Thread by @SandmanGrant

Day 4 #gafaus22 began for me at the Chins with 1 Chronicles 18 and prayers from the prayer diaries of @AnglicanAidSyd for India, @CMSAustralia in UAE, @MooreCollege study week and @AFES work in Albury-Wodonga and Armidale.

1 Chronicles 18:13-14 possible contains the pinnacle of OT existence, “...And the Lord gave victory to David wherever he went. So David reigned over all Israel, and he administered justice and equity to all his people.”

And a brief pinnacle it was… but such a great pointer to David’s Greater Son and his victory inaugurated in his death and resurrection, and the justice and equity of his coming future reign in the new creation. Maranatha.

Grateful for Christian hospitality, this week from Richard and Jeanette, but such a worldwide experience - the Christian passport is the best!

Now to Ashley Null’s third #gafaus22 conference address; unity, diversity and now charity, and the reading of 1 Corinthians 13.

Love does fulfil such a deep-seated need in our souls that it has the power to move us in unexpected ways, altering priorities and even re-orienting our world. It’s at the heart of the meaning of life and the centre of the Christian hope.

Therefore the Enemy’s game plan is to make us doubt God really loves us, so that we feel we’ve got to go out and find love for ourselves.

And the World says we’ve got to look after ourselves and show others what we’ve got. So there’s always something more to do, something more to prove…

Genesis 3…
1. Plant a negative attitude: focus on what you don’t have, by overstating a restriction (& distorting God’s Word): “Did God really say…?” And the focus is switched away from all the good things God has given!

So we are tempted to focus on having lesser of a family, lacking that someone special, your goals being thwarted…

Step 2. Make Eve doubt God’s love: he’s really a competitor and doesn’t want you to have what he has. He knows if you do your own thing you’ll be like him and he doesn’t want that.

Step 3. Undermine your self-esteem, by implied comparisons to others: Eve, realise you don’t have enough; you don’t know enough!

Without confidence in God’s love for us, unconditioned by our performance, we are vulnerable. The temptation will be the self-improvement, self actualisation treadmill. Eat the fruit and you can be as wise as God, and never feel inferior again!

The Enemy gives the first humans a false problem and ‘kindly’ suggests a false solution. And so turning their backs on God they turn on each other and turn to their own meagre abilities to try and ‘cover up’. Fig leaves are not a solution at all.

We can even turn the gospel into performance. Is repentance something we do to please God? Or something God is pleased to work in us?

Cranmer bequeathed the latter view to the reformation Anglican Church.

Medieval penitence - voluntary self-punishment, sincere, consistent, lifelong sorrow at sin - would turn God back to us.

Confession to a priest and effort in acts of penitence should be accompanied by inward contrition. You should work hard at sorrow for sin and hope hard for forgiveness… look at what Christ has done for you, what have you done for Christ?

Medieval Catholics existed in constant uncertainty to drive you harder to try and please God with your repentance in a mix of shame and fear and hope and love.

Cranmer and fellow Reformers agreed that only love for Christ would change lives! But they disagreed with the means to change the heart. Not just fear or shame. The love of God must be the ruling love.

Where does this stronger love come from? You cannot shame your way to righteousness. Null is a chaplain to Olympic athletes, and as he reflected on motivating athletic performance I thought how this appears to have been the tragic method in much gymnastics coaching, for example.

What produces love? “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.”
1 John 4:18-19

This is what Martin Luther and then Thomas Cranmer realised justification by faith alone achieved!

The key to the godly life was knowing the assurance we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

This is the reform that brings around the changed society. Not trying harder. But appreciating what God had already done for them in Christ. #HorseBeforeCart

Only knowing the free gift of eternal life in the grace of Christ can reach down into the depths of our aching hearts’ need for love.

Faith alone justifies, not works (Galatians 2), but lively faith, living faith (James 2), faith working by love (Galatians 5).

This could come to full expression under Edwards’s reign and is seen in the homilies he then produced.

See also Article XI
“Of the Justification of Man”…

“We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings:

“Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.”

Article XII
Of Good Works
“Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s Judgement;…

“…yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith; insomuch that by them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit.”

See Romans 5 for the Reformers’ doctrine of the heart… “and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”
Rom 5:5-6

Legalism can be so close and yet so far, by turning our heart away from what God has done for us to what we can, should do for God, turning God into the ultimate sports coach turning us into a better performer by trying harder through fear of failure. Legalism is brutal.

We must not burden people by making it sound like they’ve got to change their behaviour on their own… But preach the gospel of Jesus who died for sinners like us at our worst. That is the time they need God’s love (and ours) more than ever.

