Ephesians 6:13-18

We have a very real Enemy who seeks to deceive and distract us from becoming who God wants us to be. So we must always be alert. Prepare for spiritual warfare by making today’s passage part of your daily time with God. For example, “put on” the various armor pieces as you pray:

Lord, thank You for giving me everything I need for doing battle in Your name. In the power of Your Spirit, I put on my “armor”–

• Protect my mind and imagination with the helmet of salvation. Focus my thoughts steadily on Your love and power.
• I claim Christ’s righteousness as my breastplate, protecting heart and emotions.
• So that I won’t be governed by feelings, wrap Your belt of truth around the core of my being to protect me from deception.
• Guide my steps in the sandals of peace. Set my feet firmly in the good news of Your redemption and love for the world, and empower me to stand firm against attack.
• I raise my shield of faith. Protect me from Satan’s arrows as I stand shoulder to shoulder with Your army in a wall of opposition against his schemes.
• I take up the sword of the Spirit. Plant Your Word deep in my heart in a fresh, exciting way so I will always be ready to deflect and cut down lies with Your truth. I proclaim Your victory today!

You should never be so preoccupied with fighting that anxiety makes you lose your focus on the joy of knowing God. Rather, remain at peace as you “dress” for battle, knowing that you are fully victorious and secure in Christ, and that He has already defeated the Enemy

In John’s telling of the life of Jesus, Jesus is described as the kingly shepherd who lays down his life for his friends, the gate who lets in the sheep, and the lamb of God himself. So it is not without significance that John dates Jesus’s death on the day of preparation of the Passover, the day a lamb is slaughtered in remembrance of God’s passing over the Israelites in Egypt. Whereas Matthew, Mark, and Luke each describe a final supper shared with the disciples in the upper room, John hints at the consumption of a meal in the mysterious space after Christ’s death. In other words, the bread of life and Lamb of God is first broken and slaughtered so that the Passover meal can be seen in its full significance by a greater upper room.

This mystery of the Lamb after the slaughter is extensively heightened in the Revelation of John. Envisioned is a heavenly scene with one seated on the throne holding a scroll, and John begins to weep because no one is worthy to open it. But then one of the elders points to “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah,” “the Root of David,” the one who “has conquered.” And John sees between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered,” one worthy to open the scroll. But how on earth does a lamb stand when it has been slaughtered? And what are we to do with such a creature?

For me it brings to mind the deliberately impossible demands presented by Jesus. How are we to be perfect? To live holy lives? To keep anger at bay lest we be guilty of murder in our hearts? It is a life we might succeed in trying for a time, but ultimately we cannot remotely achieve. In the words of one theologian, “[T]he summons to a holy life, far from assuming its achievement, assumes quite the opposite: that God has acted and nothing can be done in response. The structures of existence are incapable of change or alteration, whether empowered by grace or not.“(1) Which is perhaps to say, the lamb was slain. Irreversibly, Jesus was slaughtered, his life laid down for his friends. And now, in a seeming incapable structure of existence, this slaughtered Lamb stands.

Professor John Lennox notes that when Scripture speaks of Christ as the Lamb of God, it is easy to think of it as something like a symbolic code. We read of the lamb or the lion and the recognition is instantaneous: The lamb is Christ. The lion is Christ. But John’s description of the slain and standing lamb seems to say not only who it is, but what it is. This is Christ as the lamb—that is, beyond the statements he made about himself, beyond the parables, beyond the imagery and symbolism with which Jesus spoke truths and turned categories on their heads. In this picture, he is the overturned. John places Christ as the lamb before us, and he is slaughtered yet standing. For  John, literarily at least, the way of slaughter is the way of victory.

Yet this is not to say, as some argue, that our own suffering is a similar way to the victorious life or that Christ is calling the world to suffer with him at the cross. The deliberately impossible marvel of the slain and standing lamb is blurred when we imagine ourselves in any way able to reproduce it. We can no more do so, than we can reenact the Incarnation.(2) While it is true that John’s audience was likely to suffer for their faith, the slaughtered lamb is not encouragement for of a brand of discipleship that recreates Christ’s suffering as victory; slaughter is not the goal. On the contrary, the slain and standing lamb is the one weapon capable of tearing violence and unjust suffering apart. This is not a symbol disciples are to learn to repeat and mimic; it is the very structure and feat of existence that allows them to be disciples. John’s description moves far beyond the slaughtered lamb as symbol. This is Christ as the lamb—the impossible structure of existence given not for us to mimic, but rather to take, eat, and drink. This is his body—a slaughtered and standing lamb—powerfully, mysteriously, impossibly broken and given for the world.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Roy Harrisville, Fracture: The Cross as Irreconcilable in the Language and Thought of the Biblical Writers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 111.
(2) Regrettably, this too is a language often heard, that followers are to be incarnational like Christ. For more on this, see J. Todd Billings, Union With Christ, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011).

