KERYGMA – Salvation Through Christ

Kerygma (noun): the apostolic proclamation of salvation through Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul’s kerygma (or gospel)

The prophesies are fulfilled, and the new Age is inaugurated by the coming of Christ. He was born of the seed of David. He died according to the scriptures, to deliver us out of this present evil Age. He was buried. He rose again on the third day according to the scriptures. He is exalted at the right hand of God, as Son of God and Lord of quick and dead. He will come again as Judge and Saviour of men.

Acts kerygma (or gospel)

The Age of fulfilment has dawned. This has taken place through the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. In virtue of that resurrection Jesus has been exalted to the right hand of God, as Messianic head over the new Israel. The Holy Spirit in the church is the sign of Christ’s present power and glory. The Messianic age will shortly reach its climax in the return of Christ.[1]

Similarities and Differences

Both speak of the same gospel—the Gospel of Jesus Christ—but one (Paul’s) gets us casting back over the period from just after Jesus’ death back through all the ages previous—including mainly the prophesy of the Prophets of the Old Testament, as indicated “according to the scriptures.”

The other is the unabashed proclamation of the New Covenant reality. Such a proclamation was never complete without a call of “repentance, and offer of forgiveness and of the Holy Spirit.”

Both festoon the path to God—grace via repentance.

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A principle ever known through the Scriptures—that of appeasing God for sins—is transformed in the manifestation of grace.

Yet...

“The central theme of the Old Testament is redemption by grace. But incredibly, the Pharisees entirely missed it.”

~John F. MacArthur, Jr.,

The Gospel According to Jesus, 1988, p. 42.

One Gospel, old and new... always extant but made new, in and through Jesus.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

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[1] Michael Green, Thirty Years That Changed the World: A fresh look at the book of Acts (Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p. 90. (All quotations are from this author, quoting or commenting on Professor C.H. Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and its Development.)

Worshiping the Power BEHIND the Sun

“And when you look up to the heavens and see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, do not be led astray and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples everywhere under heaven.”

~Deuteronomy 4:19 (NRSV).

Thanks to NASA, the first decade of the 21^st Century engineered terrific advances in humankind’s knowledge of the sun, morphing our fascination of it. From the 3-dimensional images taken there is a greater appreciation of this enormously powerful body, including eruptive prominences that make our volcanoes distinctly ordinary in comparison.

It’s impossible to comprehend the size and might of the sun, and it’s therefore easy to get led astray under the captivated sway of wonder, awash at the size and mystery of created things—there are a great many things to marvel at.

What Serves What?

Our worship is ascribed to what we serve. Moses alludes to this in the above passage as he compels the Israelites to turn away from worship of the firmament and onto worship of the Lord.

As it is, the sun, moon and stars—all that heavenly host—serve us, not the other way around. The firmament of the cosmos is about a living environment for creation to exist. We don’t owe it—we owe the creator of it.

The sun provides critical heat and light for essential processes to support life. God put it there for us; for our survival and enjoyment.

But we’re too easily lost to wonder in ‘things’ and not wonder in the Being behind the thing.

Worship – the Practice of Service

What else are we likely to unsuspectingly worship? The sciences enthral us, capturing our attention, and we devote our minds and allegiance to knowledge, which is okay to a point.

It bears thought, however, that that which we give our attentions gets our worship. Sure, this can be taken too far, but if something—besides God—gets majority attention it’s been elevated above its purpose.

The marvellous things of life—those there to serve us—the things God created to support life—should, in our marvelling, propound to our minds the majesty of the Creator behind it all. It’s only when this occurs that we understand the right forms of service we’re to give, having been served at God’s command by things like the sun.

Right worship magnifies the Lord, and that in turn compels us to serve God—not that which has been required to serve us. If we have our service to God right, it will tend for others’ benefit; we understand God wishes us to serve other people in love.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Graphic Credit: NASA photograph of a Huge Eruptive Prominence from the Sun.

Love’s Responsible Freedom

“We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes people arrogant, but love builds them up. Those who think they know something still have a lot to learn. But if they love God, they are known by God.”

