Can I lose my salvation?

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. Hebrews 6:4-8

If you are a Christian, saved through your faith in Christ, is it possible for you to lose your salvation?

It’s always good, as a preacher, when somebody comes and asks you about something you said. Even if they disagree with you, at least it shows they were listening, and that they were interested enough to take you to task!

This happened to me recently. I wasn’t preaching about the passage above, but I made a passing reference to the danger of Christians “falling away”. The man who questioned me didn’t actually disagree, but he was unsure about what I had said, and wanted a bit of clarification. (No doubt I had expressed myself a little carelessly, and he was quite right to ask – a lesson to me!)

Whoever wrote the Letter to the Hebrews was obviously troubled that his readers – Christians from a Jewish background – might lapse back into Judaism. No disrespect to the Jewish faith, of course, but if Christianity is true then it fulfils Judaism and, so to speak, leaves it behind. There must be no going back.

This worry keeps cropping up throughout the letter – just take a look at chapters 2:1-5 and 3:7-19.

But the really striking verses are here in chapter 6. There’s no way we can, in honesty, tone these words down; they are fiercely uncompromising. The person who falls away cannot be “brought back to repentance”; indeed, they are “crucifying the Son of God all over again”. That sounds pretty solemn…

But surely, we might say, the New Testament as a whole teaches that once we are saved we are for ever saved? In John 10:38-39 Jesus says of his followers, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand…” Paul states that “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”, and he builds chapter 8 of Romans to a wonderful climax by insisting that nothing – absolutely nothing – “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:1,38-39). Putting it another way, a person who has been “born again”, surely, can’t possibly be “unborn again”!

That seems clear enough, and thank God for such good news. But… Hebrews 6:4-8 is part of God’s word, and it isn’t going to go away! And nor is the reality of stark experience. Anyone who has been a Christian for any length of time will know people who once seemed fine, strong Christians, but who now are far from God.

Of course, we can speculate about what has happened to such people. Either (a) they were never true Christians in the first place, in spite of appearances; or (b) they are true Christians, only temporarily away from God, so it’s just a matter of time before they are restored.

But in practical terms such speculations are a waste of time. It’s a case, quite literally, of “God only knows”, and we might as well leave it there. Our task is to take such people as we find them, and seek to win them back to Christ.

Like many so-called contradictions in the Bible, I think this one has a positive value. The fact is that we need both perspectives if we are not to fall into serious error. If we over-stress the “once-saved-always-saved” line we run the risk of becoming complacent: “I am saved by God’s grace! My eternal destiny is secure! So I can do pretty much what I like…!” (As Paul puts it in Romans 6:1, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound?”)

If, on the other hand, we over-stress the danger of falling away, we run the risk of losing any sense of assurance or confidence in our salvation. It becomes a matter of trusting as fully as we can and then, so to speak, of keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for the best.

In a word: Either we become spiritually smug or spiritually insecure; both of which are bad. So the Bible’s two voices have the effect of safeguarding us from both dangers. One day, when my faith has somehow been a bit wobbled, I might need Romans 6:1; another day, when I’m a bit over-confident, even arrogant, I might need Hebrews 6:4-8.

Over the years I have learned to be a little suspicious of Christians who claim to have every area of doctrine cut and dried: every i dotted, every t crossed. The fact is that, to our limited human understanding, truth just isn’t like that. And God, of course, is the ultimate mystery, and he isn’t like that either. So it’s no surprise that the Bible contains things which have us scratching our heads.

The fact is that when he decided to give mankind a written revelation, he chose to give us not an Encyclopaedia of Christian Theology or a Concise Handbook of Religious Truth, but a big, baggy collection of documents which we know as “the Bible”.

Let’s read it with honesty and humility!

Father, thank you for your Word, the Bible. Help me to delight in it when its meaning is clear, to humble myself before it when it is puzzling, and, most of all, to obey it with simple trust and faith. Amen.

