Tag: redemption

A love relationship with God?

God’s purpose and desire in creating people in his likeness is that we experience a harmonious relationship with him; this is the real purpose of life, ignored or disregarded by so many.

And this harmonious relationship should be one of love! God is love, and he made persons in his likeness that he could love and that could love him in return. But loving God seems bizarre: so many people deny his existence, avoid him, or even hate him. But since loving God is our raison d’être, those who miss out on that harmonious relationship end up truly frustrated. Indeed, those who spurn God’s loving presence wander aimless, lost, and confused – and their bad relationship with God is the source of their inner distress.

The Bible says that God loved us first: he is the one who desires a good relationship with us. Human sinners don’t want God to get close and personal, for God is holy, and we feel his disapproval. Yet he is kind to the unworthy creatures that we are and comes looking for us. “God so loved the world [therefore, you] that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish [in an aimless existence here and hell hereafter] but have eternal life”. He loves us so much he sent his Son to save us – at the cost of his horrendous suffering on the Cross; and he warmly invites sinners to be reconciled to him. When we are converted and start to follow Jesus, doing what he taught us, then God loves us in a further way; for Jesus said, “He who loves me will be loved of my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (John 14.23). God is glad to find hearts that open to his love and respond in loving obedience to him. He is pleased to find people in tune with his heart and purposes.

Jesus radically laid down the first of all God’s commandments: to “love the Lord your God with all you heart and… soul and… mind and… strength” (Mark 12.30). This is his main command, because he loves us and wants us to love him in return. In fact, “we love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4.19). He wins our love by granting us salvation by grace – undeserved love; our gratitude for being saved is the beginning of our love for God.

We are therefore called, by our conversion, to develop a love relationship with God, responding to his great love for us. To love God is to seek to please him. We find ways to show him we love him: we can cultivate closeness and intimacy with him in prayer, we can submit to his perfect will for our lives, we can depend on him for help, unite our hearts with his and seek to fulfil his purposes for our lives. It’s a whole new relationship to cultivate, with a loving Saviour who is ever close to us.

Then as we learn to love Jesus, we become more like him. Indeed, we learn to love our neighbour as well, showing others something of the love that has touched our hearts. Furthermore, Jesus even calls us to love those of our neighbours who we consider our enemies; loving them, says Jesus, will show them how God loves; for he loved us when we were either indifferent to him or rebellious against his will, living in sin. “As I have loved you,” said Jesus, “you are to love one another” (John 13.34).

Clive Every-Clayton

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Being “born again”?

“Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of heaven”, is Jesus’ categorical teaching. He insisted, “You must be born again” (John 3.3, 7). God operates this new spiritual birth, granting new life to people who turn in faith and repentance to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the indispensable doorway into the kingdom of God; and it happened to you if you believed.

Another verse in John’s Gospel (1.12-13) makes this clear: “To all who did receive [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born … of God”. To be born of God (not by human descent) makes you a child of God.

How is a person born again, born of God? What does this verse say? By “receiving the Lord Jesus and believing in his name”. Have you trusted in Jesus for your salvation? By that faith you were born again.

The apostle Peter picks up this idea in his first letter as he writes to encourage believers: “Blessed be God! … According to his great mercy he has caused us to be born again” (1 Peter 1.3). He encourages his readers further on in verse 23: “you have been born again… through the living and abiding word of God”. This verse fleshes out the image of being spiritually like a new-born baby, born however not by a human process, but “born of the Spirit” (John 3.8) through the “seed” of the word of God.

The concept of being “born again” means that as the Gospel is received by faith, so the Holy Spirit of God communicates new life to the believer.

When this happens to you, what are the consequences? There are at least two: a new life has begun for you; you have become a child of God.

Let’s consider the first of these. When a baby is born he or she receives physical, human life. When you as a believer are born again, you receive life of a different kind: it is spiritual life, called “eternal life” and also “abundant life” (John 10.10). It adds an extra dimension to the life that you lived up till now. As physical life starts out very small, so new life in Christ has humble beginnings. Some babies are born screaming, while others are calm. Even so, some new believers are so overwhelmed by their experience of God’s saving power that they are instantly transformed by God’s saving love. Others, also born again by faith in Christ, experience God’s presence more quietly, almost imperceptibly.

But as the new-born baby slowly grows, so the new-born-again believer is called upon to grow. Peter continues this theme: “Like new-born infants, [you should] long for the pure spiritual milk [the milk of God’s word], that by it you may grow up into salvation” (1 Peter 2.2). We will look again at the whole aspect of spiritual growth, but here, the key element that Peter underlines is God’s Word, the Bible. It was the seed of God’s Gospel that fell into the prepared ground of your heart and began to bring forth fruit in a new life; that life is nourished by reading, studying, and meditating on further truths revealed in God’s Word.

