Romans 8: 14

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

I am led (often reluctantly, alas!) by the Spirit. Even today, I wanted to tell a lie, and I did not only because the Spirit intervened to lead me. Too lightly do people say things like, "There, but for the grace of God..."

To say that I am led by the Spirit is not to claim to be some sort of great spiritual giant. I emphatically am not, as anyone who has met me, and some who only know me by reputation, will tell you. A reputation, of course, is not character. Reputations are built up by painstakingly taking credit for successes, and are destroyed by omitting to attach blame for failures to someone else. But then, I do not claim to have character, either. The best I can do is cry out: "Abba, Father!" In fact, that's the best you can do, too.

I am led, more or less, as an infant, by the hand. Sometimes I'm such a dog, I need a short leash. On the other hand, I'm one of God's sons. So I'm happy.


---
B.B. Warfield on the leading of the Spirit.

Isaiah 6:5

I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Isaiah did not know who the coals symbolised, but he discovered the truth of faith: that the God who convicts sinners of their sin, honours faithful repentance, and atones for their transgressions.

Stand up, and bless the Lord
Ye people of his choice;
Stand up and bless the Lord your God
With heart and soul and voice.

Though high above all praise,
Above all blessing high,
Who would not fear his holy name
And laud and magnify?

O for the living flame
From his own altar brought,
To touch our lips, our minds inspire
And wing to heaven our thought!

God is our strength and song
And his salvation ours;
Then be his love in Christ proclaimed
With all our ransomed powers.

Stand up, and bless the Lord;
The Lord your God adore;
Stand up, and bless his glorious Name
Henceforth for evermore.

Acts 10:43

To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

The soldier Cornelius looked, by anyone's standards, like a standup guy: a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God. An angel even testified that his prayers and his alms ascended as a memorial before God. Why did they ascend thus? Because God gave this decent man to be saved from his decency.

I can only conclude that the religious things he did were worthless, blameworthy even, apart from his salvation. Cornelius was not some obviously morally degenerate criminal type who needed to "shape up" - Cornelius was a perilously religious, rule-keeping, moral guy, who had to be born again. His trouble was that he was better than almost all the people about him. People even carried his reputation as a "good" man before him. What a dangerous state to be in! No wonder God had to shout to get his attention.

It would not be by the things he did that he could be saved. Jesus is the one in whom anyone who has received forgiveness of sins has received it. Cornelius was born again. The things he did were good things, but they were only remembered before God because he would be saved through Jesus' name. He was directed by a holy angel to send for Peter to come to his house and to hear what he had to say, in order that he would be saved by the preaching of this truth about Jesus: that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. You can be as good as you like, or as bad, but only believing in him counts. Only believing counts. He could not believe unless he had been told about him in whom he ought to believe.

He was sent by an angel to be converted: sent to hear the call to believe in Jesus. The call to believe in Jesus is not the call to moral reform. It's the call to rebirth. It's the call to conversion - a status-changing saving relationship with the living, risen Lord Jesus, the messiah, the lamb of God, to whom all the prophets still bear witness. God's love has to become the focus of life. Once it has done, you will be sure of your conversion. Real Christians love God and love each other. We work out our saved lives, and are not ashamed of the government of our souls, but exult in God's praise.

Proverbs 29:25

The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.

Jesus feared God more than anyone. Isaiah 11 says this of him:

the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
---

How greatly do I dread you, Lord,
Who are so quick to bless,
Your Son, the way, the life, the Word,
Makes fear love's deep impress;
For who could love you truly, if
they had not learned to fear?
I have that great and gracious gift:
Your very presence near -
Your love, the call that brought me here,
Your dread, the touch so dear.

Prov 1:7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Prov 1:29-31 Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, would have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices.

Prov 2:1-5 My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.

Prov 8:13 The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.

Prov 9:10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

Prov 10:27 The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short.

Prov 14:26 In the fear of the Lord one has strong confidence, and his children will have a refuge.

Prov 14:27 The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, that one may turn away from the snares of death.

Prov 15:16 Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it.

Prov 15:33 The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor.

Prov 16:6 By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord one turns away from evil.

Prov 19:23 The fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied; he will not be visited by harm.

Prov 22:4 The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life.

Prov 23:17 Let not your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day.

Acts 2: 42-47

And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

The church was characterised by:
1) Being filled by the Spirit,
2) Learning,
3) Praying,
4) Being loving,
5) Being evangelical,
6) Being blessed (to be a blessing),
7) Worshiping,
8) Being faithful.

