What We Pray

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service run by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Though we are slaves, our God has not forsaken us in our bondage. He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia: he has granted us new life to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins, and he has given us a wall of protection in Judah and Jerusalem. But now, our God, what can we say after this? For we have forsaken the commands you gave through your servants the prophets…

Ezra 9:9–11

If the book of Ezra was just about ‘getting back in the building’, it would end with chapter 6.

In spite of setbacks and opposition along the way, God’s people have persevered. The temple has been rebuilt and dedicated. Even so, it’s not just a ‘bricks and mortar’ moment. It’s about reconnecting with the past, reclaiming their identity, and remembering God’s salvation. No wonder we read that ‘the LORD had filled them with joy’ (6:22). In truth, it would be a great place to finish the story.

But there’s more. There always is.

Ezra knew what many churches have discovered: once the building project is over, the real work starts.

Renewed worship is to lead to renewed lifestyle. But the people had lost touch with how God had called them to live. The very issues which had taken them into exile in the first place now threatened to undo them and their witness to the nations all over again. They were not only abandoning their obligations to be a distinctive people, they were also jeopardising the blessing that was designed to come through them to others.

So it is that Ezra prays.

The prayer provides a poignant window into Ezra’s heart. It’s a deeply emotional outpouring of grief to the Lord, highlighting the people’s unfaithfulness, all too aware that he stands in solidarity with them. There’s a full acknowledgement of guilt and a recognition that they have placed themselves under the searching gaze of God.

But the prayer is addressed throughout to ‘our God’. And this is the only hope for the restoration they need. Even when they stop living like his people, he will not stop loving like their God. God has ‘shown kindness’ – covenant loyalty – to them. Ezra knows that this covenant God ‘has not forsaken’ them, and that his grace is already seen in the events which have brought about their return, giving them ‘new life’.

It’s perhaps a prayer to take with us as we continue to emerge out of lockdown, whatever that might look like over the next season.

We move forward recognising that our celebrations of regathering are nothing without our relationship with God being in place. And we do so confident in God’s character and commitment to us, that his love is designed to bring us to a place of service, and that our future is based solely on who he is.

Where We Start

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service run by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

The builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD… With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the LORD: ‘He is good; his love towards Israel endures for ever.’ And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy.

Ezra 3:10–12

As moments in history go, this one was significant – unprecedented, even.

At long last, things were beginning to open up. New circumstances. New possibilities. Inevitably, there’d be risks involved. The experience had been draining. People would need space for lament and confession, for reconnection and reconstruction. There’d be some delayed grief going forwards. But none of that could detract from the fact that change was in the air.

Sound familiar?

It was 539 BC.

Persia had taken over from Babylon on the world stage. A new regime with new ideas. Cyrus, whose heart had been moved by the Lord, allowed captive peoples to go back to their own lands.

So it is that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell of the building projects – the temple and the walls of Jerusalem – that take place after God’s people return from exile. No less real, and no less hard graft, is the rebuilding of the people themselves – in relationship with God and each other. But at the heart of the restoration, that which comes first, is worship.

It’s where true restoration begins. And that’s because of who God is: ‘he is good; his love towards Israel endures for ever.’

The account is realistic enough about the conflicting emotions, the opposition they’d face, the delays involved (it would be another 20 years before the temple was finally rebuilt). Even so, the affirmation of God’s character and covenant commitment pave the way for a new start. Hope has been rekindled, faith has been stoked, memories have been stirred, markers of identity have been reinstated, promises have been reaffirmed, God has been praised.

As new beginnings go, it’s a great place to start.

For all the differences between their situation and ours, the need for worship is no less significant today than it was then. Not the sort of worship which provides a momentary retreat from the world, but worship that shapes us for life in the world, which paves the way for renewed witness on our frontlines.

Yes, as we head into this new season, there’ll be mixed emotions. Like God’s people of old, we shouldn’t be surprised if joyful happiness is tinged with regretful disappointment. But God is present with us and calls us to see his bigger purpose, to celebrate who he is and what he has done, and to be empowered to be his people in and for the world.