The conservative answer to sexual sin has been too often - but cannot be - to shame people into righteousness.

The progressive answer has then been that acceptance of self (in what was called sin) which can never free from slavery to sin.

The GAFCON answer should be to recover the reformation biblical truth: only God’s love for sinners inspires sinners to love God more than sin.

And singing with @CityAlight:

“O Your love, my God, like a flood,
As heaven opened up pouring out on us;
O praise the King, who came to the world;
In His love like a mighty flood…”

@threadreaderapp please unroll

At the @AnglicanAidSyd morning tea and reminded of the story of Rev Berthier Lainirina, raised in highly liturgical and sacramental Anglicanism, training in seminary and discovering this…

The example of @AnglicanAidSyd’s partnership with Anglicans in Madasgascar exemplified the combination of theological training and practical aid and development, literally saving lives… anglicanaid.org.au/from-famine-to…

Here’s a hostile opinion piece…

smh.com.au/national/angli…

And my letter in reply…

Editor,

"Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone…” Jesus’ example tells me we can be both personally merciful in protecting the vulnerable from self-righteous bullying, and also challenge people to “go, and sin nor more”…

As I remain in the Anglican Church of Australia, and also support those in the new Diocese of the Southern Cross, this Jesus will be my benchmark.

Yours sincerely,

Sandy Grant
Anglican Dean of Sydney
Forest Lodge

And now Archbishop Peter Jensen on Philippians 4… with the first verse a key!

How do we stand firm … in working out our own salvation (Phil 2:12)?
1. Live out your unity, 4:2-3, with an cause of division unknown to us. But this word - to “agree in the Lord” - is crucial to us in #GAFCON as orthodox believers. We must unite: love & respect each other

2. We must rejoice (4:4) in the Lord. Only when you look outside yourselves can you really rejoice. Gaze on Jesus and who he is and what he has done for us! We do NOT rejoice in ourselves or our prospects let alone achievements.

3. We must forbear. We must let our gentleness (NIV), “reasonableness” (ESV), “graciousness” (CSB) be known to all (v5) as you hold to an unpopular position.

4. We must pray 🙏 in anxiety, which will come with the criticisms and uncertainty, and remain thankful to God who is sovereign and good (4:6).

5. We must focus on what is good. Not a technique for well-being but a genuine resistance to evil thoughts and a filling of mind with whatever is good and lovely and noble and pure (v8)… Who does that remind you of? There is only One - Jesus!

6. Imitate, v9, what is learned & received from the Apostle. (And to repeat from 2 days back, the supreme model of the Lord Jesus Christ, 2:5-11.) …And imitate good servants of God in your own day. And remember your example - even of ‘the least of these’ has an impact on others

7. Worship! V18 speaks of the Philippians’ gifts and support in finances and other ways (e.g. through your helpful prayers, 1:19), as worship, pleasing sacrifices to God.

How do we stand firm in the Lord? Secondly and foundationally, by knowing God who is at work in you (2:13)?

It’s in union with Christ - “in the Lord ”, v1, v2, v4, v7, etc!

Four great truths:
1. Bringing assurance - peace with God! He guards us with his peace. We don’t guard his peace! (4:7)

2. Bringing presence - he will be with you (v9).
3. Bringing contentment - the “doing all things” (v13) is not some super-power - he was still in chains! - but contentment in all circumstances (vv11-12).

4. Bringing provision, In his glorious riches God will supply all your needs, v19…

God is so good to us. What he says is for the benefit of human beings.

Say it. Argue for it. Demonstrate it. Stand firm in the Lord. And fix your eyes upon Jesus. And rejoice!

Bishop Glenn Davies is now being commissioned by @ArchbishopFoley as the inaugural Bishop of the Diocese of the Southern Cross, in the presence of board members of #Gafcon and of the new diocese, along with Bishop Jay Behan of CCA in New Zealand.

We welcome and pray for Glenn…

We’re concluding #gafaus22 with the Lord’s Supper, introduced by this exhortation (I think, my favourite words in the Prayer Book)…

“Brothers and sisters in Christ, we who come to receive the holy communion of the body and blood of our saviour Christ can come…

“only because of his great love for us. For, although we are completely undeserving of his love, yet in order to raise us from the darkness of death to everlasting life as God’s sons & daughters, our Saviour Christ humbled himself to share our life & to die for us on the cross.”

This ends my live-tweeting of the #GAFCON Australasia #gafaus22 Conference. Well done, if you’ve read this far. I’m being driven home by an Archbishop and Bishop, so I’ll try and behave!

Last hymn: Be Thou My Vision.

ENDS

(Actually, it turned out only to be an Assistant Bishop, and we both survived, edified.)