None of us have met Jesus personally; we did not spend time with him in Galilee. We are among those for whom he prayed just before his crucifixion, when he said, “I pray not for these only, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word” (John 17:20). But what do we believe?
It’s valuable to ask this question from time to time. There is great comfort to be gained from rehearsing our faith, for we are saved by faith. The parable of the sower shows that along the path of life, there will be those who fall away. If we were baptised as teenagers, then with the passing of years, some of those with whom we were baptised will not last the course. We ourselves always need to take heed lest we fall. Perhaps as young men and women, we thought that we would not/could not fall, but experience of human nature soon shows how fragile is the human mind.
Our minds are assailed by all manner of opposing forces, and we are beset by the troubles of this life. We have this confidence that He who has begun a good work in us, will ensure that we are kept and made ready for the day of Christ’s return. The Gospel is true and simple, but there are many views ‘out there’, which say the Gospel is ‘this or that’. We can re-assure ourselves about the Gospel by examining the preaching of the apostles. When we do this we find that it is essentially a Jewish Gospel, revolving around Abraham and his natural and spiritual descendants. The Gospel concerns a land, an inheritance, a man and a bride, a people and a name.
We must never lose sight of this Gospel as the instrument of our birth. As time passes, it is easy to lose sight of the Gospel and various things combine to distract us. There is the slow strangulation of the world and its values which impinge on us at every turn. As we step out of our homes, these values are evident everywhere in the cities where we live. Our very ‘Lot-like’ life in those cities is one where we can become acclimatized and accustomed to its ways. The more this happens, the less separate we are, and the less we find ourselves looking for that city to come. We find ourselves content in the city of our present life.
The child of God ought to sense a real alienation from his city and its inhabitants. His city has much evil on display— the hoardings, the shops, the cinemas, the media, the entertainments— where can s/he look without seeing the qualities of the flesh? How dark is the city in which s/he walks? Can s/he see that its darkness is so thick that only a few will be saved?
It is not just the city, because the city begins with individuals. It is a fact that if the world is evil, we too are evil. Indeed Jesus described his disciples as evil, for he said that we are evil even though we know how to give good gifts unto our children. There is fear not only of the world; there is fear also of us.
It is possible to become despondent, it is possible to despair, but we are not without hope. We may be in bondage to sin and death, but freedom has been offered through belief of the truth. It is easy to dwell on problems, especially if you are a melancholic, but the main antidote which we must seize is the reading of the Scriptures. Our reading of them is a kind of barometer on our spiritual health. David loved the Law, and it was his meditation all the day, but can we say this of ourselves? A saying in the world runs – “we are what we read” – of course not many people read anything as heavy as the Bible. It needs to be different with us. Jesus testified that these Scriptures spoke of him, and if we would know the man we have yet to meet, we have to read of him.
We can read of him in the Psalms—the Messianic Psalms— these give us an insight into his thinking, because they are often expressions of his thought— rather than descriptions of events. For example, how did Christ feel when he read Isaiah 51, “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting” (v. 6)? Christ had to read Psalm 22, with its prophecy, “They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture” (v. 18). He had to read, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me” (v. 1). These passages give us extra information about the trial. As well as being spat on and buffeted, his accusers pulled at his hair, as they roughed him about. In this experience of facing death, he did not lose confidence; his accusers would wax old as a garment. None of us have been through a public execution, we have not waited in a condemned cell for three years with the knowledge of our end, and we have not counted the years and the days, or the hours. We have not had to deal with the changing physiology of our body and our nerves as the moment approached. We do not know the day of our death.
Any words we could use to describe the death of Christ would be an understatement, but we do need to reflect on this sacrifice made on our behalf. In his death he overcame the world, he overcame his city. As we walk around our cities, may we constantly have his example in our mind and be of good cheer.
Reflections on the Potter and the Clay