~1 Corinthians 8:1b-3 (GW).

God always make fools of the arrogant wise, yet how implicitly do we go there—the ‘knowledge’ of one’s oft-cherished wisdom?

We don’t have to go far through the translations and paraphrases of the Bible to discern the wisdom in these words of the Apostle Paul’s to that ‘knowledgeable’ people, the Corinthian church of the 52–55 C.E. period. The Message says, “We sometimes tend to think we know all we need to know to answer these kinds[1] of questions—but sometimes our humble hearts can help us more than our proud minds. We never really know enough until we recognize that God alone knows it all.”

So: Love comes from the humble heart; knowledge ostensibly from the (sometimes proud) mind.

The End of Knowledge Comes Quickly

This is the truth for us: the seeming vast wells of our available knowledge run dry without warning, sending us away scratching our heads, stumped about what can be done. The reason this hits us as such a surprise is, per The Message, we’ve heeded our proud minds in favour of listening to our humble hearts (for the mind thinks “What knowledge has the heart to offer?”).

This issue is recognised in the fields of science where small facts overwhelm us because we can’t see them—ask any engineer or oncologist. A little knowledge can be dangerous as we don’t know what we don’t know; we only think we know it all. Sometimes problems crop up and they take hours, days or years to solve, and in hindsight the solution is always common sense. Still, a heart-informed mind can envisage the danger of vesting too much in knowledge.

Love Beats and Completes Knowledge

Later in Paul’s letter he’s seen proclaiming love (1 Corinthians 13) and this, here in chapter 8, is but a little taste of what’s to come.

Love is the knowledge—first and foremost—of God. It’s the limitations of the human mind stowed in such a way as to be indelibly warned of taking knowledge too far. But it’s a lot more... this knowledge of God is not just wisdom—it’s knowledge of the Lord’s nature, which is to care for all creation, and, to require that same care from creation to and over itself. This is caring for each other in humility.

Love knows there’s always more to life than strict knowledge. It’s true understanding, for all the right reasons, whereas knowledge is found by nature to be short-sighted.

But true knowledge—one that’s buoyed in love—is from the Lord. It is wisdom and truth rolled into one.

Love Furnishes Responsible Delivery of Freedom Acts

Due the items of grace we’re free in all ways in the realm of God. But it’s naïve to think for a moment that such a responsibility—embellished to love—can be discharged without accounting for how it’s done.

Love is accounted-for freedom. This balance is beautifully accorded in wisdom to know both extremes of: complete freedom with the responsible application of knowledge to appropriately enjoy such freedom.

When we act in love (accounted-for freedom) we can be trusted. Due care is issued by way of the choice of the action. If the puffed-up Corinthians had acted with such care they wouldn’t have needed Paul’s rebuke.

For us, love is to define our actions—accounted-for freedom is exhorted; it’s the wisdom of God. Those who act like this “love God, [and] they are known by God.”

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

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[1] Regarding, specifically for the Corinthians, eating meat sacrificed to idols.

“Deserting” and The Confessing Faith

“When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. And Jesus said to them, “You will become deserters; for it is written,

‘I will strike the shepherd,

and the sheep will be scattered.’”

~Mark 14:26-27 (NRSV).

Of course, this above is precursory to the foretelling of Peter’s denial. We, ourselves, don’t like to be associated with ‘this’ Peter, but this is who we are. God knows and accepts our occasional denials; as Peter was forgiven, so are we, accorded of our repentance.

The facts are, everyone deserts God at one time or other, whether via lack of (or inappropriate) ‘confession’ in the presence of family or friends, or via departure from the Lord’s will—everyone sins.

It’s important to know that God accepts that this will happen.

Choices For and Against God

A choice for the fellowship of secular humanity is usually a choice against God. Many times in fellowship with non-Christians we know it. We laugh at a crude joke or join in the sarcasm or make light of a justice issue. Instantly the Spirit is heeding us to this. This is the time to repent in silence.

Choices for and against God are stark and pointed. They’re like east and west.

