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CHAPTER 8
THE PURPOSE, THE PARODY and the
PURITY
You see it on all sides.
There is the desire, the thrust, the aspiration, the inward intimation: where
is the PERFECT person, or the HEROIC person, or the gracious, noble,
understanding, peaceable, trustworthy, yes and more than even all of these!
Where, is there to be found, where the man of parts where the parts are less
than the whole, the spirit is supreme and the nature is not only refined, but
inspirational.
THAT is not the least of the
reasons why people tend to idolise football stars,
tennis stars, golf stars, singing stars, acting stars, and very occasionally,
political stars. It is one major reason why people tend to be gullible if not
credulous to the point of incredulity to the mind of the beholder, in being
gazers on the outstanding, satellites of the popular, dizzy about the elevated,
and all the time, looking for more, more … so that having been duped by Stalin,
they are yet ready for Hitler, or perhaps mesmerised
by the outstanding cruelty of the Islam from Muhammad, they are yet ready to
inflict jihad.
What is the source of this
amazing human defect, this supra-adolescent desire that attacks the mature
minds, the talented, the courageous, and misleads them to follies unspeakable
as their idol speaks folly, in little red books, or in other ones cemented without warrant, basis
or verification ? How is it that the SANE become virtually insane, the
industrious, hypnotized, the disciplined as if delirious ?
What is the prompting which defiles the good,
and chaining it to evil, makes some hideous idol the source of
inspiration … until it passes, witless and horrible, from the globe, or else
clings on, like a cat with breaking claws, to what it rips as it holds it ?
This enigma is readily
understood – and what is not! – in the light of the
Bible. That of course is just one more of the endless procession of
verifications which is the work of truth and one of its primary attestations
(cf. SMR Ch. 10).
Man is made by and for God,
and without Him, he tends to look for substitutes.
Since these are not and cannot be within an infinite distance of the infinite
God, thus the perversion of spiritual instinct becomes as desperate and
disparate from the reality as the case requires; but this does not stop the
misled. With the passion and indeed the fervour which
seeks AS IF for the actual, it seeks for what it can pretend, imagine, suppose,
propose as the thing to be desired. It is not the
effectual “desire of the nations” (Haggai
2:6-7), nor ever can be; and it is indeed the sheer disparity between what is,
and what is sought as a substitute, it is this which makes virtual madness of
so many sects, isms and dreams, whether in pseudo-science, as in evolutionism,
or in philosophy, as in Hegel, Barth or others dealt
with on this site (see Index SMR), coming with all the persistence of the cry
of the starving, for good.
They are insistent,
persistent; they are hungry. The CALL for food is there; but since the only supernatural
for the natural, the only divine for the human, the only wisdom for the
wandering or the witless, the solely
veritable, validated and the verified, Jesus Christ, is neglected, rejected or
scorned: therefore, the QUIETUS does not
come*1 . It is sought, not wrought; the work
is done, but the wonder is left, as a young man leaves virtue and follows vice.
The
substitute thus gains an illicit stature, it works beyond reason on the
uncovered minds and vulnerable spirits of those who, rejecting their actual
base and basis, fondly dream themselves into what is merely illusory. Since idols are not themselves such a desire,
in seeming to turn themselves into it, they often
display themselves in a following of the love of power, money, glory and such
trifles of pretension without purpose or truth. The double based result readily
becomes a trip, an extraganza so intense, so profound
as to make the race, in segments sometimes large, sometimes smaller, to look as
if an oddity in
odyssey, or a parody enacted with gravity, screened with contempt and
illustrated with intemperate haste.
It soon becomes increasingly
debased in mind, intoxicated in spirit, shameless in perception, a shambles in
discord from reality, relaying its horrors of misperception with passion while
millions die, either mentally, physically or as far as possible, spiritually.
As far as possible
? But yes. Man is dead already, to God (Ephesians 2, 4), and this is a
status dynamic, so that his energies become as rockets that fizzle, foozling
into the seas, grand in design, minimal in result; great in consequence, but
wholly inconsequential, embattled, belittling, catastrophic, gravely ludicrous
in the realm of much of his politics, philosophy, sociology and pseudo-science.
The ludicrous becomes normal; sages strangle reality, as they did in Christ’s
own day more literally, and looking grave, enunciate continually, the garbage
for goodness substitution of which man seems never to weary, taking what CANNOT
be true, as if true,
even while denying truth, so that one wonders how people could be
rational in conduct at all, while so
deluded.
That of course is the other
point. It is delusion. It is not a mere lapse, nor a mere substitution, though
it is all of these. Into the cauldron of heated remnants, comes the spice and flavour of the ludicrous. It is the cover for dead and
diseased meat, cloaking the decay, disguising the corruption. The mind of man
is not capable of substituting its gods for God, whether these be ostensibly
merely human, or various kinds of impossibility, like the Hindu version (cf.
SMR Ch. 10) which refuses to have any
attribute, and miraculously wishes yet to be differentiated from nothing. The
physicists are no better, one actually wanting nothing to get active and source
us all! (cf. TMR Ch. 7).
It is penal, for it is as
much the product of misuse of function, in the mind and spirit of man, as is
smoking for his lungs. The cancer is not confusion in the lung, though it
resembles it in the disintegration of the organized order which is its natural, supernaturally
contrived habitat. In the mind however confusion is its name, and delusion is
its operating system.
Not merely, however, is this
disease, this spiritual pathology, this mental miasmatic delusion, to be found
in religion in general, as well as other disciplines, but it is to be found in
what calls itself Christian. If I were the devil, obviously the most elementary
grasp of strategy would impel me, if not imperiously, then at least with
panache and vigour, into the all too vulnerable
forces of popular churches. Popular ? Ah there is
their rub! If popular, why ? Is not that which is highly esteemed among men, abomination before God!
(Luke 16:15)!
‘Here
then is a chance!’
