Charismatic Puritan

Colossians 1.13-23 - Part 3

2010-01-17T08:03:00.006-05:00

III. Jesus as creator.

We typically talk of God the Father as creator, but the NT describes what the OT hinted at, that is the plurality of agents in creation, by telling us in several places that creation was formed by, through and for Jesus (All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. John 1:3 (ESV)), as it does here.

Paul explains a fourfold relationship of Jesus Christ to Creation.

1. He existed before Creation

2. He created all things

3. All things exist for Him

4. He holds all things together

1. He existed before Creation

He is “the firstborn of all creation…by him all things were created…And he is before all things…” The term firstborn (prototokos) does not specifically refer to time, but to place or status. Jesus Christ was not the first being created, since He Himself is the Creator of all things.

Firstborn primarily means “of first importance, of first rank, the heir.” Firstborn of all Creation can also impose a chronological relationship however, and thus means “prior to all Creation.” As we said before when we discussed His God-head, He is eternal God. (Before Abraham was, I am.) (In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1 (ESV))

2. He created all things

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.” “All things were made by Him” (John 1:3). He is the Creator, not of “the rest” of the universe, but of “all things.” The word for that introduces this verse could be translated “because.” Jesus Christ is the Firstborn of all because He created all things. It is no wonder that the winds and waves obeyed Him, for He is Master over all. All things are under His command.

3. All things exist for Him (v. 16b).

Everything exists in Him, for Him, and through Him. Jesus Christ is the Sphere in which they exist, the Agent through which they came into being, and the One for whom they were made.

Paul’s use of three different prepositions is one way of refuting the philosophy of the false teachers. For centuries, the Greek philosophers had taught that everything needed a primary cause, an instrumental cause, and a final cause. The primary cause is the plan, the instrumental cause the power, and the final cause the purpose.

When it comes to Creation, Jesus Christ is the primary cause (He planned it), the instrumental cause (He produced it), and the final cause (He did it for His own pleasure). What He is not, is one with it. Creation is not of Him, that is of his substance.

This world with its mountains and lakes, its insects and birds and fish and beasts, and flowers (especially TULIPs) was made so beautiful because it was Christ’s world. Man was created and the ages of history were all arranged for Him.

Sin was ordained for him so that He could save us from it. Creation was designed to be the stage for manifesting God’s glory through Jesus Christ. The eternal purposes of redemption and their fulfillment in time were all for him so that He could simultaneously demonstrate God’s love and mercy and justice and wrath.

4. He holds all things together (v. 17).

“In Him all things hold together.” “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. Hebrews 1:3 (ESV))

Science continues to look for a universal theory that would explain the function of the universe, what is euphemistically called the Theory of Everything (TOE).

There appear to be different rules for how big things like galaxies function and other rules for how atomic and sub-atomic particles behave. And different rules for different kinds of particles. Light has wave and particle properties. Small particles have particle and wave properties. There are electric, magnetic and gravitational forces, and subsets of those.

When you consider the volume occupied by an atom, it is mostly empty space. Imagine that the nucleus of an atom was a golf ball. The first electron shell would be 1000 meters away. If the nucleus was the size of a period on the fifty yard line of a football field, the first electron would be out at the goal line. These are massive distances relative to the size of the objects that hold them together. What is the force that does this, that keeps matter together? It is Jesus. That may sound like a simple school child answer, but that is what it is. The Word of his power.

ῥῆμα [rhema /hray·mah/] “word” 56 times, “saying” 1 time. That which is or has been uttered by the living voice, thing spoken, word. 1a any sound produced by the voice and having definite meaning. speech, discourse.

Jesus speaks and His words have sufficient power to not only create, but sustain and carry the universe through to its purposeful completion. (Heb 1.3 - uphold = to carry to completion) He holds it together yet keeps it from collapsing in on itself. He rules it at the cosmic and subatomic levels, and at all stages in between.

Colossians 1.13-23 - Parts 1 & 2

2010-01-14T05:24:00.000-05:00

I. Intro: Jesus as He is.

I am a husband. I love my wife. I wrote down some of the things that I love about my wife:

1. I love the way she greets me at the door when I come home. She is so excited to see me it is as if her whole day has been spent waiting for that moment.

2. I love the way she snuggles up with me on the couch when we watch TV.

3. I love how soft her fur is behind her ears.

4. I love to watch her tail wag when she gets happy.

5. I love the way brings her toys to me and hunkers down and barks at me when she wants to play.

So quickly you get the picture that I’m not really talking about my wife, Jewell, but I’m probably talking about my dog, Mizu. Now, I have a relationship with my wife and my dog, but they are very different relationships. When I call myself a husband, I’m talking about a relationship with my wife.

My relationship with my wife, if it is going to be honest, if my love for her is to be real, needs to be built on a knowledge of Jewell as she is, not as I want or imagine her to be.

What is a Christian? Most of our definitions of “Christian” revolve around a relationship to Jesus Christ. But in the same way I confused my definition of Jewell with my definition of Mizu, we can confuse our definition of Christ with something we want or imagine Him to be and the result is that we love, worship, follow and obey someone or something other than Jesus as He really is. We create an idol.

A.W. Tozer defined idolatry as this: “We imagine something about God and then act as if it were true.” We don’t get to “imagine” Jesus to be something other than who He really is as revealed in scripture. All attempts to describe him beyond what we have been infallibly given must be regarded with extreme caution because they will always have a tendency to redefine Him according to our image and likeness, our preferences, and that is evil.

Fortunately, we have the infallible, revealed word of God to inform us. This passage of scripture in particular is one of the most detailed and precise definitions of who Jesus is, what he has done, and how that matters. Knowing who Jesus really is is essential to our ability to love, worship and obey Him. And that is to be our primary eternal purpose: to worship God through Christ by loving and obeying Him.

I am convinced that God’s greatest purpose, His ultimate goal, the one thing that consumes His zeal more than anything else, is His own glory as revealed in His Son, Jesus.

There’s a song that sings of Christ on the Cross, “You took the fall and thought of me above all.” I think that is false. Honestly, I think that is an insidious indication of pride and narcissism. Jesus did not think of me above all, He thought of His Father’s glory above all. And God not only loves His own glory, but loves His Son so much as to make him the primary agent of creating, revealing, and magnifying His glory.

We become partakers of that glory, fellow agents of magnification, and beneficiaries of the work of Christ - all of His works from before the foundations of the world - through the Gospel; that is, the very real historical fact of Jesus as He is, His dying for sinners, and our the proclamation of those facts.

As we look at these verses from Colossians, we must consider Paul’s original intention towards his original audience, which was to correct the errors of false teachers by establishing sound doctrine. Exactly who they were, I don’t think we can be certain. There is some evidence of arguments against Gnostic heresy, some against Judaizers, and some against pagan or Greek mythology.

The only remedy to the snares of false doctrine, is to understand who Christ is. So, to counter them, whoever they were, Paul makes clear, detailed doctrinal statements about the specific nature, power and function of Jesus Christ, and especially as his role as part of the God-head, as Creator, as Lord and as Redeemer.

These are huge subjects that volumes have been written about and in these few verses, we have a tremendous amount of theological content. I could easily imagine 3 months of preaching, on these 11 verses. Maybe 6. Yet at the same time we could summarize the vital and essential information of this in a sentence:

Jesus Christ is the son of God who took on flesh to die as a sacrifice for our sins so that God the Father could reconcile us to Himself so that we could stand before Him blameless and be welcomed into his kingdom as sons. (I don’t do small sentences.).

Even Better, we could make it a song:

Holy God, in love became

Perfect man to bear my blame

On the cross, He took my sin

So that I might live again.

(The Gospel Song, Sovereign Grace Ministries)

I want us to look in rather broad strokes at these four roles - deity, creator, redeemer and king - and begin to put them in usable terms so that we can define who Jesus is and what our relationship to him is, so we can worship Him rightly, and avoid idolatry.

II. Jesus as part of the God-head:

Paul speaks of Jesus distinctly as God. He is the image of the invisible God. Not as man was made in the image and likeness of God, in his natural faculties and dominion over the creatures. Rather, he is the express image of his person, (Hebrews 1:3a: He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.). Jesus claims this of Himself in John 14:9 (ESV) “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” And even more so, Paul says that in Jesus the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

What does that mean, fullness? Fullness = πλήρωμα, plérōma - n: a total quantity, with emphasis upon completeness. It thus denotes in particular totality, the absence of any lacunae (gaps or holes - like the lacunae in bone). All things needed are provided. This also applies to kings having the full measure of authority and greatness. It was specifically used of Caesar Augustus. Pleroma, as a word and as a concept, does not brook any room for exceptions. It completely fills the space. “Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over” Luke 6:38 (ESV) It does not allow for any other definition of Jesus except as fully, actually, completely God.

Currently there is a heresy that began around the 1870s called “kenosis theory” (Have this mind ... but made himself nothing (kenoo - emptied himself)..."

