Breathe on me, breath of God

Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit…” John 20:21

… be filled with the Spirit… Ephesians 5:18

Is the Holy Spirit (a) an article of Christian doctrine to be analysed, discussed and possibly fallen out over, or (b) the very life, energy and breath of God living inside us and inspiring us to live holy, Christlike lives?

All right, that’s not an entirely serious question (if anybody answered (a) I would suggest that you fix up a chat with your minister pretty sharpish, because you have a serious problem).

Of course, the Holy Spirit is God himself living within us! Yet sadly he has too often become a battleground between different Christian factions each of which is convinced that they are right and that anyone who disagrees with them is wrong.

As we come to Whit Sunday – Pentecost – I suggest that a good way to think about the Holy Spirit is through worship, and not least through the songs and hymns that have been written in effect as prayers either about him or perhaps to him. I want to share a handful that have meant a lot to me in over fifty years of seeking to live this wonderful Christian life. You may not know them – certainly not all of them – but, whether you do or not, you might find it helpful to turn them into your own prayers.

Here’s one which takes its cue from that momentous meeting in which the risen Jesus met with his disciples on the evening of Easter Sunday (John 20:21-22)…

Breathe on me, Breath of God,/ fill me with life anew,
that I may love what thou dost love,/ and do what thou wouldst do.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,/ until my heart is pure;
until with thee I will one will,/ to do and to endure.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,/ till I am wholly thine;
until this earthly part of me/ glows with thy fire divine.

Breathe on me, Breath of God:/ so shall I never die,
but live with thee the perfect life/ of thine eternity.

I say it takes its cue from Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit on the disciples. But there’s another Bible verse also that comes to mind: when God created the first man (according to Genesis 2:7) he “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being”.

This suggests that when Jesus rose from the dead, he was a new Adam, bringing into being a whole new human race – so that everyone who receives the gift of the Spirit is a member of that new humanity. I hope that makes us feel both wonderfully privileged and deeply humble.

Here’s one of the most beautiful sung prayers I know. I love it for its childlike simplicity. It doesn’t in fact mention the Holy Spirit by name, but there’s no doubt that each verse reflects a different aspect of his work within us…

May the mind of Christ, my Saviour,/ live in me from day to day,
by his love and power controlling/ all I do and say.

May the Word of God dwell richly/ in my heart from hour to hour,
so that all may see I triumph/ only through his power.

May the peace of God my Father/ rule my life in everything,
that I may be calm to comfort/ sick and sorrowing.

May the love of Jesus fill me/ as the waters fill the sea;
him exalting, self abasing:/ this is victory.

May I run the race before me,/ strong and brave to face the foe,
looking only unto Jesus/ as I onward go.

May his beauty rest upon me/ as I seek the lost to win,
and may they forget the channel,/ seeing only him.

Both those songs are prayers for the Spirit to work in us as individuals. But the Day of Pentecost, of course, is much more about the church as a body.

So here are two more which plead with God to come upon the church today in the power of the Spirit…

O Breath of life, come sweeping through us,/ revive your church with life and power;
O Breath of Life, come, cleanse, renew us,/ and fit your church to meet this hour.

O Wind of God, come bend us, break us,/ till humbly we confess our need;
then in your tenderness remake us,/ revive, restore, for this we plead.

O Breath of love, come breathe within us,/ renewing thought and will and heart;
come, Love of Christ, afresh to win us,/ revive your church in every part.

Revive us, Lord! Is zeal abating/ while harvest fields are vast and white?
Revive us, Lord, the world is waiting,/ equip your church to spread the light.

And then this: a rousing cry to God to give his church a whole new Pentecost…

Great is the darkness/ that covers the earth,
Oppression, injustice and pain. Nations are slipping/ in hopeless despair,
Though many have come in Your name,
Watching while sanity dies,/ touched by the madness and lies.

          Come Lord Jesus, come Lord Jesus,
Pour out Your Spirit we pray.
Come Lord Jesus, come Lord Jesus,
Pour out Your Spirit on us today.