One might think in such terms
if without understanding, as would be the requisite case for the devil; for his
corruption is by reason of his brightness
(Ezekiel 28:17). Indeed we find this, “you have corrupted your wisdom by reason of your brightness”,
this being a major ground of his exclusion from the presence of God!
Seeking then popular
movements within Christianity, especially those which seem to attract
politicians of indifferent morals, or preachers of changeable doctrine, many
might be, and are lured to find themselves in congregations replete with a
multiplicity of manifest unbelievers, these for devious reasons aiming at
attaining money, power and prestige, importance or sundry marvels of mind from
airy sources, or from combinations of what is sound and unsound, as if
potassium cyanide and warm milk were the offering (cf. II Corinthians 4:1ff.,
11:1ff).. Such was the case with Paul’s reproof to Corinth, and as we see in
Jeremiah 23:17-20, II Peter 2, II Timothy 3, I Timothy 4, Matthew 24:24, for
example, these things are not only happening now, but are PREDICTED to do so
(cf. Answers
to Questions Ch. 5).
Would not the devil, then,
seek to USE their weakness, their willowy alien premises, to bend them yet further,
to come in with flamboyant impudence, calling it higher criticism,
neo-orthodoxy, user-friendly morals (one is not aware that this phrase has been
used … yet, used or not, its substance has been presented, for all that!).
Thus, in such murky depths,
kindness would be turned into a PHILOSOPHY of humanism, CHRIST would be made an
exponent, not the Lord, man would be made the BOSS, not the recipient, SINNERS
would be made an offensive term, as in the Crystal Palace extravaganza, and so
on. Thus debasing the reality, would not the devil pursue his strategy with address ? Of course, what else has he to do with his energy. Rebellion is never nice, and even against tyrants,
it is not likely to be pleasant.
With kindness as its victim,
however (as in the crucifixion of Christ who though MORE than kindness, the
very incarnate Son of God, once for all, and all for once, was not less! cf.
Colossians 1:19ff., Philippians 2), the satanic rebellion would seek to make
itself so great that God Himself is forgotten, always the ultimate desire of
the paranoid in extremis! The social gospel then would mature into humanism; and it
did.
Is it not as in the
days of Jeremiah (and the parallel CAN so readily be intense since MAN does not
change in his image, his nature, GOD does not change and the temptations remain
of common kind)!
Listen to the divinely
impelled remonstrance
(23:9-14):
“My heart within
me is broken
Because of
the prophets;
All my
bones shake.
I am like a
drunken man,
And like a man
whom wine has overcome,
Because of
the Lord,
And because of His holy words.
“For the land is full of adulterers;
For because
of a curse the land mourns.
The
pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up.
Their
course of life is evil,
And their
might is not right.
“ ‘For both
prophet and priest are profane;
Yes, in My house I have found their wickedness,’ says the Lord.
“ ‘Therefore
their way shall be to them
Like
slippery ways;
In the darkness they shall be driven on
And fall in
them;
For I will
bring disaster on them,
The year of
their punishment,’ says the Lord.
“ ‘And I have
seen folly in the prophets of
They prophesied by Baal
And caused My people
Also I have seen a horrible thing in the
prophets of
They commit
adultery and walk in lies;
They also
strengthen the hands of evildoers,
So that no
one turns back from his wickedness.
“ ‘All of
them are like
And her inhabitants like
“Yes in My house I have found their wickedness …”
It is quite the same in
Jeremiah 7 8-11, where the Lord remonstrates incisively, derogating their
degenerating and deriding their delinquency:
“‘Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot profit.
“‘Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn
incense to Baal,
and walk after other gods whom you do not know,
and then come and stand before Me in this house which is
called by My name, and say,
‘We are delivered to do all these abominations’?
“‘Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of
thieves in your eyes?
“‘Behold, I, even I, have seen it,’ says the Lord.”
The parody is multitudinous,
like error in a class of less than brilliant teen-agers, when a stiff
mathematics examination is set. It is inventive, original, remarkable, amusing,
tragic, both … But it is not right!
This may befall people within
‘churches’ which may be, to use St John’s inspired terminology, ‘synagogues of
Satan’ (the possibility is undeniable, even Judas representing 8 and one third
per cent of Christ’s proto-apostolic band). The forecast is equally clear (II
Peter 2, II Timothy 3, I Timothy 4 cf.
Revelation 13).
The purity is found only
where it is right, where reality is no dream, and truth is to be discerned.
On the other hand, the
reality of such modern miasmic movements is sterling verification of the
principles of creation and desecration, so carefully carved out in the words of
God to Israel and in their ways (cf. Isaiah 30:8-13), as a preliminary example to the world, and
of prophecy concerning this Gentile surge: both (cf. News 121,
122, Joyful Jottings 8).
The Power of God beyond all Parody and
the Purity of God beyond all Pollution
“Glorious in
holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders”
is the Lord (Exodus 15:11), and His is not merely a total contrast to these
devious dealings but a focus of spiritual beauty so lustrous in its integrity
as to constitute not merely a uniqueness in degree, but in kind. Objectively,
here and here only in all history, is the idea, ideal and realization of what
many multitudinously mistake! (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms Appendix IV, Appendix 1, News
51, Biblical Blessings Appendix
IV). In Shakespeare’s King Lear, we find words indicative of a desire to ‘anatomise’ one of the fateful daughters, to ‘see what lies
about her heart’. That, it was grisly.
Here, however, we merely apprehend with delight what is the
opposite, the wonder of the work of the heart of the Messiah, of His hands and
of His Spirit.
CHRIST the power of Peace
He is the ground
of peace, for without reality and truth, there not only IS but CAN BE no peace.
It is then just a question of this: into what will you next blunder ? When
truth is found, however, there still might be no peace: for if one were
alienated from that truth and incontinent in rebellion, then repentance must be
added to the meeting of truth; just as equally, repentance would be in vain if
there were no truth, and indeed, even an enormity of anomaly!
