Trinity as the divine koinonia, and stresses our koinonia as flowing from and being modeled on the divine kononia.  We participate in the triune communion of perfect love, as God the Father draws us to himself through the sending of Son and the Spirit.  The communion is therefore both “vertical” (between God and humanity) and “horizontal” (a communion that is shared with all who are in Christ).

This final concept has great ecumenical potential, first of all because it does not carry a lot of historical baggage.  It’s not a concept which is “owned” by one particular Christian tradition.  It also has great biblical foundations.

I wouldn’t want to exclude any of these concepts – the question is how they are related to one another, and where the priority lies.  For example, I would agree that unity is a spiritual reality, but I’m not comfortable with the spiritual unity perspective if it’s just used on its own, or as a way of justifying denominational divisions.   I’m still working through these issues now as I write my dissertation, so I don’t have any hard and fast answers, but I find it helpful as an analytic tool to lay out and compare these different visions of unity.

Leaving the graveclothes behind

/ James Pedlar / 6 Comments

A while back I was preaching on the raising of Lazarus, and I got thinking about the narrative shape of this passage of scripture (John 11:1-43).

From a dramatic perspective, the climax of the story of the raising of Lazarus comes at the end, when the dead man walks out of his tomb after four days.  But from a revelatory perspective the real climax of this story comes in verse 25, unexpectedly, as Jesus is talking with Martha.

When Martha, anxious to see Jesus and no doubt exasperated by his two day delay, runs up to Jesus on the road outside of town, she says “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  Jesus’ first answer is “Your brother will rise again.”  Martha replies, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

Martha has a completely orthodox (if somewhat distant) hope that one day she will see her brother again – that he will rise on the great Day of the Lord which is to come.  But Jesus’ next statement reveals to her the deeper truth about resurrection:

“I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”

Life comes from God, we all know that.  And it is a mistake to think that we can know and enjoy apart from God, who gave us life.   Later, in John chapter 17 Jesus says, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”  To know God is to participate in his life; and to know Jesus is to know God – he is God incarnate.

Therefore, resurrection is not some remote benefit that we get because we believe in God; Jesus is not a ticket to heaven; he’s not giving out resurrection gift certificates, so that we can cash them in when our number is up.  No, resurrection is a personal communication of Jesus himself, who is the divine life; if we are raised, it is not because we have obtained resurrection as a benefit, but because we are joined to him who is the resurrection.

Paul says, “If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection” (Rom 6:5).    Even more poignantly Jesus says, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

Jesus’ gift to Martha, though I’m not sure she understood it at the time, was to show her that his plan was not simply to raise Lazarus from the dead, but to unite him, and her, and all of us, with himself, so that we might truly share in the love that he shares with the Father and the Spirit.  By being united with him who is resurrection and eternal life, we can know that death will not have the last word.

Why do I think Jesus statement to Martha is more of a climax than the actual raising of Lazarus?  The proof is in the grave clothes.

This is a seemingly strange detail to the story.  If Jesus could raise Lazarus from the dead, why couldn’t he remove his grave clothes?  Why did have to ask others to do that for him?

The grave clothes remind us that there is a difference between the raising of Lazarus and the resurrection of Jesus.  When Jesus was raised, the grave clothes were left behind.  The disciples found them in the tomb.  It was a once and for all resurrection.  He now and forever lives and reigns with the Father and the Spirit, one God.  When Lazarus was raised, on the other hand, it was only to die again.  Tradition has it that Lazarus lived for thirty years after Jesus death.  But he did eventually die.   What Jesus did for Lazarus was a truly great miracle, but it was only a pale reflection of the resurrection of Jesus.

That’s what Jesus is saying to Martha.  Lazarus will rise again.  But I am the resurrection.  And one day you will understand that by uniting yourself to me, you have a far greater hope; right now you are just wishing that you brother would have survived his illness;  but that is only a temporary hope, a deferral of death until a later date.  My resurrection, on the other hand, will bring complete and permanent healing.  We will leave those grave clothes behind, once and for all.

Christian Life as Ecclesial Life

/ James Pedlar / Leave a comment

I want to finish this three part discussion of Salvation and the Christian life by drawing attention to the ecclesial nature of the Christian life.  This also brings us full circle, as we return to the question of theology and ethics.