“The Divine Logos by His Incarnation divested Himself of His divine attributes of omniscience and omnipotence, so that in His incarnate life the Divine Person is revealed and solely revealed through a human consciousness.”

But this is a new concept without any theological history beyond German Liberal scholars and no support in the actual text of scripture. God, through Paul, anticipates such idolatry and so gives us clear refutation in verse 19 and again in v 2.9, by declaring the true and full deity of Jesus, the pleroma of His godness.

During Paul’s time the heresy was the opposite distortion, that Jesus was fully God, but not really human. The false teachers taught that matter was evil, including the human body. They also taught that Jesus Christ did not have a real body since this would have put Him in contact with evil matter.

The results of these false teachings were tragic, including extreme asceticism on the one hand and unbridled sin on the other. After all, if your body is sinful, you must try to enslave it and deny it any sense of pleasure. Or if flesh is evil and is going to perish anyway and only our soul matters, then why not enjoy our carnality since it’s just going to be purged in the end.

Paul doesn’t allow for the heresies that say that Jesus was a divine creature that only appeared to be in the flesh, because clearly in vv. 20 and 22, he speaks of Jesus’ flesh and blood, not as symbolic but as the means by which he made atonement for sins. If his physical form was merely metaphor or apparition, then so is our salvation only a specter.

Rather, Jesus is both God and man - the hypostatic union - and He will redeem both spirit and flesh, reforming creation to be the union of heaven and earth, not two separate realities, but one contiguous realm that He made and rules (God, creator, redeemer, king).

Book Review - The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet by Thomas Dubay

2008-07-27T14:56:00.001-05:00

My mother gave me Dubay’s book since she knows that science and theology, and their constant intersection, are things I, as a physician and a Puritan, constantly engage both theoretically and practically. As such I was eager to read this book and found it most enjoyable, generally well written, although sometimes I think his assertions and conclusions unknowingly beg the question of Christian faith, and typically theologically sound. I must say upfront that whenever Dubay would delve into the realm of that which is specifically Roman Catholic in doctrine – particularly discussions of Mary, the Saints (vs. the saints), his treatment of sanctity vs. sanctification, his description of the nature of the church, and his adherence to the Pelagian error – I found it disturbing to my Reformed sensibilities. Having said that, I would plainly recommend this book to an informed and doctrinally sound Protestant Christian who has a discerning theological filter, but would be less likely to recommend it to a more spiritually immature or naïve Christian. If one is Catholic, they are used to these things and probably embrace them.

Let me briefly begin with faults because I want to concentrate on the book’s many strengths:
1. Again, from my Reformed perspective, the plainly Roman Catholic doctrines I previously mentioned and a few others.
2. The treatment of Science and theology as separate, independent, self-evident co-equals. Theology is derived from the inerrant scripture and is the benchmark of all truth since it is the breathed Word of God and therefore must be above science which is derived from broken groaning nature and flawed human reason, both corrupted by Adam’s rebellion.
3. A generally uncritical acceptance of evolutionism, and even a criticism of creationism, without a serious discussion. There are many resources to counter this: Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth does this well when presenting the importance of Christian world view, Michael Behe, William Dembski, the Discovery Institute, etc.
4. The insistence that current biological forms are “perfect in their kind,” which is antithetical to a belief in any kind of evolutionary logic.
5. His drift toward universalism, the idea that we are all “children of God.” Only those in Christ are God’s children, the others are our neighbors, not our brothers and sisters. This is further evidence of the Pelagian error.
6. His beef with rock and roll and his blind affection for classical music. He criticizes rock as essentially brutish, and much if it may be, but consider Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, consider Rush, Fates Warning, Dream Theater, Yes, among many others. Conversely, there are many “classical” music pieces that are grossly secular in their themes – sex, drinking – that it cannot be established as pure. The issue is skill, content and context, not musical style.

The strengths, in brief summary, because they are many and profound:
1. The single most important strength of this book is the exaltation of the beauty, splendor and glory of God manifest most graciously in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This book has greatly encouraged and exhorted me to love Jesus more, and more as beautiful. Dubay’s emphasis on Jesus can be summed in this quote he has from Hans Urs von Balthasar, his primary resource: “It is not sacred scripture which is God’s original language and self-expression, but rather Jesus Christ. As one and Unique, and yet as one who is to be understood only in the context of the whole created cosmos, Jesus is the Word, the Image, the Expression and the Exegesis of God.” That is beautiful.
2. The overwhelming emphasis on love. “There is a great need to reunite what God has joined together…intellectual competence and burning love – which is to say that the beautiful must be a prime part of the biblical and theological enterprises.”
3. Numerous beautiful, well explained examples of the design inferred from nature, 5 chapters specifically devoted to micro-, macro-, and midi-marvels, the anthropic principle and artistry in nature.
4. The exhortations to holiness, derived from God’s holiness, reflecting Christ’s holiness, and observing glory as “holiness manifest” in the sublimity of creation. If one were to argue about the errors in the system as a result of sin, he has a chapter on Ugliness, specifically dealing with that.
5. An emphasis on Trinitarian theology in the expression of God’s character in creation.
6. The idolatry inherent in modern science as expressed in scientism. “We must have something to focus on, to glorify, to worship. We either pursue the real God or a created surrogate.”

“People who love reality, love truth…being men and women of integrity, they treasure beauty because it is the mark of truth.”

Overall, this was a wonderful book that moved me to love my Savior more.

WWJD?

2008-07-04T23:06:00.002-05:00

From World magazine: “Diana Smith, a self-described moderate and committed Presbyterian…"The whole gay thing?" she says. "Jesus never mentioned homosexuals at all."”

What about nuclear weapons? Jesus didn’t mention anything about them? OK, we could get that covered under all the war stuff in general, which means that Jesus would be totally cool with nukes because He told Peter to go buy a sword, right? And Jesus even said He didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword. Why not a nuclear sword? Diana?

Let’s get away from something so cataclysmic. Identity theft. Jesus didn’t mention identity theft at all, so that should be cool. He also didn’t mention heroin. And he did turn water into wine, so a little feel good is good, right?

This is preposterous. Jesus never mentioned homosexuals? Did he have to? Doesn’t the Old Testament history and law give us adequate condemnation of homosexuality? Doesn’t Paul clearly condemn homosexuality? What about rape? Well, maybe that could be included under the broader category of sexual immorality, but if that’s the case, then wouldn’t homosexuality be included there, too? If not, then according to this logic rape should be at worst neutral as far as Jesus is concerned.

Jesus doesn’t have to mention homosexuality just like he doesn’t have to mention rape because He is the fulfillment of the law and will not remove one iota of it. If homosexuality will not be tolerated by God among the people of Israel, Jesus won’t tolerate that either, because He is God and the law is a reflection of His character.

Marriage – and for that matter sex – is a Mysterious and profound metaphor for the relationship between God and his people. Jesus is the bridegroom and we, the true church, are his bride. When you distort the earthly image of God’s relationships you distort the image of God. Can you think of more pervasive and heretical sin? This is the opposite flow of the Garden’s distortion. Adam and Eve rebelled against God and distorted that vertical relationship which IMMEDIATELY resulted in a distortion of their horizontal relationship. It was the first consequence of sin. So when we deliberately distort our horizontal relationships, especially, particularly, our sexual relationships, we create distortions of our relationship to God as well.

This is not about hating homosexuals. This is about loving Jesus and His bride, the church. It is about being jealous for the unsurpassable beauty and glory and righteousness and holiness of the Lion of Judah, the Lamb that was slain, who is waiting to come back and claim His beloved.

Savior: Celebrating the Mystery of God Become Man

2007-12-24T20:13:00.000-05:00

Do I need another Christmas album? I have Frank and Ella and Tony, Sarah McLachlan, The Mormons and Hillsong, and about 2 dozen Christian artists I've downloaded off of iTunes, so, no, I really don't. But, as we listen to the "Christmas muzak" being played in stores and on the radio we all hear the paucity of Christ in what is being sung. Even Christians singing hymns will often change words to remove some of the more important lyrics. It was after 3 tries that Johnny Mathis finally gave the lyric in "What Child is This" that I was looking for - "Nails, spear shall pierce Him through; the cross be borne for me, for you." And that's a really important concept. Yes, Jesus is the "Reason for the Season," but the real core of the reason He made this season is so He could become incarnate in order to someday be our atoning sacrifice and bear our sins on the cross. The "Savior" album captures that reason in all its before, during and after redemptive wonder.

Although several of the songs don't have that musically "Christmas" feel to them, whether that is arrangement of instruments or the song itself I'm not sufficiently articulate in the language of music to describe, but I think the use of choral voices may have helped. The instruments, also, are those of typical contemporary music and not the strings and horns that more traditional Christmas music might have. However, there are several particular standouts that highlight this exceptionally well crafted and deliberately scripted album.

The first song, "Christ the Lord is Born Today" will be one of my favorite Christmas hymns, in fact, just one of my favorite hymns, for the foreseeable future. The promises of Genesis are wrapped into the birth narrative as well as the anticipated realization of the redemptive promises that began their fulfillment at the Savior's incarnation. Musically it is lively, energetic and festive and smacks of what I think of when I think of when I think of Christmas music.

