Category: sermons by Rod Benson


What it takes to act with justice

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April 29, 2012

A sermon on Ephesians 5:1-2

I have a problem.  I’d like to believe in God, and do what is right, but I’m uneasy.  What if we can be good without God?  And how do we know what is good and what is bad?

Fortunately, I’m not the first to ask such questions.  The New Atheist movement is bursting at the seams with highly intelligent and profoundly moral people who argue that it’s possible to be good without God, and who live what appear to be exemplary lives of courage, compassion, humility and generosity.  And then there’s Richard Dawkins.

And for thousands of years people have wondered whether a good action is approved by God because it is good, or whether it is good simply because God approves it.[1]  Or, to put it in Christian terms, does God will something because it is good and just, or is something good and just because God wills it?  In other words, are justice and goodness necessary and eternal truths about the nature of things, or are they merely arbitrary values?  Let me know when you’ve come up with the solution.

The title of my sermon tonight is: “What it takes to act with justice.”  It matters what you accept as a foundation for justice:

  • mutually agreed pursuit of rational self-interest (after Ayn Rand)
  • mutually agreed pursuit of fairness and equality (after John Rawls)
  • a system of rewards and punishments to control human nature
  • whatever God commands (divine command theory)
  • what would Jesus do? (applying the teaching and example of Jesus)
  • something else?

A Christian emphasis

The baptist ethicist James McClendon has suggested that a comprehensive ethical vision should incorporate three “strands” or “spheres.”  In his words, we are:

(1)   part of the natural order, organic beings … God’s natural creation; but also

(2)   part of a social world that is constituted first by the corporate nature of Christian existence, the church, and thereby by our share in human society, God’s social creation, as well; and

(3)   part of an eschatological realm, the kingdom of God, the ‘new world’ established by God’s resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.[2]

McClendon calls these three strands respectively the body, the social, and the resurrection strands of Christian ethics.

He implies that people generally take for granted the bodily and social aspects of ethics, but are hungry for a greater story that overcomes our persistent self-deceit, redeems our common life, and provides a way for us to be a distinctive community without subtracting from the significance of others’ peoplehood, stories and lives.  He says Christian morality involves us in the story of God.

And the best place to hear the story of God is in the Bible.  And if we’re searching for a “resurrection strand,” we’re interested in the story of Jesus.  And so to Ephesians 5:1-2.

 Follow God’s example

Chapters 1-3 of Ephesians outline key aspects of the new community brought into being by the death and resurrection of Jesus, and by the faith of those called to participate in it.  Chapters 4-6 outline the new standards of conduct expected of those who follow Jesus and necessarily participate in this new community.

In 4:1-16, Paul talks about the need to cultivate unity while respecting godly diversity.  It’s not about consensus or sentiment, but a unity grounded in the person of Jesus, and shaped by obedience to biblical truth.

Then in 4:17-24, Paul contrasts the pagan lifestyle with the Christian ideal.  Wrong thinking and a subjective approach to ethics leads to bad behaviour, while right thinking, inspired by an encounter with objective truth, personified by Jesus, leads to right attitudes and right actions (vv 20-24).  God gives us a new self-understanding, and through his Spirit empowers us “to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (v 24).  Wow!

Then in 4:25-32, Paul shows how this works out in our relationships, concluding with a call to model the kind of love and grace we have received from God.

And then, in 5:1-2, Paul says, “Follow God’s example” (literally, “imitate God!”).  Elsewhere, there is encouragement to “be holy, as God is holy” (e.g. Lev 19:2), or to “follow the Lord wholeheartedly” (Num 14:24).  Paul uses the language of imitation to urge Christians to imitate him as he imitates Christ (1 Cor 4:16; 10:31-11:1; Php 3:17; 1 Th 1:6; 2 Th 3:7,9).  But this is the only time in the Bible where the people of God are commanded to imitate God.

How is it possible to do this?

