John 1:16-18

In saying that we have received His fullness, the apostle here confirms that God’s grace can actually fulfill human nature. So often, we hear our nature referred to as corrupt, or totally depraved, or in anyway negative and wicked. And yet, consider that when Scripture states that we receive forgiveness, we would never question if we are truly forgiven, when Scripture states that we receive eternal life, we would never question whether that were actually so or not. And yet, when it states “of all His fullness, we have received,” we immediately begin to try to re-interpret that to mean something other than what it truly says. Why do we do that? Why do we question that our nature can be fulfilled, perfected? Why would we question that the grace of God can restore us to our original design, the image of Christ? I would wager that the underlying reason that we question that is simply, to do so requires faith in something. It requires full, true faith. See, to believe that we are inherently wicked is to believe that we are fully waging war with who we are, and thus it becomes so easy to allow ourselves certain indulgences in the name of our “total depravity.” GK Chesterton says that “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” See, to accept that we are wicked, to embrace that theology is so easy for we who love our sin, and then to excuse it in the name of a wicked nature. But, this concept is totally foreign to Scripture. Paul himself writes to the church in Galatia, “I labor in birth until Christ is formed in you.” (Galatians 4:19). What does Paul mean by that statement? If we can never be fully perfected in Christ, then for what is Paul laboring? Does he stand as a grand inquisitor punishing those until externally their lives bare the traits of Christ? God forbid. No, rather what he is stating is that he will continue to teach, to edify, to encourage, and yes admonish them, until internally they attain to the heart of Christ.

See, the real heart of the issue is this. God forms man as the icon of God, made in His image. And God Himself is a good God. Thus, to claim that our nature is wicked is to deny that we were formed in His image, or to imply that God did not create us. If God formed us in His image, and He is good, and is not the creator of wickedness, then we, in our nature, must be good. And it is through our willful acceptance of sin that we are stained by wickedness. We allow the world into our hearts and slowly begin to lean more and more on it. I would use as an example cell phones. Stay with me on this. How many people today feel as though they would be unable to live without their cell phone? And yet, 30 years ago, such a thought would have been unheard of. Throughout the continued influence of the world, however, we are convinced that we would be unable to live without it. So too is it with sin. Any sin which the world has embraced becomes harder and harder for us to be cleansed of, because we have allowed it to permeate our lives. And, much as we see with other cultures, it is not that those very vices have become more necessary for our survival, but rather we have grown accustomed to the luxuries they afford, and thus find it harder and harder to allow ourselves to let go of them to be re-formed back into the image of Christ.

Lest we, however, in reading this think that it is merely the external change to which the apostle is referring here, he addresses this external change. “The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” The law here represents this external change. The law here represents the Christian who is “born again” and immediately begins to look at his life and cut out things that the Scriptures tell us are wrong. While these disciplines are important to our healing, they are not in and of themselves our healing. The addict removed from addiction is still an addict if they change only externally. The very spiritual disciplines themselves become chores if they are merely external changes. Church goers mourn their lack of ability to watch the latest blockbuster movie because it has an “R” rating. They see certain disciplines like fasting as “inappropriate tradition” and “asceticism.” And, ultimately, you end up with a list of rules followed by those who regret their decision to abide in the ways of the Lord. You find people asking “Can Christians smoke marijuana,” and “is it okay for Christians to watch Game of Thrones?” More importantly, you enter into this realm of self-righteousness, where you hear statements like “I don’t watch that….because I’m a Christian.”

If Paul were referring only to these external changes, then he would be evoking the law. As he himself wrote, “for what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.” (Romans 8:3). The Pharisees themselves could teach the law, could preach the law, could stand in judgment punishing those who had sinned beating them into submission until externally their lives appeared to be holy and righteous. And yet, Jesus response to this very mindset was “you cleanse the outside of the cup, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence…first cleanse the inside of the cup that the outside may be clean also…you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness….you outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness….(Matthew 23:25,27-28). It’s this idea that no matter how righteous you appear, until there has been this internal change, it is only for the appearance of holiness before men, which in turn feeds the pride and ego and leads to this self-righteous attitude that permeates our culture far too often. And see, the biggest problem with this is that it is filled with ambition to do that which we can ourselves do. It is the power which has no power of a faith that requires no faith. This internal change, however, requires that we fully, truly embrace our faith, and in doing so, understand that it is through this very change that we are able to have our nature fulfilled, perfected, in Christ. It is only His grace which can restore us internally to the image of God, restoring within us His fullness, perfecting us in Him. Allowing us to be restored to this life of communion with God.

John goes on to state that no man has seen God at any time. No one can see the full true essence of God. The Lord told Moses that “you cannot see My face and live.” (Exodus 33:20). Only One who is Himself divine can see our Lord, thus the Son of God is the only One who has ever worn flesh that is able to declare Him. However, a revelation of God’s energies can be seen and received by those who are truly faithful. We see this all throughout the Scripture, where the Lord reveals a small part of His energy, but only to those most faithful. “No man has seen God at any time,” states the apostle, and yet, in Isaiah, we read “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up.” (Isaiah 6:1). Ezekiel states, “the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.” (Ezekiel 1:1). In Daniel, we read, “I continued to watch until thrones were put in place, and the Ancient of Days enthroned Himself.” (Daniel 7:9). Do any of these contradict what John says here? Of course not. No part of Scripture contradicts itself, but rather complements itself. In Hosea, we read, “I have multiplied visions, and by the authority of the prophets, I was represented.” (Hosea 12:11). The full essence of God can only be beheld by One who is fully divine, but by His grace, we can partake of that nature. We can, through His grace, receive a “glimpse” of that essence, experiencing a revelation of it.

In true worship, we can attain that revelation. We can never attain that revelation through listening to sermons, which are intended to help us understand the things of the Lord, but through pure worship, we can attain to the heavenly things. We can join the heavenly hosts of thousands of angels and archangels singing “Holy, holy, holy.” Moses, when he ascended to the mountain, saw the back of God. Isaiah saw His glory. Ezekiel saw images of the Lord. And we also can experience the same things, if we only have the faith that will allow us to do it. Through His incarnation, Jesus granted all of us this same opportunity that Ezekiel, Moses, and all of the saints throughout history have had. The opportunity to experience this revelation of the essence of the Lord. The opportunity to join in with the angels, hymning and praising our Lord. To become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), being fully perfected in Christ.

We will never be able to become divine in our nature, we are man, not God. But, through His grace, we can become fully restored to this state of full communion with Him that we see in the garden, where God is no longer some abstract idea or mental ascent, but rather a very real part of our lives. One which creates within us the internal changes that we can align with our will and desire that we no longer seek these “boundaries,” but rather are fully led in our heart to fulfill His will, our natures perfected by Christ dwelling within us.

