Living Wittily

TFTD June 16-22: A Faithful Saying.

Monday

Titus 3.4-5a “But when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us…”

That word ‘saved’ is too easily overlooked, or understated, or dulled by overuse. This is a miracle word and it means when everything was at stake, when we were lost beyond our own help, God intervened. The kindness and love of God appeared in the gift and revelation of God’s Son, Jesus. This old apostle is in the process of establishing his legacy in the form of a faith community in which the risen Son of God, Jesus Christ, is present by his Spirit – to save, and keep, and guide. Grateful worship has always been the living evidence that we are saved, and we know it.

Tuesday

Titus 3.5 “He saved us not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy…”

We are saved not by our best efforts, but by the kindness, love, and mercy of God. These three keywords of Christian vocabulary are required to express something of the sheer gift and undeserved grace, of what God has done for sinners through the work of Christ. Once saved, of course, God requires us to live by that same grace into holiness and righteousness. Being saved by God’s mercy and justified by grace, is “a status which must then be demonstrated in practice in righteous living.”

Wednesday

Titus 3.5 “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” 

Deep echoes here of that late night conversation with Nicodemus about being born again by the Holy Spirit. There can be no more radical new beginning than being born again. Our moral life, our inner drives of love and desire and hope, so often distorted by sin into possessiveness, greed and self-serving, are all of them reset in a renewal only possible by the cleansing and enabling power of the Holy Spirit. No wonder Paul said, “If anyone is in Christ – new creation!” And all by the kindness, love and mercy of God. We really should take more time to sit down and wonder at all of that!

Thursday

Titus 3.6 “The Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour.”

The language is still about the extravagant grace and generosity of God. The Holy Spirit is given without measure, a reminder of John’s vivid memory: “From the fullness of his grace we have all received, one blessing after another.” (John 1.16) God gives of himself in his fullness in Christ and by the Holy Spirit. Not only so, it is all mediated through Jesus Christ our Saviour. There is no more convincing sign of the saved soul than grateful love, lived out in faithful service to church and world, and continually celebrated in lifelong praise to the Saviour.  

Friday

Titus 3.7 “So that having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.”

Being justified by grace means we are not heirs by right, but by gift. In Romans Paul spells this out much more fully: “The Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ…” The hope of eternal life is not set round with conditions, or ‘ifs and buts’. This hope is secured in our relationship to God, through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s what being saved means, to live faithfully and hopefully towards our future in eternal fellowship with God.

Saturday

Titus 3.8 “This is a trustworthy saying.”

In the Letters to Timothy and Titus, Paul repeatedly tells those who will hear his letters read, “This is a trustworthy saying.” Believe it; stake your life on it; act on the truth of it; accept it into your heart and mind and let its truth and trustworthiness be fuel for your faith, day in and day out. Read Titus 3.1-7 again, because the truth Paul is telling is well worthy of your deepest trust and strongest confidence in God. For your interest here are the other ‘faithful sayings’: (1 Timothy 1.15; 3.1; 4.8; 2 Timothy 2.11-12; Titus 3.8). Find time to ponder these trustworthy sayings too.

Sunday

Titus 3.8-9 “This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.”

It’s not a bad motto: “Be careful to devote yourselves to doing what is good.” Careful means not being careless about those opportunities that always come our way to make someone else’s life better. Being devoted and loving God, makes us morally predictable about our choices of behaviour, about the words we speak, and how we think. Because God in his kindness, love and mercy has saved us through Jesus Christ, and cleansed and renewed us by the Holy Spirit poured out all over our lives in blessing and enabling grace – because of all that, we take great care to live gratefully, generously, and hopefully, as befits those who are saved and belong to the Saviour. Quite a thing to live a life profitable to everyone! Good deeds change the world!

The Devotional Poem / Hymn of a Quiet Philologist

 

Edwin Hatch is one of the lesser known figures In the history of 19th Century biblical criticism. His Hibbert Lectures, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, changed the course of New Testament scholarship for over a century.

 

His research on the Septuagint was focused on compiling a comprehensive concordance on the Greek version of the Old Testament. He died before completing it, and it was completed by a friend, and became known as the Hatch and Redpath Concordance of the Septuagint, still a defining work to this day.

 

All of this by way of saying that the same Edwin Hatch, shy scholar, content to be in the background of academy and church, wrote one of the loveliest hymns about the Holy Spirit. In Victorian England, and most other periods, t's quite rare for reserved academic philologists and historians to state so simply and overtly their own devotional feelings.

 

'Breathe on Me Breath of God", remains a prayer of the heart for those of us who still sing it, and are in churches that might choose it.

 

Breathe on me, Breath of God,

Fill me with life anew,

That I may love what Thou dost love,

And do what Thou wouldst do.

 

Breathe on me, Breath of God,

Until my heart is pure,

Until with Thee I will one will,

To do and to endure.