  • by discovering more about the character and actions of God
  • by devoting ourselves to Jesus and to his vision for our world
  • by inviting the Spirit of God to change, shape, inspire and guide us

What will that look like?  Those who seek to imitate God will be:

  • investing serious time and energy in spiritual disciplines
  • valuing and contributing to radical Christian community
  • engaging in costly, sacrificial acts of love
  • going places, and doing amazing things, we wouldn’t dream of
  • becoming different from secular role models and memes
  • feeling the heartbeat of God throb in your life and actions

If you take one thing away with you tonight, let it be this:

  • you were created to be like God (4:24)
  • God wants you to imitate him (5:1)

Ephesians 5:2 is a succinct summary of all the ethical teaching of ch. 4-6: “Walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

Transform your world

If God is who he says he is, and acts consistently in accordance with his character, and loves you more than a million words could ever express, and created you to be like him, and now invites you to imitate him,      what a fool you’d be not to accept the invitation!

God is righteous, he loves justice. God cares deeply about personal morality, but God also cares deeply about the proper structure of relationships between people, and the just distribution of goods, and fair retribution for evil. God never plays favourites.  God is not interested in what we have, or in what we’ve done to attract his attention. God looks at our heart motivations, our attitudes, our character.

And the presence of godly character, however small or humble, indicates that the life of God is at work within you, and the love of God is transforming you, and the justice and mercy and grace of God is flowing through you to a world of people who desperately need it.

You want to know what it takes to act with justice?

You want to know if it’s possible to be good without God?

You want to know how to choose the good from a range of options?

I’m not here with sophisticated philosophical arguments.

I’m not here with the latest Christian self-help manual.

I’m not here with a creed, or a slogan, or a statement of values.

But I’ll point you to what worked for Paul, and what has worked for millions of people both small and great through the centuries:

  • Discover the difference Jesus makes!
  • Become an imitator of God!
  • Walk in the way of love!

And so transform your world.

Sermon 607 copyright © 2012 Rod Benson.  Preached at Thornleigh Community Baptist Church, Sydney, Australia, on Sunday 29 April 2011. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011).

[1] This is the Euthyphro dilemma, found in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, where Socrates asks Euthyphro, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?”  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma

[2] James W. McClendon, Systematic Theology: Ethics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986), p. 66.

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Why was the death of Jesus unique?

Filed under: cross, Easter, sermons, sermons by Rod Benson — Leave a comment
April 6, 2012

Detail from Pierre-Paul Prudhon, Crucifixion (1822)

Sermon preached by Rod Benson, Good Friday, 28 March 1997

Alexander the Great once found his philosopher friend Diogenes standing in a field, looking intently at a large pile of bones.  Asked what he was doing, the old man turned to Alexander and replied, “I am searching for the bones of your father Philip, but I cannot seem to distinguish them from the bones of the slaves.”  Alexander got the point: everyone is equal in death.  From the greatest to the least, from the most beautiful to the most ordinary, death is the universal equaliser.

Most of us know the shock and grief that comes with the death of a loved one or colleague: the sense of loss, perhaps numbness or anger, perhaps the realisation of our own mortality.  Jesus – the King of the Jews, the Messiah, the Son of God – shared the human experience of death.  His heart stopped beating, his lungs ceased their constant inhaling and exhaling, and the electrical impulses within his brain slowed and subsided into nothingness.

Each of the Gospel writers describes the event of Jesus’ death: “When Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit”; “With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last”; “When he had said this, he breathed his last”; “He bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (Matthew 27:50; Mark 15:37; Luke 23:46; John 19:30).  But none of the Gospel writers focuses on the physical sufferings of Jesus.  Each tells part of the whole horrific story, with his own emphasis and understanding of its significance.  The death of Jesus was not only unusual – it was unique.

Jesus shared the common experience of death that we all must encounter.  Some die accidentally, others by their own hand; some die deserving death; others unjustly or prematurely – but all die.  Yet Jesus’ death was unique because it was perfectly timed.

People die in different ways.  Sometimes the spirit leaves peacefully while the person is asleep.  Sometimes it is violently removed, and there’s an agonising battle as the sufferer struggles frantically to hold onto life.  Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin died in 1953, and his daughter Svetlana penned this graphic description of his last moments:

The death agony was horrible . . . At what seemed like the very last moment he suddenly opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room . . . He suddenly lifted his left hand as though bringing down a curse on us all.  The gesture was incomprehensible and full of menace . . .  The next moment, after a final effort, the spirit wrenched itself free of the flesh (Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend).

