It's almost upon us - the high point of the Christian calendar - so I wanted to share something rich and glorious in regards to what our dear Lord has bestowed. I'm grateful to Steve Brown, and particularly his work, "A Scandalous Freedom", which has inspired this series. I hope and pray it will encourage and enrich your faith in these perilous days. Howard.
The Inheritance of Freedom.
"Have you lived hard enough, sinned deep enough, to understand what's really yours"?
That was the question of the theology teacher to his students, and it's one of those primary questions Jesus Himself placed before the 'super-spiritual' pietists of His day, in the form of the parable of the two sons, which we often, incorrectly (though understandably), label the story of the prodigal.
If you read a book like Chad Bird's excellent "Night Driving", then you begin to gain a notion of what the question and the parable are seeking to address in respect of not only the astonishing, unfathomable depths of Grace, but the glorious endowment of Sonship which is bestowed along with this to every blood-bought child of the most High.
Perhaps the biggest trouble facing the believer today is the negation of the scope and the depth of this vast inheritance. Our engagement, so often stifled by fear of being seen as "too earthy", leaves those around us witnessing a manner of 'religious' expression that will never venture beyond a social convention, never mind bending or breaking a divine command, and yet, we find the deepest treasures of truth amidst a book composed by grace by some of the most flawed beings in cosmic history! How many of us could have trusted Peter after his denials, or David after acts of Murder and Adultery - yet these men are the vessels of the richest truths delivered from God to men. This, as Martin Luther noted, is the good news we must proclaim to one another, for it is the continual validation of Christ crucified.
"It's the terror of knowing what this world's all about" notes a famous pop song, noting that only genuine love "dares you to care", to unveil what really makes a difference - taking the risk to live. A sculptor and a ballet dancer may both produce art, but only the latter truly engages with flesh and blood in an immediate, continual fashion to convey something vibrant and essentially alive to display something to inspire - Christianity is resurrection, not taxidermy!
If our faith doesn't bridge the miss-match between what we believe to be true and what surrounds us as 'the norm', then we effectively become gnostics, having nothing to invest in this life - we will never see the richness of what God has set Himself to redeem, never catch the fragrance of the heaven that is coming to earth.
Our liberty isn't merely 'conceptual' in nature - it is meant to exude from the very pours and breath of our days here. God's image of the manner of elegance envisaged for us isn't the stifled existence of our present narcotic infusion of a culture which defines us as being pointless - it is the splendour of Eden, where we eat freely and are unashamed. It is David, lost in joy in dance before the ark. It is Jesus, producing gallons of the finest wine at a party.
So often, this manner of freedom scares to the core, because it shouts that we are truly responsible for how we take and use the manifold gifts and qualities we have been bestowed with, not principally in respect to failing - God resolves that - but in regard to denying our calling as His workmanship.
To escape such 'mummification', sadly so often preferred to the call given to us, we have to recognise the genuine bounds of where we have been called. Paul was not seeking to mislead us when he stated that our faith furnishes us to understand that nothing in creation is 'unclean' (literally untouchable) in and of itself, so it clearly depends on how we employ (partake) of something as to whether it becomes good or demeaning in its use.
The "publican" who never set foot over the threshold of the temple doorway was deemed by Christ to be righteous, because he refused to see the Lord as anything but good - the one who was totally merciful to one so undeserving as himself - the true justifier of the wicked. What is wicked, then, becomes good solely because God deems it to be so - He alone makes everything beautiful in its time, and makes that truth eternal. If our faith becomes a rite which drains us of this manner of renewal, then we have truly become unclean - inhabiting a realm where we deem our own merits to be what makes us worthy creatures - we have become content with a facsimile of dignity at the cost of loosing our birthright.
Paganism seeks to marry the impaired nature and dreams of humanity to a broken creation, marred by us. Christianity redeems all of this purely by Christ's substitutionary death and resurrection, clothing our misery in fallen Adam with a imperishable righteousness. It is in the light of this alone that we are now called to live well, because God is well pleased entirely by the nature of His beloved Son - that alone facilitates the rightness of our days, now and forever.
Hopefully, we're beginning to "hear" and thereby see the magnitude of what we have been brought into - a banqueting house in which the banner placed above our heads spells out unmerited mercy and care. It means God isn't going to expel us when we forget what we are by grace and become wild once again, but it does mean that we have to allow that love to ravish us and win us continually by its overwhelming splendour. To spurn such by a dogma of false self-confidence is death. To go deeper, further in our union, even when make mistakes, is what is desired.
The Prodigal was free to leave - free even to take his father's riches and abuse their intended good use. None of this changed his father's longing for him, or impeded the deep joy and affection which flowed when he returned from the misery of his folly - that is all included in the goodness which God gives - hence, redemption is found exclusively in His love.
We live in a world where people commonly beg, steal or borrow to obtain what little happiness they can hoard. We are called to show a wealth that is fathomless in comparison - a true adorning with a beauty that cannot be tarnished or ruined, in whatever circumstances we are presently housed. Paul could rejoice in prison because what he was at the core wasn't determined by the 'downtown' notions of life and death - he was a free man, even whilst placed in chains. Being fed and clothed, or hungry and naked, isn't the criteria - it's the fellowship with our merciful Father who translates into an eternal citizenship defined by His Son.
If and when we begin to seek to conform our behaviour to lesser criteria - what you must do/not do, eat, drink wear, and the like - we can then so easily become a manner of people serving up a 'form' of reward which the world revolves around 24/7. What we must understand is that the 'offence of the Cross' as Paul unpacks to the Galatians, is a total freedom from such peripherals, hence the charge so often laid at the feet of the 'religious' - that they are evidenced as 'hypocrites'... law-breakers, without a Gospel which allows for our errors.
Standing and living for this freedom isn't often appreciated. It means our devotion and behaviour won't be defined by what others deem to be best, because we, in unreserved love for the one who continually tells us we are at liberty to live, and to live to the full. He is the one who has promised to stay with you no matter what - the vilest of things we have done was nailed to His cross, and they're dealt with - that is the single place God deals with us in respect to this trouble, and makes us His - that is why we now come to a seat of authority entirely defined by unmerited mercy. This is what underpins us here, whatever our external circumstances.
We all know the famous verses that state that nothing severs us from this manner of love, but how many times do pressures work in a fashion to undermine our astonishing liberty? God's freedom allows us to stand with the oppressed, the beguiled, the discarded - it refuses to allow others to remain under such burdens, wherever encountered.
Freedom alone breaks evil, because it shows the sham of a piety derived from manipulation - it narrows the access to deliverance to a man hung upon a tree by us, and cries out, from this singular place, "The Lord Reigns!" His 'least-ness' is our one true greatness.
Naturally, we want to invest a great deal into 'our' purity - there's an inclination in the natural man to seek to 'be' something in the eyes of others that can be esteemed as virtuous and even holy, but such excursions can so quickly distance us to what actually needs to be our adornment - the beauty, the richness, the endearing sweetness, of another.
Where is freedom found?
Does it vary in respect to situations and circumstances, judgements and determinations, or is it anchored in the overshadowing of the one who is gloriously rich in what satisfies us, beyond our present, merely temporal, capacities?
Christians need to be free!
Going back to where we started - are those around you practicing this manner of freedom, or something else?
How do we encourage a church of people nourished and flourishing in this freedom?
More next time.
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