From a Christian perspective, there are no autonomous subjects.  All of us exist in a relation of dependence upon God.  Yet the idea that we are autonomous selves is often found within the Church, as well as in our hyper-individualistic society.  For example, we often treat the topic of Christian life in a highly privatized and individualistic manner.

For those who are evangelicals: think of how much stress is put on the importance of our “personal relationship with Jesus” in the evangelical tradition.  How about “personal devotions?”  We spend a lot of time talking about (and feeling guilty about) “personal devotions.”  I’m not saying that private prayer and meditation on scripture are unimportant; surely they are.  But compare the amount of stress put on “personal devotions” with the attention that is given to other issues.   I mean, of all the challenges facing the church today, of all the things for us to focus our time and energy on, the one thing that evangelicals are racked with guilt over is “personal devotions”?  And when this is done in the context of a consistent focus on our “personal relationship” with Christ, the Church can seem redundant.

We are still dealing with the question of the chrisotogically determined direction of salvation and its implications for the Christian life.  The Christian life is ecclesial because God’s election of Jesus Christ includes the election of the Church to be his witnesses.  There is no “private” salvation; there is no “individualistic” election to salvation.  God’s work in Christ is not intended to sporadically save independent and autonomous Christians who will live solitary lives of saintliness.  Rather, it is about God forming a people who will give witness to his redemption by their words and deeds.   This may seem like a reduntant point but it needs to be said: the Christian life is an ecclesial life.  We are definitely not autonomous subjects; we are members of a body, who can only function in the context of that body.  In attempting to answer the question, “how now shall we live?” the emphasis is on the word we.

But this is not simply to say that Christians are to value “community” and “relationships” in the abstract.  Again we must look to Jesus Christ as the concrete and particular revelation of the truly human life.  We are dealing with the particular God revealed in Christ; this should lead to a very particular Church – a particular kind of community, not “community” in general or as a value in and of itself.  The particular kind of community in which we live means that the Christian life is a very particular kind of life.  Perhaps it would be better to say it is a peculiar kind of life.  Just as the God of the gospel always cuts against the grain of the world’s expectations, so the life of the Christian community ought to be counter-cultural.   The Church is called to embody the always surprising grace of God in its communal life together, and it should therefore be the context in which a different way of life is enacted and sustained.

Therefore as we think about the question of “ethics” within the context of the Christian life, we must reject the enlightenment suspicion of “tradition-dependent” ethics. Christian ethics is explicitly tradition-dependent, because the Christian lives and moves and thinks in the context of the Church and attempts to do so with the Church.  The Christian believes that the commands of God are directed to the Church, not to autonomous individuals.  Ethics, therefore, is always ecclesial.

The task of Christian ethics, then, is not so much about abstracting “timeless principles” that can be applied to any situation, as it is about seeking to inhabit an understanding of God and the world that is shaped by the Church as the people of God, attempting to be a living enactment of the story of the gospel.   In the end, Christian ethics is about what is real, and what is real is Jesus Christ and the gospel.  If the gospel is the true story of God’s history with humanity, then Christian ethics can be described, as Hauerwas puts it, as living as if Jesus and Trinity matter; living as if the gospel is reality.

There is no such thing as “ethics for anybody.” We all stand in a tradition, and cannot exist as  “autonomous individuals.”  Ethics, then, must be received and nurtured in the context of the Christian community.

This too is part of the direction of our salvation.   We are saved for communion with God and with our fellow human creatures.   We find this in the new humanity which Christ has inaugurated.  We participate in it now as an anticipation of its full realization in the new Kingdom.

Salvation and Active Obedience

/ James Pedlar / 1 Comment

[continuing from my previous post]

Just as God’s freedom makes our freedom possible, we must also say that God’s action makes human action possible.  God’s action always precedes our action.  Our action is the always a gracious response to the prior action of God.  God takes the initiative, and we respond, with a genuine human response, a response which can only be given as an echo and answer to the definitive action of God in Christ.   This is why it is said that God’s action and our action are not in competition with one another.  It is not as if we must choose to either believe that it is God who acts or it is human beings who act in salvation.  Human action is only possible because of God’s action.  And human action is not able to encroach upon God’s action.