Not so with Jesus: “After he took the wine, Jesus said, ‘It’s done . . . complete.’  Bowing his head, he offered up his spirit” (John 19:30, The Message).  Even as he hung suspended by Roman nails between earth and heaven, he was in control, bringing his life mission to its ultimate climax.  Augustine reminds us that “Jesus gave up his life because he willed it, when he willed it, and as he willed it.”

Until Sir William Deane signs the Andrews Bill nullifying the Northern Territory’s euthanasia legislation, you and I can choose to die in the Northern Territory by computer-administered lethal injection.  We can choose the mode and time of our death, but we’re not masters of our spirits, able to dismiss them and expire.  Jesus had that power, and he dismissed his own spirit; in this respect his death was unique.

His death was also an act of worship.  Throughout his life Jesus pleased his Father.  At his baptism heaven opened and God declared, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).  To the Jews who persecuted him Jesus said, “I seek not to please myself but him who sent me” (John 5:30).  And Hebrews 9:14 reveals that on the cross Jesus “offered himself unblemished to God.”

With the Old Testament sacrificial system in mind, the writer reminds us that Jesus Christ offered not a lamb or a bull but himself in sacrifice to God.  Jesus was both the person offering the sacrifice for sin, and the sacrifice!  Nothing less would take away the sin of the world, and nothing more valuable could take his place.

Unlike the temple priests who first sacrificed an animal to remove their own sins before sacrificing on behalf of the people, Jesus offered to God his own body – his own life – for our sins.  In doing so, he demonstrated his complete obedience to God as his holy Father, and the complete worthiness of God as the object of his worship.  In this respect also his death was unique.

When Jesus dismissed his spirit and died, the soldiers stationed nearby were surprised he had died so quickly; some victims remained alive for up to two days before dying.  But they were not the only ones surprised.  Across the valley, in the city centre, at the precise moment of Jesus’ death, Matthew records that “the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.  The earth shook and the rocks split.  The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life” (Matthew 27:51-52).  The death of Jesus had supernatural consequences.

The enormous, thickly lined curtain separating the holy of holies from the holy place was torn in two, symbolising that through the death of Jesus the way into God’s immediate presence was open to all, regardless of the distinctions often made between clergy and laity, Jew and Gentile, master and servant, man and woman.  All people now had equal access to God and to his salvation, and equal opportunity for worship and service.

And then the earth shook and rocks were split in pieces!  The event was, quite literally, earth-shaking, as the natural environment responded to the death of its creator.  Burial chambers broke open, probably through the force of the earthquake.  Then something occurred that no earthquake could achieve: the bodies of many dead people returned to life (verse 52)!  The death of Jesus Christ triggered the resurrection of God’s people, and his resurrection guarantees our future resurrection when he returns to earth.  There was no other death like it, before or since; in this regard also the death of Jesus was unique.

But his death also had eternal consequences.  Immediately before he died, Jesus said, “It is finished” (John 19:30).  What was finished?  The work he came to earth to accomplish.  Michaelangelo, the Renaissance artist of Sistine Chapel fame, was a genius.  He excelled as a sculptor, designer, painter and architect.  His statues of Moses and David are widely recognised and appreciated.  What many people don’t know is that in Florence, there’s an entire hall filled with his ‘unfinished’ sculptural works.  As great an artist as he was, he left much unfinished.

Jesus left no unfinished work – he accomplished everything he came to do.  He completed his monumental mission.  Hebrews 2:9 says with majestic simplicity, “In that death, by God’s grace, he fully experienced death in every person’s place” (The Message).  Jesus not only died – he died in your place.  He died so you could have life.  He suffered so you could find peace.  He endured the darkness of Calvary so you could experience the light of the Good News.  He endured the curse so you could enjoy the blessing.  He was alienated from God so you could be reconciled to God.

He who never did wrong suffered under the agonising weight of your wrongs, so you could be put right with God.  “He personally carried the load of our sins in his own body when he died on the cross, so that we can be finished with sin and live a good life from now on” (1 Peter 2:24, LB).

In his death Jesus demonstrated God’s love for us in the fullest possible way, achieved total victory over evil, and made our salvation possible.  He was not merely a good man who died as an example of virtue or meekness; he was the perfect God who took our burdens of sin and guilt and made them his burden.  His death was not merely an example to inspire us but a sacrifice to save us!

