Abide In Me

Being Fully Alive In Christ

Early

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498291125
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The scriptures of the Christian faith speak of a life qualitatively different from that which we see portrayed on videos, movie screens, and the pages of magazines. The Scriptures proclaim that we can experience the "life of God" here and now. Most of us long for such a life, but have discovered that experiencing this life of God is not simply a matter of following seven specific steps or nine important principles. In this book, Rev. Douglas J. Early reminds us that the way to the fullness of life that God offers us has little to do with our own striving and far more to do with receiving what is already at hand. Using wisdom found in 1 John, Abide In Me serves as a guide to experiencing a life of joy, purpose, and love. Readers are invited to explore the breadth and depth of the life that comes from abiding in the presence of Christ and attending to the Spirit of Christ abiding in each of us. For anyone wanting more in life but tired of working hard and getting nowhere, this book offers hope for experiencing the life of God in Christ, here and now.

Chapter One

A Substantial Faith

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched —this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. (1 John 1:1–4 NIV)

If a trusted friend or mentor offered me a sure way that I might experience life and joy, I think I’d hear them out. If I saw a commercial on late night TV offering me a “sure way” that I might experience life and joy, I wouldn’t bother calling the 1–800 number. I think most of us are fairly cynical when it comes to sure-fire promises about our future. We are all too accustomed to hyperbolic sales pitches. What persuades most of us that something is true is tangible evidence or, in the hypothetical case of me and my trusted friend, the integrity of the person making the offer.

For many people these days, the promises Christianity makes seem about on par with those hawking ways to “Pay no taxes! Ever!” If conversations drift toward matters of faith, they know to set up their cynic’s defenses. Even many of us who have had a significant experience of Christ and who earnestly try to be his disciple can find ourselves unconvinced that Christ’s presence in our lives will make a substantial difference.

And yet Christianity still has the gall to make the pitch. Witness John’s claim in what the canonical scriptures number as his first letter:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. (1:1–4)

Life and joy—John claims we can have more of both.

He starts with promising life. And not just the ordinary sort. These days, with the incredible advances we’ve seen in science and medicine, the whole cell-division, heart-beating type of life is becoming fairly run-of-the-mill, or run-of-the-petri-dish. John speaks of something qualitatively different. John speaks of “eternal” life. John speaks to us of a quality of life that makes our current existence pale in comparison.

The life we experience on a regular basis is one marred by our fallen nature. This is the life we experience when we yell at our kids in the morning, “Hurry! We’re late!” This is the life we experience when we wake up in the middle of the night because we’re not sure how we’re going to get enough money to pay for the cleanup of our flooded basement. This is the life we experience when we hear our spouse say, “I’m leaving you.” It is a life scarred by impatience and disappointment, by cruelty, greed, and violence.

In contrast to the life we normally experience, John promises the kind of life that John Calvin, the 16th century church reformer, speaks of as the “life of God.” He means that we will share in God’s life. In his typical bold fashion, Calvin declares, “When Christ is preached [made known to us] the Kingdom of Heaven is opened to us so that being raised from death we may live the life of God.”1 This is a life filled to overflowing with love, grace, beauty, peace, creativity. This is the life embodied in Jesus, the Christ. In the prologue to his gospel, John writes of Jesus:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind . . . The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth . . . Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (John 1:1–4, 14, 16–18)

These words strike me with the beauty of their ideal for our lives: “light,” “grace,” “truth.” John proclaims that this life was embodied in Jesus. Further, when we enter into a relationship with Jesus as our Savior and Lord, we enter into this life that Jesus shares with God the Father/God the Mother and God the Spirit. The existential experience of this “eternal” life is joy.

This is the next great promise John makes in his letter: that a prime characteristic of the life we can share with God is joy:

We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. (1:3–4)

At first glance, this passage may not seem like a promise for us. Yet the British theologian John Stott sees in John’s use of the pronoun our, the inclusion of both John and those to whom the letter is addressed.2 In other words, it is joyful both to enter into this life of God and to see the readers of his letter enter into communion with the Father/the Mother and Son, as John has. Centuries before John wrote his letter, David proclaimed this same truth in song: “You [God] make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand” (Psalm 16:11).

This is good stuff. But do we really believe it? As Christians we profess that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Yet as we live out our lives, it sometimes looks a lot more like we believe that Oprah is the Way, Bill O’Reilly is the Truth, and Kim Kardashian is the Life. We tend to model our lives on those people we can observe in the world around us. And we can’t observe Jesus in the same manner that we observe celebrities, newsmakers, or our neighbors.

In our congregation, we occasionally sing a hymn titled, “We Walk by Faith and Not by Sight.” The lyrics acknowledge:

We walk by faith and not by sight; No gracious words we hear from Christ, who spoke as none e’er spoke; but we believe Him near. / We may not touch His hands and side, nor follow where He trod; But in His promise we rejoice, And cry, “My Lord and God!”3

Yet even those of us who are not from Missouri tend toward the philosophy engraved on their license plates—we don’t trust the sales pitch; we want someone to “Show me.” Without a living body, one that we can see, touch, hear, smell (?!), or even just follow on Instagram, it can be extremely difficult to believe that Jesus existed, let alone that he is the Messiah.

John speaks directly to those doubts in the opening of this letter. He writes, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard.” Even those of us who are not too quick on the uptake, as I often am not, can catch John’s emphasis (though the italics are mine). John seeks to assure us that he has personally encountered the risen Lord. The assertion of the church is that the gospels and the letters of the New Testament are based on firsthand accounts. Even if the writing wasn’t always done by the witnesses themselves, the words were at least written by those who heard the stories from the witnesses directly.

Still, this makes the foundation of our beliefs fairly shaky. At best, our belief is third-hand. In fact, this is all so dicey that Jesus had to say an extra prayer for us. In John’s gospel, Jesus prays not for his immediate disciples only but also for “those who will believe in me through their message” (John 17:20). That’s us!

That said, we believe in the existence of a myriad of people for whom we have only secondhand or third-hand reports. For instance, I suspect that everyone reading this book believes that Julius Caesar e...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Permissions
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: A Substantial Faith
• Chapter 2: The Light of the World
• Chapter 3: Fess Up
• Chapter 4: Hope is a Person
• Chapter 5: Let It Be
• Chapter 6: Embracing the Family Name
• Chapter 7: Love Is a Verb
• Chapter 8: Christian Spirituality
• Chapter 9: Love Is a Noun
• Chapter 10: Real Life
• Bibliography