Exiled Preacher

Christmas and a grace too powerful to name

2025-12-16T11:35:00.006+00:00

The musical Hamilton has been a big hit, with acclaimed performances on Broadway and London’s West End. The Hamilton in question is Alexander Hamilton (circa 1755-1804). The American politician was involved in the Revolutionary War against the British and became the first US secretary to the treasury under George Washington. Hamilton helped to frame the constitution of the newly established republic. The life of Founding Father seems like an unlikely subject for an all singing, all dancing musical, but it works.

My wife and I recently saw the film version of a Broadway performance of the musical, released to mark the show’s tenth anniversary. We went in part to see what all the fuss was about and enjoyed it. Act II certainly packs an emotional punch. Without giving away too many spoilers, Hamilton becomes estranged from his wife, Eliza. A terrible tragedy then strikes their family, following which they are reconciled. The drama of the moment is carried forward by the song It’s Quiet Uptown.

In the song, a grieving Hamilton acknowledges that he is undeserving of his wife’s love. Surveying the scene, Eliza’s sister Angelica reflects, ‘there is a grace too powerful to name’. As the couple hold hands as a gesture of reconciliation the chorus sings, ‘forgiveness, can you imagine?’ Watching this unfold, I’m thinking, ‘Preach it. Amen to that!’

Better still, what happened at the first Christmas revealed that grace indeed has a name. In the New Testament Paul writes of God’s grace ‘which has now been manifested through the appearing of our Saviour, Christ Jesus.’

Grace is God’s love for underserving sinners, lavished upon us in Jesus. The Son of God came to die in our place that we may be reconciled to God and have our sins forgiven. Forgiveness, can you imagine? You can do more than imagine by receiving God’s gift of forgiveness by faith in Jesus. That’s the power of grace.

Providence Baptist Church Carol Service, Sunday 21 December, 10.30am - All welcome!

* For various local newspapers & magazines

On (finally) visiting Great Chalfield Manor

2025-11-03T08:00:00.008+00:00

My wife and I have been on and off members of the National Trust for many years. Our latest 'on' period expired at the end of October. We've done all the local NT properties multiple times; Stourhead, Dyrham, Lacock, etc. Plus visiting many further afield ones for day trips or when on holiday. But decades came and went, and we'd not yet explored Great Chalfield Manor near Melksham. With only a few weeks left before our membership ran out, we finally made it.

It was a beautiful sunny day. The garden flowers were in full bloom, while the trees were just beginning to take on their autumnal shades. The manor house is regarded as a fine example of late medieval architecture. We joined a tour of the old place. Our knowledgeable guide filled us in on the fascinating history of the residence as he showed us around numerous rooms, each of which had a story to tell. Be sure to check the property’s National Trust website before you visit, as the manor house is only open for guided tours on certain days of the week.

Great Chalfield Manor and Garden is only around 15 minutes away from where we live. So near, yet we almost missed out on the opportunity to visit the hidden gem. Our tendency to neglect special places that are close to hand put me in mind of the spiritual quest of Augustine of Hippo (354-430AD). In his pre-Christian life Augustine sought truth and beauty in the external world, where he hoped God might be found. He failed to realise that God was closer than he had imagined. “You were with me” he said, “and I was not with you.”

Although we may be far from God, he is close to us. As the Bible says, “in him we live, dwell and have our being”. Augustine came to see that God has made it possible for us to draw near to him. He bridged the gap that separates us from him by sending his Son Jesus Christ to die upon the cross for our sins. Augustine, who had searched high and low for God, experienced the warmth of his embrace in Jesus, confessing, “you touched me, and I burned for your peace".

You may also be searching for meaning and purpose in life, but thus far what you are seeking has escaped you. As Augustine discovered, the answer may be closer than you think, “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near.” (Isaiah 55:6)

* For various local parish magazines

On revivals, quiet and loud

2025-10-01T08:00:00.014+01:00

In his poem Dover Beach published in 1867, Matthew Arnold pictured the tide going out on the sea of faith with a “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”. In some ways Arnold’s poem was quite prophetic. Church attendance figures have plummeted since the 1860s. For the first time on record the 2011 UK Census revealed that people who identify as Christian are now a minority in our country. 'New Atheists' such as Richard Dawkins confidently claimed that further religious decline was inevitable. Secular reason would soon obliterate the last vestiges of faith.

Not so fast. Newspapers are reporting an uptick in churchgoing among young adults. They are calling it “the quiet revival”. Some suggest that a newfound interest in faith is because the secular world is failing on its own terms. The up-and-coming generation were promised a more prosperous future. If only they knuckled down at school and went to Uni, the world would be their oyster. But having done all that, many now find that they can’t get a decent job. Buying their own home is a distant dream. Disillusionment over what society has to offer could be part of the reason why people are exploring what the Christian faith is all about.

But perhaps there's more to it than that. Even in our secular age people long for something beyond the delights and disappointments of this present world. A transcendent realm beckons. The sense of communal connection at the summer’s Oasis concerts was described in almost religious terms in some write ups. Hard bitten rock critics described the ecstatic crowds belting out, “you and I are gonna live forever” as if they were worshippers singing a hymn. Although fans should take note of Noel Gallagher’s caution in Don’t Look Back in Anger,

Please don’t put your life in the hands
Of a Rock ‘n’ Roll band
Who’ll throw it all away.

Maybe its not the case that, "I all I need are cigarettes and alcohol", after all? Writing in The Times, James Marriott reports that young people are looking for a “full fat faith”, with a focus on encountering God in worship and clear Bible teaching. As yet, this “quiet revival” is rather patchy, with a focus on larger city churches. That said, stirrings are evident here and there in some Wiltshire fellowships. All this is welcome, at least to a Christian observer. However, a return to faith in Christ is not widespread in society at large, where apathy often reigns.

For that to change a considerably louder revival is needed. The last large-scale Christian awakening in Britain was the 1904/05 Revival, which was especially evident in Wales, although other parts of the UK were also affected. In that short period, it is said that over 100,000 new converts were added to the membership of churches in Wales alone.

'Revival' means bringing back to life something that was either dead or dying. As the writer G. K. Chesterton explained, “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” What Arnold failed to realise when on Dover Beach was that while the tide may go out on the sea of faith, it can always come back in again.

* For various local rags & mags

'God Without Passions' by Samuel D. Renihan

2025-09-25T15:38:00.003+01:00

God without Passions: The Majesty of God's Unshakeable Perfection,

by Samuel D. Renihan, Broken Wharfe, 2024, 86pp

Throwing in 'I am passionate about...' has become a hackneyed phrase in Uni personal statements, CVs and job interviews. Beyond the worlds of study and work, someone might say, their real passion in life is for hang gliding, foreign travel, or whatever. In other words, we consider 'passion' to be a highly commendable thing. Someone who professed to lack any sort of driving passion would strike us as rather dull. Depressed, even.

A book with the title God Without Passions might sound rather off-putting, then. Who'd be interested in a remote, passionless deity? But passions weren't always viewed quite so positively. That struck me only recently when reading John Aaron's Thomas Charles of Bala (Banner of Truth Trust, 2022). Charles lived from 1755-1814. In his day passions tended to be viewed with some suspicion. You wouldn't necessarily admit to harbouring them in a job application.