From Him also is
the attunement to peace. Truth is insatiable, inevitable and inflexible. It
does not alter. Repentance is necessary, for one must come to where it is, and is
not born with it. But even these two are not enough, unless there be also
available what attunes. Discord is impossible for the violinist who carefully
modulates his tones to the standard FIRST. How can this attunement be made to
the God of creation ? Is invitation enough ? Not at all, for one could be
invited to dine with Her Majesty, without being equipped with appetite, teeth
or custom. It DOES help, if it IS present (cf.
Matthew 22:8ff.); but it is not enough.
You need also the
attunement which makes you able to eat the fare provided, speak with
understanding and discourse with profit. How is this to be obtained ? By the
power of God which created man with communicative abilities, now operative in
creating the sense of understanding, so that speech might be rounded with
knowledge, and knowledge with wisdom. This power needs to open the heart better
than any heart surgeon, even the heart
of the entire man, and equip it with sight, not sighings,
with grace, not goadings. Of this Christ spoke as
seen in John 3, telling Nicodemus the
need to be born again.
Yet even so,
without attainment who can converse ?
without being brought into PRACTICE, who could use the new gift of
understanding in speech ? So there is need also for the grant of KNOWING GOD, so
that the discourse is inspired by His presence, and the realities are illumined
by His own speech to an eye apt, and for an ear made knowledgeable through love
in action. Then may be found the love in repose to which the Christian properly
comes (Zephaniah
With this,
however, is even more need, as the stupendous spiritual pathologies of our race
show. It is to the LORD Himself that one must come, for it is He who created;
and even His pity does not remove His rule, His reality and the fact that of
universes there is one, of patterns for man, there is one, of Governors for
man, there is One whose heart understands, whose property man is, and who
respects what He has made, so that violence is not the way in, but rather the
way out! (cf. John
Then there is
peace. Being born is not a procedure by which the infant-to-be executes his own
arrival; but instead, in this divinely wrought process, there are many divinely
ordered elements*2, the sight of which it is
well to observe, for in the reality, there is peace. It is this which Isaiah
mourns in its absence in Isaiah 48:18ff.,
“Oh that you had hearkened to My commandments. Then your peace
would have been like a river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea!”
Again, Christ laments as in Luke 19:42ff.,
of
“If you had known, even you, at
least in this you day, the things which belong to your peace! But now
they are hidden from your eyes!”
Only in Christ is there a
verified, validated, consistent, empirically supported, logically sustained*1 offer of peace, covering all the elements. It is
from Him the power to perceive arrives, and in Him that it flourishes (John
3:1-7,
CHRIST, the power of
Understanding, of Truth
Why then was Christ so
fearless, in speech, in action, as likewise in their dual action together
? Consider cases.
Ø
You see this bold
authority for example in Mark 2, with the healing of the paralytic in such a
way that had he not risen as commanded, Christ’s claim to forgive sins would at
once (justly) have been deemed bogus, so ending His ministry; for with God
NOTHING shall be called impossible, and
when in terms of this biblical base, one comes in the name of the Lord, the due
expectation is performance at the level of the text! That Christ did this, and
this sort of thing – since it had to be without exception – becomes the most
obvious testimony to His authenticity, since the situations where NO failure
was possible or permissible, was in the first instance, the realm of the
humanly impossible.
Ø
Again, consider
His deft daring in the face of imposing social adversaries in Luke 11, where His excoriation of the
hypocrisies and pretensions of the Sadducees could well lead to His murder,
since it would become intolerable to the mutinous conscience, so to be
confronted, exposed and brought to deserved contempt!
Ø
Gaze on the case of
commanding Lazarus to arise, which would have been a distasteful comedy had he
not risen after the four days!
Ø
Consider Christ’s
confrontation with the Pharisees as in Matthew 23, where with precision alike
in His appeal to scripture and to
fact, He demolished for all time the
puny powers of pretension and the proud indignities of solemn farce in those
who abused religion by departing from the living God in order to practice it!.
It was clearly because He had
nothing to fear. To be fearless when fear has no basis, it is rational*3.
This is not to make Him less
than human, but more than sinful. His was purity. TRUTH is His NAME and it was
not possible to vary at all from it; which is one of His glories. In this, as
in all things, He is what He says, and does what He is, and never is anything disjoined, the one part
from the other. Another like that, it is not
to be found, partly because of sin,
and partly because of ontology:
for what is not God is quite unable to masquerade effectually AS God, and what
IS God, is quite disinclined to vary from what He is, for what He would not
like to be, He would not become,
and what He is become is what He has
been, since always, before even the little contribution of the time series to
which we humans are so accustomed, and
would be. Lying is mere dissonance; failure is mere divorce from what and who
He is.
Hence fearless in deed, in
speech, and accurate to the last degree in the correlation of both, He both spoke and did with the same power, at
whatever level, in whatever audience, in whatever test. Thus it was not
possible to TRAP HIM words (Luke
Thus He cited David who in
the SPIRIT of the law, USED the showbread for necessary sustenance, since after
all, THIS is what it symbolised, the divine concern
for and ability to meet the needs of His people! It was only for the priests to
eat, but in co-operation with the priest, David was allowed to have it, the
bread deployed for its symbolic witness in dire need, as actualising
the symbol! His men ATE it! God is a Spirit, and those who serve Him must do so
in Spirit and in truth.
Christ approached no limit,
knew no conditions, except that of His ardently assumed humiliation into the
form of a servant, a man, owed no obligation, except to be what He was and is,
the very living word of the living God, immutable, indisputable, but gracious
and kind (cf. John 12:48-50).
