Tim Suffield.com

I went to a wedding yesterday, but that isn’t what I want to talk about. The service was in a traditional looking Anglican church building - stained glass, soaring ceilings, the works.

Now, this isn’t the sort of place that churches in our sort of streams tend to meet in, but it does have some benefits. Beyond the great acoustics, buildings of that style show people something about God. The soaring edifices, the beautiful architecture, they demonstrate that our God is holy. The otherness, the grandeur, show us that we cannot step into God’s presence lightly.

Having churches that look like that is a deliberate theological act specifically designed to teach people truth about God’s holiness. It is in part a hang-over from Catholicism, but mainly is the legacy of the English Arminianism of late 1500s and of the later Arminianism of Archbishop Laud in the 1630s and 40s. Despite disagreeing with most of their theology, their concern with the ‘beauty of holiness’ led to specific reforms in the ways churches looked in an attempt to communicate the holiness of God. Sadly though, their theological concern with God’s holiness led to an almost complete disregard for God’s grace.

Obviously, being a church like that presents a problem of how you present the outrageous grace of God in a way that people believe they have a right to be in that place, that people begin to understand that they can call the very presence of the fearsome God who is, ‘home’.

This isn’t a problem that my sort of church has. However, perhaps we have an inverse problem. If we are in a church that effectively teaches the radical, paradigm-shattering grace of God, then how do we effectively communicate the vastness and mind-bending magnitude of the glory of majestic Yahweh? If our church demonstrates clearly that we can enter into God’s presence freely and without shame, which we can, then how do we demonstrate to people quite how miraculous this is?

In a church that understands the lavish grace of God, how do we teach God’s holiness?

Answers on a postcard.

Long time no blog! Hopefully I’m going to begin blogging again on a more regular basis.

Anyway, I’d like to tell you about a book. A very good book. A very very good book.

Frankly, I really hope I’m coming late to this party. This is a book too good to have gone largely unnoticed for the last four months outside of Newfrontiers circles.

Let me introduce you to Incomparable by Andrew Wilson.

Incomparable is a book on the character of God. Essentially it’s clear, but not basic, theology presented in bite-size chunks. Each chapter revolves around a specific facet of Yahweh’s character.

Let me tell you why this book is good. I suggest reading the back for some incredible reviews from some big names. Terry Virgo raved about it at TOAM07, Joel Virgo outdid his father in his praise of it at Newday. Its entire print run ran out over the summer for a reason.

This is why I think it’s awesome: Every, single chapter will expand your understanding and widen your vision of God. Every, single chapter is a condensed reason for radical living and extravagant worship. Every, single chapter led me to my knees before the throne of almighty God.

Every, single chapter will introduce you to a God who is mighty beyond conception, majestic beyond comprehension and glorious beyond words, beyond speech and beyond thought.

If you haven’t read this book, you should. It is that good.

Sorry for the lack of posts or the lack of interaction in the comments on the one before this, I have a few things brewing but I’ve been really busy. I start my new job next week and I don’t currently know how much blogging I’ll be able to fit into my evening - hopefully a little more than I’ve been able to offer over the summer!

This is just a quick one to say that I preached at Grace Church Nottingham last Sunday, and my preach is now available online here, all of the Grace Church audio downloads are available here. Your comments/criticisms/sycophantic murmurings are more than welcome!

As I’m imagining you’re well aware, the Protestant doctrine of salvation is ‘justification by grace through faith alone,’ although it is most commonly taught as ‘justification by faith.’ Generally it is considered that the opposing Roman Catholic doctrine is ‘justification by works,’ and while this is unfair to their theology (it’s actually something more like ‘justification by grace through faith and works,’) it is true that there is a dichotomy between the two views. Protestants say faith only for salvation, Catholics say faith and works.

The thing is, this sounds majorly confusing to many. Before I became ‘reformed’ it confused me too. Here’s one reason why: works are things that people do … so is faith.

I was unable to understand for a very long time how being ‘justified by faith’ was all that different from being ‘justified by works.’ I couldn’t figure out how faith, something that people do, wasn’t just another work. Why was this work special? What was different about faith?

I was told that it was different because faith exposes your own weakness and asks for help, faith is an enemy of self-reliance. That’s part of the answer, but it’s still mired in a logical problem: faith and works are both human acts. The claim that they are dichotomised (opposing) seems like a category mistake. They aren’t really very different.

There’s one fairly simple reason why this confuses Protestants, and it’s one reason why legalism is rife within some sections of the Church. We’re often taught that we’re justified by faith. The thing is, if that’s left as a statement without clarification, it isn’t true. We are justified by our faith, but perhaps it’s clearer to say that we’re justified through our faith. Faith is different from other human works because it looks outside of itself, but looking outside itself isn’t enough for salvation: faith is different because it accepts that we can’t save ourselves and that God has to do all of it. It’s an acceptance and a certainty that we are saved not by our act of faith but by an act of grace.