As John Stott says, “A pattern cannot secure our pardon . . . an example can stir our imagination, kindle our idealism and strengthen our resolve, but it cannot cleanse the defilement of our past sins, bring peace to our troubled conscience or reconcile us to God” (Basic Christianity 1971:89).  Only the death of the holy Son of God could achieve those purposes.

His death was an example, but it was much more than that.  It was the only way God could bring you into relationship with himself, into his glorious kingdom, his new community.  Jesus’ death was unique because it was perfectly timed, it was a priceless act of worship, and it had supernatural consequences; but above all his death had eternal consequences. 

“There is one God and one mediator between God and men,” says Paul to Timothy, “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).  Jesus did not step out of his human body when he rose from the grave, nor when he sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  And heaven will be filled with people from every nation, tribe, people and language because Jesus came, and lived among us, and died in our place.  Will you be there?  Thank God for Jesus, and his great love for us!

That’s the good news of Easter!  It’s the kind of news that both sobers me and fills me with joy and a desire to know my Lord better.  But you may not yet have surrendered your life to Jesus Christ and experienced his forgiveness and joy.  Don’t let the opportunity pass by!  I invite you, right now, to thank Jesus for dying for your sins, in your place, and ask him to enter your life, to cleanse you and take control of your life.  Pray this prayer with me:

“Lord Jesus Christ, I acknowledge that I have gone my own way.  I have sinned in thought, word and deed against you.  I’m sorry for my sins.  I turn from them now in repentance.  I believe that you died for me, bearing my sins in your own body.  I thank you for your great love for me.

“I invite you to enter my life.  Come in, Lord Jesus, as my Saviour, and cleanse me.  Come in as my director, my Lord, and take control of me.  Fill me with your Holy Spirit, and with your joy.  And I will serve you as you give me strength, all my life.  Amen.”

Sermon 108 preached by Senior Pastor Rod Benson at Flinders Baptist Community Church, Ipswich, Australia, on Friday 28 March 1997. Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980). 

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Choosing the butter

Filed under: calling, Leadership, sermons by Rod Benson — Leave a comment
February 13, 2012

A sermon on 2 Kings 2:1-18

One of my favourite French atheist philosophers is a man of about my own age called Michel Onfray.  When he was 28, Onfray nearly died of a heart attack brought on, in part, by his love for classic French cuisine.  As he recovered, his doctor spoke those words we all dread – especially those of us who are too old, too grey, too plump and too sluggish: “Change your diet, or risk your life.”

In response, Onfray said, “I prefer to die eating butter rather than to economise my existence with margarine.”[1]

I’m with him on the food.  But those words capture more than Onfray’s culinary preferences: for him, secular philosophy is butter for the mind, and Christian theology is mere margarine.  And so we part company.

But I want to apply his statement to the story of Elijah and Elisha.  The purpose of the editor of 1-2 Kings is to encourage and challenge his post-exilic audience, the decimated people of God, to affirm God’s continued love and faithfulness in a radically changed environment.

Here in 2 Kings 2, the editor emphasises:

  • the imperative of personal as well as national loyalty to God
  • the demand for courageous and dependable spiritual leadership
  • the reality of another order of existence beyond our material world

As we encounter them, Elijah’s extraordinary life is drawing to a close, and Elisha’s fifty years of prophetic leadership is just beginning.  God is in the business of choosing unlikely candidates for key ministry roles.  Just look around you this morning!  Think about it:

  • Abraham, an establishment Ur-pagan, fathers the people of God
  • Moses, a stuttering murdering shepherd, emancipates the nation
  • Gideon, a terrified wheat-thresher, becomes the nation’s chief justice

And on it goes: Hannah, David, Amos, Mary, John the Baptist, Jesus, Peter, and many other women and men in biblical and church history.

Now Elisha, son of Shaphat, another nondescript farmer, enters biblical history.  He’s ploughing a field with the village oxen, and Elijah, prophet extraordinaire and white-hot hero, turns up looking for a successor.

We select our spiritual leaders in all sorts of ways:

  • sometimes it helps if you’re the son of the senior pastor
  • or the one with all the strengths and none of the weaknesses of Moses, Jesus and Paul
  • or the guy with the most impressive referees (or facial piercings)
  • or the person with the best business plan for church growth
  • or the candidate who hits the magic quorum at a members’ meeting
  • or it just “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28)

Elijah simply waits for the oxen to pass, and throws his cloak around Elisha, who says goodbye to his family, destroys his plough, slaughters his oxen, and celebrates his ordination with a feast (1 Kg 19:19-21).  No bivocational ministry for Elisha!