CHRIST, the power of purity
His was adequate motivation
(Psalm 40 cf. Joyful Jottings 22), not
selective for convenience, not special pleading or predilection of the flesh,
the mind or the heart; His were acute standards, like the milli-ammeter,
most sensitive, and yet never dislodged for that reason – Matthew
His purity was free from
intrusion (John 18:36), as by ice-bergs floating free in the Atlantic, for in
His Spirit was no marring, in His way no obtrusion, nothing came unvetted, nothing went unknown. HIS peace could be felt
(cf. John
CHRIST, the power of beauty
§
Christ in the
consistency and harmony
§
of His holiness
and deeds, never divorced (cf. Luke
§
of His principles
and promises, never disengaged (cf. Mark
§
even in the most
personally challenging scenario and climax,
§
transcends the
utmost on earth,
§
as a painter in
his oils, may be seeking to exhibit something of beauty’s supernatural
exemplar:
§
yet He perfectly
explains its presence (cf. Matthew
§
expressed in His
own expressiveness (cf. Matthew 7:22-23, John 5:19-23),
§
which being
divine in nature,
§
is non-distorting
in representation (cf. Hebrews 1:1-3, John 14:9).
As to beauty, its appeal, its
call, its place is not from a mere combination of many variables, relative to
many in man, sometimes achieving a consistency of mutual benefit, like a
benefaction; and its ‘mystery’ is not to be attributed to ignorance, unless it
be concerning the wonder of God Himself, by willful departure!
Rather is beauty a
benediction, a conferment in spirit of what in site displays now this, now that
element, aspect or insight into the brilliance of donation, the exquisiteness
of excellence dowered with meaning, the gracefulness of graciousness in control
of its environment, inspiriting a sense of wonder. But what does beauty have ?
It is PRECISELY that inter-personal divulgement on the one hand, and that
supernatural origination for creation, on the other, together with that
spiritual enhancement to the spirit of man - which is like a Father speaking to
His child, but this time to His created child - from the Creator’s munificence
of expression, intimation and artistry, which is beauty’s precinct (cf. SMR pp.
431ff.). From such splendour, it has many outworkings.
It is this, however, which
provides its means, without confusion or complicity; and it is seen even in the
atmosphere of divine action as the covering of word is released into the
perception of spirit, and Christ comes to earth. It is this which is seen in
v
the
meteorological (cf. Matthew 14:29-33, Mark 4:39, Matthew 8:23ff.),
v
the work of
instant therapy (Mark 2),
v
the labour of life over death (John 11:40ff.),
v
the correlation
of geography, pity and time (John 11:6-25),
v
the contouring of
history to His word, in sculptured magnificence, and yet simplicity (Luke
v
the complexion of
compassion, judgment and exposure, seen in the same place, like wisteria
climbing over a stretched framework,
v
the prevailing in
precise lines of uncluttered thought, in the truth of His speech over the
optional pretenders, over aspirant arrogances (Matthew
v
the detailing of
His doings in concert with His Father, bringing the mind of heaven to the
matrix of earth, whether in His birth, death, Gospel content of teaching or
parables (cf. John 8:29, 5:19-23, Matthew 13:14-17, and see SMR Ch. 9),
v
the facility and yet the rigour
of event collation with prophecy, the latter portending the same of Him as
certainly He would do (op.cit. Ch. 8),
v
the social
synthesis aligning His personal contribution with the correct strength and savour of the whole, yet this without the strain of
imperiousness or the fidgeting of unfaithfulness (Matthew 21:1-21, with Luke
19:42ff.),
v
political
chronology, siting His work in the days of the 4th
Empire of Daniel, as in the tragic progress to glorious spiritual culmination
(cf. SMR pp. 886ff., Ch. 9, Daniel
2, 7, 9:24-27 with 7, Matthew 21 and 26),
where as King in spirit He came TO THE HUMBLING OF BAPTISM, THE ONSET OF
TEMPTATION, THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEVIL, THE PURGING OF THE TEMPLE, and THIS
WITHOUT THE IMPOSITION OF FORCE, but rather the exhibition of a zeal so mingled
with desire for good, that it past all form without deforming faith, till as
King in work, He came to the CROSS, and finished His divinely depicted labours there as He had to do (Isaiah 53, Psalm 22 cf. Joyful
Jottings 25); as also
v
delightful sovereignty, like a courier with
express mail, putting the plan of salvation in person into the right time for
His death precisely in the period Daniel predicted for it (More Marvels … Ch. 4), as if love had no contest with mind, or mind with
spirit, or spirit with history, but all concurred with that glorious interweaving
of design, in which form was mastered by function, and function by love. This
graced that earth as nothing else did, or could.
To hear Him, this same Jesus Christ,
during this last phase of gloriously productive agony, and incisively
wrought deformation (Isaiah 52:13-15), despite all this, bathing with sensitive compassion His
companions on crosses, though they were criminals and He was as He is, the absolution for crime against God or man,
is like the sound of waterfalls in the forest: abundant, soft and thrilling
with awe.
|
Not merely did He cry, “Father forgive them, for they
do not know what they are doing,” but HE KEPT IT UP*4, the smoothness of its continuance in masterful
contrast with the smashing force of His enduring assassination, wrought by
hatred and fashioned by envy.
CHRIST, the power of mercy
Not as a bargaining chip,
like the chattering of idle birds, buying and selling things for selfish
profit,
Nor as a ploy for personal
peace, as with those who seek to yield to achieve gain,
Nor for social elevation, as
those who pardon to procure advancement,
Nor a sop to conviction, as
if to suffer evil in order to manipulate mind:
But as a necessity of life He
gave mercy and was its quintessence,
since the alternative for sinners is hypocrisy
in conformity that does not conform,
and without it, the
sustainable nature of spiritual life becomes eroded to vacuity.
Christ is His mercy dowers a
governing grace, not deploying an erratic trade-in,
And activates an instrument
of love, wholly alien to a mere guise of government,
Investing history with the
Gospel as paid-up, till its time comes, its work is wrought, this new flood
being as undesired by many, as the geological variety in its day, and in our own!
All is predicted, arranged,
and provided (cf. Matthew 24, II Peter 3 with Joyful Jottings 8),
For just as the mercy of God
has grandeur (Mich 7:19ff.) so too it has method
(Romans
And in Christ, its power is
personal, liberating and enabling,
Translating truth into life,
and life into love, so that all should be pure.