Chapter 4 of Aaron's biography details the preacher's pursuit of and eventual marriage to Sally Jones. When a young man Charles was based in Milbourne Port, Somerset and his beloved Sally in Bala, North Wales. Their long distance courtship was largely conducted by letter. In their correspondence Sally played hard to get and was forever second guessing the purity of her own and Charles's motivation for getting married. What if their budding romance were simply a matter of blind passion, she wondered? In one of his letters Charles acknowledged, "Passions are unsteady things; they are no sooner excited but they subdue again, and cannot be depended upon." (p. 61).

With that in mind it is little wonder that the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, 1689 states, 'God is... a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions' (Chapter 2:1). The Particular Baptists were not being idiosyncratic on this point. They were simply echoing the theological consensus of Reformed Catholic theology. That consensus is beginning to break down in the world of contemporary Evangelicalism (see here). In fact the doctrine of divine impassibility has become the subject of passionately argued debate.

Renihan doesn't approach the impassibility of God with theological daggers drawn. His approach is irenic, lucid and pastorally motivated. The writer accepts that Scripture itself often speaks of God in terms of a human seeming emotions. In Genesis it is said that prior to the Flood 'the Lord was sorry that he had made man... and it grieved him to his heart' (Genesis 6:6). In Ezekiel 6:9 the Lord complains about Israel, 'I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me'.

What are we to make of such language? For a start it is qualified in the pages of Scripture itself. The Lord's statement, 'I regret I have made Saul king' (1 Samuel 15:11) should not be taken at face value. Why? Because of the words we find in the very same chapter, 'the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret.' (1 Samuel 15:29). How may we reconcile these two sayings of the Lord? Well, we need to recognise that in the Scriptures God speaks of himself in accommodated language that is accessible to us, given our human limitations. We often have regrets about decisions we made and opt for a different course of action when things don't work out as we planned. God's plans always work out, including the raising up and removal of Saul. Divine 'regrets', then are merely apparent, signalling the outworking of his eternal decree in this world of time.

When we confess that God is 'without passions' one thing we are saying is that he is not affected by anything that happens outside of his own being. Nothing can therefore upset God's eternal blessedness or disturb his peace. Human beings are not like that. As Renihan points out, we are creatures of affections and passions. In our affections we are attracted by what we consider good and repelled by what we see as bad. We may be cheered by the kind words of a friend. We may be hurt by the cruel barbs of an enemy. Passions may be defined as twisted affections. They are characterised by undue intensity, or even irrationality. Taken in that sense says Renihan, 'to love is an affection, to lust is a passion; to be angry is an affection, but to rage is a passion'. (p. 21).

You can see why Sally Jones and Thomas Charles wanted to avoid being motivated to marry merely by blind passion. And clearly, passions so defined cannot be attributed to an eternal and unchanging God. Neither can affections for that matter, for as we have said God is not affected by anything outside of himself. But does that mean when the Bible speaks of the love of God, or the wrath of God, that the Scriptures are merely playing with words? Certainly not. God loves and we love, but while love in humans may be analogous to the love of God, we don't love as God loves. God is love in the fulness of his infinite, eternal and unchanging being. Similarly with the wrath of God. Unlike us, he isn't provoked into fits of raging fury. Divine anger is the expression of God's unalterable justice when faced with sin.

God's love, justice and faithfulness and so on are not passions or affections, then. They are divine perfections, of which our human equivalents are a shadowy likeness. But in the incarnate Son of God we have one who was both impassible according to his divine nature and who possessed a full range of human feelings, yet without sin. While the Son could not suffer and die as God, he did suffer and die in our place as Man. Because the two natures are united in the person of Christ, we do not say that his human nature was given as a sacrifice for sin. Rather we confess with Paul, 'the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me' (Galatians 2:20).

Confessing that God is 'without passions' is of great pastoral worth. If the love of God was an affection like ours, his affection might change if the object of his affections changed. But God does not love as we do, because he was attracted to what was good in us. Neither is his love a flash in the pan passion. God loves us with an everlasting love that flows to us from the depths of his being. He loves us even as sinners, which is why he sent his Son to save us by his blood. He loves us as his children, wayward and fickle though we are. It is precisely because God is impassible that Paul can assure suffering saints, 'nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord'. (Romans 8:39).

We can therefore trust God to keep his promises and rest in his faithfulness,

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23).

Samuel Renihan has produced a most helpful introduction to the doctrine of divine impassibility. He wrestles with the biblical text sensitively and draws upon the theological wisdom of the past to illuminate his accessible study. The publisher Broken Wharfe is to be congratulated for making this handsome volume available. Now going for only £4.50.

Entitled

2025-09-18T08:00:00.006+01:00

Who would be a politician, especially today? Our political leaders are forever trying to balance the competing demands of different sectors of society. If they tax the mega-rich to boost the public purse, the wealthy up-sticks and head for low tax regimes like Monaco. An estimated 16,500 dollar millionaires are expected to do exactly that this year. Meanwhile, eight million people are claiming universal credit benefits, with almost half the claimants not even required to look for work. It doesn’t add up, which is why the national debt is skyrocketing.

Writing in The Times, columnist Matthew Syed argues that a sense of entitlement is holding our country back. It's not just about disappearing millionaires and the ever-growing number of benefit claimants. As Syed points out, we all know that more new homes need to be built so young adults can get on the property ladder. However, nimbies are quick to protest if their view of green fields and rolling hills is threatened by a new housing estate. Syed’s prescription for the ‘entitlement epidemic’ is a healthy dose of patriotism. But I wonder whether love for good old Blighty is a strong enough force to make a difference.

In his Letter to the Philippians the apostle Paul urged his readers, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Very fine principle. But a sense of entitlement is hard to shift. People are often quicker to demand their rights than fulfil their responsibilities to others. If ever anyone was entitled to anything it was Jesus. Paul describes him as ‘being in the form of God’, resplendent with divine majesty. Yet he was willing to stoop from the heights of heavenly glory to ‘take the form of a servant’, coming into the world as man. More than that, Jesus came to suffer and die on the cross to save his people from sin.

Those who believe in Jesus are called to imitate his attitude by giving due consideration to the interests of others. That applies to the way Christians relate to society, as well as their fellow believers. We should not only insist on our own right to freedom of speech, but also the right of those who may disagree with us. If we can work, we must work and pay our taxes so that decent public services may be provided for the benefit of all. The Christian vision of life helps us move the dial from self-interested entitlement to a pursuit of the common good.

* For various local magazines

Won’t Get Fooled Again

2025-08-27T08:00:00.003+01:00

The Chapel I attended as a teenager in Rhiwderin near Newport, South Wales boasted a rather fascinating member of the congregation. His name was Bert Entwistle. Bert had a wonderful baritone voice and sang in local choirs. But that wasn’t the thing that made him such an intriguing figure to my teenage friends and me. It was his son we were especially interested in. For John Entwistle was bass guitar player with The Who. Bert kindly arranged for us to have a signed photo of the bassist. The band have just announced their farewell tour, some sixty years since forming in the mid-1960s. Although only singer Roger Daltrey and guitarist Pete Townsend are still in the land of the living.