Here’s what is important.  Elisha is ready.  He obeys God.  He respects authority.  He risks everything.  He chooses butter.

2 Kings chapter 2 opens with an astonishing disclosure: “When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind…” (v 1).  Elijah takes his protégé on what will be his last tour of duty, or circuit, visiting the people of God at Bethel, Jericho, Gilgal.

Elisha shadows his mentor, and Elijah tests the strength of his commitment three times (vv 2, 4, 6).  Elisha is thinking: Am I the one?  Is this for me?  And three times he chooses the butter.  These three moments of decision are separated by interventions from “the company of the prophets” (vv 3, 5).

They are potential rivals.  The cloak might have fallen on one of them.  They are enthusiasts and nerds.  They have googled their way through life.  They know Elijah’s impending fate, and they want Elisha to know that they know what God knows.  Shades of Donald Rumsfeld perhaps?

Their function in the story is to serve as witnesses to Elisha’s succession.  Is he the one?  Is this for him?  Has he chosen butter?  But they distract him, and exacerbate him.  “Yes, I know – so be quiet!” he says.

Then comes Elijah’s last miracle (v 8), and as they cross the dry bed of the Jordan – into Moab, where Moses died – Elijah asks his last question (v 9), and Elisha’s answer indicates his desire to answer Elijah’s call.  Elisha is not seeking twice the power of his mentor.  He is seeking confirmation that the right choice has been made.  So Elijah sets a condition (v 10).

Then, in mid-sentence, a chariot of fire, horses of fire, a whirlwind, and Elijah is gone, his cloak falling empty from an empty sky.  Elisha picks it up and returns to the east bank of the Jordan River.

Now for the test that matters.  The other prophets are on the west bank.  Elisha takes the cloak and strikes the water.  He seems to waver for a moment, and says, “Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” (v 14).  But the waters part, and he crosses over to the other side.

Fast forward half a century, and Elisha has lived through the high and low points of the reigns of five kings of Judah.  He surveys his own extraordinary life: a life of teaching, challenging, modelling, miracles, advocacy, fidelity.  Everyone can see that, in the realm of the spirit, Elisha has chosen butter rather than economise his existence with margarine.  They can also see that God has chosen butter in choosing him.

That is not to suggest that the pursuit of a so-called secular vocation indicates poor choices, or lack of courage, or is less worthy than a career in so-called spiritual ministry. But faced with the opportunity, and the necessary gifts and abilities, to serve God in a front-line spiritual capacity, and choosing something else is like Michel Onfray choosing margarine instead of butter.

And the consequences for yourself and others can be devastating.

Elisha was probably quite capable of ploughing a straight furrow, and tending sheep, and pruning grapevines.  But he was better employed, and contributed more to the spiritual capital of the people of God, by following in Elijah’s footsteps.

I faced a similar choice.  When I was 22, I found myself on a Commonwealth scholarship, enrolled in a doctoral degree, working as a research assistant and teaching at a University.  Life was good.

But God had better plans.  Through a series of steps, it became clear that my studies were more about pride and status than about serving God.  I was challenged by the experience of Moses, captured in Hebrews 11:26f, that there was something better.  I chose the butter, and went to College, and became a pastor, a chaplain and an ethicist.

Who knows what the future holds for us?  Choose butter, not margarine!  Respect the advice of others, but don’t be limited by their vision.  Don’t be limited by their experience.  Take the road less travelled.  Walk with leaders like Elijah.  Expect the unexpected.  Let God surprise you with his goodness and mercy and grace.

When it comes to the decisions that will shape your life, your ministry, and your legacy: choose to eat butter rather than economising your existence with margarine!

Sermon 582 copyright © 2006 Rod Benson. All rights reserved.  Preached at Morling College Chapel, Sydney, Australia, on 29 May 2007. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: Today’s New International Version (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1985).

[1] Amanda Hooton, “The voice of reason,” The Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend magazine, 12 May 2007.

