William W. Goligher

Thomas Manton, a seventeenth century minister, once wrote, “Divisions in the church breed atheism in the world.” Certainly the lack of unity in the church distracts minds, breaks hearts, squanders energy, and inhibits evangelism. Unity in the church is important to God. John 17 has been described as “a standing monument of Christ’s affection to the Church.” At least three times Jesus prays for the Church’s unity and witness: “that they all may be one” (v. 21); “that they may be one even as we are one” (v. 22); “that they may become perfectly one” (v. 23); so that all “the world may believe that you have sent me… and loved them even as you loved me” (vv. 21, 23). So the stakes are high. In the twentieth century, these verses were taken out of context and used to argue for a lowest-commondenominator kind of unity—an institutional union that flattened out distinctions and minimized the very doctrines that make the church distinctively “Christian.” What is striking, however, is to see that, rather than being minimalistic, Jesus’ prayer paints a grand picture of the rich contours of Christian belief that hold His people together in the world.

Specifically, the church is united in a shared history. Here we find an exalted view of God the Trinity as the Son speaks to His Father of the pretemporal glory they shared “before the world existed” (v. 5). We listen to the Son speak of an eternal covenant, or arrangement, forged between the members of the Godhead in which they planned the salvation of a people out of the world. (Theologians call this the pactum salutis, or the covenant of redemption.) In other words, the church’s history began before history in the mind and heart of God, when the Father promised a people as a love gift to His Son. We hear the Son reporting that He had “accomplished the work” that the Father had given Him to do. That work finds its focus on the cross, for “the hour has come” when both God the Father and the Son will be “glorified” (17:1). He had linked His glory to His death before when He said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified…. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (12:23–24). This was the “hour” for Him to “depart out of this world to the Father” (13:1). The hour of His death would be the hour of His glorification. It is with a view to this death that the Son, as our Great High Priest, “consecrates” Himself (17:19) the sacrificial victim to be our sinbearer and Saviour. So we have a shared history as those chosen by the Father, then given to and redeemed by the Son.

The church is united in a shared legacy, which was given by Christ to the Apostles for our sake. John 17:6–17 refers primarily to these men whom Christ had chosen and gathered around Him in the upper room. He had “manifested” the Father’s “name” to them (17:6) and given them God’s “words” (17:8). That “word” of God, given to the Apostles, “is truth” (17:16), and it is “through their word” that we today have come to “believe” in Jesus (17:20). In other words, as our Lord peers into the future, He sees generation after generation of His followers who will believe in Him through the word of the Apostles. From the very beginning, the church of Christ has been an Apostolic church: “and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship” (Acts 2:42). This leads the Apostle Paul to say that the church is one, a single building, God’s temple, because it is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets” (Ephesians 2:20). For Jesus, it is the truth that unites us. Our spiritual legacy is both a common truth and a common life, for the church shares the very life of God by being organically united to both the Father and the Son: “just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us” (17:21). John Stott has written, The two potential enemies of Christian unity are time and space. It is these that separate believers from each other. But the same apostolic truth spans the successive generations of the church, and the same divine life animates all believers of the same generation. The church is united in a shared destiny. For as Jesus finishes His prayer, He looks beyond history to eternity and expresses His final will for His church. He prays that His people will be with Him where He is and see His glory. This is the church’s destiny: both to be with Christ and to see Him as He is, and the vision of Jesus will be the vision of God. What distinguishes the church from the world now is that the world does not know God, but Christ has made Him known to the church. In eternity, that knowledge will be complete, and our fellowship perfect, for we will enjoy the very same love with which the Father has loved the Son (17:26).

Dr. William W. Goligher is senior minister at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

First published in Tabletalk Magazine 01 November 2011, an outreach of Ligonier.  Copyright by Ligonier Ministries http://www.ligonier.org). Used with permission.

John 6:52–59

“Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (v. 54).

Having declared that He is the bread of heaven sent down to provide eternal life, Jesus expanded on what He meant by telling His hearers in the Capernaum synagogue that the bread of heaven is His flesh that He gives for the life of the world (John 6:16–52; see v. 59). The conceptual parallels between this statement and other texts such as Luke 22:19— “He took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me’ ” —indicate that Jesus was referring to His atoning death. The bread of life is Jesus, particularly in His sacrifice for our sins.

The conceptual parallels with the institution of the Lord’s Supper, as well as the general tenor of John 6, particularly verses 52–59, have led many people to conclude that Jesus is speaking of the sacrament as a source of life and necessary for salvation. Certainly, that has been the majority position in the Roman Catholic Church. However, while the Lord’s Supper is no doubt a tangible picture of many of the realities described in this text, Jesus could not have been talking directly about the sacrament at the time He gave the Bread of Life Discourse. After all, He had not yet instituted the supper, and the crowd, which was not made up of His closest disciples, would not have known about the supper and so would not have been able to make the application of our Lord’s words to the sacrament. More important, Jesus told the crowd what it means to find life by eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Note the parallels between verses 40 and 54. Those who believe are those whom Christ will raise up on the last day, and those who eat and drink the flesh and blood of Christ are those whom He will raise up on the last day. To eat and drink of Christ are not fleshly, carnal acts of chewing fundamentally; eating and drinking of Christ consists of trusting in

Him for salvation. Augustine of Hippo comments on today’s passage, “Believe, and you have eaten.” Christ is the true food that our souls need for us to enjoy eternal life. And there is no way to eat of this food other than by faith in Christ alone for salvation. When we believe that Jesus died to atone for our sins and that He has been raised from the dead for our justification, then we are united to Coram Deo – before God.