But we must go further than this. We’re not speaking here of the simple affirmation that God has created all things, therefore we would not exist and could not act if it weren’t for his creation.   When we speak of God’s action we are speaking of something concrete and actual: Jesus Christ.

The action of God on our behalf is the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.   Jesus, in his truly human activity, is the basis for the new humanity, in which we are included and toward which we are being moved by the Spirit.  Thus “human action,” as was the case with human freedom, does not refer to some neutral form of agency, or some latent potentiality which we can choose to direct toward whichever ends we choose: truly human action means a faithful response to the gracious action of God, as concretely manifested in the human life of Jesus.  Truly human action is action which is conformed to the likeness of Christ.

What about the fact that human beings, including professing Christians, don’t act in conformity to Christ?  Human actions which do not conform to the likeness of the new humanity in Christ are not evidence of an “agency” or a “power” that humans have over and against God.  They are rather evidence of the weakness of the human response; they are deficiencies in human agency; they are a kind of inhuman aberration.

Therefore, because God has acted, we can and must act.  The action of God on our behalf in Christ is ordered to our conformity to Christ and our realization of God’s intention for an active human covenant partner.  God has not acted so that we will not have to act at all; he has acted in Christ so that we will act in a truly human way.   Our action in conformity with Christ is not the basis for God’s justifying and sanctifying action on our behalf; rather, our action in conformity to Christ is the goal of God’s justifying and sanctifying work on our behalf.

I want to add one more layer to this description I’ve been giving of the character of the Christian life: the Christian life is a life of obedience.  Here is where those who are nervous about works-righteousness get particularly nervous.  How can Christian life be about obedience?  Isn’t the whole point that we cannot obey, and therefore we can only throw ourselves on the mercy of God?   Well, yes, if we are talking about the question of our standing before God.  None of us is capable of obedience to God in our own strength.  Nevertheless, if we keep the directional nature of salvation in mind, and the christological determination of salvation’s direction, we must say that the Christian life is a life of obedience.   God has determined that he would have a free, active covenant partner who responds to his gracious commands in obedience.    Jesus Christ is that covenant partner, and we who are “in Christ,” saved by Christ’s faithful obedience, are being conformed to his humanity and formed into obedient children.

The obedience of Christ is, I think, an undervalued theme in the New Testament.  I think in our concern to affirm the divinity of Christ in the face of historical criticism we have tended to shy away from a full appreciation of Jesus’ humanity.  But it is clear from the scriptural witness that Christ, in his humanity, had to go through the genuinely human struggle of obedience to God.   The obedience Christ offered in his life on earth was not something which came easily to him. His obedience was not “automatic;” and he was not removed from the genuine human trial of obedience.  The reference point for this discussion, of course, is the garden of Gethsemene.  There was real struggle, described in Hebrews as a process of “learning obedience.” What is intended by that text, I believe, is a description of the way in which Christ had to gain first hand experience as an obedient human being, in order that he could offer a perfect sacrifice on our behalf, and also in order that he could be our perfect, sympathetic high priest: one who understands the trials and temptations of human life and yet was able to overcome.  He is the “author and perfecter” of our faith – the trailblazer in a sense, who has in his humanity paved the way for us to participate fully in God’s covenant.

If Christ in his human life lived obediently, then surely our lives, as an echo and response to his, will be lives of obedience.  There will be struggle.  There will be real effort on our part.  There will be moments of decision in which we are called by God to answer a specific demand and act in accordance with his will.  But once again, none of these efforts, struggles, or decisions will be or ever can be the basis for our standing before God.  Our efforts are not the presupposition for God’s grace.  God’s grace, seen in the obedience of Jesus Christ, is the presupposition for our obedience.  Again, our obedience is not the ground of our salvation, but it is the goal.  Once again we must also say that it would not be enough to simply affirm that the obedience of Christ makes our obedience possible, as if Christ had simply restored a potential for obedience in us that we then can choose to use or not.  Obedience is our direction.  Obedience is our determination in Christ.  Our salvation is directed to obedience as free human action.