If you are interested in following up this question of the “contradictions” of the Bible, look out for Paradoxology, by Krish Kandiah, published by Hodder. It doesn’t answer every question we might want to ask – of course not! – but it takes a refreshing look at the whole question. Well worth a read.

Facing discouragement

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? Psalm 137:1-4

This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon… It said:

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Jeremiah 1-7

Sorry about the longer-than-usual Bible passages today, but it’s hard to know what to miss out. I hope you will take the time to read them, because, taken together, they provide a vivid background to what was going on in the nation of Judah nearly 600 years before Jesus, the period known as the Exile – and there are features which we today can learn from.

Two voices speak.

Voice One (Psalm 137) is someone who has been taken away into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. If you read the whole psalm (it’s not that long) you find a strange mix of despair and defiance.

Despair, because the people are far from their beloved Jerusalem – and don’t know when (or if) they will ever see it again. And defiance, because they are refusing to obey their jeering captors by singing some of the sacred songs of Jerusalem; they prefer to hang their harps on the poplar trees.

“Leave us alone in our misery!” they seem to be saying.

Voice Two is the prophet Jeremiah. He’s still in Jerusalem, but he sends the captives quite a long letter (Jeremiah 29:4-23).

And his advice is matter-of-fact, sleeves-rolled-up common sense. Of course he’s well aware how wretched they are feeling, but this is what he says: Settle down; build houses; dig gardens; grow food; marry off your children; build up your numbers… And then: “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for if it prospers, you too will prosper” (verse 7).

Oh, and don’t listen to the false prophets who are among you! They tell you “Don’t worry – you’ll soon be back home!” But they’re telling you lies: there will be some hard times ahead (seventy years, to be exact)…

Sure enough, Jeremiah’s prophecy came true.

Well, all this happened some 2,600 years ago, and in a far-off place. But there is a relevance for us as Christians today. True, we are not (most of us anyway) exiles in a foreign country; but in many respects we are passing through discouraging and even depressing times. Many people simply write the church off as finished, and it’s hard for us sometimes not to be infected with this gloomy mentality. Will the glory-days return (if indeed they ever existed)?

In such an atmosphere it’s easy to slump, to become defeatist, rather like those exiles hooking their harps onto the trees.

But this is where Jeremiah’s bracing advice comes in. It can be summed up in a single sentence: Buckle down and get on with the practical business of everyday life. Don’t put your life on hold. You’re in for the long haul, folks!

In other words, avoid the temptation (a) to look back with misty-eyed nostalgia to “the good old days”; and also (b) to look forward to a golden age which might just possibly appear if we, so to speak, keep our fingers crossed. The time for action is now; and the action required is to get up every morning and commit ourselves to the bread-and-butter business of the day.

We shouldn’t miss the fact that, as well as encouraging the people to get on with matters of “hatch, match and dispatch”, Jeremiah urges them to take a positive view of the land of their captivity. Even though Babylon is their enemy, they are to “seek its peace and prosperity” and to “pray for it” (verse 7). In fact, it’s in their own interests to do so: “… if it prospers, you too will prosper”.

The application for us as churches is clear: be faithful in worship, prayer, evangelism, service and witness. Be part of the wider community, a Christlike presence in every area of life. And never doubt that God does promise final victory to his people: “For I know the plans I have for you” he says, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (verse 11).

As one commentator puts it, “in the ‘death’ of exile are the seeds of new life”.

I knew a woman many years ago who suffered with depression. I asked her once how she managed to cope with the specially difficult times. “I usually scrub the floor,” she said. That may seem strange, and of course I’m not suggesting it’s a cure-all for all mental health problems. But, well, it worked for her. Instead of sitting moping or allowing time to drift by, she found that getting on with a useful, practical task made a real difference to her frame of mind.

And to some extent, that’s not a lot different to the advice Jeremiah gave to God’s people during that dark time. Is it advice we too need to take to heart today? Christian, get on with the job of following Jesus, and leave the future to God!