The
power for all this is that to meet
Justice with grace,
Calumny with kindness,
Contrition with
transformation and
Penalty with pardon (II Cor. 5:17ff., John 3, Titus 2-3) and
The clamour
of judgment with the calm of killing (Matthew 26:52-56).
Without deformation of
mission, of heart, but with hideous deformation of body,
barbs to mind (cf. Matthew
27:42ff.), and constraining victory of spirit,
the power of mercy in Christ
was to despatch the irrelevant, complete the
necessary and
do it with that grace which is integumental
to integrity (Matthew
On all this Micah 7:18ff. speaks powerfully, with 5:1-3 (cf. Sinners
Only), as does Revelation 5:9-13.
CHRIST, the power in
contest
Deflating theological
wind-bags,
Exposing ecclesiastical fraud,
Making spiritual sacrifice
without wilting,
Enduring unspeakable follies without
writhing,
He
overcame the erupting lava of blackening heat
With the cool fearlessness
and constant precision
That knew neither confusion
nor defeat,
And this with a mastery so
colossal that it seemed free as the wind,
Yet
ineffaceable beyond diamond on steel
(Luke 11:37-54, Matthew
22:15-46, 12:1-8, 9:14-17, Mark 2:8-12,
3:1-5).
CHRIST, the power of
testimony
In the very midst of lethal
rage, His words were still constructive, creative, compassionate (Matthew
12:9-14), and even in the incinerative judgments
which had to be unleashed to thought, as a therapeutic incision, preferable to
the loss of life itself! These for some would bring contrition, repentance and
redemption! (cf. Acts 6). He was so composed that the pronouncements had no
tinge of mere fury, nor distortion from desire. Thus, Matthew 23 starts with
exposure, proceeds to judgment and ends with lamentation in acute pity, the
exposure of the depth of mercy arriving in the midst of just and due darts at
deviation, hypocrisy and obduracy.
Amid murderous venom, even
constituted as a court, likewise, His vision knew no cloud, and the winds of
circumstance could not prevail against the testimony of truth, duly related to
the existing word of God written (Mark 14:53-64), the scenario of prophecy
meanwhile, accurately fulfilled.
His Sermon on the Mount
(Matthew 5-7) exposes the very paths of peace, procedures of purity, the gleam
of goodness, showing in this way the coherence of His words with life as it is
intensely and meaningfully livable, not as a foray of mere fervour,
as a fiasco of force, but as spiritual justice and truth, in the power of God.
Whether then, in Christ as
the power of mercy, power in contest, or power of testimony, we find that the
POWER TO DO, whether for us or from Him, is always allied with the injunction
or need to DO IT. This applies whether the miracle be His healing, or our
hearing and performing; for it IS indeed a miracle when the deaf hear and the
blind see, be it metaphorical or physical by His mere word (cf. Matthew
13:10-17).
CHRIST, the power of
spiritual regeneration
You see this God manifest,
Jesus Christ, come to earth,
Conferring mental, spiritual
and even physical life (Luke
Disorder reigned (Matthew
Delusion drafted (Matthew
Disruption held devilish
dynamic (Mark 5:1-19),
Distemper reveled (Matthew
8:5-13),
Disorientation seized like a
lion (Matthew 9:1-7 – notice the primacy of sin in this healing), or
Formality fluttered (Acts 6:7
– even priests forsaking their wrong leadership, for the Lord) or indeed
Connivance cluttered the
heart, and injustice permeated the soul (Luke 19:1-9).
Like light in darkness, it
overcomes, and is not overcome (cf. John 1:5,12,14). It can be communicated or
activated, or even come to hearts where regeneration makes its stay welcome!
(John 3, II Corinthians 4:6). In many, from the first, this derivative power
was made manifest (cf. the apostles John and Peter in Acts 3-4, and others with
them).
CHRIST, the power to bring
death its funeral,
Fear its finale, Passion
into its place
This is exemplified in Luke
7:11ff. (perceive the discriminating compassion for the widow), John 11:25-44
(and notice the apparently leisurely way in which Christ came to this scene,
deliberately delaying for the glory of God in showing the ineluctable dynamic
that could take ANY death at will – 11:4-6), and in Luke 8:48-56 (observe the
apparent EASE with which He healed someone else on the way to this miracle,
though not really without labour as in 8:46).
If such power is seen in
raising others from that dread threshold to bodily corruption, back to life,
how much more is it seen in His own raising, though physically dead, from the
domain of death when sent there vicariously, this victory being the greatest of
all (cf. Luke 22:39-46), since it involved (Hebrews 5:7) an anguish spiritual
and cardinal; for suffering to meet justice, must justly be the suffering
justice confers! and life from the dead, is then not merely from the vacating
of the flesh, but from the intrusive impact of the ground of the death, namely
the requirement to bear sin for all who would believe, and to offer salvation
to all (Romans 8:32, I John 2:2).
This power to overthrow death
is seen, just as it was prefaced by Lazarus’ raising in the very turmoil of
approach to the cross, in the very eye of the tornado of judgment, as the Age
ends and the dead are raised, by THIS SAME POWER OF CHRIST, incorruptible (I
Corinthians 15:20-27, 50ff.). The performed is matched with that to be
performed; the actualities are allied to the impending resurrection to come. It
is all but inexpressibly beautiful to find this power so perfected in previous
deeds, this prerogative so incontestable in purity of sacrifice to attain it in
Christ (I Peter 2:22ff., 3:18, II Cor. 5:17-21), so graciously bestowable
and even this, not by impending questions, but unquestionable grace (Ephesians
2:1-10).