Morning

“He was heard in that he feared.”  –   Hebrews 5:7

Did this fear arise from the infernal suggestion that he was utterly forsaken.

There may be sterner trials than this, but surely it is one of the worst to be

utterly forsaken? “See,” said Satan, “thou hast a friend nowhere! Thy Father

hath shut up the bowels of his compassion against thee. Not an angel in his

courts will stretch out his hand to help thee. All heaven is alienated from

thee; thou art left alone. See the companions with whom thou hast taken sweet

counsel, what are they worth? Son of Mary, see there thy brother James, see

there thy loved disciple John, and thy bold apostle Peter, how the cowards sleep

when thou art in thy sufferings! Lo! Thou hast no friend left in heaven or

earth. All hell is against thee. I have stirred up mine infernal den. I have

sent my missives throughout all regions summoning every prince of darkness to

set upon thee this night, and we will spare no arrows, we will use all our

infernal might to overwhelm thee: and what wilt thou do, thou solitary one?” It

may be, this was the temptation; we think it was, because the appearance of an

angel unto him strengthening him removed that fear. He was heard in that he

feared; he was no more alone, but heaven was with him. It may be that this is

the reason of his coming three times to his disciples–as Hart puts it–

“Backwards and forwards thrice he ran,

As if he sought some help from man.”

He would see for himself whether it were really true that all men had forsaken

him; he found them all asleep; but perhaps he gained some faint comfort from the

thought that they were sleeping, not from treachery, but from sorrow, the spirit

indeed was willing, but the flesh was weak. At any rate, he was heard in that he

feared. Jesus was heard in his deepest woe; my soul, thou shalt be heard also.

 

Evening

“In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit.”    –    Luke 10:21

The Saviour was “a man of sorrows,” but every thoughtful mind has discovered the

fact that down deep in his innermost soul he carried an inexhaustible treasury

of refined and heavenly joy. Of all the human race, there was never a man who

had a deeper, purer, or more abiding peace than our Lord Jesus Christ. “He was

anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows.” His vast benevolence must,

from the very nature of things, have afforded him the deepest possible delight,

for benevolence is joy. There were a few remarkable seasons when this joy

manifested itself. “At that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank

thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” Christ had his songs,

though it was night with him; though his face was marred, and his countenance

had lost the lustre of earthly happiness, yet sometimes it was lit up with a

matchless splendour of unparalleled satisfaction, as he thought upon the

recompense of the reward, and in the midst of the congregation sang his praise

unto God. In this, the Lord Jesus is a blessed picture of his church on earth.

At this hour the church expects to walk in sympathy with her Lord along a thorny

road; through much tribulation she is forcing her way to the crown. To bear the

cross is her office, and to be scorned and counted an alien by her mother’s

children is her lot; and yet the church has a deep well of joy, of which

none can drink but her own children. There are stores of wine, and oil, and

corn, hidden in the midst of our Jerusalem, upon which the saints of God are

evermore sustained and nurtured; and sometimes, as in our Saviour’s case, we

have our seasons of intense delight, for “There is a river, the streams whereof

shall make glad the city of our God.” Exiles though we be, we rejoice in our

King; yea, in him we exceedingly rejoice, while in his name we set up our

banners.

 

I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.

Luke 19:40

But could the stones cry out? Assuredly they could if He who opens the mouth of the dumb should bid them lift up their voice. Certainly if they were to speak, they would have much to declare in praise of Him who created them by the word of His power; they could extol the wisdom and power of their Maker who called them into being. Shall we not speak well of Him who made us new and out of stones raised up children unto Abraham?

The old rocks could tell of chaos and order and the handiwork of God in successive stages of creation’s drama; are we not also able to talk of God’s decrees, of God’s great work in ancient times, in all that He did for His church in the days of old? If the stones were to speak, they could tell of their breaker, how he took them from the quarry and made them fit for the temple. And aren’t we also able to tell of our glorious Breaker, who broke our hearts with the hammer of His Word, that He might build us into His temple? If the stones should cry out, they would magnify their builder, who polished them and fashioned them into a beautiful palace; and shall not we talk of our Architect and Builder, who has put us in our place in the temple of the living God? If the stones could cry out, they might have a long, long story to tell by way of memorial, for many a time a great stone has been rolled as a memorial before the Lord; and we too can testify, stones of help and pillars of remembrance.

The broken stones of the law cry out against us, but Christ Himself, who has rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb, speaks for us. Stones might well cry out, but we will not let them: We will silence their noise as we break into sacred song and bless the majesty of the Most High; we will spend all our days glorifying Him whom Jacob calls the Shepherd and Stone of Israel.

The family reading plan for March 23, 2012

Proverbs 10 | Ephesians 3