Father, I think of the many times in scripture where you allowed your people to go through dark and discouraging times. But thank you that you are the same God at all times, one who calls us to trust, to obey and to walk hand in hand with you. Please help me to do that when the way seems specially hard. Amen.

Tempting? - or testing?

Jesus said, And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. Matthew 6:13 (NRSV)

A friend approached me with a query. His church had adopted a new version of the Lord’s Prayer, and he was puzzled by one of the requests. (I can’t resist saying, well, at least his church still said the Lord’s Prayer – a practice which I get the feeling is becoming more and more rare.) He had no problem with the language being updated, but he felt that the essential meaning had been changed.

What was his problem? Well, all his life he had been praying “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”, but suddenly now he was expected to pray “do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one”. Which is very different. Had he been praying wrongly all those years? If he had, surely it was because the church had led him to do so!

This is just one example of how new Bible translations sometimes seem to say something completely different from what we are used to.

So, while I am no expert on the original Bible languages (or on anything else, come to that), I thought it might be helpful to briefly explain why this happens. (You may know all this anyway – in which case I won’t be in the least offended if you skip this blog!)

The fact is this: Unless you are familiar with Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek (plus a little bit of another language called Aramaic) you cannot read the Bible except via a translation. That’s just the way it is. You are totally dependent upon language-scholars whose minds are soaked in these languages.

This being the case, two important factors come into play.

First, the experts sometimes discover through further study that the way a Hebrew or Greek word was understood in the past was in fact somewhat misleading, and therefore needs to be changed.

And second, every language changes gradually as the years and the centuries go by, and therefore translations need to be revised. (We English-speakers today don’t talk today the way Shakespeare talked, and not even the way Dickens talked. I’ve just been reading a novel by Jane Austen (1775-1817), and it’s striking how different her English is from ours today – little things like “surprised” being spelled “surprized”, for  example – really quite surprizing, you could say.)

My friend’s problem with the Lord’s Prayer is wrapped up in a Greek word which, putting it in English letters, is spelt peirasmos (say “pay-raz-mos”).

The question is: Does peirasmos mean “temptation” in the sense of “seduction to do wrong”, or does it mean “testing” in the sense of “trial” or “being given a hard time”? And the general opinion among those who know the Greek is that it’s the second option: so Jesus is teaching his disciples to pray “Don’t bring us to a time of hard testing”.

(One commentary I looked at told me that the word peirasmos occurs thirty-six times in the New Testament, and in all but two it clearly means “testing” rather than “temptation”.)

The Jews believed, and Jesus also taught, that before the end of the world there would be a time of severe trouble, as the forces of evil gather their strength and work havoc on the earth (Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 24 is full of this). In the Lord’s Prayer, then, Jesus is preparing them – and us, of course – to be always ready and, indeed, to pray that we might be spared this fate.

There’s another important consideration too. The more you think about the translation “lead us not into temptation” the more odd it seems. Why would God lead anybody into temptation! Indeed, how could a perfect and holy God do such a thing? Jesus’ brother James explicitly says: “When tempted, no one should say ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone…” (James 1:13).

And so… however unfamiliar the new translation may seem to be, there can be little doubt that it is more accurate. We have to get used to it, accepting that just as Jesus, the living Word of God, is both divine and human, so too the Bible, the written Word of God, is both divinely inspired and also humanly written.

Of course, scholars can get things wrong, and may sometimes mislead us. Some, sadly, seem to believe virtually nothing in the Bible at all. But let’s not be unduly suspicious! – especially when we’re talking about scholars who have a strong belief in the inspiration of scripture. They are our friends, and we should be thankful for them and pray for them. The more accurate they can make our Bible translations, the better we will come to see and know Jesus.

After all, if it weren’t for them we simply wouldn’t have a Bible, would we? Imagine that!