Salvation, Ethics, and Human Freedom

/ James Pedlar / 5 Comments

The main source of discomfort with talk of “morality” in protestant theological circles is the issue of faith vs. works.  We are nervous that any talk of morals will lead to moralism, to a reliance on our moral behaviour as the ground of our standing before God.  Of course, the doctrine of justification excludes such a conception of human ethical behaviour.  Salvation is the gift of God, fully and completely, and even the faith by which we acknowledge our salvation must be said to be God’s gift, and not a human work.

So where does this leave the human agent.  Is there nothing for us to do?   I want to argue that the Christian life is an active life of free obedience.  But the key thing to remember is that this activity on the part of the Christian is not the ground of our salvation; rather our salvation, as the gracious gift of God, is the ground for our free obedience.  God’s action always precedes our action, but God’s action does not exclude our action, but rather opens up the space in which we can act as responsible agents, and directs us toward the responsible action which is proper to our existence as human creatures.

We are free to actively obey God precisely because that obedience does not merit our salvation; if it did, we would not be free to actively obey, we would be damned. I’m going to attempt to unpack that statement by way of a positive view of Salvation.  Just as we cannot talk of “freedom” without speaking the goal of human life, so also we cannot talk about “salvation” without speaking of salvation’s goal.  That is, salvation cannot be conceived in purely negative terms, as “salvation from” sin, death and the devil.  It is true that our salvation is a salvation from, but we must also consider salvation in positive terms, as salvation for communion with God and with our fellow human creatrues.

We can be more specific than this, however, because “communion with God and with our fellow human beings” could be seen as somewhat vague.  The direction of our salvation is anything but vague; it is concrete, specific, and particular; it is Jesus Christ himself.   He is “our wisdom, our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,” and we are being conformed into his image.  Christ himself is the concrete direction toward which our salvation is oriented.  God has determined that he should have a free, responsible human covenant partner, and in his humanity, Jesus Christ is that true covenant partner. It is in his free obedience that we are enabled and called to respond to God with a free and active obedience of our own.

That is why salvation and ethics are inseparable: human action is not the ground of our salvation, but it is the goal of our salvation.  Salvation has a christologically determined direction; therefore it is ethical. We appropriate this free, active obedience in accordance with the mystery of salvation: it is a gift realized fully in Christ, and yet being realized in history as we are conformed to his likeness.   Thus, if we can speak of “growth in grace” in the sanctification process, we can also speak of “growth in free active obedience,” as we are conformed to Christ, and the Spirit continues to lead us into an ever-greater radical responsiveness corresponding to God’s radically free grace in Christ.

Karl Barth has described God’s freedom and ours in the following terms: “God’s freedom is his very own,” and “Man’s freedom is his as the gift of God.”  The human creature does not possess and inherent, directionless “freedom.” The Christian life is a life of freedom, not because we have an inherent “free will” or capacity for free moral decisions: rather, we are freed to respond freely to God’s grace because God, in his freedom, has chosen that it should be so, and acted to make it so in Jesus Christ. In our own power, we are not free; rather, we are exposed to the tyranny of our own will, with all of its disordered desires.  But God has determined that he would have a free covenant partner, and has acted in electing Jesus Christ as that free human partner.  Our being “in Christ,” our union with him, is the basis of our freedom, a freedom which is an echo and correspondence of his freedom.  This means that we only know what human freedom is by looking to Jesus Christ, as God’s truly free covenant partner.  Our understanding of freedom must be constantly measured against the the freedom of Jesus Christ as the truly free human creature.

This means that a “negative” account of freedom is obviously misguided.  The negative view of freedom posits that freedom is simply freedom from all external constraints and obligations.  To be free is to be an autonomous, unencumbered, self-directed agent, acting in accordance with our own desires.  In this context, any kind of structured moral obligation appears as an impingement on our freedom, and a burden which needs to be thrown off.  Such freedom, however, is illusory because it lacks a goal; it lacks positive content, and direction.  In other words, it is not freedom at all, but a form of slavery to our own misguided desires and impulses.

But this is true not only of supposed accounts of “free will;” it must also be emphasized that the Christian freedom we are discussing here as a freedom which is an effect of God’s grace is not a directionless negative freedom.  That is, human freedom in Christ is not simply a  freedom from negative influences, a freeing of our will which would then lead to a kind of regenerated “free will.”  Christian freedom is not a kind of “second chance” at free will, where God does his part in Christ and now leaves us to do our part with a newfound freedom.