One of The Who’s best known songs is ‘Won't Get Fooled Again’, released in 1971. The air was full of revolution in the previous decade. Young people were busy throwing off the old order of deference and restraint. They demanded a less inhibited and more equal society. ‘Free love’ and all that. The heady idealism of that time had begun to peter out in 70s. In ‘Wont Won't Get Fooled Again’, Daltrey belts out Townsend’s disillusioned commentary, ‘Things look just the same, and history ain’t changed’. At the climax of the song he roars, ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.’

That’s the trouble with revolutions. The old order may be overthrown, but the new lot aren’t necessarily a whole lot better. Which is the basic lesson of George Orwell’s novels Animal Farm and 1984. Orwell had Soviet Russia firmly in his sights. The October Revolution may have got rid of the Tsar’s corrupt regime, but you’d hardly call Stalin’s Russia a bastion of justice, equality and freedom. Similarly with the so-called ‘Woke Revolution’. The intention may have been good, to champion the cause of the oppressed and marginalised. But once the Woke Revolutionaries gained cultural power and influence, they soon became dab hands at doing a bit of oppressing themselves. In a now notorious case, Kathleen Stock was hounded out of her professorship at the University of Sussex for daring to insist that being a woman has something to do with biology.

Well, earlier this year the Supreme Court ruled that for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ refer to biological sex, not gender identity. Even senior politicians who seemed a tad confused about the details of male and female anatomy now accept this common-sense judgement.

But why is it that even the most idealistic people who believe they are on the ‘right side of history’ often end up acting in a pretty brutal way? Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg put his finger on it when commenting on why the internet seems to spew out so much fake news and other vile stuff, “This is the awful truth: we like misinformation, we like lurid headlines, we like gossip, we like mischief, we like people saying critical things of each other.” Clegg added, “We are not nice. Human beings are not always nice and never ever have been.” What Clegg calls “not nice” the Bible calls “sin”. That is our wilful tendency to defy God and do damage to others.

That’s why revolutions fail, and the new bosses soon become as bad as the old ones they removed. Accepting the Bible’s realistic account of human nature will help ensure we won’t get fooled again by people who promise sweeping change. The problem of sin is one what we cannot resolve on our own. That is why God sent his Son Jesus into our broken world. He came to rescue us from sin by dying upon the cross in our place and being raised from the dead. By faith in Jesus we can be forgiven and receive power to live a new life. The 'Christian Revolution' is based not on human efforts to remodel the world, but the life-transforming grace of God: "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." (2 Corinthians 5:17)

* For various local magazines

Baptised with Heavenly Power, Philip H. Eveson

2025-08-20T11:05:00.528+01:00

Baptised with Heavenly Power:

The Holy Spirit in the Teaching and Experience

of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

by Philip H. Eveson

Mentor/Christian Focus, 2025, 421pp

Last November my wife and I visited Cardiff to watch the Wales v South Africa rugby match at the Principality Stadium. It was raining quite heavily that day, so we decided to do a bit of window shopping before the game. We wandered around various departments in the John Lewis store and then headed into St. David's centre, which was thronged with Christmas shoppers. Sarah spotted some familiar faces in the crowd. It was Philip and Jenny Eveson accompanied by one of their grandchildren.

I first became acquainted with the author and his wife when I was a student what was then the London Theological Seminary (now simply London Seminary), from 1988-90. Mr Eveson was not only Resident Tutor at the seminary at the time, he was also pastor of Kensit Evangelical Church, of which I became a member. The seminary was founded by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in 1977. His influence still loomed large when I studied there.

We stopped to chat and Philip mentioned he had written a book that was being prepared for publication. This book. He was kind enough to have a review copy sent to me. The author was personally acquainted with Lloyd-Jones and had heard him preach on numerous occasions. I hadn't even heard of the famous preacher until after I was converted (circa 1984), and by then he had died (1981). However, I came across some his books as a young believer and read them avidly. As I recall the first Lloyd-Jones title I read was Prove All Things, followed by Joy Unspeakable. As I was beginning to feel the first stirrings of a call to pastoral ministry a lay-pastor friend lent me a copy of Preaching and Preachers.

By the time I arrived at seminary I had read most of Lloyd-Jones's multi-volume expositions of Romans and Ephesians. Although it wasn't until later that the final volumes in the Romans series were published. What impressed me about Lloyd-Jones's writings was his strong emphasis on biblical doctrine, wedded to a deeply experiential thrust. He defined preaching as 'theology on fire', which sounded good to me. It wasn't until I arrived at the seminary that I discovered that Lloyd-Jones's teaching on the work of the Holy Spirit was the cause of some controversy. Influential leaders such as John Stott, Donald Macleod and Peter Masters were quite critical of some of Lloyd-Jones's writings. Some detractors even accused him of being a 'crypto-Pentecostal', or 'Reformed-Charismatic'.

It seems that there are still some misgivings about aspects of Lloyd-Jones's teaching on the work of the Holy Spirit. Eveson writes in part to correct these misapprehensions, but he goes beyond answering critics to offer a constructive account of what Lloyd-Jones had to say on key elements of the Spirit's work. He does this in the opening chapters by locating the preacher in the context of the Reformed tradition, especially that of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists of the Evangelical Revival. As the label suggests leaders such as Daniel Rowland and William Williams were solidly Reformed in their doctrine, but they had also experienced an outpouring of the Spirit that enabled them to preach with great power. They urged their converts to seek full assurance of salvation through the witness of the Spirit.

It wasn't unusual for an older generation of Reformed writers to understand New Testament terms such as 'baptism with the Holy Spirit' or 'sealing of the Spirit' to denote a special empowering of the Spirit to give boldness in preaching and assurance of salvation. Lloyd-Jones drew upon this aspect of the tradition in articulating his views. In fact, his exposition of the sealing of the Spirit in Ephesians 1:13 and the witness of the Spirit in Romans 8:15-16 draws heavily on the work of the Puritan Thomas Goodwin.

Eveson gives close attention to Lloyd-Jones's handling of the biblical materials on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Chapters are devoted to the baptism, sealing and filling of the Holy Spirit. The writer interacts with critics of Lloyd-Jones's views. He is honest enough to point out that the preacher didn't always express himself consistently. In some sermons Pentecost is seen as the 'birthday of the church' that constituted her the one body of Christ, in others he distances himself from that position. Whatever may be thought of some of the details of Lloyd-Jones's expositions, it seems evident that the New Testament holds out the promise that since Pentecost a greater fullness of the Spirit may be sought and experienced by believers. Preachers are in need of the Spirit's empowering presence in their ministries. Believers may be filled with the Spirit, granting them assurance of salvation and inexpressible joy in the Lord.

There has been a widespread recovery of expository preaching in Evangelical Churches in the United Kingdom. That is welcome, of course, but in practice what passes for 'expository preaching' can on occasion be reduced to an explanation of the meaning of a Bible passage, with a few words of application thrown in. A sermon may even be nicely structured and well-illustrated, but the element of 'theology on fire' may be conspicuous by its absence. Eveson provides a helpful corrective to this tendency in a number of chapters devoted to Lloyd-Jones's teaching on the relationship between word and Spirit in preaching.