May now Your church rise/ With power and love,
This glorious gospel proclaim./ In every nation/ Salvation will come
To those who believe in Your name.
Help us bring light to this world/ That we might speed Your return.

          Come, Lord Jesus…

Great celebrations/ On that final day/ When out of the heavens You come.
Darkness will vanish,/ All sorrow will end,/And rulers will bow at Your throne.
Our great commission complete,/ Then face to face we shall meet.

          Come, Lord Jesus…

Please don’t gallop through those songs or just skim them – they’re worth giving time to in drawing near to God.

And may God enable us, by his Holy Spirit, to add a heart-felt Amen to each of these beautiful prayers!

Dear Father, thank you for giving me the gift of the Holy Spirit. Help me day by to become more worthy of this privilege. Amen.

(The writers quoted are, in order, Edwin Hatch, Kate Wilkinson, Elizabeth Head, and Gerald Coates/Noel Richards.)

Pentecost, power and purity

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit enabled them. Acts 2:1-4

I always look forward to Whit Sunday, the day the church remembers how the Holy Spirit was poured out on the first believers in Jerusalem. Though I am neither Pentecostal in denomination nor “charismatic” in doctrine (these are the groups generally reckoned to focus especially on the Holy Spirit) I find it hard to read Acts 2 without a real sense of excitement.

I’d like to share just a couple of reasons for my enthusiasm.

First, it’s simply a wonderful, exciting story.

We’ve recently had the agony of Good Friday, followed by the ecstasy of Easter Sunday, then the seeming anti-climax of the Ascension. And now we have the sheer drama of Pentecost…

Jesus’ disciples, obeying his instructions, have gathered in Jerusalem waiting for – well, they don’t really know what. Certainly, the words of Jesus were clear enough: “… John baptised with water, but in a few days you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5). But what did those words mean? What form was this “baptising with the Holy Spirit” going to take?

Well, they were soon to find out!

They heard the sound of a gale-force wind… they saw “tongues of fire” settling on each of them… they felt the Spirit of God entering them as never before… they found themselves speaking in languages they had never learned…

Can you imagine how they looked at one another? – in amazement, wonder, confusion, quite likely even in fear. What was going on! Ah – so this is what Jesus meant!

They come tumbling out of the house where they are staying. The people around, many of them fellow-Jews on pilgrimage from far away, look on shaking their heads. Then they find that they can understand what they are hearing: these “tongues” are recognisable to them. (Mind you, there are also some sceptics and cynics around: “Huh, they’re drunk!” I suppose that shouldn’t surprise us…)

You might think that’s excitement enough. But it’s only the beginning.

Simon Peter – the man who just weeks before had cursed and sworn and denied having anything to do with Jesus, the man who ended up weeping and broken in spirit – stands up and addresses the crowd. He tells them about Jesus, of course, about his death and his rising again; and he explains that what is happening before their eyes is the promised outpouring of the Spirit predicted by the prophet Joel (see Joel chapter 2).

His hearers can’t resist the power of his message. They break down and cry out for God’s mercy. They get baptised right there and then – three thousand of them! Miracles happen, wonderful healings. And a whole new community – truly a family – is born that day: total strangers eating together and sharing their property with one another.

How can anybody read this chapter and not be excited? Is there anything more exciting in the whole Bible? This is a chapter, first and foremost, to be savoured and to be inspired by; it isn’t a quarry to be mined for doctrine. Just imagine for a moment if it wasn’t in the Bible. How much we would miss…

The second reason for my enthusiasm is this: the chapter whets my appetite for more of God.

I find this in two respects.

First, in relation to the church as the body of Christ on earth.

If Acts 2 is about anything, it’s about power. In the Bible the Holy Spirit makes himself known in various ways: he is our comforter, companion  and peace-giver; he is our teacher; he is our enabler and inspirer; he is nothing less than the very life and energy of God within us. Yes, all that and more: but in Acts 2 the emphasis is all upon power.

And how we as churches need that power today, in our troubled, soiled and suffering world! Even at our strongest we are often weak and ineffective. I may be neither Pentecostal nor charismatic, but I feel not the slightest hesitation about praying, “Oh God, baptise us afresh with your Holy Spirit! Give us a mini-Pentecost! Do an Acts 2 in our day!”

