A Paradigm for Understanding the Relationship Between Grace and Works

James Jordan comments on the relationship between God's grace and our labour as illustrated in the life of Jacob.

Just as he was about to cross over into the Promised Land, a "man" met Jacob and wrestled with him all night (Gen. 32:22-30). It was the Angel of the LORD, God Himself, Who wrestled with Jacob. Amazingly, Jacob "won" the fight, although we realize that it was a victory in grace, not in works. This passage is explained by Jesus Christ when He tells us that the Kingdom of God is open, and all men strive violently to enter it (Matt. 11:12, Luke 16:16). All his life, Jacob had desired to inherit the Covenant, and had wrestled to obtain this blessing. God approved of his actions. It had been God Who had set up the roadblocks in Jacob's way, to test and improve his character, but it had also been God who gave Jacob the grace and the will to persevere.

Then God crippled Jacob as a reminder that when we wrestle with God for His blessing, it is not our might that prevails, but His grace. Then we read, “Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Penuel." Just as Jacob crossed the boundary into the land of promise, the sun rose. We can see him limping across the boundary, and the sun bursting up in its might behind him, a sign of the strength of God's people... who wrestle with God and prevail by His strength, scattering His enemies.

New Year's Eve Watchnight Meeting

As per Sean's post, we plan to host a New Year's Eve watchnight meeting at the church offices from 11pm on 31st December 2013 to 12:30am on 1 January 2014.

It will be a mix of Bible meditation, prayer and sung worship, loosly based around the following themes:

• Why God gave us the gift of days, seasons and years: Why we are gathering this night.
• "The Lord Gives and Takes Away - Blessed be the name of the Lord:" Committing to God all that has been has been
• "On Earth as it is in Heaven:" Committing to God for all that is ahead.

A great way to welcome in the new year.

Keller on Bonhoeffer

Timothy Keller, writing in the forward to Eric Metaxas' biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer "Pastor Martyr, Prophet, Spy" says:

It is impossible to understand Bonhoeffer's Nachfolge [imitation (of Christ)] without becoming acquainted with the shocking capitulation of the German church to Hitler in the 1930s. How could the "church of Luther," that great teacher of the gospel, have ever come to such a place? The answer is that the true gospel, summed up by costly grace had been lost. On the one hand the church had become marked by formalism. That meant going to church and hearing that God just loves and forgives everyone so it doesn't matter much how you live. Bonhoeffer called this cheap grace. On the other hand, there was legalism, or salvation by law and good works....

Both of these impulses made it possible for Hitler to come to power. The formalists may have seen things that bothered them, but saw no need to sacrifice their safety in order to stand up to them. Legalists responded by having pharisaical attitudes toward other nations and races that approved of Hitler's policies. But as one, Germany lost hold of the brilliant balance of the gospel that Luther so persistently expounded - "We are saved by faith alone, but not by faith which is alone." That is we are saved, not by anything that we do, but by grace. Yet if we have truly understood and believed the gospel - it will change what we do and how we live.

By the time of Hitler's ascension, much of the church understood grace only as abstract acceptance - "God forgives; that's his job." But we know that true grace comes to us by costly sacrifice. And if God was willing to go to the cross and endure such pain and absorb such a cost in order to save us then we must live sacrificially as we serve others. Anyone who truly understands how God's grace comes to us, will have a changed life. That's the gospel, not salvation by law or by cheap grace, but by costly grace. Costly grace changes you from the inside out. Neither law nor cheap grace can do that.

RFC Bible School 2014

2014 will see us running our first ever formal Bible School. It's open to anyone at RFC who wants to know the WHOLE BIBLE better, but could never quite mobilise themselves to do it alone.

The nine session course will take place at the RFC Offices on the third Monday of the month (apart from April). We'll start each evening with a pizza buffet at 7pm followed by a lecture and seminar delivered by one of the Bible School teaching team and finish around 9:30pm.

Whilst we use words like "lecture" and we plan to cover a lot of material, we aim to pitch that material academically at GCSE / O-level standard.

There are no formal written assignments in this course, but anyone who wishes to write an essay or the like in order to consolidate / build on what they have learned is welcome to do so and will get feedback on it. Also, it goes without saying that the more personal time you can put in, the more you will get out.

The cost of the course is £70, the vast majority of which is to cover the cost of our food, drink and course handouts over the nine sessions. However, we don't want cost to stop anyone from attending, so if you would like to participate, but finances are tight, bursaries are available - more information on request from the church office.

