Modern Slavery? CPX Interview with Baroness Caroline Cox

Baroness Caroline Cox of Queensbury is a nurse, lecturer, author, advocate, humanitarian and cross-bench member of the House of Lords in Britain. She has lead a rich and full life that would fill the pages of an adventure novel. For decades she has worked to provide relief to people suffering in countries across the globe. Determined not to pontificate from afar, her policy has always to go where the people are and the trouble is at its worst. Her commitment and bravery in the face of real threat and deep discomfort is extraordinary.

This interview focuses on the reality of modern slavery. It is sad to think that despite the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain led by William Wilberforce, that slavery is such a significant issue around the world - and even in Australia.  Check out this video from CPX, then pray and think about what you can do:


Baroness Cox: Modern Slavery from CPX on Vimeo.

SATISFYING THE LAW??

In Chapter 5 of The Cross of Christ, Stott continues in the discussion of who is satisfied by the cross by asking the question 'Is it the law that is satisfied'?
He summarises this argument succinctly:

Sin is lawlessness (1 Jn 3:4), a disregard for God's law and disobedience to it. But the law cannot be broken with impunity. Sinners therefore incur the penalty of their law-breaking. They cannot simply be let off. The law must be upheld, its dignity defended and its just penalties paid. The law is thereby 'satisfied'.

The strength of this argument is that it recognises the justice or righteousness of God – in that His law is right and true demands an appropriate punishment.

Can a 16 Year-Old Girl Really Do Anything?

It was remarkable to see the reception that 16 year-old Jessica Watson received on her arrival in Sydney on Saturday. Tens of thousands of people turned out to welcome the girl that our Prime Minister called our "newest hero". As someone who has sailed around the world (HMAS Sydney, 1990, 450 foot ship, crew of 225, 6 months, lots of stops!) and experienced some of the challenges of being at sea in rough weather, I have nothing but respect for Jessica's efforts to sail around the world, solo, unassisted in a 34 foot boat in seven months!

Of course Jessica received a great deal of support from her parents and sponsors and was able to be in regular contact through the wonders of satellite communications. Nevertheless she had to face the challenges of solo sailing with all its inherent dangers, including huge seas which apparently knocked her boat over 7 times. It takes a special kind of mental toughness to tackle such a huge endeavour and to persevere to the end.

We might be thinking differently if there had been some accident or disaster. Many more experienced round-the-world sailors have failed in their attempts. Remember Tony Bullimore and Thierry Dubois – rescued by HMAS Adelaide from the Southern Ocean in 1997? Bullimore had to wait 5 days in his upturned boat before being rescued. Another competitor in the same race, Gerry Rouffs, lost his life.

But Saturday was all about celebrating Jessica's success. When the Prime Minister called Jessica a hero, she said:

I'm going to disagree with the Prime Minister. I don't consider myself a hero. I'm an ordinary girl who believed in her dream. You don't have to be someone special, or anyone special to achieve something amazing. You've just got to have a dream, believe in it and work hard.

They are inspiring words, but are they true? They certainly are a great encouragement to young people to dream great dreams and work hard to achieve them. While it is true that not everyone who dreams a dream and really believes in it will achieve their goal, it is also true that people who dream big and work hard to achieve their dream are more likely to achieve something!

This leads me to reflect on what young Christians dream about. Do we encourage our young people to dream great dreams for God and work hard to achieve them? Or are we happy to let them continue on with the same ambitions as the world around them? It is great for the 'old folks' to dream of reaching our city, nation and the world for God – when in reality our capacity to do the new things needed for such a mission are much more limited. But what if our young people started to dream big and started working on being and doing what is necessary to proclaim Christ to everyone around us? What if they were prepared to give up the small ambitions of the world and continue their whole lives working in God's strength to see His kingdom grow? Then we might indeed see great things done for God's kingdom in our own day.

SATISFYING THE DEVIL??

In Chapter 5 of The Cross of Christ, Stott examines a number of traditional views of what 'satisfaction' is achieved on the Cross. Was Jesus satisfying the devil?

The idea that on the cross Jesus satisfied the devil was apparently widespread in the early church. Stott suggests that the early church fathers were sometimes 'extremely injudicious' in the way they presented the devil's power and how the cross deprived him of it.

It is true that the Bible tells us that since the fall, mankind has been in captivity not only to sin and death, but also to the devil. Some of the (post-apostolic) early church fathers therefore thought of him as the major tyrant from whom Jesus came to liberate us.

Stott suggests that, with hindsight, we may detect three errors made by the early church fathers:

The Cross – Who is Satisfied??

