Tag: gospel

Justice and amazing grace

Some people get confused about God’s nature: they think that God is “only love” – as if that one divine attribute is so glorious that it says all there is to say about God. Others, however, are gripped by “the fear of the Lord” and apprehend that God is a cruel judge who is out to condemn them to hell. What is right?

All God’s various attributes (and there are as many as 25) cohere in Him in absolute harmony; he is in no way divided against himself. All the attributes that describe him are his in perfection, and all he does honours all the many facets of his glorious divine character.

So when he contemplates us, sinful human beings, he looks on us both with justice and with love. His love desires our true happiness; his wisdom knows how to procure that happiness while respecting our freedom. He wants to win our love by demonstrating his great love for us. 

But equally he looks on us assessing the real seriousness of our sin, our disobedience to his will, our indifference to his love and our many transgressions of his holy law. Our sinful conduct incurs his righteous condemnation. He is a God of justice and that means he punishes disobedience to his commandments. Indeed, he expresses not only his calm, objective condemnation; he is stirred to righteous – but well-controlled – anger by our wilful disobedience.

These two aspects of his nature appear to be in conflict; but in his infinite wisdom, God knows how to show mercy in harmony with his justice.

Exactly 250 years ago, John Newton, who had been a worthless and wicked slave trader before his radical conversion in a storm at sea, penned the much loved hymn, “Amazing grace”. He had certainly deserved God’s judgment by his foul lifestyle on the high seas for many years. He admits he was a “wretch”. But – ah, the grace of God reached him, saved him, changed him into a saintly wise old preacher and hymn-writer, a much respected church leader and an inspiring spokesman of the movement that brought an end to slavery in Britain.

What then is this amazing grace of God that can save a wretch like Newton? It is a glorious theme in the Bible: it means that God is so loving, he is even kind to his enemies – to wicked, hell-deserving sinners – to the extent that he sets in motion a grandiose plan of salvation whereby those sinners, living in rebellion against God and flouting his law, can be brought to an enduring and radical change of life and inherit eternal life. Newton testified, “Grace… saved a wretch like me”. He once was lost, far from God, a blaspheming immoral sailor; but God found him and drew him into his loving arms and transformed his whole existence.

Grace means that even when we think we’ve sinned away all chances of mercy and forgiveness, and however heinous our sins may have been, there is still hope that God is willing to receive us back with love. Indeed, he has gone before us and done all that is necessary to allow him – in a way that fully respects an honours the requirements of his justice – to pardon sinners such as me and you.  

How he does that is the most wonderful news the world has ever heard!

Clive Every-Clayton

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The character of God

A man of God once wrote that what enters into a person’s mind when they think of God is the most important thing about them. What comes to your mind when you think of God? What kind of character do you think he has?

I’ve written about his goodness and his kindness and his love, but maybe when you think of God, you would not normally think of those attributes; perhaps you think God is all about condemning people – a God of judgment. We really need wisdom and balance here. Twice the Bible says, “God is love”. But twice it also says, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord”.

An aspect of God’s goodness is his holiness: his very nature upholds truth, purity, justice, as well as kindness and absolute goodness. His will, expressed in his precepts, defines what holiness is for us, his creatures.

One of the most mind-bogglingly profound pieces of writing ever penned, in my opinion, is the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel, where we have God the Son speaking in prayer to God the Father. I ask myself, who could ever have invented such a conversation? What mere mortal mind could conceive the deep concepts that are shared within the Godhead? John and the disciples eavesdropped on this astounding conversation where Jesus prays for the fulfilment of his mission to the world. Read it and ponder!

Jesus declared that he knows the Father (John 8.54-55). In that prayer, Jesus uses two striking adjectives in addressing his Father: “Holy Father” (v11) and “Righteous Father” (v25). Jesus knows, and teaches, the holiness and righteousness – or justice – of God. Elsewhere he teaches God’s goodness and love, of course, but these two attributes are also essential to God’s perfect nature. Together they guarantee that all that is done in God’s creation will ultimately demonstrate the justice and perfection of God’s will.