May the peace of the Lord be with you, my beloved family.

“And we are witnesses to these things, and so also is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him.” (Acts 5:32).

This passage has been weighing very heavily on my heart, and I have spent much time meditating on the meaning of all that Peter says in this one single statement. I wanted to look really deeply at what he actually says in this passage.

In human terms, a witness is someone who has seen, experienced, observed, or in some way actively participated in an event, who then relates the details of that event to others. Consider a courtroom setting, one can only be a witness to a particular instance if that person actually witnessed the event taking place. If I was present and observed an automobile accident, I could realistically be called at some point to be a witness to that event. On the other hand, if I merely saw photos of that event, then I would be unqualified to be called upon as a witness. I can’t channel someone else’s experiences and still say that I was a witness to the events that someone else witnessed. Likewise, if I was present when a robbery occurred, then I may very well be called to be a witness to the robbery, however, merely reading a detailed account of that robbery in the news would not qualify me to be a witness to the robbery. Further, if you personally know someone, then you may be called to be a “character witness,” being able to testify to the character of the person, their personality, their immediate reactions to thing. The only real criteria here is that you actually know the person and have a relationship with them. Regardless of how many journal entries you have read about them, regardless of how many biographies you have read about them, you could never be a character witness for them unless you actually had a relationship with them. All of this bares extreme relevance in terms of this passage and what it means for we who are in Christ.

Peter proclaims that they are witnesses to these things. So, that begs the question, what are the very things that he is proclaiming them to be witnesses of? “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered by hanging on a tree. Him God has exalted to His right hand to be Prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.” (Acts 5:30-31). So, in this one statement, we have Peter baring witness to not merely the concrete things, but the supernatural mysteries as well. It’s important that we follow this train of thought here. He is proclaiming, in order, that: the God of our fathers (God the Father, the God of Jacob, Isaac, and Israel) raised up Jesus (reference to the resurrection) whom you (the Jews) murdered by hanging on a tree (the crucifixion) and that God the Father has exalted Jesus to His right hand (the ascension) to offer (give) repentance and salvation to Israel. Notice that the crucifixion is the one thing that was concrete that no one could deny. All of the rest of what he said, however, was in reference to supernatural mysteries which made no sense to anyone whose faith wasn’t strong enough. The very doctrine of the Church, as determined in the Council of Nicea (325 AD), is utterly illogical in human wisdom. It is not “logical” that this One Man was the Son of God, that He ascended and is seated at the right hand of the Father, that He came to offer salvation and repentance. None of these things make sense in human terms, but, perhaps the biggest mistake that we make is trying to bring God down to our terms rather than accepting the ascension to His terms. And, none of these things made sense, and yet, Peter experienced them. Even moreso, he recognized that those very mysteries were the exact things that he needed to be a witness to, the very things that he needed to preach to the unbelievers. He wasn’t on trial for teaching that Jesus was crucified, everyone could see and know that Jesus was crucified. It was the mysteries that no one would believe that needed the witness of someone who had seen, experienced, observed, or actively participated in. The healing, the transfiguration, the ascension, the sitting at the right hand; those supernatural mysteries that cannot be logically explained, but are fully intrinsic to our faith.

And it is this that I really wanted to speak to. I come from a very Protestant, very Evangelical background. And in that background, we see a tendency to distill our faith down to these concrete images. Much like an almost neo-Eunomian system of belief, we determine that whatever doesn’t make sense logically must be wrong. When we read in Scripture about something that doesn’t make sense in our logic-based 21st century minds, we immediately explain it away. We become tantamount to Christian atheists, determining what is logical and what is miraculous, and deleting the miraculous. I once read that Thomas Jefferson wrote a Bible wherein he went through the Holy Scriptures and removed all of the accounts of miracles performed by Jesus, leaving only His moralistic teachings. While we don’t do that historically in the life of Jesus, we do it in the continued work of Jesus in our very lives. In Peter’s place in this passage, our generation would preach the crucifixion while denying the ascension. Consider Paul’s list of the spiritual gifts. We read this list that was given to us: wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, healing, working of miracles, prophecy, discernment, speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues. We take that list and, anything that requires faith as opposed to logic, we remove, explaining that the “spiritual gifts ended” with the close of the canon. We remove any of the miraculous and leave each of the gifts that we are able to attain to in our own power. You can acquire knowledge through study, you can acquire faith, you can acquire wisdom on your own; to heal requires Divine intercession though, so obviously, that must be removed. We remove the very power of our own faith. Consider that for a moment, what does that statement truly say? Anything that requires God’s intercession, we explain away, while anything that we can emulate in our own power, we continue to believe. Who exactly are we worshiping when we do that?

See, my issue is this. The very Sacraments of the Church have been robbed of their mystery by those who claim to be the members of the Body of Christ. The Sacraments of the Church have been relegated to mere traditional symbolism. Consider this; what is Baptism? To most church-goers in our generation, it is nothing more than a symbolic event, a public decree that we are Christians. I’ve heard baptism referred to as an act of as little spiritual meaning as changing shirts, like a work uniform. We change from “Team World” to “Team Jesus,” and post signs all around us stating that we are “under new management.” Consider the Eucharist. In our generation, it is commonplace to consider it to be nothing more than a metaphor, a symbolic representation of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. When you think of the Eucharist in that way, then suddenly, the body and blood of Christ become merely tokens, thus, the “elements” used become irrelevant. Communion could realistically become wheat thins and kool-aid at that point. In fact, I’ve been to services where the once a month communion included sugar-free and gluten-free options. “Diet body of Christ.” What is true worship? Looking to Scripture, I see a much different image than ten minutes of singing, divided, flanking a sermon which focuses on a man’s ability to discern in man’s wisdom what man decrees God meant when He gave us certain words. One of the greatest ironies of the Protestant Church, in my opinion, being that the very sect that decrees “Sola Scriptura” is the only group that will base 50+ year careers on determining the meaning of “Scriptura,” rather than allowing Scripture itself to be the definitive authority.

What is fellowship? Is it the much dreaded 2 minutes of “stand up and say hi and shake hands and greet one another in Christ” that so many of us hate, or is it actually sharing in one another’s lives? Is it sacrificing for one another as Christ sacrificed? Jesus Himself said, “A new commandment I give you, as I have loved you, so you should love one another.” (John 13:34), and again, “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12). How did Jesus love us? “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” (John 3:16). See, it’s this idea that we should love one another to the point of being willing to sacrifice anything to help one another. Is that how we feel about one another in the Church? Think about those that you see every Sunday. Would you be willing to sacrifice lunch for them, much less your only child? Have you ever seen, in your life, an example even, of someone who would do this? Someone who could have thousands of dollars stolen from them or their family, and still pray for that person, rather than seeking retribution?