We aren’t justified by faith, we’re justified by grace through faith.

There isn’t a middle way between the reformed and Catholic positions: you’re either saved entirely by God, or you’ve got something to do with it. If you’ve got something to do with it - then you’re trusting a dead guy to save you…

Mistake.

I am back in the loop. Well, I have internet. I can’t promise any sort of regularity of posts since I don’t have a schedule of any sort. I’m currently job-hunting, which takes up most of my time. Rest assured that all the things I thought of to write about in the last month or so I have subsequently forgotten.

I’ll write something soon.

In the meantime, go and read some better blogs: Dave Bish at the blue fish project and Tony Reinke at the Shepherd’s Scrapbook are both far more deserving of your time.

If you weren’t at Brighton/TOAM07 go and find some people’s talk write-ups or the mp3 downloads. Its all excellent: except Rob Rufus who is bizarre, but comes up with incredibley helpful nuggets.

The scarcity of posts currently is due to my homelessness: I’m staying with friends during the gap between the end of one housing contract and the start of the next. I just wanted to point to a quick couple of things.

Adrian Warnock’s blog has moved, so if you enjoyed his excellent interviews with Terry Virgo linked below and want to read more you now need to go to http://adrianwarnock.com/. Yes, this is a shameless attempt to be linked.

I recently read C. S. Lewis’ essay ‘The Inner Ring,’ and its excellent. Go and read it here.

Oh, and if anyone fancies employing me, that would be nice too. (Because, of course, all of my regular readers are philanthropist oil tycoons who would employ a lowly theologian simply because they can … it was worth a try!)

Hopefully we can return to our scheduled (!) programming relatively soon. You never know, that series on Galatians that’s already over a year late might arrive, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Edit: Since its Brighton/TOAM next week, if any other Newfrontiers bloggers would like to have some sort of merry get-together, that would be tremendous fun! I’m only there Thursday-Friday due to having to graduate, but I’d love to meet some of the people whose writing I admire and whose vision I share!

All this week Adrian Warnock has been interviewing Terry Virgo, you can read all four parts of the interview here:

Terry Virgo: Leader of Newfrontiers

Terry Virgo on the Early Days

Terry Virgo on the Distinctives of Newfrontiers

Terry Virgo on the Future (fascinating!)

These make interesting reading if you’re wondering what Newfrontiers is about, why it looks like it does, why we go on about apostles etc - or if you’re wondering what the future of Newfrontiers might be.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, Terry now blogs here.

Theology in its ‘proper’ sense involves delving into and investigating the character of God. That is pretty much the root of it.

So, why should Christians do that?

Simple. Christian were called out of darkness for a purpose: to be worshippers. Note that that is not ‘to offer worship.’ The distinction is that God is not after perfect songs of his greatness - he’s after people sold out to his greatness, convinced of his preciousness and committed to worshipping him with every breath.

Being a worshipper is a relational thing. It involves being convinced that the personal object of your worship is truly precious. Since it is a relational thing, there is only one thing that could actually make one a ‘better’ worshipper: knowing the person you are worshipping better. If you know them better, you know their qualities, their excellencies and their glories better. This means that you are all the more convinced that they are worth worshipping and that you are going to be all the more radical in your lifestyle in order to demonstrate that they are as precious as you think they are.

Jesus is precious. Theology allows us to explore why he’s precious and just how precious he is. Theology lets us get to know him better.

Theology makes us better worshippers.

The Gospel Is:

Sin Dealt With

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.

1 Peter 2:24

I’ve said this before. I’m going to say it again, and again. We have a problem. Why is it so important to understand that we have a problem, what the problem is and why the gospel is the solution? The answer is at least threefold. Firstly it is important so that we can understand that the gospel is a solution. Secondly it is important so we can understand how the gospel is a solution. After all, if you do not understand what a solution is a solution to, the logic of why it is indeed a solution is going to escape you. Thirdly, because sin is foundational to a Christian worldview.

What I mean by that is not something that I’m going to be able to draw out fully here, that would take a book, but the Christian understanding of the human condition is that we are sin-sick. We are depraved and because of our depravity everything we do, think and touch has become depraved. We are depraved people in a depraved world. Basically, to jargonise, we are sinners. This actually forms the foundation for all Christian engagement with culture: all Christian apologetics and ethics. It does this because it is the basis of a Christian ‘anthropology;’ that is, a Christian doctrine of what it is to be human. You might quite often here people speak of ‘the human condition.’ In the simplest summary the human ‘condition’ is that: we are alienated from God. We are sin-sick.