Chapter 5 of John Stott's The Cross of Christ is on 'Satisfaction for Sin'. As Stott says, there are no words more likely to cause offence in discussions of the atonement than 'satisfaction' and the related term 'substitution'. He quotes Sir Alister Hardy, former professor of Zoology at Oxford and researcher into religious experience who describes his inability to come to terms with the 'crude' beliefs of many 'orthodox churchmen. Quoting from The Divine Flame (c. 1965) he says:

I feel certain that he [Jesus] would not have preached to us of a God who would be appeased by the cruel sacrifice of a tortured body. . . I cannot accept either the hypothesis that the appalling death of Jesus was a sacrifice in the eyes of God for the sins of the world , or that God, in the shape of his son, tortured himself for our redemption. I can only confess that, in my heart of hearts, I find such religious ideas to be among the least attractive in the whole of anthropology. To me they belong to quite a different philosophy – a different psychology – from that of the religion Jesus taught.'

Stott reminds us that opponents will often caricature the Christian understanding of the Cross in order to more readily condemn it. "The real question", he says, "is whether we can hold fast to the saving efficacy of the death of Jesus, and to its traditional vocabulary (including satisfaction and substitution) without denigrating God". His answer is "I believe we can and must."

Professor John Lennox on the Problem of Suffering and Evil

At a recent outreach at UWS we raised the question of suffering and evil by asking: 'Is God Really Good'

I found this helpful resource at the Centre for Public Christianity (CPX). Professor John Lennox (of Oxford University) discusses the arguments for God's goodness - at both an intellectual and emotional level. I hope it is helpful.


A good God? from CPX on Vimeo.



More videos can be found here:  http://www.publicchristianity.com/Videos/lennox.html

The Problem of Forgiveness - Reflecting on Stott's The Cross of Christ #2

In part two of The Cross of Christ, Stott begins talking about ‘The Heart of the Cross’ by thinking first about ‘The Problem of Forgiveness’. As he says near the beginning of the chapter:

In particular, our insistence that according to the gospel the cross of Christ is the only ground on which God forgives sins bewilders many people. ‘Why should forgiveness depend on Christ’s death?’ they ask. ‘Why does God not simply forgive us, without the necessity of the cross?’

He then goes on to quote the cynical French phrase which translates (roughly): ‘The good God will forgive me; that’s his job.’ This is not far different from the Muslims who wonder why there should be any difficulty in God deciding to forgive sins.

The One Who Meets Our Need (Hebrews 7:26)

Last week I was preparing for a sermon on Hebrews 7 (go here for MP3) and was particularly struck by these words:

²³ Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; ²⁴ but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. ²⁵ Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. ²⁶ Such a high priest meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. ²⁷ Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. ²⁸ For the law appoints as high priests men who are weak; but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect forever.

It seems that the writer to the Hebrews draws these conclusions from Psalm 110:4 – which he quotes twice in the chapter – and the fact of Jesus' resurrection. To the writer, the resurrection shows that Jesus is the one to whom God was speaking in Psalm 110. In fact, he sees those words as the oath which guarantees Jesus' priesthood (v20-21).

He then draws a number of implications from these observations:

1^st: Because Jesus lives forever, he has a 'permanent priesthood' (v24). Not that Jesus needs to offer his sacrifice over and again, but that he acts as our mediator and advocate before the throne of God on an ongoing and eternal basis.

2^nd: Because of his ongoing intercession with the Father on our behalf, he is able to 'save completely' those who come to God through him (v25). The Greek translated 'completely' is eis to panteles which can be read qualitatively, ie. 'completely' or temporally ie. 'forever'. The context seems to suggest that 'forever' or 'eternally' is the best meaning, but if we are saved eternally, then that implies that we are saved 'completely' as well!

3^rd: Such a high priest meets our need: 'one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens' this all emphasizes his difference to the human Levitical priests – a point which is again made in verse 27 (he does not need to offer the sacrifice for himself, but offers himself); and in verse 28 (the high priest of the oath is not weak like the priests of the law).

This all highlights for me that we sometimes believe we know what we need, but it is God who really knows what we need! In this case we are told that what we really need is a High Priest who is holy, pure, blameless and set apart. I wonder if we don't see this need because we forget the reality of our separation from God – the separation that in the OT law was shown by the physical separation of the unclean and un-sanctified from entering God's presence as signified in the Most Holy Place. In other words, we forget that we are sinners and that God is Holy, and that there is not normally any way for us sinners to approach the Holy God. The only way we can even begin to contemplate such a possibility is because we have Jesus, the Son, as our High Priest who has offered himself to God for us.

How much more amazing then does that make the statement back in Hebrews 4:16

Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

How amazing to be able to approach God with confidence through faith in Jesus – knowing that God will give us mercy and grace!

Perhaps we might think of this next time we sing the last verse of Charles Wesley's great hymn 'And Can It Be':

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine;
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach th'eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.