All of that leads us to this question, and I want each of us to be honest with ourselves; to what are we witnesses? Consider my examples above. If we were not physical witnesses to these great mysteries, then, much like the man called to witness to an accident, we would be unqualified to be a witness to it. If we were not present for a robbery, we would never be able to be a witness to that robbery. Regardless of how much Scripture we read, we could never be called to be a character witness to God, unless we had a true relationship with Him. Could you imagine if Peter, in this passage, were speaking about the depth of a Bible-study? To what a greatly gifted speaker Paul was? Could you imagine St Stephen the Protomartyr being willing to be stoned on account of the importance of a good lecture? See, so often we claim that Scripture is our sole authority, and then live our lives like we don’t even believe what the Scriptures teach us. We pick and choose what verses we wish to abide in, and then interpret away those parts that don’t fit the mold. We begin, not with the words of our Lord, but with our own “theological system,” and then make the words of Scripture fit it. Every time Jesus uses the word Baptism, it is necessary unto salvation, but that doesn’t fit a particular theological belief system, so we interpret it to mean something different. It is never Sola Scriptura, but rather Sola whatever works for our theology. If Eucharist is merely symbolic, then the elements are little more than an appetizer preceding our Sunday morning lunch. If baptism is nothing more than superfluous tradition, is it not better if we add some soap that at least our flesh become cleansed in the process? If we disbelieve in the supernatural things that are beyond our human comprehension, shouldn’t we at least make them practically useful?

If the power of our faith is distilled down to what makes sense to us in our finite, carnal minds, then we remove it’s very power by removing the need for faith. To bare witness to the power of an addict to overcome an addiction is a great witness to the power of a human mind to overcome a human temptation, but to do so removes the need for faith. If what I believe can make sense to someone who doesn’t believe, then what faith is required for what I believe? “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for,” (Hebrews 11:1) and “we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?” (Romans 8:24). Do we understand this correlation? Faith means that we believe in the very mysteries that we can neither see nor understand, and yet still believe through Faith. It means that we accept that there are things in our faith which will never make sense, nor were they meant to in our human wisdom, but, “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise.” (1 Corinthians 1:27). The very fact that we don’t understand them means that they require faith for us to actually believe. When we disbelieve the mysteries and bare witness only to those things which we can explain, then we bare witness only to the power of man, not to the power of God. The term “mystery” itself is defined as that which is not explained.

Ultimately, when we remove the supernatural power of the Holy Trinity from our lives, then we bare witness to what we are able to accomplish on our own. Consider that thought for a moment. If we believe that God can’t, or won’t, perform miracles in our lives, then our faith becomes logical in human terms. At that point, we are on a very fine line of idolatry. We bare witness to the power of this change in our lives, but it is a change that we can affect in our own lives. It is the power of ourselves to change our lives in our own power, and that is not the power spoken of in Holy Scripture. To reduce the power of God to what we, as human beings, can understand, is to create an idol ourselves. Regardless of whether we name that idol Baal, Dionysus, Thor, Jesus, Bast, Steven, etc, is to create an idol. It is the creation of a god who is not God, because, “the Mighty One is great, we do not know Him. The number of His years is endless also.” (Job 36:26). If we create a God who makes perfect sense in our lives, who conforms to all of our precepts about Him, then it is not the true God of Scripture.

On the other hand, to fully believe in the mysteries of the Church; to believe that in Eucharist, the “elements” literally become the body and blood of Christ, to believe that in Baptism, we literally die and are reborn in Christ, to believe in God’s ability to perform in miracles; these things require true faith. And, they are very hard to accept, because they are counter everything that we have learned on this earth, but, that is the very definition of faith. After all, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and who has faith in what they’ve seen, for that which is seen is no longer faith. To believe in only what makes sense is not to have faith in it, but rather, to have faith in ourselves. Our faith must necessarily be a “supernatural” faith, and that, by definition, is outside of nature, and thus, outside of our capacity to comprehend. Through the prophet Isaiah, the Lord teaches us, “Let the ungodly man abandon his ways, and the lawless man his counsels…for My counsels are not your counsels, neither are My ways your ways…but as heaven is distant from the earth, so is My way distant from your ways, and your thoughts from My mind.” (Isaiah 55:7-9 LXX). To fully comprehend God, to refuse to accept those things which don’t make sense, is to remove His sovereignty by bringing Him down to a human level. Consider St Paul’s writing to the Ephesians, his prayer that “Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge…now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations.” (Ephesians 3:17-21). Each of these explains to us that we will never, neither should we be able, to comprehend the things of the Lord.

So, what are we witnesses of, my beloved family? A witness has seen, observed, experienced, or actively participated in an event. When we speak of “witnessing” to others, to what are we witnesses? What have we participated in that is worthy of witness? I fear that many of us couldn’t honestly answer beyond convicting lectures, engaging theological debates, in-depth Bible studies. Have we participated in the heavenly gifts, the heavenly worship that we see in the Book of Revelation? Have we stood in the presence of the saints? Have we joined in the heavenly choir? Have we tasted the fountain of immortality? Or have we merely attended lectures lectures and studies with the goal of understanding the infinite with our finite minds? Do we truly believe in the words of Jesus, or is our faith in the interpreting away of His words by one seeking to make them “make sense” in our own minds? Scripture admonishes us to walk by faith, not by sight; do we accept that or do we, as did the apostle Thomas, demand that we see something before we will believe it?

The peace of the Lord be with you, my beloved family.

Meditate on what you most want for your life. Peace, contentment, love, forgiveness, happy relationships, whatever you most strongly desire.

Now, consider those who have personally wronged you. Regardless of your relationship with them; even if you will never meet them again. Consider those “enemies” that you have in the world; people at work, friends, whomever it may be.

Now pray for each of them those things that you most want for your life. Pray that they will find that peace, that love, that contentment, that forgiveness that you most desire.

Gospel of John 1:14-15

John here bares testimony to the fact that the Word, who was together with the Father and the Holy Spirit before time, the Word Himself became flesh, and not merely became flesh, but walked among us. This is important to notice, because so often when we speak of the “Word of God” as being the ultimate authority, we erroneously attribute that Word to being the Holy Scripture. And yet, the Holy Scripture never became flesh and dwelt amongst us. To the contrary, it is Jesus Himself who declared that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.” (Matthew 28:18), thus to declare that the Scripture itself has this authority is to remove it from God the Word, Jesus, who declared it to be so. It’s important for us to acknowledge this, that the Word that Scripture points to is not Scripture itself, but rather is God the Word, who is Jesus, from everlasting to everlasting and unto the ages of ages.

