THE HEARTBEAT OF HEAVEN
Dear Friends,
‘Are you asking me to sign up to a life of misery?’
It was a genuine question. Not from some fictional man. Nor a merely conversation-filler sort of theoretical question. And the answer, I should probably add, was a quick, categorical, ‘No’!
His question was right from the heart: asked with feeling. From a man who is ‘down-on-his-luck’ (as he’d put it) and struggling to make sense of it all.
His life is empty. No partner. No job. No prospects. No car. No future. No hope.
His life is empty, his experience miserable. It didn’t help his mood, of course, that he’d caught some bug, had a cold and a cough, and was stiff and sore all over.
Was this God’s way of punishing him, he wanted to know. Or was he a modern-day Job? Perhaps more like the prophet Jonah, I suggested – since he has a bit of background in the church and isn’t unacquainted with the Word.
But his background is such that I could see where he was coming from – a rather jaundiced view of Christian faith whereby he figured that in one way or another the life of the believer’s pretty tough: either being punished by God for stepping out of line, or put through the mill of a ‘fiery trial’ to burn off the dross in our lives. Neither had that much appeal for the man! And hence, of course, his question.
His question is maybe a little bit nearer the mark than we might like to think. What, after all, is the mark of the life to which, in following Christ, believers have all been called? In what ways, and to what extent, and for what reason, does the dark, disturbing shadow of the cross of Jesus Christ leave its mark upon our lives?
‘Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me’ (Mt.16.24) sounds more like the so-called ‘pleasure’ of a masochist than that of the winner of a jackpot. Denying, instead of indulging oneself: the pain and the shame of a cruel cross, instead of the peace and the joy of a comfortable, carefree existence. It doesn’t really sound like a barrel-load of fun!
In these weeks leading up to Easter, then, let’s think about the cross. How does it come into play in our lives? And what sort of life will it bring?
Perhaps the simplest, safest starting point is to begin with the words of Jesus.
“Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (Jn.12.24).
It’s a picture He’s painting – but a principle He’s stating as He does so: a principle which, from what Jesus says, is somehow very basic both to His and our being glorified, on the one hand, and to His and our enjoyment of a vibrant, fulsome, everlasting life. The dying He speaks of is somehow itself the doorway to glory and life.
That was how it would be for Him, of course. His embracing the grain-of-wheat routine, falling to the ground and dying, and being buried in the earth through those three long days – that death which He died as the single ‘seed’ of the woman, issued in a whole new crop of ‘seeds’, a massive new humanity being brought into being. The cross was followed by the empty tomb: His wretched crucifixion by a mighty resurrection.
We get that. It’s the message of Easter, in which, as we mark those three great days that changed the course of history, we’ll bask once again this month. We live because He died.
But the picture of the seed falling into the ground was used by Jesus not only to highlight the heart of the gospel’s message, that He no less would stand in our shoes and take our place and die the death which we by right should have died – that we thereby might live, forgiven and renewed: He used it, too, to explain the path which we who long to live are bound to take. A ‘death’ of some sort is the doorway through which we must pass if life in its fulness is what we desire to know.
And I guess we get that, too. We should do by now. It’s the ‘death’ of our pride, the ‘death’ of our arrogant strutting around assuming we’ve got what it takes in ourselves to sort ourselves out and put ourselves right with the Lord. It’s the ‘death’ that’s involved when we’re humbled at last, and brought to our knees, and constrained to beseech God for mercy: it’s the ‘death’ Jacob knew when that head-strong, self-confident man was so painfully crippled and obliged at the last to cling to the Lord in seeking the blessing for which he had worked all his life.
It’s the ‘death’ of a heart that is penitent, contrite and bowed; it’s the ‘death’ of the self which has sought centre-stage all our lives; it’s the ‘death’ of our plans and our dreams and our aim to make gods of ourselves. It’s costly. And sore. And ever so hard to embrace.
But it is the doorway, the sole and necessary doorway through which we may step into life. For just as the seed which falls into the ground and dies releases in that very death a thrilling surge of new and bountiful life, so, too, in that ‘death’ to the self that we die we discover a fulness of life. Pulsing with the presence of the risen Christ. Throbbing with the Spirit’s power. Sharing in the service of the mighty King. A life that is marked by the four great compass points of gospel life – purpose, power, pleasure, and peace.
‘Death’ as the doorway to life. The call of Christ in the gospel. Come to Me. Take My yoke upon you. And I will give you rest. We follow the One who went to the cross, and we take up our cross and die. No longer our own we’re His.