This means that the church is characterised by:
1) Being filled by the Spirit,
2) Learning,
3) Praying,
4) Being loving,
5) Being evangelical,
6) Being blessed (to be a blessing),
7) Worshiping,
8) Being faithful.

1 Peter 5:6-7

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

He does care for us. Humility is discovering that God cares for you, and believing it. There is nothing good that I have that God has not given me. As a public statement, I say that I don't want to be God, because God is better at it.

Unfortunately, I find that I am, against the tenor of this conviction, full of pride, just like Satan.

Lord, this is my anxiety. Care for me, when I don't even know what my problem is. I forget that Jesus was superlatively humble, never opposed by God, one in Spirit with the Father. I forget that the hand of God was powerful; it gave grace to him, and through him to me. I forget that Jesus' death allows me to put my sins to death, and I am not just a passive victim of this pride. Lord, you will lift me up, when it is right for you to do that. Help me take care of and grow a deep conviction to love you, and loving you, to be who you made me to be.

It is no bad thing to "think greatly of the greatness of God", as John Owen put it.

Proverbs 10:23

Doing wrong is like a joke to a fool, but wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding.

A number of proverbs are structured like this, a balanced pair of statements turning on the conjunction. The idea is to contrast and compare the halves to discover the meat of the saying. In this proverb, there are two contrasts and a comparison: the first contrast is between "doing wrong" and "wisdom" - indicating that wisdom is the shorthand for "doing right". The second is between "a fool" and "a man of understanding". The implication is that a fool lacks understanding. The "joke" is the constant part of the proverb - the joy of a joke being comparable to "pleasure". Another proverb about a "joke" (ch. 26:18-19) deals with a deceiving neighbour. Someone who deceives his neighbour and passes it off as a joke is like a madman throwing around firebrands, arrows, and death. Serious deception is not funny, and can not rightly be passed off as such, when its consequences are so devastating. "Ha ha, I've destroyed your life," is evil, not merely incongruous.

Behind both these proverbs is an assumption that humour, as such, is something that it is right to enjoy in its proper way. Similarly, in Ephesians 5:4, the implication of the proscription of filthiness, foolish talk and crude joking, which are out of place, is that these things, being out of place in the meeting of God's people, get in the way of expressing thanks to God. Again, the implication behind the word "crude" is that it is an out-of-place type of joking that has to be guarded against. Joking per se is not the issue.

I have written of "humour, as such", but that implies a fixed idea of what humour actually is. As it goes, I think there is a working definition of humour which we can lay down that distinguishes it from all other facets of interaction. To start with, humour is definitely distinct from laughter. Although laughter can often be the physiological symptom of humour, is not something to consider in the same way. Being tickled or ingesting certain toxins can make us laugh. There is no humour present in laughter, though there may be laughter present where there is humour.

But what is humour? It has always seemed to me that the occasion of humour is the recognition in the mind of an obtuse arrangement of anything - ideas, places, people, things - in a way that suggests that it is appropriate, and which, for a split second, may even appear consonant with the proper arrangement of the universe, but which soon is discovered by the mind not to be so. There is no humorous situation, or joke which does not agree completely with this definition. This is why the madman of the firebrands deception is not humorous: the wise man recognises in the madman's incongruity only sin and malice - not seeming congruity. Doing wrong is like a joke to a fool, because he lacks a proper sense of humour. It is God who gets the last laugh.

The wicked plots against the righteous
and gnashes his teeth at him,
but the Lord laughs at the wicked,
for he sees that his day is coming.

Psalm 37: 12-13.

Proverbs 20:3

It is an honor for a man to keep aloof from strife,
but every fool will be quarreling.

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to - W.C. Fields

How right he was... The point about pointless arguments is that you don't have to be right or even have to understand the issues to join in. It was Voltaire who said that a long argument means that both sides are in the wrong, and he also may have had the germ of a point. The issue is one of honour and folly. It's the difference, if you'll pardon me, between being a thinker and a stinker.

Matthew 17: 24-27

When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma tax went up to Peter and said, “Does your teacher not pay the tax?” He said, “Yes.” And when he came into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, saying, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax? From their sons or from others?” And when he said, “From others,” Jesus said to him, “Then the sons are free. However, not to give offense to them, go to the sea and cast a hook and take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for me and for yourself.”

Simon prefered not to rock the boat. Getting the small amount of money was clearly important to the collectors, more than one of whom came to ask. To avoid embarrassment, or creating bad feeling, or an unpleasant scene, he acquiesced with their request. Ought he to have done?