o
Here is a thrust
for compassion, which stops at nothing, and which nothing stops,
o
A drive for duty
which anguish of heart, with sweat like blood (Luke 22) could not terminate,
o
A call for
responsibility which was embraced to the death (John
o
Finding home in
faith that receives it (Ephesians 2:8),
o
And code in His
personal completion of all that was needed, Himself both terminating justice’
demands and exterminating sin’s guilt (John
CHRIST, the power not only to integrate,
but to actuate, activate and actualise
We
see this in different ways,
Ø
in Matthew
17:14ff. with the centurion;
Ø
in John 6:26-27
with 6:67ff. with disciples;
Ø
in Mark 1:16-20
with fishermen;
Ø
in John 1:35-42
with seekers, in
Ø
in Matthew
19:23-29 where results follow the following, but do not induce it;
Ø
in John 11:39-44
in the delicate domestic tissue of friendship and fatality, the latter
annulled;
Ø
in John 20:11-19,
in the gentle meeting of grief with power, apt to the case;
Ø
in John 21:15ff.
in the restoration from the affliction of the dutiful, the stricken peace of
the confused, and
Ø
in the whittled
liberty of the saddened as in Mark 3:7-12,
now
equipped the munificence of mercy, amid the multitude, through His restoration of spiritual
integrity and blessedness to those afflicted often far beyond the body!
In
many such ways, Christ could and did
Communicate
as the organising original (John 1:3),
Provide
profundity its life and its meaning (John
Regenerate
by image restoration (Genesis
Correct
not just by source code, but by the Spirit and the Source itself, Himself the
dower and the donation as well (Colossians
Providing in patience the mind of God to the heart of
sin (John
CHRIST, the power to be
beyond comparison
This is shown
Ø
In
invulnerability to mischief (Luke
Ø
whilst being
accessible to sacrificial duty (Luke
Ø
In intimating
immortality in the very presence of murder (Luke
Ø
In precision
work, like filigree with art, in executing ALL the prophetic signals which
served both as identikit to show His authenticity, and testimony, to illustrate
the love of God (Matthew 26:54, Luke 22:35-38, Matthew 21:1-11, 26:31ff., Luke
22:35-38),
and seen in Him
Ø
As duller of
debunkers (Luke
Ø
Terminus for all
truth, as its Source (Matthew
CHRIST, the power to
provide
Whether it be wisdom, or
glory, or peace, or tax, whether instruction or awe, Christ showed His undimmed
disposition to provide. It occurred through compassion ON THE JOB as the people
followed His teaching and healing, and in Himself as He taught and wrought
(Mark 6:34, Luke 9:11, Matthew 14:13ff.), through kindly personal instruction
(Luke 10:39, 41-42), stimulating ascent to the heights (John 3 with Nicodemus,
for all his astute learning!), as with the scintillating shaft of light at the
transfiguration (Matthew 17). There was to be seen Christ personally giving the
sense of glory in the very valley of death, telling His disciples after so
close an interview with heaven itself, of the dirt and drama to come in the
cross-purposes of the religionists and elders, leading to the cross (Mark
9:9-13).
He provided even the temple tax with such ultimate discretion and
amazing knowledge, that a fish, the first to be caught under direction by
Peter, contained the necessary money, thus allowing the law to be kept on the
one hand, and the power and position of Christ as the “son of the house” to be
maintained through the obvious divine intervention in making such a provision!
(Matthew 17:24ff.).
He met discernment with
encouragement (Mark
CHRIST,
the power to deride
and direct
The Lord Himself would, on
this earth, deride evil without mere negativity, detest without merely
corrosive hatred; He would invest what was divested, when the soil was
prepared, with the seed of truth. In this way, we observe that in Matthew 23,
the excoriating excision of the tumour of pride from
the Pharisees was not the beginning, but rather nearer the end of His ministry.
Had He not before then,
instructed Pharisee Nicodemus with tremendous good humour,
happiness of speech and penetration of teaching John 3 ?
Did He not tellingly intrude
into their complacency as seen in John 5:38-41, pointing in spiritual therapy
the way to the truth, the truth of the way and the necessities of conversion ? Had
He not crowned the day with the centrality of the Cross (John 6), to make the
feeding of the 5000 on the previous day, not a mere eat fest, but a
demonstration through physical miracle, of the physical miracle to come, that
of His resurrection after His death; for how would He, being sacrificed
Himself, raise them up (John 6:50ff.),
if He were not first Himself raised, and who could teach, who could not
likewise do! for here are universal procedures, and their need was for the
leader to provide not only the love, but the power to implement it.
Did He not first tell them
decisively of the meaning of His coming, and going, and of the nature of the
evil which many of them were about to commit! (Mark 12:1-11)! Was not
Nicodemus, selectively, having drunk in the truth, to become ready, though a
Pharisee, to be exposed to maximal social ostracism and ecclesiastical fury, if
no more ? How would this be done freely ? It would be by his accompanying the
body of Christ, entombed by one who had personally asked for it, in order to
have it buried in his OWN TOMB! (pre-pared like pre-paid funerals, John
12:38ff.)! More, Nicodemus gave some hundred POUNDS of myrrh and aloes, as
well! Thus the surgical knife, where the evils had lasted in many areas for centuries, did not
cut too soon; yet it could not lie undisturbed, for judgment comes at length,
as it did come, first to Him and then to
those who had so excluded truth and power and wisdom, light and love, healing
and grace from their very own midst.
Nor are these alone, even in this OUR DAY, for
Christ from time to time
(Luke 11) shone like a bright light penetrated to the very depth of the
corrosion of truth in the pseudo-religious heart. The culmination however was
not at first.
When however the time did
come for total excision of all excuse for double-mindedness, two-faced conduct
and heavy-hearted weariness in religion instead of vital life in the presence
of God (cf. Malachi
1:13, 2:17), then the words did it.
Thus Matthew 23 is perhaps
the most surgical of all utterances! With this surgery finished, as seen in
Matthew 24, Christ launched into the
history to come, there depicting the times of pressure, trouble and testing,
the proliferation of the Gospel, the rejection, resentment and resistance of
this world, the judgment signals of His
coming (as He would come, and assuredly will come – Acts 1:7-11), and the
impact which would follow, when His coming at length occurred (Matthew
24:45-51). In all this, Christ made it clear whether in healing, raising the
dead, rebuking the lofty, that what He said, was an intimate and closest companion of what He did! The
word of God and the work of God are indivisible! Even His mercy in all its
wealth, does not prevent just judgment, but merely transfers the guilt! (cf.