The gift of freedom is directive: its end is conformity to Jesus Christ.  It is a freedom for this goal, a freedom for true humanity, in communion with God and with his creation.  We are therefore being made free human creatures as we are conformed to his image.  Our freedom does not precede God’s work in us and for us in Christ; it is not the ground but the goal of our salvation.

I would argue that this is an authentically Wesleyan position, although Wesleyans are often seen as aligning themselves with accounts of “free will.”   Certainly there are some Wesleyans who have argued in favour of a libertarian concept of free will, but I don’t think that is consistent with Wesley’s own views on the subject.   I’ll have to post separately on this question, to do it justice, but I believe it would be better to describe Wesley’s argument in terms of the freed will of the regenerate, rather than claiming “free will” for all humanity.

The Good Samaritan, by John Newton

/ James Pedlar / 2 Comments

Further to my previous post, here is a hymn by John Newton, reflecting on the same idea – that the parable of the Good Samaritan points us to Christ.  Taken from Olney Hymns (1779), Book 1, Hymn 99.

*

How kind the good Samaritan

To him who fell among the thieves!

Thus Jesus pities fallen man,

And heals the wounds the soul receives.

*

O! I remember well the day,

When sorely wounded, nearly slain;

Like that poor man I bleeding lay,

And groaned for help, but groaned in vain.

*

Men saw me in this helpless case,

And passed without compassion by;

Each neighbor turned away his face,

Unmoved by my mournful cry.

*

But he whose name had been my scorn,

(As Jews Samaritans despise)

Came, when he saw me thus forlorn,

With love and pity in his eyes.

*

Gently he raised me from the ground,

Pressed me to lean upon his arm;

And into every gaping wound

He poured his own all–healing balm.

*

Unto his church my steps he led,

The house prepared for sinners lost;

Gave charge I should be clothed and fed;

And took upon him all the cost.

*

Thus saved from death, from want secured,

I wait till he again shall come,

(When I shall be completely cured)

And take me to his heav’nly home.

*

There through eternal boundless days,

When nature’s wheel no longer rolls,

How shall I love, adore, and praise,

This good Samaritan to souls!

Christ as the Good Samaritan

/ James Pedlar / 3 Comments

In preparing for a sermon on the Good Samaritan, I came across some classic interpretations which see the parable as pointing to Christ.  Here are selections from three ancient doctors (courtesy of the Ancient Commentary on Scripture), and a 20th century giant:

Ambrose, from his Exposition of the Gospel of Luke, 7.73-84:

Jericho is an image of this world. Adam, cast out from Paradise, that heavenly Jerusalem, descended to it by the mistake of his transgression…He was greatly changed from that Adam who enjoyed eternal blessedness.  When he turned aside to worldly sins, Adam fell among thieves, among whom he would not have fallen if he had not strayed from the heavenly command and made himself vulnerable to them…he received a mortal wound by which the whole human race would have fallen if that Samaritan, on his journey, had not tended to his serious injuries. 7.73]

…Here the Samaritan is going down.  Who is he except he who descended from heaven, who also ascended to heaven the Son of Man who is in heaven?  When he sees half-dead him whom none could cure before, like her with an issue of blood who had spend all her inheritance on physicians, he came near him.  He became a neighbour by acceptance of our common feeling and kin by the gift of mercy.

…”And bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine.” That Physician has many remedies with which he is accustomed to cure.  His speech is a remedy.  One of his sayings binds up wounds, another treats with oil, another pours in wine.  He binds wounds with a stricter rule.  He treats with the forgiveness of sins.  He stings with the rebuke of judgment as if with wine.”

Since no one is closer than he who tended to our wounds, let us love him as our neighbour.  Nothing is so close as the head to the members.   Let us also love who is the follower of Christ, let us love him who in unity of body has compassion on another’s need.