"Emmanuel, Emmanuel," the third song is similar in its energy as well as its broad scope of redemptive history. It begins in the poverty of the virgin's lap, describes our brokenness that Christ came into and the recounts the promised redemption and its consequences as paid for by the cross. As I'm shuffling through the songs now, the second song, "Hope Has Come" also has the joyous warmth of a soul satisfied in the Savior and desirous of adoring Him.

The last song, "Sleep, Jesus, Sleep" has that very simple elegant sound of a meditative traditional hymn. It is also a favorite because of the magnificent vocals of Shannon Harris that turn what is almost a lullaby into a profoundly worshipful recounting of Christ's supreme authority, the anticipation of His full redemptive work and the truly personal and intimate way we should experience and celebrate it. The fact that it was written by my friend Rich Dalmas makes it that much more cherished.

I've used the word group "anticipate" twice in this review and I think that is an appropriate singular description of the effect of this work; it develops in me a deeper appreciation of Christ and His work and a hungrier anticipation for His return. I can think of no better result of celebrating the first advent than a jealousy for the second.

The Snozberries Taste like Snozberries

2007-10-15T17:49:00.000-05:00

A practical application of Hebrews 1.3

As I awoke last Saturday morning cruising onto the rising sun at about 520 miles per hour (well it was morning, obviously, at my current longitude, although my body clock was somewhere on the other side of the international dateline at about 11:00 later that night – yes, I’m a time traveler!), I became acutely aware of the sustaining grace of our orderly, law-making, law-abiding, creator God. The basic physical principles that have existed since about 10-43 seconds after God said, “Now,” were keeping my Boeing 767 in the air above the Pacific Ocean. Bernoulli’s principle (and/or Newton’s Third Law) works, every day, thousands, if not tens of thousands of times to keep millions of God’s image-bearers airborne as they bustle about across the surface of the planet that God, in His total sovereignty, sustains in existence.

Physics works. Planes fly, internal combustion engines run, electrons flow across filaments or slap against glass to make light or images on a screen. Atoms clack together in the air and make sound; a fork made of a particular metal of a specific length and thickness will consistently produce the same, calculable tone. Oxygen gets picked up by hemoglobin in your red blood cells as they slide through your lungs and is deposited in your eye to fuel the intra-cellular machines that will eventually (like, in milliseconds) allow a burst of electrical charge down a neuron into your brain so you can read these words. Biology and chemistry and mathematics work. When you eat a piece of chocolate, it tastes like chocolate because right then, at that point in spacetime God actively and consciously sustains the order of that time-space continuum in its progress by the word of His power such that we have a reliable, predictable world. The oranges taste like oranges and if there were snozberries, they would taste like snozberries because the King of the universe made and keeps them that way.

Did you ever think about the effects of Adam’s rebellion on the physical properties of metals? I admit I’m a little outside the realm of the Genesis text here, but I suspect that prior to his rebellion, had Adam learned metallurgy and blacksmithing, there would be no structural fatigue. There would be no rust. O-rings and valves and rivets would not fail. Things would not break – not bridge spans, not light bulb filaments, not my mom’s hip.

Did you ever think that before Adam’s rebellion nothing would have spoiled? I don’t think we would have found an instance of rotten, over-ripe fruit on the ground under a tree somewhere in the garden. If Adam hadn’t rebelled, I don’t think we would have ever seen moldy cheese. We certainly wouldn’t have seen spina bifida or its rostral evil sister, anencephaly. If Adam hadn’t rebelled against the loving, sustaining, creator God that walked with him in the cool of the day, such that God was reviled by Adam’s presence and was required to separate Himself from this now spoiled world, my friends’ daughter would have lived longer than just that one day. In fact, she would never have died.

Right now, the sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient God who sustains the universe by the power of his word knows both the exact location and specific trajectory of every atom and subatomic particle in your body or hurtling through the universe. He knows this with no uncertainty. He knows about that little divot in the yard where you are going to roll your ankle and the avocado pit that is going to deflect a paring knife into the palm of your hand. He knows about the turbine that is going to shred itself inside its housing, sending fragments of hot metal into the fuel tank of a plane that will then plummet to the ground, or sea, with everyone onboard just as He knew about the plates of earth’s crust that slipped over and sent a wall of water to kill a hundred thousand people in Indonesia. He was not ignorant or impotent. He was separated because of sin, but He was in complete control.

Because of sin there is venous thromboembolic disease, multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter and the cancer that began in my grandfather’s lungs and then spread through his body. Because of sin God has ordained errors into the system (even as He continues to sustain it, otherwise it would just explode), so that we suffer consequences of sin. Because of God’s sovereign control over His orderly universe, fibrinolytics and anticoagulants and meropenem or imipenem and surgery and radiation – and vaccines – typically fix those consequences of sin, but not always. That is His deliberate plan. God has ordained suffering because of sin so that His Son, Jesus, could suffer on a cross to put sin and suffering to death. That is the death of death in the death of Christ. As Piper says, God has chosen to reveal the greatness of the glory of His grace through suffering.

But! But despite Adam’s rebellion, but because of Jesus’ obedience to the cross, the day is rapidly approaching when all this error will be corrected, wiped away, and a new, perfect and perfectly sustained creation will unfold. In the new Jerusalem, there will no be no NH&NE Medical Center. There will be no need for civil engineers (sorry, Brock, but we’ll both be out of a job) or building inspectors. There will be no decay in the load bearing members in the eternal city that has God as its designer and builder. There will be no rust and no spoilage and always, forever, with perfect clarity and unblemished luxury, the snozberries will taste like snozberries.

When God becomes an idol

2007-09-16T09:38:00.000-05:00

“My God is…” is one of the expressions I hear Christians say that often makes me nervous. That is because what often follows is a statement about who God is or how God behaves that may or may not be biblically sound, or even biblical. When we substitute “My God” for God, I believe we risk making God into an idol.

We can never fully and completely know God because we are finite creatures. Even in the new heavens and earth, when our relationship with the Triune God will be perfect, we will not know God completely. We will spend eternity searching Him out, just as the Holy Spirit does now. However, we can fully and completely know what God has revealed about Himself to us through Scripture, and therefore can have a true and correct understanding of what we can know about God.

In John 17.3 knowledge of God is essential to, no, actually, the definition of, eternal life. Clearly this must be a correct knowledge, for we are to worship God in spirit and in truth and he has spent a lot of time in His revealed word to us telling us about who He is and what He does. Muslims worship “God,” even the God of Abraham, and they revere and love Jesus, but we should deny them as a true religion because they do not worship a correct understanding of God and they completely redefine Jesus. We can fall prey to they same heresy, only in subtler ways, when we decide that “My God” is better than God.

We constantly use metaphors for God. He constantly uses metaphors for Himself. They are an essential way of trying to understand someone who is transcendent and, therefore, completely other - but we must consider all of God’s metaphors for Himself when we seek to define Him. If my metaphors or examples of God become my definitions of God, or I am deliberately excluding or prioritizing some of God’s metaphors for Himself such that I ignore or distort the full clear revelation of God in scripture, then I have created a lesser, and inherently false, god.

God’s attributes are not only a characteristic of some part of God or a temporally variable expression of emotion or reaction. They are descriptions of God Himself and therefore describe all of God. We discuss Him in parts because we are finite creatures and are severely limited in our capacity, but God is infinite in presence and knowledge and IS all of Himself, always.

“We must remember that God’s whole being includes all of his attributes: he is entirely loving, entirely merciful, entirely just, and so forth. Every attribute of God that we find in Scripture is true of all of God’s being, and we can therefore say that every attribute of God also qualifies every other attribute.” Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology. pp 178-79 (emphasis in the original).

God is a “completely unified integrated whole” (Grudem) who is infinitely, perfectly existent in all of His attributes all of the time. Although it is absolutely true that we see, or are able to recognize, some of His attributes more than others, this is a function of His deliberately revealing or concealing parts of Himself to or from us, or our inability to see all of His attributes at once.

This is not to say that we have to worship all of God all the time. That would be impossible. We can spend hours, days, weeks even, contemplating and studying a particular attribute of God. A new believer can worship God truthfully in their limited knowledge of God. I am not considering either of those circumstances, that is, unintentional ignorance, and purposeful meditation and study. I am talking about deliberate ignorance and purposeful neglect.

The doctrine of God’s unity – that He is not divided into parts but is a completely integrated whole – is at the core of the difference between either/or vs. both/and kinds of thinking (thank you, Scot, for continuing to emphasize that). The former, a reductionist approach, is at times useful for us as finite beings. Though it is frequently flawed and its limits must be recognized from the outset, there are times when it is absolutely correct – either God cannot sin or He is not holy. There are other instances when it is completely false, such as either God is just or He is merciful. More frequently, I would argue, He is both/and, that is God is both emotional and responsive to human action in time and space and fixed and unchanging in His secret will and plans for all eternity.