And that He became flesh and dwelt among us is also vitally important. The Word, while still being fully God, also became fully human. He assumed all characteristics of humanity; body, soul, mind, emotion, even mortality itself. He felt pain, He suffered, He hungered, slept, cried, He was angered, He was tempted, all of this experienced while He was in the flesh. He came down to show us what we should truly look like, what humans were created to be; being created in the image and likeness of God.

John tells us that “He dwelt among us.” In the Old Testament, God’s presence dwelt in the ark of the covenant, and later within the temple. Here, however, we see His presence dwelling amongst all men, in humanity itself. His glory here refers first to the signs and wonders that Jesus performed while He was in the flesh; and secondly to His humble service, His love and compassion towards all men. It’s interesting to notice that throughout all of the Gospels, we never once find Him rejecting any aside from those whose prideful knowledge and love of the world had caused them to become blind. In Scripture, we see a constant warning against this idolatry of “knowledge.” In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul warns that “knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.” (1 Corinthians 8:1). In Romans, we see the warning to “not be wise in your own opinion.” (Romans 12:16). This is not to say that the Scripture encourages ignorance, but rather that it warns not to place it on a pedestal above the need for faith, for love. See, Jesus fully embraced sinners, the lame, the sick, the homeless, the hungry; He was a companion to laymen, a physician to those who were ill. Only those who loved themselves too strongly, or those who “knew better” were unable to see that He was the Messiah. And so often, we also do the same thing. We get so caught up in our learning that we are unable to see. We think ourselves too wise to believe in the foolishness that the Lord has set before us. We seek to “solve” the mysteries of our faith, blinded to the fact that those very mysteries are those things which test our faith. I think of the Eucharist, and our contemporary belief wherein we have distilled it to a symbolic ritual, rather than partaking of the divine nature of our faith itself. I think of the miracles promised of the Lord which we have deigned to assume were ended with the close of Scripture. I think of all of these great mysteries, which to believe in them requires true faith, and our explanations to make them more “logical.” We blind ourselves with our knowledge, seeking to define the things of God following the laws of human logic; thereby removing the very faith that we need most strongly to be exercising in those moments.

“Full of grace and truth,” John continues. This statement hereby qualifies the Word and His glory. It is through this very truth that we are able to be restored to the image whence we were created. To the image and likeness of God. In the garden, we learn that Adam and Eve were created fully in communion with God. God spoke directly to them, no intercessors, no mediators. We see this in the Lord’s warning about the fruit of the one tree that would remove them from this communion (Genesis 2:16-17 LXX), and directly after the transgression, where we read “Then they heard the voice of the Lord walking in the garden that afternoon, and Adam and his wife hid themselves…So the Lord God called Adam and said, ‘Adam, where are you?'” (Genesis 3:8-9 LXX). And because of the fall, that communion was broken. Thus, the glory of the Lord left. Each of us are born similar, each of us is born in the image and likeness of God. The glory of the Lord resides within us, as temples of the Holy Spirit. And, through our sin, we break that communion. Much as we read in the prophet Ezekiel, when we fall through sin, as did Adam in the garden, “the glory of the Lord departed.” (Ezekiel 10:18 LXX). We are left, without the conviction of the Holy Spirit guiding the nous of the soul, we are left at the mercies of our will, of our desires; whereas the nous of the soul (where dwelt the Glory of the Lord through the dwelling of the Holy Spirit) slowly atrophies. Each step we take into sin, we weaken our ability to be receptive to the will of God. And it is through this grace and truth that the apostle mentions that we can be restored to that state, to that full communion with the Lord. Where we can be filled again with the Glory of the Lord and slowly bring into alignment our wills and desires.

It is to this very fact that John the Baptist speaks when he states that “He who comes after me is preferred before me.” See, the Baptist’s teaching was of the One who was to come after him. He recognized that his role was merely that of the Forerunner; his purpose was not to be the Messiah that would save many, but rather to prepare the people for the coming of the Messiah. He baptized, but his baptism was external. He convinced many to turn from their ways, but he was unable to restore that communion that could change someone internally. He could teach the commandments, but the people could only keep them as faithfully as their will and desire would allow; without the restored communion with the Lord, their hearts themselves were unable to change, thus his baptism could never produce true repentance. We see in the Book of Acts, “when the apostles heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John who…prayed that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For…they had only been baptized in the name of Jesus. Then, they laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 8:14-17), and again, “John indeed baptized with a baptism of repentance, saying that the people should believe on Him who would come after him…when they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and when Paul had laid hands on them, they received the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 19:4-6). John’s baptism, while it was of God, was not of the Holy Spirit, and thus it could never effect change in any beyond their own capacity to change in their own power.

See, my fear is that many, particularly in Protestant Denominations, are never taught any of this. When this sacrament of baptism, held to be a supernatural act since the time of the apostles, has become nothing more than a symbolic representation at best and optional at worst, I fear that many respond in truth the same as Apollos does here, “we have not even so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.” (Acts 19:2). We might intellectually affirm that He is real, because we’ve been taught as such, but never having actually known or experienced His presence in our life, because we were taught that His supernatural happenings were things of the past. And, when people consider baptism itself as nothing more than symbolic, then the inevitable next thought becomes, what do we do next? We start looking to our life and trying to figure out what we feel as though we need to cut out, instead of being led by the Spirit how to live, and those things that we deign to remove, wee attempt to do so in our own will and desire, never actually restoring the communion that would make it possible. On the other hand, when we recognize the sacrament of Baptism for what it truly is, a literal death and resurrection into the Body of Christ, the literal indwelling of the Holy Spirit, then that change becomes internal. We no longer fight against the urges of sin, because our will and desire begin to align more with the Lord’s will for our lives. Our lives become governed by God the Word, looking to the words of God as guidelines, and this not only leaves us with no room for these “loopholes,” but it leaves little to no desire to seek them. Once we recognize that we have died with Christ and that it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us, our desires are no longer rooted in fleshly lusts and passions, but rather in the desire to walk with God in all holiness. And this is only possible through the truth of God, revealed by the grace of God, given to us by the Word of God, Jesus Christ Himself.

We must be careful of the trappings of this external baptism, this baptism of John. So many, I fear, have accepted this baptism and grown coomplacent with it. So many have adopted this “I’m not perfect, just forgiven” cliche in our culture, ignoring the teaching of Jesus that “you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48). Does this mean that you shall never sin? To the contrary, the more you are being perfected, the more aware of your sinfulness you will become. However, it is because your life is being led by the indwelling Holy Spirit that you even recognize these things as sin. In your own power, you can perhaps create a PG-13 version of yourself, but with the indwelling of the Spirit, you literally die to yourself and are born anew, with a new will, with new desires; and those remnants of your previous life will be like so much dust, occasionally fluttering down but instantly recognizable and able to be repented of. So, we must evaluate ourselves and question, is baptism to us merely a symbolic changing of baseball jerseys, going from “Team World” to “Team Jesus,” or is it a Sacrament, a mystery, whereby we literally die to ourselves that we can be resurrected daily with the risen Christ? Are we content with a one-time proclamation of our faith, “once saved always saved,” or do we renew our baptism daily with tears of repentance?

