June 28, 2010

Simon Peter, or Peter Johnson as he has been called (You are Simon son of John: John 1:42)*, is one of the most attractive and instructive figures in Holy Scripture. He is loved for his enthusiasm, keenness, and ebullience, but we sympathize and empathize with him for his blatant flaws. The man was impulsive, over confident, and unreliable, indeed the perfect example of the fickleness of human nature that caused Jesus to mistrust it (John 2:24-25). Peter was emotional, hasty, and rash in his promises and decisions, as changeable as the face of the waters upon which he earned his livelihood. He was bold and brash in his expertise as a hardy fisherman but not really as resolute in a crisis as he fancied himself to be. At depth he didn't really fit the profile of a worthy disciple of the Lord Jesus and was a most unlikely candidate for apostleship. Thank God it is the Lord himself who searches and chooses us and not our fellow men. We do not perceive the divinely created potential in others and what the Lord by his grace purposes to work within them.

We must acknowledge that Peter was sincere in his intentions and utterances, but often misguided. By grace he confessed Jesus as Lord but by natural judgment he misspoke on the Lord's mission and the means by which it would be accomplished (Matthew 16: 13-28). Like all of us he could alternate between serving the Lord's cause and promoting the cause of the opposition. Our understanding is partial and our performance patchy. His immaturity and impulsiveness, however, did not totally nullify his attachment to the Saviour. Jesus had initiated the connection and accordingly Peter's aspirations were genuine according to his light. He over-estimated his capacities but we cannot under-estimate his devotion when he made his heartfelt vow to his Lord: "Lord, why can't I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you" (John 13:36-38). From that point on Peter was a deplorable failure, doing and saying the wrong thing, defending Jesus in an inept way by slicing off an arresting officer's ear, and then miserably denying Jesus when harmless citizen's questioned him about his being a follower of Jesus. Here was a man of God still controlled by the flesh at crucial moments. He thought human action could take care of critical events, and he learned bitterly that human resources and resolve were not sufficient to sustain the spiritual life or warfare. Peter was permitted to be an advertisement for the helplessness of the flesh. Whilst Jesus was redeeming us Peter was exemplifying the shame and helplessness from which we needed deliverance (1 Corinthians 15:50).

But Peter's failure was not the whole story even when the Lord knew beforehand that his passionate disciple would let him down. Peter would sin gravely but he was still under the governance of divine grace. Human failure cannot foil the will of God. Even as Peter proclaimed his brave loyalty to his master, Jesus was pronouncing a better guarantee over Peter's future: "Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later". The man left to his own devices would surely fail, but restored from his fall and filled with grace, he would become faithful and follow Jesus through a life of effective ministry and even to a similar death. In Peter we see the vivid contrast between confidence in self and trust in God. It takes a lot to evacuate the believer of self reliance and instinctive boastfulness and the process is constant because the urge to depend on our wisdom and works is continuously active. Serious lapses sometimes seem to be the only way of getting the message of total dependence upon God home to our wayward hearts. The crowing of the rooster was the chilling signal to Peter that the prediction of his defection had been fulfilled (John 18:27). He was craven, weak, and helpless at the moment of testing and he had learned the treachery and guilt of the human heart. None of us can follow Jesus in our own strength. The will and the walk come from his grace granted to us. When Peter was at last restored, renewed, and reinstated he was divinely enabled to fulfil his vow now re-presented to him as the Lord's command, "You must follow me" (John 21:22).

Peter's writings show just how much he became a follower of Jesus, how much he came to comprehend the person and work of the Saviour, and employ his intimate experience of the Lord in his commendation of the gospel. Peter's testimony to Christ is not in the form of abstract discourse, the utterance of truth alone. The impress, the stamp of the Lord Jesus is engraved upon his very nature and heart, and in all his speech we discern a portrait of the Christ who has made his disciple Christ-like. Peter is not simply laying down principles for imitation. He is expressing the will and word of the Saviour who indwells his folk and he has no fear of recalling awkward reminiscences in his life to cite the ways grace has wrought transformation in himself through events that disclosed his faults and fallibility. For Peter the facts of the gospel are not pious theory that he recites by rote but divinely wrought happenings within and without that have united him to Jesus and created an authentic resemblance to his character. Peter has become a copy of his Lord. Peter's biography is a series of instructive moments that educate us in the wilful waywardness of the human heart and the compulsion to rescue us in the will of God. Peter's experience of guilt and grace was indescribably profound and imbued every word of his teaching. It is not just Peter who is addressing us but Christ in and through Peter. The denier of Jesus now delivers the truth of Jesus from a mind informed and illuminated by Jesus and memories inclusive of life lived with Jesus in which both sin and grace were exposed. Peter is commending what he knows with every fibre of his being.