This both/and reasoning that describes the fullness of who God is has its ultimate expression, as is usually the case, at the cross of Our Savior. There God demonstrated that He is, completely, both just and merciful, both loving and wrathful. Jesus took the wrath that I deserve so that I can receive the love that He deserves. He experienced the just punishment from a righteous judge that I deserve so that I could experience the grace and mercy of His heavenly Father that He deserves. God demonstrated all of Himself there. But it is God’s wrath in particular that I find many Christians neglecting or misrepresenting, or outright denying.

The God of the Bible is an unchanging God. He is love and wrath and judgment and mercy and peace and jealousy and light, and more, and He is all those attributes simultaneously and always. He will never cease being a God of wrath; it is an essential element of who He IS, not just what He does. His wrath will be justly poured out on Satan, his angels and unrepentant sinners who are Satan’s children, for all eternity. It will not end. I do not revel in God being a God of wrath, I fear it and dread it - although not nearly enough - but I am thankful for it. It should be our further motivation for evangelism and a further instigation of love for our Savior since He took the wrath that was meant for us. It should also give us confidence that God really does always and forever with absolute perfection and infinite intensity, hate sin. I and all my Christian brother’s and sisters will never experience God’s wrath, but there is a world full of people who will.

There is no attribute that can be singled out as more important (except maybe that God is holy if we were to include in that definition that His holiness is the perfect sum of all of His attributes). We may highlight God’s expression of one attribute for the purposes of teaching, study, meditation or prayer, or because of a particular emphasis of a biblical text, but to place one attribute above another in importance, perfection, completeness or essentialness to the wholeness of God would be wrong. The intentional or unintentional disregard for all of who God is, I would suggest, is the heart of idolatry and a root of all sin going back to the very first.

If I am only willing to consider one or a few attributes of God, or I refuse to consider or purposefully neglect one of God’s attributes, I have created a new definition of God and have made a false god. If I, as a man, like to define God as a warrior who fights for and protects His people, I am not wrong. But if that definition distorts or obliterates the many other attributes of God, such as His mercy and steadfast love, then I have made God into an idol of my creation. If I was a woman and liked to define Jesus as a bridegroom who woos and wins my heart, but have feasted only on that aspect of God, then I have made Jesus my substitute for a boyfriend or husband and have made an idol out of Him. Jesus does win our hearts (though we could have a long talk about the correct interpretation of The Song of Songs here), but He is the same Jesus that will also come back with eyes of fire, the same Jesus whose robe will be soaked with the blood of His enemies. When I worship and delight in God in only some of who he is and what He has done, but have no concern for the rest, I have redefined God to suit my purposes or preferences. I have created “My god.” Intellectually, spiritually, practically, it’s no different than carving a stick.

A Psalm

2007-07-26T05:56:00.000-05:00

In the morning
I rise to greet You and present
myself to You;
In the evening
I lay down with You
recalling Your great love
I take each step in between
my rising and sleeping conscious
of Your hand over me;
I take each breath between
my sleeping and my waking
secure in Your sovereignty.

Should the powers of hell come against me
Or the schemes of men overwhelm me,
If my breath should fail me
or my heart give way in my chest, this I know:

You are the Most High God
and all creation obeys Your decrees.

In secret You work the raging of demons
and the schemes of men
to accomplish Your just end.
You ordain sin, even my own sin,
yet You are still holy
And I can trust
that He who killed His own Son for my sake
will not abandon me
nor leave me to my enemies.

For this one thing I know:
How precious is the greatness of the
glory of Your grace;
And awe is the groaning in my mouth
And the tears of my face are called love.

Eating Your Way to Sanctification

2006-10-01T18:34:00.000-05:00

I’ve been reading about this thing called Manna Planet that my brother asked me to look into. It is basically a nutritional supplement program that claims to be able to fix your health, relationship, financial and spiritual problems. Is your Spidey-sense tingling? I certainly hope so. As, you might be imagining, I can’t honestly endorse this. Actually I have to reject it. Read their website and follow some of their links if you have nothing to do. If you have something to do, let me 'splain…No there is too much, let me sum up.

First off, there are all the elements of a pyramid scheme type of operation, like Amway or various other companies. (Get 10 people to by from you and you will be getting the product for free and then they get people to buy from them….) all under the guise of “blessing.” (They use lots of "quotation marks" on their site, as if they are quoting "somebody important.") My family got into this a long time ago with water filters. If it doesn't become your life's work, you loose money, which means someone else makes money. Your money. Yeah, bless me, baby.

There is also a lot of vague “Christianese.” No, that’s not true, it’s not at all Christian, it’s vague spiritualism. There is no mention of Christ, sin, salvation, etc., but the problems of sin, i.e. sickness, death, etc., are all described as resulting from nutritional deficiencies. Yeah, OK, sure. This is what I call Magical Humanism. As long as you get rid of all the “toxins” of this evil modern world, eliminate all the “synthetic” byproducts we pump into your body, and get back in touch with Mother Nature, you will be happy, healthy, wealthy and wise. Sure. Cool. It’s a form of paganism. You become your own god and need to be worshipped at the altar of Health. All right, they didn't say "Mother Nature" but it is the same premise you can find on dozens of other websites or in any naturopathic health food store. Hey, my wife and I frequent health food stores and we're both pretty "Green" when it comes to a lot of things we put in and on our bodies, but It's not my religion any more. I'm a Christian. Eventually my body will be absolutely perfect, forever.

One of the "ministries" that endorses Manna Planet is a pseudopsychiatric health and wealth, “healing ministry” that attributes your problems to your inner woundedness. Yes, you see, the problem is that you have been wounded. "I'm wounded?" you ask. Yes, you are wounded. By whom they don't say, but I don't think that is as important as the fact that if you are wounded, then you are not to blame for your problems. Even better, somebody else wounded you, so you get to blame them, or perhaps more generally just Them, but certainly not you.

My question, if we are going to talk about wounds is, what about Jesus Christ on the cross? What about His wounds? Who do we get to blame for that? I’ve got to stop soon. I’m trying to be angry and not sin, but I tend to have a limited duration for that.

OK, medically. I found some limited research on “glycobiology,” which is the underlying biochemical substrate that this nutrition supplement is supposed to be composed of, and its real applications to human beings. One study I read showed a benefit of glyconutrients on immune cells isolated from patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) when compared to normal hosts. The research showed benefit to a particular subgroup of CFS patients who were deficient in certain glycoprotein cell markers. However, CFS is an extremely heterogeneous group. Only 13% of CFS patients in the study had the cell marker deficiency. Also, the study only looked at the cells in culture in the lab and recognized that we have no idea if there would be any actual effect on the humans or if ingestion creates the same changes as a culture bath. Most of the other glycobiology stuff I’m looking at is waaayyyy technical biochemistry and is either very narrowly applied to a specific disease pathophysiology or not even close to being extrapolated into a real functional application in humans. In fact, a lot of it is still in animal or bacteria models. It’s expensive to test on humans.

I emailed the company that makes the stuff and asked for their research so that I can recommend this product to my patients. We’ll see what they fork up.

I admit a serious bias against a lot of these guys because they always paint me, that is, a regular western-trained allopathic physician, as some sort of modern Frankenstein who is distorting the naturopathic holistic nirvana that we had before the industrial age. Except we never had that nirvana, well, OK, we did, it was called Eden and the thing that screwed it up wasn’t synthetic toxins. You know the story, so I’ll quiet the tirade.

My advice: Pray, read the Bible (I recommend the ESV), go to church, cultivate loving relationships based on the Gospel that are filled with grace and accountability. Eat healthy foods, organic and free range foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, stay away from lots of fast food and junk food and soft drinks, exercise regularly, get enough sleep, drink clean, filtered water and wear magnets and crystals. OK, skip the magnets, but true magic always involves crystals.

Oh, and get your shots. People talk smack about immunizations and all these bogus associations with immunizations and autism, but I’ve got one word for all of them…smallpox. Make that two words…smallpox and plague…no, wait, three words…smallpox, plague and polio. Name anybody you know in a developed country who has had one of those diseases from normal social contacts in the last decade and I’ll give you cash money. No kidding.

Brief Follow-up

2006-03-12T15:59:00.000-05:00

A comment on the WorldMagBlog that reinforces my last post. A Syrian-born doctor compares Jewish and Muslim responses to persecution. We share the same foundations as the Jews and should have responses that are similar. It’s particularly interesting that it comes from a Muslim. True, she lives in LA, practices psychiatry and has fully invested herself in humanism, as her interview demonstrates, but her comparison is right on target.

Religion of Peace

2006-02-18T19:07:00.000-05:00

I know that many comments about the Muslim response to the Danish cartoons have been made… in the blogosphere, on radio, in the press. Even before these riots, there has been much commentary on the “violence inherent in the system” of Islam, even in the very academic secular literature (“The challenge for the West can hardly be overestimated: Even if only 1 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims were to end up being seduced by the global jihad, the West and moderate Muslim regimes would still have to deal with some 12 million jihadists spread across more than 60 countries. And if only 1 percent of these 12 million were to opt for “martyrdom operations,” the West would still have to deal, for a generation at least, with some 120,000 suicide bombers.”)