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The new way (sermon by Rod Benson)

Filed under: discipleship, sermons by Rod Benson, virtue — 1 Comment
January 15, 2012

Romans 12:3

In last week’s sermon we saw how, in Romans 12:1-2, Paul commends a positive attitude toward God in God’s attitude toward the world, and a negative attitude toward the world in its opposition to God, as the basis of Christian discipleship.  There is great power in those words, and surprise, and challenge.

But in verse 3, Paul surprises us again.  We might have expected him to expound what he understood of God’s “good, pleasing and perfect will”; or about conformity to “the pattern of this world’; or more about what it means to be a “living sacrifice”; or how we experience God’s mercy in salvation and sanctification.

Instead, Paul says, “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.”  He commands all Christians to cultivate humility in their daily lives.

We all know what humility is, and each of us can probably think of people known to us whom we would describe as humble.  John Dickson, in a recent book on the subject, defined humility as “the noble choice to forgo your status, deploy your resources or use your influence for the good of others before yourself,” or, “a willingness to hold power in service of others.”[1]

Sports and entertainment stars aside, Australians have a grudging respect for the virtue of humility, and no one likes a show-off or a “know-it-all.”  But the world in which Paul was writing saw things very differently.  Ancient Greek and Roman culture typically respected honour and shame, and praised arrogance and boasting and self-congratulation.  There was no room for humility in the ancient world, and any would-be leader who was humble, or who encouraged humility, was generally swept aside and forgotten.

Except, of course, a man called Jesus.

As John Dickson observes, “the modern Western fondness for humility almost certainly derives from the peculiar impact on Europe of the Judeo-Christian worldview.”[2]

In his teaching and example, Jesus overturned established values and stereotypes.  It is not going too far to claim that he redefined the nature of honour, and recast the concept of greatness, during his short life.  Hear Paul’s words in Philippians 2:5-11:

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 
rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

What would the Gospels be like if Jesus had come to our world but adopted the pride and arrogance that was typical of leaders of the time?  Part of the genius of Christianity is the radical humility Jesus displayed and commended.  When he emptied himself, he changed the world.  When he modelled his ministry on the ideal of radical servanthood, he was doing something counter-cultural, and laying the foundation for the character development of all Christian leaders who would follow him.

And what a foundation it is!  And what a challenge it brings!  American statesman Benjamin Franklin said:

There is perhaps not one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.  Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself … For even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.[3]

And yet, in various places in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, God calls his people to embrace humility as Jesus did.

The call to humility is an important aspect of the transformation in thinking that comes with the new life we have through our link with Jesus.  Being transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2) isn’t merely a mental exercise, and it’s about more than the individual.  Paul wants us to recognise that Christlikeness is not demonstrated in a vacuum, but in our relationships with others.

In his book, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters, Anglican New Testament scholar N.T. Wright puts it like this: “the New Testament envisages the holiness of God’s people as a major factor in their larger vocation to be the lights of the world.”[4]  And he goes on to explain that Christian mission doesn’t make sense unless it is preceded by Christian morality.  The virtues that constitute the high calling of Christian morality (such as the fruit of the Spirit, or the classic cardinal virtues) are the vital components of the still higher callings of Christian worship and mission.[5]

Do we want a deeper experience of worship?  Are we convinced that mission done right will advance the kingdom of God and bring glory to Jesus?  Then invest time and effort in cultivating virtues like justice, prudence, fortitude and restraint within a Christian theological framework. Or here, as Paul commands, practise humility.

The link with verses 1-2 is obvious: we should reject the kind of thinking that produces pride and arrogance, and embrace the kind of thinking that leads to humility in word and action.  At the same time, some of us fall into the opposite trap: we think too lowly of ourselves, either through a false humility (that is actually pride carefully concealed); or a failure to fully appreciate our identity in Christ, and what God is capable of doing in and through us.  The solution to both problems is to examine the direction in which our affections and decisions are taking us “with sober judgment.”

But what does the last phrase mean?  Some biblical scholars link it with verses 4-8, suggesting that it refers to an attitude based on the gifts and abilities God has given each individual.  But I think the meaning is clearest if we think of “faith” here as a strong, confident trust in God – something we all have access to in equal measure.