So the Holy Spirit communicates a fresh upsurge of holy life in newly born-again Christians, promoting spiritual growth as they read the Bible and apply it in their particular circumstances. 

The Christian life is not therefore just acquiring new religious practices: it is the uprising of new life that needs to be nourished and encouraged.

Clive Every-Clayton

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How to believe in Christ?

Whatever may have been your previous acquaintanceship with the person of Jesus, you have come, as it were, to hear his call, “Come, follow me”. Like those in the Gospels, you arose and followed him. It was a personal decision; you may not have understood too much about what it all involved, but you decided to open your heart and you asked Jesus to be your Saviour.

When out for climbing in some great mountains, it is indispensable to procure the services of a guide: the situation may prove perilous ahead. As you journey through life you may now have the services of Jesus, the only reliable Guide to human living at its best. You may trust him to lead you in the right path. There is no better Spiritual Master.

Jesus made numerous promises to those who would believe in him. That’s not simply to believe he existed, nor even to believe he was the Son of God, though these facts about him are foundational. Rather he was referring to a personal commitment between the believer and himself.

When I came to believe in Christ, the evangelist compared what I was about to do to the way a young couple get together. He said that the guy likes the girl and wants to get to know her over time, learning to love her, and desiring to enter a long-lasting relationship. “But,” he said to me, “the two are not married until they stand before the minister who asks them “Do you want to have this woman (or man) to be your lawfully wedded spouse?” In the same way, he said, Jesus says to you, “Do you want me to be your personal Lord and Saviour?” Then he asked me, “What do you want to say to him?” I acquiesced: I wanted to believe. Then he added, “Whenever anyone asks Jesus, ‘Do you want to accept this sinner as your disciple?’ He never says no!”

Maybe like me, you prayed that the Lord would “come into your heart” and save you. After I left the evangelist, I went for a walk, thinking that I had made an important decision that day. It was Easter Sunday afternoon, and I felt that as one “dead in trespasses and sins” I had now become alive in and with the risen Christ (Ephesians 2.5). 

So to “believe” in Jesus has that kind of meaning. He promised “eternal life” to those who believe in him (see John 3.16, 5.24, 6.47, 11.26). Eternal life is the gift of God; he gives it as we believe and receive Christ as Saviour and Lord, committing ourselves to him, to follow and obey as our new friend and Master. 

If I asked you, “Have you believed in Jesus like that? Have you received him as your Lord and Saviour?” – how would you reply? It helps our faith when we tell someone else that we have decided to follow Jesus. This is sometimes called “confessing Christ” and it allows you to exteriorise before a friend the decision that you have taken in your heart.

If you’re not sure if you’ve actually taken that step, there’s no harm in turning in prayer, just by yourself, and saying, “Lord Jesus, thank you for coming into the world to seek and save the lost like me; I open the door of my heart and receive you as my Lord and Saviour. Help me from now on to grow in my faith and to live as a Christian. Amen”

Jesus will gladly welcome you as his follower. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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God can forgive your sin

The Bible is a very realistic book. It does not hesitate to recount the sexual failures of some of its main characters – to make us realise two essential truths. One, that in even the best of men there is sin (the sole exception is Jesus). And two, the worst sinners may be redeemed.

Take King David for an example. He was called “a man after God’s own heart”, he penned a number of Psalms that are in the Bible, many of which express his devotion to God and trust in the Lord. But when he was tempted, seeing Bathsheba bathing, he was overcome with lust and committed adultery with her. Then, in a vain effort to cover us his sin, he brought about the death of Bathsheba’s husband, and then married her.

When the Bible records such events, it never encourages such behaviour, of course. The reader is to learn from the bad examples in the Bible as well as from the good: to imitate the good, not the bad!

Indeed, the Bible recounts how a prophet came to rebuke David for his sin, and two of David’s psalms (numbers 51 and 32) give deep emotional expression to his most earnest contrition, his search for forgiveness, his prayer of repentance, and the ultimate joy of knowing God had forgiven him. 

The Bible constantly maintains that double message: first, we are all sinners in need of forgiveness, whether our sin is desperately wicked or relatively respectable; and second, our sin can be forgiven however awful it may be.

