To Be with Him

By Stuart Vaughan

“By grace we are saved” ... All who self-identify as Christian know this well. In this book Stuart Vaughan mines the theme of grace in the ongoing life of the believer. He shows grace to be surprising in depth and variety – potentially enriching the life of every Christian in knowing his or her Lord more intimately, while also inviting the outsider in.

About the Author
Stuart describes himself as an Amos among the Isaiahs and Jeremiahs of the Christian writing world. As Amos, a farmer and outsider to the world of professional prophets, was commissioned with a message, Stuart, a mechanic, considers himself similarly commissioned for today’s Christian world.

He has worked in various pastoral and teaching fields while keeping his daytime job. He has been engaged in mentoring and writing articles for the past decade. Living in Johannesburg, South Africa, he has three children and six grandchildren.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stuart Vaughan
• Release date: Oct 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005085322

Stuart Vaughan

Stuart Vaughan is a first time novelist, whose day (or rather night) job is as a mobile mechanic for the AA. To while away the long hours on call, he started writing a story about a man with a dream and a boat that needed a dreamer, and his book grew from there.Stuart lives and works in Auckland.

Book preview

TO BE WITH HIM

A New Look At the Shape of Life Lived in Grace

Stuart Vaughan

Copyright © 2020 Stuart Vaughan

Published by Stuart Vaughan publishing at Smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by Stuart Vaughan using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Website: www.reachpublishers.co.za

E-mail: [e-mail]

Cover Design by Daniela

Stuart Vaughan Email:

[e-mail]

Table of Contents

Dedication.

Preface.

Introduction

Part 1 - ‘Getting’ the Gospel

1.God’s Intended Pattern of Christian Living

2.It’s All About Grace

3.Incarnation!

4.Behold the Love!

5.The Nature of Our Relationship With Jesus

6.Reflexive Incarnation

7.A Paradigm of Grace

Part 2 - Living the Life: From Theory to Practice.

8.Following Jesus

9.Ethics and the Second Paradigm

10.God’s Part/My Part.

11.Bits & Pieces

12.Mission: Evangelism and Service.

Conclusion

Postscript

Dedication.

I dedicate this book to the one whom I believe to be its source: the one true God, whom to know is nothing short of eternal life.

And to the one who repeatedly encouraged me to write, without which this book would not have been conceived. God will hear my prayer for you: Lord do not let her be left behind!

And to Derek and Este, greatly encouraging companions along the way, for helpful comments; and Este for the title. And to Daniela for the cover design. And to Erwin for his hours in the final production, as well as Joe of Reach Publishers for help in the final stage.

And to the small band of participants in prayer and financial contribution towards publishing costs. May you consider yourselves rewarded in the outcome.

And to the beautiful Isa 42. 1 cohort, too many to name, on whom I was able to road-test most of the ideas. You all were more encouraging than you knew, and the lines of thought you suggested or interrogated enriched this offering.

Preface.

The chief distinctive of this book is that grace is considered – perhaps better: reconsidered - in terms of our essential identity in Christ as sons and daughters of God. It also considers this grace as a growing thing. Viewed from God’s perspective his grace is, of course, the outworking of his unchanging love. In that sense it is absolute: the favourite term of the Old Testament is steadfast. However, from the perspective of the recipients of that grace – all committed to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God – grace expands, bringing ever-increasing maturity, obedience, fulfilment and joy. I call this current grace.

Much of the content is new; indeed, I believe, seminal, though none of it is novel. As such, it bears an intrinsic hazard. I have engaged in some speculation, but not of the kind of a Bultmann or any others of his school. Indeed, Darrell Johnson is far kinder to the said Bultmann than I am inclined to be, my early studies having been in a place where he was held high as a new authority. Here will be found a different kind of speculation - one that seeks to glorify God rather than man.

Thus I am prepared for critique: I ask only that it be done in fairness and the brotherly love to which we have been called. At best, may this be the start of a fruitful conversation…

Introduction

The theme of this book is grace: which, though much misunderstood and treated tritely, shines indefatigably through the clutter as the supremely beautiful characteristic of God’s dealings with humankind. The particular focus here is on what might be called current grace. That term, invented for the present purpose, invites explanation.

Everyone who chooses to follow Jesus begins his/her journey in the kingdom of God by faith in: we come alive in our new-found access to the Father with our sins forgiven and our inherent sinfulness dealt with – it’s all grace. We know that well, and rightly revel in it. But how do we relate to God as son or daughter in the years that follow? The wedding day brings bride and groom into a new, exhilarating and, we hope, lifelong relationship: but after that high point, how is that relationship to be enjoyed, nurtured and grown in subsequent life together – with work pressures, new family, unpredictable circumstantial bolts-from-the-blue and more? Faced with new pressures, crises etc, it helps little to seek answers by looking back to that first day: we have matured since then; our horizons expanded; and the relationship depends on the love dynamic that has similarly matured and expanded. So too, in living the life Jesus gives us: of course, it is predicated on the same grace that brought us initially into relationship with Father: but what is the shape – the dynamic - of the continuing life in grace?

