The Three Words of God (iii)

In the first part of this series, I introduced a Trinitarian understanding of the Bible as “the word of God about the word of God about the word of God”, or “the Holy Spirit’s words about the Father’s message of grace about his Son.”  In the second part ,I considered what might happen when we neglect or down-play two of the “words of God”. In this third and final part we come to the Son of God and then conclude with some thoughts about lived experience.

The word of God: The Son of God

The third word of God that I mentioned is Jesus himself. On the lectern of the theological college at which I trained are inscribed the words of the Greeks in John 12:21: “Sir, we would see Jesus.” The Father’s message centres on his Son. Jesus came for us, but the hero of the story is Jesus, not us. Old Testament characters are examples of fallible faith and demonstrations of the need for a sinless Saviour. Human-centred preaching and church leading is so easy and is what happens when we neglect this particular word of God. But the hero of the story is Jesus. And it is just worth pointing out the preacher or the pastor are not Jesus, and nor are our words those of Jesus. We are under-shepherds. We neither preach from Sinai, nor from the cross. We are first of all fallible, fallen and one of the flock before we are a pastor. One preacher I know occasionally begins sermons by saying “50% of what I am going to say to you is true. I just don’t know which 50%, so you’ll have to look at your Bibles and work it out.” Of course, that is massively over-stating the point and has the potential to cause the congregation to despair (after all, if the preacher doesn’t know which is true, what hope have we got?) but there is a helpful point here. Although preachers do all we can with the Holy Spirit’s help to be accurate, we still only see in a glass darkly. We are not the Saviour. The flock need Jesus in all his glory and grit, his majesty and his entering our real mess, his purity and his patience with our sin, his sovereignty and his suffering with us, his righteousness that clothes our wretchedness, his graciousness and his gently making us more like him. I don’t think that means we have to find Jesus in every passage or show how every passage of Scripture points to Jesus such that our congregation are waiting for the hermeneutical Jesus trick. Beyond the typlogical, the salvation history, the prophetic and the Christophanies, we have to remember that the Son is eternally the self-revelation of the Father. As much as the passage reveals God, it is the revelation of the Father through the Son by the Spirit that will deeply speak to, or even contrast with, how the Father relates to us today in the Son by the Spirit. So, this is more of a question how our pastoring, preaching and leading is suffused with the Father’s message of grace that is all about Jesus, so that they see him in all his glory and, gazing at him, are transformed into his likeness.

Lived experience of all three words of God

And that comes to down to the question of our lived experience. For me this is where it gets painful and personal. One danger for me is that, in the words of Scott Sauls, I become a “grace pharisee.”[1] I can look down on those who don’t get it!

So, I want to take us to Philippians chapter 3 to put all this into practice. I have often heard people say Paul’s “Finally,” in 3:1 is a figure of speech. I don’t think it is.

Let’s approach this first of all just with taking the Bible only as the words of the Holy Spirit. Paul tells us to “Rejoice in the Lord.” He says later in 4:4 “Rejoice in the Lord always.” These are imperatives and therefore commands. We are to do this. If you are not doing it you are sinning. Condemned! And those of us with mental health struggles are left in a heap, or the preacher has to make pastoral exceptions (e.g. “this doesn’t apply if you are depressed”).

Now let’s add in a deficient understanding of the word of the Father, namely ”gappy grace”. The sermon now becomes how Jesus forgives us for our lack of joy and that that, somehow, should give us joy. Or something like that. Not very satisfying.

So, let’s go a step further for “law-y grace”. Humanly speaking, we can’t be joyful always, but Jesus has been joyful for you and will enable you to do this, so turn to him for help, keep confessing, start doing it and he will enable you to have joy. Getting there? Well, maybe. Or maybe not.

Here’s the thing, when Paul writes 3:2 he hasn’t got distracted from joy in the Lord in 3:1. The whole section from 3:1 to at least 4:10 is about joy (hence why Paul says “finally”). In my opinion, Paul’s point is not a command about being joyful, it is actually the words of our Father telling us where to find joy – in the Lord. What steals our joy is confidence in the flesh. Which is why gappy grace and lawy grace steal our joy: they focus us back on ourselves. By contrast, Paul says that everything of his flesh he considers rubbish. What matters is being found in Jesus, and knowing Jesus and knowing Jesus more. It is because of Jesus that Paul presses on towards all that Jesus has given him. He then talks about other joy stealers (including self-indulgence, division and anxiety), exhorting his beloved brothers and sisters to “stand firm thus in the Lord.” The focus is not so much to be always joyful, but always to find our joy in the Lord which will enable joy. How does that happen? By rejoicing again in justification by faith alone, rejoicing that Christ is all in all, rediscovering the privilege of knowing Jesus personally and bringing all our anxieties (which are not necessarily wrong, for Paul is anxious for the churches) to the Lord in thankful prayer.

Here are the words of the Holy Spirit about the Father’s message of grace about his Son, this time in the key of joy.

Perhaps significantly for us, in the midst of this all, Paul encourages the brothers to imitate him. The point is this: as a preacher and pastor I need to know the lived experience not only of the Bible as the words of the Holy Spirit, but as the Father’s message of grace about his Son, so that people see it lived out, shining through me.

The problem is, after covid and all the controversies, many pastors like me have reverted to various unhealthy coping strategies. I have seen all of the following in me:

• escape: “the church (or my family) would be better off without me”
• the wall: “control the emotions, protect me and protect my family and my church from the real me”
• the fight: “whip myself (and the church and my family) (back) into shape”,
• fold: “I can’t change, it will always be this way, so just give up trying to change” or
• escapism: “I’ll find something else that gives me at least some fleeting joy”

For a weary beleaguered pastor and covid-depleted congregations, we don’t need gappy grace or exhortation to greater joy or lawy grace so that I can obey this command. I need Jesus and his welcome and him taking my burdens and fears and gently showing me my idols and replacing them with his heart and his yoke. And our congregations need under-shepherds in his image. Because Scripture is not just the word of God. It is the word of God about the word of God about the word of God. It is the words of the Holy Spirit about the Father’s message of grace about his Son, in whom is found all that the Father delights to give us, namely himself, including his love, peace, joy and rest.

How our souls need that.

[1] Scott Sauls “How gentleness raises us above cancel culture” on the Gospel Coalition Podcast.