Yet, we’re required to interact with the secular world as salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16). This helps explain our difficulty and, at times, persecution (Matthew 10:16-24).

A ‘Confessing’ Faith

Jesus said,

“Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.”

~Matthew 10:32-33 (NRSV).

This—along with the earlier Matthew 7:21-23 passage—is a warning to be careful not to deny God.

But there are times, and God accepts this, that for want of courage we do desert God as Peter did; these times are not reason for Christ’s denial of us in heaven, for repentance is the key. The unrepentant ones are the ones that Jesus does not know.

Still, it is required of us to have a confessing faith: to proclaim we’re Christian as the opportunities afford themselves, to glorify God (for it would make little sense to proclaim belief in Jesus’ name when it wouldn’t glorify him).

This is an important issue for many Christians, especially those who’ve had verses like Matthew 10:32-33 thrust in their faces by legalistically ardent believers.

Jesus will not deny before the Father the person fervent in their repentance.

A bold confession in Christ at the right time is God’s will beautifully manifest, but none of us is perfect. We are destined to shrink from time to time, just as we’re destined to ‘confess’ Christ at times when these very occasions bring him no glory for matters are, we’ve sinned; sometimes by how we’ve done it.

Again, our best for God is achieved in confessing Christ with integrity, so all people might see the power in the delivered will of the Lord.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Job’s Restoration and Ours – Fortune Redoubled

“And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.”

~Job 42:10 (NRSV).

There’s always more to unfold in the stories of our suffering. The horrid languidness of these events is not the end.

Job’s Repentance and Ours

Job is brought to God’s precipice; to the vista of truth, and therefore repentance (verse 6). He’d gone full circle, from pity party to adroit acknowledgement of the Sovereignty of the Almighty. God’s ways are forever above ours (verse 3; Isaiah 55:8-9).

Repentance is always the key to any response to God in our suffering; not that suffering itself is always an indicator of justice via the consequences felt.

Repentance is simply the practice of turning back to God in the midst of any distress that’s unconscionable.

When the strain takes us down to nowhere fathomable we don’t reject God; we cling hard toward the Lord. It did Job no good to thumb his nose at God and it does us no good either!

As justice is barren and the scope for reason is denied, we hold out in hope, having winged our way back to God.

All the above is repentance; it’s not just a behaviour engaged in for repealing personal wrong. It’s also what we’re to do when we’ve been wronged... it’s God’s sure comfort in the presence of any wrong.

Penitent Hearts – Open to Eventual Blessing

Many times in the Bible it’s said the lowly are blessed of the Lord (e.g. Psalm 51:16-17; James 1:9-11). This is the typecast Job. Finally, when everything was spent within him, and defending the indefensible was seen futile, he makes a public declaration of truth. Job did not understand... his words: many things of God are “too wonderful for me” (Job 42:3c). In that admission, he finally does understand his rightful place.

The same goes for us.

As we begin to understand in our trials, disappointments and losses that our pain is not the point—that instead it points us to God for help—we’re all the more better off. Understanding’s reached for repentance—the acknowledgement of the Divine nature and character. God is inscrutable. Our only worthy act in the sight of the Almighty: worship.

With dramatic irony, pain brings us closer to the Lord. And this in turn brings us closer to the eventual blessings that will come... redoubled in their own form... in God’s good time.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Jeremiah’s Tree of Life

“I the Lord test the mind

and search the heart,

to give to all according to their ways,

according to the fruit of their doings.”

~Jeremiah 17:10 (NRSV).

There are many biblical concepts wrapped up in this sub-section of Jeremiah concluding at verse 10. This Word of the Lord is a wisdom oracle consistent to the genre of the biblical Prophets; polarising faithful living with unfaithful. Indeed, Jeremiah 17:5-10 is also reminiscent of Psalm 1, just reversed.

Overall, by the vitality of their “fruit” is how the faithful shall be known.

Seekers and Finders of Our Own Destiny

We sow more intrinsically than we realise. Whilst God searches our hearts and tests our minds, we’re of full volition when the conscience is the vehicle to it. The Lord need not find a more capable ally than we find in ourselves.