The life He gives, though, isn’t just full – though it is undoubtedly that, a fulsome, vibrant, rich and abundant life: it’s fruitful as well, or at least now potentially fruitful too. The picture of the seed again provides the lens through which we see how such fruitfulness comes. The same picture and the same principle.
Jim Elliot, the missionary martyr of a former age to the Auca Indians in Ecuador – he certainly grasped the principle, spelling it out in his famous, one-line entry in the journal that he kept – ‘He is no fool who loses what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.’
The cross is the crux of the matter.
In his case that meant martyrdom. In the case of others that may mean adversity, hostility or both.
Adversity takes all sorts of forms: problems and pressures at work: sickness and suffering of body or mind: bereavement and loss, with their grief and their pain, and the questions and struggles which often will flow in their wake. Check with Job for his dictionary definition of what adversity can mean. Or check with the apostle Paul and the catalogue of trials he endured (2 Cor.11.23-29), a rather different list of ‘key credentials’ on his ‘CV’ form! Adversity (not ‘misery’, I’m quick to remind my friend) – adversity is but the ‘bread and butter’ of believers’ lives. “The righteous person may have many troubles .. You have made me see troubles, many and bitter ..” (Psalms 34.19; 71.20).
In all such adversity, whatever its form, the seed’s falling into the ground. There are ‘deaths’ being died, the ‘deaths’ inherent in a sin-stained, fallen world, ‘deaths’ being borne now by those who believe in the crucified King – who boldly fall into the ground in these ways and who cling to the fact that their King who came back from the dead will cause multiple seeds of new life to emerge through the ‘cross’ and the ‘death’ of their adversity.
Remember the remarkable turnaround in the fortunes of God’s people in the era beyond the Judges: where did it have its roots? In the grievous, distressing adversity which Naomi and Ruth both endured. There were ‘deaths’ they died themselves in the literal deaths of their men: but what issued down the line was life, and life in abundance – the ‘multiple seeds’ of a wholescale revolution in a nation’s life. That’s precisely the sort of scenario Paul was surely on about when he wrote – “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you” (2 Cor.4.10-12)
Adversity – in all sorts of shapes and sizes – is only one form that the shadow of Christ’s cross will take in the lives of His faith-fired followers. Hostility’s another. And sure as fate it’s going to come your way: “everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim.3.12). It’s all-inclusive and it’s definite. It’ll happen. You won’t be always popular, and you’ll sometimes be the object of both violence and vitriol.
So, get used to it! For the ripples of our Saviour’s cross will follow all His followers throughout their days of ministry: and thus (and only thus) in this deadened, fallen world, new life is strangely born. Multiple seeds from a seed that’s willing to die. Life from the deaths Jesus dies in His church. His cross and His resurrection, the steady, regular heartbeat of His saving grace.
And I guess we get that too. But is it just in a fallen and sin-tarnished world that this seed-in-the-ground way of life is required? Or is it not also the case that the heartbeat of heaven itself is this death-into-life paradigm? The cross may indeed be the response of heaven to the needs of a fallen world: but it’s also the hallmark of heaven, descriptive of the character of God. The life of heaven, in other words, is also decidedly cross-shaped.
Think of the way that that great early hymn Paul quotes in Philippians 2 describes the work of our Saviour. It’s a ‘seed-in-the-ground’ sort of statement again, down to the depths then exalted on high – the down-and-up heartbeat of heaven itself. And running through it all, of course, are the three foundational values of the Kingdom of God: submission, service, sacrifice.
Submission – He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped: a ready and eager submission.
Service – He took the form of a servant: He did not come to be served, but to serve, because that’s the very nature of our God: a stunning revelation which the Scriptures make – ‘no eye has seen any God besides You, who acts on behalf of those who wait for Him.’ He does the work: it’s who He is and what He’s like. Service is a core value of the Kingdom, because a basic characteristic of Almighty God.
And sacrifice – obedient unto death, even death on a cross. He spares nothing, sets no bounds, but offers Himself and gives His best and pours out His all for others.
The three core values of the Kingdom, all of them there in the cross at Golgotha: and all of them there in the landscape of glory as well. No wonder, then, that the down-and-up life of the seed-in-the-ground is the path Jesus bids us all tread if it’s life in its fulness we’d know.
So, back to my friend with his question: is it really no more than a miserable life that we’re likely to find in Christ? And what on earth’s going on in his life at this time? Is God completely ignoring him? Is God for some reason chastising him? Is God turning up the heat, as it were, intent on purifying the man?
Or is this more about the ‘death’ that the man must die if it’s life that he’s going to know?
With gratitude always for the fellowship we share in our risen Saviour and Lord,
Jeremy Middleton