So what can we do to become more humble?[6]

  1. Observe traces of humility in those you respect.
  2. Evaluate your own strengths, weaknesses and limitations.
  3. Keep learning new things, seek guidance, remain teachable.
  4. Act with humility
  5. Invite constructive criticism.
  6. Forget about being humble.[7]

The great author and apologist C.S. Lewis knew a great deal about both duty and virtue.  In his book, Mere Christianity, Lewis concludes his discussion on humility, and I conclude my sermon, with these words:

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step.  The first step is to realise that one is proud.  And a biggish step, too.  At least, nothing whatever can be done before it.  If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.[8]

Sermon 606 copyright © 2012 Rod Benson.  Preached at Eastwood Baptist Church, Sydney, Australia, on Sunday 15 January 2012. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011).

[1] John Dickson, Humilitas: A Lost Key to Life, Love, and Leadership (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), p. 24.

[2] Ibid., p. 99.

[3] Source unknown.

[4] N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters (New York: Harper Collins, 2010), p. 246.

[5] Ibid., p. 247.

[6] Based on chapter 11 in John Dickson, Humilitas, op. cit., pp. 173-183.

[7] In saying, “Forget about being humble,” I am not suggesting that the attainment of this virtue is a temporary challenge to be mastered before moving on to some other challenge, or that one should ignore all the previous advice.  Rather, the point is that humility is a low-key virtue that does its best work in the background without drawing attention to itself or to the person expressing it.

[8] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: Collins, 1986), p. 112.

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The new day

Filed under: discipleship, sermons by Rod Benson, worship — Leave a comment
November 13, 2011

Sermon by Rod Benson, 13 November 2011

Romans 12:1-2

What’s your favourite time of day?  Mine is the dawn – even if I have to wake up earlier during Daylight Saving to experience it!  I love the new day – the freshness, the soft light, the furnace of the sun tearing through the bank of cloud out to sea, the birdsong, the peace.  Even the traffic is better at dawn.  And the dawn portends a new day of possibility and opportunity.

Some new days are more important than others.  There’s the day of your birth, the day you seriously became a follower of Jesus, perhaps the day you married and the day each of your children was born.  There’s the day in 1901 when this nation became independent of Britain.  There’s the day in 1905 when the Mosman Baptist Church was founded, or in 1920 when the present sanctuary was opened.

The Bible speaks of many new days.  There’s the day of creation, when God created matter; and day eight of creation, 13.7 billion years later, when Adam and Eve looked around at the world they inhabited and were fully conscious of its grandeur and grace. What would it have been like to be in the Garden of Eden on that day?!  And there are many other significant days in biblical history:

  • Day 1 of the Exodus, and Israel’s redemption from Egypt.
  • Day 1 of Saul’s monarchy.
  • Day 1 of the public ministry of Jesus.
  • Day 1 of the resurrection.
  • Day 1 of the church, when the Holy Spirit created an altogether new entity, in which we participate today.

But every day is an opportunity to be aware of your existence, of your place in the world, and of the potential you have to make a difference.  It’s an opportunity for a fresh start, a step higher, a renewed interest in what matters most.  So what is it that matters most?

I put it to you that what matters most in your life, and in the life of your church, is your active participation in the kingdom of God – in the progress of God’s rule, and the renovation of human hearts, and the transformation of this world into the future that God intends.  And there’s no better place to catch a glimpse of the foundation of that idea, and the sunrise of that concept, than Romans 12:1-2:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Our relationship to God is the basis of all other relationships, and our duty to him the basis of all other duties.[1]

The first word (“Therefore”) reminds us that what Paul is about to say (indeed all of what he will say in 12:1 – 15:13) rests on the theology of chapters 1-11.  Doctrine is good, but without practical effect it may as well not exist.  On the other hand, action is important, but it needs to be grounded in coherent theory and principles.

These two verses are the door to the ethical implications of the profound theology that Paul has expounded in the preceding eleven chapters.  He explains and defends what he believes, as revealed to him through Jesus, and then says, “On the basis of our common understanding of the gospel and its application to all of our lives, here’s how we should live.”

And in Romans 12:1-2, Paul commends a positive attitude toward God in the light of his relationship to the world, and a negative attitude toward the world in its opposition to God.  We call this Christian discipleship.

Notice that this is a response to God’s mercy.  Notice too that it begins with an attitude, a turn of the will, a renewal of the individual mind, but it is demonstrated and effected in bodily devotion expressed in community.