This is the Christian person: one who has enabled God to steer their lives.

Certain others won’t be tested or searched; they’ll not have a bar of it. They refuse entry of the Sovereign God into the vestibules of godly dominion: their minds and hearts.

Still, that’s not a chosen destiny for us; we have a better angle on life because by our deeds we wish to be known. Fruitfulness is the disc of our spiritual hard-drive and, solemn to scrutiny, it’s not fragmented.

Watching the Heart

Proverbs most virulently proposes the heart as both the wellspring of life (4:23) and the deviser of scheming (6:18; 15:11). This wisdom book makes a purposeful study of the concept of the heart being the seat of both our emotions and intentions.

It is obvious that this is what Jeremiah has in mind as he transcribes God’s Word. No one can understand the motioning and concluding devices of the heart; least of all, at times, its possessor—us. If we’ll not watch our hearts, God will; the judgment of the Lord we’ll reap upon ourselves in any such event—good or evil.

It pays us to watch our hearts.

A Tree Planted by Water

Jeremiah offers Psalm 1 imagery. We imagine a sole tree in a desert, but one fed by an abundant nearby stream. Both tree and stream appear out of place in the landscape of the desert, but they cast forth an important metaphor to remember.

Sinfulness abounds in this life. That sin is desert-like; it’s caused any life around it to be swallowed up and the only things known to the desert are the hot and chilly winds that howl by day and night. It is a most inhospitable place.

On the other hand, the tree survives marvellously in this environment because it has its water-source nearby to constantly refresh and feed it.

We are the tree and God’s Spirit and Word is the stream. It nourishes us in this desert-life where the winds of sin howl, consuming all in their path, including the deceiving of our hearts toward treachery if we’re not connected vitally to the “stream” of God.

The tree planted by the water has evergreen roots connecting ever-better to the stream; it is well prepared for the coming heat and strangling drought. It continues bearing fruit through all seasons. So shall we.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

General Reference: J. Andrew Dearman, The NIV Application Commentary: Jeremiah/Lamentations (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002), pp. 175-76.

The Greater Part of Spiritual Vision

“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

~1 Corinthians 13:12-13 (NRSV).

The grandest betrayal of life is the fact of part sight this side of eternity; a limitation the Apostle Paul accepts—and even propounds—in this section of his letter to the Corinthians.

Paul is attempting to broaden the cognitive landscape of the reader. Love is beyond inadequacy and it may describe perfection at the contention of perfect life without it; this greater part of life (‘everything’, but without love) is banal, futile and uncouth. It’s forever incomplete.

The perfect life without love is worthless; yet, a naïve love powers through many tremulous situations unscathed. God’s foolishness makes a folly of human wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:25).

Looking Forward to ‘That’ Day

Paul is found pondering a day to come when perfection before Christ will be known. He’s torn between two desirable realities; he wishes to live, yet he wants to be with the Lord (Philippians 1:23-24). Life’s seen through this mirror dimly and imperfections propagating sin abound. Wherever Paul looks it’s the same. We never see face to face.

Still, there are glimpses of faith, hope and love, and in that, definable perfection. It can be attained and maintained for moments; miraculous instants—gems of grace in the realm of time.

There’s no grieving for the present condition, for it’s a thankful thing that experience is what it is—real and true with powerful shades of light breaking through bitter darkness. Where would we be without faith, hope and love?

Eternity is the realisation of perfection; all-the-time perfection... and perfection is love.

Our Presence in the Temporal Realm is Nothing to Boast About

We could be forgiven for thinking we’ve got it made; God, through Christ, having saved us. But Paul’s lament is that the true life is some way off. Today is a taste—an ‘audition’ I read recently—for the acme of eternity.

The moment we pretend that we’ve got it all in this life is the moment Satan is embellishing our minds in a lie. This realm is but a shade of the next.

The greater part of spiritual vision is recognising this gap but not to the point of getting depressed about it. It does give us more reason to ponder for eternity. It smashes the death curse, for perpetuity is coming.