Second, as well as the need of the church, there is also of course the need of each of us as individuals.

The New Testament tells us to be “filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). Being filled with the Spirit isn’t a one-off event like Pentecost – though no doubt individuals can and do experience remarkable anointings of the Spirit – but a constant state: we are called to be always “full of the Spirit”.

But how can that be? Putting it in a nutshell, it’s a matter of living, every day, a life of serious faith, humble trust and determined obedience. Not that we are ever perfect, of course, but that, little by little, we are making progress in that direction. We are growing in purity.

The empowering of the church – and the transforming of the individual. These are the prospects held out to us by Acts 2.

Aren’t they good reasons to be excited?

Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus,/ Pour out your Spirit we pray./ Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus,/ Pour out your Spirit on us today. Amen! (Gerald Coates and Noel Richards)

The atheist who needed God

God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no-one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11

A well-known atheist recently wrote: “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him”. Another sceptic said: “The trouble with being an unbeliever is that you have no-one to thank when you’re happy”. Yet another said how grateful he was for the Church of England; even though he didn’t believe a word of its teaching, he loved the beauty of its ritual, its music and its buildings.

Interesting! Let’s give due credit to these writers for their honesty.

Their words suggest that deep down within them there is a hankering after a reality that can’t be found in material things. It’s as if they’re saying, “All right, God doesn’t exist – but he ought to! I need this non-existent God”.

Ecclesiastes is one of the Bible’s strangest books. Its key word is meaningless: “Meaningless! Meaningless!… Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless” declares its second verse. And yes indeed, there’s no doubt that the basic mood is heavy and gloomy – not a lot of gospel here!

But I think it’s rather wonderful that such a book is found in the Bible, for isn’t this exactly how many people feel about life? Indeed, aren’t there times when we who are believers are tempted to feel this way? But scattered throughout Ecclesiastes there are also little glimmerings of light which suggest the much fuller truth we find in the Bible as a whole. Chapter 3 verse 11 is one, especially the claim that God “has set eternity in the human heart”.

Is that what those honest atheists were unknowingly bearing witness to?

It’s a tantalising statement if ever there was one! What does it mean?

If nothing else it recognises that we human beings alone have a sense of the passing of time: as we look at the world and at our lives we see a past, a present and (we hope) a future.

Many years ago I saw a cartoon in a paper. There were two hippopotamuses (oh, all right, hippopotami if you insist) standing nostril-deep in the river. One was saying to the other, “I keep thinking it’s Thursday”. The joke, of course, is that such a thing is utterly ludicrous: animals just don’t see the world the way we do. (Your cat may be pretty smart, but I bet he doesn’t keep a diary.)

No, we human beings are unique.

Not only do we have a sense of the passing of time, we also have a sense that there is something beyond time – that our brief earthly existence is not all there is. There is an unseen, unknown world beyond the reach of our five senses. You can call it by various names: “eternity”, the “spiritual world”, the “supernatural”. But whatever you call it, it points to the ultimate reality which I suspect those writers I quoted were feeling after. It points to God.

God is outside time. Or perhaps it would be better to say, he encompasses all time within himself because he has no beginning, no middle and no end. Not so much outside time as around time: which means that the day of your birth is still “present tense” to him. As is the day of your death…

The Bible says that we are like God. We read in Genesis 1:26 that in the act of creation God said “Let us make mankind in our own image, after our likeness…”

Again, whole books could be written (and have been!) about exactly what those words mean. But one aspect is that we are creatures designed for relationships.

God himself exists in relationship in his inmost being: he is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And the Genesis story makes clear that he created man and woman in order to be in relationship with him.

This can only mean that any man or woman who isn’t in a relationship with God is not truly alive: he or she is missing out on the very reason they were created. Our problem is described in the Bible as “sin”: we have become rebels, disobedient to the God who loves us and in whom alone we can find true meaning.