Safe Hands

I wrote this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC). I originally wrote it a version of it for my own church community, coinciding with the anniversary of the first national lockdown in the UK, but it was ‘repurposed’ for this short series of reflections which ties in with the release of a set of Bible studies by members of the LICC team, to which I contributed, on some of David’s psalms – Worshipping the God of All in All of Life – published for Spring Harvest 2021.

In you, LORD, I have taken refuge;

let me never be put to shame;

deliver me in your righteousness…

Love the LORD, all his faithful people!

The LORD preserves those who are true to him,

but the proud he pays back in full.

Be strong and take heart,

all you who hope in the LORD.

Psalm 31:1, 23–24

‘My times are in your hands’, declares David. And for decades, David’s times were fraught with life-threatening danger. In 53 of his 75 psalms he mentions enemies. Time and again David turns to God. Time and again God is there for him. In this psalm he prays, ‘Into your hands I commit my spirit; deliver me, LORD, my faithful God’ (Psalm 31:5). As the greater King, Jesus also prayed this prayer as he hung on the cross (Luke 23:46), committing himself into his Father’s hands.

But this isn’t just for David, or for Jesus. It’s for us, too.

‘Into your hands, Lord…’

It’s the prayer I felt compelled to pray last week, on the anniversary of our first national lockdown, designated as a ‘day of national reflection’ here in the UK.

I wonder, what did the anniversary bring to mind?

Perhaps it was queuing outside the supermarket only to find the shelves empty on the inside. Perhaps it was trying to capture the last time you saw your elderly parent, just in case. Perhaps it was the cancellation of planned celebrations or exams. Perhaps it was that as lockdowns ended and started again, with all the resulting uncertainty, you began to know more people who were impacted, and some of those closest to you were at the sharpest end of that pointy stick.

‘Into your hands, Lord…’

Or, perhaps you remember that you and your neighbours were suddenly so much more, well, neighbourly. Perhaps it was the rainbows in windows, which rightly applauded our frontline workers but also reminded us of the promises of God’s faithfulness embedded in Scripture as well as in nature. Perhaps you enjoyed the glorious Spring of last year, got out more, and rested more than you’ve done for ages.

‘Into your hands, Lord…’

Not just a prayer for kings, but a prayer for us.

The key is in the final two verses of the psalm in which David addresses God’s people. As those who’ve been on the receiving end of God’s love, he calls us to love and trust God, and wait for him in hope: ‘Love the LORD, all his faithful people! The LORD preserves those who are true to him... Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the LORD.’

Those hands that have kept us so far will keep us still. They are the safest hands of all.

In Exile with Ezekiel #4: God’s Unwavering Plan

I wrote this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

The man brought me back to the entrance to the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple towards the east […]  Then he led me back to the bank of the river. When I arrived there, I saw a great number of trees on each side of the river… Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.

Ezekiel 47:1, 6-7, 12

As Christians, we affirm that ‘we believe in the resurrection of the body’. Even so, there’s an all-too-common tendency to imagine that heaven is somewhere ‘up there’ above the sky, which is where our disembodied souls will go when we die, leaving the world behind. But the biblical picture, as we see in Ezekiel’s final vision and elsewhere in Scripture, is that God remains committed to the earth and will one day renew it.

So it is that in words and images that echo the garden of Eden and which John will later pick up in Revelation, Ezekiel is allowed to glimpse the goal of God’s restoring work – and it is nothing less than a new creation.

Ezekiel sees a stream of water flowing from the temple. Though it starts as a trickle, it deepens and widens as it flows. As it flows, it generates life – in formerly dead seas swarming with fish, in trees which never stop bearing fruit, whose leaves bring healing. And all because of the one who now dwells in the temple.

In short, the God who breathes new life into his people will also transform creation itself.

This vision of God’s unwavering purpose is perhaps what exiles need most. In keeping with how the Bible describes our hope, it not only provides a way of seeing the future, but of living in the present. For, if this is the final destination of the biblical story, it is also the direction in which that story is moving.

It is the assurance of God’s transforming presence that allows us to envision a new reality in our relationship God, with each other, and in the world. To be sure, we don’t bring in this new order. But nor do we wait passively for it to arrive, and its certainty allows us to lean into it now where we are able to do so. That hope frees us up to live expectantly and confidently, though realistically, in ways that seek to transform the here and now in line with what will be – not as an act of self-assertion, but as a response to God’s gracious promise.

