The Good God: Michael Reeves

Introduction:

C.S. Lewis was wrong... the oft quoted story about C.S. Lewis' bold declaration that 'grace' is the one thing that makes Christianity different from all other world religions is wrong. Michael Reeves points out that actually it's 'Trinity' (which is still one word).

The Protestant Buddhists
Francis Xavier was a Roman Catholic Missionary to Asia. When he reached Japan in 1549 he came across a particular sect of Buddhism (Yodo Shin-Shu) that stank, he said of what he called 'The Lutheran heresy'. That is, like the Reformer Martin Luther, these Buddhists believed in salvation by grace alone and not by human effort. Simple trust in Amida, they held, instead of trust in self, was sufficient to achieve rebirth into the pure land. If we call on him, they taught, then despite our failings, all his achievements become ours.
Of course the 'salvation' in view here was nothing like Christian salvation: it was about enlightenment and the achievement of Nirvana. It was, nonetheless, a salvation grounded on the virtues and achievements of another, and appropriated by faith alone.
We need not be disturbed by such similarities. That which distinguishes Christianity has not been stolen. For, what makes Christianity absolutely distinct is the identity of our God... the bedrock of our faith is nothing less than God himself, and every aspect of the gospel - creation, revelation, salvation - is only Christian in so far as it is the creation, revelation and salvation of this God, the triune God.

The above quote is interesting and a good reminder that we needn't be so afraid of celebrating the uniqueness of Christian faith. I think that the belief in a Tri-une God is quite obviously something that distinguishes us from all and any other faith but it is also the thing we're least (read I) likely to talk about since it seems a rather embarrassing and illogical idea. Reeves goes on to helpfully say:

Can we rub along with just 'God'?The temptation to sculpt God according to our expectations and presuppositions, to make this God much like another, is strong with us. You see it all down through history: in the middle ages it seemed obvious for people to think of God as a feudal lord; the first missionaries to the Vikings thought it obvious to present Christ as a warrior God, an axe-wielding divine berserker who could ou-Odin Odin. And so on. The trouble is, the triune God simply does not fit well into the mould of any other God. Trying to rub along with some unspecified 'God', we will quickly find ourselves with another God.

That, ironically, is often why we struggle with the Trinity: instead of starting from scratch and seeing that the triune God is a radically different sort of being from any other candidate for 'God', we try to stuff Father, Son and Spirit into how we have always though of God.   

What was God doing before Creation?

We are to understand God not in terms of 'creator' or 'almighty' that is by reference to what he does but in terms of who he actually is, the loving relational and triune God who has always existed and always will exist. He is not, as Aristotle, described him 'the Uncaused Cause' but he is Father, Son and Spirit and getting a glimpse into their relationship means that we are better positioned to know him and live in relationship with him.

God does not need us, he did not create us to keep him company. One danger of describing God simply in terms of what he does 'Lord, Ruler, Creator' is that it can imply that he needs something to be Lord over and Rule or create. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Swiss theologian Karl Barth put it starkly:

Perhaps you recall how, when Hitler used to speak about God, he called him 'the Almighty'. But it was not 'the Almighty' who is God; we cannot understand from the standpoint of a supreme concept of power, who God is. And the man who calls 'the Almighty' God misses God in the most terrible way. For 'the Almighty' is bad, as 'power in itself' is bad. The 'Almighty' means Chaos, Evil, the Devil. We could not better describe and define the Devil than by trying to think this idea of a self-based, free, sovereign ability.' Mere might is not all God is.

Quotes from this chapter:

In other words, I can never really love the God who is essentially just The Ruler. And that, ironically, means I can never keep the greatest command: to love the Lord my God. Such is the cold and gloomy place to which the dark goat-path takes us. 

That is who God has revealed himself to be: not first and foremost Creator or Ruler, but Father.