The good news, though, is that God doesn’t stop loving us. The even better news is that he has done everything that needs to be done in order to bring us back to himself. Possibly the most famous verse in the Bible sums it up like this: “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Yes, humble faith in Jesus is enough to bring us back to the God who alone is eternal. No wonder the word “gospel” means “good news”.

Here’s a prayer that I think those atheists I started with could honestly pray. Just possibly it might also be right for you…

Oh God, in truth I’m not even sure you exist at all. But if you do, I simply pray now that you would make yourself known to me. Amen.

Sincerely and humbly meant, that is a prayer that God has pledged himself to respond to.

Oh God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. Amen. (Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, 354-430)

Just another day?

Then they gathered round him and asked him, ‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” Acts 1:6-11

What’s special about next Thursday, 21 May?

You might be tempted to reply, “Not a lot! – especially with this pandemic lockdown in place.” And I have every sympathy with you: next Thursday looks like being, well, just another day.

But wait a minute. In the Christian calendar next Thursday is in fact quite significant: it is Ascension Day, the day when the church remembers how the risen Jesus was taken up bodily into heaven.

Let’s get the sequence of events clear… Jesus was crucified – that’s Good Friday. Three days later (counting inclusively) he rose from the dead – that’s Easter Day. For forty days he appeared to his disciples. At the end of that period he was “taken up into heaven”, or ascended. Then ten days later he poured out the Holy Spirit on the church – that’s Whitsun, or Pentecost.

And next up? He “will come back” – that’s the Second Coming, or the “Parousia”. (Which could be tomorrow, so we’d better be ready!)

Luke describes the Ascension twice – once, very briefly, right at the end of his Gospel, and secondly, in more detail, here at the beginning of Acts. Why does he seem so keen to stress this event? After all, none of the other Gospel writers describes it, and in the rest of the New Testament it’s simply taken for granted.

Perhaps the main reason is because the ascension demonstrated to the disciples that Jesus’ earthly ministry really was now over. For forty days they have seen him from time to time, and that must have been truly wonderful; but now they must get it into their heads that they won’t see him any more – not until he returns in glory.

Taking the New Testament as a whole, Jesus’ departure suggests at least two things.

First, the disciples have a job to do.

Before he left them, Jesus gave them the promise of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8), the promise fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost. But he also made it clear that “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). In other words, their job was to make known far and wide all about Jesus – his life, his teaching, his miracles, his sacrificial death and his victorious resurrection.

If these extraordinary things are true, then they need to be made known! And that is the disciples’ commission – and ours too, of course, as we today follow in their footsteps.

We read that, as Jesus was taken up, the disciples “were looking intently up into the sky”. To be honest, I can’t say I entirely blame them – after all, they were experiencing something pretty remarkable! But the two angels who appear seem to give them a bit of a telling off: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky?” As if to say, “The time for sky-gazing is over! Now is the time for rolling up your sleeves and getting to grips with the job Jesus has given you to do!”

I think we today should also take those words to heart. Throughout the centuries there have always been Christian people who have been what you might call sky-gazers – people, for example, who have occupied themselves trying to work out the date of Jesus’ return. They have generally been regarded as cranky and fanatical (especially when their predictions have proved false).

I trust none of us are like that. But there is a danger that we can become, as the saying goes, “too heavenly-minded to be any earthly use”. We busy ourselves with doctrinal arguments and discussions, forgetting that Jesus has given us a job to do, the job of making the good news known by word and by deed. This world needs the gospel! – and who is to proclaim it if not you and I?

The other thing that Jesus’ departure suggests is that he too has a job to do.

 You might say, “But surely his work is done! As he died on the cross didn’t he cry out ‘It is finished’?” Yes, of course – that is, the work of dealing once for all with our sins.

But Jesus isn’t idle in heaven! No, the New Testament makes clear that he is actively involved with his Father in the ruling of the universe. And in particular, he is exercising a ministry on behalf of us, his people: the role of high priest. Paul sums it up well in Romans 8:34: he is “at the right hand of God… interceding for us”.

This is far too big a subject to go into now. I can only suggest that you follow it up by reading carefully through the Letter to the Hebrews, where it is a major emphasis.

