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Last week, the Life of Jesus class studied the parable of the Prodigal Son. We considered Luke 15:31-32:

And [the Father] said to [his elder son], Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.

Joel Green writes:

Accepting his unworthiness to be counted as a son, the younger had opted for the status of a day laborer; having severed his relationship as a son, he hoped to reestablish it as a hireling. Ironically, the elder son comports himself now not as a son but as a slave.

Just as the father had run out to meet his younger son, so, again dishonoring himself, he leaves the banquet over which he is host in order to plead with his elder son. Calling him son and conferring upon him the honor of an equal, he seeks restoration. In doing so, however, he advances a condition—namely, that the elder acknowledge the divine necessity of celebrating the recovery of the lost. As the son of his father, the elder must embrace his fathers gracious will. If he is really his father’s son, he will act as he has acted and rejoice at the recovery of the lost (cf. vv 5–6, 10). Hence, the father’s reference to his younger son as this brother of yours is presented as an invitation to restoration.

The younger son had utterly thrown off his relationship with his father.  For the father, it was as if his son was dead.  The return of the son to the father was a restoration like a return from death.

In last week’s class, the topic of creeds and their recitation came up.  For some, a congregation reciting a creed (or, for that matter, any part of a liturgy) may bring up uncomfortable feelings, or may even seem unhealthy.

Many Christians, over many centuries, have found value in the creeds, and have used them as an integral part of worship.  Peter Kemeny makes the case for creeds:

We recite the historic Christian creeds: the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. Is this vain repetition? Hollow formalism? I say no. Here are my reasons:

…

In reciting creeds, we are saying to God, “here are the main things we believe as we come together to worship You.” The word creed itself comes from the Latin word, credo, which means “I believe.”

Second, reciting the historic Christian creeds underscores the unity of the church down through the ages. It is a way for a congregation of Christians to say, “we stand shoulder to shoulder with the church across the centuries. We hold to the faith ‘that was once for all entrusted to the saints’ (Jude 3).”

…

It’s unlikely that the historic creeds of the faith will be improved upon as summaries of what the Bible teaches. Let’s hold on to them.

In Tuesday’s Life of Jesus class, we talked a bit about liturgical worship in church.

No one form or expression has an exclusive claim to the right worship of God.  Personal experience and one’s personality may draw a person to one style of worship, or make some other style less appealing to that same person.

Some may think that liturgical worship, such as the services in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, is especially prone to becoming dry and lifeless.

One writer addresses this:

All forms of worship run this risk. This is more of an indicator of the state of one’s heart than the form of worship. In fact, most churches do have some kind of “ritual” in their worship even if they don’t call it that, i.e., it follows the same form week after week: sing songs, give announcements, pray, hear a sermon, and conclude with a song. Anything we do and any form of worship can become empty and meaningless when it is not done in the right spirit; it will become merely acting out a part rather than participating with our hearts, minds, and spirits. But if our worship is truly Spirit-filled and our hearts are open to God, then our worship will glorify God. The key to authentic worship is having a heart and attitude of praise and reverence that seeks to earnestly glorify God. Liturgy seeks to facilitate true worship.

There is no absolute “right” or “wrong” form of worship, in fact, it may be that certain forms are more [accessible] to some people than others. But worship that seeks to glorify God (and not merely to make the individual most comfortable or stimulated) will strive to create a worship environment that is utterly pleasing to God, whatever form that may take.

In Tuesday’s Life of Jesus class, we were talking about how some Christians, including Roman Catholics, request intercession from saints, such as St. Mary.

1 Timothy 2:5 tells us:

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus

Jesus is the one and only mediator.  The Bible does not leave a place for any other agent between a believer and God.

Article 22 (of the Anglican 39 Articles) states:

The Roman [Catholic] doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, worshipping and adoration as well of Images as of Relics, and also Invocation of Saint, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture; but rather repugnant to the word of God.