Preachers must proclaim the truth of Scripture faithfully and accurately, but they also need to experience something of the wonder of that truth in their own hearts and lives. Eveson draws upon Lloyd-Jones's testimony to his own spiritual trials and experiences of God to help explain what made his preaching ministry so compelling. While it is true that the Spirit is always at work whenever the word of God is proclaimed, the Spirit's power may be more or less evident, both upon the preacher and also in the lives of those who hear the truth. Having only just been filled with the Sprit at Pentecost, the early church prayed that the Lord would 'grant your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness' (Acts 4:29). The Lord answered their prayers by filling the people afresh with the Holy Spirit (Acts 4:31). The contemporary church urgently needs a fresh outpouring of the Spirit in all his fulness and Christ-exalting power. That is what will make the 'Quiet Revival' we are hearing so much about a 'Great Awakening'.

Well, it was good to renew fellowship with the Evesons that rainy afternoon in Cardiff. I'm grateful for the review copy of Baptised with Heavenly Power. It's a powerful reminder of some vital truths. For my summer project at the seminary I wrote a essay on 'The Sealing of the Spirit'. I drew upon the writings of D. Martyn-Lloyd Jones, Thomas Goodwin and others in seeking to understand the meaning of Paul's words in Ephesians 1:13. Graham Harrison, lecturer in Christian Doctrine at the seminary oversaw my project. In his remarks on the essay, Harrison commented, 'Remember, there is always more with God'. That, in essence, is the burden of this book.

Read the world’s bestselling book

2025-07-22T09:20:00.000+01:00

The Times newspaper recently published an in-depth survey of the attitudes and opinions of ‘Generation Z’, people born between 1997 and 2013. Interestingly, the younger generation seems to be more attuned to the spiritual side of life. According to The Times, “62 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds identified as either ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ spiritual.”

Allied to this is a new interest in the Bible among GenZers. Publishers report that between 2019-24 there was an 87 per cent increase in Bible sales. People are evidently searching for a something that will make sense of their lives and give them hope.

So, what's the Bible all about? First and foremost it's a book about God. According to the Good Book, he's a God of sovereign purpose, boundless love, awesome power and spotless purity. The one true and living God eternally exists in three glorious Persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Bible teaches that human beings are made in the image of God. But sin has ruined our relationship with God. We are made for him and nothing less than knowing God can satisfy the human heart. The Son of God, Jesus Christ became man in order to die on the cross that we might be put right with God.

But Jesus did not stay dead. God raised him from the grave and exalted him to heaven. In Jesus Christ, God offers us a relationship with himself that is real and satisfying by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that one day we will all have to give an account to God for the way we have lived our lives. Jesus died in our place of so that we might not be condemned but have everlasting life.

According to Guinness World Records, the best-selling book of all time is the Christian Bible. The 'Good Book' has something to say to people of all generations. Why not give it a read yourself? A wide variety of English translations are available for free on BibleGateway.com, or you can get a hard copy in most bookshops. The Gospel According to John in the New Testament would be a good place to start. Attending a church where the Bible is explained and applied will also help you get to grips with the message of God's Word.

* For various local magazines

Artificial Intelligence

2025-07-17T19:59:00.005+01:00

My wife, our grown-up children and I once discussed which of us would soon find ourselves out of work due to the advance of Artificial Intelligence. As a pastor I was pretty confident that no AI-enabled robot could do my job. My son promptly asked ChatGPT to write a Baptist style sermon on a passage from Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. It completed the task in seconds. The sermon took the form of a typical Baptist message and helpfully explained the text. Would have taken me hours to do that. No, I haven’t been tempted to take AI shortcuts in my sermon prep. Honest.

Apparently, many Uni students don’t have such qualms. ChatGPT and other AI platforms are being used to write essays to save budding scholars the bother. Lecturers complain that the attention span of today’s students has been addled by their use of social media. They have difficulty reading the requisite number of books and then deploy AI to write essays on A Tale of Two Cities, or whatever. The trouble is that that AI platforms sometimes make mistakes. No less a journal than the Chicago Sun-Times recently published an AI-authored summer reading list for 2025. The list helpfully included a brief blurb for each title recommended. However, alert readers quickly pointed out that some of the books were fake. Rather embarrassing for the paper.

AI no doubt has its uses, but it can’t be left to get on with things without our involvement. Just ask the red-faced editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. There is no substitute for human ingenuity in the arts, science, and literature. We cannot delegate ethical decisions to algorithms. Besides, we will always need the human touch. Have you ever tried to sort out a customer service problem using an AI Chat facility? ‘Artificial’, certainly. ‘Intelligence’, not so much. Even exchanges with other people using texts, email, or social media can’t replicate face-to-face communication.

One of the most profound statements in the Bible is found in the opening chapter of the Gospel of John, ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’. Christians believe that in Jesus God entered our world to speak to us in person. We can read his words as recorded in the Gospel accounts of the New Testament. Jesus did more than speak to us about the love of God. He came to show us God’s love for humanity by laying down his life for our sins upon the cross. The risen Jesus in present in the lives of his people by the power of the Holy Spirit. When the Lord returns his people will see his face and share his glory.

Flaws and glitches notwithstanding, Artificial Intelligence may be able to do things that put our capabilities in the shade. But the most sophisticated computer has nothing on human beings, whom God created in his own image. Like all technological revolutions AI brings with it opportunities as well as threats. Some jobs may well be lost, but new ones will no doubt be developed. Reassuringly, members of my congregation didn't seem too enamoured at the prospect of me being replaced by a cyber-pastor.

*For various local magazines

On Time

2025-06-26T14:59:00.001+01:00

Relax if you are given to tardiness. This isn’t a piece on the importance of punctuality. Rather, I want to reflect on our relationship to time itself. Although it has to be said that time isn’t an easy thing to define. Early Christian thinker Augustine of Hippo puzzled over the question ‘What is time?’ saying, ‘If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know.’ All he could say is that some events lie behind us in the past and some lie ahead of us in the future. If nothing at all existed there would be no present.

Augustine proposed that God did not make the universe in time, but with time. God is eternal, existing outside of time. He didn’t wait around for ages before creating the world. The clock only started ticking as it were at the beginning of creation. Modern cosmology tends to agree on that point. Anyway, the thing is that we exist in time. Our lives are constantly moving from the past, through the present and into the future.

The trouble is that these days people only seem interested in the present. The past isn’t worth thinking about. People did bad stuff back then. Slavery and that. The future will have to look after itself. In 2010 Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg dismissed the idea of building more nuclear power stations as they wouldn’t be good to go for another ten years. I mean, who cares what happens in the 2020s? Maybe it’s apt that after a career in politics Clegg went to work for Facebook/Meta.

Social media tends to make us focus on the present moment, rather than the past or the future. What’s going on now captivates out attention, no matter how trivial. This is an age of momentary celebrity and throwaway fashion. Why bother with the time-consuming process of saving for major purchases? Much easier to take out instant credit to buy on a whim something that flashed before our eyes in an online ad.

