1.

Coppicing

A walk around any European forest of ash or hazel, willow or birch will soon show you that very few branches grow completely straight. Since this is the raw material for an arrow, that might be considered a major setback. Fortunately, hundreds of years ago, forest managers discovered the benefits and art of coppicing.

Coppicing is a method of pruning which involves periodically cutting a tree down to almost ground level; this stimulates fresh growth from the stump. New branches tend to grow straight upwards, towards the light, and have the useful flexibility of young saplings. Coppicing can be done every five to ten years and, fortunately for arrowsmiths, ash is a tree that responds very well to this treatment.

Done on a rotational basis, careful woodland management ensured a regular supply of suitable material for a medieval arms supplier. While not a mechanised industry, it did allow for arrowsmiths, blacksmiths and fletchers to work together to produce high-quality arrows, and was obviously many times more efficient than wandering randomly, if hopefully, round a woodland searching for suitable shoots and branches from mature trees.

Preparing an arrow in the old-fashioned way requires a lengthy sequence of preparation and perfecting, involving considerable violence to the potential arrow; but it produces a valuable, effective product in the end. Just as gold undergoes repeated heat treatments when it is refined in order to remove the impurities it carries, so an arrow must experience a sequence of processes at the hands of a skilled craftsman if it is to move from being a simple stick to a piece of lethal weaponry.

You may feel more like a rough stick than a sleek arrow, poised to penetrate the culture around you today; I know I often do. Reminding ourselves of God’s truths is a way to lift our eyes off ourselves and our circumstances, stir our souls and reposition ourselves to move forward in faith, with our eyes fixed on Him.

God’s search

Just as the forest manager searches for suitable wood to sell on to the arrowsmith, so God has searched for you. Whether you came to faith as a child, a youngster or in later years, He is familiar with every detail of our life’s journey, and has seen our every step. In fact, God knows us through and through, and has done from conception.

You may find this comforting, or maybe it makes you uncomfortable. That probably depends on your view of God. If you’ve only known Him as a distant and severe headmaster-type figure, then I can assure you that you haven’t truly met Him yet. God is a good, loving, present, engaged Father who cherishes, nurtures and champions us; we have no secrets from Him. He knows us thoroughly and fully – flaws, foibles, fractures and all – and yet, amazingly, He loves us and cares for us as well.

If He feels distant to you, then be assured that He truly cares for you, and longs to pursue a relationship with you. He’s been watching, not to catch us out, but to draw us to Himself by putting markers along our path to point us towards Him. Keep seeking Him; He promises that He’ll be found.^[1]

God’s choice

Not only does the forest manager see which coppiced trees are responding to his care, but he then picks out and chooses which ones are ready to be made into something both beautiful and useful.

God chooses us too. In fact, He chose us before time began on earth. Not an eeney-meeny-miney-mo, let’s-see-who’s-lucky-today kind of choosing, but a specific, deliberate, thought-out choosing. He also oversaw the entire miraculous pregnancy process which brought us into the world: from zygote to embryo to fully formed baby. The miracle of life has been in His hands the whole time.

I have four grown and flown children who are a delight to me. Each one was planned and anticipated with excitement; each was placed in my arms and greeted with a genuine joy and a fierce love, unlike anything I’d ever known. While my husband and I chose to have them, we didn’t get to choose anything about their physical appearance, their academic aptitude or their personalities. We welcomed them and engaged in the wonder of seeing them grow, develop and flourish. Prior to their arrival, I was somewhat anxious on their behalf. What if we weren’t the parents they would have chosen? What if they wished we were someone else? Fortunately, and thanks to the happy connective design of gestation and pregnancy, it wasn’t a problem.

Sadly, some parents wish they had been given different children. Maybe they longed for a girl and a boy came along instead. There are disappointed parents who have expectations of a child which their offspring’s inclination, intellect or DNA can never fulfil. Parents get what they are given: each child a unique combination of parental genes manifesting themselves in a distinct, never-to-be-repeated individual; and most of us are thoroughly enraptured by that. I have several friends whose unplanned children have brought just as much, if not more joy to their families, thanks to the surprise of their conception.

If you are an adopted child, whatever the story you carry, you have the privilege of being deliberately chosen by your adoptive parents. I can’t imagine what that’s like, or how such parents choose one child over another; but that element of choice is strong. You know what it is to be picked out.

There are currently upwards of 8 billion people on this planet, and thousands of years of human narrative precede us. Yet, God, in His wisdom sees, knows and loves you. You are not an accident. There are some mind-boggling statistics around this. Someone recently told me that the chances of any one of us being here with our unique DNA combination carries the same likelihood as 2 million people playing a game with a trillion-sided dice, and all throwing the same number at once. You really are a miracle!

