The Man born to be King

Dorothy Sayers' radio plays on the life of Christ, are currently being played on BBC radio 4 extra - an interpretation of the Scriptural gospels, a creative account. I don't really know why it was so controversial when first broadcast; I'm delighted to hear something so strongly based on the Biblical narrative. 

Herod: 'You cannot rule men by love. When you find your King, tell him so. Only three things will govern a people: fear, and greed, and the promise of security. ... Wherever I love, I find treachery. Love is a traitor, it betrays all kings. It will betray your Christ.'

The first episode is available until Tuesday 26th April: Kings in Judea.

Quote of the day: God for scumbags

An unusual source for today's quote of the day: from the News Quiz on Radio 4 -

God spends all his time hanging around prisons waiting for scumbags to find him."

Spot on, in so many ways! But there are a great many more prisons around than he might have meant - people trapped in povery, in oppression, in despair, in consumerism... And not only external forces imprison us: everyone becomes a prisoner to the desires to which we give in [2 Pet.2.19] And we all know how that works - they're not our most wonderful, selfless, godly desires! If we're honest, those things aren't just us on a bad day - they're the emprisoned us spilling out when unguarded. We're emprisoned and we're scumbags.
So the good news! "God spends all his time hanging around prisons waiting for scumbags to find him." Or as God said through a poet a long time before the News Quiz was recorded:

"You who seek God, be encouraged, for the LORD hears the needy and does not despise his own people who are prisoners." Psalm 69.32-33

How come? Does it seem a bit strange of a holy God to hang around our sordid prisons, our hearts which fester, our minds which leak scum, so that we could find him? And who would want to find God in such a state?? Wouldn't we rather run away and hide from God if we're in that condition?!

Ah, but when God came to earth, it turned out that he'd rather emprison himself, absorb all our filth and take the whole sentence himself, to set this scumbag prisoner free. That's not just a God who hangs out around prisons vaguely hoping someone might find him. That's the God who moved heaven and earth to break into the prison and rob it of all its prisoner scum. This is the God who lived perfectly as a man in order to take away our prison uniform and give us his own clothes to wear. Here is the God whose Son agreed to be murdered so that his murderers could be adopted as sons.

I worship that God, not a holy philosophy for people with uncharacteristic moments of weakness, but the God and Father of our Master Jesus who came [as Mark recorded]

'not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.'

The God revealed in Jesus explodes the walls of our inner hatred and self-reliance, plunders the prison, and takes us as free prisoners of Jesus. Our old prison ID is gone. There weren't multiple new IDs available, though: just the One. So from now on, it's not prisoner #57829. It's Jesus. If I'm free in the presence of the kind of God who hangs out round prisons looking for scumbags like me, it's because he's given me Jesus' identity. Hallelujah!

"Thou shalt not be unhappy"?

Is our main problem sin against God and his right anger at that, or life's threats to my happiness and my hurt at that? Do we live in a way that fits our answer to that? Carl Trueman mentions how our therapeutic culture has fed into some of evangelicalism in a White Horse Inn broadcast.

In a wide-ranging conversation, he also addresses some problems in "traditional" church worship. Preaching is not an explanation of the Bible for information transfer or moral advice: it's declaring God's word to the transformation of his people. A worship service isn't just a handy gathering, it's a drama of worship.

And since we were speaking earlier of the Hibernian mentality, Carl says of the Scots and assurance, "Few Scotsmen can believe they're going to heaven; no American can believe they're not going to heaven, in my experience!"

Quote of the day: WWJD is not gospel

I've never found WWJD bracelets particularly inspiring - rather, I think if I wore one I'd find it a bit depressing! The gospel says not, "What Would Jesus Do? Go and do likewise." No, the gospel says, "What has Jesus done? Rejoice and live in Him!"

So I was interested by this snippet of discussion in the White Horse Inn broadcast from last week:

Michael Horton: So, "What Would Jesus Do?" is not the gospel?
Retired Episcopal Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison:

It is contemporary adoptionism. ... It's an ancient and classical heresy in which it reduced the work of Christ to giving us a good example. ... Jesus was baptised and we heard the Father say, "This is my beloved Son with Whom I am well pleased,"... according to the adoptionists, He did what none of the rest of us have ever done, which was to be perfect. And therefore he's like a kind of Roger Bannister, breaks the 4-minute mile, and he becomes the image by which if we just try harder, if we are scolded enough, then we will run the 4-minute mile: we will be like Jesus. And it ignores the complete OT presentation of a Messiah who came to take away the sins of the world: that God did something that we were unable to do. The Messiah came and made it all right by his actions. It leaves out 2/3 of the whole meaning of the gospel.

And yet, let's get this: neither is the gospel, "God has accepted the unacceptable: so now go and do likewise - accept yourself."
Horton, summarising Allison: It is law to tell people, "Accept yourselves," it is gospel to tell people, "This is how God has made you acceptable to Him."

So what isn't law? What is gospel? Allison says the key is imputation - not known or loved as a word because it's so awkwardly and variously translated into English (account, credit, reckon, etc.): we have no good translation for it. Of this, Allison says,

The word itself, λογιζομαι (logizomai),... is the verb form of λογος (logos). ... It's not merely that God by His action in Jesus Christ has made it possible for us to have mercy, but I am imputed as righteous, even though I am not righteous, and by that wording of me as righteous, I begin to become the kind of righteousness that we see in the second person of the Trinity.

Horton: So it is actually a speech-event: God has declared us righteous.
Amen!

Novel noises

If you enjoy listening to novels, it's worth keeping an eye on BBC7. At the moment, Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey is playing at No Sign of Foul Play (first episode available for 2 more days), and her wonderful account of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, The Man Born to be King, also first episode available for 2 more days. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday is sadly approaching its end, and of course Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet only recently played. As I say, worth keeping an eye on BBC7!

PS Milton's Paradise Lost is being read marvellously at the moment on BBC Radio3!

Out of the Silent Planet

One of my favourite novels is being read on Radio 7 at the moment. C.S.Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet is the second in his space trilogy, and contains a devastating and penetrating apologetic against the fall, and understanding of sin. I wonder if the BBC reading will capture that?

Late correction - Out of the Silent Planet is the first in the trilogy, with Perelandra being the second (entitled 'Voyage to Venus' in America). So I'll have to wait to see if they'll broadcast Perelandra too. In the meantime, if you haven't read the trilogy, do get hold of them.