Isaiah 53:4-6, where the ‘healed’ are those who sins He has borne!).
In the Old Testament, we see,
or rather hear God’s therapeutic thrust in Malachi 2:17, exposing to the air of
healing, the frightful flaws in the merely religious:
v
“You
have wearied the LORD with your words;
v
Yet
you say,
v
‘In
what way have we wearied Him?’
v
In
that you say,
v
Everyone
who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD,
v
And He
delights in them,’
v
Or,
‘where is the God of justice ?’ ”
In Christ’s own mouth, you
find, in Matthew 23, such scalpel wounds as these:
Ø
“But
woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of
heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those
who are entering to go in.
Ø
“Woe
to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and
for a pretence make long prayers … you travel land and sea to win one
proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as
yourselves… Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!”
But
He would invest what He divested, when the door for it opened …
Thus His friend Peter, although summarily rebuked when he
almost strayed into the papacy for a few seconds (Matthew 16:22-23), failing to
be the FOLLOWER but sounding for a nonce,
like the Master (a lesson which a millennium has not managed to din into
papal ears today, despite Matthew 23:8-10, ‘all of you are brethren’ ONE being
Master, and I Peter 5:1-3 – ‘NOT as
lords!’), and needing yet more rebuke (Luke 22:61), still had recompense,
release and investment.
With what then was he
invested, this Peter ? It was with a commission to FEED the Sheep and Lambs
(John 21), in the same spirit as came in the word of God in Ezekiel 34, when
God Himself indicated that HE WOULD DO THE PASTORAL WORK HIMSELF, since none
was willing to be tender, compassionate, concerned and genuinely kind! Hence
Christ, the Good Shepherd in fulfillment, God as man so caring, deputed to
others (cf. John
Yet
there is more.
CHRIST, the power to
surpass all limits
You see this in a word in
John 3:33-36.
God did not give to His only
begotten Son, the Spirit by measure, and He was indeed FULL of grace and truth
(1:14), the increate God encapsulated in the form of man, which God first made
in His own image, before planting Himself within it, for man’s salvation,
instruction and deliverance. This
however as is most emphatic, is only for these, as many as believed in Him (cf. John
¨
This surpassing
power, this limitless capacity is His
¨
Not by the
laurels of emulation, indeed He told them, HOW
can you believe, who receive honour from one another!
(John 5:44),
¨
But by the
ontology of actuality (John
¨
Being forever
God, sent as meant, incarnate as intended, express and expressed as foretold
(Micah 5:1-3, Psalm 45, Zechariah 12:10, 2:8, Hebrews 1, Colossians 1)’
It is His -
¨
Through the
eternal force of the genuine (John
11:40ff.),
¨
The artless
composure of the authentic (John
¨
With the very demeanour of God (John
¨
The grace of
sheer goodness (Acts
¨
The
incorruptibility of reality (Matthew 4:4).
Is it to be a matter of overcoming death in others, in Himself in the
body, fear or trouble, trickery or treachery, of demonstrating truth in the
heart of hostility, of achieving wonders before hating eyes, of speaking words
with which millennia cannot tamper, of opening physical or spiritual eyes long
closed ? He is able to do it, and He did
it. The BEST test of power, it is the doing of it, and He did it, so can do it,
and being truth, will do, as always, precisely what He has said (cf. John
14:1ff.).
Is it to comfort the foreigner, and heed sensitively what
is being said (Matthew 15:26ff.), to meet the outcast and bring courageous
comradeship to his side (Luke 19:1-10), since the Son of man came to seek and
to save what was lost ?
Or was it to
remove the sense of limitless arrogance which long tradition may breed, on the
other side of things ?
Then in all
this, we find Him so active as in Mark
7:7ff., cutting out the callouses of convention with
the steel of truth. Neither is He tireless, as if not man (John 4:6), nor
unable, though tired, to bring to pass a miracle both personal and social, in a
hostile land, that of
His resources
are infinite, so that on another occasion, the healing first one unknown, who
had to identify herself, and then one dead, in short order, is merely the vigour of attainment, not the distress of incapacity!
(Matthew 9:18-26). Nothing stumped Him, stymied Him, re-styled Him, tooled His
instruments anew or disturbed His sure knowledge, sweetness of disposition or
capacity to conquer cavil and contrariety alike, without self-assertion, pride
or personal disdain (cf. John 8, where sorely tried, He yet turned the
conversation to the very heights of salvation, as in John 8:31ff.), and all
this, with unanswerable charge and address, because of truth and righteousness
(John 8:45-47).
CHRIST, the power of
restraint
And
why and in what was there restraint ?
Not for compromise,
or by negotiation,
but as love He was
restrained, for love IS restrained.
Not to seize but to enable
and ennoble liberty, He acted,
avoiding the parody of
Communism and its philosophical allies,
as likewise that of the
spirit of Islam, to come later, but present already in type, with its
ideological comrades.
Not by force, implicit, or
explicit, but by truth, verifiable, veridical, virtuous, operational, testable
in word and deed, He acted.
Not by mere inducement, or
arbitrary ‘ism’ or erratic vision, as if reward were the truth, and motivation
were material, selfish or unspiritual, a mere relocation of evil in religious
terms,
but by the unveiling of
reality and its performance in one seamless robe of realism,
He proceeded.
What He said, He did. What He
claimed, He performed; what He advocated: this was His own operation. He had
power for it, wit for it, wisdom for it and heart for it; and He did it.