Quoting Athanasius in his debate with Arius over the nature of God (4thC)

The right way to think about God is to start with Jesus Christ, the Son of God, not some abstract definition we have made up like 'Uncaused' or 'Unoriginate'  

With 'The Unoriginate' we are left scrambling for a dictionary in a philosophy lecture; with a Father things are familial. And if God is a Father, then he must be relational and life-giving, and that is the sort of God we could love.

The loving Father

Since God is, before all things, a Father and not primarily Creator or Ruler, all his ways are beautifully fatherly. It is not that this God 'does' being Father as a day-job, only to kick back in the evenings as plain old 'God'. It is not that he has a nice blob of fatherly icing on top. He is Father. All the way down. Thus all that he does he does as Father. That is who he is. He creates as a Father and he rules as a Father; and that means the way he rules over creation is most unlike the way any other God would rule over creation. 

It is only when we see that God rules his creation as a kind and loving Father that we will be moved to delight in his providence. 

A Father is a person who gives life, who begets children... this God is an inherently outgoing, life-giving God. He did not give life for the first time when he decided to create; from eternity he has been life-giving... love comes from God. Whoever does not love, does not know God. 

And just as a fountain, to be a fountain, must pour forth water, so the Father, to be Father, must give out life. That is who he is. If he did not love, he would not be Father.
If he created us in order to be who he is, we would be giving him life.

In Hebrews 1:3 it says that Jesus Christ, the son, is the radiance of God's glory and the exact imprint of his nature/being. The 4thC theologian Gregory of Nyssa explained this by likening it to the light that emanates from a lamp - I love this quote:

as the light from the lamp is of the nature of that which sheds the brightness, and is united with it (for as soon as the lamp appears the light that comes from it shines out simultaneously), so in this place the Apostle would have us consider both that the Son is of the Father, and that the Father is never without the Son; for it is impossible that glory should be without radiance, as it is impossible that the lamp should be without brightness.' 

The Son has his very being from the Father. In fact he is the going out - the radiance - of the Father's own being. He is the Son. 

A wonderful and extremely challengeing summary of marriage as it relates to the Trinity was also laid out. In just a few words he summed up, for me, what I think I ought to be working toward in my marriage:

That dynamic is also to be replicated in marriages, husbands being the heads of their wives, loving them as Christ the Head loves his bride, the church. He is the lover, she is the beloved. Like the church, then, wives are not left to earn the love of their husbands; they can enjoy it as something lavished on them freely, unconditionally and maximally... Such is the spreading goodness that rolls out of the very being of this God. 

The heavenly hodge-podge of modalism is what Reeves calls 'moodalism' three different moods of the one God. A great quote on this:

'The trouble is, once you puree the persons, it becomes impossible to taste their gospel.

St Hialrius (Hilary of Poiter)  said that:

Trying to define God without starting with the Father and his Son, he saw, one would quite simply wind up with a different God.

Mere Trinitarianism.

The Apostle John wrote his gospel, he tells us, so 'that you may believe that Jesus is the christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.'

John Calvin once wrote that 'if we try to think about God without thinking about the Father, Son and Spirit, then  only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God.'  

This God simply will not fit into the mould of any other. For the Trinity is not some inessential add-on to God, some optional software that can be plugged into him. At bottom this God is different for at bottom, he is not creator, ruler, or even 'God' in some abstract sense: he is the Father, loving and giving life to his Son in the fellowship of the Spirit.

Creation: The Father's Love Overflows

The Father has always enjoyed loving another, and so the act of creation by which he creates others to love seems utterly appropriate for him.

Referring to Jesus' prayer in John 17:

The Father loved him before the creation of the world, and the reason the Father sends him is so that the Father's love for him might be in others also.

We have been created that, knowing his love, we might love the Lord our God.

It's all Greek to me:

Hypostasis - means something similar to 'foundation'
Hypo = under; Stasis = something which stands or exists.
LXX translates Psalm 69:2 when the psalmist says 'I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold (hypostasis).'
Hebrews 1:3 'The son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being (hypostasis).
The son is the exact 'foundation' of the Father.