May the peace of the Lord be with you all, my beloved family in Christ.

Having given to us the urgency concerning the advent of God the Word, John here tells us of the herald of the very Word. Through the Prophet Malachi, we learn that word of the Lord, “Behold, I will send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me.” (Malachi 3:1 LXX). Now here, the apostle tells us that this John (the Baptist) is “sent from God,” and thus, being the Lord’s messenger, we must recognize that the words that he speaks are not the words of a mere man, but rather they themselves are a message from the Lord. The sheer fact that the Lord refers to him as a “messenger” implies that he speaks not for himself, but for He who sent him. A postal employee doesn’t deliver his own letters, rather words that are written by others. Thus was John the Baptist merely a courier for the message of the Lord.

And, what was this message exactly? For what purpose was John sent? This Forerunner of Christ was sent to reveal that God the Word was this light which the apostle had already proclaimed to be the light which leads to life for all who walk in it. And yet, one may say, we know that God “will not receive the testimony of men.” (John 5:34). So, if God required not the testimony of men, then to what purpose was John sent? Rather than that those who believed not would come to believe, but instead that those who would believe would be able to learn form one of their own. John came to prepare those who would believe for the coming of the Lord. “That all through him might believe.” This word believe gets used so much in our contemporary culture, especially concerning the things of faith. And, while this mental assent is a portion of faith, the word believe means to trust fully and completely in. Which is why so often when we read about obedience, it is in reference to the phrase “that your faith might be perfected.” (1 Corinthians 2:5, 1 John 4:17, Philemon 1:6, 1 Thessalonians 3, etc). As we read later, while John’s testimony was used by Jesus, it was overshadowed by the witness of the Holy Spirit. We read that “If I bear witness to Myself, My witness is not true…you have sent John and his witness is true…he was the bright and shining lamp and you were willing to rejoice in his light.” (John 5:31,33,35). But, we also read that “I have a greater witness than John’s, for the works the Father has given Me to finish bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me.” (John 5:36). See, John, who was received by men, serves as a witness to the coming of the Messiah, and yet, his witness is only partially effective compared to the witness of the works of Jesus or the Holy Spirit. John’s strongest witness was bourne in his witness to teaching those who did believe and leading them to the Messiah. He was sent as a herald and a prophet that by the voice of a man, other men might be prepared by one of their kin for the coming of the Messiah.

But, lest any should immediately assume that John himself was of a divine nature, the apostle immediately adds, “he was not that light.” See, this becomes imperative, because so often our nature elevates the messenger as being more responsible for the message than the one who sends the message. I think of the very leaders whose names define their movements. Consider the number of denominations named after the theologian who devised the denomination rather than the God that they serve. I have heard it said that great movements of God begin when the founder of the movement truly knows God…and those same movements die when the followers only know the founder. The death of the Church as we have come to know it will be when the followers of the Christ become very familiar with the words of the teachers, but cease to know God. When God is reduced to the exponent in an equation and His Holy Scripture is reduced to a Hermeneutical formulary created by man, rather than the “double edged sword” that Paul writes about in Hebrews. When the 2000 year old traditions of the Church are erased to pave the way completely for theological relativism, the Church as we have come to know it will no longer be. When the very children of God, about whom the Lord wrote, “this is how they will know you are My disciples, by the love that you have for one another” (John 13:35) divide and argue over different teachers, proclaiming this teacher to be better than that teacher (circa 1 Corinthians 1:12-13); and judging one another’s beliefs rather than trying to edify one another.

This light which John came to bear witness to was not himself, nor any of the apostles, Rabbis, Scribes, teachers, nor any other man; but was Christ Himself. “And all the light was the true light that was given to every man.” See, this light is offered to all, not any particular elite group of elected individuals. Not to any particular ethnicity or lineage. No, God does not select an elect group of people to save and then deign that the rest should perish. Peter teaches us that “the Lord is not slack concerning His promise…but is longsuffering towards us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9). Paul teaches us that God “desires that all men be saved and come to knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4).

God desires that all men be saved and that none should perish, but then John tells us that “He came down to His own and His own did not receive Him.” What do we do with that verse? Pretend it’s not there? Consider this, God came down to His “chosen people,” His elect nation; the Jews. And yet, they were the very ones who rejected Him. Now, in absentia of our own will, what does this say about our Lord? If He is not willing that anyone should perish, and desires that none of us perish but all come to knowledge of the truth; and yet His very people are able to reject His, then one of two things must be true. Either, God has no power to save us, or God allows us to freely choose to either accept or reject Him. Obviously it could not be the former, for we know that God is all-powerful, thus, it must be the second. That this light which leads to life is offered to all, and yet we have freely the choice to accept or reject it. The apostle goes on to state that “as many as receive Him, He gave the right to be sons of God.” And this “right” is not an inalienable right; it is the word “exousia,” which literally means the “power of choice, the physical and mental power, the authority.” Thus, as many as receive Him, He gives them the power to choose to become sons of God, the authority to become sons of God. Do you understand what this is saying? When we receive Christ we are given the ability to become sons of God, we become children of God by adoption and by grace we inherit that which God is by His very nature. We become “co-workers of God” (1 Corinthians 3:9), “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17), “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

And this adoption is based neither on ethnic descent (of the blood), neither natural birth (will of flesh), nor man’s own decision (will of man). No, this adoption is of God, it’s a spiritual birth by grace, through faith, and sealed with the Holy Spirit. We freely receive the gift which the Lord, in His grace, offers us, and are baptized. And through this baptism, we are born “of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5), are “buried with Him in baptism and raised with Him in faith” (Colossians 2:12, Romans 6:4); thereby becoming “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Ultimately, we restore, through God’s grace, the original theanthropic form into which He created us, where “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20), and we can truly proclaim with St Paul, “the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14). This is what the Scripture means when it says that we must “die to ourselves,” we must put to death all of these indulgences that we have grown so accustomed to embracing. We must no longer pursue the things of the flesh, but rather, pursue the things of the Spirit. To “deny ourselves, pick up our crosses, and follow Him,” means that we must deny ourselves, pick up our crosses, and follow in His footsteps. It’s not allegorical when He says to deny ourselves, it means that there are certain things in our lives that we must actively resist, and other things that we must be willing to be removed from us. I heard a priest recently who posed a very important question to his parish, one which I feel that we must all truly, deeply meditate on; and answer in all honesty. Think about your sins; now if you could push a button and remove that sin from your life completely, would you? Think of your favorite sin, maybe it’s lust, maybe covetousness, maybe dishonesty, maybe drunkeness. Your favorite sin could be completely removed from your life; would you do it? See, it’s easy to say, “I want to be free from sin,” but it’s hard to honestly say “yes,” because we tend to love our sin. See, Jesus frees us from sin’s power over us, but He still allows us our free choice, and so often, we return to those things because we miss the pleasure that they bring. As Peter writes, quoting from Proverbs, “‘A dog returns to it’s vomit,’ and ‘A sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire.'” (2 Peter 2:22). So are we when it comes to sin. We must be freed by the grace of Christ, but then we must be willing to continue to choose against it. Praying that the Lord would free us from the sin of pornography will do little if we keep websites bookmarked and photos on our phones. He may free us from the bondage, but then, through our own choice, we return to the same filth which He freed us from and find ourselves in the same situation.