In the Lord’s Supper we are reminded of how essential the body and blood of Christ are to our lives, not because they are magical but because His body was broken and His blood was shed to bear the curse of our sin. When we take the Lord’s Supper, the focus should be on our need to trust in Christ. Our eating tangibly shows us our desperate need for Christ, so let us confess that need in the supper and always.

Passages for Further Study

Psalms 2:12; 18:2, 30; 91           Mark 14:22–25              John 15:1–17

This devotional taken from Tabletalk magazine  Website: www.ligonier.org 

All rights reserved. Used with permission.

H.P. McCracken

I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; And I will not remember your sins.

An elder in my congregation often quips, “They say as you get older, short-term memory is the second thing to go; I can’t remember what the first thing is.” Christians will agree that a finite memory that weakens with age and can even be distorted by sin is common to humanity. But when in Isaiah 43:25 God says, “I will not remember your sins,” how are we to understand God’s memory? There are a few reasons why we should not interpret this verse to mean that God literally forgets, though it does teach an important and wonderful truth.

ANALOGICAL LANGUAGE

     Throughout the Bible, our infinite God reveals Himself by means of analogical language. These are figurative rather than literal descriptions of God to accommodate our limited language and finite understanding as humans. In this way, the Bible attributes human actions to God, such as smelling (Gen. 8:21), hearing (Ex. 2:24), sitting (Ps. 9:7), and coming down (Mic. 1:3). Human emotions such as regretful sorrow (Gen. 6:6) and jealousy (Ex. 20:5) also serve to teach us by analogy something of what God is like. Though God does not have a body, the Bible speaks of His hand (Ps. 118:15) and eyes (Prov. 15:3). With the language of human occupations or relationships, He is described as a husband (Isa. 54:5), father (Deut. 32:6), king (Isa. 44:6), and shepherd (Ps. 23:1). God’s remembering (Gen. 9:15) and forgetting should be interpreted as such analogical language.

GOD’S NATURE

     Rising from the conviction that God’s infallible Word is not contradictory at any point, the “analogy of faith” is an important principle in biblical interpretation that directs us to let clearer and nonfigurative passages of Scripture interpret less clear and figurative ones. God’s “forgetting” cannot be literal memory loss, equivalent to my forgetting math formulas from high school, because this contradicts what the Bible teaches about God’s omniscience, His total and perfect knowledge. We are told that “his understanding is beyond measure” (Ps. 147:5) and that He declares “the end from the beginning” (Isa. 46:10). It is against God’s nature literally to forget anything.

     If God does not literally forget our sins, what does Isaiah 43:25 mean? We should understand this description of God to be covenantal language by which He assures His people of the complete forgiveness of their sins.

COVENANT LANGUAGE

     If God does not literally forget our sins, what does Isaiah 43:25 mean? We should understand this description of God to be covenantal language by which He assures His people of the complete forgiveness of their sins. Immediately before verse 25, God had reminded His people of their unfaithfulness and false worship, concluding, “You have wearied me with your iniquities” (vv. 22–24). Yet chapter 43 is part of a larger section in Isaiah, beginning in chapter 40, in which God is largely communicating comfort and assurance to His people. He tells them in 43:1–4, 15:

     Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. . . . For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour. . . . You are precious in my eyes, and honoured, and I love you.

     These assurances communicate the covenant relationship into which God has brought Israel, despite their sin. Then, in verse 25, God says, “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” In emphasizing that He does this “for my sake,” God again points to His gracious covenant. It is not because of their worthiness but because of His pure grace and love for them that He takes away their sins.

     In two figurative descriptions, this verse assures Israel how fully and finally their sins are forgiven. First, blotting out is the language of wiping away something written. Israel’s sins, each an offense against God deserving judgment, are pictured as having been written in a book, but He has erased all of them. They can no longer be read and used to accuse God’s people. Second, God assures Israel that their sins are as good as forgotten. God will never again bring them up and hold them against His people. God in the Bible uses several such images to emphasize how complete and final His forgiveness and its benefits are. He speaks of covering over our sins (Ps. 32:1), removing them as far as east is from west (103:12), and casting them into the depths of the sea (Mic. 7:19).      The rest of the Scriptures reveal how it is that God can have such a covenant relationship with sinful people, how He can “forget” their sins. It is not because of a memory lapse, nor is it a trite idiom. It is because God sent His Son to bear all the sins of His people and to die in their place on the cross, erasing the guilt of His people’s sins and making them as if they were forgotten forever in our relationship with Him.