“The sacrifice God looks for is no longer that of beast or bird in temple, but the daily commitment of life lived within the constraints and relationships of this bodily world.”[2]  By the time Paul was writing this letter to the Christians living at Rome, they were marked out as unusual because of their complete lack of a sacrificial ritual in their worship, in contrast to Jewish and pagan religion.

The closest they came to this was the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.  There was no longer any need to offer literal sacrifices, because Jesus had fulfilled all that was required of the Old Testament sacrificial system, and brought it to a complete end.  His death brought closure to the divine demand for animal sacrifice.

But Paul now exhorts the Christians to offer themselves to God.  They give themselves.  We give ourselves.  We are the offering.  We are the sacrifice.  And our act of worship, intimately entered into, is both holy (in the sense of intelligent devotion to God) and pleasing (in the sense that it brings pleasure to God).  The result of this kind of sacrifice is not death and destruction but devotion and delight.  There is no higher calling.

But what does Paul mean by “true and proper worship”?  The King James Version rendered this phrase “reasonable service.”  It is difficult to translate into English.  I think the NIV translators have it right.  Paul has in mind the act of worship (involving not merely what happens when I gather together with other Christians for praise, prayer and mutual edification, but all of my life, my whole person).

He also has in mind the intentional or rational motivation for this worship.  Thus Douglas Moo writes, commenting on the difficulty in translation, “We cannot feel confident that either ‘spiritual’ or ‘rational’ is absent from the adjective [i.e. the word translated “true and proper” in the NIV 2011] or that ‘worship’ or ‘service’ is lacking in the noun.”[3]

As I said, in verse 1 Paul commends a positive attitude toward God; then in verse 2 he commends a negative attitude toward the world.  It’s not that he doesn’t like culture or sport or kissing.  He would be among the first to encourage us to be fully human, and express our humanness in the fullness of body, mind and spirit.

But there are limits, there are boundaries, beyond which lies sadness and madness.  Unless we think carefully, and rely on good advice, and take precautionary actions, all of us have a tendency to drift into conformity with those qualities and actions that do us and our community damage.

Instead, says Paul, “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  By an act of the will, we learn to think differently: new thoughts, godly thoughts, compassionate thoughts, thoughts of others, thoughts after Jesus, thoughts undergirded by sound doctrine, thoughts anticipating heaven and home.

And this becomes a habit, a daily process of renewal, slowly and inexorably changing our world-conformity into Christ-conformity. As we become proficient at this new art, as this process of Christian discipleship becomes second nature, we discover something that is at once simple yet profound, clear but deep.

With the help of the Holy Spirit, we discover that we are able to “test and approve what God’s will is” – like a muscle, our minds are trained to weigh up what is good and right and true (both out there in the world, and deep within our own minds and hearts) and put it into practice.

This is achieved not by endeavouring to keep all the laws, or copying the lifestyle or teachings of someone we admire, or trying to evade the label of hypocrite, but by submitting to the authority of the risen Jesus, and asking him to renew us from within by his Holy Spirit.  It’s about a determined commitment to God, and daily dependence on God.  This is the biblical basis for responsible Christian living.  It’s a lifelong process, but it may be invoked, developed and deepened with each new day.  You can decide to move forward at any time.

I attended a conference with Bill Hybels in Melbourne in 1999, and here’s part of what he said (I’ve never forgotten it):

People never drift into higher levels of commitment to God.  People never drift into higher levels of devotion to the church.  People never drift into higher devotion to servanthood.  People always drift away from God, away from character, away from devotion, away from servanthood.  How then do people wind up with increased devotion to God, to the church, and this kind of stuff?  They are taught, they are challenged, and at some point the leader stands before them and says, “Make a decision today!”

Today may be your decision day.  Today may be your new day.  What will you decide?

I close with a prayer of St Francis of Asissi, inspired by Luke 9:23-24 and Romans 12:1-2:

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much

Seek to be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love;

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Sermon 604 copyright © 2011 Rod Benson.  Preached at Mosman Baptist Church, Sydney, Australia, on Sunday 13 November 2011. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011).

[1] James Montgomery Boice, Mind Renewal in a Mindless Age (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993), p. 19.

[2] James D.G. Dunn, Romans 9-16 (Dallas: Word Books, 1988), p. 717.

[3] Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans, 1996), p. 434.

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