We are adopted as children of the living God; heirs of God and co-heirs of Christ. Because of that, our lives should reflect it, in all aspects of them. When Peter tells us that we are to “be holy, as the Lord is holy,” it is not merely by proclamation of our faith that we are made so, but also through the life that we present to our beloved Lord. We must be holy, and we are empowered to do so through the grace of the Lord, but we must also choose that path, that walk, that we may continue on the road to healing. We must pray for the grace to be freed from our slavery to sin, but we must also put forth the effort that displays that grace. As John the Baptist states, “bare fruit worthy of repentance.”

May the peace of the Lord be with you, my beloved brethern.

So often, I’ve heard political pundits and conspiracy theorists alike speak on the topic of the gold standard. I’ve so often heard that once the government removed the gold standard, the US Dollar became worthless. The dollar lost it’s meaning, because it lost it’s value. It was no longer valued as being measurable in a unit of gold, thus it was reduced to a “promissory note.” It was worth one dollar only because the government promised that it would be worth one dollar, and at any time the government could change the value of that dollar to be more or less than it currently is.

Man was created to be in communion with God. We see this all the way back to the Garden. We see all throughout the creation story that God and man were in communion; think of the words, “I have given to you every seed-bearing herb that sows seed…and every tree whose fruit shall yield seed” (Genesis 1:29). After the fall, we see “the voice of God walking in the Garden…so the Lord God called to Adam…” (Genesis 3:8-9). Now picture this, God was speaking to Adam as plainly and clearly as you and I could stand and have a conversation. Each of those instances were not through special rituals or any other sort of ceremony, “the voice of God walking in the garden saying ‘Adam, where are you?'” I wanted to explain that, because it paints such an important image here. Man, in full communion with God. This is important, because it shows the harmony, the communion, which we were created to have with the Lord. The fruits were given to man as a blessing, the vegetation, the animals, all of it were in harmony with God’s plan. They were all received with the blessing of the Lord.

But then, Adam and Eve fall. They fall and seek the one thing that was not given to them with the blessing of the Lord. And this is such an important facet to the story. See, the sin of Adam and Eve had nothing to do with the fruit, neither even did it have to do with their disobedience. The real sin that we see in the garden was Adam and Eve seeking to receive something outside of the blessing of the Lord. It was looking outside of the Lord for something that would provide for them that which they felt that the Lord would never allow. It was looking to what He had provided for them, what they could receive in communion with Him, and then going beyond that in spite of His warnings.

And, it’s so easy to condemn them for doing that. Especially when you look at it from the viewpoint of breaking their communion with God. It’s not that they chose the world, it’s that they chose something that was outside of the blessing of God. It’s so easy to condemn them for it, and yet, we often do the same thing. Consider how often we separate the “spiritual” from the “secular” life. We worship God in Church, even occasionally at home, but we always feel that there are times when He is, and times when He isn’t, appropriate. See, when we become “new creations” but still cling to old things, we create this sort of schism within ourselves. We create this life of trying to maintain unity with the Lord, while still trying to keep this distance, this area where we are fully out of communion with Him.

St Paul exhorts us that “whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do unto the Lord,” (1 Corinthians 10:31) and again, “whatever you do, work at it heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men.” (Colossians 3:23), and again, “with goodwill doing service, as unto the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:7-8). See, when we segregate secular activities from our faith, much like the dollar with it’s gold standard, these activities lose their meaning. They become action for the sake of action, seeking our fulfillment from a world which is dying. But, when we heed the words of the apostle, his admonishment, our very lives become Eucharistic. All of life returns to this communion with God. Thus, all of life regains it’s original meaning, this ubiquitous state of communion with the Lord. Food no longer remains merely a necessity for survival, but rather becomes a blessing. We are truly able to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 33:9 LXX). Work, which so often is the foundation for grumbling and despondency amongst the lost, becomes anew the blessing from which it was begotten.

All of life regains it’s original splendor once we are able to see each thing as it is, a blessing from the Lord. Much like the dollar, once we restore the gold standard, it no longer seems to be filled with empty promises and broken dreams, it becomes truly valuable once more. And yet, “the abodes of wisdom are more to be chosen than gold, and the abodes of discernment are more to be chosen than silver.” (Proverbs 16:12 LXX). So, if the gold standard would return the true value to the dollar, and wisdom is more valuable than gold, then how much more valuable would it be in our lives to return to the Lord in all that we do, rather than reserving the “spiritual things” for spiritual times? Every aspect of our life should serve one purpose, to bring us into communion with the Lord. To be disciples of Christ means to recognize that it is Jesus alone who has given us these great and perfect gifts, and we should use each of them to bring us closer into communion with Him.

May the peace of the Lord be with you all, my beloved brothers and sisters. Christ is in our midst.

The Gospel of John

Chapter 1:1-5

Beginning in all wisdom, with the wisdom and the conviction of the Holy Spirit guiding him; see how strongly begins the humble apostle’s Gospel. “In the beginning,” he declares, evoking the creation story of Genesis as his witness to the very words that he is about to write. And yet, in contrast to the words of Moses in the Penteteuch, the apostle here focuses rather than on the account of creation itself, but on the Creator. And not merely the Creator even, but note how quickly he turns the topic from the Father of all to the God the Word, Jesus.

See, we have to recognize one thing about this writing; John was in no way contesting the Father, but rather that the Father had already been revealed unto all manner of men. It was not in the wisdom of our age where we consider that anything could happen without the presence of the Lord, as in the garden, where the vile serpent had convinced Adam and Eve that they could become as God was. No, rather, the presence of the Father, and even the Holy Spirit, was evident to all in creation, to which creation itself bore witness. The Psalmist tells us that “The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament shows the creation of His hands” (Psalm 18:1 LXX). No, all who existed recognized the existence of the Father; it was rather Jesus to whom John attested, God the Word. Thus, here, in his introduction, we see John evoking creation itself to be the witness to the Creator, and then quickly begins to allude to the new Creation which is in Christ Jesus Himself.