We don’t often think of holiness. I have just sent to the publishers a book on the subject, because I believe it is not only a fundamentally important aspect of God’s nature, but we human beings are supposed to be holy, as image-bearers of God. My book is in French, but the title translates as “The holier you are, the happier you are” – and I really believe that is true, because that is what the Bible teaches. To be holy is in our best interests!

God wants his moral creatures to share his passion for holiness. It is thus that we will be most like him, as creatures made originally in his image. And it is thus that we will find the greatest fulfilment. 

I have said that fulfilment comes from a harmonious, loving relationship with God. For that to come about, we need to be on the same wavelength as God, on this issue of holiness. Our human problem – what hinders our true fulfilment – is that we are not holy; we are sinful.

Now “sin” is another word that deserves clearer thinking, because, unlike the more general term “evil”, sin is defined in relation to God and his will enshrined in the Bible’s commandments: “Through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3.20). Indeed, “sin is lawlessness” or, “the transgression of God’s law” (1 John 3.4). 

The glory of the Christian gospel is that it brings an answer to our human sin problem – a remedy not merely in theory but in our personal experience.  I’m eager to share that with you.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Why life’s meaning is elusive

I have sought to show that Jesus, affirming and demonstrating that he had come into the world from God his Father, is the key to getting authentic God-given answers to our essential questions about life, the universe, God, human fulfilment – and everything. 

I have shared, on that basis, that a harmonious relationship with our Maker is the key to the true purpose of our existence as persons made in his likeness – and this is the way to true human fulfilment because God loves us very much.

But why is this life-purpose so elusive? Why do so few people enjoy a loving relationship with God? Why do so few seem to show it in their lives?

Well, I have broached the subject of good and evil, and therein lies the problem. How can a good and holy God show his love for people whose lives are attached to their self-centred, godless, evil ways? Or rather, how can we, shameful transgressors of God’s commandments, ever reach any kind of agreement or connection with a pure and holy God? We intuitively realise there is a barrier obstructing that relationship, so it is not friendly as it should be, but rather fraught, anguished, fearful – if there is a relationship at all.

If only we could approach God knowing that he longs to put his loving arms around us and welcome us into his intimacy! We may sometimes hunger for such divine love, but at the same time we realise he must disapprove of us; so we prefer to keep God at a distance; we don’t want him to disturb us. This is the practical outworking of the sin principle within human nature since the Fall. 

Somehow this barrier must be overcome if we are to find true fulfilment; but how? Can we work our way into God’s good graces? Can we earn his friendship by our religious practice? Many have tried in the various religions of the world, and would like to think they are doing well. However, we cannot buy God’s forgiveness by doing good. Although many nourish that hope, it is ultimately of no avail.

Why is God so hard to find? Why does our search for fulfilment turn out to be so frustratingly elusive? Because there is only one way for the barrier to be broken down, and it is not something we can do “from our side”. The initiative comes from the God who loves us very much. 

We must realise that God is extraordinarily good and kind! His generous love is called “grace”: it’s the lovingkindness he shows to undeserving sinners. “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1. 17). This is what Jesus brought at the cost of his life; it is only his coming and death for us that provides the way to remove the barrier that sin makes between us and God. 

So Jesus said, “I am the way… No one comes to the Father except by me” (John 14.6). That is the only way. Jesus says that if we try to find God’s life-fulfilling purpose without trusting him, we will never attain it! We must turn to him; he is the Saviour we need. Through him we can find forgiveness and enter into life which is truly fulfilling.

How grateful we should be that the insoluble human dilemma has an authentic, valid, real, effective answer! “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,” says Jesus, “and”, he promises, “I will give you rest” (Matthew 11.28).  

Clive Every-Clayton

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Good and evil

Everyone agrees that a nurse who kills seven babies under her care in a hospital is guilty of horrible evil. Other examples of evil come readily to mind. Evil is real. But so is good. We all know some really good people, like the kind, reassuring and efficient nurses that have been taking care of me these last few days. 