As the token biblical Christian in many of my professional circles I have had much opportunity recently to engage in conversation about this and offer, I hope, some informative perspective on the matter. In the interest of an attempt at brevity, I’m going to briefly consider three particular aspects of this subject: first, the nature of Christ versus the nature of Muhammad; second, the Christian response to public insult versus the Muslim response to public insult; and finally, how “peace” is radically different in Christianity and Islam. Also, in the light of brevity, I will not establish many of my premises, just present them. If anyone asks, I’ll respond with more.

Consider the actions of the two faiths’ monikers. There is an extensive historical record of the people murdered by Muhammad. Jesus only raised His hand to the merchants that were desecrating the Temple to drive them out, but He killed no one and ordered the death of no one. John Piper, with extensive quotes from scripture, demonstrates how the whole mission of Christ was hinged on His suffering on the cross, a fact that the Muslim denies even occurred, and that suffering is at the heart of the Christian life and witness. Jesus’ purpose was to establish a heavenly kingdom that would eventually be manifested here on earth, whereas Muhammad sought, as Muslims today seek, to establish an earthly kingdom that would be blessed by heaven. Christ came to serve, to live a life and establish a practice of humility, sacrifice and obedience to God. Muhammad sought to establish a complete authoritarian rule under his religious dictatorship where honor and authority were paramount. Christ was poor and reviled in His death. The Muslim denies this.

Now, look at the controversy over the NBC show “Book of Daniel.” This show had an Episcopal priest with an openly gay son, a drug-dealing daughter, a promiscuous teenage son, a drug addiction of his own, and regular conversations with a hippy-like Jesus who was, like, “Let it be, man.” So on top of all the things going on in the show that are offensive to Christians and opposed to biblical Christianity, we have to endure blasphemy of the character of Jesus as well. So what do Christians do? Since no one has been posting pictures of NBC’s offices burning and martial law has not been declared in New York or LA, we can establish that there was not a violent outpouring of rage from the vast right-wing conspiracy, yet the show was cancelled after three episodes. Why? Well in part because over 600,000 emails were sent to NBC by individual Christians protesting this insult. Thousands of letters and phone calls were also made to central and affiliate stations. No bombs, no Molotov cocktails, no demands to the government for censorship and apology, only democratic free-market activities (which, by the way are the product of the Protestant reformation and Reformed theology). Christians typically obey the law and act within the constraints of the system, even when that system is secular and even when that system may be opposed to Christianity. Read Romans 13 if you would like clarification.

The Muslim response is vastly different, as we all see. There are historical, philosophical differences to the Christian and Muslim approach to society and government that inform this current tension. Ann Coulter, whom I DO NOT want to associate with biblical Christianity, makes some interesting observations (unfortunately she tends to do that in an angry and hurtful way and does not lend a helping hand as much as a cattle prod to any situation). Consider the Muslim response to the Egyptian ferry that capsized. An angry mob attacked the company’s offices and the hospital where some of the victims were brought. See a trend?

Most Muslims call Islam a religion of peace and justice. Christians would call Christianity a religion of peace, as well. Both religions have histories tainted with blood, sometimes a lot of blood (not as much as say, Stalin or Mao, mind you – just to make sure no one walks away from this thinking I’ll someday advocate Marxism or atheism). What is important to ask then is, are the practitioners of these religions acting in concert or in contrast to their declared belief system when they act violently due to personal or religious insult (I put in that qualifier to obviate the need to discuss Just War and protecting the good, innocent and weak from evil), and if so (or not) how are these religions of peace?

The Muslim responds appropriately to insult to his faith and person when he strikes out against his attacker because the Muslim doctrine is about honor and authority and superiority. Read the links above about the historical and philosophical differences to the Christian and Muslim approach to society and government. The Christian acts against the very teachings of Christ when he does this. The Christian assumes personal and theological insult for his faith, is not surprised by it (or shouldn’t be) and, biblically, counts it a blessing. The Muslim denies the Cross because they recognize it for what it is, a curse and an insult.

I heard a radio show recently where the panelists were espousing Islam as a religion of peace, but within three sentences of that statement, the same panelist said that, because of the “marginalization of Islam in the global community” Muslims are filled not just with “anger” but with a consuming “rage.” I find that to be a textbook definition of irony. Actually, no, I think it might be a textbook definition of contradiction. How is it that a religion of peace has millions of adherents that are filled with rage because of their religion? It is because our definitions of peace, and how it is obtained, are radically different.

The Muslim seeks an imposed, horizontal peace that is forged through complete theocratic authority, such that all aspects of life are under submission to the religious rulers. There is no appropriate secular authority in Islam. This authority is imposed by whatever means necessary and should result in complete conquest or destruction of the enemies of Islam. The Muslim is at peace with the world when it is under Islamic control. That is why the symbol of Islam is a sword. The Muslim, however, within Islam, has no guarantee of peace with God.

Christianity is a religion of a derived, vertical peace, that is peace with God that He has made through the sacrifice of His Son on the cross that allows us to therefore have peace with one another. However, we are not at peace with the world. Rather there is enmity and strife with the world, that being sinful thoughts, words, philosophies and actions, but our primary weapon is the love of Christ as portrayed in the Gospel. Hence our symbol is the cross.

As a Christian, peace, like a river, attends my way, because Jesus, the author and perfecter of my faith, the Prince of all glory, shed His perfect blood in submission to God’s righteous wrath for my sins. I am to have His mind, the mind of the one who became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, that most despised symbol of shame in the Roman Empire that criminals would never be crucified within city limits. I endure scorn and ridicule and even attack because my Savior endured them, not out of weakness, but out of obedience, with the promise from His Father of an eternal glory that awaited. My peace is ultimately and primarily with God, the one whom I was ultimately and primarily at war with, and is eternally secured because Jesus Christ is the Surety of my peace.

And, again, I cannot be brief.

Politics and a Sovereign God

2006-01-22T18:53:00.000-05:00

I have a friend who attends a large, local evangelical church with a reputation for reasonable biblical theology. In a recent conversation with me, she said she thought the church should stop talking about abortion and gay marriage because those are political issues. I was stunned.

She continued to wonder why the church doesn’t teach more about anxiety. Anxiety, after all, is a sin because it demonstrates a lack of trust in God, and many people are anxious including her. She said she wanted to know the “mind of Christ.”

I agree that anxiety is a sin, but the consequences of a woman waking up in the night, anxious about whether or not she will be a good mother when her baby is born are vastly different than if that woman murders her innocent, defenseless unborn baby in the womb because she was anxious about whether or not she will be a good mother. I admit that both speak of a lack of trust in God, both are sins for which the Prince of Glory died, but anxiety is transient and murder is final. Murder is a violation of God’s image and a violation of a commandment. When the baby dies, there are no opportunities for amending the situation. The baby is dead and that mother is guilty of murder.

What does the mind of Christ say about abortion I wonder? No actually, I don’t wonder. Where the Bible is purposeful and clear we can speak with full confidence about God’s revealed will. His word is clear that murder is a sin. His word is also clear that His hand formed us in the womb and that He knew us from eternity past, such that killing the unborn is still killing a creature made in His image and qualifies as murder. I can say with as much confidence as any mere human, with access to Holy Scripture, can say that the mind of Christ is reviled by the thought of His image being destroyed unjustly.

The larger question is, really, what defines a political issue such that the church doesn’t need to discuss it? When does sin become a matter for the “political process” such that Christians – ambassadors of God’s pure and perfect law to the unsaved world – can abdicate any responsibility for upholding righteousness? As Wayne Grudem (as part of a series called “The Cross and the Culture War”) said, “If Christians will not speak out about moral and ethical issues, who will?”

If God is the complete sovereign ruler of the universe that He has created – as He says repeatedly in His word – then there is no sphere of human activity or natural occurrence that He is not concerned with and which we shouldn’t possess some Biblical thought regarding. This is not to say that there is a clear Biblical description of how trade policy with China should be developed, but there are underlying principles that should inform it. It does, however, mean that where God has clearly spoken, saying such things as the fact that He considers homosexuality an abomination, the church must stand up and speak the truth. God cares about these matters or He would not have spoken about them.

The Gospel is the foundation of civil society. Politics is the means with which we enact our worldview. Christian worldview must be informed by the Gospel as its foundation. When we abide by the lie that we must keep our religious mouths shut and proceed only on strict secular, that is, atheistic, grounds, we permit all kinds of atrocity. We become like the world and fail in the Great Commission. A sovereign God demands that His standards of righteousness be upheld by and for all people.