Ekstasis (from which we get 'ecstasy') means to be beside yourself or outside yourself.
Ek = 'out from'; Stasis = something which stands or exists

What we have been seeing is that the Father, Son and Spirit have their hypostasis (foundation) in ekstasis (outside himself). That is, God's innermost being (hypostasis) is an outgoing, loving, life-giving being. The triune God is an ecstatic God.

The Father finds his very identity in giving his life and being to the Son; and the Son images his Father in sharing his life with us through his Spirit

God gives away - he is ecstatic:

The tragedy is that so many think that the living God is the devilish one here, as if her created us simply to get, to demand, to take from us. But the contrast between the devil and the triune God could hardly be starker: the first is empty, hungry, grasping, envious; the second is super-abundant, generous, radiant and self-giving

Grace then is not merely his kindess to those who have sinned; the very creation is a work of grace, flowing from God's love.

This God's very self is found in giving not taking.

His very nature is about going out and sharing of his own fullness, and so that is what he is all about... his pleasure 'is rather a pleasure in diffusing and communicating to the creature, than in receiving from the creature.'

In the sunshine of God's love: We become like what we worship

Richard Sibbes a Puritan preacher who spoke so winningly of God's kindness and love that he became known as 'the honey-mouthed' preacher. He saw God as winning, kind and lovely: he spoke of the living God as a life-giving, warming sun who 'delights to spread his beams and his influence in inferior things, to make all things fruitful.'

That is, God is simply bursting with warm and life-imparting nourishment, far more willing to give than we are to receive... the creation (he says) was a free choice borne out of nothing but love.

Wherever God's Spirit is, fruitfulness is the result, creation occurs as an overflow of the love and goodness of God.

In the book of Job Elihu says 'The Spirit of god has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.' (Job 33:4) Ongoingly in his creation, the Spirit vitalises and refreshes. He delights to make his creation - and his creatures - fruitful. Isaiah writes of the time when 'The Spirit is poured upon us from on high and the desert becomes a fertile field, and the fertile field seems like a forest.' Is 32:15 The psalmist sings 'When you send your Spirit, they the creatures are created, and you renew the face of the earth.' Ps104:30

The supposed sexism in the Da Vinci Codes is simply wrong. Gnosticism has at its core the idea that the earth was created as an evil banished from the spiritual goodness that originally existed and that women, since they were created from the side of man, were similarly bad. On the other hand:

Studies have shown that in that world it was quite extraordinarily rare for even large families ever to have more than one daughter. How is that possible across countries and centuries? Quite simply because abortion and female infanticide were widely practised so as to relieve families of the burden of a gender considered largely superflous. No surprise, then, that Christianity should have been so especially attractive to women, who made up so many of the early converts: Christianity decried those life-threatening ancient abortion procedures; it refused to ignore the infidelity of husbands as paganism did; in Christianity, widows would be and were supported by the church; they were even welcomed as 'fellow-workers' in the gospel. In Christianity women were valued.

In the triune God is the love behind all love, the life behind all life, the music behind all music, the beauty behind all beauty and the joy behind all joy. In other words, in the triune God is a God we can heartily enjoy - and enjoy in and through his creation.

Philippians

Context:
The honour of being a provincial capital belonged to Thessalonica but Philippi had its own importance both past and present. Its name came from the father of Alexander the Great Philip of Macedon who captured the city in 360BC. In the early 1990s a tomb was found belonging to Philip that was full of gold. A find second only to that of Tutankhamen tomb in Egypt.

In recent years it was the scene of the decisive battle in which armies loyal to the murdered Julius Caesar (fighting under Augustus and M Anthony) defeated Brutus and Cassius. To honour this event the dignity of being a 'colony' was conferred on the city.

