Monthly Archives: May 2012

Robbed by tradition

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I’m going to say at the outset that not all traditions are bad – some traditions are enriching, valuable parts of what it is to be human and live in fellowship with other humans. As a fairly new Father, one of the things I can’t wait to do is establish family traditions that will give my family a sense of unity and history as we go through life together. So this is by no means an anti-Tradition rant for the sake of it.

However, there are other traditions that aren’t so good. For example, there’s an old story about a newly married couple and their first roast dinner.

Watching his wife prepare the joint of meat, the husband bemusedly watched her cut two inches from either end of the meat and threw it in the bin. Thinking it an awful waste, he asked her “Why have you just cut those ends off?”

“That’s just how my Mum taught me to prepare a roast. She’s done it all her life, and I never thought to ask her why,” she replied as she carried on seasoning the meat.

“Fair enough,” the husband said. “I don’t want to cut across family traditions. After all, Mum knows best!”
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A Valentine’s Gone Wrong

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I know it’s the middle of May, but I’d like to share a bit about a Valentine’s Day with my wife where I got it completely wrong. We had talked a bit about what we wanted to do to celebrate the day together, and my wife made it clear that what she really wanted was to have a night out. In the end, we didn’t manage to  find a baby sitter, so she then said that she’d be happy with a posh ready meal from a supermarket so that we’d be free to spend the time after dinner not cleaning up the kitchen. She left me responsible for working out what we’d eat, which is where things started to go wrong… Continue reading →

The Naked Gospel by Andrew Farley

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Grace is one of those things that can be very difficult for our religion-addicted brains to grasp. From the cradle to the grave, we’re told by the world that we get what we work for, and that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and in all honesty we’re not generally communicating a better message in the church! I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that taking hold of and believing the gospel of pure grace has been the biggest challenge I’ve had in my walk with God. There’s just so much confusion and effort-based preaching that I’ve taken in, and even delivered, over the years that it can all seem a bit too good to be true.

If this sounds a bit like you, I’d love to commend The Naked Gospel to you. I have had this book for a really long time, but finally got around to reading it while I was on holiday recently. Within the pages of this brief and easy-to-read book, Andrew Farley takes aim at the very foundations of law-based religion and the compromised mixtures of law and grace that are so prevalent in the church today. Having shown the impotence of the law to lead us into the life God desires for us, he then shows us how the New Covenant founded on Christ’s blood is infinitely better than what was given to Israel on Mount Sinai.

Using modern-day illustrations and Scripture to challenge widely-held beliefs that fall short of the New Covenant, Farley has written a fantastic guide to the true gospel that is all of grace. Along the way, he presents clearly and persuasively the truth of our identity in Christ, the futility of human effort in serving God, the true purpose of the Law, why it is no longer binding on believers in Christ today, and how we go on living in grace day-by-day.

I read The Naked Gospel in three or four days, and I found it an incredibly encouraging and faith-building read. At the end of the book, I was much less impressed with myself and much more impressed with Jesus, which can only be a good thing! I intend to read it again, going through much slower, so that I can get my mind renewed and be even more amazed at what Christ has done and continues to do in my life by grace.

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering “What is so amazing about grace?”, get this book and find out for yourself. Your religious pre-conceptions will be challenged, but bear with it and you may well see the way to freedom in Christ more clearly than you have before.

The importance of not knowing

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God has challenged me on my intellectual pride recently. I have a constant temptation to think that I have to understand everything, and that the route to spiritual growth is the ability to remember and regurgitate Scripture and doctrine. Maybe it’s because I’m someone who reads a fair bit of theology and Christian literature. Maybe it’s because I’ve been known to preach and teach in various contexts. Maybe I’m just a bit of a know-it-all! I don’t really know the root of it.

What I do know is that this tendency has held me back. I will often sense God reminding me of a scripture, or a particular aspect of doctrine or faith, and my knee-jerk reaction is “I know that!” While it can sound like I’m acknowledging what God is saying, I’ve started to realise that this is my pride saying “I already know this. I don’t need to hear that again, so tell me something new!” I’ve been unwittingly rejecting the day-by-day bread God has wanted to give me from His word.

Being a bit thick-headed, it took God pushing back for me to finally see what I was doing. The last time I told Him “I know that!”, He lovingly responded “No you don’t, Jon. If you knew it, I wouldn’t need to tell you. You need to stop telling me you know things just because you’ve heard it before, or even because you’ve preached it before. Trust me when I tell you something, and please listen to me!” If ever there was a word to cut through the fog of pride, it’s that one!

It’s so important to realise what you do and don’t know. There’s a reason Jesus said we must become like children when describing how we enter the Kingdom. Children aren’t in the place of being experts or teachers. On the contrary, children are learning everything new for the first time. It takes time for them to pick things up, and a father knows both what his child needs to learn and when they have learned it. I know that with my daughter, I don’t have to teach her how to sit up or walk any more – she’s already mastered them! Likewise, God, the perfect Father, knows exactly what we need to learn at each point and, as His children, we need to be ready to receive exactly what He wants to give us at each moment.

So here’s my new posture. There’s all kinds of things I think I know. I’ve studied and read a lot, but one of the things I’m finally learning is that there is so much I don’t know. There is so much about grace, faith and who I am in Christ that I still need to receive and meditate on. If God speaks to me about something, I’m going to take it on faith that I need to hear it and take time to meditate on it and get my mind renewed. Yes, I want to grow in wisdom and understanding, but wisdom starts with the fear of the Lord and knowing that there’s so much still to learn. So instead of feeling like I need to master truth, I want to focus on knowing Jesus who is the truth, and then let truth master me.