There’s no escaping time, however. We are all products of our past experiences. What we decide in the present will impact on how we fare in the future. But our history need not be our destiny. God entered our world of time and space in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He came to die on the cross that our past sins and failings may be forgiven. He rose from the dead that those who believe in him may have the hope of everlasting life. God gives us time to seek him while he may be found and call upon him while he is near.

*For various local magazines

'Time for Judgement: God’s judgement and ours in times of crisis' by Paul Yeulett

2025-04-24T20:07:00.001+01:00

Day One Publications, 2024, 432pp, pbk

‘May you live in interesting times’, says the old Chinese curse. Well, we have certainly been living though ‘interesting times’. The coronavirus pandemic engulfed much of the world in 2020-21. Then in 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine. That conflict caused a global spike in utility bills, triggering a cost-of-living crisis. Added to that is a sense that having turned its back upon the Christian faith, much of Western culture is in bondage to idolatrous forces.

For a good part of this period the reviewer was preaching though the Book of Jeremiah. The prophet’s warning of the Lord’s judgements upon Israel and the nations seemed uncannily up-to-date. Jeremiah spoke repeatedly of, ‘pestilence, sword, famine and captivity’ (Jermiah 15:2). But is it appropriate to apply the words of Old Testament prophets to the church and wider world today?

We are certainly not in the same position as Jeremiah whose writings were inspired by Spirit. He could say, ‘Thus says the Lord… I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon.’ (Jeremiah 20:4). We need to be a little more circumspect as we seek to pronounce on what the Lord is doing in our day. None the less, God has given us the Holy Scriptures which bear witness to the judgements of the Lord in history. Mindful of that, Paul Yeulett helps us to understand recent upheavals in the light of God’s Word.

Like the men of Issachar, we need to be people who have ‘understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do’ (2 Chronicles 12:32). The writer’s analysis of the period through which we are living may not command the reader’s agreement in every respect, but his work helps us discern the hand of the Lord in contemporary events. He also endeavours to show how the church should respond to the challenges of the hour. In an age of ‘pestilence, sword, famine and captivity’ we are called to authentic godly living and passionate gospel preaching.

Love so amazing

2025-04-14T17:06:00.002+01:00

The crucifixion of Jesus was the supreme manifestation of human malice and hatred. Those who plotted his demise knew he hadn’t done anything to deserve being executed upon a cross. Jesus proclaimed a message of love and showed that love in action by healing the sick and feeding the hungry. The ordinary people flocked to hear Jesus’ preaching. That was the problem. The Jewish religious establishment were afraid that if this Jesus movement took off, they would lose their position in society. Innocent though he was, Jesus had to go.

There was only room for one king in the Roman Empire. It was on that basis the religious leaders manipulated the governor of Judea, Pontus Pilate into having Jesus put to death. “If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend.” They cried, “Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.” Sure enough, Pilate handed over Jesus to be crucified. It was customary to attach a charge sheet to the cross of a crucified man. Jesus’ read, ‘The King of the Jews’.

We could see this simply as one of countless miscarriages of justice that have happened over the course of history to this day. What makes the crucifixion of Jesus unique is that this condemned man was the Son of God. The miracles he performed were signposts to his divine power. Why did Christ not use the power by which he healed the sick and raised the dead to extricate himself from being crucified? Jesus described his God-given mission to his followers in these words: “Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus died for our sins that we may be forgiven and be put right with God. Yes, the cross of Jesus was an act of vile hatred on the part of his enemies. But more profoundly, it was a stunning revelation of the love of God. Paul could reflect, “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Isaac Watts’s hymn When I survey the wondrous cross is often sung in church services at Eastertime. The hymn concludes on a note of wonder at the love of Jesus for his people:

Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.

*For Easter edition of various local parish magazines

Snowdrops

2025-02-20T10:59:00.033+00:00

Snowdrops, Mells

A galanthophile is a person who loves snowdrops. Apparently, there are around 500 different varieties of delicate white petalled plant. A true galanthophile will be able to tell a ‘Ding Dong’ from a ‘Heffalump’. Don’t ask me, though. I just like the things. It’s always a joy to see multitudes of them in bloom along the banks of the B3098 on the way to West Lavington.

A favourite winter walk for the wife and me is through the Somerset village of Mells. You can pick up a path alongside the Mells Stream that will take you past the ruins of Fussell’s Iron Works. Around this time of year, you will find snowdrops a-plenty springing up in front of the old furnaces that loom high over the path.

Snowdrops are an early promise that the arid deadness of winter will pass. Soon there will be daffodils and tulips. Spring will have sprung. In the meantime, the humble snowdrop is a little reminder of the beauty of creation. We don’t simply live in a world that provides us with the bare necessities of life (as Baloo might put it), but a world that fills us with delight. After all, you can’t eat snowdrops, which are poisonous to human beings. But who would be without them?

The Christian faith teaches us that God created our world to display his wisdom, power and goodness. The snowdrop is a wonderful example of his handywork. Yes, we live in a fallen world that is twisted and broken, but there is still much that is beautiful for us to behold. The purity of the snowdrop stands in contrast with the grubbiness of human greed, hatred and cruelty.

None of us is free from the taint of sin. The goodness of God hinted at in Ding Dongs and Heffalumps is revealed most wonderfully in that he sent his Son, Jesus Christ to die in our place to cleanse us from sin. As Isaiah the prophet almost said,

“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:

though your sins are like scarlet,

they shall be as white as [a] snow[drop]."

* For various local parish magazines

‘Emmanuel: God with us’

2024-12-19T16:12:00.002+00:00

Joseph, a carpenter from Nazareth was considering breaking off his engagement to Mary. She was pregnant. And he wasn’t the father. According to Matthew’s Gospel, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream to convince him to go through with the marriage. The heavenly visitor told the carpenter, ‘do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.’ As the Lord had spoken by Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.” The name given to Jesus by ancient prophecy tells us something about his unique identity and mission.

God with us

Matthew explains that Emmanuel means, ‘God with us’. Christians believe that the baby boy who was born in Bethlehem and laid in a manger was God in human form. Now, that’s an awesome claim. We might perhaps expect that God would do God-like stuff, like create the universe to display his wisdom, power and goodness. But would the Creator of heaven and earth stoop to enter our world as man? The New Testament insists that he did. Jesus is the Son of God, fully divine in every way. Yet he became human. He is Emmanuel, God with us as one of us.

God for us

The angel of the Lord also instructed Jospeh that Mary’s son was to be named Jesus. Once more, a word of explanation is given, “for he will save his people from their sins”. Jesus is the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua, which means ‘the Lord saves’. That is the reason why God became man, to rescue us from sin and death. Christ, who was without sin, died in our place on the cross that we may be forgiven. As Paul affirms, ‘God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’

God in us

Matthew concludes his Gospel by telling us that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples. The final words of the risen Lord to his followers in Mathew’s account are, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ Jesus ascended to heaven, having completed the work of salvation. He then poured out the Holy Spirit upon the church on the Day of Pentecost. Christ dwells in his people by the power of the Spirit. His presence in the lives of his followers now is the pledge of greater things to come, ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’. Jesus became Emmanuel, God with us so that those who believe in him may be with God for ever.