Ideally we would like at least 20 people to sign up (it feels like a "proper" class size then), but will happily run it for whoever we get. Due to space issues, the maximum number we can take is 35.

Here is the course in outline...

20 January
Approaching the Bible
What do we mean when we say that the Bible is the inspired "Word of God"?

17 February
Coming to the Light
What is the central theme of the Bible?

17 March
Gospel Rhythm: From Darkness and Chaos to Light and Order
How does Genesis 1 set the scene for the rest of the Bible?

28 April (Fourth Monday)
Leviticus: The Gospel for "Little Children"
How do we make sense of the laws and rituals of Leviticus?

19 May
The Psalms: Gospel Songs for our Journey Through This Life
How should we read the Psalms?

16 June
The Prophets: God's Gracious Gospel Enforcers
Who were the prophets and how were they used by God?

15 September
The Gospels: Behold the God-Man
How do the Gospels shed new light for us about Jesus?

20 October
Acts: The Gospel goes Viral
How is the Gospel Planted into and lived out in Alien Cultures?

17 November
The Revelation: Not as Strange as You Think
How should we try to understand one of the most controversial letters ever written?

For more info, email me here.

To sign up or find out more about bursaries, email the church office here.

Bonhoeffer on Confession

In our day we are constantly trying to rid ourselves of sin and guilt, either by restitution to make it better, medication to take away the guilty feelings or redefinition so that we have no shame in the first place. However, in Life Together, Deitrich Boenhoeffer defines sin, or rather the knowledge of sin as a surprisingly liberating thing assuming it leads to confession before God. He says [note that when he wrote - 1930s, gender neutral language was not in vogue]:

Anybody who loves beneath the Cross and who has in the Cross of Jesus discerned the wickedness of all men and of his own heart will find that there is no sin that can ever be alien to him. Anyone who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sins of a brother. Looking at the Cross of Jesus, he knows the human heart. He knows how utterly lost it is in sin and weakness, how it goes astray in the ways of sin, and he also knows that it is accepted in grace and mercy. Only a brother under the Cross can hear a confession.

It is not experience of life, but experience of the Cross that makes one a worthy hearer of confessions. The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of men. And so it does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of the psychiatrist I can only be a sick man: in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him, here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who yearns for God's forgiveness and wants to confess. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ. It is not lack of psychological knowledge but lack of love for the crucified Jesus Christ that makes us so poor and inefficient at brotherly confession.

The Garden of the Heart

Found at: makethemostofyourgarden.com

Popular Western Culture has made the heart the fountain of all truth. There is evidence all around if you want to look for it.

The heart is a pump in both the emotional and biological senses. Biologically it pumps blood around the body - keeping us alive, and emotionally (sometimes seemingly from nowhere) it pumps out all kinds of desires and dreams that make up our emotional life and of which we have to try and make some kind of sense.

To put it another way, the heart is like a garden:

• Every garden's situation is unique - shape, size, soil make up, climate etc.
• Every heart is unique - DNA, environment, experiences etc

• Every garden, left to its own devices, will have elements of beauty e.g. wild flowers, but the overall picture is one of disorder.
• Every heart, left to its own desires will have elements of beauty - kindness etc, but the overall picture is one of disorder.

• Every garden, left to its own devices, will ultimately become chaotic and ugly.
• Every heart, left to its own desires will ultimately become chaotic and ugly - a black hole - sucking the life out of its surroundings.

• If you let your garden do its own thing, no one will congratulate you for what it brings forth.
• Yet somehow, in our culture, we expect to be congratulated for allowing our hearts to pump forth whatever it likes.

• Even well kept gardens need constant attention to ensure they remain so. Weeds appear of nowhere soon enough and choke the work already done.
• Well trained hearts need constant attention in the same way.

• To bring order to your unique garden, you need a gardener to show you step by step what to do so as to bring order out of chaos.
• To bring order to your unique heart, you need to the Holy Spirit of God to show you step by step how to bring forth a beautiful life of holiness (meaning a life that is looking to and looking more like Jesus Christ's).

Only in union with Christ does the diversity of the human heart finally find its highest purpose and expression.

“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?”

Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

John 14

A Twilight Plea...

Billy Graham is the most famous and influential modern evangelist America has produced. Here, his twilight plea to the nation is joined with music and testimony: