He did fifty-five minutes on a stag weekend in a kitchen at two in the morning and it was, by common agreement, the best conversation any of them had that year.
There were four of them left up. Somebody had said something dismissive and somebody else had disagreed with it badly, and he came in about ten minutes later and took it seriously, and for the next fifty-five minutes he laid out, patiently and without a single cheap move, why the thing is not absurd.
He was good. He is good at this. He has read for twenty years and he does not use the tricks and he is genuinely interested in the objection, which is why people keep bringing him objections.
One of those four rang him three weeks later. That happened.
And in fifty-five minutes he did not once use the word.
He has gone back over it since, more than once, and he is certain. He said the Christian claim and what believers hold and the position is and, twice, people who take this seriously. He said Jesus perhaps forty times, in the third person, historically, carefully, in a way that would satisfy anybody assessing it for accuracy.
He never said mine.
He is fifty-three. He has been a Christian since he was nineteen, without a wobble, through a divorce and a redundancy and one very bad year in his forties.
And the word is one syllable and he has not been able to get it out of his mouth in thirty-four years.
One pronoun
I want to start by taking one accusation off the table, because you will have laid it against yourself and it is not accurate.
That was not cowardice at two in the morning.
You did fifty-five minutes on a subject most people will not touch, with four men who had been drinking, one of whom had opened with a dismissal, and you did it patiently and without cheap moves and one of them rang you three weeks later.
Nobody in that kitchen thought they were talking to a man who was hiding. The evasion, if it is one, is so small that not one of the four could have named it, and it took the man who did it several passes to be certain it had happened.
So this is not about courage. You have plenty and the record shows it.
It is about one pronoun, and about what it costs to move from the third person to the first.
Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.1 John 4:15
That verse is doing something with grammar and I do not think it is an accident.
Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God. That is a third-person claim. It is exactly the sentence you have made forty times, historically, carefully, accurately.
And then the second half turns round entirely: God dwelleth in him, and he in God. Two prepositional phrases, and both of them are about a person's inside.
The verse takes a statement anybody could make in a lecture and, in the same breath, describes the mutual indwelling of God and the one making it. John does not treat those as two separate stages with a gap in between where the person has to prove something. The confessing and the dwelling are in one sentence.
You have God dwelling in you and you dwelling in God, and you have had it since you were nineteen, and that is not encouragement for an articulate man, it is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the reason it is landing on the pronoun rather than on a verse you could exposit at length.
Now let me say what I think the word costs.
Mine moves it out of the category of things you can defend and into the category of things you can lose. A claim held in the third person is a position, and a position can be argued for on its merits, and you are extremely good at that. A claim held in the first person is a stake, and a stake can be attacked in a way that is not about the argument at all.
Thirty-four years of the third person is thirty-four years of a very intelligent man keeping the thing where it can be defended.
You are not required to defend it. Scripture puts the dwelling in God's hands and describes it as mutual and present, and the Spirit of God has been in you through a divorce and a redundancy and one very bad year in your forties, and none of those was survived by a man holding a position.
You have God dwelling in you and you dwelling in God, and you have had it since you were nineteen. Scripture puts the confessing and the dwelling in one sentence with no gap between them, and the Holy Spirit carried you through a divorce and a redundancy and one very bad year.
So here is the turn and it is one syllable.
You are going to say mine out loud today, once, in a room with nobody in it.
That is the whole of it. There is no kitchen and no stag weekend and no four men, and nobody is asking you to go back to any of them or to work it into the next conversation somebody brings you an objection in.
Alone, standing, one sentence with the first person in it.
And the reason is not that God needs to hear a pronoun. It is that a man who has held a thing at defensible distance for thirty-four years has never once heard himself claim it, and the difference between those two positions is not intellectual and cannot be reasoned across. It has to be spoken.
You have said Jesus forty times in an hour. Today you say the other word.
You are not required to defend it, and thirty-four years of holding it where it could be defended is over. The written word describes the indwelling as mutual and present, and the Holy Spirit in you is the seal on a man who was never holding a position.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, standing, once, in the first person. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so this is not a man setting out a position. It is an ambassador saying out loud what his King has already said, and however He answers and whatever He does from here is His and it is good.
- Third person, you are safe ground and you are not where I live. The word of God says whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God has God dwelling in him and he in God, and it puts the confessing and the dwelling in one sentence with no gap between them.
- Thirty-four years of keeping it where it could be defended, in the name of Jesus you are over and I am not defending this today. The Holy Spirit has been in me through a divorce and a redundancy and one very bad year, and none of those was survived by a man holding a position.
- Lord, You dwell in me and I in You, and Your word says both of those in the same breath. He is not the Christian claim and He is not what believers hold, He is mine, and I am standing in this room saying so.
1 John 4:15
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