THEOLOGICAL COMMENTARY – by Rev. Nicholas Sykes

 

THE DISCIPLE'S PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION

 

I recently read a famous book written about 1500 years ago called The Consolation of Philosophy. It is written by Boëthius, a very learned person who had held high office but who had been convicted unjustly for treasonable offences and was preparing himself for torture and death. The author shows through reason why a person who suffers loss for the sake of goodness has nothing to be sad or complaining about. Rather, it is the person who has lost goodness for the sake of some lesser gain that there is reason to take pity on.

 

As with the Lord's words in Matthew 16: 21-28, the conclusions that are reached, such as "Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it" seem to many people to be contrary to  reason. However, the perspectives that are brought to bear on a situation will entirely change the way we understand it. The language of faith is the language of revelation, and disciples and prophets gain their most important insights not from the everyday life around them, but from revelation.

 

We see therefore that the Christian disciple is called to make changes in his outlook as he progresses spiritually. Of course it is also true that someone who regresses spiritually is also going to make changes in his outlook, but in that case the changes he makes will conform more and more with the passing age that is influencing him. The active  disciple's personal changes do not always come automatically, but may require considerable personal application. The acknowledgment of the absolute holiness of God is one of the very first ways in which a disciple must personally change. An awareness of that holiness with which we are dealing may not automatically remain with us as a tangible sense. We will need to make a mental effort to sustain within us this awareness. We will not accomplish all the changes we are called to in a moment.

 

The words of Jeremiah 15: 15-18 are part of the prophet Jeremiah’s personal lament. “I sat alone”, he says, “because thy hand was upon me, for thou hadst filled me with indignation. Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?” Such words reveal to us the anguish that Jeremiah went through. He had been given the prophetic calling, but his people could not accept his words. His rejection and isolation pained him greatly, he was being persecuted for the sake of righteousness, and he even got to the stage of asking God if He were being unfaithful to His own promise to him. “Wilt thou be to me like as deceitful brook, like waters that fail?” he asks of God. But he records that the Lord answered him (verse 19), “If you return, I will restore you, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious and not what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth.” Jeremiah too was called to a costly path of transformation, in which the things that matter from God’s perspective become all important to the disciple, and the things that matter from man’s perspective, but are not what matter to God, or not within His mandate to us, diminish in our consciousness.

 

Matthew 16: 21-28 shows us a vignette of a Peter that had not yet accomplished the changes to which the Lord was calling him. Peter, whom the Lord had just previously called the rock on which the church was to be built, could still be described as a personification of Satan, because he had taken it upon himself to rebuke his Lord for what He had said about His coming suffering and death, and to try to divert Him from that path. And the severity with which Jesus spoke may indicate to us the emotional cost that the knowledge of his path of suffering was beginning to exact upon the humanity of the Saviour Himself, in spite of the joy with which He accomplished our redemption.

 

It is part of the transformation of the disciple that he can both increase in the genuineness of love and in discrimination between good and evil things. The disciple who is exhorted to be genuine in his love is the same disciple who is directed to shrink from what is evil, and to cleave to what is good. Paul sums up the matter in Romans 12:21: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." In His death and Passion, this is exactly what the Lord accomplished, and to follow Him as disciples we too, in exercising genuine love, not being overcome by evil but overcoming evil with good, are called along the path of denying ourselves, taking up our cross and following Him. And in doing so, as the author of The Consolation of Philosophy would point out, we will have nothing to be sad and complaining about, but unlike others will achieve full happiness and fulfilment.

 

For commentary, information and devotional material see www.churchofenglandcayman.com and www.anglicansatprayer.org