Jesus challenged him straight away because, in a sense, he had caved-in to avoid trouble. This was Simon, not Peter: not a rock. In a tacit way he had misrepresented Jesus as one who was a subject, rather than one who was a ruler. By rights, Peter ought not to have agreed that Jesus should be expected to (or even be asked to) pay this tax. It was not his tax to pay.

In this city on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, the men who collected taxes needed to know this. Indeed, Jesus had previously called on Matthew there, who was sitting at his tax booth. Jesus had been to Capernaum before, always on his kingdom mission. On one occasion he used his healing of a paralytic man to demonstrate his equality with God and his power to forgive sins. He healed there on the sabbath, and stirred up controversy by doing so. Was he really keen "not to give offense to them" or was he really keen to have Peter think a bit more carefully about what he was involved in? Who is it more important to keep in with? Man or God?

In providing the shekel from the mouth of a fish, Jesus reminded Peter of his mastery over the entire created order, and his right to be within the temple to be served rather than to be taxed. The temple, after all, was for him. It was where he should be worshiped. The money Simon agreed to pay was not to come from the common purse, but from a fish, which the fisherman-to-trade was to catch. The fisher-of-men was reappointed a catcher-of-fish, in a mild rebuke, which no doubt reminded him of his true calling.

I love the way Jesus gently brings us back on board. He did not show Simon up in front of the tax collectors, but took him aside, into the house. He did not just let him see the error of his ways, he provided him with a way to admit to his thoughtlessness, and a way out of his predicament, a way that reminded Peter of the awesome power that Jesus commands, and the fantastic privilege it is to be on his side.

Matthew 7: 6

"Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you."

It's a famous saying, "Don't throw pearls before swine" but what does it mean? Jesus is not accounted a great teacher for crystalising the obvious, so what was his point?

As I scour the internet, I am amazed to discover that rather lot of people have written of this section in the sermon on the mount that it is a call not to be too gracious, just in case you are taken advantage of. If that is the case, then Jesus might have taken his own advice, since he, not counting the cost, paid for it sorely. It doesn't seem like Christ to call on us to be limited in compassion, or to be parsimonious in generosity. I'm fairly sure God loves a cheerful giver, and that someone who sows sparingly reaps sparingly. In fact, I'm sure I read that somewhere... What can we say about this throwaway line, then?

It is a proverbial instruction, true, but that does not advance us much, as it is clearly not a standalone proverb - it is not susceptible of a casual interpretation in the absence of substantiating context. In fact, looking at it on its own gives us "don't be wastful" or, "be careful who you give good things to": hardly inspirational. What else can we say of it? It is an example of synonymous parallelism, certainly, and ontological personification metaphor too. But, big words aside, still we come back to: what do these trampling pigs, attack dogs, pearls and holy things all mean?

Jesus calls on the crowds to repent and to get on-board with the kingdom, which is the wider context of this instruction. But there are other teachings where he deals with treasures. He tells them: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

An interesting turn, that. Not, Where your heart is, there your treasure will be, but an invitation to examine the things I spend my money (or time / energy etc) on; and subsequent clarity on this matter: what matters to me. Could it be that "You cannot serve God and money" is the context for this talk of pearls?

A treasure was discovered by a man in a field, and he gave everything he owned to get it. The kingdom is like that too. I suspect that the pearls are our lives, hidden in Christ, and the pigs and dogs are the things of this world. The proverb is about not getting it (life, that is) wrong. He might plainly have said: "Don't waste your life."

Why do I think that? Well, it fits with a parallel reading of 6:19 - 7:11. The component passages may be broken down by theme as follows:

Prefer heavenly to earthly riches, 6:19-24;
Don't worry about the things you need, 6:25-34;
Don't be hypocritical about other people's struggles, 7:1-5;
Prefer heavenly to earthly riches, 7:6;
Ask God for what you need, 7:7-11;
Treat other people as you wish to be treated, 7:12-14.

That's my tentative best shot. Help and insight welcome...

2 Timothy 2:24–26

The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to
everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting
his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant
them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and
they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of
the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

When Paul says that “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth,” that is virtually what happens in the new birth. And here is the key to liberating people from the captivity of the devil. God grants repentance — that is, he awakens the life that sees the ugliness and danger of sin and the beauty and worth of Christ. That truth sets the prisoner free.