As a 'colony' Philippi was in fact 'Rome in miniature' In conferring on Philippi the ius Italicum Augustus bestowed a great honour on the town:

Ius Italicum (Latin, Italian or Italic law) was an honour conferred on particular cities of the Roman Empire by the emperors. It did not describe any status of citizenship, but granted to communities outside Italy the legal fiction that it was on Italian soil. This meant that it was governed under Roman rather than local or Hellenistic law, had a greater degree of autonomy in their relations with provincial governors, all those born in the city automatically gained Roman citizenship, and the city's land was exempt from certain taxes. As citizens of Rome, people were able to buy and sell property, were exempt from land tax and the poll tax and were entitled to protection by Roman law. (from Wikipedia)

Paul encountered in Philippi a community that had a pronounced pride and dignity from being a colony of Rome - essentially Rome away from Rome. The Romans divided the world up into two types of people, citizens and strangers. A colony was a city of citizens in a land of strangers.

Only in Philippians does he use language that speaks of civil or political identity. He tells them to 'live in a way that is worthy' of the gospel and he reminds them that their citizenship is in heaven. Paul is trying to get them to see themselves as Christians first and Romans second not Romans first and Christians second. Their higher allegiance and larger identity was to a ruler who is far greater than any Caesar.

Philippi is the location of Paul's first church plant and the first city he had visited in mainland Europe.

Town lies on the Via Egnatia a road that stretched from Albania, through northern Greece and into Turkey. It was a popular trading route.

Paul visited Philippi in 49/50AD and is recorded in Acts 16
Acts 16:10 - Macedonian call Paul's dream of a man begging saying 'come over to Macedonia and help us.' Philippi is described in A16:12 as 'a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia.'
v12 - we stayed there several days.
v15 Lydia was converted after Paul and friends sat down and began speaking to some of the women at what they supposed was a place of prayer. They then stayed at Lydia's house. Although described as 'a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira' which is in Northern Turkey she had a 'house' in Philippi. Also in Philippi with her was her 'household' which could include anything from immediate family to employees/slaves.

Lydia’s hospitality may have even served as the catalyst for the generous, giving spirit of the new church Paul established in Philippi.Years later, when the apostle wrote to the Philippian church, he recalled their generosity at his initial meeting with them 4:15

v16 - 'once when we travelling to the place of prayer...' the word once  implies that they travelled there quite often. Following the fruit of seeing Lydia converted they saw it as an effective place to share the gospel. The fact that Luke doesn't mention what happened on all of the subsequent visits to the place of prayer by the river could suggest that not much of significance happened on those days. Although not necessarily as he is more giving us a highlight reel of what happened in response to God's leading.
v18 - 'she kept this up for many days' again seems to suggest that they were used to a similar strategy of visiting the place of prayer and talking to people. Paul was quite deliberate about what he did and where he went. He didn't simply start shouting in the streets to get people's attention. He found somewhere open and visited there regularly talking to people.
v32 - presumably then the jailer's household lived with him in the prison district.
v40 Paul and Silas have spent a night in jail where God used him in bringing the jailer to faith and the next day return to Lydia's house 'where they met with the brothers...' which is a generic gender neutral term to mean brothers and sisters. Just from the few people we've been told about Paul's converts included Lydia's house, possibly a slave girl (redeemed by Lydia perhaps?) and the jailer and his household.

1 Thess 2:2 Paul mentions that he was treated shamefully in Philippi referring perhaps to how he felt being assaulted as they were by the magistrates and the jailer.

It is supposed that Paul left Luke in charge of the converts since it is at this point that the narrative stops saying 'we' and returns again to 'they' once Paul and Silas leave. Luke then starts using 'we' again when Paul returns in 20:6 when he records 'we sailed from Philippi after the Feast of Unleavened Bread.' Phil Moore mentions that the difference in time between A16 and A20 is 4 years. If this is true then it seems that Luke was in Philippi for four years building with what Paul had got started after the 'Macedonian Call.' Some have even suggested that Luke was the 'Man form Macedonia'. In Colossians Luke is described as the beloved doctor and there was a school of medicine in Philippi. Perhaps Luke lived in Philippi.

