PITLOCHRY CHURCH OF SCOTLAND

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MINISTER'S LETTER

PASTORAL LETTER FOR FEBRUARY 2012 

Dear Friends,
Strangers sometimes start conversations with me.  When I wear a dog collar, which isn’t often, it seems to happen more frequently.  In the course of the conversation, the person mentions the Good Samaritan and how he tries to be a good person.  The implication is that there’s some sort of equivalence between being a good person and being a Christian.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer argued that anyone who wants to be true to the teaching of Jesus must give up the question ‘How can I be good.’  Instead they must ask themselves a very different question ‘What is the will of God.’  If we decide that we want to be ‘good’ then we’ve also decided that we know what good means and have the capability of achieving it.  Bonhoeffer rightly argues that God alone is our authority and in Him only is goodness.  It can only be as we seek God’s will that we can do what is right, good and just.

The Prophets, John the Baptist and Paul all recognised that they were not good in the sight of God.  John said he wasn’t even “worthy to stoop down and untie Jesus sandals” (Mark 1:7).   When Jesus began his ministry He said, “The time has come.  The kingdom of God is near.  Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15).   Along with the Prophets, John the Baptist and Paul, we acknowledge that repentance is the key to beginning our journey to seek God’s will.  We confess our sins and ask God to fill us with the Holy Spirit that we may follow His way of truth and love.

Try as we may, our motives are always compromised by our values, our culture, and our great ability to deceive ourselves.  And so we go to the foot of the Cross and cast ourselves on the grace, mercy and love of God.  Jesus was highly critical of, and denounced in the strongest terms, those who thought they were good.  To a group of Pharisees who criticised Jesus for associating with sinners and tax collectors, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17).

As we have opportunity to share the good news of Jesus’ saving love with others in the course of our daily conversations, it’s vital that we’re clear about what the gospel is and is not.  The good news of Jesus isn’t good views, a teaching that can help us live in a good way.  The gospel isn’t a self-improvement manual so we can become a good person.    The gospel message is that we aren’t good and because of that God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, born as one of us, to live a good life focused solely on God, to die a death that defeats the power of sin, and to be raised to new life and so open the way to our being ‘new creations’ in Him.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no-one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).  We put our trust in Jesus not on the basis of our goodness but on God’s grace.  God alone saves.  Once we know this we are ‘set free.’  Instead of always striving to be ‘good enough,’ we’re freed by the knowledge that God, in His grace and mercy, loves us in Jesus, just as we are with all our imperfections.  And by His Holy Spirit, He’s changing us into the people He wants us to be (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).

Geoff 

            Contacts
Minister
News
Session Clerk: Andrew Brown
Tel: 01796 472232
Church Office: 01796 472160
Weekdays 9 – 12 noon  
Pitlochry Church of Scotland
Church Road,
PITLOCHRY PH16 5EB
e-mail: thetryst@btconnect.com