While individual Anglicans are not unanimous on this topic, Will Briggs makes the case that the Anglican Church does not believe that praying to the saints is okay:

If God is not the object of our prayers, and the agent of our prayers, then we are asserting that we can reach out to God in our own strength, or through the strength of someone else.  This undermines the work of Christ and suggests that we do not have absolute need of [him] – something that goes against the heart of the Christian faith.  Christ alone is our mediator.

We do respect the “Saints” as particular exemplars of the faith and count them amongst the “church triumphant” – but we count them as forebears – brothers and sisters in service, not the captains that we follow.

A discussion in this week’s Life of Jesus class reminded me of 1 Corinthians 10:13:

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

Our discussion this week in the Life of Jesus class raised a question about suffering, and about God’s will.

Romans 8:28 tells us:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

God causes all things, even the terrible and traumatic, to work together for his glory, and for good.  This can be a hard truth to accept.  We want a God who will make us feel better…right now…and take away the pain, and the sense of injustice when innocent or defenseless people suffer.

Just this week, senseless terrorism at the Boston Marathon finish line took the lives of three, and maimed or injured many dozens more.  This is not only a tragedy, it is a challenge to our faith and trust in God.

John MacArthur writes:

Every aspect of our lives is in God’s hands and will be divinely used by the Lord not only to manifest His own glory but also to work out our own ultimate blessing…

We are always in God’s hands.  We may not feel like we are, but the Bible assures us of that truth.

MacArthur goes on:

Paul is not saying that God prevents His children from experiencing things that can harm them. He is rather attesting that the Lord takes all that He allows to happen to His beloved children, even the worst things, and turns those things ultimately into blessings.

No matter what our situation, our suffering, our persecution, our sinful failure, our pain, our lack of faith-in those things, as well as in all other things, our heavenly Father will work to produce our ultimate victory and blessing. The corollary of that truth is that nothing can ultimately work against us. Any temporary harm we suffer will be used by God for our benefit (see 2 Cor. 12:7–10). All things includes circumstances and events that are good and beneficial in themselves as well as those that are in themselves evil and harmful.

In this week’s Life of Jesus class, we talked quite a bit about sin, suffering, and God’s will.

Why does God allow so much suffering?  It’s not an easy question, and the answers we do have are less than fully satisfying.

Jared Wilson, quoted on Justin Taylor’s web site, offers ten reasons.  Here is just one:

To remind us that the world is broken and groans for redemption

Romans 8:20-23 describes the condition, not just of the human race, but of all creation.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

We experience corruption.  We yearn for freedom and redemption.  We live in a world that is subjected to futility, in bodies not yet redeemed.  It is a frustrating way to live, but God has a purpose: to make us whole, and to make us wholly his.

This side of Heaven, we cannot fully know why God allows what he allows, but 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 gives us hope in God’s purposes and in his protection:

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed

In last week’s Life of Jesus class, somebody asked how Jesus disciples could have recorded in the gospels the events and words of Jesus’ temptation in the desert, when they were not present for them.  The same question could be asked about Jesus’ prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane, when the disciples had all fallen asleep.

The site bible.org offers a response:

I think we have essentially four options in questions like this:
(1) assume that it is wholly fictitious;
(2) assume that someone besides Jesus told the disciple(s) about the incident;
(3) assume that the Holy Spirit told the disciples later; or
(4) assume that Jesus told the disciple(s) about the incident.

The writer addresses, in turn, each of the first three options, and then…

When we come to view 4, it certainly raises some interesting questions, such as “How did the disciples find out? Did they sit down and interrogate Jesus about these events? Did they function as reporters?” What is interesting to me is that not once do we read anywhere in the Gospels, as far as I am aware, in which an evangelist says, “I got this story from so and so.” That is, nowhere in the Gospels does the evangelist tell us that he used a source for a particular story. Yet Luke’s prologue and John’s epilogue tell us, in broad strokes, that they did this very thing. So it seems to me that the M.O. of the evangelists is not to tell who their sources were, but to indicate that they did use human, eyewitness sources for their narratives and, on many occasions, were the eyewitnesses themselves. All it takes is for us to use a slightly sanctified imagination to envision the disciples sitting around the fire with Jesus, asking him all sorts of questions. We know that they did this with prophecy (see Matt 24); so why couldn’t they do this with history, too?