You have been placed in history at this exact time and place to reflect God’s glory, to enjoy Him and to demonstrate His nature and character in your particular context or sphere of influence. Those who are included in His family can all relax in the security that comes with the assurance that we have also been chosen by Him, not just as part of a crowd, but by name.^[2]

The Bible says that God has called us ‘out of darkness’ (1 Peter 2:9) and into His plans and purposes for us, which are always good.^[3] He uses the circumstances of our lives, including our relationships, to shape us and mould us, just as clay is worked into hundreds of different articles by the hands of a potter or, in the case of our arrowsmith metaphor, into a swift arrow.

That means that even if you spent your formative years within the care system, or in a series of foster homes without the safe space of a consistent, loving family, God still saw you, heard you, knows you, and His heart yearns to include you in His family, just as it has always done.

Perhaps you think that’s far-fetched; after all, you reason, you don’t seem like very promising material; but God thinks very differently. He has declared and shown His immeasurable love for us by sending Jesus into the world to bridge the gulf between us and to win us back to Himself.

The arrow is chosen, not because it already looks good. The Bible tells us that it was ‘while we were still sinners, Christ died for us’ (Romans 5:8). We don’t need to try to clean ourselves up first, in a misguided attempt to impress God or to qualify for His forgiveness and grace. He accepts us as we are; but He loves us so much He will not leave us as we are.

Like the arrow, we are chosen, picked out and purchased at great cost. No woodsman would give his wood away; he would require a payment. There could be nothing more expensive than the life-blood of the Son of God which cleanses, or purifies, us from everything within us that falls short of His perfect holiness.

Everything – that means absolutely everything: the worst things you can think of – and the even more terrible things that your mind doesn’t want to begin to contemplate – can all find forgiveness in the once-and-for-all perfect sacrifice of Jesus. No one is beyond His reach; nothing is too shameful, too brutal, too evil to be covered by that extraordinary spiritual detergent.

That is sometimes difficult to grasp; after all, surely some people don’t deserve to be chosen, or to have a way back to God. But grace – mercifully – is not dependent on merit. Grace is not issued in proportion to the merit of our deeds. This is God’s unique prerogative; it is not for us to decide.

Remember the dying thief next to Jesus at Calvary? We don’t know his crime, but we know that crucifixion was the most excruciating death the Romans had been able to devise: slow, brutal and humiliating. We can only assume that he was a law-breaker of some sort; he certainly believed that his punishment was appropriate for his crime(s).^[4] He may not have had all his theological ducks in a row, but Jesus met him in those moments, knew his heart and assured him of a place with Him in heaven that very day.

A new way

Up until Jesus’ time in history, men and women were obliged to make animal sacrifices to God as an offering for their sins. Blood was a requirement in order for forgiveness to be granted.

The Old Testament, Hebrew pattern of animal sacrifice required a substitutionary sacrifice, which symbolised the transferral of the people’s misdeeds onto an animal which was slaughtered in their place; the spilt blood of the animal acting as an atonement.^[5]

God has always been quite clear that death is the inevitable consequence of sin.^[6] Our contemporary minds find this truth hard to get our heads around, but it’s not such a surprise to see that a holy and perfect God cannot look on sin, when we understand the gravity of it. To revolt against our Maker, the King of the universe who has consistently provided for us, protected us and given us everything we could possibly need in perfection, is an appalling crime. How His heart must be broken.

Ever since Adam and Eve chose something other than keeping their open and pure relationship with Him, the repercussions of sin have tumbled down the generations for us as individuals, communities and nations. It’s an immeasurable grief to God to see how sin harms us, and how we wound and hurt one another when we choose to live according to standards that are not His.

It’s erroneous to think of God as silent, angry or, even worse, vengeful and vindictive. Anyone who is a parent suffers as and when and if their precious offspring make choices that bring them and their loved ones pain, sorrow and destruction. God feels the same hurt on a far greater scale.

Sin must be dealt with completely if we are to have any real, meaningful relationship with God. He’s chosen us to have that relationship with Him, but the path between us gets blocked by sin. It’s an impenetrable barrier. The nature of the sacrifice required to overturn this tells us the seriousness of our crime.

The Bible brings us the unpalatable truth that sin has infused us from conception; it is metaphorically imprinted in our DNA and has become part of the inheritance of all humankind, thanks to the disobedience of Adam in the beginning.^[7] Sin is not just an annoying habit, or an inconvenient character trait. It strikes deep from, and into, our core being; it affects our lives in every area, and ultimately brings death, or separation.

Pastor and theologian Bruce Milne wrote:

Sin affects the whole of a human being; the will … the mind and understanding … the affections and emotions … as well as one’s outward speech and behaviour … no area or aspect of our nature is left intact by sin.^[8]

This means that outside of Jesus Christ, we are unable to stand in God’s presence, since we are indelibly stained with the sin which He cannot tolerate. We struggle to live according to God’s will when He is not at the centre of our lives. When that place is taken by our own desires and wants, they dictate our decisions and choices, and fail to reflect God’s kingdom. Our sinfulness leads to guilt and condemnation when we know we have broken God’s law of perfection, and have no way of repairing it ourselves.