Everyone knows the difference between good and evil; our conscience gives us this moral intuition. But when we complain about the wrong someone has done to us, they do not necessarily agree that what they did was wrong. They have a moral code different from ours. Indeed, with the rise of moral relativism, many think that what was considered immoral 50 years ago is perfectly okay now. Who is to say what’s right? Do good and evil alter over time? Can the individual just decide for himself? Are there no objective standards? 

The problem with moral relativism is that it tends to favour the easiest, most lax moral code for oneself – though one may have harsher standards when judging others! When a society as a whole has only relative standards to guide it, the tendency is therefore towards greater permissiveness. And if it continues unchecked, moral chaos will result. 

Neither atheism, nor science is able to move in and alter that downward trajectory. Moral reformers are generally religious people. In their efforts to uphold higher moral standards, they invoke God. It takes a prophetic voice to bring spiritual revival and ethical improvement. 

People in our generation in the West who enjoy the liberalising effects on moral values don’t want to listen to the challenge of Christian morality. But that is what is needed to stop the rot of a society where statistics show, in so many areas, the detrimental effects of liberalising moral norms.

We need both moral light and moral authority: God alone provides both. Whether we like it or not, we must face the fact that we are created by a good God to have an inner sense of good and evil. We have a God-given conscience that makes us understand that we ought to do good, and turn away from evil. Wisdom dictates that we listen to what God has to say in the area of good living.

It is a striking fact that Jesus’ first public preaching, recorded in Mark 1.15, is his call to “repent”. To repent means to rethink one’s moral situation, and to turn away from what is wrong. Or as Jesus also said, “Sin no more” (John 5.14). The call of the Christian gospel comes as a challenge to change one’s life-style, to commit to a better, purer, kinder and more righteous way of life, as Jesus defines it. The Gospel is much more than that – it centres on Jesus who, out of loving kindness towards us wayward sinners, came to give his life for us so that we might be forgiven. But the gracious offer of forgiveness is promised to those who repent and believe in Jesus as Saviour and Lord. Maybe that’s something you need to do? Think about it. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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Only God is good

To say that God is good is fairly commonplace: if there is a God, most people would agree, he ought to be good. But Jesus had a different angle on this. This is his riposte to someone who called him “good Master”: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Luke 18.18-19). No one is good! Only God is!

This is a profound insight, and a vital clue to answering many of our ethical questions. The first important thing Jesus teaches here is that no-one is good. On two occasions in his teaching, speaking to a perfectly ordinary group of listeners, he refers to them as “evil”. In his famous “Sermon on the Mount”, for example, he says, “If you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7.11 and again in Luke 11.13).

These words communicate two truths: first, that people are essentially classified by God as “evil”; yet, they are also capable of doing good, like giving good things to their kids. What may seem shocking to us, however, is Jesus’ insistence that “no one is good” in the absolute sense – or as the Bible teaches elsewhere, “There is no-one righteous, not even one… for all have sinned” (Romans 3.10, 23).

The second thing taught by Jesus is that God is good – indeed, he alone is good. Now these two fundamental truths revealed about both God and humans form the foundation enabling us to get clarity on issues relating to morality.

We all face moral questions every day: what should I do? What is right or wrong here? How am I to decide? According to my family tradition? According to the majority opinion? By the light of my conscience? One’s conscience needs a reference for its judgment, and that reference can vary – it is not stable.

“Only God is good”: here, then, Jesus would say, is the only proper source for understanding what is good and what is evil. This is a service that “only God” can render to humanity – for we are all tainted with evil to some degree, and therefore disqualified to pontificate on moral truth. God alone – who is our Maker, after all – is wise and good enough to inform us correctly about how his creatures are to be good.

And God has rendered us this service – beginning by laying down the famous Ten Commandments which he gave to Moses for his people to obey. Jesus reinforced those commandments and Christians hold to them as defining right human behaviour. To disobey them is wrong. So adultery, theft and murder, for example, are wrong, as are coveting (lust), perjury (lying), and putting other things as “gods” in the place of God himself. These are the minimum basics for truly good human living. And Jesus fills out the very demanding “spirit” of these commandments in his Sermon on the Mount. Have you ever read it? It is revolutionary! You will find it in Matthew’s Gospel, chapters 5 to 7.

