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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!
A hymn to go with my previous post on being Slaves of Christ - by Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-79):
Jesus, Master, whose I am,
purchased yours alone to be,
by your blood, O perfect Lamb,
shed so willingly for me:
let my heart be all your own,
let me live to you alone.
Jesus, Master, whom I serve,
though so feebly and so ill,
strengthen hand and heart and nerve
all your bidding to fulfil:
open now my eyes to see
all the work you have for me.
Jesus, Master, will you use
one who owes you more than all?
As you will! I would not choose;
only let me hear your call.
Jesus, let me always be
in your service, glad and free.
Jesus, Master, I am yours;
keep me faithful, keep me near,
shine on all my days and hours,
all my homeward way to cheer.
Jesus! at your feet I fall;
be my Lord, my all-in-all!
It occurs to me what a privilege it was to grow up singing this, and other beautiful hymns. It lodged such truths and expressions in me, so that reading them, they didn't seem strange to me, but right and familiar. Challenging, yes, but not perculiar or alien. Praise God for His gift to His church, of hymn-writers!
On recommendation, I read Harris' Slave of Christ on holiday, and now heartedly recommend it also. In our culture, we tend to be wary of using slavery to describe our relationship with God: when we think of slavery, we think of non-personhood and of dreadful mistreatment of humans by others.
Harris examines the Biblical evidence to show that the imagery of slavery is pervasive in Scripture, and that ultimately, we are slaves of Christ. Most of our English translations have softened it to servants, but the idea of slavery is very much there. Why slavery? It denotes complete ownership, command, protection and dependence (rather than autonomy). The slave must obey his Master's commands, and also seeks to please his Master.
I once attended a seminar taken by a leading Christian apologist to Muslims, who made the case that while in Islam the primary man-God relationship is that of slave, in Christianity we don't see ourselves as slaves of God. But this isn't the contrast that the NT makes. We are slaves - in fact, everyone is a slave to whatever masters him, as Peter wrote. So becoming a Christian is gaining a new master - Jesus is Lord! The difference with Islam is not that we do not see ourselves as God's slaves, but that we are slaves of the living and true God who revealed himself in Christ, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a slave,being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. [Phil.2]
As Horatio Bonar's hymn asks, "It is the way the Master went: should not the servant tread it still?" We are not slaves of an arbritrary and capricious despot who only insists at length in writing that he is merciful: we are slaves of the one who came and was among us as one who serves, to give his life to purchase us for God. And that makes all the difference!
There are Scriptural limitations in the metaphor of slavery: Harris considers being friends of Christ, who are given revelation of his business, and adopted co-heirs of Christ. But we mustn't simply reject the image because it's not comfortable to us. As Christ's, we are his slaves, owned totally by Him, to obey Him fully and to live to please Him.
This may be despised by men, as if we might as well be dead, as live in slavery to a Master, following His will and living to please Him. But that's the point: I have been crucified with Christ: it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. [Gal.2] What a joy and privilege!