We need both those messages. To ignore how sinful we are leads us into pride and self-deception and we fail to realise our need of God’s forgiveness. To ignore the grace of God that saved even a wretch like the slave-trader John Newton (who wrote the hymn “Amazing grace”) is to cut yourself off from the hope of a conscience finally cleansed of all guilt and at peace with oneself and (more importantly) with God.

So the Bible abounds with God’s offer of forgiveness and salvation, and as we all fall short of the good life we should lead, we all need God’s forgiveness. Furthermore, no-one else can grant us that forgiveness; but God can and he wants to forgive you. In fact he wants so much to forgive you that he sent his Son to bear your sins and “pay” for them when he died on the cross, so that if you accept his offer of forgiveness you won’t have to pay for them in all eternity – yes, in hell. 

So listen to God’s words: “Seek the Lord while he may be found… Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55.6-7). What an invitation!

“Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity? …He delights in showing mercy. He will have compassion on us… You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7.18-19).

“In Christ we have redemption through his blood (shed on the cross), that is, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1.7).

“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1.18).

“Repent therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3.19).

If you turn from sin in your life – whatever you may be conscious of, and call on the name of Jesus, he will forgive you.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Implications of creation

It is not for nothing that the Bible begins with the story of creation and specifically that of the man and the woman in God’s likeness. This is a key factor for our very basic need to know who we are and what our life is all about. There are far-reaching and vital implications of that introductory statement in Genesis 1:26-27: “God said ‘Let us make man in our image’… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”.

The first is that God is actually the Creator of all that exists, as the context makes clear. This fact has further implications: God owns everything; he has rights over everything; he knows the purpose for which he made everything.

This leads to the further implication that God has a purpose for our human existence. He alone, as Designer and Maker, is able to give meaning and purpose to his creation. When we are confused about our raison d’être, we must refer to Him; our own guesses are not worth much, whereas he both knows and can correctly inform us about the aim of our lives.

Furthermore, he cares for his creation: he cares for us in providing the air we breathe, the life-giving food we eat, and human companionship – and a lot more besides. The further context in Genesis chapters 2 and 3 show how God is solicitous for his creatures, how he gives them instructions to follow and tasks to fulfil. He is not an absentee God: he is right there in communication with his personal creatures, talking to them and listening to them.

If human beings are made in God’s image, the Creator values them highly – indeed, they are the crown of his creative work. They are, one might even say, his pride and joy. Before they went astray, God was pleased to see his own image reflected in them.

Humans were made in the likeness of a God whose nature is holy, righteous, and loving. He would still like to see that holiness reflected in his image-bearers. If we are not holy and loving, we tarnish that image, we show off a false impression of our Maker. In other words, God is misrepresented by sinful humans. Sin cuts across our Creator’s purpose; sin displeases him and causes our dysfunction. Indeed, it brings about a whole lot of miseries that we suffer from. And it grieves God’s heart. He would like us to be better – not only in the sense of being good rather than sinful, but that we find true fulfilment which we will not know if we persist in our tacit or open rebellion against his will.

Will God stand by and wring his hands in hopeless sadness? No! He sets in motion a plan for recuperating and restoring his prize creature to its pristine glory. Even as he banishes the rebel human pair from his glorious presence, he promises he will find a way to bring people back into the harmonious relationship with him that they have lost. His kindness is such that he desires to restore them to an even more wonderful final end. 

That’s why the Creator came to earth to be the Saviour! And we will find true human fulfilment when we are saved by that Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was sent into the world to mend our brokenness. “Return to me,” he calls, “Come to me”. We can receive both mercy and true human fulfilment as we trust in him.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Don’t go down a dead end

It is amazing how often intelligent peoples’ thinking is self-contradictory. I have several pages of such contradictions – like this one that shows the impossibility of determinism: “If all our thoughts are determined, that must include the thoughts of neuro-scientists who hold to determinism. So determinism would mean we can never trust the conclusions of scientists as being true, including those of neuro-scientists”. Another one I like was put out in a TV advertisement for the Bank of Scotland, where a wise man said: “Some people say there are no right or wrong answers”. Then he added: “But what if they’re right? … Or wrong?”

So as we search for right answers, let us beware the dead end of self-contradicting theses.

It is normal to believe in free will – that our choices are real and that we have freedom to make our own decisions. Indeed, we consider it a “human right”, and we want the freedom of others to be acknowledged and respected. It is against this much-loved reality that determinism comes crashing.

The counterpart to freedom is responsibility: we may be held responsible for the use of our freedom. We will have to answer for any evil use of our freedom. There is unavoidable moral responsibility attached to human freedom. This instinct is written in our consciences and refers both to society’s and to God’s right to punish those who use their freedom to harm others. So freedom is not an absolute liberty to do all one may wish; it is best understood as the ability to do as one ought, despite the threat of those who would impede that liberty.