There’s more to say on our need for moral guidance, but the key is – God is good, and it is he who can (and does) tell us. And it is to him, after all, that we are answerable. If this highlights the very real problem of our misdeeds, we need to hear – and can know – that God forgives. That’ll be for another blog post.

Clive Every-Clayton

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God’s love and human freedom

Another difficult question needs to be answered as we grapple with the sad fact that God’s supreme creature has become so perverted as to displease his Creator: why didn’t God prevent the Fall from happening? Was it wise to allow the first man the freedom to sin?

Well, what was the alternative? To create a robot? God is perfectly capable of creating parts of the world that act mechanically; but he is personal, he is a lover. He created little persons in his image to be able to enjoy personal relationships. Human beings are not automatons: Professor of psychiatry Glynn Harrison informs us: “Human beings are fundamentally lovers”. We are so gloriously constituted that not only can we delight in relationships with other people – we can also have a personal relationship with God himself! 

But here’s the basic issue: love relationships must allow freedom. It’s part of the deep pleasure that love is mutual and consented freely. So God made Adam and Eve in his image, as persons with intelligence, emotions like love and a free will – the capacity to choose. And this included the very real possibility that they could choose – as indeed they did – to disobey God’s will. Yes, our freedom is that real!

But our freedom is not autonomy; we are never independent of God. Autonomy would mean that we are a law unto ourselves – we would make our “law” which would replace God’s law. This was the essence of Adam and Eve’s sin. The law we would choose for ourselves is not the best – we are not as wise as God in our ethical choices. God as Creator has supreme authority in the universe: he remains in ultimate control and we remain answerable to him. He has the right to impose his wise and best will on us, demanding our obedience for our highest good. And he has the ultimate right to exercise just judgment and also to inflict final punishment where it is deserved.

So our human free will is grounded on the fact that we are true persons, made with a view to enjoying a loving, warm relationship with God.

But did not God foresee that mankind would rebel? Yes, he surely did. So why did he still go ahead with it? Here we are in the profound depths of God’s unfathomable infinite wisdom: God’s design was to reveal to humankind the most mind-boggling aspect of his glorious love for us. The technical word for this amazing love is “grace”, which has the meaning “God’s undeserved loving-kindness and favour” – shown not merely to the undeserving, but to the hell-deserving! 

When Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount that we should “love our enemies”, he said that if we did we would be like his heavenly Father who is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. What an amazing concept! In other words, God loves even his enemies. So the Bible encourages believers by telling us that “while we were God’s enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son”. And again, “God proves his love towards us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5.8, 10). The immensity of God’s love is revealed in that he cares deeply even for those who live in rebellion against him; it is also revealed in the greatness of the sacrifice he made to show the fullness of his love. Before Jesus died, he said, “Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15.13).

It is as we take in the full wonder of His love revealed in the Cross, that we are overwhelmed by his amazing grace and can gladly accept his offer of pardon and reconciliation and begin to love him in return.

And thus we enter into the purpose for which we were created!

Clive Every-Clayton

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God loves you very much

We may not be keen on loving God, but we should know that he loves us very much. His love is of immense, eternal proportions! There was love in the heart of God before he began creation: Jesus prays to his Father, “You loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17.24). That is mind-blowing!

Before creation began, God had foreseen his plan of action, to create persons able to love each other and to love him, and one day he would reveal to them the greatness of his love for them. His love is all the more powerful in that he allowed us humans to live in potential rebellion against him, and indeed, we humans are not, in general, passionate about loving God. But despite our indifference, going our own way instead of His, he has persisted in drawing people out of their inner reticence into his arms of love.

So he demonstrated his immense love in a mind-boggling manifestation. He came into the world like an ‘undercover boss’ by sending his Son, Jesus. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way,” says the Bible, but Jesus came as the Good Shepherd, seeking the sheep that was lost.