What matters is this: The ascended Jesus is faithfully fulfilling his role on our behalf; are we faithfully fulfilling ours on his?

Come to think of it, there’s quite a bit to get to grips with on Ascension Day, isn’t there…!

Jesus, my great high priest,/ Offered his blood and died;/ My guilty conscience seeks/ No sacrifice beside:/ His powerful blood did once atone,/ And now it pleads before the throne. Amen.

Isaac Watts, 1674-1748

When you can't give much

Elisha replied to her, “How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?” “Your servant has nothing there at all,” she said, “except a small jar of olive oil”… 2 Kings 4:2

Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up: “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”… John 6:8-9

A poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few pence. Mark 12:42

There are no prizes for spotting the link between these three passages – in each case something so small as to be hardly worth bothering with turns out to be massively important.

The woman in 2 Kings has reached rock bottom. A widow, she is terrified that the person she owes money to is going to take her sons into slavery. But at the suggestion of the prophet Elisha she – with a next-to-nothing supply of oil – starts up a micro-business sufficient to pay off her debts.

The boy in John 6 presumably offers his lunch-time pack-up to Jesus’ disciples to help with a sudden emergency – and five thousand “men” (plus women and children?) get fed.

The widow in Mark 12 can afford to put into the temple treasury only “two very small copper coins”. And what happens? She draws Jesus’ admiration – and becomes an example who has been read about and preached about for two thousand years and counting.

During the present lockdown one of the worst things is feeling so useless. We want to do something to help; we want to make a contribution. We look at the front-line workers who risk their health and possibly even their lives every day just by going to work, and we wish we had more to offer than admiration and encouragement (and the banging of saucepans on Thursday evenings), important though those are.

The danger then is that we slump into an attitude of shoulder-shrugging helplessness: subconsciously we think “Because I can’t do everything, there’s no point trying to do anything”. And that’s where we need the message of these stories: that even tiny, insignificant things can in fact make a real difference.

This is such a truism in all sorts of situations that it has given birth to a cliché: “It’s the little things that count”. Not that big things don’t count too, of course! But that doesn’t affect the truth of the cliché. The thing about truisms is that they have a habit of being, well, true.

In the lockdown situation the obvious example might be a friendly greeting to a stranger if we’re able to go out for a walk; or a smile and a word of thanks to the person sitting at the supermarket check-out or driving the bus or delivering the letters or… well, the possible list is endless.

Not to mention a message of some more permanent kind, via the internet or email or good old-fashioned phone or letter. Little things like that can, as we say, “make somebody’s day”.

I read an article once about the total contribution a footballer might make to a match in terms of time on the ball. I had vaguely assumed that that brilliant mid-field player who bossed the game and orchestrated his team’s victory would dominate whole long sequences of play. But no: apparently it’s just a matter of a few minutes – which, when you think about it, get your calculator out, and divide ninety (the number of minutes in a game) by twenty-two ( the number of players on the pitch) isn’t so surprising after all. My wife and I watched a German league game this afternoon – the first to be played under lockdown and behind closed doors – and Dortmund’s opening goal was a perfect illustration. The goal-scorer met a cross with the side of his foot and guided it into the net – the work, quite literally, of a split second, a statistic that would barely figure in the final stats, but which was a mark of brilliance and which changed the game.

Yes, little things!

Nothing done for the glory of God, and in the name of Jesus, is ever done in vain. So, as one seemingly blank, even slightly boring, day after another stretches before some of us, let’s pray for a positive and determined spirit and grab hold of every opportunity that comes our way. Let’s get the basic fact into our heads: I can make a difference today.

That way, we really can support both those who are working themselves into exhaustion, and, even more, those whose lives are most deeply affected by what is happening.

Lord God, I don’t have much to give at the present time. But such as I have I offer to you. Please take it, sanctify it, multiply it and use it, and to you be all the glory. Amen.

The defeat of death (2)

To me, to live is Christ, to die is gain… Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two; I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far, but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Philippians 1:21-24

It’s always good to get feedback on a post I have written. (There’s a hint there, by the way.) So thanks especially today to Bill Jones, who had something to say about Paul’s desire to “depart and be with Christ” which I recently commented on. (I published that on May 5, if you’re interested in looking back.)