See here for Providence Baptist Church Christmas Services

* Article for various local parish mags

Shared Life The Trinity and the Fellowship of God’s People, by Donald Macleod

2024-11-11T08:00:00.000+00:00

Christian Focus, 2024, 30^th anniversary edition, 129pp, hbk

The doctrine of the Trinity can sometimes seem just that, a doctrine we are called to believe and defend, and that’s about it. Nothing can be further from the truth, as is demonstrated by the author in these pages. Of course, he discusses the biblical evidence for the claim that the one God eternally exists in three persons; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The theologian also covers what the first Christian thinkers made of the Bible’s teaching, as set out at the Council of Nicea. Macleod’s handling of matters biblical and historical is admirably clear and concise. But that is just the beginning.

The doctrine of the Trinity is of deep practical relevance. It speaks to us of the God we have been called to understand, worship and serve. The fact that the God who made is ‘in his image’ exists in three Persons tells us something very important about human equality and our need for community. Macleod cautions, however, that Bible’s teaching on male headship should not lead us to think that the Son’s relation to the Father is one of eternal submission to his authority.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit indwell each other in the fullness of the divine being. Jesus prayed that his people may share in the fellowship of the persons of the Trinity (John 17:21). With that in mind, the unity of the church is not a drab uniformity, but unity in diversity. The doctrine of the Trinity has profound implications for the Christian life. We have become children of the Father though his Son and by the Spirit of Adoption. The indwelling presence of the Triune God secures our final salvation. In our evangelism we have been commissioned to ‘make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ (Matthew 28:19).

Shared Life is an ideal introduction to the Trinity for believers wishing to read up on the subject. It will also be of help to pastors in equipping them to tease out the practical implications of this most glorious of doctrines.

Losing our virtue

2024-11-04T08:00:00.002+00:00

Matthew Syed is one of the most insightful columnists writing today. A couple of his recent articles in The Sunday Times really made me think. In one he argued, ‘All the policy in the world won’t save us if we can’t rediscover patience’. Easy access to money has ‘taken the waiting out of wanting’. Both governments and individuals prefer to borrow to spend now, rather than save up and purchase goods more cheaply. Government debt is unsustainably high, at 100% of GDP and those Klarna bills soon mount up. We need to learn once more that patience is a priceless virtue.

In another piece Syed reflected on a key lesson from the Grenfell Tower inquiry, namely, ‘Today’s disasters aren’t caused by lack of regulation, but simple dishonesty’. Governments can pass as many new regulations as they wish, but if building contractors dishonestly subvert health and safety rules, more disasters are likely to happen. As with patience, fidelity to truth pays economic dividends. Countries where people are more likely to be honest are typically wealthier than lands where lies and corruption are the order of the day.

It is difficult to gainsay the points made by the columnist. Theologian David Wells spotted the trend he highlights more than two decades ago. In Losing our Virtue he suggested that where populations widely adopt civic virtues like honesty and consideration for others, governments can give people a considerable amount of freedom to live their lives. Where such virtues are scarce, the State is forced to try and maintain order by regulating its citizens' conduct ever more tightly. As Wells put it, “What was once an open space between law and freedom, one governed by character and truth, is now deserted, so law must now do what character has abandoned.” And so Community Protection Notices are being used to force unruly members of the community to behave in a neighbourly manner.

But as the writer’s point about Grenfell shows, more government regulation isn’t necessarily the answer. Especially when the State has lost its moral authority. The idea that our political leaders can form us into more virtuous citizens is laughable. The last lot never recovered from ‘Partygate’. Sir Keir Starmer pledged to lead a ‘government of service’. A noble sentiment, but to many it seems more like a ‘government of scroungers’. The PM and some of his senior ministers have faced a barrage of criticism for accepting hordes of freebies; from expensive clothing to pricey concert tickets.

Syed has certainly diagnosed the cause of many of our ills today, but he prescribes no cure. How may we regain our virtue? It is increasingly recognised that the ‘Christian Revolution’ had a transformative effect on the moral and spiritual climate of the ancient world. This was not a top-down imposition of morality by regulation, but a matter of personal regeneration. As Paul wrote, ‘if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.’ In the New Testament believers are frequently urged to shun their old vices and display the virtues of truth, self-control and hard work. So, Vive la Christian Revolution!

Vicious cycles

2024-10-23T14:32:00.001+01:00

I am an ex-cyclist. I quit when it was me calling for my children to wait up, rather than the other way around. They were mid-teens at that point, I think. Now they're late twenties. When I finally dispensed with my unloved and neglected bike, I didn't even accord it the dignity of flogging it on Ebay. The lime green Raleigh roadster was deposited without ceremony at Warminster recycling centre. Destined for a new life in India, apparently.

I wasn’t much of a cyclist anyway. I don't think I've ever knowingly worn Lycra. My top speed was probably achieved as a paper boy. A dog I regularly encountered in Tredegar Street, Rhidwerin would snap at my pedals until the road went downhill on entering my home village of Bassaleg near Newport. Eat your heart out, Geraint Thomas.

With apologies to Orwell's Animal Farm, for me, it's a case of "two legs good, two wheels bad." Cyclists may object. Oh, well. For their sakes, my wife and I must repeatedly stop holding hands to let them whizz past when we're strolling along the Kennet & Avon towpath.

And my point is? Oddly, that freedom is a precious thing. Cyclists are free to get on their bikes, while I'm free never to get in the saddle again. Old married couples and two wheelers may groan at the sight of each other on the K&A, but neither party owns the towpath. We just have to give each other a bit of space to do our own thing.

Now, freedom has limits. I'm not at liberty to push cyclists into the canal as they pedal past. Cyclists aren't free to run into us if we’re a bit tardy getting out of the way. Similarly, the law does not give us liberty to incite violence against others. As keyboard warriors who made incendiary comments during the summer riots have found to their cost.

But with all the necessary qualifications in place, in a democratic society, we need to be able to say stuff that other people may find objectionable or even offensive. Christians shouldn't have a problem with that, as we don't believe people can be coerced into the kingdom of God. We demand no aid from the state when it comes to advancing or defending our beliefs. Our God requires no blasphemy laws to protect the honour of his name.

The truth is best served by making space for an honest and forthright exchange of views, even when some of those views are despised by fashionable opinion. Otherwise, you end up with a vicious cycle of intolerance and repression. Freedom withers, truth is sacrificed. As Jesus himself once said, 'You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.'

* For various local mags

Deadlines

2024-10-15T11:27:00.020+01:00

"Depend upon it, sir", wrote Dr Johnson, "when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." The editor of this publication has not threatened to hang me, yet. But she does set strict deadlines.

They have the effect of concentrating this writer's mind wonderfully. Especially when nothing has thus far entered his mind as a topic for the next edition of the magazine. There's a deadline to meet. A blank Word document to fill up. Better get on with it, then.

From the grandest columnist for The Times newspaper to the humble contributor to your local parish mag, scribblers live and die by editorial time limits. In fact, there's a deadline looming over us all. The day will come when we are called to give an account of our lives to our Maker and Judge.

That thought should certainly concentrate our minds. For who of us can say that the copy book of their life is without blot or blemish? The good news is that God has done everything necessary for us to be prepared to meet him.