Some good places to be convinced and convicted:

Dr. Mohler’s Blog and Commentary
World Magazine Blog
Between Two Worlds
Challies Dot Com
Jollyblogger

Idolatry

2005-09-10T13:55:00.000-05:00

First, I apologize for such a long absence. Internship is difficult and I promised my wife that she would not be neglected due to my many other interests. This blog counts as an other interest.

"Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous. The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true." A. W. Tozer

How does my idolatry begin, then? What is the fountain and what is its idolatrous imagery that creates my distortion of God?

My first thought is impotence; God is not powerful enough to intervene in my life to either give me the blessings I want-and think I deserve-or to impose upon me the punishments I fear-and know I deserve. Because I have lived a generally (and actually, very specifically) blessed life and have not suffered nearly as much as I should for my sins, I rest too easy on God's mercy and forget His wrath, or assume His wrath has no sting for me. It is in impotent wrath.

Clearly I also think God is ignorant. I fool myself into believing He is not aware of my sin, that He doesn't see or know of what I have said and done and thought: that He didn't hear my harsh word to my wife or my boastful words to my peer; that He didn't see me speeding to work and breaking the law of the civil government that He has established for my good; that He cannot possibly perceive my rabid, vulgar, violent, lustful and greedy thoughts, my sinful wants-not needs-that subtly declare, "What You have for me is not sufficient for my happiness."

Underneath all this, and probably most grievous, is that I think God ignores my sin. Whether that is because He doesn't care or that somehow my salvation through Christ makes my sin no longer an issue, I have established an idol of God as "tolerant" of sin. Oh, perhaps not in general, but certainly of my particular sins right now. What wrath is there? What consequence is there? Who suffers for this? Surely, since I am writing this, happy, healthy, unscourged by His righteous judgment, there must be none of those things for me.

But of course there is. The Cross of Jesus Christ is the place where God clearly, explicitly, violently and mercifully demonstrated His absolute hatred for my sin, His mighty wrath for its commission, and the consequence of death and punishment for my sin. There also He displayed the love He has in showing that none of us could bear the suffering for sin that we deserve so He poured it out on Himself and the person of His Son.

"For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in spirit." 1 Peter 3.18

On the first two points, I am neglecting reverence of the "omni's:" God's omnipotence and His omniscience, two vital attributes of the all-sovereign God. But on the last point, I'm specifically neglecting reverence of God's holiness. Surely all that God is and does is assumed within His holiness, but thinking for a moment that God, ultimately, tolerates sin makes His holiness a stained garment not a pure essence. God's holiness is the most significant attribute of who He is. It is the trisagion, the three-word name of God. These are the words that the angels and elders repeat around His throne: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty." (Rev 4.8, cf. Isaiah 6.3) It is the only descriptive of God spoken three times and that is an indication of how paramount His holiness is.

How then, knowing this, can I spit in the face of God and declare His holiness of no matter? Simply because my heart, as Calvin would say, is an idol factory, were on the assembly line of my sin I generate a myriad of false and evil images of God to suit my purposes. I make Him blind, crippled, mute and asleep. More importantly, though, is how can I spit in the face of God and live? How, why, does God tolerate my sin?

The plain fact is that He doesn't. He doesn't tolerate my sin for one instant. He has an eternity of furious wrath for my sin, but He has chosen to pour it out on His perfect Son rather than me. At the Cross of Jesus Christ God fervently displayed His total intolerance of my sin and smashed all the idols my heart could ever produce by demonstrating for all eternity the consuming jealousy He has for His holiness. At the Cross God perfectly displayed His hatred for sin and His wrath and judgment for sin, but He did that by propitiating that wrath onto Christ. That act of propitiating is simultaneously the perfect display of His love and mercy. This is vital: if I do not have confidence that God's wrath is pure and perfect and complete against sin, how can I have confidence that His mercy is equally pure, perfect and complete? If I cannot trust that God completely hates sin, then I must fear that He permits sin, and if He permits sin, He could tolerate lies and falseness, and if He can tolerate lies and falseness, beloved, how can we have any trust in His mercy? I need God to be merciful!

Thanks be to God that the Cross gives us confidence in the love and mercy of our heavenly Father by declaring that the wrath that we deserve is no more, but that Christ has done what we could not do and purchased for us adoption as sons into the kingdom of heaven. "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." (Eph 2.13) It is because God's hatred for sin is pure that we can trust Him as holy, and since we can trust Him as holy, we can have total confidence in His mercy.

Two Psalms

2005-06-21T20:01:00.000-05:00

How precious is Your Word to me,
that You have preserved it through generations
so it might feed me this day.
For this I cry out in thanksgiving.

I lift my hands to in praise to You;
You open my heart and my heart cries out,
my mind overflows from Your Spirit
pouring waves of mercy into my very soul.

I cry out to You, Abba, Father, and You bend Your ear
because my Savior pleads for me at Your right hand;
because His blood leeches the stains from my prayers,
I can sing to You like David, robed in the costume of Christ.

You are my breath, dear Jesus, my very breath
without You my bones would whither and rot;
at the loss of Your love, my thoughts would become rabid.
How much more my soul? How much worse would be my soul?

Blessed are You, O God of the nations,
O God of the heavens and the earth, O God of my soul.
Your Word is more cherished than any gem,
The tale of Your mercy, on my tongue, is the sweetest of foods.

I drink full from the cup of Your mercy,
and am satisfied,
and still You continue to pour.

Lord, make my heart race after Yours.

Make my thoughts march with Your thoughts,
my feet walking the straight path
You’ve laid out for me.

Conform me, my mind and my flesh,
the very fibers of my body,
to Your perfect law.

Let me not kick against the goads.
No, that I would not need them,
but that my every breath would come
as if Your hand pumped my chest like a bellows.

Let the words of my mouth
fan the flames of Your Spirit within me;
let obedience be my blood
and truth be the marrow of my bones.

You are God; in You do I move.
In Your sovereignty do I make
each movement of my own will.

I am free within Your grasp,
completely free in the palm of Your hand,
and no further.

How fearful this is, how secure.

Sin, the Attributes of God and the Gospel

2005-05-29T08:08:00.000-05:00

I think my natural examination of sin is from an altered perspective. I recognize untoward effects of my behavior, examine those products, seek out causes, motivations and root distempers that stir vile passions and carnal acts, and then look backwards through the process, seeking to fathom the nature and character of our enemy through his machinations, as if to say, “Aha! I see your mischievousness here and your attacks there.” Through this I seek to discern sin’s battle plans in an effort to match or thwart its process and progress. From my rational examination of the mechanics of sin in a given situation, I develop a profile of sin, a generalization of its activities to guide my behavior in the defense of my soul against my next encounter. When I sin again, I wonder at my failure and begin the analysis anew, tracking back steps from sinful consequence, through sinful behavior to sinful motivation in the attempt to locate some previously unseen or undefended against agent of sin. That is the failure of my scientific rationality in the spiritual warfare against sin, Satan and his lies.

Satan’s agents are innumerable, his methodologies chimerical, and rapidly so, and his instruments are as varied as the material, intellectual, emotional and spiritual distractions I have created and permitted in my life. His assault will not be on the same front twice, or if it is, not with the same forces, or if they are, not with the same weapons, banners and bugle calls. But even if it were, even if he comes against me with the exact same force in the exact same array with the exact same battle plan, he simply sends his messengers to remind me of my previous defeats and in my fear, self-doubt and guilt, I recommit my forces in an unprofitable order of march when I have failed first and foremost in not seeking my wise counselor, armorer and sword smith, the Lord Jesus Christ, at the first hint of dust on the horizon.

This is where scientific rationality – recognizing results, evaluating processes, determining predispositions and motivations, establishing general characteristics – will, in and of itself, fail to combat the sinful nature. Scientific rationality is, by its very nature, natural and man centered, and so can be and is useful – for understanding man is vital for understanding sin since he is the ubiquitous agent of it – but cannot bring victory, for the battle against sin is ultimately spiritual and spiritual rationality is thus required.

Spiritual rationality seeks first the nature and character of God (Proverbs 3.5) “The most portentous fact about any man is not what he at any given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.” (Tozer) As God is the standard and source of all that is holy – that is, transcendent, perfect and pure – and as Christ is the founder and perfector of our faith, so there must I fix my gaze and set my standards and my hopes. From there must I proceed in my assessment of any situation and evaluation of any assault of the enemies of my soul for they will be in opposition to God’s attributes.

What this necessitates, then, is a detailed study of and constant reflection on the attributes of God. If this sounds like a weighty and insurmountable task, I would suggest it is; we will never for all eternity, finish our study of God. The Spirit Himself continually searches the depths of the mind of God, and He is God! How much more will be exploring the inifinitude that is God and all His attributes. In this, I would highly suggest A.W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy. It is thin but very rich and dense and is an excellent treatise of the attributes of God and a brief but powerful treatment of the definition of Holy.

