Known By God
“Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.” (Hos 6:3)
Introduction
In a limited degree, in harmony with prophets, Jesus and apostles (Luke 19:41; Acts 17:16; Rev 5:4), I am at times severely emotionally disturbed by stories concerning the state of the Church. This happened to me recently and it has provoked my present writing. (To Donna’s distress; but Christian marriages are called to reflect Christ and the Church (Eph 5:29-32)). What pains me so much is the failure of those in leadership to recognise the holy elevated status of “ordinary Christians”. Believers of all people should know by divine revelation, as C. S. Lewis once remarked, that “There are no ordinary people.” (The Weight of Glory pp. 45-46). People are either on a trajectory to becoming like “gods/goddesses” or destined to be “unimaginable horrors in hell! How have we fallen so low as to regard our brothers/sisters “in Christ” as being people without “the hope of glory” (Col 1:27)?
Who Are You
A popular contemporary song repeats, over and over (as is customary today), “Jesus at the centre of it all” (https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/darlenezschech/jesusatthecenter.html). Whilst my life has become increasingly dedicated to confirming the centrality and supremacy of Christ (1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:16), in the Church few seem to understand the implications of this “testimony of Jesus” (Rev 1:2; 2:9; 12:17; 19:10; 20:4). That is, the implication of Jesus own testifying amongst us. The practical ignorance of so many of God’s people is doubtless due to the spiritual poverty of our times. On the one hand we have centres of “superior worship” (Pentecostal-Charismatic megachurches), on the other hand there is “brilliant expositional teaching” (Reformed-Evangelical congregations), but we are severely lacking rich encounters with the fullness of Word and Spirit “to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:11). The venerable truth, “All Word and no Spirit, we dry up; all Spirit and no Word, we blow up; both Word and Spirit, we grow up.” (David Watson) is needed amongst us. Few recognise our impoverished revelation-knowledge is a crisis in the covenant we share with Christ in God (Matt 26:28; Heb 13:20). “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos 4:6), is a perennial truth that has visited the Western Church. This should not surprise us, for in Scripture “knowledge” refers to shared relational intimacy with Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Gen 22:12 is a fine example).
Who knows who you are?
“No one knows who you are.” was a comment shared by a shy friend in response to what she received from a group of city leaders approached about a proposed Bible reading marathon. As far as I am aware, they did not earnestly go to the Lord about her request. They apparently lacked the disposition shared by Jesus’ with the Early Church (Matt 9:38; Luke 22:44; 1Thess 3:10). This neglect of godly response reflects a failure of the Church to “press on to know the LORD” (Hos 6:3; Phil 3:12-14) and so to know his covenant people. Where is the apostolic word, “But if anyone loves God, they are known by God….But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God” (1 Cor 8:3;Gal 4:9). The “knowing” of which Paul speaks is one with the intimate covenantal knowledge of salvation expounded in the writings of John, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3). Such knowledge receives the faithfulness of God’s tough covenant love, “It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought…. You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you….” (Hos 13:5; Am 3:2). Not to intimately know our brothers and sisters in Christ is not to KNOW God ! “Whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” (1 John 4:20), Participating in the union of the love shared between Father and Son in power of the Holy Spirit is a matter that demands complete Christlikeness. All believers are, after all, “partners in the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4).
Pastoral Blindness
The Church in Perth is suffering from a serious crisis of “pastoral blindness”. The sheep of “God’s pasture” (Ps 100:3) are not being recognised in their glorious individuality before their heavenly Father. Jesus said, “in heaven the angels (of God’s “little ones”) always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.”, they, like the 1 compared to the 99 (Matt 18:10-14), must never be disregarded. “Pastoral blindness” is sometimes attributed to the ongoing professionalisation of “the ministry”. In, Brothers we are Not Professionals, John Piper pleads with fellow pastors to abandon the secularization of the pastorate and pursue the prophetic call for radical ministry. But most pastors I know avoid the cost of any serious prophetic call. In a recent encounter the Spirit showed me every Christian person is at the centre of the local gathering as it shares with Christ in the heavenlies (Gal 4:26; Col 3:1-3; Heb 12:22ff.). This prophetic vision (Prov 29:18) destroys not only all evil selfish ambition (James 3:14, 16) but makes us in Christ as servants of all (Mark 10:43-45). Seeing each sheep of the Lord as superlatively special in the eyes of Jesus Christ our righteousness (1 John 2:1) is to have a vision of their eternal glory in him (1 Pet 5:2; Heb 13:20). They are NOT nameless and faceless people!
Who Am I?
Praise God for the rich heritage of the Church which constantly delivers us from our small-mindedness. The famous poem titled Who Am I by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, (https://theologyandchurch.com/2020/06/25/who-am-i-bonhoeffer/), was written in a prison cell whilst awaiting execution, and it ends with a profound affirmation, “Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.” This was an articulation from the depths of the heart (Ps 42) made possible by Bonhoeffer’s sharing in “the fellowship of sufferings” (Phil 3:10), it was a rare gift delivered from the saving agony of the cross, “And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice…“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:33-34)
Conclusion
There can be no “power of the resurrection” (Phil 3:10) in the Church whilst we seek to be special in and of ourselves. A preacher remarked that the following ad, “For the most important person in the world, you.”, could never have been said in a more Christian age. Tragically, the age of Christendom has departed both the world and the Church. This is the sovereign wisdom and judgment on the Western world in which we are currently immersed. What we need today is a new revelation of an old truth brilliantly expressed by a wonderful scholar, “for one who is ‘in Christ’… human nature …exists not just alongside of the Creator, but in such a way that his/her human being is anchored in the very being of God. The breath-taking import of all this … is that our human nature has been taken up and in Jesus to the top and summit of being, and that with him and in him humanity is located in the very centre of all things!” (T.F. Torrance). To God be the glory for his eternal triumph in Christ! “There are no ordinary people.” (C.S. Lewis); thanks God for that.