Rev. H.P. McCracken is pastor of Reformed Presbyterian Church of Orlando in Orlando, Fla.

Taken from Tabletalk magazine August 2019  Website: www.ligonier.org  All rights reserved. Used with permission.

R.C. Sproul

Jesus was saying in Matthew 6:7 that we must not regard prayer as some kind of magical incantation, for that is how pagans pray. They recite certain phrases over and over again, with no understanding of what the words mean. In these contexts, prayers are used as mantras, with the hope that they will change the environment or the circumstances in which a person lives. New Age thinking is filled with this type of thing. Jesus did not commend such exercises as godly forms of prayer; rather, He linked the use of vain repetitions to paganism.

“And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.” (Matthew 6:7)

Christians can easily fall into a pattern of praying in a repetitious fashion, without engaging their minds. It bothers me sometimes when Christians gather for a meal and the host will say to someone there, “John, will you please say the grace for us?” The host doesn’t ask for someone to lead in prayer but to say the grace. That kind of language suggests a mere recitation, not a prayer that comes from the heart.

We can even treat the Lord’s Prayer this way. The Lord’s Prayer is an integral part of the worship of multitudes of Christians. Worship services often include the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. The use of the Lord’s Prayer has a rich history in the church, and whenever we pray it or hear it, we are reminded of those priorities that Jesus sets before us as objects for prayer. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not opposed to the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. However, there is a danger that this use of the prayer may be nothing more than a recitation. The praying of the Lord’s Prayer can become as mindless and as vain a repetition as the magical incantations and mantras that pagans use.

Jesus did not give the Lord’s Prayer with the intention that it would be repeated mindlessly. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we need to pray it thoughtfully, giving attention in our minds to its content. It is not a mantra to be repeated without the engagement of the mind or heart. It is an example of godly prayer.

Of course, repetition has great value. I’ve often said that one of my favourite liturgies in the life of the church is the traditional marriage ceremony. You’ve heard it many times: holy bonds of marriage, which was instituted by God,” and so it goes. It’s a very brief service. It contains pledges, vows, charges, and prayers. For me, the more often I lead this liturgy or hear it, the more blessed I am by the content of it. That is, the more familiar I become with the language, the more I think about it and meditate on it, and I see afresh how rich it is in explaining to us the sanctity of marriage. So it is with the Lord’s Prayer. Hearing it over and over again may lead us to mindless repetition, but it also may burn these words, and the underlying principles, into our minds. Repetition in and of itself is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s one of the most important ingredients of learning, because it’s the rare person who masters a concept or a principle by hearing it once.

This excerpt is taken from The Prayer of the Lord by R.C. Sproul Copyright 2019 by Ligonier Ministries http://www.ligonier.org). Used with permission

One of the greatest joys of pastoral ministry is preaching the Word of God to the people of God every Lord’s Day, morning and evening. However, it is also one of the greatest challenges of pastoral ministry. The challenge is not only in the enjoyable and arduous task of sermon preparation, nor is it merely in the spiritual, emotional, and physiological strain of preaching. The challenge also comes in expositing and carefully applying the Word of God to the entire congregation—to mature believers and to new believers, to believers who are weak in the faith and to believers who are strong in the faith; to people of various races, nationalities, and socioeconomic backgrounds; and to adults and to children. I am certain that I will find it a challenge to preach to the entirety of our congregation as long as the Lord sustains me in pastoral ministry. Thankfully, I have had the wonderful opportunity to be mentored by one of the most articulate communicators of our day, Dr. R.C. Sproul. His example of preaching to the entirety of the congregation is one that many faithful pastors have sought to follow. Striving to communicate to everyone in the congregation is no easy task, and from beginning to end, we who preach are resting in the Holy Spirit to take the Word of God and instil it within and apply it to the hearts of His people. And it is our unwavering belief that the Holy Spirit can regenerate the hearts not only of adults, but of children as well. Thus, we strive to communicate to both young and old. In our congregation, that means that the older must always strive to be patient with the younger, and the younger must always strive to honour the older. For this is one of the ways that our children grow in maturity. We certainly want kids to be kids, but we don’t want them to remain kids. We want them to grow up to be young men and women who are mature in Christ and mature in all spheres of life.

Paul said to young Timothy, “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity”  (1 Timothy 4:12). Even the youngest believers can attain and model emotional and spiritual maturity, for maturity is not a matter of age. Some of the youngest among us are the most mature and some of the oldest are the least mature. Young and old alike, God calls all His people to grow into “mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13), and this not so people will exalt us but so they will exalt our risen and returning Saviour, as we strive to live as mature believers, looking to Christ, the author and finisher of our faith.

Dr. Burk Parsons is senior pastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla., chief publishing officer for Ligonier Ministries, editor of Tabletalk magazine, and a Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow.First published inTabletalkMagazine,01 November 2016, an outreach of Ligonierhttps://www.ligonier.org. © Tabletalk magazine. Used with permission