I had said how humbled I always felt on reading Paul’s words, because they are so far removed from how I feel. I want to go on living, thank you very much! Death doesn’t appeal in the least. So Paul’s preference for death made me feel how very unspiritual I must be, how lacking in real love for Jesus and in real faith in the joys of eternal life.

But Bill points out that there could be a much less “spiritual” reason for his readiness to die: namely, that he had simply reached a point in his life when he was “ready to go”.

This reminded me of a really old lady I used to visit many years ago. She was confined to her home, broken down in body, and often in pain. But her faith continued to burn brightly, and every time we prayed she would say, “Oh Colin, please ask the Lord would take me!” Which, of course, I did – and which, of course, he did. (It was nice to be able to pray a prayer where you could be sure of a fairly prompt answer!)

For some thirty years Paul had been burning himself out in his service for Jesus. As I said last time, he had experienced a massive battering, both physically (beatings, floggings, imprisonments and more) and psychologically (not least his “concern for all the churches”, 2 Corinthians 11:28). So what could be more natural than that, as he got old, he should be feeling that perhaps the time had come – and that he was well ready to welcome it?

(Bill’s comments also reminded me that we shouldn’t turn people into “super-saints” – even the great characters we meet in the Bible like Paul. No: even the finest Christians are also weak and flawed human beings, probably far more like the rest of us than we realise.

In practical terms this might apply to us when it comes to big-name writers or preachers who mean a lot to us. Putting it simply: don’t put them on a pedestal! – very possibly the day will come when you feel disappointed and disillusioned with them.)

Of course, the New Testament is full of the hope of resurrection and the certainty of eternal life. But that doesn’t mean that the first Christians viewed death in a shallow or unrealistic way. No; it was still an “enemy”, as Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 15, and therefore unwelcome under most circumstances. Two New Testament examples make this clear.

First, think of Stephen. He was the first Jesus-follower (the word “Christian” hadn’t yet been coined) to die. He was murdered by a mob of religious zealots (Acts 6:8-8:3), and Luke tells us that “godly men buried him and mourned deeply for him”.

We don’t know if Stephen was young or old, married or single, a father or childless. And we can’t help but wonder what great things he might have accomplished for God if he had lived for another twenty years – an equal to Peter, Paul and the rest, perhaps? But whatever, the certainty of life beyond the grave didn’t take away from the sadness of premature and cruel death. There was no forced jollity, no shallow rejoicing, certainly no “brave” refusal to grieve; but a proper dignity and recognition of “the last enemy”.

And then, of course, there’s Epaphroditus. (What do you mean, Who’s Epaphroditus?) In the very same letter in which Paul has expressed his readiness to die, we meet a man who didn’t die, but whose recovery from dire illness is described by Paul as a “mercy”: Epaphroditus “was ill, and almost died. But God had mercy on him…” (Philippians 2:27).

And you think to yourself, “Hang on a minute, Paul – one minute you are speaking of dying as a ‘gain’, as being ‘better by far’ than living, and now here you are talking of not dying as a mercy from God! You can’t have it both ways!”

Is Paul contradicting himself? Not at all. He was under no illusions about the sadness and trauma of death, and he was simply happy that Epaphroditus and the church in Philippi were spared that. So while in chapter one it’s perfectly natural to rejoice at the prospect of death, in chapter two it’s equally natural to rejoice at deliverance from death.

The Bible (this shouldn’t surprise us) is giving us a perfect balance. We shrink from death: that’s entirely natural and right. But by faith we also welcome death: that’s a gift of God’s grace.

How do we maintain that balance until our last day on earth? – ah, that is something for which we must quietly pray to our loving Father in heaven.

Lord Jesus, you passed through the sadness and sorrow of death. But then you triumphantly left it behind you as a defeated enemy. As I hold your hand by faith, help me to know that that is my destiny also. Amen.

Thinking about character

We boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope… Romans 5:3-4

What does the word “character” mean?