It’s what happens when a person in the dark fondles an ebony brooch hanging around his neck, and then the lights go on and he sees it’s not a brooch but a cockroach, and flings it away. That’s how people are set free from the devil. And until God does that miracle of new birth, we stay in bondage to the father of lies because we love to be able to tell ourselves whatever we please. We keep fondling smooth roaches and warm fuzzy tarantulas in the dark.
John Piper, Finally Alive, pp.57-58.

On a youthwork forum I read, someone called Mel Adams wrote in to ask "How do we know if our youth ministry is effective?" An excellent question.

The first answer was a fairly bald statement: "Simple answer -- If lives are being changed!
Honestly, though, that's what it is all about. If you don't see fruit in that way, then it is time to re-evaluate what you are doing and the methods you are using. People talk all the time about numbers of students in your youth group, but really it should be about the number of students coming to know Jesus and changing their lives for Him."

If this is how we measure ministry success, then Jesus' personal preaching ministry was largely a failure. Regeneration - the new birth - is certainly not something that we can contrive. Obedience is the key. I wrote back:

If you are being faithful, then your ministry is as effective as it can be. You may never see a single life changed. God is in the business of changing lives, and you are in the obedience business.

Do not try to measure your success by anything other than your faithfulness... Be faithful and work.

The key to being effective is to burn up grace like a rocket burns its fuel.

1 Samuel 17: 37

"The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine."

It is an amazing thing that David understood this, living so long before Jesus. It worries me that I am not up to scratch. What a giant of faith! But Jesus, of course, is the reason I can find hope in this story. Jesus killed every Goliath when he defeated death on the cross, and is the champion who gives me hope as I read about David.

I know that I'm no David. But I also know that the God who delivered the messiah from the unjust death that he died for my sake can deliver me too. Whatever giants lie in my path, I can encounter them in confidence, because I know - from that death - that God loves me, and has ultimately already killed them for me. David risked his life for God's sake. Jesus lost his for mine.

This is what our young people will get to hear at our church holiday club today. I hope they discover that it is good news. But most of all, I hope that they won't treat the story as some sort of moralistic exemplum. If the message were, "Go off and be like David - confront the giants in your lives, and God will help you overcome them!" then that should seem more like witchcraft than worship.

Genesis 3: 14-15

The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”

I'm leading a small group bible study for a holiday club this week, and amongst other passages from the bible we're looking at Genesis chapters 2 and 3. The young people are going to be asked to discuss these questions in groups:

What did the fruit promise?

What did it deliver?

What went wrong, and who was to blame?

What would the world be like if nobody had ever gone against God?

Is it important to love God and do what he says? If not, why not, and if so, why?

I rather hope these questions will help them open up the meaning of the chapters. It's a colossal sequence of ideas to get to grips with: creation, relationship, love, openness, honesty, lies, temptation, sin, death, punishment, alienation from God, each other, and the planet, God's mercy, and the hope of restoration.

My aim in getting through the bible passage will be to get them to identify with the truths of the passage, principally, that we need someone to rescue us.

As Romans 5:14 says, Adam was a type of the one who was to come. I am glad that the one who came passed the test.

---

cf Tim Keller.

Ezekiel 1: 28

Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell on my face.

God as a working hypothesis in morals, politics or science, has been surmounted and abolished; and the same thing has happened in philosphy and religion. For the sake of intellectual honesty, that working hypothesis should be dropped, or as far as possible eliminated.
[Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God in a Secular World, in A. McGrath, Christian Theology Reader, (Blackwell, 2007) p.52]

I have desires and appetites which correspond not to the things which I find in the world, but which are satisfied beyond the world. The resurrected Christ is the only existentially satisfactory and intellectually credible answer I have found to these appetites and desires.

I desperately want these things to be real, and founded in immutable truth: society, love, family, beauty, meaning, purpose, life-and-not-death, discovery out of mystery, joy, happiness, reconciliation, glory. A purely material experience is devoid of that reality.

I find that when groups of people take Jesus's message at face value, then they discover that these things exist, and have been given to us by a loving God.

I can show this simply by looking at how the early church got on, and the things that they proclaimed and avowed.

A vision of real society is glimpsed in Acts 2: 42-47 -

And they {that is, the three thousand or so souls who were baptised and who became followers of Christ after they heard Peter preaching to them} devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.

And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

A vision of real love that is worth contending for is clearly discernable in the introductory salutations of Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church. Even though these people were backbiting, immoral, and involved in all sorts of bad practices, Paul could write this:

To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

The kind of society that God is involved in will be sorted out by God, in his patience, and through his Grace, by the gift of his Spirit. The cross of Christ is not emptied of its power, and later on in the letter, Paul explains exactly what the love which should
characterise church life looks like:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Paul's advice:
Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts.

