Love Hurts: The Heart of the Christian Story: The Heart of the Christian Story

By Alan J Spence

This book offers a fresh outline of the Christian story shaped by the idea of God's love as it is described in the New Testament.

Love Hurts is a fresh and compact summary of the central themes of the Christian message. Journeying through the Bible's rich and diverse world of ideas and stories, it leads the reader on a route mapped out by one particular motif - the love of God. The meaning of this idea as it is explained in three key verses in the New Testament determines the path taken. The reader is invited to consider the costliness of that love, the judgement from which it saves men and women, the sort of life it promises and the role that faith plays in responding to it. The saving ministry of Jesus is considered afresh in the light of it. There is also a reflection on why these short lives of ours have ultimate significance and the distinguishing mark of those who are blessed by God. Finally, consideration is given to the pre-emptive nature of God's saving love and how that love is presented to us in the gospel as promise.

'In Love Hurts Alan Spence demonstrates that it is possible to be both simple and profound. Spence starts with the conviction that the love of God lies at the heart of the Christian story, and proceeds to unpack this belief with nuance and insight, producing a compelling and convincing argument primarily by allowing the Bible to speak for itself. This is a book well worth reading.'
Brian Harris, Principal of Vose Seminary and Senior Pastor of Carey Baptist Church, Perth, Western Australia

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authentic Publishers
• Release date: Mar 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780783017

Alan J Spence

Dr Alan J. Spence taught mathematics in Harare, served as a tent evangelist in the South African townships and ran camps and conferences with Scripture Union in Zimbabwe. He has been a minister in the Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa, and was at one time Moderator of its General Assembly. He helped to found Domboshawa House, a theological college in Harare and has chaired the Justice, Peace and Reconciliation Committee of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches. He is now the minister of a United Reformed Church congregation in Northampton, UK. His highly successful book, Love Hurts is published by Paternoster (2012).

Book preview

LOVE HURTS

LOVE HURTS

The Heart of the Christian Story

ALAN SPENCE

Copyright © 2013 Alan J. Spence

19 18 17 16 15 14 13    7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First published 2013 by Paternoster

Paternoster is an imprint of Authentic Media Limited

52 Presley Way, Crownhill, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ES.

www.authenticmedia.co.uk

The right of Alan J. Spence to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-84227-810-9

978-1-78078-301-7 (e-book)

Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations are taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (Anglicised). Copyright © 1974, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, formerly International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, a Hachette UK Company. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’, is a registered trademark of Biblica. UK trademark number 1448790.

Other Scripture versions cited:

Common English Bible (CEB), Anglicised

Good News Bible (GNB)

New English Bible (NEB)

New International Version © (NIV 1984), Anglicised

Cover Design Phil Houghton

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd., Croydon, CR0 4YY

For that happy band of cousins:

Jennifer, Kirsten, Fiona, Adam, Kingsley, Katherine,

Mitchell, Lauren, Courteney, Gael, Ewan, Neil

and Chelsea

Contents

Preface

1. Costly Love

Asking Questions

God’s Love

The Love of the Son

Summary

2. His Only Son

The First Real Human

An Opening of Eyes

A Pre-Existent Being

The One and Only Son

3. In Praise of Justice

They Shall Not Perish

The Nature of Judgement

The Justice of God

Christ as Judge

Justice and Peace

A Fresh Look at the Scriptures

Summary

4. The Means of Forgiveness

A Cry for Mercy

The Place of Mercy

The Ground of Mercy

The Instrument of Forgiveness

5. Where Mercy and Righteousness Meet

The Restoration of Harmony

The Revelation of God’s Righteousness

Justice as Fair Play

The Foolishness of the Cross

6. They Thought It Was All Over

A Ministry of Intercession

Resurrection to Priestly Service

Confidence in the Face of Accusation

The Ongoing Work of Christ

Christ as Head of the Church

Presenting the Christian Story

7. The Mystery of Faith

Faith as a Problem

The Nature of Faith

The Model of Faith

The Dynamic of Salvation

8. Life Indescribable

New Life Now

Life for Those Who Are Dead

A Different Sort of Life

Life More Abundant

United with Christ

Life beyond Death

9. Facing Up to Death

The Fear of Death

Accepting the Path of Death

Consider Yourselves as Dead

Summary

10. This Life Counts

Taking the Warnings Seriously

It Is All Over

Justification and Glory

Summary

11. The Mark of the Blessed

Poor in Spirit

Humility and Faith

Attributing Right Value

The Fear of the Lord

Summary

12. Making the First Move

He First Loved Us

Divine Purpose and Human Willing

Helpless in Ourselves

Difficulties with the Doctrine

Summary

13. The Promise as Gift

The Son as Gift

The Spirit as Gift

The River of Blessing

Summary

14. Debriefing

The Gospel

Assessment

The Scandal of Particularity

The Scandal of Judgement

The Scandal of Faith

Summary

Endnotes

Preface

Some months back, I was given a copy of Rob Bell’s book Love Wins. I was fascinated by it. That someone could write with so easy a style while dealing with such important religious ideas was an eye-opener. Perhaps I have been somewhat trapped in a way of thinking which assumed that fairly technical language was necessary to handle the really big issues about God and salvation. I admired the way Bell was able to use humour and provocative questions to encourage ordinary Christians to think through certain key ideas of their faith in quite new ways. I found myself a little envious of his skill as a communicator.