All this serves as an increasingly dense blockage in our ability to hear and discern the voice of God. Like white noise that drowns out everything else, our sin inevitably means that we become desensitised to His voice.

A new life

This all sounds fairly hopeless and miserable, but the good news is that the debt we owe has been paid for us by Jesus’ death on the cross. Where our lives were forfeit, Jesus stepped in and gave His own instead. The gospel is not just a few books of the Bible or even a message; the gospel is Jesus Himself. God with skin on; a manifestation of the Father in human flesh. As the only sin-free person to have ever walked the earth, Jesus was the only one qualified to take our place, since He had no debt of His own.

At the cost of His own dearly loved Son, God bought us and brought us, back to Himself. Jesus’ blood was spilt on our behalf. His once-and-for-all sacrifice made atonement for our wrongdoing.

This put an end to the ritual animal sacrifices of the past. When the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in AD70, all those things which served as pointers and symbols to what was to come with the Messiah came to a natural end. They were no longer needed; Jesus had done it all.

Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.
(Hebrews 7:27)

Jesus’ blood: so costly, yet so powerful.

What a wonderful thing that the Creator God should be interested in us at all. How marvellous that He should know us so fully, call us by name and choose to include us in His family. Our salvation is a fantastic miracle of grace, and we partake of it on God’s terms, not our own. As a stick on its own carries no life away from the tree, it is not in a position to make its own terms with the one who tore it from that tree. Making bargains with God is a futile endeavour.

Just as every part of our nature was subject to sin before we knew God, now every part of our nature needs to become subject to Him after conversion. Complete lordship is His requirement; not to restrict us or hem us in, but to bring us more freedom than we’ve ever known.

Cutting sounds painful, but it’s the beginning of our journey to arrowhood.

Target Questions

• ‘God is a good, loving, present, engaged Father who cherishes, nurtures and champions us.’ How have you known God in any of these ways?
• What is the significance of being chosen by God?
• How does knowing that Jesus has permanently dealt with the indelible stain of sin make a difference to your daily life?
• How can you ensure that every part of your nature is truly subject to God?

1a.

Paul

Paul’s change of heart, mind and life was so dramatic that his actual Damascus Road experience has become a euphemism for any startling turnaround or revelation that brings a conspicuous alteration to the modus operandi of an individual.

We first come across Paul when he still went by the name Saul. A Roman citizen from the port city of Tarsus, we find him looking on in approval as the first Christian martyr was killed by a violent crowd of furious religious leaders. Acts 6–7 records how Stephen was brought before the Jewish elders in a Sanhedrin court, where false witnesses were persuaded to lie about his activities in an attempt to get rid of him. The ploy worked and, despite one of the greatest oratories recorded anywhere in the Bible, the religious elite were infuriated by his claim that they had missed the longed-for Messiah they all claimed to be watching and waiting for. Incensed, they dragged Stephen outside the city walls and stoned him to death.

Saul had been born into a life of privilege. He was one of the religious elite himself and, having been educated in Jerusalem under the respected Jewish rabbi Gamaliel, Saul’s CV was impressive:

circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.(Philippians 3:5-6)

He had been brought up from birth to conscientiously keep the Jewish law; important in that culture for finding favour with God, and the way to keep pure in His eyes. To him, the proposition that Jesus was the promised Messiah would have been a dangerous, liberal idea, which threatened the very fabric of Jewish society.

Saul would have thought of himself as chosen by God to seek out followers of Jesus and destroy them. He would have seen this job as doing God’s work for Him. It’s fair to say that in first-century Palestine, at the time of Stephen’s death, he would have also been seen as one of the most unlikely propagators of the gospel. But then, quite suddenly, God met with him and he discovered that he had been chosen for a very different line of work.

Acts 9 gives a detailed account of how Saul was commissioned by the high priest in Jerusalem to continue his resolute quest to root out disciples and followers of Jesus. While he was still fuelling his anger against this group of people, and making all sorts of grisly threats, Saul obtained letters of authority to search synagogues around Damascus for believers who he would arrest and take back to Jerusalem for sentencing. They were considered to be apostates, betraying the long history of the Hebrew people, rejecting their culture and traditions.

