In Depth:  Matthew Mason

‘For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive’ (1 Cor. 15:22).

Imagine for a moment two giants standing astride the world. Each giant has a thick belt around his waist. From both belts hang billions of hooks. And on each hook is a human being – billions of men and women, girls and boys, from the unborn to the elderly. But the giants are very different. One giant is falling to destruction, and the people hanging from his belt are going with him. The other giant is standing strong for eternal life, and with him all those who hang from his belt.

‘What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?’ (Ps. 8:4).

When you meet another human being, what are you encountering? As you look into the eyes of a friend, or a parent, or a child, what is it that you see? Is an encounter with another human being different from an encounter with a mouse, or a goldfish, or your pet dog? Is it different from an encounter with an AI Chatbot? Intuitively we think it probably is. But why?

‘For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love’ (Gal. 5:6).

If you had to summarise the Christian life in four words, you probably couldn’t do better than ‘faith working through love’. This is what it means to live as a new creation in Christ (Gal.6:15).

‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.’ (Rom. 15:13)

Dressed in black, a family gathers round a grave. Slowly, the coffin is lowered into the ground. One by one, the mourners gather a handful of earth and let it slip through fingers onto the lid of the plain oak box. The minister speaks: ‘…earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ…’. For centuries, this was how Anglican Christians buried their dead.

‘So now faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love’ (1 Cor. 13:13).

Life as a Christian can be summed up in three words: faith, hope and love. They appear together time and again in the New Testament, and form the abiding shape of the Christian life. They provide the climax of Paul’s great chapter on love in 1 Corinthians 13. They define a church shaped by the gospel. How can you know that the gospel is at work in a church and bearing fruit? Because its members are marked by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, love for all the saints (other Christians), and hope in what God has stored up in heaven for us (Col. 1:4-6).

Words matter, but we’re drowning in them – websites, books, conversations, songs, magazines, social media, news.

Some words are deeply damaging – speech used to lie, exaggerate, promote division, seek power, demean opponents. Many words are trivial. Can any of us remember what we saw on social media today? Some words are good and true. But in the flood of words, it can be hard to tell what’s true and false, and even true speech is easily washed away.