He sent his Son, the Lord Jesus to die on the cross that the record of our sins may be wiped clean. The Holy Spirit has been poured out to give us new life. A grand invitation is made for us to ‘seek the Lord while he may be found and call upon him while he is near’.

Well, if you’re reading this, it means I was ready in time for the deadline. Always important, that and not just for writers.

*For various local rags & mags

Free of charge

2024-06-04T10:46:00.010+01:00

Yes, I know, according to the old cliche church ministers only work one day a week. That would be nice, but no. In fact, I only tend to take one day off a week, Saturday. Apart from when there's also a Bank Holiday Monday, of course. The wife and I thought it would be a fun if we went to Bournemouth either on the first Saturday of May or the Bank Holiday Monday. The weather forecast would decide which day we headed for the seaside. Initially the outlook was good. At least according to the BBC Weather App. But as the weekend drew nearer rain was predicted both for the Saturday and Monday, and so it turned out. Oh well.

It was glorious sunshine the following Saturday, so to Bournemouth we did go. On such days you’d think parking anywhere near the beach would be a hassle. But there’s a street we know where you can park all day for free, only 5 minutes’ walk from the seafront. We’ve never failed to find a space. As it happened, one was available immediately we turned into the road. From there you stroll to the seaside down a street with pay & display parking bays. It’ll cost you £13.50 for 6 hours and that’s before you’ve even bought an ice cream. Extortionate.

Oddly, cars were queuing up to park on the pay & display street. Every bay was taken. Some drivers seemed to grow tired of waiting and left to find a space elsewhere. Others chanced it and parked on double yellows. It was dead quiet where we pulled up. No fiddly parking app. No fumbling for change. Free parking all day long. We didn't feel at all smug, honest. In fact, being a preacher and that, this little episode was suggestive of a modern-day parable.

People were bypassing what was available for free, while falling over themselves to park at great cost. It's a bit like that with the Christian faith. With most other outlooks on life, you 'gets what you pays for'. The religious hope that if they keep the rules demanded by their faith, they will earn an eternal reward. Those with a more secular outlook often believe that given enough hard work, they'll get what they deserve and soon they'll be 'living the dream'.

The Christian message is different. It is based not on merit, but grace. Which means God giving us what we don't deserve, free of charge. Jesus willingly paid the price of sin by dying in our place upon the cross. God offers eternal life to everyone who puts their faith in his Son as their Saviour. What's not to like? Yet many people spurn this gracious offer, preferring to pay their own way. Eternal life, however, is a gift that can’t be bought.

Of course, it's my bounden duty as a minister of the gospel to proclaim to anyone who will give me a hearing that salvation full and free is available for all in Jesus. The whereabouts of that road with freebie parking, a short stroll from the golden sand and shimmering sea of Bournemouth? Now, that would be telling.

* For June edition of various local parish magazines

Something greater than me

2024-04-25T11:34:00.021+01:00

Our post-Easter break was cut short. Something came up that necessitated the wife and me returning home a day early. Don’t worry, nothing bad happened. On the contrary. We had booked a week in the lovely Herefordshire village of Eardisley. The original intention had been to arrive on Easter Monday and stay until Saturday. But that’s not how it worked out. After the reservation was made it was announced that Paul Weller was due to perform at the newly refurbished Bristol Beacon on the Friday evening. Hence the change of plans.

I’ve been a fan of Weller ever since I was a teenager and he fronted The Jam, followed by The Style Council, and then as a solo artist. He has a new album out this month, called ‘66’ (his age this year, apparently). Back in April he played a series of concerts across the UK to promote his latest offering. At the Bristol gig Weller played a variety of old and new songs, including the first single to be released from his forthcoming album, ‘Soul Wandering’. It’s an intriguing track, full of spiritual yearning. Weller sings, ‘I want to believe in something greater than me’. You’ll find it on YouTube if you fancy a listen.

It seems that even being a successful rock musician has not satisfied the singer’s soul. The idea of believing in ‘something greater than me’ put me in mind of the teachings of Anselm (1033-1109 AD), the great Medieval Archbishop of Canterbury. His writings are an expression of faith seeking a deeper understanding of God and his ways. The theologian proposed that God is, "something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought". He is a perfect being, without flaw or creaturely limitations.

But how could such a God be known that we may believe in him? The Christian faith teaches that God has revealed himself to us through the universe he created by his powerful Word. The world we encounter each day speaks to us of the wisdom, power and goodness of our Creator. Further, God reveals himself by his written Word, the Bible. The pages of Scripture disclose God’s matchless being, mighty acts and righteous laws. Above all, God has revealed himself to us by the Living Word he sent into the world, Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Spirit he has poured out upon his people.

According to the Bible we are lost and wandering, far from God due to sin. Jesus came to bring us back to God by laying down his life for our sins on the cross. Are you also longing to believe in, ‘something greater than me’? Your wandering soul will find rest in returning to the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is none greater.

* For the May edition of various local parish magazines

Time Passes

2024-01-03T10:44:00.000+00:00

“Time passes” wrote Dylan Thomas in Under Milk Wood, “Listen. Time passes.” It certainly does. The ebbing away of an old year and the promise of a new one makes us acutely aware of the passing of time. The joys and sorrows of 2023 are gone and can never be recovered. Crane our necks as we may, we cannot peer into the future.

In his great work, The Confessions, Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) ponders the nature of time. He can’t quite pin it down, reflecting, “What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know. Yet I say with confidence that I know that if nothing passed away, there would be no past time; and if nothing were still coming, there would be no future time; and if there were nothing at all, there would be no present time.”

Augustine addresses the question, ‘What was God doing before the creation of the world?’ He points out that the question is based on a misunderstanding. ‘Before’ is a time-bound category. We should not think that God waited for ages and ages before creating the universe. The world originated not in time, but with time. Modern day scientists agree. The clock only started ticking at the beginning of creation.

God is infinite and eternal. He had no beginning and will have no end. His life does not depend on anything outside of himself. The Lord God exists beyond the world of time and space that he created. The vast universe cannot contain him. His power is not diminished by the passing of time. As the Bible says, “from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.”

God created all things by his Word and through his Spirit to display his wisdom, power and goodness. What the Bible calls ‘sin’ is our rebellion against the Creator, our stubborn refusal to live for his glory. But God did not write off fallen humanity. He entered the world of time and space as one of us to rescue human beings from sin. John writes in his Gospel, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Time passes. The old year has gone and a new year has dawned. Many opportunities will no doubt present themselves in 2024. Above all, let us seek the Lord while he may be found and call upon him while he is near.

‘You shall call his name Jesus’

2023-12-12T21:28:00.004+00:00

“What's in a name?” asked Shakespeare’s character, Juliet, “That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet.” Smell as sweet, maybe, but I can't help thinking that roses are called roses and turnips, turnips for a reason. Although, maybe the Bard had a point. When it comes to the names our parents bestowed on us, or we gave to our children, I doubt the meaning of the name was a big factor.

My mum wanted to call me Alexander, which has a rather distinguished ring to it. But my dad registered the birth and dubbed me Guy. The name means ‘wood’, apparently. I guess the name was chosen more for how it sounded than what it meant. Unless he thought I looked as thick as two short planks. Oh, well. I’m stuck with it now.