Dr Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, recorded the extraordinary encounter that took place on the road to Damascus, when a bright light stopped Saul in his tracks and literally threw him to the ground. This was followed by a voice from heaven heard by no one except Saul, as God first questioned and then instructed him. The dazzled man remained blind for three days until godly Ananias came to visit, in response to hearing God during his own personal prayer time. Luke’s account includes the initial reluctance of Ananias, based on all that he had heard about the focused brutality of this notorious Pharisee. However, obedient to God’s call, he went as directed, found Saul, called him ‘Brother’, laid hands on him, and God healed him.^[9]

God revealed to Ananias the heavenly appointed new task He had for this persecutor of believers:

This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.
(Acts 9:15-16)

God chooses who He chooses; including me and you. Saul/Paul looked an unlikely candidate on paper, but nothing is too difficult for God. No one is beyond His reach, be they on the pavement, in the prison or in a palace. We may be surprised, but we are always grateful, if a little bit baffled, that His choice includes us.

How God chose Paul was a remarkable story which he told to a crowd in Jerusalem in Acts 22, and again in Acts 26 during his trial before the governor Festus, King Agrippa and Bernice. It’s fascinating to read about his experience in his own words.

Saul started being called Paul in Acts 13, after he and Barnabas were sent by the believers in Antioch on their first missionary journey together, starting in Cyprus.

Paul’s change of name indicated the extent of his radical change of heart and his life’s focus. From persecuting the fledgling Church to evangelising, discipling and planting church communities across the Mediterranean in various teams, Paul’s teaching brought revelation to hundreds of converts who, in turn, affected hundreds and thousands of others searching for life, hope and purpose.

You may know of other conversions in which the element of God’s choosing is as strong. Most of us undergo incremental change over a long period of time, and we have less-exciting stories, in which the before and after contrasts are not so pronounced. There may well be people within our own faith community who have dramatic stories of how Jesus met them, and the consequent changes which took place in their lives. It’s always a great conversation starter to ask others about their own experience, and an effective way of learning more about their journey and who they really are. It’s important to remember, though, that all our stories are just as valid as anyone else’s. The level of drama is irrelevant to the reality of the heart transformation, or the fact that God, for reasons we cannot explain beyond knowing that He loves us, also chose us.

Everyone in God’s family has moved from death to life; no one was any more dead than anyone else before we responded to His Spirit at work in us. God graciously meets with us as He chooses; but all of us, like Paul, need to die to an old life and embrace the new one, nourished and nurtured by the life of God.

As soon as Paul had his sight restored, he was baptised and began to preach in the local synagogues, much to the concern of the disciples and believers in the area. Not surprisingly, they were fairly incredulous that such an obsessive oppressor, so committed to the violent eradication of believers, should be accepted as a brother in Christ. Their caution is understandable; their fears were only allayed when Barnabas befriended him. This godly man, known for his gift of encouragement, made time to reach out to the ex-persecutor and fledgling believer. It was Barnabas who took Paul to meet the apostles and introduced him to other followers of Jesus.

So, straight away, in a complete turnaround, Paul began to preach the good news of Jesus, debated with scholars, and used his education and learning to prove that Jesus was who He had said He was. Despite death threats and suffering, beatings and imprisonments, storms and sleepless nights, encounters with bandits and multiple dangers, Paul never reneged on his faith.^[10]He knew that God had appointed him for the task of widening the net of the gospel message, and that fact gave him the resolve to carry on.

He ended his days in a prison in Rome from where he wrote some of his most impactful words of encouragement to various churches, which today form a substantial part of the New Testament. So, in that way, his transformed life is still helping to transform other lives almost 2,000 years later. His teaching, exegesis, explanation of doctrine and application of godly principles into real life are as powerful now as they ever were.

Paul was ripped out of his old life in a miraculous way. After that blinding encounter with God, he threw off his past, embraced forgiveness, submitted himself to a new Master and became a willing and obedient servant, welcoming his new life of faith with vigour and focus, refusing to be distracted by anything else. He knew that he had been chosen by God to go and serve across a swathe of the Mediterranean by bringing the message of hope, life and joy to unreached people. He knew too that others had been chosen by God, they just didn’t realise it yet; he knew the encounter he had had could impact others, and open their eyes to who Jesus really was. In his own letters, he often introduced himself as one who was called and chosen by God; he knew that there had been no mistake.

Although it wasn’t a promising beginning, Paul became a giant in the faith; an arrow fired effectively not just into first-century Palestine and Europe, but way beyond that, into the twenty-first century, finding its target and pleasing the One who prepared and ‘fired’ him.

^[1] Jeremiah 29:13; Matthew 7:7-8.

^[2] Isaiah 43:1

^[3] Jeremiah 29:11.

^[4] Luke 23:40-41.

^[5] Leviticus 4–5; 17:11.

^[6] Romans 6:23.

^[7] 1 Corinthians 15:21-22.

^[8] Bruce Milne, Know the Truth (Leicester: IVP, 1982), p106.

^[9] Acts 9:10-18.

^[10] 2 Corinthians 6:4-5; 11:23b-28.