“He was in the beginning with God.” That He was in the beginning with God means that there is no starting point, there is no point where He was not with God. One of the most common heresies throughout the history of the Church is the denial of the divinity of Christ. That He was either never God or that He was born human and became God. And those very heresies which began centuries ago continue unto this very day. Arius and his followers adhered to these false doctrines; Marcion and his followers clung strongly to the inverse, that Jesus was God but that He was not the Father, but rather that the God of the Old Testament was no longer, and that the two were separate gods. This non-Trinitarian stance remains today, wherein the Mormons believe that Jesus was born man and ascended to the state of divinity throughout His life. Christian Scientists, Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc, all still hold to these false teachings about the Lord, denying His words that “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no man comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6).

John continues, “The Word was with God, the Word was God.” This is such an important statement, as it shows the contrast between the two. That the Word was with God shows that in the beginning, Jesus, the uncreated being, was with the Father; thereby showing Him to be a separate and distinct Person, fully in communion with the Father, but fully separate. If I am resting after a day’s labor and lie alone in my cell, no one would ever say that “I am with me,” or that “I accompany myself.” However, John doesn’t stop there, he also states that the Word was God. This statement shows that, though they are two separate entities, two separate Persons; they are of one essence. God the Father and God the Word are co-equal, co-eternal. It reveals Jesus to be of one essence with the Father, by Whom all things are made.

But what of the Holy Spirit, one may ask at this point? Again, let us remember John’s purpose for writing his Gospel, one which he himself reveals unto us. John himself tells us that “These words are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” (John 20:31). John goes on to state that “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” See, God the Word (Jesus) is the co-creator of all things, with the Father and the Holy Spirit. In Genesis, we read that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (The Father, Genesis 1:1), and that “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water.” (Holy Spirit, Genesis 1:2) and “has spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.” (Hebrews 1:2). I wanted to note, especially from the words of John himself, why his focus is almost exclusively, in this passage, on the Son, lest someone conceive this notion that John is removing the presence of the Holy Spirit from his account of creation. Each of these three Persons of the Trinity are ever present all throughout Scripture, it was in the context of his writing of this Gospel that he focused so strongly on God the Word during the creation, rather than on each of the roles played by each Person of the Trinity. Each of the three were, and always are, equal, with the Son being the Begotten of the Father and the Spirit likewise proceeding from the Father Himself.

John continues to state that, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” It’s this total idea that only God has life in Him, thus the Word is the source of life, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Consider in Scripture how often the unbelievers are referred to as “the dead.” When Jesus calls one man to follow Him, the man replies that he must attend to his father’s funeral, to which Jesus replies, “leave the dead to bury their own.” (Matthew 8:22). Only in the presence of God do we find true life; and yet, when we turn to Him, He grants us to partake of that life, to share with Him in that life. He grants us the grace to walk away from the ways of the flesh, the ways which are dying and are dead. In Sirach, we read “Woe to the cowardly hearts and weakened hands, and to a sinner who walks on two paths….those who fear the Lord will not disobey His words, and those who love Him will keep His ways.” (Wisdom of Sirach 2:12,15) and Solomon teaches us that “the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torture will ever touch them. In the eyes of the undiscerning, they seem to have died, and their departure was considered misfortune…but they are at peace. For though in man’s view they were punished, their hope is full of immortality.” (Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-3). In Proverbs, we read that “there is a road that seems to be right with men, but the ends of it reach into the depths of Hades.” (Proverbs 14:12). See, in His coming, Jesus allows us, mankind, to be receivers of this divine light. And by receiving and walking in this light, we receive the life from Him as His children, sons and daughters adopted into the family of God. Which is why John, in his epistle, tells us that “whoever walks in darkness and claims to have fellowship with Him is a liar and the truth is not in him.” (1 John 1:6), because Jesus Himself taught us that “He who has My commands and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” (John 14:21). And this light, John tells us, this light which we freely receive, shines in the darkness, which indicates both spiritual ignorance and satanic oppression. When we receive this light, we can no longer walk in the darkness of the world, blinded by the lies and teachings of the world, but rather fully embrace the light of the hope of the world to come. No longer chained to earthly lusts and wants, temptations and desires; freed from each of them and fully embracing the light which is the life of the kingdom and our lives walking freely in that light.

See, when we truly receive Christ, when we truly embrace the Father, when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are to walk as children of light. And our lives should become something that the world can’t comprehend or overcome. See, the world looks at someone like Teresa of Calcutta, living in poverty amongst the poor and the wretched, refusing earthly gain, and it can’t understand the concept of it. She displays the love and compassion of the Lord and they can’t grasp this concept, so they immediately demonize it. They have to; otherwise others may find the same joy and peace in doing the works of the Lord. They need to vilify her, to make her look bad, otherwise others may try to display the same mercy, compassion, and love; and then any of the world selfish philanthropic actions become exposed for what they truly are, selfish PR gimmicks. The last thing that the world can afford to happen is to find a group of believers actually living “the Way.” They can have people doing studies all day long and never say a word, but to have someone actually holding the strength of their convictions, actually standing with a strength as strong as St Stephen, then suddenly, they must needs to demonize this faith.

The world, Satan…neither cares what we believe, as long as we’re quiet and private about it. Satan is perfectly happy to observe as masses of people memorize verse after verse, Scripture after Scripture, parable after parable; and then go to study groups and argue about interpretations. When Satan gets scared is when he sees groups of Christians who recognize that the first book that follows the Gospels in the printed Bible isn’t the “studies of the apostles,” but rather the “Acts” of the apostles. Where Satan gets scared is when we see a homeless on the street freezing and invite that person into our home, allow them to shower, feed them a real meal. Where Satan gets scared is where he is unable to convince us that our faith is not merely a mental assent, but is rather a way of life that we must embrace. Satan gets most scared when we read the words of Jesus and instead of memorizing them, we actually live them. The world doesn’t care what we say or feel; the world doesn’t care what song we sing on a Sunday morning. The world cares when we carry our faith out of the Cathedral and actually live it in our life. The world doesn’t what we post on social media, the world cares when we actually live out the convictions of our faith.

The moment our faith becomes our warcry; our convictions actually affect our lives; the moment we start living out loud and our faith becomes more than Sunday morning lectures and feel-good platitudes; that’s when Satan must try to silence us. And we, my beloved brothers and sisters, must never allow that to happen.

The apostles were twelve uneducated men; but filled with the boldness of the Holy Spirit, they were able to turn the world upside down. Not through theological debates, not through Bible studies, but by a thorough and intimate knowledge of our God, the Holy Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Lord never changes, my beloved brethern. Jesus Christ is the same always and forever. And we have the same God, the same Holy Spirit, as the apostles; may we have the same faith as well. May our faith never be distilled to mere intellectual assent, but rather may our faith grow to be the conviction to live our faith in action.