The Christian hope of a new heaven and earth provides a source of motivation for how we live in the light of his presence now – doing all things for the glory of the God who will one day make all things new.

In Exile with Ezekiel #3: God’s Restoring Power

I wrote this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Ezekiel 36:25-27

It would be all too easy to blame our lack of missional success as God’s people on the fact that we are a disenfranchised minority. Or perhaps, we might think, it’s down to the apathy and stubbornness of people in society.

Ezekiel knows the real reason often lies elsewhere, and it’s altogether more sobering.

It’s clear as we read the Old Testament prophets that the biggest obstacle to God’s people making good on their call to be a light to the nations was not primarily persecution or resistance but their own failure to follow God’s ways. The greatest threat to mission was the worship of other gods.

Called to live among the nations, Israel was to walk in the ways of the Lord and reflect his character to the world in their daily lives. That they had not done so means, as God tells Ezekiel, that ‘wherever they went among the nations they profaned my holy name’ (36:20). At stake is the reputation of God’s name, and his desire for it to be known in all the earth.

For Ezekiel, and for us, God’s promises of restoration come at the point of deepest loss. And at the heart of those promises is the renewal of the people themselves, which God will bring about as he pledges to cleanse them and give them a new heart and a new spirit.

Reinforced by his vision of dry bones raised to life, Ezekiel sees that this renewing work will come about through the Spirit, who will enable God’s covenant people to walk in his ways. In an action reminiscent of God forming Adam from the ground and then breathing into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2:7), God restores his people to their original design – a new humanity, no less.

That hope expressed in Ezekiel speaks of a larger, deeper restoration which would come about through Jesus, whose death, resurrection, and gift of the Spirit continue to animate God’s people today.

So it is that God’s promise through Ezekiel opens up to include us, who carry forward the same mission to represent God to the nations. For us, too, it is the permanent, transformative presence of the Holy Spirit who empowers us to live out our calling as witnesses to who he is and to what he has done, as we point others to Ezekiel’s God and ours.

In Exile with Ezekiel #2: God’s Loving Promise

I wrote this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: although I sent them far away among the nations and scattered them among the countries, yet for a little while I have been a sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone.’ […] They will return to [the land] and remove all its vile images and detestable idols. I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.

Ezekiel 11:16-20

The trauma of displacement stamps itself on the visions and sayings of Ezekiel. He even acts out its humiliation and horrors in his own body, becoming a living demonstration of God’s message to those in exile.

That message is poignantly captured in the vision recorded in chapters 8–11 of his prophecy. Ezekiel sees judgment brought on those practising idolatry and perpetrating injustice in the temple and Jerusalem, before then witnessing the sad departure of God’s glory from his sanctuary and holy city.

On the face of it, not the most encouraging message!

But it was one the people needed to hear. Because, for all its sombreness, it insists that the Lord is in charge. God isn’t too weak to stop Babylon defeating the nation and destroying the temple. In fact, it’s the mysterious path he has chosen. It’s part of his larger plan to purify the people and restore his presence among them.

That’s why even this darkest of moments is accompanied with a promise of renewal on the other side of judgment. While God has left the temple, he has not abandoned his people in exile, and promises to be a ‘sanctuary’ for them there. What’s more, he’ll bring them back, give them new hearts, and restore them to a life of service.

Like other sufferers of traumatic events, Ezekiel’s hearers needed a way to reweave their experiences into a larger, more-encompassing, life-giving plot. Ezekiel’s message offered a way for them to understand their displacement within a story which brought together past, present, and future in the light of the Lord’s work – not only in their lives but for the sake of the world in which they were called to live.

God’s promises to us have a way of doing that.

For us, too, trauma can come in different shapes and sizes. For us, too, is the reminder that God’s purposes will never be derailed by the Babylons of this world, whatever form they take. For us, too, is an assurance that in our deepest need, we are secure in him. Even if his hand leads us into exile, he will be present with us there, and will one day bring about our full and final restoration.

Such is his commitment. Such is his love.