That grace – current grace - is what this offering is about. It is focused on bringing the one true God – Father, Son and Spirit - home to the everyday disciple in his/her actual life as it is lived day by day in the actual world. ‘Actual life’ is intended to include life in all its vast diversity. In whatever environment in which we ‘do life’ at home and work and beyond, let our question be: How, really and practically, can I live realistically - and hence credibly - as a disciple of the once-incarnated Son of God? This book is my quest for meaningful answers.

The result has changed my life; may it be so for all its readers.

This project began with seeking answers to an existential problem (described below), but as it progressed, morphed into a celebration. In his Preface to Paradise Lost CS Lewis writes: … when the old poets made some virtue their theme they were not teaching but adoring, and what we take for the didactic is often the enchanted. I cannot imagine a better expression of the celebration that has suffused this exploration and now, I hope, this account.

As we proceed Paul’s prayer in Eph 1. 17f (freely paraphrased) is apposite: ‘God of truth, our Father, give us the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Christ, enlightening the eyes of our hearts, that we may come to know in depth wonderful things: the hope to which you have called us, the unfathomably rich inheritance we have in Christ, and your limitless power available to us – the power you displayed in raising Christ from death, and now at work in us. Spirit of God, in your grace, unite within us heart and mind as we seek to know more deeply and truly the God who has called us in grace, and our life in him, lived in this world’.

- PART ONE -

‘Getting’ the Gospel -

- Chapter One -

God’s Intended Pattern of Christian Living

Yeshua of Nazareth - the focal point of both Old and New Testaments - was absolutely unique. No other system, religious or philosophical, comes near to presenting so radically astonishing a concept as that the one true God - absolute in his self-contained essence; Author of all existence; searingly holy; limitlessly powerful; meriting the title God of Grace to the extent that he could be defined as the essence of self-giving Love (1 Jn 4. 16) – that this God entered his world in the form of a man: Yeshua ben Yusuf (Yeshua son of Joseph) of Nazareth. Moreover, the primary purpose of his sojourn in the world was death by crucifixion, in order for fallen humankind to be reconciled to God. This shattering event was to be prefaced by a life that modelled authentic human life. Contemplation of that death – and the life that preceded it - moves us to endorse Jurgen Moltmann’s designation in the very title of his book: The Crucified God.

It is rightly said that, if the term ‘religion’ is understood as man’s striving after God, then Christianity is not a religion at all: instead, it describes the Crucified God striving after humankind - reaching into his created world and providing, not for a religion, but for a relationship - life-giving and lifelong.

And, moreover, astonishing in its radical effects on all areas of life. Yeshua made his intentions clear from the start. (It seems fitting to use the name by which he was actually known during his earthly mission. The translation of his name into the language of every people where the Gospel has been proclaimed began only after Pentecost.) His very first recorded words in ministry (Mk 1. 14f) were: Repent – the Kingdom of God is at hand! – which we could justifiably paraphrase in current colloquial terms: ‘Get this heads-up – there’s a new order coming - everything is going to change!’.

In case that paraphrase needs to be justified, Repent (metanoia), in addition to its primarily spiritual meaning of renouncing sin in favour of living for God, has also the connotation of: ‘change the way you think’- and the Kingdom of God that he was ushering in is, at every level, the very opposite of the present order. Apparently no-one asked him how much change in our thought-patterns he had in mind – minor adjustment or more? Or in what ways things were going to change. Get rid of the Romans? Or more? Had he been asked, he would probably have answered simply: 180 degrees (the maximum possible) to the first; and Everything to the second. Paul was the first to express how literally he meant what he said (2 Cor 5. 17): the old order has gone; the new has come; and even after two millennia his people (church) has a somewhat spotty record of effectively catching on.

Jesus’ proclamation therefore has about it the sense of a warning of an inverted form of nuclear attack, with life-giving, rather than destructive, consequences. A looser paraphrase might be simply: ‘Watch out! Here it comes!’

God himself has spoken. We proceed on full alert.

- Chapter Two -

It’s All About Grace

John’s prologue to his account of God coming into the world in the form of his Son (1. 1-18) takes a high-level view, describing him – the man Yeshua - as the Logos; the Word, who was with God from the beginning – and indeed was God. He marvels at two characteristics of this Yeshua: first, that, though he was God, he was fully and properly a man – just like us; and second, that he exhibited the epitome - the very embodiment – of grace.

These two characteristics: that in him God had become fully human, and that his trademark characteristic was grace - with several corollaries that flow from them, form the basis of our exploration into the application of grace in living our lives in relationship with him.