But there is a false form of freedom that is indeed illusory – and it is getting unfortunately quite invasive in society, though it will prove to be a dead end street: you don’t want to go down there, you’ll get nowhere. It is known as “expressive individualism”. 

This freedom, writes rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, “is embodied in words like authenticity, autonomy, self-expression, and self-realisation, to which we claim to have unfettered rights”. This extraordinary claim to quasi absolute freedom is a dead end street. It is at the basis of a lot of human pain in the lives of those who suppose they can define their own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life – of “who they are”, when this is in denial of what is “given”. It substitutes for the given-ness of our existence the mad dream that we can “invent ourselves”, alter the reality of who we truly are. Don’t go down that road.

If you want a different form of yourself, a better “you”, there is a preferable way, the right route to take. You can be “made over”, deeply and radically transformed into what you really ought to be. This is what Christian conversion is all about. When a person rejects his or her own reprobate inner self – those aspects of our personality that come under the description of “evil” – and when they turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, calling on him to be their Saviour and Master, a radical renovation takes place. Jesus called it being “born again”. When you invite Jesus to save you from all evil, to clean you up on the inside, it’s like being recreated – “old things are passed away and all things become new.” And all this is from God, “whose service is perfect freedom”. By such healthy transformation the Lord demonstrates that he is in the business of turning sinners into saints!

Clive Every-Clayton

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Why not other religions?

Maybe some think that my referencing Christianity and the Bible as the source of true and valid answers shows disrespect for other religions. Why not turn to them instead?

Apparently there are about 4,000 religions in the world – a statistic that reveals humankind’s innate religious disposition. In every country people discern there must be some Higher Power, some transcendent Reality, some Deity. Allied to this intuition is the reflex that God must be the fount of all goodness and justice, and that we, by contrast are not totally good and pure. People therefore fear divine judgment – sometimes perceived as the intervention of evil spirits – and they feel the need for God’s protection and his mercy.

The brightest and noblest minds, therefore, giving thought to these uncertainties, propose varying theologies, moral systems, and religious practices with a view to connecting with the Divine, or appeasing the powerful Spirit, or obtaining peace of mind by God’s forgiveness. Christianity deals with these same troubles of the human spirit, but with a radical difference that sets it apart from all other religions of the world. The essence of Christianity’s uniqueness is that while other religions issue from humanity’s deep religious thinkers, the religion of the Bible comes by the initiative and intervention from out of this world – from God himself who became incarnate in Jesus.

I have written an (unpublished) book: “Only Christianity: why Christianity is truly unique and uniquely true”. Interestingly, the 12 or so reasons why the Christian faith is unique correspond to reasons why it is true. Let me give you some of them.

Firstly, Christianity is anchored in history: it is not a mere religious philosophy proposed by man. God’s interventions in history are recorded throughout the Old Testament – Creation, the call of Abraham, the Exodus of Israel out of Egypt, their entry into Canaan, and ultimately of course the absolutely unique incarnation of God in Jesus, his historic life, death, and resurrection, recorded by the apostles. That God thus became incarnate should be known throughout the world!

Secondly, the unique fact of fulfilled prophecy. Blaise Pascal, impressed by this fact, enumerated in his Pensées (§489ff/693ff) numerous Old Testament predictions that were subsequently fulfilled. “I see a number of religions in conflict,” he wrote, “and therefore all false, except one. … But I see Christianity and find its prophecies, which are not something that anyone can do” (§198/693). As a statistician, Pascal found this convincing.

Thirdly, it provides a conscience-appeasing atonement. The sacrifice of Christ, bearing our sins and our punishment, is an historical accomplishment by which alone the requirements of Justice are satisfied. Only the atoning death of the God-man, Jesus Christ, could permit the Righteous God and Judge of all to grant forgiveness in a way that does not undermine the whole justice of the universe. 

Fourthly, the promises of Jesus Christ offer a full and perfect remission of all sins – not as earned by one’s religious practice or deserved according to one’s efforts at holiness, as all other religions propose  – but by a life-transforming experience of God’s grace that makes believers God’s children. 

This conversion experience is also unique to Christianity: it makes saints out of sinners as they receive the risen Christ into their hearts in repentance and by faith. 

Finally, Christianity offers a love relationship with a loving God and saviour which is beyond imagining. Believers may be overwhelmed when they grasp the love and faithfulness of their Saviour and the lengths to which he went to save us from hell.

Could any other religion rival all that?

Clive Every-Clayton

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