In Exile with Ezekiel #1: God’s Empowering Presence

I wrote this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

In my thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the River Kebar, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God […] This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. When I saw it, I fell face down, and I heard the voice of one speaking. He said to me, ‘Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you.’ As he spoke, the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet, and I heard him speaking to me.

Ezekiel 1:1, 28 and 2:1-2

Until fairly recently, western Christians have enjoyed a sense of being at home in the world. Not completely, of course, but able to exercise significant power nonetheless.

That tide has turned.

We might not be facing outright hostility, and nor have we been completely removed from places of influence, but today’s culture seems more alien to Christianity than it used to be. Increasingly, Christians are having to learn what it means to ‘sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land’ (Psalm 137:4).

Although it’s easy to overstate the case, it’s as if we’re in exile. This description – which reverberates through the pages of Scripture – captures something significant about our identity and our mission. It involves recognising that we do not yet live in our ultimate home, even as we serve the Lord where we are here and now.

Recapturing the language of exile may help us understand some of the cultural changes taking place and allow us to see the life to which we are called – where the goal is not simply to survive in order to get through, but to be shaped into a people who bear God’s saving presence in and for a broken world.

What does being a Christian look like in such a context? What will prevent us from being absorbed into a culture that so powerfully shapes our identity? What will ensure our faith is more than just a bolt-on activity or accessory to an already-full life?

We need what Ezekiel received as he kicked his way along the banks of the River Kebar in Babylon – a vision of the glory of God. A vision which shows God is not restricted or contained, but real and present with his people. A vision which anticipates the one who would himself embody God’s presence, the one who ‘made his dwelling among us’, of whom Christians are able to say: ‘we have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth’ (John 1:14).

If exile provides an opportunity to be faithful to Jesus in the time and place in which we live, Ezekiel’s vision of God’s kingly glory reminds us that God will not abandon us, but will make himself present to us, fill us with his Spirit, and give us a task to do.

So Great a Salvation #6: The Cross and the Sacrificial Altar

I wrote this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4:9-12

Would it surprise you to hear that the earliest known visual depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus makes fun of it?

It’s the ancient equivalent of schoolboy graffiti, but it’s significant nonetheless. Scratched into plaster, it depicts a figure with the head of a donkey hanging on a cross, underneath which stands a man with his hand raised in reverence. Below it is a caption which reads: ‘Alexamenos worships his God.’

To be clear, the ridicule is not that Jesus died, but that he was executed as a criminal in the most shameful way possible. That was something to mock.

And yet, for all its apparent strangeness, the Christian faith makes no sense without the cross.

The biblical writings provide a rich mosaic of images to unfold the significance of what’s really going on at the cross – as that which replays and regains what we lost in our first parents, forming a new humanity in the process; as that which brings about a release from slavery to one owner into the service of another; as the place where reconciliation between God and human beings is made, which will one day be extended to the whole cosmos; as that which enables us to be declared right with God and brought into covenant relationship with him and others; as the supreme victory over the powers of darkness and death...

And all made possible through the sacrifice of one in the place of others.

Apart from the explicit language here in John’s letter and elsewhere, repeated phrases such as ‘through his blood’ and ‘for our sins’ make clear the substitutionary nature of Jesus’ sin-bearing death. So it is as Jesus heads towards the cross, he takes on the role of the servant spoken of in Isaiah, suffering and dying on behalf of others, where ‘the punishment that brought us peace was on him’ (Isaiah 53:5).

Crucially, all this flows from God’s love. Far from involving a cold transaction, the cross is rooted in the heart and actions of the triune God – the abounding love of the Father, the atoning death of the Son, the applying grace of the Holy Spirit.

That love is then reflected in our own lives. Christ’s death not only provides the source of our salvation but the shape of our salvation, such that our daily life ratifies our core allegiance to Jesus – as we take up our cross to follow him.

So Great a Salvation #5: The Cross and the Defeated Enemy

I wrote this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Colossians 2:13-15

Global warming. Terrorist threats. Nuclear weapons. Covid-19...

It’s not too difficult to draw up a list of reasons to be fearful. And that’s before we add in anxieties related to relationships, work, money, and childrearing. Small wonder that many have spoken of living in a ‘culture of fear’ – with the overwhelming sense that we are confronted by powerful forces that threaten our everyday existence.