When it came to naming Jesus, Mary and Joseph had little choice in the matter. For according to the Gospel accounts he was named by the angel of the Lord. First, Mary was told, ‘And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.’ Then Joseph was informed concerning Mary, ‘She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus’, with the added word of explanation ‘for he will save his people from their sins.’

‘Jesus’ is the Greek version of the Hebrew name ‘Joshua’, which means ‘the Lord saves’. In Jesus’ case his name could not have been more fitting. The Bible teaches that the Son of God came into the world as a human being to bring us back to God. He lived a perfect, blameless life, died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the dead. Now we may be saved, by faith in Jesus.

As the angel of the Lord said to the shepherds of old, ‘For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.’

‘What’s in a name?’ In the name of Jesus we find salvation.

*For various local parish magazines

When dinosaurs roamed the earth

2023-11-12T21:15:00.025+00:00

‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there', wrote L.P. Hartley. Just how foreign and exotic is the past was brought home to me the other week. My wife and I went to hear the author Tom Holland give a talk on his new book, Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age (see report here). In the opinion of Edward Gibbon, the era covered by this work (69-138AD) was ‘the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous’. Not so much, perhaps, if you were a woman.

These days there is widespread outrage if allegations are made that a powerful man has exploited his position to gain sexual favours. #MeToo scandals have engulfed the words of politics, business, entertainment and the police. All that would have made no sense in ancient Rome. It was the expectation that rich and powerful men were entitled to pounce on anyone they pleased.

As a boy Holland was fascinated by the heroes of Rome. To him they were the awe-inspiring apex predators of history. But as he grew up and immersed himself in the ancient world, the author found himself appalled by the monstrous cruelty and depravity of Rome’s overlords. Holland realised that he was viewing the mighty emperors of old from the perspective of someone who lived in a culture that was steeped in the Christian faith. He tells that story in his previous work, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind.

In his preface to Pax, the author describes Christians living in the period of Rome’s ‘Golden Age’ as ‘Mesozoic animals in an ecosystem dominated by dinosaurs’. Those tiny Christian ‘mammals’ seemed pretty insignificant as they scurried around at the feet of towering T-Rex figures like the emperors Trajan and Hadrian. But they sparked a revolution that still affects the way we think today.

Christians held that men as well as women are made in the image of God. That is the basis of equal rights. Christ is pictured as a husband who loved the church as his bride and gave himself up for her on the cross. In the light of that the church upheld the importance of marriage and men were forbidden to use women just as they pleased. The #MeToo movement only makes sense in that context.

In Paul’s Letter to the Galatians we discover the meteorite that destroyed the dinosaurs. The impact of that meteorite is still sending shockwaves around the world centuries later: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slavenor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ (Galatians 3:28)

*For November editions of various local parish magazines

Losing our religion

2023-10-10T08:00:00.002+01:00

According to a survey cited in The Times newspaper, around 75% of Church of England clergy believe that the UK can no longer be called a Christian country. The latest census data bears that out. In 2011 the number of people identified as Christian was 60%, but by 2021 that had dropped to 46%.

For hardline secularists the decline of Christianity in our country may be an occasion for rejoicing. But as Rod Liddle argued in a recent column in The Sunday Times, what we’re left with as Christian influence has receded is a more individualistic society, devoted to the pursuit of material gain. The trouble is that looking after number 1 and buying endless stuff online hardly satisfies the deepest longings of our souls.

Similarly, as Celia Walden reflected in an article in The Telegraph, we’ve swapped the worship of God for the worship of self, “as a secular society, we’ve thrown ourselves into the cult of self, precisely because we’re flailing, with no basic spiritual scaffold to keep us steady.” Welcome to the brave new post-Christian world.

But if we broaden our perspective to take in the global picture, Christianity is not in decline. The faith is advancing in China, Africa, South America and even Iran. Even here in the UK Rod Liddle points to the “rapidly growing numbers attending Pentecostal and evangelical churches — where eternal biblical certainties are still enjoined upon the worshippers”. This is evidenced in a piece in The Spectator by Dan Hitchens, Inside the fastest growing – and shrinking – churches in the UK.

The worship of self and wealth are poor God-substitutes. The eternal biblical certainties set before us the one true and living God who is worth worshipping. He is the God who sent his Son, the Lord Jesus to die for our sins and be raised from the dead that we may have the hope of everlasting life. Jesus calls us to renounce the cult of self saying, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

* For various local parish magazines and newspapers

God's emotions!

2023-10-05T17:49:00.011+01:00

In a previous post I argue that God does not have emotions, see here. In this post I want to assert that God does have emotions like us. Joy and sorrow, compassion and anger, astonishment and disappointment are all part of the range of feelings experienced by God.

But I am not contradicting myself.

How am I able to hold that God both does and does not have emotions? Because God did something that enabled him to do things that God cannot do. Given the aseity (self-existence) of God, he cannot die. His life is self-sustaining. Given his immensity, God cannot be bound by space. Given his eternity, God is not subject to time. Given his impassibility, God experiences no fluctuating feelings. But the God who has life in himself became mortal. The omnipresent God was bound by space. The eternal God entered time. The impassible God experienced fluctuating feelings. How? Because 'the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us' (John 1:14).

At the incarnation the Son of God took a human nature. In his human nature our Lord not only had a human mind and will, but also human emotions. B. B. Warfield writes most helpfully on this in his essay, The Emotional Life of Our Lord. Even in his exalted state, Jesus 'knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust'. He knows what it is to be a member of suffering humanity from the inside. Jesus can therefore sympathise with us in our weaknesses, having been tempted on all points as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:14-15).

The Reformers developed the idea of the 'communion of attributes' to help clarify the relationship between the divine and human natures in the person of Christ. They certainly did not mean that divine attributes are communicated to Jesus's human nature, or the other way around. At the incarnation the Son of God became what he was not [man], without ceasing to be what he was [God]. That is the so-called extra-Calvinisticum. According to John Calvin, 'The Son of God descended miraculously from heaven, yet without abandoning heaven; was pleased to be conceived miraculously in the Virgin’s womb, to live on the earth, and hang upon the cross, and yet always filled the world as from the beginning. ' (Institutes of he Christian Religion, II:xiii.4).

The 'communion of attributes' is an aid in making sense of passages in the Bible say things like, 'they... crucified the Lord of glory' (1 Corinthians 2:8), or 'the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me' (Galatians 2:20). Does that mean Jesus suffered as God and died on the cross? No. Should we understand, then, that Christ's human nature died for our sins? No. We believe the person of the Son of God gave himself to the suffering and death of the cross in his human nature. The Second London Baptist Confession explains,

Christ, in the work of mediation, acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself; yet by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture, attributed to the person denominated by the other nature. (8:7 - see also WCF and SDF)

It is in that sense we may speak of 'God's emotions', because in the person of the Son, God entered into the sorrows and joys of life in our fallen world, 'tears and smiles like us he knew'. We don't need to cut God down to size to make him more relatable when he has already descended to our level. In other words, if you want a God who feels like us, don't deny the impassibility of God, proclaim the incarnation of God. 'And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us'.

See here for an earlier post on Anselm and the suffering of the impassible God.