Thank you, Father, for your written word, the Bible. And thank you for people who devote their lives to understanding it, explaining it, and working to ensure that we have it in the best possible translations. Through their work, enable us to get to know Jesus, your living Word, better and better. Amen.

Peace that passes all understanding?

Jesus said, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:7

You know how sometimes a hymn or song pops into your mind out of nowhere? It happened to me recently – an old hymn that I don’t think I had even so much as thought of for years.

It was written by a nineteenth century American Quaker, John Greenleaf Whittier. The first verse goes like this:

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,/ Forgive our foolish ways;/ Reclothe us in our rightful mind;/ In purer lives Thy service find,/ In deeper reverence, praise.

With beautiful simplicity, Whittier prays at least three prayers: for forgiveness for “our foolish ways” (amen to that!); to be “reclothed in our rightful minds” (remember the demon-possessed man of Mark 5, whom Jesus left “clothed and in his right mind?); and for “purer lives” (amen to that too).

And so the hymn goes on – a lilting sung prayer – giving out a sense of quietness, trust and peace. For me the best words of all are in verse 5:

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,/ Till all our strivings cease;/ Take from our souls the strain and stress,/ And let our ordered lives confess/ The beauty of Thy peace.

Amen again! Oh for an end to our endless, often pointless “strivings”, oh to be free of all the “strain and stress”, oh to live, every day, “ordered lives” which reflect the beauty of God’s peace.

As the hymn played itself out in my mind I found myself thinking of the great words of Paul in Philippians 4:7: “And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”. Peace that “passes all understanding”! – that really is something, isn’t it?

The word “And” connects this verse with what has gone before. Paul has just urged the Christians of Philippi to “rejoice”, to be “gentle”, to not be “anxious” – and to be very serious about the duty and joy of prayer (verses 4-6). He sees the peace of God that passes all understanding as growing out of that.

I found myself wondering just how many of us can honestly say we know anything of that peace? – certainly, we seem to hear a lot about “stress-related illness” today, not least among Christians. As a fairly stress-free person (well, I am retired – I certainly can’t claim to have always been so!), it’s not for me to imply criticism of anyone, perhaps much younger than me, who finds life pretty well too much to cope with.

But the fact is that peace is presented to us in the Bible as part of what I might call “the Gospel package” – it’s right there, number three in the list, as Paul opens up “the fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22). Peace is part of our spiritual birthright. So perhaps we do need to give it a little thought.

Is our problem all to do with the frantic pace of modern life? I’m sure that plays a big part. But even then I remember, many years ago, an elderly Christian man who had begun his working life down a coalmine, smiling slightly cynically as this was put to him, with the suggestion that “it just wasn’t like this in your day”.

“We didn’t know about stress?” he said. “Really? We could have been thrown out of work at any moment. We worked long, dangerous hours. Our pay was pathetic. We often struggled to feed the children. When we got sick, well, that was just bad luck… And you tell me we didn’t know about stress…?”

I suppose stress and strain take different forms for different generations. I understand too that a certain amount of stress can be a good thing – it keeps us motivated, keeps the adrenalin flowing. But, as I said, these verses seem to make peace a promise, not a pious hope; notice that word “will” – this peace “will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus”. And in Matthew 11:28 Jesus didn’t say “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I might give you rest”, did he?

There’s no simple coin-in-the-slot solution. There’s no point in looking back to verses 4-6 and saying, “Right then… As long as I buckle down and (a) maintain a rejoicing mood, (b) stay gentle, (c) clamp down on any form of anxiety, and (d) pray hard, then I am guaranteed the peace that passes all understanding”. No! It doesn’t work like that: God doesn’t work like that.

But if we persistently lack peace, perhaps we do need to take a look at ourselves, our attitudes, our priorities, perhaps certain aspects of our behaviour.

And in that respect a few quiet moments soaking up John Greenleaf Whittier’s lovely hymn might not be a bad place to start…

Breathe through the heats of our desire/ Thy coolness and Thy balm; Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;/ Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire,/ O still small voice of calm. Amen.