Origen, Homilies on the Gospel of Luke, 34.3,9:

One of the elders wanted to interpret the parable as follows.  The man who was going down is Adam.  Jerusalem is paradise, and Jericho is the world. The robbers are hostile powers.  The priest is the law, the Levite is the prophets, and the Samaritan is Christ.  The wounds are disobedience.  The beast is the Lord’s body.  the pandochium (that is, the stable), which accepts all who wish to enter, is the church.  The two denarii mean the Father and the Son.  The manager of the stable is the head of the church, to whom its care has been entrusted.  The fact that the Samaritan promises he will return represents the Saviour’s second coming…

…the Samaritan, “who took pity on the man who have fallen among thieves, is truly a “guardian,” and a closer neighbour than the Law and the Prophets.  He showed that he was the man’s neighbour more by deed than by word.  According to the passage that says, “Be imitators of me, as I too am of Christ,” it is possible for us to imitate Christ and to pity those who “have fallen among thieves.”  We can go to them, bind their wounds, pour in oil and wine, put them on our own animals, and bear their burdens.  The Son of God encourages us to do things like this.  He is speaking not so much to the teacher of the law as to us and to everyone when he says, “Go and do likewise.” If we do, we will receive eternal life in Christ Jesus, to whom is glory and power for ages and ages.

Augustine, Sermon 179A.7-8:

Robbers left you half-dead on the road, but you have been found lying there by the passing and kindly Samaritan. Wine and oil have been poured on you.  You have received the sacrament of the only-begotten Son. You have been lifted onto his mule.  You have believed that Christ became flesh.  You have been brought to the inn, and you are being cured in the church.”That is where and why I am speaking.

…This is what I too, what all of us are doing. we are performing the duties of the innkeeper.  He was told, “If you spend any more, I will pay you when I return.  “If only we spent at least as much as we have received!  However much we spend, borthers and sisters, it is the Lord’s money.

Augustine, Christian Instruction 33:

God our Lord wished to be called our neighbour. The Lord Jesus Christ meant that he was the one who gave help to the man lying half-dead on the road, beaten and left by the robbers. The prophet said in prayer, “As a neighbour and as one’s own borther, so I did please” [cf 1 Cor 6.15]. Since the divine nature is far superior and above our human nature, the command by which we are to love God is distinct from our love of our neighbour.  He shows mercy to us because of his own goodness, while we show mercy to one another because of God’s goodness.  He has compassion on us so that we may enjoy him completely, while we have compassion on another that we may completely enjoy Him.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, III, §18, pp 418-419.

The question with which Jesus concludes the story is which then of the three (i.e., priest, Levite, and Samaritan) proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among thieves? And the teacher of the Law himself had to reply: “he that showed mercy on him,” i.e., the Samaritan.  This man as such, as the one who showed mercy, is the neighbour about whom the lawyer was asking.  And that is the only point of the story, unequivocally stated by the text.

For the lawyer, who wants to justify himself and therefore does not know who is his neighbour, is confronted not by the poor wounded man with his claim for help, but by the anything but poor Samaritan who makes no claim at all but is simply helpful.

It is the Samaritan who embodies what he wanted to know.  This is the neighbour whom he did not know.   All very unexpected: for the lawyer had first to see that he himself is the man fallen among thieves and lying helpless by the wayside; then he has to note that the others who pass by, the priest and the Levite, the familiar representatives of the dealings of Israel with God, all one after the other do according to the saying of the text: “He saw him and passed by on the other side;” and third, and above all, he has to see that he must be found and treated with compassion by the Samaritan, the foreigner, whom he believes he should hate, as one who hates and is hated by God. He will then know who is his neighbour, and will not ask concerning him as though it were only a matter of the casual clarification of a concept.  He will then know the second commandment, and consequently the first as well.  he will then not wish to justify himself, but will simply love the neighbour, who shows him mercy.  He will then love God, and loving God will inherit eternal life.

…The Good Samaritan, the neighbour who is a helper and will make him a helper, is not far from the lawyer.  The primitive exegesis of the text was fundamentally right.  He stands before him incarnate, although hidden under the form of one whom the lawyer believed he should hate, as the Jews hated the Samaritans.  Jesus does not accuse the man, although judgment obviously hangs over him. Judgment is preceded by grace.  Before this neighbour makes His claim He makes His offer.  Go and do likewise means: Follow thou Me.