Fear itself goes back to the garden of Eden, where it’s a mark that we are out of joint with our Creator. But, to those who live in the shadow of fears, there is good news.

As it happens, the good news also begins in Genesis 3, with God’s promise of the serpent’s crushing defeat by the seed of the woman. The fulfilment of that promise unfolds in the rest of the biblical drama, coming to its unexpected peak in the death of Christ. To bystanders it would have looked like the worst-possible, most-shameful defeat. But for Paul, it was the place where ‘having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross’.

Notice that Jesus defeats the enemy not only in his resurrection and ascension (those obvious markers of victory) but first and foremost at the cross – precisely at the place where it looks like the powers of darkness and death have triumphed.

But why was the cross necessary? Because, says Paul, of the record of debt ‘which stood against us and condemned us’. The victory Jesus brings comes only at the expense of the death he dies. His Devil-defeating, death-dealing, deliverance-bringing work on the cross is carried out on our behalf.

This paradox of victory through suffering carries over into the Christian life. As Paul writes, ‘the God of peace will soon crush Satan underneath your feet’ (Romans 16:20), but there is a gap between the ‘It is finished’ of the cross and that final day. We’re not merely waiting around for that victory to come; we live into it now, as those who have been made ‘alive with Christ’ – but we do so only in the shadow of the cross.

In this way, the cross also points forward – to the worship of people from all nations, singing the triumph of the slain Lamb, victorious and enthroned, all enemies put down, all fears finally put to rest, that God may be all in all.

So Great a Salvation #4: The Cross and the Law Court

I wrote this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus... If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Romans 8:1, 31-35

Paul could hardly say it any more clearly. Read it again if you need to: ‘there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’

And that little word ‘in’ is all-important.

What’s the central thought of Paul’s letters? Is it justification? Reconciliation? Adoption? As important as they are, what’s most central is Jesus. The prior, primary, foremost, fundamental reality for Paul is our union with Christ, being in Christ. And all the benefits of salvation flow from that union – our justification for sure, but also our adoption, redemption, sanctification, glorification, and our being joined to each other in the church, the body of Christ.

It’s on the basis of our union with Christ – in his death and resurrection – that we are declared right with God, free from the penalty of our law-breaking. As Paul has made clear earlier in his letter to the Roman Christians, what flows from being justified is ‘peace with God’ – not through anything we can bring to the table, but ‘through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (5:1).

Moreover, since God has declared us right in the present, that verdict will stand on the last day. We can look forward to the future with confidence, because it’s a future that Christ himself has secured for us. Being counted righteous in God’s sight, even now, brings hope as well as peace.

But more than a legal declaration of our status before God, justification takes us to the heart of the covenant relationship between God and his people. Like Abraham himself, all those who stand in right covenant relationship with God do so through faith, and on the basis of Christ’s death on the cross, whether they be Jew or Gentile. Here is how God makes good on the promises made to Abraham that all nations would be blessed through him.

As if this was already not enough, at the bottom line of it all, and the ultimate basis of Paul’s confidence, is God’s love – not merely shown to us, but ‘poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit’ (Romans 5:5), a sign of his ongoing commitment to us. It’s a love, Paul says here, from which nothing can separate us.

If any of this was down to us, we’d have room for doubt. As it is, our assurance lies elsewhere. Peace, hope, blessing, love – and all through Christ.

So Great a Salvation #3: The Cross and the Reconciled Enemy

I wrote this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him [Christ], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.

Colossians 1:19-22

The New Testament writers use rich, evocative images to unfold the significance of Jesus’ death: a bloodstained battlefield, a slave market, a law court, a sacrificial altar... The word pictures engage our imaginations, even as they invite us to place ourselves in situations that might not be immediately familiar to us.

In several places, though, Paul writes about the cross in language most of us can readily identify with, often from firsthand experience – that of a broken relationship in need of mending.

In many such cases, the phonecall is made, the card is written, the flowers are given, apologies are offered and accepted, and the relationship moves on. In other cases, the hurt is all too painful, the hostility all too powerful. Issues of justice may also be involved, with reparation required. Forgiveness is possible, but won’t come cheap. The likelihood of reconciliation seems remote.