We might say of someone “He’s a right character, isn’t he?”, implying that the person in question is someone we sort-of admire but perhaps don’t entirely approve of. But the Bible is much more positive about the word.

Paul uses it at the start of Romans 5. He is teaching that while, of course, we can glory in our status in Christ – it’s wonderful to be a forgiven sinner! – we can even “glory in our sufferings”. Why? Because suffering ultimately can do us good. And he opens up a little chain reaction about how this works: “…suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope…”

He obviously thinks of “character” as a positive thing. So back to the question: what does “character” mean for us as Christians?

The Greek word Paul uses is one found elsewhere in his letters, but which, apparently, is unknown in earlier writings. It conjures up the idea of testing, as in our expression “tried and tested”. It suggests metal that has been purified in the furnace, like coins that are “sterling”. Rock solid, dependable, reliable… that’s what people are like who have developed “character” through their life experiences.

The Bible has much to say about character. Let me offer, first, a pen-picture of such a person, and then two individuals, one female, one male, who I think demonstrate it.

The pen-picture is in Psalm 15. Here are verses 2-5: he or she is “the one whose way of life is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from their heart; whose tongue utters no slander, who does no wrong to a neighbour, and casts no slur on others; who despises a vile person but honours those who fear the Lord; who keeps an oath even when it hurts, and does not change their mind; who lends money to the poor without interest; who does not accept a bribe against the innocent”.

I find especially striking that bit about “keeping an oath even when it hurts”. Yes! You’ve agreed, say, to sell your house for a particular price, when along comes someone with a better offer. But you’ve given your word, so, sorry, that’s that.

It’s all about honesty, integrity and virtue (to use an old-fashioned word) – qualities which seem to be sadly rare in our me-first, look-after-number-one world, a world where we hardly bat an eyelid when we know we are being fed lies and half-truths and that statistics are being manipulated.

God give us that kind of character!

We meet my female example in Proverbs 31:10-31. In the NIV Bible this section is headed “the wife of noble character”, but while these verses are directed specifically at women, it doesn’t need a lot of imagination for us men also to think ourselves into its words.

The passage is too long to quote in detail, but in essence it’s about discipline, reliability, care for others, honest hard work – in short, about nobility (there’s another old-fashioned word!) of character.

We shouldn’t miss that “she opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy” (verse 20), and that “she speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue” (verse 26). She is indeed “a woman who fears the Lord” (verse 30).

A “home-maker”? Yes, and she has no problems with that. But she is also far, far more! – wife, business-woman, teacher, crafts-woman… (I find myself thinking of Lydia, from Acts 16.)

My male example is Barnabas, whom we meet frequently in Acts.

If you aren’t able to read the whole of Acts, I suggest just soak your mind in chapters 9-15, where his partnership with Saul/Paul is described in some detail…

It was he who gave sacrificially to God’s work (4:35-36); he who believed in the newly converted Saul when everyone else kept their distance (9:26-27); he who mentored Saul as a budding teacher (11:25-6); he who was entrusted by the church leaders in Antioch with big financial responsibility (11:29-30); he who was chosen by God to be the leader of the first missionary party (13:1-3); he who was humble enough later to recognise Saul’s (now Paul’s) greater gifts of leadership and to take second place to him…

All right, it was also he who had a serious falling-out with Paul, and who at one point rather lost his way. But that simply makes him very human, like the rest of us.

Anyway, it’s no accident that the apostles gave him a nick-name – no longer Joseph, but “Barnabas” or “Son of encouragement”. Yes; people with tried and tested “character” take encouragement with them wherever they go.

Our grubby, soiled world badly needs men and women of true character. I wonder if it sees them in people like you and me? Our truest example is, of course, Jesus himself – that goes without saying. But we can thank God too for the kind of men and women I’ve focussed on here – the man of rock-solid integrity in Psalm 15, the woman “of noble character” in Proverbs 31 – and dear, generous, humble, hard-working, dependable, warm-hearted Barnabas.

Lord God, thank you that both in the Bible, in church history, and in our own lives we meet people who have Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled characters. Please mould me into such a person – even at the cost of suffering and hardship. Amen.