The four gospels make no claim to represent everything that Jesus ever said and did during his three-year ministry on earth.  It is reasonable to conclude that many conversations happened that were never written down or, if they were, did not end up in the gospels we have today.

A question came up this week in the Life of Jesus course at St. John’s Vancouver: “What is a Christian?”

Romans 10:9 is a good answer:

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Noted theologian (and St. John’s parishioner) Dr. J.I. Packer also  addresses this topic:

True Christians are people who acknowledge and live under the word of God. They submit without reserve to the word of God written in “the Book of Truth” (Dan 10:21), believing the teaching, trusting the promises, following the commands. Their eyes are upon the God of the Bible as their Father and the Christ of the Bible as their Savior.

Christians will tell you, if you ask them, that the Word of God has both convinced them of sin and assured them of forgiveness. Their consciences, like Luther’s, are captive to the Word of God, and they aspire like the psalmist, to have their whole lives brought into line with it. “Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees!” “Do not let me stray from your commands.” “Teach me your decrees. Let me understand the teaching of your precepts.” “Turn my heart toward your statutes.” “May my heart be blameless toward your decrees” (Ps 119:5, 10, 26-27, 36, 80). The promises are before them as they pray, and the precepts are before them as they go about their daily tasks.

The web site gotquestions.org offers another good response:

The Bible teaches that the good works we do cannot make us acceptable to God. Titus 3:5 says, “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” So, a Christian is someone who has been born again by God (John 3:3; John 3:7; 1 Peter 1:23) and has put faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Ephesians 2:8 tells us that it is “…by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”

A true Christian is a person who has put faith and trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ, including His death on the cross as payment for sins and His resurrection on the third day. John 1:12 tells us, “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” The mark of a true Christian is love for others and obedience to God’s Word (1 John 2:4, 10). A true Christian is indeed a child of God, a part of God’s true family, and one who has been given new life in Jesus Christ.

In this week’s Life of Jesus class, somebody posed a superb question I had never heard before.  If Jesus died to pay for our sin, then didn’t his resurrection from the dead somehow “undo” that atonement for sin?

Romans 6:9 tells us that the power of death no longer holds any power over Jesus:

We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.

Jesus, the sinless Lamb of God, was the only one who could atone for the sin of the human race.  Having done that, God then raised him up, breaking the stranglehold of death forever.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (1 Corinthians 15:3-5)

Jesus’ resurrection is the means of eternal life for every believer:

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

Christians demonstrate their unity with Jesus in baptism, which represents death, and, likewise, will be raised to eternal life, like Jesus was raised:

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Romans 6:5)

The message of the New Testament depicts the resurrection not as an “undoing” of Jesus’ atonement.  It is, rather, a completion of that saving act.  Not merely a ransom payment, Jesus death and resurrection were a game-changing combination that forever altered how people could relate to their God.

What happened in the time between Jesus’ death, and his resurrection?  S. Michael Houdmann writes:

Did Jesus go to sheol/hades? Yes, according to Ephesians 4:8-10 and 1 Peter 3:18-20…Jesus’ body was in the tomb; His soul/spirit went to the “paradise” side of sheol/hades. He then removed all the righteous dead from paradise and took them with Him to heaven… It was the death of Jesus on the cross and His suffering in our place that sufficiently provided for our redemption. It was His shed blood that effected our own cleansing from sin (1 John 1:7-9). As He hung there on the cross, He took the sin burden of the whole human race upon Himself. He became sin for us: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

…When Jesus cried upon the cross, “Oh, Father, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), it was then that He was separated from the Father because of the sin poured out upon Him. As He gave up His spirit, He said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). His suffering in our place was completed. His soul/spirit went to the paradise side of hades. Jesus did not go to hell. Jesus’ suffering ended the moment He died. The payment for sin was paid. He then awaited the resurrection of His body and His return to glory in His ascension.