So, we have a problem. Our problem is our sinfulness: our alienation from God. But why is this a problem? It’s a problem because God is holy. The reason we are alienated from God is because we have acted in an unholy fashion. For example, we have disobeyed God. We have worshipped other objects, or even ourselves, as though they were gods. Christians still do it all the time. This ungodliness leads to wickedness. This wickedness taints everything we do. We do not have thoughts which are untainted by sin. This is not to say that everything we do is so tainted by sin and that we are incapable of any act of goodness, or that our reason is useless. It is to say that everything is tainted by sin. Sin’s breadth covers everything, even if its depth leaves us some capacity to function. It is not enough of a capacity to function, however. Our own faculties will not allow us to reach to God, we would not look in the right place.

So, we are alienated from God. More than that, we are incapable of even finding him again. The Bible goes further and says that we do not even want to find him again (Rom. 3:10-11). However, this might not concern you. Why would you want to find God? You are coping alright at the moment, are you not? A lack of desire for the presence of God is symptom of our sin-sickness. Sin so taints our vision that not only can we no longer see God, but we forget that we desire him, we forget one simple fact:

We were created for a purpose.

We were created for a purpose, and that purpose was to be worshippers of God. That is why sin is such a big problem, it corrupts us to such an extent that we are lost to our created purpose. To return to the reason sin is a problem, God holiness means more than that we are not fulfilling our potential by being apart from him. That is no gospel. God’s holiness means that he cannot stand sin. God’s justice means that his holiness works itself out as wrath against sin. The wrath of God is not a cup that you want to drink!

As we have seen, though, Jesus drinks that cup for us. The wrath of God against our offense was instead poured out on the body of Christ. This means that sin is dealt with. Once and for all, dealt with. This does not mean that we are not tainted creatures in a tainted world. It does not mean that we have ceased to sin. It means that our sin no longer has the consequence of the eternal wrath of God. It means that, by God’s grace, we can see God again; we can regard God as infinitely precious just like we were created to. It means that we can be reunited and reconciled to God. It means we can have a personal relationship with him. It means that our hearts can quicken with desire for the God of the universe. The mysteries of God’s grace are such that even sinners like us can enter into to the throne room by the blood of Jesus, gaze upon the king on the throne and cry out: “This precious One, he is God!”

Let us look briefly at the logic of 1 Peter 2:24. Firstly then Jesus ‘bore our sins in his body on the tree.’ What this means is that Jesus, in a very real and actual way, bore the full punishment for our sin when he hanging on the cross (that is what ‘the tree’ refers to). It means that it actually touched the incarnate son of God. It was ‘in his body,’ this does not mean that the punishment was simply his physical death, but it does mean that he did not avoid it somehow: he suffered it. Jesus did not run away to hide in heaven while the wrath of God was poured out on his carcass, he experienced the full physical and spiritual pain of the anger of the Almighty against sin. What is more, he did it for us. It was a substitutionary sin-bearing, hence that word ‘our.’ It was our sins that Jesus bore, not somebody else’s. That means two things. Firstly it means that Jesus’ death was substitutionary. Secondly it means that if Jesus has saved you then any sin you have, are, or will ever commit Jesus died for 2000 or so years ago at Calvary. Period. They are done and dusted. Forever.

Peter continues: ‘that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.’ So, Peter says that this is the reason that Jesus died: firstly so that we might die to sin. That is, broadly speaking, what we have just been talking about: Jesus’ death removes sin. It removes sin to such an extent that we can be spoken of as having died to righteousness. If the gospel is described as bringing new life, it is not simply a renewal, it is a resurrection! The previous self that was bound to sin is dramatically and decisively dead (c.f. Rom. 6 & 7). Secondly Jesus died so that we might ‘live to righteousness.’ I do not really have to time to do this theme any justice, but broadly speaking our new life is one of righteousness in two ways: it is one of moral righteousness, in that God’s grace and the Holy Spirit’s action enables us to live according to the commands of God (NB: not the OT Law, but that is another topic!); it is also one of righteous status, in that we are now emphatically righteous in standing before the judgment seat of God because we stand with Christ.

Peter continues: ‘By his wounds you have been healed.’ In essence this just sums up the sentence before, while alluding to Isaiah 53. Jesus’ wounds dealt with our sin. Our sin is a sickness. His wounds have, therefore, healed us. The ‘great physician’ has healed us with an unfailing, unlimited, unmerited, unending healing.

We will not ever get sick again.

Just a quick overview of the last few weeks and why I haven’t been posting:

Last week I was at Let’s Go! This was a week of intensive street evangelism in an area of Nottingham called St Ann’s. St Ann’s is famous for its violent (especially gun related) crime, but it’s lovely: the people are warm, friendly, and amazingly open to the gospel. God was all over that estate, with people being invited in to pray with people left, right and centre - with God’s healing power touching people, with people enthusiastic about coming to church, going to Alpha, or just a friendly face in a Grace Church red t-shirt!

I also received my degree result - remarkably, and only by the grace of God, I got a first!

And then possibly most excitingly (although the power of God touching and changing lives is incredibly exciting, but I’m sure Helen would be insulted if I placed that first!): yesterday Helen & I got engaged!