Tough love?

Jesus got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet, be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” Mark 4:39-40

The story of Jesus stilling the storm is one of the best-known in the Bible.

He’s with his disciples on the Sea of Galilee, fast asleep “on a cushion”, when a “furious squall” blows up. The disciples panic and wake him up, whereupon he stands and majestically tells the raging elements to quieten down. Which they do. He then turns to the disciples and gives them a bit of a telling off for their lack of faith.

We love the story because it pulls together two of the greatest truths about Jesus – that he was both fully human (tired and in need of rest) and also fully divine (empowered to command the very forces of nature). So simple – and so awe-inspiring!

But focussing on these great truths can blind us to other important truths – in particular, the way Jesus treated his disciples. People sometimes speak of “tough love” – being hard on someone in order to help them learn and grow – and I think that perhaps that phrase fits Jesus’ behaviour here.

Two things strike me.

First, it was he who led them into danger.

Verse 35 tells us: “he said to his disciples, ‘Let us go over to the other side.’” It seems that making this journey was his idea, not theirs; left up to them, they would have stayed safe and sound on shore that night.

Was he deliberately testing them? Could he foresee what was going to happen – that there would be a dangerous storm? I am inclined to answer “No” to both those questions; he was just keen to continue his ministry further afield.

But even if I’m right, that doesn’t alter the fact that it was he who initiated this trip.

Some Christians seem to teach that the reason Jesus lived, died and rose again was basically in order to give those who believe in him a comfortable, smooth, easy life. Perhaps quoting John 10:10 – “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” – they teach that, if only you have enough faith, you can expect good health, ample money and a trouble-free family and work situation. This, of course, is the poison of the “prosperity gospel”; but I suspect that in a less extreme form it comes across in many a sermon and lurks in many a Christian’s mind.

But no. Following Jesus is certainly the most wonderful thing we can ever decide to do. But let’s not fool ourselves; it can also be draining, demanding – and seriously painful. Jesus plainly told his disciples, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). Just ask any of the thousands of those who are persecuted for his sake.

Bad things happen to us simply because we, though Christians, are still part of this fallen world: faith in Jesus is not some kind of insurance policy which gives us an immunity against the ordinary pains and sorrows of life. But what matters is this: God takes these events and experiences as an opportunity to teach us and to help us to grow and mature. Romans 8:28 sums it up perfectly…

Th second thing that strikes me is that Jesus seems to have been quite hard on the disciples once the danger was over.

“Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” That sounds to me pretty much like a scold, though no doubt a loving one.

I can’t help but put myself in the shoes of the disciples. If I had been in that boat I’m pretty sure I too would have woken Jesus up and cried out for rescue. What, after all, did he expect them to do! Calm the storm themselves? But there’s no reason to think they had ever been given such powers.

Could it be that in effect he was saying: “Look, several of you are professional fishermen! You have been sailing this lake all your lives. You know perfectly well that storms like this are a regular occurrence, and you have battled them on many occasions. So why not today? Why this panic?”

I don’t know. But the fact is that Jesus is disappointed in them. He expects better of them. Of course, when he knows their need he responds to it. But that isn’t what he would have wanted.

Jesus is always there for us, through thick and thin. But are there times we too disappoint him by failing to roll up our sleeves and take responsibility for our own situation? – like a big child who goes running to mummy at the least provocation.

Yes, Jesus is our loving Lord. But he can also be severe with us (remember how he turned on Simon Peter with “Get behind me, Satan”?).

Call it “tough love” if you like. Call it “being cruel to be kind”. But whatever you call it, it’s something we need to look right in the face. Otherwise how will we grow in him?

Lord Jesus, forgive me for those times when I disappoint you. Give me, please, a robust, practical, down to earth faith that will hold me fast in the many storms of life. Amen.

What's the dress-code?