Never once did He in anything
STOP doing it! Nothing wavered from the truth, for His feet did not wander,
though His heart was sorely tried (cf. Hebrews 2 and 5). In, by, with and as
the Truth, He operated, His native land never exiled from His heart, turned
from His mind, truncated in its flow or turbulent with other motives (John
17:1ff., 8:29). Without lie, He acted, since God CANNOT lie, being One and
free, and without self-contradiction in word and deed (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6 -7, Repent
or Perish Ch. 2, SMR Ch. 1): in truth is and was His native land,
domain, nature and life.
THIS is the power and the wisdom
of God, Christ Jesus (Philippians 2), who for us men and women, children,
became flesh that with severed flesh, that He might give in flesh the
requirement of love, the medicaments of mercy and the requisition of justice,
on our behalf. HOW OFTEN would I have gathered (cf. SMR Appendix A)…
if ONLY IN THIS YOUR DAY, you had realised! (Matthew
23:398, Luke 19:42ff.), He cried; but He did not crack, either the whip of
tyranny, or the truth.
Love has restraint, and He
showed it; love has power to provide, and He provided; love does not hesitate
to provide itself, and it was Himself whom He provided! (Matthew 20:28,
Galatians 3, II Corinthians 5:17-21). History was and is the attestation of His
power, the power of the Gospel (Romans 1:16), the verification of His way;
geography sings His praise as the Middle East inflames itself about the very
site of His crucifixion, unable to settle, to resolve its woes, settle its griefs or find its basis, without the One to whom it, with
all, must come, before peace finds there its place.
WHEN this happens, as so long prescribed in the word of God
which Christ so unremittingly backed with His own word (Matthew 5:17-19), HE
will first have come. As God always does what He has said, right down to the
date, so now, though the date be hidden the signals are not (Luke 21:24,28).
In a little, they will think
for a moment that they have it, that they have achieved some statuesque peace
in the name of freedom or prudence (I Thessalonians 5:1ff.), but it will not
last. The words of the ‘little horn’ are
to be pompous (Daniel
Moreover, just as the word of
God has declared, there IS no peace for the wicked (Isaiah 57:19-20), so it is;
and as it has shown His peace to His people, so it is and it will be. Many hunt
the ‘
NOTHING in history, in
geography, in morals (cf. Matthew 24:14), in turmoil (cf. Matthew 24:21ff.), in
test (cf. Matthew 24:24), religious, military and economic (cf. Revelation 6),
is left undone, which ought to have been done, in terms of the unlimited licence, indeed the limitless wisdom of Christ, the very
expression of God, eternal, before time, with the Father, equal with Him by
nature, sent by mission.
The scope for verification
and divestment through evidence of error is vast; the errors are nil.
NOTES
Cf. Repent or Perish Chs. 2, 7, That Magnificent Rock Ch. 5, More Marvels Ch. 4, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6 - 7,
SMR Ch. 10, 6, 9.
*2 See for example SMR pp. 476, *6.
In
turn, in The Biblical Workman, Appendix
IV, are to be found some of the phases and features AFTER this birth!
*3 It
is also revelatory in style. Thus in Isaiah 29:9ff., you see a basis in virtual
farce, though gloomy is the fun, where there is an official failure, a social
failure and a spiritual failure all in one.
It is depicted that the book of the Lord is brought to sundry people, to
see who could impart understanding, or even have it, in its terms, of its text.
To the learned it goes, but asleep in the ponderous pontifications of tradition,
or the obtuse imperceptiveness of the formally damned, the scholars decline to
interpret, saying, “I cannot; for it is sealed.”
Off
to the unlearned, perhaps more frank and free, goes the prophet in the vision, or
the envisagement. Can they interpret, understand ? But no, says the unlearned, “for I am not learned”.
·
“In that this people draw near to Me with
their mouth, and with their lips do honour Me, but have removed their heart far form Me, and their fear toward Me is taught by the
precept of men,
·
“Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work and a wonder; for the wisdom of their wise
men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hidden.
Woe to those who seek deeply to hide their counsel from the LORD, and their
works are in the dark, and they say, Who
sees us ? And who knows us ?
·
“Surely, your turning of things upside down
shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay; for shall the work say of Him who made
it, He did not make me ? Or shall the thing formed say of Him who formed it, He
had no understanding?”
Paul reverts to this in I Corinthians 1 concerning the Gospel,
replacing with its divine simplicity the pretentious striving without light, of
the many obfuscatory obstructionists and obscure ponderers, for so
long. Into this category go the traditionalists, in fact simply adding their
philosophies in terms of former uninspired writers, to the scripture, and so
obscuring its witness, like false witness at a trial, when one additive can
foul the whole before the judge, in this case the reader! So does Christ speak
with unlimited liberty in Mark 7:7ff., despising their additions and
traditions, in that they are placed in parallel with the word of God, as if man
could become a co-author of the word of the Lord.
In our present context of thought, Matthew 23, like Luke
11:53ff., there is such an exposure with such a mocking but authoritative lash,
such a disparagement with grief, climaxing in 23:37, a stripping naked of false
and foolish practice with clinical precision, that you see just the same spirit
of truth and compassion, that WILL not be baulked, as in Isaiah 29. These
scriptures speak as one, but it is the One who here speaks in the flesh, who
does it in His own name. To be sure, His words were commanded (John
This, then, the intimate parallel between Isaiah 29 and Matthew
23, is not only one of the all but innumerable resonances in the Biblical text,
being likewise of one spirit, but it is also here the word of the One who
claims to be that very God (John 8:58), and so consistently, insistently, and
yet in personal humility (as becomes the authentic) acts and speaks as He.
Not however in strident elevation, but in authentic grace, He
does His work in full acknowledgment constantly of the collation of work with
His Father (e.g. John
There is no other Saviour but God, and
it is He (Luke
*4 The ‘saying’ of ‘Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are
doing’ is in the imperfect tense, and so it is actually ‘was saying’ cf.
John 15:25, Matthew 27:18, Psalm 69:4
with Joyful
Jottings 25). It was a continuing
pity in continued utterance, a plea that proceeded over time, for His Father to
forgive such treatment of His only begotten Son.