A Compelling Invitation

by Clarke Dixon

• Listen to the 33-minute sermon on which this devotional is based.

What do Chance the Rapper, Snoop Dog, Blake Shelton, Avril Lavigne, and Justin Bieber have in common? Beyond perhaps that they sing music you do not like? They have each expressed more than a passing interest in Christianity in recent years. They have this in common with 2 billion other people today, and a further few billion throughout the last two millennia. There is something compelling about Christianity. What is it? Why has Christianity stood the test of time? Why has it weathered every storm, from within and beyond?

Some have said that Christianity is appealing to people who need a crutch. Perhaps that is what is compelling. However, people like C.S.Lewis, Lee Strobel, and J. Warner Wallace have found it compelling for other reasons. Thinker C.S. Lewis became a Christian through thinking it all through. Journalist Lee Strobel became a Christian through a journalistic inquiry. Cold case detective J. Warner Wallace considered the evidence and became a Christian. None of these felt any need for a crutch. They, along with many, many others, have found Christianity to be compelling.

When it comes to providing compelling answers to important questions, Christianity is like a banquet. I am reminded of an invitation Jesus speaks of in Luke 14:

16 Then Jesus said to him, “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. 17 At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’ 19 Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’ 20 Another said, ‘I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’ Luke 14:16-20 (NRSV)

An invitation was given to great dinner. But some fluffed it off. While billions of people have found Christianity compelling why have billions of others not? Some things to think about:

People can be distracted by chip trucks.

You are invited to a great dinner, but on the way you drive by a chip truck. You have heard the french fries there are really good. You stop and your appetite is satisfied. “Please make excuses to the dinner host, I cannot come now.” This kind of thing happens with regards to worldview. When a worldview answers a few of the questions of life well, people may not feel the need to look any further. It is like enjoying great french fries at a chippy daily, yet not realizing what delightful foods are being served elsewhere.

To give an example of this, consider those worldviews that make reference to karma. The idea of karma gives a compelling answer to the question; “why do good people suffer?” The answer is that good people who suffer now must have been bad people at some point, likely in a previous incarnation. They are now working off bad karma. There is “cosmic justice” after all. The righteous really are rewarded and the evil really do suffer. Some people find this way of looking at things compelling. It is a nice tidy answer. However, how well do the karma-focused religions answer all the other questions? For a worldview or religion to be truly compelling it must provide compelling answers to many questions. In the weeks to come we will be looking at how Christianity provides compelling answers to many questions.

People can be distracted by various religions, which may offer good answers to some questions in the way a chippy can offer some tasty food, but what about those who say they just don’t believe anything?

Dinnertime comes for everyone.

Those who refuse the invitation to the great dinner are not saying “I refuse to eat.” They are saying “I refuse to eat what you are offering, I will eat something else.” All people have a way of looking at things. All people have some perspective on religion and “religious” truth. It is sometimes said that only people advancing religion who hold a burden of proof. As a Christian I don’t mind shouldering a burden of proof. There is good evidence for the truth of Christianity. It is compelling. However, anyone advancing any kind of perspective has the same burden of proof. The atheist who says there is no God and the agnostic who says it cannot be known if there is a God or not, will still need to give reasons why their perspective is compelling. All people have religious views. God invites all people to the banquet. All people need to think through their response to the invitation. All people need to explain why they find their choice compelling.

We focus on the food and forget about the host.

Think of someone you would not dream of declining if they invited you to lunch. Perhaps it is a loved one you have not seen in ages. Perhaps it is a celebrity you adore. Whoever it may be, you excitedly accept the invitation no matter what is on the menu! Now consider that God Who has revealed Himself in the Bible is far greater than that person in every possible way. The dinner is not that important after all. Being with the host is!

In the great dinner parable told by Jesus, the initial invitees are too wrapped up in themselves to go. Jesus told this parable to people too wrapped up in themselves to care about him. The scribes and the Pharisees could not, and would not, grasp the identity of Jesus. He did not fit what they thought the Messiah should look like. In the parable there are those who are initially invited, who then make excuses and decline. These represent the Jewish elites, invited by God to participate in what He is doing, yet who decline the invitation to participate in what He is doing through Jesus. Watch what happens next:

21 So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ 22 And the slave said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’ 23 Then the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. 24 For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.’ ” Luke 14:21-24 (NRSV)

The religious leaders did not respond well to Jesus, but everyone else is invited! We are reminded of these words from John, chapter 1:

11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. John 1:11-13 (NRSV)

While we will be looking at many reasons Christianity is compelling in the weeks to come, the most compelling thing about Christianity is not a thing at all, but a person, Christ Himself. Yes, the food is really great. But it is really about the host!