The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. Genesis 3:21

Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 13:14

A member of parliament created a bit of a stir recently – she made a speech in the House of Commons while wearing a dress that exposed a hefty helping of one of her shoulders. There were mutterings about “inappropriate dress” and “lowering the dignity of the House”. Mmm.

“Dress codes”, written or not, exist in all sorts of places.

But there is nothing in the Bible, literally nothing, about how God’s people should dress, for worship or otherwise. The Old Testament priests, of course, had special vestments when functioning in the temple, and kings had their robes for royal occasions. But otherwise the Bible is sublimely indifferent. Jesus and the apostles wore nothing special, so why should we? – it’s not easy to answer that.

No. God’s concern is for what we can only call our “spiritual” clothing. And the dress-code there is simplicity itself…

We read that when God made the first human pair and placed them in the Garden of Eden, “Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame” (Genesis 2:25); in their innocence, naked was simply the way they were, a dress-code they didn’t even think about.

But after their act of disobedience “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised that they were naked…” That is, what had first seemed “just the way things were” now took on a new and troubling aspect; innocence had given way to shame. So, cowering pathetically in the undergrowth, trying to hide from God, “they sowed fig-leaves together and made coverings for themselves” (Genesis 3:7).

From being the beautiful lords of God’s creation they became a trembling double-bundle of guilt, desperately trying to cover their shame with… fig-leaves. But God takes pity on them and covers their shame by fitting them out with more durable “garments of skin” (Genesis 3:21).

Never mind how literally or otherwise you take the Eden story; what matters is the rich variety of thoughts it sparks about sin, rebellion, human folly – and shame.

We in the liberated, “permissive” and largely godless western world still have our legal restrictions on nudity. And I think I’m right in saying (please correct me if you know me to be wrong) that even cultures that we, perhaps arrogantly, refer to as “primitive”, are uncomfortable with complete nakedness: the genital areas, at least, are covered. For shame is a universal sense; and shame is a universal sense because sin is a universal reality.

I imagine that God felt an infinite sadness as he made those coverings for Adam and Eve. But that wonderfully humble act can be taken as a tiny foreshadowing of what he would do for their whole race (that’s you and me) in the person of Christ. Our shame is not simply “covered” as a temporary, makeshift measure, but is fully dealt with through Jesus’ death on the cross. As Peter puts it with wonderful conciseness, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24).

And so it is that we – fallen Adams and Eves though we are – are offered an infinitely greater covering. Paul tells us (in words which, when you stop and really think about them, are truly amazing) to “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans13:14). (How can you possibly clothe yourself in a person!? – yet he means exactly what he says.)

Those who feel the weight of their guilt may take those words as an invitation: come and have your sins forgiven through the death of Jesus! Put your trust in him, for there is “no condemnation” any more for those who are “in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). What Adam and Eve could never do for themselves in the Garden, and what we too can never do for ourselves today, he has done for us, finally and perfectly, on the cross.

But the words “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ” are, even more, a command for those of us who have already come to faith in him. He, if I dare put it like this, is our “dress code”.

If we are not praying and seeking daily to become more like him, can we really call ourselves Christians? John tells us that one day “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). But we are not to leave it to that day; this is also for the here and now! And not just on special occasions, in special places, or at special times. No! – in the workplace, in the shops, in the leisure-centre, at home, driving the car, picking up the children…

Is Jesus your 24/7 dress-code?

Is it our true desire that when people look at us they actually see him? Make no mistake, this, and nothing less, is what it means to be a Christian.

No condemnation now I dread;/ Jesus and all in Him is mine!/ Alive in Him, my living Head,/ And clothed in righteousness divine,/ Bold I approach the eternal throne,/ And claim the crown, through Christ, my own. Charles Wesley, 1707-1788

Can comedy be holy?

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens… a time to weep and a time to laugh. Ecclesiastes 3:1,4

“Jesus is the funniest guy I know.”

That was the title of a column in a recent issue of the Times newspaper. It was about Tom Elliott, described as “a Christian comedian and magician”. Elliott exercises an evangelistic ministry through his gift for comedy, and good for him, say I. I think I would like him if I knew him.