Let’s face it, we’ve all wandered far from God in thoughtless disinterest in doing his will, and so by our disobedience we have incurred his displeasure. He would be quite entitled to cast us away, to pay no attention to us, even to visit righteous judgment upon us. But when he came in Jesus, he did not come to demand we pay for our sins – no! the marvel is that he came to pay for our sins! That’s what Jesus’ death on the cross was all about. The Good Shepherd gave his life for us, the wayward sheep!

“God demonstrates his own love for us in this” – says the Bible – “in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”. We didn’t have to clean up our act before God loved us – we were, in his verdict, “sinners”. We were guilty, we deserved righteous judgment; but Jesus – who never ever sinned – interposed and bore our sin in his body on the cross, suffering the horror of punishment that should have fallen on the guilty. “He died, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3.18). “This is how God showed his love to us”, says the Bible (1 John 4.9-10) “He sent his only Son into the world… not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins”. 

It’s maybe hard to grasp, but an atonement was needed because of the demands of justice. Since God is absolutely just, he cannot grant pardon to all the guilty people in the world – that would be a supreme injustice. Yet he desires to forgive and receive us into a warm loving relationship. How could he do it while yet upholding the demands of his justice? By himself providing the atoning sacrifice, whereby his Son, truly man but also truly divine, accepted out of love to come and bear – on the Cross – the full penalty of our many sins. His death for us is the most loving event ever, in the entire history of the world. 

And he did it for you, because he loves you that much.

Clive Every-Clayton

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God loves

Love puts a spring in your step, a smile on your face and joy in your heart. What happiness to love and to be loved! That’s because we were made for love. But therefore how sad is the experience of those who are not loved, or whose love relationship has ended in acrimony… There is deep pain in feeling unloved – because we were made for love, not for disputes and hatred.

The good news is that God loves you. This is no mere religious fantasy, not just a heart-warming ideal that we are pleased to entertain: if that is all it is, we would be indulging in a religious illusion. Humans cannot invent a God of love. The real issue is not what we desire, but what God is objectively like. The Judeo-Christian God alone, in all the religions of the world, presents himself to us as a God who loves us dearly. Jesus, God incarnate, told us not only that God is there and that he is our Creator: he brought the astonishing revelation that God loves us. 

But what is love? Impossible fully to define, we may consider it as delight in the other, as emotional attachment, deep friendship, harmony and mutual understanding, caring and helping… On the human level, love is seen in seeking the good of the other, and acting on that love, even at extreme personal cost. All this – and more – applies to God’s love for his creatures: he seeks our highest good; he wants to be our friend and he desires that we come to know his love and enter into a warm loving relationship with him.

The one who loves longs for the other to respond in love; and so it is with God. That’s why Jesus insisted that the first commandment – which is God’s foremost desire for us his beloved creatures – is to “love the Lord you God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12.30). Such total love cannot just be demanded, however; it must be won. And God has taken steps to demonstrate his immense love for you in such a way as to win your total love in return. In other words, God loves you with a love so strong, faithful, immense and kind, that he considers your response to loving him with all you have as the only fitting response.

One of Jesus’ apostles wrote, “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4.19). God takes the initiative in love. He “proved his love toward us” says the apostle Paul (Romans 5.8). Why does no other religion teach that God is love? Because they cannot show any proof of God having shown great love. In Christianity this is unique: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3.16). “This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4.10). Christians therefore see in Jesus’ self-giving sacrifice the supreme demonstration of God’s love for them. 

This needs to be developed in order to be understood; the one who has not grasped this yet has a glorious enlightenment in store!

Clive Every-Clayton

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Divine prerogatives

For some people the idea of God as Creator represents a specific problem: they do not like the idea because they realise that God would logically have the right to command their obedience. There are three things to say to such people, and the first is, that we are not dealing with simple philosophical ideas here. The witness of Jesus and all the biblical prophets, the findings of science as it has revealed how fine-tuned our universe is, and the deep intuition in the human heart combine to tell us there is a Creator behind this amazing world we inhabit. Chance does not do things so extraordinarily well! I have sought to show this in previous posts.