May the peace of the Lord be with you all, my beloved family.

“Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, ‘Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.’ And Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.'” (Luke 10:38-42).

I’ve been meditating quite a bit on this passage, and what it means, even more importantly, what it actually says, and it has led me to wish to confess this to each of you. Here we see two sisters who were very devout in the faith, and who were enamored at the presence of He whom they knew to be the Messiah. These two are the sisters of Lazarus, whom we read about in the Gospel of John (John 11). And in meditating on this passage, I see a very important message contained herein.

We see two sisters here, both of whom are adamant believers in the Lord, and both of whom respond differently to being in His presence. On the one, we see Mary, who sits at the feet of our beloved Lord, reveling in His presence, listening attentively to all that He has to say. And, on the other, we see Martha, who is so busied with her service and accommodation of the Lord that she is too busy and anxious, tired, to just enjoy being in His presence. We see this one sister who is so set on trying to accomplish everything that she refuses to share company with Him.

So often, in our day, we are Martha. It is a fact that the Lord has laid heavily upon my heart as well. So often, we mistake productivity for busy-ness. Consider how much time that you dedicate unto our Lord daily, now how much of that is spent in stillness? The Lord has laid it upon me how guilty I am of this very thing. The time that I dedicate daily to the things of the Lord, how much of it is spent on study and reading theology, on writing blogs, etc, versus how much of it is spent just sitting still and quiet and listening to the Lord. It was as though my faith itself had been distilled down to what facts I could learn, what cross-references, what “deeper meaning” I could find beneath His words, rather than just sitting in silence and listening. In the Psalms, the Lord admonishes us to “Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth.” (Psalm 45:11 LXX).

This stillness is one of the Spiritual disciplines that I most strongly struggle with. I constantly feel the need to study, to dig, to find…searching for any deeper meaning that I can. And yet, the Lord promises us that His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts. And, through my own understanding I may be able to find meanings so deep that the original authors never intended them to be there. But, what good does that do? What good is it to climb the highest up a ladder if the ladder is on the wrong building? Of what use is it to break up the fallow ground if the soil is pure clay beneath? I could labor for years, but never be able to draw water from a stone.

This is my confession. In my pride, I constantly mistake busy-ness with productivity. And, this sin is one that I intend to work much more on. To take much more quiet time alone, blocking out the outside distractions and dedicating myself to listening to the word of God. Not in trying to over analyze the words of Scripture, but rather to let the Lord speak for Himself. What part of my wisdom could ever surpass the importance of the words of the Lord Himself? I’ve written so often about the verse “Whoever hears these words of mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house upon a rock; and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was built on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand; and the rain descended, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was it’s fall.” (Matthew 7:24-27).

I believe very strongly that all of Scripture is inspired by God. And, because of that belief, I would rather read and believe what I read than to attempt to explain it in a manner that makes sense to me. I will continue to read, and study Scripture, as I always have. However, I shall also be taking much more of that time and dedicating it to pausing and listening to the words of the Lord, to God the Word, our Beloved Jesus. And that not “reading between the lines,” but rather looking at it objectively. I’ve always believed that when Jesus said, “it’s hard for the rich to inherit the kingdom,” that what He meant was “it’s hard for the rich to inherit the kingdom,” and when He says that we must care for the poor, the persecuted, the hungry; what He meant was that we must care for the poor, the persecuted, the hungry.

Those who claim to believe that the words of Scripture are the sole authority (Sola Scriptura), I challenge you to ask, do you truly believe that? I am pausing my study of the Book of Romans to study one of the Gospels, and I challenge you to pay attention to the readings as well as my studies, in fact, even moreso than my studies. If you truly believe in Scripture as the sole authority, what do you do with verses like “whosoever believes in Me will do the same works that I do.” (John 14:12)? What do you do with a verse that challenges the other verses that are so oft quoted in our culture? “For grace you have been saved by faith, and this not of your own works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9), thus obviously works have nothing to do with our salvation, until the next verse, “for you are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” (Ephesians 2:10). So often, in our generation, we seek to make things fit into our mold for something; we approach things with a theological doctrine already in place and then try to stretch the words of Scripture across that mold, instead of adapting our “mold” based on what is plainly in Scripture. I’ve heard arguments about election and predestination, but then read verses like “the Lord…is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) and the Lord “desires that all men should be saved and to come to the knowledge of the Truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4). My challenge is this, as I have done in reading and studying these passages, forget your preconceived notions, unlearn the theology which has been ingrained into you, and allow the words of Scripture itself to speak for itself. Allow the words of God to have the actual authority, rather than the interpretation of man. Even if you don’t read any part of my study, read the passages that I am writing about and see what the Scripture is plainly stating, rather than what you were taught growing up.

My goal is to study the words of Jesus, meditating on His words, as Mary did, and growing in my relationship with Him; rather than following the example of Martha, who spent so much time working that she never stopped to listen to what He was actually saying. Remember, the passage says that while Martha was busy serving, Mary sat at His feet, and heard His word. This is not to say that there must not be service, to the contrary, there must be much more service (according to Scripture) than is prevalent in the Church, but there must also be that time of stillness, where we allow God Himself to teach us and to reveal Himself to us. May we never forget this teaching from the Gospel itself, and may we never become so busy doing our “work for the kingdom” that we ignore the very King Himself. I pray that the Lord would guide each of us, you and I, into the continued growth of our relationship with Him. Never again mistaking busy-ness for productivity, neither mistaking knowledge for maturity. We must know Scripture, but knowing Scripture alone is never enough if we don’t know our Lord Himself.

May the peace of the Lord be with you all, my beloved brethern.

“Vanya, go down the road and find the sheep,” an old man told his grandson.

The road was next to a cemetery. The boy was scared:

“Grandpa, I’m afraid of the cemetery.”

When the old man heard it, he said:

“Vanya, the cemetery is a God’s place, it’s a sin to be afraid of it. The bones of our relatives rest in graves peacefully and quietly until the Archangel’s trumpet wakes them up on the Judgment Day. Why should anyone be afraid of them? Instead of being scared, you should visit them as often as possible. If you come to a cemetery often, you won’t harbor evil thoughts. Remember death, judgment, and the Heavenly Kingdom, and you’ll never sin again.”

The old man paused and then added, “Of course, there is a horrible place in our village.”

“Where is it?”

“It’s the bar. It’s the place where demons live and destroy those who go there. Where are fights, foul words, ravaged households, tears of mothers and children, and ruined health? In the bar. I can’t even count all people who went broke or died because of alcohol. Be always afraid of the bar, Vanya, and run away from it, for it is a place cursed by God. The cemetery, on the contrary, is a holy place, the Lord’s farmland.”

Prepared by the “Catalog of Good Deeds”