5 church buildings have been excavated from the ruins of Philippi the earliest dating to 500AD.

The church started around 52AD

Themes of the letter:

Unity in the church - other than Epaphroditus Paul mentions only two Philippians by name - the quarrelling women Euodia and Syntyche. 'Once disposed of the news-sharing he abruptly plunges into a fresh topic: 1:27' Live worthy.

Under attack - the gospel is bearing fruit but it is also producing enemies. People opposed to Paul are preaching a gospel out of selfish reasons. The Philippians are also being 'frightened' by opponents of the gospel and it is into that that he writes in 2:1 'so/therefore' and then lists how the church can respond to the threats '...make my joy complete by being like-minded, of one spirit...' 'stand firm' against such opponents. Motyer writes 'there is an effective reply to a hostile world - a united church.'

The coming great day - the day of Christ's return is a day toward which the Father is working. Since the Father wants every creature without exception to own Jesus as Lord. To this end the Father is constantly engaged in the task of making Christian believers ready for the great day. The Lord's return is a day 'toward which every Christian must work.'

Since the Lord is at hand, the present duty of each Christian is to live in his likeness, to make urgent progress in holiness so as to have a harvest of righteousness ready for him, and to long to bring others to faith so that they may be glad together before his throne.

Three themes intertwine to make up the letter to the Philippians but the uniting factor is not any one of them but the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The church has caught the vision of Paul's gosepl preaching since they send him both a financial gift and a valued member of the church to be with him.

The letter is quite different to the others written by Paul. It doesn't concentrate on problems or crises but on relationships between Paul and the Philippians.

David Pawson points out that two main themes of the letter are: gospel partnership and joy. He also argues that Paul's joy comes from two main sources: 1) Because of what he lived for. 2) Because of what he lived on. The Philippians financial contributions were the only ones he received.

The major teaching of Philippians follows the poem about Christ's humiliation-come-glorifitcation. Those teaching themes are:
1) Redemption: an experience to apply
- God works it in
- You work it out
2) Righteousness: an end to pursue
- not ours
- but his
3) Resurrection: an event to desire
- out from the dead
- with a new body
4) Responsibility: an effort to make
- forgetting the past
- straining towards the future
5) Reproduction: an example to follow
- bad = earthly minded
- good = heavenly minded

Pawson's conclusion:
We have seen that the major thrust of the letter is not what the Lord does in the believer but what the believer needs to do in response.

Tom Wright:

- When people were put in prison in the ancient world they weren't usually given food, instead they had to rely on the kindness and support of friends. The fact that a group from another country would send money and support and one of their own on a dangerous journey speaks volumes of how they felt towards Paul.

In Paul's world the word 'partnership' would usually be used in the sense of a business. Partners in a business. It usually included a financial and practical element. The Philippians then are partners in the gospel and partners in grace. They are in the gospel business and the grace business.

Philippians: Changed Lives

Changed Lives - Sermon by Keller.

Philippi was perhaps the healthiest church that Paul planted.

Here's what we find: three absolutely different persons

Racially:
Lydia - Asia Minor in Turkey (Asian)
Slave girl - native Greek
Jailor - Roman
Asian, Greek, Roman

Economically:
Lydia - extremely wealthy. A dealer in dyes, a respected business with more than one house. She is like a successful fashion CEO. A person of power and influence. Homes in different towns - paris etc.
Slave Girl - Opposite end of the power spectrum. She is powerless, economically exploited
Jailor - not wealthy, not a mess like the slave girl. Blue collar, working class, ex-GI.

Analogous to...
Lydia - eating at Espinars, living on 5th Avenue
Slave Girl - prostitute controlled by pimps, living under the bridge
Roman jailor - guy living in Queens drinking at his pub

Utterly different worlds.