Three things (my things, not Tozer’s) to consider when we study the attributes of God:

1. He is the complete and perfect example of that attribute. Of God’s communicable attributes – those which we reflect some characteristic or trait of, such as mercy or justice – we will only ever reach a shadow of His perfection, and even then but for a moment, whereas He is that attribute always. His mercy is perfect mercy. All mercy we see and display and experience from each other must be held against our Heavenly Father’s mercy as the ultimate standard. Likewise, His justice is perfect Justice, not fair or legal by our human standards, but just in the ultimate and eternal standards of complete holiness coupled with supreme hatred for sin and His aforementioned mercy, all of which flow perfectly and in perfect harmony with His pure, passionate, perfect love.

2. Ultimately, infinitely, God is perfect in His perfection. This may be a redundant statement, but it is essential. Our standards are inherently fallible and vulgar, and so we make gradations of superlatives. We use "great," "greater," and "greatest," and even have lists and rankings of greatest things (yet Christ was completely correct and satisfied to simply call God His Father "good" knowing that no one else could be good like God is good, which is to say perfectly good). God, however is not to be troubled with titrations of quality. He is a thing or a way in its pure and undiluted form: in its essence. Considering this, His perfection must be declared as perfect perfection because we would seek to establish a hallmark of perfection based on something we have seen or done which we found laudable but which is genuinely tried when viewed against the perfect perfection of the Sovereign Creator of the universe. It was this vision of the holy perfection of God that caused Isaiah to cry out, “Woe is me! I am undone.”

3. Anything other or less than God's standard is sin. This may seem an outlandish statement considering the previous two, for certainly if God is perfect in all his attributes, and His perfection is perfectly perfect, such that we can't even glimpse the true and complete perfection that He is, then everything we think, say and do must necessarily be less than His perfection, and therefore sin. I would suggest that is correct. I would submit to you, and reading Tozer may help to convince you of this, that scripture’s continued testimony to God's holiness reinforces the fact that we are wretched sinners and can do nothing of eternal value, nothing that is genuinely pleasing to God, without His grace and sovereign intervention in our lives. This gets at the root of the Puritan concept of total depravity; not that we are completely depraved in all that we do, that is to say completely wicked for God certainly restrains us and no one is as wicked as they could be, but rather that everything we do is stained with sin. If we were not born again in the Spirit, covered in the blood of the Lamb, and clothed in pure holy righteousness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, our finest most noble moments would be but filthy rags.

There are times when I would rather be silent, and let the rocks cry out for me, because I am acutely aware that I don't have a single moment or a single thought that is not tainted by my sin. My most precious and beautiful and adoring prayers are always marred with the blackness of my sin and would be completely unacceptable - no, that is too forgiving a term; rather they are completely despicable - to a God whose standard is holiness. I think this is an appropriate attitude. Consider Tozer again: “Unless the weight of the burden [of obligation to love and worship God acceptably] is felt the gospel can mean nothing to the man; and until he sees a vision of God high and lifted up, there will be no woe and no burden. Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them.”

We must fix our eyes on God, knowing that we will never behold all there is to behold, knowing that our creature-language to describe our creature-thoughts about Him are at their core potentially idolatrous for, “When we try to imagine what God is like we must of necessity use that-which-is-not-God as the raw material for our minds to work on; hence whatever we visualize God to be, He is not…If we insist upon trying to imagine Him, we end with an idol, made not with hands but with thoughts; and an idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand.” (Tozer)

I would be moved to complete despair upon consideration of these facts were it not for my total trust in Jesus Christ as my substitutionary sacrifice on the cross and now as my constant intercessor at the right hand of God. All of this confirms that we cannot enter in to the presence of God on our own, but only through the perfection of Jesus Christ. The gospel is sweeter and Christ that much more beautiful and grace so much more amazing when we see how desperate and wretched our natural condition is. Thank you God for Your perfection and Your holiness.

Hardening Hearts

2005-05-18T11:51:00.000-05:00

Romans 11.7,8 “What then? Israel failed to obtain it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written ‘God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.’”

Deuteronomy 29.4 “But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.”

How is this hardening, then, not God forcing us to sin? How is God not responsible for our sin and how can He hold us accountable for our sin if He hardens a heart into sin? Can God be just when He hardens a heart?

1. The inclination to sin is in each one of us. It is an inherent part of our fleshly existence that will be manifest in one form or another. God directs and restrains the manifestations of sin in each individual person, but the sin nature was already present and active. When God hardens a heart, He is simply confirming and making permanent the determination of a situation already in effect. Pharaoh was not a godly and just man whom God transformed into wickedness; on the contrary, he was a thoroughly wicked man that God even restrained from performing as much evil as he could have. God simply pronounced a final decision upon Pharaoh by hardening Pharaoh’s heart and eternally confirming the previously extant condition of his soul through Pharaoh’s continued evil actions. Pharaoh was evil; God made it a permanent condition. This is how God hardens the heart practically.

2. The judgment for sin and the legal, federal declaration of guilt for sin comes from Adam and is handed over to every human being, probably at conception, but certainly by birth. We are born as Adam’s seed and bearing the fullness of his guilt. That is the same type of federal relationship that God has established for us in Christ. If we deny the former, we must deny the latter, but since this representation is perfect and declared so by God, we can tremble at the wrath we deserve as Adam’s heirs, and endure that fear, because we can also stand firm in the knowledge of justification and adoption as joint heirs with Christ because He, as our federal representative, took the wrath in our place.

Romans 5.18,19 “Therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience, many will be made righteous.”

If we accept our permanent justification through Christ, which is a free gift to the elect, then we must accept the condition of condemnation that is permanent to the reprobate (but is obviated by God’s sovereign grace in election, regeneration, justification). It would be intellectually dishonest and logically duplicitous to accept the federal representation of one condition – righteousness through Christ – without accepting the other when both are clearly delineated, and in opposition to one another, in scripture. Because of the permanent forensic condition of sin and condemnation that is a character of the natural human condition as Adam’s lineage, then God is perfectly just in confirming that condition by hardening the hearts of those in that condition and withholding his free gift of grace for their salvation. This is how God hardens the heart legally.

3. Finally, God hardens the heart epistemologically. Romans 1.18-32 is probably the most definitive doctrinal exposition of this phenomenon of God’s giving sinful and ignorant humans over to their prideful and self-glorifying but grossly inadequate knowledge and reasoning. We assume ourselves the measure of all things and our intellects to be the arbiters of truth rather than humbly seeking God’s gifts of discernment and wisdom to be shown the fullness of His truth. We have a natural knowledge of God but transfer our intellectual and spiritual fidelity to worship of the creature in willful ignorance of the creator. That is our natural tendency. God, in His mercy, opens the minds and hearts of His elect (Luke 24.25-35) to see the truth clearly so as to bring them to repentance, forgiveness and adoption. To the natural man, the reprobate, He gives them up completely to their debased minds, bringing a hardening of their reasoning such that it no longer regards or cares for the truth. This is how God hardens the heart epistemologically.

Fortunately, these are natural conditions that are then supernaturally fixed. We in Christ Jesus, however, are no longer natural but are supernatural and then supernaturally fixed there. God has put His Spirit in us to break the stony ground of our hearts and to remake us in the image of His Son. By grace, God grants life abundantly to His elect, for His glory. Thanks be to God for His miraculous mercy to save even one of us who richly deserve to be hardened and rejected, yet we know that He will surround us with that great cloud of witnesses to testify that He will fulfill His promise of salvation.

Ruminations on Sin

2005-05-03T13:01:00.000-05:00

That is some examination, about its mortification, and it contradicted with God’s holiness and our pursuit thereof.

I have spent a great deal of time and effort on engineering and administrative controls to prevent my sin, but have found that they do not deal specifically with the heart issues of my depravity or look seriously and biblically at the character of sin. I want to mortify sin and live for God, and that is an issue of heart motivation; sin must be addressed in the same way, because I can get around the filters and the obstacles I set for myself.

The root causes, the indulgent desires of my flesh, are not addressed by external controls, and so my self-made rules may thwart a particular behavior, but are not powerful enough to kill indwelling sin. The controls are good in and of themselves – they help keep me from sinning and help reduce the habit of a particular sin activity – but if it is simply a matter of external conduct and not a matter of heart desire, I am a moralist, a Pharisee, and still in sin. My sinful nature resides in all my flesh and will find outlet in another form if I simply limit or eliminate one form. John Owen would teach that we cannot simply mortify a sin but must mortify all sin.

It is only through the renewing of our minds that the Holy Spirit directs us. The biblical Christian has emotion, joy, peace, ecstasy and godliness that flow from the renewed mind, a mind renewed by the overgrowth of godliness resulting from spiritual discipline, a mind renewed through sound doctrine being brought to bear on sinful thoughts and emotional impulses, and a mind renewed by a conscious relationship with God.

This is an active, intelligent and purposeful relationship. It is about loving God, not being “in love” with God. The latter is a result of our circumstances and our emotions and our hormones and our diet, etc. It is a barometer of our fickle human affections. It says, “God, I am feeling sad, tired, bored, anxious, guilty, hungry or otherwise not particularly impressed with You right now and my affection for You is bland. Since I am not ‘in love’ with you right now, I will ignore You or perhaps feign some obedience to You for my own guilt’s sake.”