The defeat of death

To me, to live is Christ, to die is gain… Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two; I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far, but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Philippians 1:21-24

A voice in my head said, “This really isn’t a time to talk about death! What with this coronavirus business going on, aren’t people depressed enough already?” But another voice said, “No! This is just the time to talk about death! And if we’re Christians it needn’t be – indeed, it shouldn’t be – depressing!”

I decided that that second voice was the one to obey. So here we are…

The vital point can be summed up in a simple seven-word sentence: The Christian can only gain by dying. And another short phrase sums up the nature of the Bible’s teaching on death: totally realistic – and wonderfully hopeful.

If you read your way through Acts in the New Testament you soon discover that the first followers of Jesus had anything but an easy time. That included the apostle Paul. At various times he was beaten, stoned, flogged, imprisoned and nearly drowned. Both his body and his spirit took a vicious battering over the years. Even in the most fruitful periods of his ministry he knew that death could claim him at any time.

When he wrote to his Christian friends in Philippi he was “in chains for Christ” (1:13-14). And he really didn’t know what the future would bring. As he puzzles over his situation, he settles for precisely (I suspect) the opposite of what most of us would. Where we would probably put on a brave face and say, “Well, of course, I’m not afraid of dying, but to be honest I’d quite like to stick around for a bit yet…”, he sees things just the other way.

He makes two remarkable statements. First, in verse 21: “To me to live is Christ and to die is gain…”. Those are words worth dwelling on. “To me to live is Christ…” In other words, “Jesus is my ultimate purpose and meaning in life. Knowing and serving him is what life is all about; ultimately, nothing else really matters…”

And then: “… and to die is gain”. Yes: as I said earlier, whatever the Christian may lose by dying, he or she can only gain in the long run.

The second statement, saying much the same thing in different words, comes in verse 23: “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far”. As if to say: “If you ask me my preference, there’s really no choice! Of course I’d prefer death, because that means being with Christ, and that’s better by a long way…” Eternal life with Jesus is infinitely preferable to anything this earthly life has to offer.

Whenever I read these tremendous statements of faith I feel inadequate. I realise how strongly attached I am to this here-and-now life. And I find myself wondering, “Do I really love Jesus at all? And, Am I really confident about what awaits me beyond death?” Perhaps you feel much the same.

In many ways, of course, our attachment to this life is perfectly understandable – perhaps Paul himself would have felt slightly differently if, say, he had been younger and less buffeted by life, or if he had had a wife and family to think about.

I don’t say that in order to excuse ourselves; I’m just being realistic.

Our problem is this: what we have now seems so much more real, so much more concrete, than what awaits us when we go “to be with Christ” – which can seem terribly vague. This is specially so if our lives are largely enjoyable – if, for example, you are fairly fit and well, if you are comfortably off materially, and if your life is full of things you find rewarding, whether it be loving family ties, a knowledge of some fascinating subject, a particular skill or gift, or just an enthusiasm for your football team.

Why would anybody find it easy to say goodbye to such things? I’m sure God understands that, so let’s not feel too guilty.

But that doesn’t alter the fact that we are called to have a firm focus on the eternal future that awaits us. In the next letter, the one to the church in Colossae, Paul writes: “Since then you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God… “ (Colossians 3:1).

All right, we may find it hard to reach the same level of confidence as Paul, but we can certainly pray to become more heaven-focussed, to know what it means to “set our hearts on things above”.

Let me finish by stating something very obvious… When Paul talks about “departing to be with Christ”, he is making an assumption: that Christ is alive and not dead.

Let’s never forget that the whole of Christian faith rests on the conviction that Jesus died and rose again. No resurrection equals no Christianity. What happened that first Easter morning is not just an item of “doctrine” or an article in the creed but a wonderful historical fact.

He rose; and so will we!

Dear Father in heaven, thank you for all that is good, beautiful and enjoyable in this earthly life, and for the many things that mean so much to me. Please help me to live life to the very full, but also to be ready for that day when I will be taken to be with Christ. Amen.