This heartbreaking reality is at stake in humanity’s relationship with God.

Here in Colossians and elsewhere in his letters, Paul is not embarrassed to describe us as God’s ‘enemies’, as ‘alienated’ from him, and to call out our behaviour as ‘evil’. All the more staggering, then, that reconciliation comes about at God’s own initiative, and does so through the Son. Central to the gospel is the announcement that ‘God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ’ (2 Corinthians 5:19).

In particular, the cross is at the heart of this breathtaking plan. What will God do through Jesus? He will reconcile ‘all things’, writes Paul, making it clear that God not only makes peace with individuals, but will one day bring the whole universe back in harmony with himself. But at what price does this peace come? Again, Paul is clear: ‘through his blood, shed on the cross.’ He pays the cost required.

It’s the cross which brings about the ‘but now...’ relationship we enjoy with God, where formerly alienated enemies are now ‘holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation’.

The cross of Jesus stands at the climax of the entire history of salvation. Everything is understood in the light it casts, a light extending forward to the day when all things will be fully restored. Meanwhile, that light illumines our daily lives as we seek to be shaped by its reconciling power, knowing that we live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.

So Great a Salvation #2: The Cross and the Slave Market

I wrote this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.

1 Peter 1:18-21

Imagine for a moment: you live under someone else’s control, bought and sold like a piece of property; you have no rights, and very little hope for the future. You’re a slave.

For many of Peter’s readers – as for millions around the world today – imagination wouldn’t be required. Slavery would be all too real. And Peter’s language of being ‘redeemed’ would resonate powerfully: short of an owner granting release, freedom would come about only through the payment of a ransom price.

Redemption always comes at a cost.

In using this imagery to unpack the significance of Jesus’ death, Peter weaves together several strands from the biblical story, echoing especially Israel’s release from slavery in Egypt. The image of the ‘lamb without blemish or defect’ brings to mind the Passover, recalling God’s great act of deliverance. In the case of Peter’s readers, redemption involves a liberation from bondage to an ‘empty way of life’. But such freedom comes with a price – nothing less than ‘the precious blood of Christ’.

Notably, God has not stood back and orchestrated deliverance from a distance. He has himself stepped into the situation, and at great personal cost. As Jesus put it, ‘the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45). Nothing less than his life was required. Nothing less than his life was given.

As Peter does elsewhere in this letter, he extends the blessing of God’s redemption to the scattered Christian communities, made up of Gentiles as well as Jews. Although they find themselves on the margins of society, they are brought into the very centre of God’s plan for all things, set in motion ‘before the creation of the world’, in which God has acted on their behalf – ‘for your sake’, Peter tells them, and for ours.

Moreover, this act of redemption doesn’t extract us from everyday life. Instead, it’s the ground for Peter’s exhortation ‘to live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear’ (1:17). Christ’s redemptive work is not merely an inspiration for living our lives this way, but the very basis for doing so. Our release from an empty and enslaving way of existence brings with it not the freedom to do as we please, but the freedom to enter service to God – a new Lord, with a new way of living.

So Great a Salvation #1: The Cross and the New Humanity

I wrote this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

Romans 5:17-19

As he does elsewhere, Paul places the account of salvation on a huge stage – nothing less than the story stretching from the first Adam to the second Adam.

He puts it even more succinctly in 1 Corinthians 15:22: ‘For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive.’ It’s by virtue of our union with Adam that we die, and by virtue of our union with Christ that we’re made alive.

And at the heart of this story is the cross.

We need it to be so. Though formed in the image of God to represent his good rule in the world, our reflection of that image is distorted. To be sure, threads of beauty, compassion, and industriousness are woven through the fabric of our lives; but so are threads of darkness, disease, and disorder. In our more honest moments, we need go no further than ourselves to be confronted with the twists and turns of the human heart. We walk tall, but fall short, and are unable to make good on our failings.

But there is another who does through his life what we cannot do in ours. There is another who, in his death, takes on the consequences of disobedience that rightly belong to us. Christ Jesus as the second Adam succeeds where the first Adam failed and undoes what the first Adam did – and what we have done since.