The second thing follows from the first: whether we like it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, we have been created by an almighty, wise and loving God. Once we are persuaded that Jesus came from God, his teaching is clear: God is our Creator. The subtle reason many people strive against Christianity is because there is that in our nature which does not like being obliged to obey a higher power. To those who share this viewpoint I would say, I understand, for I have been there. It was realising how greatly God loves me that enabled me to bow the knee to his lordship over my life, and that would be my advice – study how much God loves you. I plan to deal with this in an upcoming post.

Thirdly, we should get it into our heads that we, God’s creatures, are obligatorily in some kind of relationship with God: it is either a warm friendly relationship or a fraught distant relationship. He is there, and he knows us through and through, even though we deny him and don’t want him to be there! Wisdom dictates that we make peace with God, that our relationship is positive. That is what God wants, and that is what is best for us.

We do need to clarify, however, what God’s prerogatives are as the Creator of all things. If he is over us, we are necessarily under him – under his all-seeing eye and subject to his ultimate judgment on the way we conduct ourselves. For though God did create us with the freedom to reject him and disobey his will, he did not put us in a context where we could rebel with impunity. We are responsible beings, and our Creator does hold us answerable for our conduct.

Furthermore, it is God’s prerogative to tell us what is true. If we reject God, we reject the source of the very truth we need to answer our existential questions. There is no other source of absolute truth to which we can turn for such answers! We need both humility and wisdom to listen carefully to what God has said to us, through Jesus and in his word, the Bible. 

In particular, God’s word not only indicates general truth about our relationship to God, but also, as our Creator, he gives us moral truth – clear indications of his will for us. He is wise, loving and holy: his commands are wise, indicating what is really best for us. As he is loving, he seeks our true happiness, and his commandments are good and right. Indeed, our Creator defines what is good – as no-one else in the universe can. Believe it – he really does want the very best for you!

Clive Every-Clayton

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Christ the perfect image

More than once the New Testament tells us that Christ Jesus is “the image of God”. While humans at the beginning were created “in the image of God”, Jesus is said to be the image of God. He reflects God’s reality perfectly because not only was he a holy man, and like God in his holiness, but he was the “I am” in person – God himself come among us in human form. As such, we may ask how he fulfilled the role that we humans should fulfil as being God’s image in the world. He reflected God’s nature so perfectly that he said, “Whoever sees me, sees him who sent me” (John 12.45), and “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14.9). Jesus shows us what God is like.

What was Jesus’ purpose? He told us plainly: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (John 6.38). Using figurative language he said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4.34). He did this so well that he could testify, “I love the Father” (John 14.31), and “I do always what is pleasing to him” ( i.e. pleasing to the Father, John 8.29).  Jesus was lovingly totally obedient to the will of God, his Father. That is the very definition of holiness.

But Jesus fleshed out what that will of his Father involved, particularly in two main services that he rendered to humankind.

The first, he stated to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who was judging him: “For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth” (John 18.37). In another passage, he refers to himself as “a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God” (John 8.40). Elsewhere he affirms, “What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me” (John 12.50). It is because of these affirmations that I have been insisting that we may know truth to answer our essential questions, since Jesus brought us truth from God. We need truth and God sent it to us through Jesus.

The second vital service, that Jesus was sent by God the Father to accomplish for us, is formulated in complementary ways by Jesus: “The Son of Man [Jesus himself] came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19.10). This was the supreme role that Jesus was sent to fulfil: we were lost, and he came to save us. How he did this deserves a fuller elaboration than I can give this time, but Jesus himself made it clear when he said, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10.45). Jesus’ mission was to “give his life”; he repeats this when having just said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”, he adds: “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life… I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10.11, 17-18). 

In other words, Jesus came from the Father into the world seeking to save the lost, and in order to do so, he was to give his life as a ransom. This is the deep meaning of Jesus’ death, which I hope to develop in subsequent blog posts. It is of the very essence of Jesus’ divine mission of salvation. And it was vitally necessary in order for us to find true life, to find God, and to find God’s forgiveness. 

Jesus could pray to his Father at the end of his life: “I have glorified you on the earth, having finished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17.4). Mission accomplished!

Clive Every-Clayton

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