V5: "Clothe yourselves with humility" emerges from the sight of Jesus girding himself with a towel in order to bathe the feet of his disciples (John 13:4). God is humble and so, too, are his followers. Humility is the family uniform and service, however menial, the family business. V8: "Be self-controlled and alert" is exactly what Peter was not like throughout so much of his life and especially at the juncture of his greatest personal trial. But he learned that Satan was always on the prowl and ready to pounce. Peter's impulsive blunders and innate cowardice were due to his letting his guard down. Resistance and firmness were not by nature in his armoury (John 18:15-18, 25-27). Only grace could defend him and fend off the foe through "the power" (v11) that is God's. V4: "The Chief Shepherd" is the One who graciously restored Peter and enlisted him as un under-shepherd (John 21:15ff). Only when Peter was soundly prepared for his commission did Jesus repeat the call, "Follow me" (John 21:19). Grace must prevail where human nature is impotent. Peter's three instances of disloyalty were erased by Jesus' three tender invitations to live in a relationship of love.

The history of Peter is massively encouraging to us. The apostles were not supermen, nor are any of the servants of the Lord. We are not chosen by qualification but by what God will enable us to become. Jesus recruits failures. The story of our lives is the same as Peter's - failed but now faithful. It is the wonder and work of grace.

*Matthew 16:17, "Simon son of Jonah", means that like Peter his father had two names, or that Jesus was indicating that Peter would become an accurate interpreter of the sign of Jonah i.e. the death and resurrection of Christ (Matthew 12: 38-42).

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me (Ps 139:1)

The Wallace Collection in London is the home of the portrait of the Laughing Cavalier. Wherever you stand in the room where the painting is hung the eye of the cavalier is always trained upon you. You simply cannot dodge his gaze. The cavalier is a constant scrutineer. In a parish church in the diocese of Bristol there is a former private chapel designed by Christopher Wren that is now used as a place of public worship. Above the communion table there is a depiction of a huge single eye that observes everyone and everything in the consecrated building. Wherever you are seated during services you are aware that you are under surveillance. Perhaps the intended message of this particular work of art is that we are always under the observation of God and that by his grace we must always approach him in purity and reverence as we offer our adoration. The significance of “the eye” may be comforting or disturbing depending upon the witness of the conscience, but the truth is indisputable. The eye of the Lord follows us and his vision penetrates to the core of our being. He is the One, “Unto whom all hearts are open, all desires are known, and from whom no secrets are hidden”.

Much of our life is lived in secret from others. We are often alone with our thoughts, in solitude with our memories, private in our desires. We may partially share our reflections and reminiscences from time to time with those who have our confidence, but there are many things that we treasure up in our hearts, and many things that we dare not share and these are consigned to the deepest crypt within our unfathomable nature. There are, too, many ideas and incidents in our lives that we care not to recollect. Our minds are storehouses of things past, things present, and things in prospect. Worthy or unworthy they are known exhaustively by God, and though our minds and memories may grow dim over certain matters of fact or fancy, God, who is eternal, sees the motions of our hearts as ever-present and, as it were, always current. He doesn’t need to press “replay” to view the record of our lives; the entire range of our existence, our character and history, is ever before him “live” as one continuous and contemporary moment, therefore the passage of time as we experience it does not lessen the significance of our past thoughts and deeds nor diminish the guilt of any attitude or action that is culpable. The past that we may forget is ever fresh before God and this fact adds weight to our responsibility and accountability before him. The judgment will simply be his panoramic and unerring view of who we are, our inclinations and performance from birth to burial, and as we see, in an instant, all things pertaining to our life here on earth through clear and accurate “flashback” or review we shall inevitably concur with his verdict. The evidence of conscience and memory will be irrefutable. Everything will be exposed. We shall see that God’s assessment will be absolutely just. The judgment is simply his signature appended to each soul’s self-testimony engraved upon the heart.

All the lies and illusions we embrace, all the deceit and pretence we employ, all that is furtive and foolish before God, all of the pride in self and contempt for others, all the neglect and irreverence towards God that lurks within the murkiness of our evil souls will rise to the surface and we shall look with horror at our innate putrefaction. For the believer this realization or process of judgement proceeds gradually throughout the process of sanctification and results in repentance. For the unbeliever this awareness comes abruptly at the moment of standing before the great white throne on the last day and culminates in eternal regret. We are searched and the contents of the heart are discovered and uncovered. Especially for the religious who have not renounced their self-righteousness there is the danger of the stunning encounter with the deadly vices of hubris and hypocrisy.

A moment’s self-inspection under the conviction of the Holy Spirit shows us the depravity of our heart, our inescapable plight, and the peril in which we stand. His eye is fixed upon us. His “high beam” searchlight scans the full expanse of the territory of the soul, oscillating this way and that, revealing the vile crop that springs from our nature’s soil. We recoil at the thought of God’s minute examination of our true and inmost self. His inspection is thorough and a comparison is made between his purity and perfection and our corruption and defilement. In our selves we are eliminated from his friendship and favour. His unblemished character and absolute holiness cannot endure our sordid and tarnished beings that are odious and offensive to him. We may try to hide for a time or elude his eye, we may convince ourselves that our desires and devices continue undetected. The persona we present to others may satisfy them, but God cannot be fooled. Our meanness, malice, envy, ill will, greed, self-interest, and lack of love stand out as clearly as figures in the noon day sun and we shall agree with Jesus that in spite of our appearance and projected image before others it is what comes from the heart that makes a man unclean (Matthew 15:16-20), and that our hearts are by nature far from God and gravely at fault in the way they lead us.

The awareness of the terrible evil that reigns within brings us to a crisis, and the radical solution - the only one available to us – is the creation, donation, and possession of a new heart which, humanly speaking, are impossibilities. We have no alternative but to turn to the One against whom we have rebelled and committed innumerable gross offences. It is a daunting choice to turn to the judge who, according to our record and disposition, can only condemn us. But it is at this crucial point that mercy advances and catches up with us. The revelation of divine grace assures us that the moment of rueful confession is the moment of our release from our just deserts. The divine Scrutineer prefers mercy to punishment and would rather award life than death (For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live! Ezekiel 18:32) It is this timely and tender disclosure that melts the heart and facilitates our turning to God without hopeless dread and with intense desire. The Lord we have insulted and disobeyed so audaciously is the Lover of our soul and the restorer of our harmonious and happy relationship with him. With caution and confidence we can step into the light, face our criminality head on and find his forgiveness, and offer the plea, “O Lord, correct me, but with judgement; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing” (Jeremiah 10:24. Psalm 6: 1).

With the Lord Jesus as our provided Substitute and perfect Righteousness we do not have to shy away from, or deny, the stark facts of our guilt and condemnation. Now these realities hold no terror. We do not have to avoid the accusations of conscience because our sin bearer has borne our punishment and averted the divine wrath on our behalf. Such candour about our natural condition and its consequences exalts the Saviour and his gracious achievement, enabling us to recognize that he has fully delivered us from sin and fear. To play down the evil of our nature and its consequences is to diminish his most adorable undertaking on our behalf and undervalue his absolutely essential saving work. From Scripture we see that the redemption he has wrought is more than sufficient to pull us out of danger and put us right with God. It is only the measure of our plight and predicament that helps us to gain a hint as to the measureless dimensions of grace. Avoidance of the painful conviction and confession of sin is to display a lack of confidence in Christ’s compassionate mission of rescue and atonement. Bitter honesty brings a better appreciation of what he has done for us. The intense, relentless divine scrutiny fosters the joy of saving faith.

RJS

Our desires are an index to our nature and they determine the goal of our lives and the direction our energies take. As much as we may think that we are making decisions from a position of equipoise we are actually driven by the inclinations of the heart which has as its central objective the service of self. There is an underlying impulse to our reasoning process and that is to secure our own interest beyond any other consideration. The presence of sin within us foreordains “the evil intentions and desires of our own hearts” that we acknowledge in the words of the Confession. As the Holy Spirit acquaints us with the depravity of our nature we are bound to admit that “there is no spiritual soundness within us”, and the immediate plea is, “have mercy on us, pitiful sinners, O Lord”. We come to the awareness that the Lord God alone is the “author of all holy desires, all good purposes, and all righteous works”.