"For by grace we are saved … This affirmation (Eph 2. 8) reverberates in the heart of every disciple of Christ who has bought into Jesus on the basis of his death and resurrection. The glorious proclamation echoes around the entire world, Sunday by Sunday, and in individual conversations every day in between. How many millions have heard the words with mystification tinged with longing; how many others dismissed them as fairy-story, too good to be true; and how many yet others awakened to a right relationship with God? That relationship is predicated, not on their best efforts at moral and spiritual attainment, but on the faith-transaction of being accounted acceptable to God. That, in turn, is predicated on the atonement won by Jesus the Messiah and Son of God in his crucifixion and resurrection. All that is succinctly expressed (2 Cor 5. 21): For our sake he (Jesus) became sin – who knew no sin – so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

A vital question – both obvious and practical - follows in its train. We have received Christ - either in a discrete event, or else a particular realisation that we have steadily morphed into relationship with him as Saviour and Lord: either way we acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord of all things, including ourselves - now what is the implication for the rest of our lives? The question is so basic that it takes us by surprise; it is analogous to the familiar assumption that the couple that falls in love and gets married will live happily ever after. But we know that neither is as simple as that. The nature and conduct of life after marriage requires much thought, effort, commitment and sheer pain: so too, and more, for life after conversion. Failure in either realm leads to stuntedness at best, disillusionment and failure at worst. Conversely, the reward: great as are the possibilities for marriage, those for a life lived well in Christ are immeasurably greater. Not even the sky is the limit. Moreover, the reward emerges along the way: there does indeed await us ‘pie in the sky bye and bye when you die’: but that ‘pie’ is the culmination of many rich and nourishing foretastes all along the way.

The Apostle Paul, having spelled out the tenets of salvation by grace in Colossians ch 1. 15-22, makes this distinction in the next chapter (2. 8), moving on from the event of repentance and submitting oneself to Christ as Lord and Saviour, to the continuing subsequent life: "as you have received Christ, so walk [live] in him… He says (somewhat obliquely) that, having received Christ by faith, based on his grace, that the subsequent walk" (life) must be likewise by faith, based on his grace to us.

Yet we search the New Testament in vain for a detailed, ‘textbook’ explanation of how this works – for good reason, as we discuss later. Suffice it here to observe that our lives and callings are so vastly diverse that it is only to be expected that at times we should feel ourselves charting unmapped territory. We know that our life is predicated on our acceptance by the Father, and that we have the hope of ultimately seeing him face to face (1 Cor 13. 12). We welcome the mass of instruction we have been given regarding our conduct; but as we seek to know God we long for teaching that spells out the nature of the relationship between ourselves and our heavenly Father.

So, a multitude of existential questions besets us - theological, ethical and simply ‘best-practice’ – and it is perilously easy (and horrifyingly common) to relapse into a life characterised more by Law that ‘plays it by the rules’ than by grace that transforms from the centre – the heart. We need to understand that this lack of direct explanation is not necessarily a matter of oversight on the part of the writers – still less on that of the true Author himself. Instead, we are called to use our God-given faculties to connect the relevant dots. Formal theology plays its part, but we are all - theologian or not - in this game. The challenge for us to apply creative thought to Scriptural injunction is sometimes almost explicit. Two notable instances are: Raise your children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6. 4); and: Be angry, but do not sin (ibid. 4. 26, ex Ps 4. 4). How many parents have cried out for specifics on the first, and have we not all done similarly for the second?

For many – all too many – the tacit answer to these and other similar, unarticulated questions is indeed to ‘play it safe’: to attempt to grow in the faith, and incidentally somehow to please God, by discovering the rules and doing their best to keep them. Thus, for example, I discover – or am explicitly told - that I need to (must!) maintain contact with God by means of daily devotions. These are often spelled out in considerable detail: devotions must be conducted daily (preferably morning rather than evening); they are to include Bible reading (largely unguided) and prayer, with the widely-recommended form of ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. (‘Request’ or ‘petition’ are better than ‘supplication’, but that spoils the acronym …) Then, too, the disciple must witness to others a) the greatness of God, b) their predicament in relation to him and c) the need to be accepted by the merits of the death and resurrection of Christ. In addition, it is important (necessary) to attend church regularly.

Let no-one dispute the rightful place of each of these things – these ‘means of grace’- in our development in the faith. But it is fatally easy for them to be imposed as rules for the new life being embarked upon. And all too often this pattern of obligation continues beyond the initial stages for the entre Christian life.

Thus it so easily happens that the person who once delighted in the salvation so full of grace comes to continue this life in a miasma of legal requirements: a regrettable legalism that militates against a dynamic of increasingly intimate relationship with God our Father. A verbal characteristic of the associated exhortations is the prevalence of the words should, must, ought, gotta and similar moralistic injunctions – in sharp contrast to the New Testament. A prescription current among many evangelicals is to preach the Gospel to yourself. It is, of course, good to reflect on just who the God in whom we live is: a theme in many Psalms. Yet that backward look is insufficient unless it is supplemented by a rich awareness of God and his grace to us in the present.

Perhaps most tragic of all, as I hear often in the course of mentoring (mostly folk in their twenties and thirties), is that we are urged to enjoy these efforts at devotion despite their barren irrelevance to the rest of life, and to summon from within a surge of love for God. In some folk I meet with I see this resulting in pathetic attempts at manipulating the emotions in the dearth of a spontaneous well of love. This condition might be compared analogically with a dull, unsatisfying marriage in which one is encouraged (or consoled) by reflection on the wedding on the great first day of the marriage.

A different effect, equally tragic, is a kind of irrelevance. Thus, for example, at work I can see that my commitment to Christ has made me different from my colleagues.