In the parable of the great dinner the master sends his servants to compel people to come to his banquet. It is funny that the servants would need to compel people, for there were already compelling reasons to go! It is a great meal, it is free, there is great company. You are invited to the table of the Lord. On the first Sunday of every month we invite people to partake of the Lord’s Supper, a symbolic remembrance of Christ’s body broken, his blood shed for forgiveness of sin and reconciliation with God. There are compelling reasons to say yes to the invitation to the table. The invitation to be reconciled to God through Christ is a compelling invitation indeed.

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Clarke Dixon is a pastor in Ontario, Canada.

Check out Clarke’s blog, Sunday’s Shrunk Sermon…

…or, if you prefer, all his articles here at C201 can be seen at this link.

A Life of Peace Overflowing out of an Experience of the Grace of God

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
 (Phil 1:2 NIV)

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 1:7b)

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
 (2 Cor. 1:2)

(are you sensing a pattern here?)

Today we pay a return visit to Alex Koo who writes on Christian living, theology, culture, and books; and also speaks, teaches, and performs at various events. Click the title below to read this at source.

Searching for Shalom

In almost all of the Apostle Paul’s letters, he begins with the greeting: Grace to you and peace from God. It is dangerously easy to quickly skim over these two words without stopping to be arrested by the weight of this new Gospel reality. Grace and peace.

The reformer Martin Luther described this phrase as the heart of all Christianity; all of Christianity is a life of peace overflowing out of a genuine experience of the grace of God. Do you know this peace?

How would you define peace? I posed this question to our young adult ministry. Some answered rightly that peace was a ceasefire, an absence of conflict. Others added that peace was being able to truly rest. But it’s infinitely more than that.

Yes, “grace and peace” was a typical traditional greeting offered in antiquity, but I’m convinced when Paul pens this, he’s also describing the new reality of the Christian. See, when he says peace, he means shalom. When he carefully writes the blessing of peace, he is also directing our hearts to the explosive reality that in Christ, there is shalom. And every single person reading this is longing for shalom. Pay attention to how Christian philosopher Cornelius Plantinga explains this concept of shalom:

The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace, but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight … a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights in. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.

Let me put it this way: we were made for shalom. Shalom is the reality of how God intended all things to be. Shalom is the experience when every arena of life functions in the way God designed it to be. Shalom is wholeness. It is fulfillment. Satisfaction. Shalom is when you take all the individual pieces of a watch, fashion them carefully together, and it starts to tick.

Pause for a moment and ask yourself, what was Adam’s God-given purpose? When we ask a typical evangelical today, our instinctive, church-like response is: “Share the Gospel” or “Make disciples.” Or perhaps some of us give the more sophisticated answer of “Glorify God” or “Love God”, but when asked how that looks like, the answer usually still boils down to “Share the Gospel” or “Make disciples”.

That wasn’t Adam’s purpose.

Why would it be? Adam’s purpose was indeed to glorify God, but there was no need yet to share the Gospel. Why? Because everything was as God intended it to be. There was shalom. I usually explain this concept of shalom in the form of four dimensions. For Adam, he experienced shalom:

1. Upward. Adam and Eve enjoyed an upward shalom with their unhindered, pleasurable, freeing relationship with God Himself as He walked and dwelled among them.
2. Outward. Adam and Eve enjoyed the trusting, loving companionship and friendship with each other.
3. Inward. They lived with a sense of fulfillment, satisfaction, purpose, and meaning.
4. Downward. Finally (and the most unfamiliar to most Christians), they also experienced a downward shalom and rightness with their relationship with creation. This means that they fulfilled their role as cultivators and stewards of the earth over their possessions, over the animals, over technology, over their work.

But ever since the fall of our spiritual parents Adam and Eve, shalom has been shattered. Everything changed when sin entered the picture. Pastor Timothy Keller says:

Human beings are so integral to the fabric of things that when human beings turned from God, the entire warp and woof of the world unraveled …We have lost God’s shalom — physically, spiritually, socially, psychologically, culturally. Things now fall apart.

In each of the four dimensions, shalom has vanished, leaving only a broken shadow of what used to be and what God had intended.

1. Upward. Now, humanity’s relationship with God has been severed. We belittle and mock God by worshiping other things. We don’t love God as we ought and we run from Him because of our sin and shame.
2. Outward. Horizontal relationships are now characterized by jealousy, hostility, fear, gossip, lack of trust, betrayal, manipulation, oppression.
3. Inward. We all live with a broken sense of purpose. We are paralyzed by guilt and shame, if we’re honest — or we buy into an illusion of self-sufficiency and pride, and attempt to recreate purpose for ourselves apart from God.
4. Downward. Our responsibility to manage God’s creation is out of alignment. We now look to our vocations for identity. We look to hobbies, technology, the arts, the sciences, to give us hope and significance. We look to created things to give us what only the Creator can.