The article interested me because it touched on a question that I have long puzzled over, albeit only rather vaguely: given that humour is such an important aspect of a healthy life, why does the Bible have so little to say about it?

I have on my shelves a wonderful reference book. It’s a Dictionary of Bible Themes, in effect a thesaurus (a word-book) of the Bible. You can look up any topic you like and it will lead you to every relevant reference, in some cases literally hundreds of them – under “r”, for example, “rebirth”, “rejoicing”, “rashness”, “Ruth” and “revenge”. Marvellous.

But look up “humour”… and there’s next to nothing there. The verses from Ecclesiastes I quoted at the start recognise that laughter is indeed a big part of life. But the one or two other references offered are a serious let-down. We are told, for example, that Abraham and Sarah laughed (Genesis 17 and 18), but I’m afraid that their laughter was really the sarcastic inner laugh of incredulity – “you cannot be serious!”, “pigs might fly!” – so I don’t think that really counts.

Tom Elliott quotes some of the “funny” sayings of Jesus: “The camel and the eye of the needle… that won’t work in a comedy club today, but back then it went down a storm”. Did it, indeed? Er, forgive me, Tom, but how do you know that? The Gospels tell us Jesus said it; but (sorry) they don’t tell us what the response was, beyond “amazement”. (And anyway Jesus was probably quoting a well-known Jewish proverb; a similar one, apparently, talks about an elephant going through the eye of a needle.)

Don’t get me wrong. I have no doubt at all that Jesus was thoroughly good-natured and enjoyed a joke. In many situations I picture him smiling broadly and with sparkling eyes. But if Tom Elliott really does regard him as “the funniest guy I know”, well, to be honest, I feel rather sorry for him.

The fact is that the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels is in line with the Bible as a whole: humour is extremely hard to find.

Which takes us back to the question: Why?

I have no answer to that, beyond the obvious fact that the Bible is basically concerned with deeply serious matters – sin and salvation, heaven and hell, life and death. It’s true too that what the Jewish people of Jesus’ day would have found funny probably wouldn’t strike us as such, nor vice versa. (Different nations and cultures, so I’m told, have very different ideas of humour – as we all know, “a German joke is no laughing matter”.)

Perhaps the Bible feels no need to talk explicitly about humour because, having recognised how important it is, it then simply expects us to pick up from passages such as Ephesians 4:29-32 that all our humour should be clean and wholesome (as I’m sure Tom Elliott’s is).

The sad truth is that, at least in our western world, humour seems to be appreciated only if it is either crude or cruel.

Crude: there is a writer in the same newspaper we started with who seems pretty much incapable of writing a column without resorting to either sexual or lavatorial references: the old-fashioned word “smutty” would fit, I think. I don’t think you need to be some kind of stone-faced killjoy to find those columns distasteful. And in terms of general language – funny or not – well, everyone from footballers to politicians to media celebrities seem to take delight in completely uninhibited language. Coarseness rules, ok.

And cruel: much of our humour takes the form of laughing not with people but at them. Certainly, those who make the decision to go into public life, especially political life, must expect to be held up to ridicule by those who find them unconvincing (I personally have a weakness for political cartoons). But “satire” is often nothing more than plain mockery, and however thick-skinned those on the receiving end claim to be, it’s bound to hurt.

Ultimately, it’s very hard to imagine Jesus ever being either crude or cruel, and that perhaps is all that needs to be said.

So where does this leave us? My suggestion would be just this: let’s thank God for Tom Elliott and other Christian humourists. Let’s pray that their particular brand of evangelism will be blessed by God and used by him.

Healthy, wholesome humour is a massive gift; may it, like all other gifts, bring glory to God. Amen!

Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of humour, laughter and fun. Thank you for the way it lightens our lives and strengthens our relationships. Help us to enjoy it in a wholesome way to bring glory to your name. Amen.