Despite all the foregoing, we have the Presence of God manifest in the character of faith, hope and love—these, God’s endowment for what’s to come.

Love, now and always, is the pathway to God.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Dark Hearts ‘for’ the LORD

“... for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.”

~Romans 1:21 (NRSV).

Dark words these certainly are, but they’re appropriate in context. The Apostle Paul utters them, we might contemplate, in a spirit of his own contempt for such a spiritual oddity—these self-righteous ones are patently deceived.

At times, however, people are victims of their environments.

I’ve long felt for professions like police, prison guards, and teachers in difficult schools etc. These people are subjected to the worst of moral humanity, though not all they deal with are like this. Still, the general environment they’re subject to leads many a person to a darker place. If people in these situations are not careful they run the risk of a spiritual darkening.

This is what Paul’s alluding to. The life circumstances of many blind them away from true confession of God—even in some cases where they pledge a hard allegiance to the Jesus.

They ‘Knew’ God

There will always be people who think they’ve got God squared away, when the real revelation is we can never truly know God. (This is why being passionate in seeking God is always blessed protection.)

Who knows the mind of the Lord? His thoughts and ways are so far above ours (Isaiah 55:8-9).

This is one of Satan’s tricks. He gets believers to think they know enough of God to judge; to self-assess and to ‘assess’ others. A little knowledge is dangerous. Mix that with an outlook that’s dark (joylessly pragmatic, looking for evil) and there’s the recipe for the unveiling of ‘false Christs,’ slander of the church and other aberrations of Christian spirituality. But, first and foremost they don’t know God. And the following explains it.

Signs of Light

The First Letter of John goes into detail regarding aspects of light and true belief; this is represented in the ability to love (1 John 1:7; 2:8-10). Light and love are connected.

People who have the light of re-birth life can’t help being attractive spiritually; that is, they’re humbly charismatic because they live hopeful and generous lives. They tend to see the good in things, not the bad (though everyone struggles to see the good all the time).

Signs of light beckon from within the one that God’s got—it can’t be any other way.

The test for the believer is this: how much love is in their lives? How much joy do they experience, for joy is merely a manifestation of love? Of course, the big disclaimer here is on those believers experiencing somewhat a ‘dark night of the soul’ and most will have it at some stage or other. This is not about those.

The Ability to ‘Honour’ and ‘Give Thanks’

The Amplified Version talks about people with “senseless minds [that] were darkened” in ways that they experience “vain imaginings, foolish reasoning and stupid speculations.” Many of us sympathise. But for most people with light, darkness is fleeting at best; quickly comes repentance from nonsensical thinking.

The one affirmative action that expels a dark heart from corrupting the mind is honouring God and giving thanks. The psalms have it right; it comes down to praise of God’s greatness and thanks for the goodness of God to us. But those in their dark thinking will not choose to see this.

The key message in all this is: Let’s pray most of all that we’re not deceived. Praise and thankfulness will ward against such deception.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Psalm 31 – God, My Rock and My Fortress

“Blessed be the Lord,

for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me

when I was beset as a city under siege.”

~Psalm 31:21 (NRSV).

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and this psalm speaks of such times; when times get tough best are we to cling fast to the Lord.

What’s added to the flavour of this psalm is the mode of imprecation toward an enemy—haven’t we all been there? That is to bring a curse on someone. If we’re honest, we have; all of us.

The psalmist (ascribed as David) seems to vacillate between honouring God with their praise for the Lord’s faithfulness and cursing the enemy who’s flatly derisive to God. They don’t care a hang about the moral realm. Without God that sort of person overwhelms our capacity for hope.

Seeking Refuge >> Obedience >> Humility

We all have times when there’s only one good place to go—into the loving embrace of the Lord. Whatever is chasing down our spirits is not the point. Where we go is.

This is a mature response to not hedge the right way despite our want to either fight or take flight.

The psalmist teaches us a good lesson here of both obedience and reliance. These are disposed out of copious humility—ordered just in time. This quality of poise is known to a spirit calmed only by its Maker.