Although I share some of Bell’s perspectives and concerns, the answers that I would give to a number of the questions that he raises are rather different. His engaging manner stimulated me to think through my own position more clearly. I soon realized, however, that many of the issues are interrelated and can’t be adequately dealt with on their own. Like a single-arch suspension bridge, all of the struts are dependent on one another. In order to explain the forces on any one of them, you need to look at the whole structure. And so I thought it would be more helpful to put together a coherent, alternative account of the Christian story rather than consider piecemeal each of the issues he raised.

My plan was to use the idea of the love of God, which had played such a pivotal role in Bell’s presentation, as a guide for my own study. I would examine how the New Testament writers employed the concept of God’s love as a key to open up the central features of the Christian message. As for style, I felt that I could at least make an attempt to say things as simply as possible. In particular, I would seek to do so without reference to any theological authorities. For someone who has spent quite a bit of time reading Christian theologians, it is quite a challenge to put them all to one side and be guided only by what the Bible has to say on the matter.

This short book has now been written and I am in a position to look back and take stock. It stands on its own as a fresh presentation of what might be called a classical understanding of the Christian story. It shouldn’t be viewed as a direct response to anyone else’s work. On a personal note, I discovered that reflecting deeply on the themes of the gospel soon had me captivated by its charms. I found myself humbled by its penetrating insights and I sensed once more the freedom of its liberating power. The apostle Paul once said that we carry this treasure in earthen jars. My hope is that the reader might, like an expensive camera, be able to focus not on the clay jar, but on the treasure that it seeks to bear. And that through such focal attention, he or she might also be drawn to its beauty and persuaded by its logic.

My special thanks to those who read the chapters as they were being written and helped me to improve the text. These include my friend Henriette, my nephew Adam, my wife Sheila and our passionate little theological group at Abington Avenue.

1.

COSTLY LOVE

Asking Questions

What is the heart of the Christian story?

What does it promise?

Does it make any sense?

Is it believable?

What does it ask from me?

For the person thinking seriously about Christianity, these are some of the key issues. The answers, however, are not always clear-cut. Our most important questions often produce a bewildering variety of responses. How are we to decide between them? Everything seems to depend on which group of Christians we ask. Different churches tend to give different answers. Even within the same church, people do not always seem to agree. How does someone who is looking for the truth decide what to believe?

Almost all Christians recognize that the Scriptures have one way or another played an important role in shaping what they hold to be true. If the Bible is the foundational document of the Christian faith, it makes sense to turn first to its pages and consider the answers they offer to questions such as these. The problem, however, as everyone knows, is that people interpret the Scriptures differently. Their experience of life shapes their spirituality. And their spirituality colours their reading of the Bible. Our backgrounds subtly influence the way we view its message. They help us determine what is significant and what is secondary. Our worldview unconsciously fashions our judgement and organizes our filters. None of us comes to the biblical narrative with a completely blank sheet of paper or a totally open mind. Consciously or unconsciously we have already formed a set of answers to the questions we are asking. Perhaps the best we can do is to make a deliberate effort to allow the ideas and perspectives of the Scriptures to speak for themselves, to order their own priorities and to disclose their own agenda.

Another difficulty we are faced with when we read the Bible is to know where to start. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the richness of its teaching and the open-ended nature of its stories. We can often miss the wood for the trees. Are there certain themes about salvation which are the foundation for more peripheral ideas? Are there some stepping-stones that are secure enough for us to place our weight on before we choose to wade out further? Many have held that the love of God lies at the very heart of the Christian story. It sounds like a good call. Let’s start there and see where the path leads.

God’s Love

Love connects people. It is the life-force of our best relationships. A world without it presents an extremely bleak prospect. Who would choose to live in a loveless relationship? Love is creative. It energizesour poetry, our literature and our music. It is the driving power behind many of our noblest achievements. Love is exhilarating and transforming. It has its own inner strength. It is difficult, if not impossible, to bring it under any sort of control. It cannot be priced. A love poem in the Bible appears to be right on the mark:

Many waters cannot quench love;

rivers cannot sweep it away.

If one were to give

all the wealth of one’s house for love,

it would be utterly scorned (Song 8:7).

Love can, however, be made cheap and dirty. It can be used as an advertising tool and a way to control others. Love can be so sentimental that it becomes sickening, like too much sugar in a good cup of coffee. We find caricatures of love in bad movies, corny song lyrics and cheap romantic fiction. When a pop singer shouts out to fifty thousand adoring fans, ‘I love you all’, what does he mean? Love can be trivialized.

What about God’s love for us? How robust a concept is it? How well does it stand up to our attempts to hijack it for our own purposes or flavour it to our own taste? Let us look at some of the principal statements in the New Testament on the nature of God’s love for the world:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8).

This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:9,10).

God’s love, according to these texts, is made known in the giving over of his Son to death. It is in a particular, concrete, historical event that took place in a minor Roman province some time back that we discover what God’s love actually means. We do not learn about God’s love by trying to analyze him. It is not rationally deduced from the idea of God. Nor is it derived from our personal reflection on how well life has turned out for us or how beautiful the world appears to be. God’s love has to do with the giving over of his Son to death. That’s it. Any explanation of divine love which does not flow from our reflection on that supreme gift is in danger of either intellectual abstraction or superficiality and sentimentality.

In the Second World War my dad, his brother-in-law and his younger brother were all pilots in the Royal Air Force. Dad crashed in enemy territory and was taken prisoner for four years. His brother-in-law was killed in action. His