Rationally:
Different ways we learn - cognitive, intuitive and concrete relational
Cog - arguments, discussion, case, evidence
intuitive - experience, encounter
concrete relational - show me

Lydia wants a disuccion
Slave girl needs a powerful encounter
Jailor - impatient with argument and rationality and turned off by emotion, he doesn't want to talk, he wants to be shown something concrete (doesn't go to church)

Spiritually:
Lydia is empty. Lydia has achieved something that was hard for a woman back then but we're told she was a worshipper of God even though she was a gentile. Turned away from her pagan roots. She's seeking.
Slave Girl. Utterly out of control. Text doesn't say 'Spirit of prediction' text says 'Spirit of a python' We met a 'pythonas'. In Delphi (Southern Greece) the oracle of the temple could tell the future and the temple was guarded by a python.

Info from Wiki-

In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god Apollo after he slew the Python, a dragon who lived there and protected the navel of the Earth. Python (derived from the verb pythein, "to rot") is claimed by some to be the original name of the site in recognition of the Python that Apollo defeated.^[2] The Homeric Hymn to Delphic Apollo recalled that the ancient name of this site had been Krisa.^[3]

Because of the girls strange and awful behaviour her parents had sold her into slavery.
Servants of 'The Most High' gave them shudders because they knew their Bible - Isaiah 14 and account of how one of the great angels became Satan. Lucifer says 'I will be as the Most High'. The term 'The Most High' is the envious resentful way the Devil himself talks about God. She was in utter torment and yet was attracted to them. Spiritually in utter despair.

Jailor - no spiritual interest.

Lydia - knew about God from ehr studies
Slave girl - knew about God from her evil Spirit
Soldier - knew nothing and cared nothing

Totally different: in every possible way. Yet God comes after them. He comes after them in three completely different ways.

Lydia - through her mind - she knew something about the OT and that God had provided means for atonement. She was trying to live morally. She'd tried paganism and now she was trying Jewish morality. The Lord opened her heart. 'Proseko' - to 'get it'. God helped her 'get it.' How? Through a Bible study, through arguments and a seminar. Lydia did not know the gospel.

Slave girl - Paul doesn't say 'let's sit down and study the Bible'. She couldn't discuss it but she knew it and she hated the gospel. She was a slave on the inside to bad masters which made her slave on the outside to good masters. She encounters Jesus' greatness over her spiritual master. A power encounter, not a sweet little seminar.

Jailor - Jailor doesn't care. The jailor is reached. Jailor is told simply to 'keep them safe' but instead he puts them in the inner prison and puts their feet in stocks (a form of torture). God confronts him with two things. 1) The Roman jailor sees two men singing and praising in the middle of the night. He's never seen anyone with joy so deep they can still praise God in difficulty. 2) The presence of the prisoners after the Earthquake. The prisoners had his life in their hands. 'All I want to know is... where does this joy and conviction come from?'

They're all different on the outside but actually they're all similar - they're all slaves.
Jailor was going to kill himself because he's a slave to duty. His self-worth was gone and he was going to kill himself.
Lydia was a slave to wealth and yet she was empty.
Slave girl was a slave

The reason Paul and Silas's master impressed them was because they had the only slave master who forgives when you fail and who gives you a joy so deep you can sing even when your feet are in stocks.

The gospel is a divine power. The gospel is the greatest thing in the world to bring people together.

Paul as a Jewish male had been taught since birth to pray a prayer. Every time that he got up would have prayed a pray - O Lord I thank thee that I'm not a woman, a slave or a gentile. That's exactly who God led him to here in Philippi.

Do you want to be used in the gospel? Check your idols and make sure you're flexible and see that God will come after all kinds of people.


--

Fall short of the mark: Hebrew word for sin 'Hatah' which means 'to fall short fo the mark

To 'us' the message has come, we are in the people to whom the message has come.

1) AFFIRM the culture
2) CHALLENGE the culture
3) BETTER than the culture