Into God’s Hand to Commit Our Spirits

The psalmist is completing the transaction of the redemption experience by affirming their allegiance to “faithful God” (verse 5). This is a beautiful harmony forged in despair.

Many of our biggest challenges force our hand. We go one way or the other—away from God or to God. The former is characteristic of our humanity; to take up cudgels with the enemy because we can have things just the way we like them (or so we foolishly think!). The latter is the step that only needs to be taken once. There we remain convinced to the value of going God’s way in temptation and struggle.

Marks of Lament

The attitude of lament is soaked into the oak of the psalm.

In the psalms we know that God connects with us; in this case by lament. A third of the psalms are so despairingly human we can literally feel their emotion. Laments are the particular language of David. But there too are the communal laments; again, the human contrasts of life.

What makes this lament noteworthy, however, is the fact that praise and commitment to God is never too far away. In our despoiled messes, can we be as gracious under tremulous threat?

Invocations to Follow the Lord

Verse 23 is an example where David proclaims the power of God to turn things around. It uses commanding language to compel those doubting the Lord’s faithfulness to just love God—all else will settle itself.

We recall the psalmist has been delivered. And we’re just as excited about God’s delivering hand at the stead of our deliverance—myriad form that’s taken.

This is most assuredly a psalm to read and meditate over during low times of oppression, depression and persecution. For any low place, take a swim in this.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

The Christian Test of Bequeathal

“Now as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you—so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.”

~2 Corinthians 8:7 (NRSV).

As the world knows, floods have swept the plains of Australia’s lands. Floods always do. What they also do is spread havoc at a living level and throw people’s lives that are affected into chaos. Westerners are not used to such ‘living’ upheaval.

At another time, 1940 to be exact, the tyranny of Nazi oppression was hitting Western Europe and Britain with unprecedented ferocity; the United Kingdom was being undone in the air. This was the most desperate conflict—at that precise time—known to the history of humankind.

Christian Level Response

To both the above problems there’s a Christian response. First to the flooding. Neighbours help. People fly in from all over the country to clean up the mess. Millions in donations are received and distributed. A National levy is designed. All in all, an acceptable response because it’s timely and it attends to the local needs as best as they can be anticipated.

The tyranny of the Nazi threat in 1939-40 is easy to understate. Winston Churchill was the leader for such a desperate hour. From total domination in the air, victory for Hitler’s Germany was a cakewalk; a threat of biblical proportions. But the pluck of the English and the wise resolve of Churchill saw production of war planes like history had never seen. In one year they were war-ready and able to compete against the gargantuan nemesis, Germany!

Both situations saw the people rise up and conquer the tremendous odds against them.

That is a Christian level response. It is the people for the people by the people.

The Corinthian Hypocrisy

Much like we see in our day, in First Century Corinth there was much wealth. She was a rich and cosmopolitan dual-port city. The strange thing about wealth, however, is it blinds us to the reality of the plight of others; the more we get the more we tend to want.

The abovementioned passage sees the Apostle Paul possibly either flatter the Corinthians by their own bragging (their belief that they had excellent faith, speech, knowledge and so on) or he’s genuinely pleading with them to respond as others have, particularly Jesus (verse 9). Perhaps Paul had both intentions in mind.

The point is the Corinthians’ in their pride spruiked about how good they were, yet when it came down to it there were needy in that region who were not being looked after. This is a far cry from the accounts of even distribution we read of in early Acts (2:45; 4:32-35).

Where are we like the Corinthians these days? Whilst the floods and WWII examples show a positive communal response, where are we failing people in our insufficient bequeathal?

Our Christian Obligation – To Bequeath More Generously

Any disaster, any heartache and really any torment that’s within any semblance of our help, the help goes with swiftness, direction and certainty—wilfully! That’s what Paul is talking about; that’s God’s will so far as our stewardship is concerned.

Some do not have money, so they bequeath what else they have; lodgings, love, laughter, prayer, encouragement... the list is endless.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.