As to family, the bible teaches that God is the one in whom all families are blessed:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

What of beauty? Well, it is Jesus himself who recognises and affirms beauty:

While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her?

She has done a beautiful thing to me.

For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial.

And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

Jesus affirms the immortal memory of true beauty. And he will affirm it, in the beauty of holiness. The advice for husbands, which Paul gives in the letter to the Ephesian church is all about beauty:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Meaning, being tied to knowledge, is entirely resident with God. There is a proverb which teaches that it is unwise to think you have the discernment it takes in and of yourself to move from knowledge to meaning. In fact, it counsels:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.

Meaning is conferred on us from outside. The significance of all things is that they point to a creator. Without God, where can we go for answers to confused meaning? This is not some "God of the gaps" theory, which says that we use God to fill up our own shortcomings of knowledge and meaning, until a better understanding squeezes God out, but rather it is God as a working hypothesis: the lens through which the world comes into sharp focus. To the extent that this has to be experienced to be understood, I recognise that I am resonating here only with the believer, but to the extent that my testimony relates my experience, I hope to convince, and invite. Jesus says things like "come to me" for a reason. He's hoping you will come to him. I am not the only one who believes this. Perhaps the most compelling evidence is from within a family context. After all, we pass on what we feel is important to our children. In his old age, King David's advice to his son was this:

"And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever."

Meaning can be found, because God wants to be sought.

If we can have meaning, we can also have purpose: God gives us things to do. He expects us to do things, holds us accountable for them, and challenges us and tests us. Abraham he tested by calling him to sacrifice his son, the longed-for son, given to fulfil a promise. And God turned his expectations around, through the expression of his character, and by divulging his desire to have his purposes adhered to.

God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here am I.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.” And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here am I, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here am I.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

Micah 6:8 gives the root of all human purposes:

He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Abraham was able to walk in humility with his God. He had discovered, by appealing to God over the destruction of Sodom, that collective guilt might be atoned for by individual sacrifice, and ultimately, God provided the perfect sacrifice. It was this one which would rearrange the permanence and powers afforded to death.

And this is why I find Christianity to be the appropriate response to my appetite for life-and-not-death. In all of history, only Jesus has convinced large numbers of people that he had power over death. He said he did, and then he died. It turns out that you really can't keep a good man down.

Christians continue to die, but, as Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica, "we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words." This is why Christianity succeeded, even though it was persecuted, and was a faith of the powerless.

Jesus promised to take his followers on a journey of discovery out of mystery: he said "I am the way, the truth, and the life, and noone comes to the father except through me." He promises an end goal: ultimate reality, the Father, God. This destination, into deepest truth and life, is a journey of ultimately great discovery and ultimately great mystery. Whoever loses their life for Jesus's sake, will find it. Jesus demands everything, so that our love for him can be absolute.

Joy and happiness, are also to be found in an ultimate way in Jesus. Indeed, the bible commands: "Always rejoice in the Lord". The love that conquers all things is ultimate reality as far as the bible is concerned: what is this but joy and happiness?

Reconciliation is what surprised the early church: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Paul was amazed by this, and passion without prejudice is always what characterises the love which is in Christ. We need this God. He is glorious.

Luke 15: 2

And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

Jesus makes a few old testament texts mean so much more through this parable. What I notice most about Jesus' tale is that the father must have been standing and waiting, keeping a look-out for his lost son. How else might he discern him at a distance? Now I hear longing in the voice when God says:

Zechariah 1: 3 - Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you...
What sort of reunion will it be, though? Will the terms be bearable? Consider this: the father in Jesus' story felt compassion, even as he saw his wretched son.

Malachi 3: 7 - From the days of your fathers, you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, 'How shall we return?'
The prodigal son just comes to his senses, realises he has nothing to lose, gets up, and comes. He comes in humility and without much hope. He does not expect to be treated like a son, knowing that he has forfeited that privilege by squandering the inheritance, and insulting his father, effectively by desiring his death. Coming humbly and without expectations is not a bad way to return to God: He owes nobody anything.

Lamentations 3: 57 - You came near when I called on you; you said,'Do not fear!'
The son in the parable apprehensively rehearses his sorry story as he trudges along the road. If only he knew that his compassionate father had been keeping a look-out! He would not require even to hear the full story when he saw him. He was the sort of father who would not stand on his dignity, but would run out - desperate to meet him - and with hugs and kisses. His son would not have to petition to see him. This was the reunion he had been hoping for, a cause for celebration!