 

Breathe on me, Breath of God,

Till I am wholly Thine,

Until this earthly part of me

Glows with Thy fire divine.

 

Breathe on me, Breath of God,

So shall I never die,

But live with Thee the perfect life

Of Thine eternity.

The photograph shows a hairstyle I've never been tempted to copy

Walter Brueggemann 1933-2025

 

Like many, many others, I owe so much to the writing and scholarship of Walter Brueggemann.

 

The multiple debts we owe to his faithful provocations, his relentless compassion, his prophetic imagination, his lifelong vision of shalom, his tireless critique of institutional and ideological greed, and above all his deep and trustful hope in God who redeems the lost and broken, who reverses the impossible, and who makes resurrection and new beginnings theologically thinkable.

 

I for one give thanks for his ministry of keeping us awake to the voice of God, and alert to God's call of grace and judgement.

TFTD June 9-15: The Holy Spirit as Transformative Influencer.

Monday

Our blest Redeemer, ere he breathed his tender, last farewell,
a guide, a Comforter, bequeathed with us to dwell.

Behind this verse is the promise of Jesus, “”I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever – the Spirit of Truth.” Pentecost is the fulfilling of that promise. The Holy Spirit is the generous bequest of Jesus, the gift that can’t be bought, the risen Christ made present by his Spirit. This whole hymn is a quiet thanksgiving for the One who comes to believing hearts as wisdom, counsel, strength and the deep assurance that we are indeed, children of God  

Tuesday

He came in semblance of a dove, with sheltering wings outspread,

The holy balm of peace and love on earth to shed.

The descent of the Spirit on Jesus at his baptism combines with the image of sheltering wings. Another hymn tells this well: “O spread thy covering wings around, till all our wanderings cease.” Amongst the great blessings of the Holy Spirit’s coming to dwell in the community of Christ, and in each trusting heart, are the peace and the love of God shed abroad in the heart, in the Christian community, and out the doors into the world where Christ died and rose again, a God-loved world.

Wednesday

He came in tongues of living flame, to teach, convince, subdue;

As peaceful as the wind he came, as viewless too. 

Sometimes the poetry isn’t as good as the words! But this verse interprets Pentecost as the gift of the Holy Spirit to all Jesus’ followers, then and now. The flame of God’s love, burning the truth into the heart, convincing of both sin and its remedy in Christ, subduing our pride and bringing us to the place of prayer, gratitude and obedience. The wind at Pentecost wasn’t peaceful, it was disruptive – but perhaps the hymn writer was thinking about Jesus words to Nicodemus, the movement of the Spirit made visible by the effects on the leaves, and that same Spirit’s effects made visible in lives born again into the Kingdom of God.

Thursday

He came sweet influence to impart, a gracious, willing guest,
while he can find one humble heart wherein to rest.

The hymn writer’s devotional instincts are finely tuned. The Holy Spirit does not gate-crash, though there is potency and persistence in the grace of God working away to open doors locked from the inside by guilt, fear, shame, pride and much else that keeps us at a distance from God. The heart that is humbled by the patient love of God revealed in Christ, the heart convicted of sin and turned towards God in repentance and prayer for forgiveness – that heart is exactly the place where the Holy Spirit comes, and dwells, and becomes the primary influencer of the heart, emotions, will, and mind.  

Friday

And his that gentle voice we hear, soft as the breath of even,
that checks each fault, that calms each fear, and speaks of heaven.

The great Reformers often spoke of “the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.” By this they meant when we read our Bibles prayerfully, we are asking the Spirit to “teach, convince, subdue.” The Spirit is continually at work towards our sanctification, in maintaining the sensitivity of the conscience when faced with temptation, by the training of the mind in our thinking with the mind of Christ, in the control of our emotions and affections as we respond to life’s routines and surprises. The work of the Holy Spirit is “God at work in us both to do and to will his good pleasure.”  

Saturday

And every virtue we possess, and every victory won,
and every thought of holiness, are his alone.

This is the most famous and most often quoted verse of this hymn – at least in the circles I moved in for much of my earlier Christian life and ministry. The author, Henriette Auber, was well aware we are saved by grace – it’s never our own doing. Likewise whatever is good in us is good enabled by the inner working of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness with our spirits that we are assuredly children of God. We are what we are, we are who we are, by the grace of God. Far from being a devaluation of our best efforts, our dependence on God’s grace as we are being conformed to the image of Christ, is what enables and empowers us to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God who is at work in us”!

Sunday

Spirit of purity and grace, our weakness pitying, see:
O make our hearts thy dwelling-place, and worthier thee.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The hymn writer used early Victorian language – the word pity refers to the compassion and affectionate sympathy of God who knows and sees and understands our struggles. The Holy Spirit is the Counsellor and Comforter who indwells the mind and knows our motives and intentions, our mistakes and failures, and whose work is to conform us to the image of Christ – to make us more like Jesus. That’s the prayer of this entire hymn!