In its thought and doctrine the Book of Common Prayer is fully in accord with Holy Scripture as to the state of human nature and the necessity of enabling grace: The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become and that every inclination of his heart was only evil all the time (Genesis 6:5). The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9). “For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13). In every prayer and at every point the Prayer Book asserts the fact of prevenient (preceding) grace - the reality that “grace goes before us”, originating and fostering every righteous desire, generating all holy affection, enabling every good intention, and causing every right decision. The BCP is consistently Augustinian in its presentation of sin and grace. It accords with the teaching of the inspired prophets and apostles. It is in agreement with Scripture. It converts the propositions of the Bible into the prayers of believers and enables us to take the truth of revelation into our souls as personal confession of helplessness and need and personal confidence in the prior action of God that saves us from sin and self. In our impotence we recognize that God himself has to initiate our desire for him and for salvation which restores us to him. Such a capacity does not exist naturally within us as sinners. Hence the Easter Collect links our new disposition to the mighty miracle of Christ’s resurrection. We, too, must be raised again. The power of the risen Jesus delivers us from the death of sin. We are spiritually inert. His death and resurrection have purchased our regeneration and his living power brings us to new life evinced in good desires.

Almighty Father and ever-living God, you who through your only begotten Son Jesus Christ have overcome death, and opened to us the gate of eternal life: We humbly pray that, through your grace going before us, good desires will enter into our minds, and, by your continual help, we shall be enabled to bring them to right fulfilment; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Good desires enter into our minds through the entrance and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. They are the supernatural effects of his influence upon us. They are, indeed, the fruits of Easter within ourselves. We celebrate Easter past, “with the yearly remembering of the resurrection from the dead of your only Son Jesus Christ” and we pray that we might experience Easter present in the request, “Grant that we who celebrate this Paschal feast may die daily unto sin” - the extinction of evil desire. Our good desires are directly traceable to the death and resurrection of Jesus. His death is the cancellation of sin. His resurrection is the source and seed of the goodness growing within us. New desire resulting in “right fulfilment” is proof of the effect of Christ’s redemptive work in our lives and the pledge of our passage through the gate of eternal life. Changed hearts are as much evidence of the resurrection as the facts recorded in the Bible. The link between the raising of Christ and our rising to new life from spiritual death is essential in our observance of the festival. Our good desires are as miraculous as his resurrection and equally the accomplishment of God’s great power as Paul avers in his extolment of “his incomparable great power for us who believe”. “That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead” (Ephesians 1: 19-20). “God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you are saved” (Ephesians 2:4). As God’s chosen ones we are accounted as alive in Christ and eventually as God’s changed ones we are alive in Christ. The power of the resurrection flows from the risen Saviour to the regenerated sinner. He or she is born again. Good desire is the first mark of the true Christian. God has recreated their nature. It is no anticlimax that the collect moves from the stupendous fact of Christ’s resurrection to our desires. They are the real and ongoing consequences of his conquest of death, the devil, and evil. They testify to the event of the resurrection as well as the historic witness that has been handed down to us. One body of proof is written in the Scriptures. A collaborative type of proof is written in our souls, and we can affirm that Christ is risen.

The First Sunday after Easter takes us a little further along the line of thought that our natures need to be changed radically by the grace of God. “Grant that we may put away the old yeast of malice and wickedness in order always to serve you in sincerity and truth.” Just as yeast is a spreading and fermenting agent in the process of bread making so sin spreads throughout our nature and agitates all sorts of evil effects. Malice and wickedness permeate the human heart. The old yeast of our former nature still sticks, sadly, to the hearts of professed believers. If our selfish interests or expectations are threatened, if our pride or self-esteem is threatened, malice can appear and wickedness ensue. We speak or do harm to avenge our sinful sensibilities. The wounds that Christians inflict upon each other are the most hurtful and tragic of all. They contradict the power of the resurrection within us and the love that wrought our salvation. In due course, if grace is effective within us, such sins will cause the deepest repentance. Malice towards another is evidence of perverted self-love, and the twisted self-defensiveness that is born of self-elevation. We put down others in order to puff-up self. It is the sting of self- idolatry, the most evil form of worship, and those we injure are the sacrifice at the centre of that worship.

At the centre of Easter is the adorable fact of the self-sacrifice of Jesus. We move closer to that centre as God moves us to sacrifice ourselves to him. But it is a long and painful journey for the soul used to the satisfaction of the evil desires of our own hearts. We need the Easter miracle to be replicated within.