All of this brokenness, in each dimension, all play out in our daily lives. It plays itself out when we gossip about others (outward brokenness) to feel significant and validated (inward brokenness). We refuse to worship God (upward brokenness) and instead look to creation — video games, hobbies, careers, academics — for purpose (downward brokenness). All these dimensions are connected. Shalom has vanished. Yet, in every one of our hungry souls, we all long for shalom. That’s why Saint Augustine writes, “our heart is restless until it rests in You.”

The Gospel is God’s plan of restoring all things to shalom. Including you and me.

This is the Gospel: God looked down in love, and for His glory and the joy of His people, embarked on a mission to reconcile all things back to shalom. Every dimension. And in the fullness of time, God sent His son Jesus Christ, to live a life of perfect shalom and died for our sin, as our substitute. Now, if we confess our sin, our idolatry, our rebellion … if we put our faith in the work of Christ, we will be saved. We will be reconciled back to the Father. But not only that, as we begin to believe the Gospel truly, we begin to be reconciled to shalom in all areas — upward with our Father, outward with others, inward with our souls, and downward with creation. When we believe and receive the grace of God for our sin, then we begin to experience peace or shalom, in the here and now, until He comes again to restore all things.

And because of this, we say with the apostle:

“All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18).

Have you been reconciled to the shalom God is extending to you in the Gospel? Have you been reconciled to God Himself? Believe in Christ and be saved!

Grace and peace.

Biblical Regeneration

I’ve been reading Arthur Sido for years, but other than one brief mention here 14 months ago, I see we have never included his writing here at Christianity 201. His blog is called The Voice of One Crying in Suburbia, and if you follow a number of online writers, I encourage you to bookmark it. Begin by clicking the title below to read today’s thoughts at source, and then look around at his other articles.

Regeneration Is Not An Attitude

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Cor 5:17)

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:1-8)

Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of salvation in the broader evangelical church, up and down the spectrum, is the simple truth that salvation is entirely a work of God. Every bit of it. Jesus didn’t die to make good men better or to create a potential, possible salvation maybe for anyone pious enough to grab it, a kind of faith meritocracy. Salvation is nothing less than a miracle, a greater miracle than parting the Red Sea or knocking down the walls of Jericho or Jesus walking on water, feeding the multitude or healing the sick and blind.

Instead of embracing the awesome and fearful image of a God who can and does save as He desires, we make salvation into a decision people make like deciding which house to buy or whether to go to Burger King or McDonalds. That decisional sovereignty might make sense if a right standing with God is predicated on your current attitude but that is not what Scripture teaches.

What troubles me about the language of “personal relationship with Jesus” and “Jesus wants a relationship not a religion” that is so in vogue in religious circles these days, other than the obvious issue of it not being anywhere in the Bible, is that it sidesteps the necessity of regeneration. There is no relationship with Christ apart from a supernatural act of regeneration and adoption. The “relationship” between an unregenerate man and God is one of an enemy and a criminal who will be held to account with no hope of acquittal. You can talk about your “personal relationship with Jesus” all you like but it is good for nothing more than making you look like a moral person in the eyes of your fellow man. It certainly changes nothing in your standing before God. Only being regenerate counts, only being born-again. That is why it is so maddening and inane when people talk about avowed unbelievers like Gandhi as if they are paragons of Christian virtues when the one thing that matters most in the Gospel was absent from their lives. They were never born again and therefore will not partake in life eternal. I have no problem with saying that Gandhi and anyone else who refuses to bow the knee to Christ in this life will face an eternal hell, one that is infinitely just. I take no pleasure in it but I would be ashamed to deny what Christ taught.

When a person is regenerated, it is not merely the taking on of a new attitude. A Christian who has been born-again is something completely new. He hasn’t merely changed his mind. He was dead and now he is alive again. He was an enemy of God, a child of wrath and now he is reconciled to God and a child of The Most High. One does not waffle back and forth like a particularly fickle adolescent girl, this day, this hour in love with God and saved and the next falling out of love and unsaved. Salvation is not a spectrum where you get to 50% +1 units of saved and you get in (unless you slide back to 50% – 1 right before  you die). It is all or nothing. You are born-again or you are not. If you are, you are in the Kingdom of God, adopted and justified. If you are not you will never see the Kingdom no matter how many good works and acts of religious piety you perform.

When the church that has a doctrine un-moored from the necessity of regeneration it ceases to be the church of Jesus Christ. It might be a swell place to hang out, it may feed lots of poor people, it might have a fat bank account but it is not the church, the both invisible and visible temporal embodiment of the Kingdom of God. We are in real danger of losing this most precious, most necessary doctrine of regeneration. If we do we have nothing to offer the world but our own piety and that will save no one from the judgment to come.

You must be born again.

It doesn’t get much clearer than that.