In doing so, wonderfully, the cross not only brings about the removal of guilt and the forgiveness of sins, but also creates a new humanity in Christ, people who now ‘put on the new self, which is being renewed in the image of its Creator’ (Colossians 3:10).

Crucially, Jesus does his work as second Adam in human flesh, and the salvation he brings about doesn’t remove us from our own body or our existence in the world. On the contrary, it makes us more truly human, more what we were designed to be. Precisely because of the one who has fulfilled the destiny for which we were made, whatever realm the Lord has placed us in – whatever family, job, school, church, or hobby – we can bear fruit in it, as men and women made and then remade in God’s image to represent and reflect the glory of his grace in all the earth.

The Lord of the Exodus

I’ve recently completed a series of six posts on Exodus:

1. The Lord who Remembers (Exodus 2:23-25)

2. The Lord who Redeems (Exodus 6:6-8)

3. The Lord who Fights (Exodus 15:1-3)

4. The Lord who Tests (Exodus 15:25 and 16:4)

5. The Lord who Commands (Exodus 20:1-3)

6. The Lord who Loves (Exodus 34:5-7)

The pieces were written for ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, and to coincide with the publication of a Bible study guide for small groups with questions on passages from Exodus, published in LICC’s ‘Gateway Seven’ series of Bible studies covering different biblical genres. The six Bible study sessions are as follows:

Session 1

Hearing God’s Call (Exodus 3:1-17)

Session 2

Experiencing God’s Deliverance (Exodus 12:1-13, 29-32)

Session 3

Trusting God’s Provision (Exodus 16:1-26)

Session 4

Becoming God’s People (Exodus 19:1-6 and 20:1-17)

Session 5

Building God’s Dwelling-Place (Exodus 25:1-9 and 31:1-11)

Session 6

Encountering God’s Presence (Exodus 32:7-14 and 34:4-7)

Further information about the book is available here.

The six posts above were designed to complement, without overlapping too much, the Bible study sessions.

From Cover to Cover: Whole Life, Whole Bible

A few years ago, along with friends and colleagues from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity – Margaret Killingray and Helen Parry – I put together a book called Whole Life, Whole Bible. First published by Bible Reading Fellowship in 2012, it was designed to go through the main contours of the biblical story in 50 short readings.

With the kind permission of BRF, LICC is making the readings available as an email series and a YouVersion reading plan. More information, including a sign-up box for the email service and a link to the YouVersion plan, is available here.

Meanwhile, I wrote the below ‘Word for the Week’ to provide more information about the approach of the book and hopefully some encouragement to ‘take up and read’.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:1

He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.

Revelation 22:20-21

‘Tell me a story’ and ‘Once upon a time’ – a four-word request and a four-word opening. Both phrases capture something of the universal human desire for stories. Indeed, our own lives are submerged in several interconnecting ‘stories’ – of living through the Second World War, of being married with grown-up children, of working in finance, of having a passion for collecting stamps, of serving on the PCC, of holidaying in Cornwall – and all these ‘stories’ shape our lives in different ways.

For Christians, of course, the most crucial story for shaping the way we think and live is the biblical story. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible can be seen as an epic narrative: a story which begins with God as Creator, which focuses on Israel as the people who will bring God’s blessing to the nations, which the New Testament declares has come to its promised fulfilment in the redemption brought about through Christ, in whom God’s purposes for the universe will be consummated.

LICC’s Whole Life, Whole Bible is designed to walk through the unfolding story of the Bible in 50 readings and reflections. It’s written with the conviction that God’s word sets the agenda for our lives as followers of Jesus today. And it does so for the whole of life – on Monday to Saturday as well as Sunday, in public and in private, in culture as well as in church, in work as much as in worship. Moreover, this ‘whole-life’ perspective is not limited to a few biblical passages here and there, but is woven through the story as a whole – from cover to cover, from creation to new creation.

The reading plan provides a way of understanding how individual passages relate to each other in the larger picture of the Bible. Beyond that is the reminder that we are a part of this ongoing drama which embraces the entirety of our lives – individually and together – for the sake of the world in which we are called to live.

Whole Life, Whole Bible aims to show how the big story of the Bible forms our minds, fires our imaginations, and fuels our daily existence – as we live in God’s world in the light of God’s word, taking the Lord of life into the whole of life.