The former is a conscious decision, a willful choice that says, “God, I am feeling sad, tired, bored, anxious, guilty, hungry or otherwise not particularly impressed with You right now and my affection for You is bland, but that doesn’t matter. You are God and I will love You with all my heart. I will extol Your goodness and rejoice in the fact that You do not change.” This is agape love, the love that Christ has for us. It is not derived from our feelings, rather our feelings proceed from it. Our feelings say, “I can” or I can’t;” “I will” or “I won’t;” “I feel” or “I’m dry.” These are lures away from “God is.” And what is more essential than the great I Am?

This, then, is a means of renewing our minds. As The Valley of Vision states in the prayer titled, The Divine Will: “Help me to honour thee by believing before I feel, for great is the sin if I make feeling a cause of faith.” Or again, from Resting on God: “Give me intenser faith in the eternal verities, burning into me by experience the things I know.” It is a purposeful control of our behavior such that it is not proceeding from emotions, instincts or tendencies – unless they be forged of godly habits – but rather that it moves from an understanding of who and what God is, namely holy and sovereign, and what that means to our daily lives. How do I make that practical, you may ask. And so I offer up some suggestions.

1) Daily consider God’s holiness, what it means to be holy, how far away from that we are and how filthy our thoughts and desires tend to be compared to that standard, for that is our standard.

2) Daily preach the gospel to yourself. The gospel is not just for the lost as the means of their conversion. It is the primary instrument that we have to renew our minds. To recognize that our sin caused the death of sinless son of God and that the result of that is that my sins, all of them, are eternally forgiven. Because of the cross, and only because of the cross, grace is available for me to be transformed into the image of Christ.

3) Owen is helpful here again: replace the sin with a means or evidence of God’s grace that is directly opposite to the sin in question. If I am feeling prideful in my work, let me recall a time when God delivered me from my imminent failures by His obvious grace, or better yet, let me seek to humble myself by serving someone else, and especially by performing a task I would, in my pride, consider far beneath me. If I am moved to anger because of some slight or injustice I feel has been perpetrated upon me, let me recall the wrath that I deserve for my many offenses against God, or better yet become a reflection of his mercy by not only forgiving the one who has offended me, but seek to serve them and honor them and lavish them with love. We must not only clean our house, but fill it with the bright light of the stuff of godliness. (Matt 12. 43-45)

4) Regularly confess and repent and be held accountable to like-minded brothers or sisters. Name sin as sin and name it with the hatred that God has for sin. Then replace the sin with the things of God.

Godliness is and must be purposeful, for sin is likewise in its attacks against us.

Faith and Repentance

2005-05-01T16:00:00.000-05:00

A friend from church read my blog (HOORAY!). Really that's enough for me, I could stop there. But actually, she mentioned a conversation she was having with someone about to 1 John 1.9 (If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.) and actually asked for my opinion, even said she'd like to see it on my blog. I’m very excited. “Lemme sum up; no, there is too much. Lemme esplain.”

If I remember correctly the conversation Laura was having was about whether 1 John 1.9 was a formula or ritual for salvation, an “if, then” proposition by which God seems to be obliged to forgive us in response to a particular action we perform. (Laura, if I'm getting the details wrong or don't answer your question please let me know. I'll try again.) At first blanch this may seem so, but the larger context of verses 5 through 10, and even to 2. 2 (quoted at the end), establish a context which opposes truth and light with darkness and lies. If we are walking in the light, that is the light of the Gospel, our sin should be painfully evident to us, and if we are walking in the truth, the truth of God's infallible Word, we should have some appreciation for how terrible that sin is. Not only should we see our sin, and have some appreciation for our sin, we should also recognize that in the face of a holy and righteous God we have absolutely no other recourse than to throw ourselves on His mercy for the forgiveness of that sin.

Verse 9, in the larger context, demonstrates God's response to our right response from the Holy Spirit's conviction of our sin and regeneration of our dead hearts. When we confess our sin, meaning not just that we say, “Hey, God, these are my sins,” but truly confess them, we identify them as what they are, violations of God's holiness. In the same way that we must confess Jesus as Christ, that is identifying him as who He is, the man-God Messiah, with full faith that He will save us from our sins, so to our confession of sin must be to name our sins as offenses that are worthy of wrath and that can only be pardoned by the propitiating sacrifice of our Savior.

In this fact there is the union of repentance and faith; we confess our sins with the intention of turning from them, not merely unloading them, and simultaneously trust in God to fulfill His promise of redemption and forgive us. As Calvin says, "But this confession, as it is made to God, must be in sincerity; and the heart cannot speak to God without newness of life: it then includes true repentance. God, indeed, forgives freely, but in such a way, that the facility of mercy does not become an enticement for sin." This confession of sin comes from the burden of knowing that we have sinned and having some idea of what that sin means to God, namely a violation of His honor so grievous that only the sacrifice of His own Son could turn His anger away from it. But thanks be to God, He has done that, and so John can declare that “Jesus Christ the righteous… is the propitiation for our sins (1 Jn 2.1b-2a).”

Because of that propitiation, the fact that God has imputed all our sin onto His perfect Son and simultaneously imputed Jesus’ perfect righteousness to us, we can have complete faith that He is faithful to forgive us our sins in accord with His legal declaration of our justification through faith in Christ. Not only that, not only does God forgive the sins that we've confessed, but He cleanses us from all unrighteousness, that being every sin from our whole lives even the ones we don't see or recognize as sin. This doesn't mean, however, that we have immediately become holy and perfect in this life, but rather, that God has made the promise that He has legally declared us righteous and will, on the last day, bring that promise to its completion when we are perfectly united with Him in Christ. Again, a little J. C. (John Calvin, that is): “Were anyone to object and say, that as long as we sojourn in the world, we are never cleansed from all unrighteousness, with regard to our reformation: this is indeed true; but John does not refer to what God now performs in us. He is faithful, he says, to cleanse us, not today or tomorrow; for as long as we are surrounded with flesh we ought to be in a continual state of progress; but what he has once begun, he goes on daily to do, until at length he completes it… that we may appear without blame before God (Col 1.22, Phil 1.6).”

Also, a little Matthew Henry: “The Christian religion is the religion of sinners, of such as have sinned, and in whom sin in some measure still dwells. The Christian life is a life of continued repentance, humiliation for and mortification of sin, of continual faith in, thankfulness for, and love to the Redeemer, and hopeful joyful expectation of a day of glorious redemption, in which the believer shall be fully and finally acquitted, and sin abolished for ever. The denial of our sin not only deceives ourselves, but reflects dishonour upon God. It challenges his veracity. He has abundantly testified of, and testified against, the sin of the world. But God has given his testimony to the continued sin and sinfulness of the world…and to the continued sinfulness of believers themselves by requiring them continually to confess their sins, and apply themselves by faith to the blood of [Jesus’] sacrifice.” OK, a lot of Matthew Henry.

One final note. If we confess with the intention of sinning again under the assumption that God must continue to honor His promise to be faithful and forgive us, well clearly the truth is not in us and we have no right understanding of either our sin, or the cost of our forgiveness, and so cannot expect God’s mercy. This is not a matter of effort, but of intention.

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 1.5-2.2

95 Theses

2005-04-28T09:48:00.000-05:00

Brad Hightower is a pastor in Artesia, California. His blog is 21st Century Reformation. He is asking the questions: “What are the most vital areas that we the church are in need of change?” and “ How can these vital few areas be expressed in a series of theses in much the same way as Luther presented his call to reformation?” He is initiating the 95 Theses Project. I have been eagerly watching and will now share some ideas. I have not researched this and apllied links to articles as Brad has, though I will be in the near future. Despite that, from what I have read, heard on Christian radio and ministry programs and what I have learned from people in the church, I think I speak with some accuracy.

This clearly will not apply to every church body. I have been blessed by God to part of a congregation that holds the Word of God to be the only standard and does an excellent job of living that out by His grace. I also know we are not the norm.

4. Despite that much of the church confesses Scripture to be the Word of God, inspired and even inerrant, she does not regard Scripture to be the source of all morals, ethics, principles and ideals for the congregational as well as the secular life.

5. Because of this lack of normative biblical morality, the church either does not know it is to be profoundly distinct from the world, or does not know how to live a life that is profoundly distinct from the world.

6. Because of this lack of normative biblical morality, the church is filled with people who confess Christ as savior with their mouth yet confess Satan as master with the rest of their lives.

7. Because of this lack of normative biblical morality, our congregants, and in particular our children, are religious in sentiment but without doctrinal foundation and so, in most regards, are indistinct from those in open rebellion to God.

8. Because of this lack of normative biblical morality, the church has embraced heretical doctrines and the errors of natural materialism and secular humanism into its religious life rather than being salt and light to a dark and dying world. This is most easily seen in regard to Christian opinions regarding such things as psychology and psychotherapy, homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia and infanticide, and perhaps most dangerously, the use of human life and human genetic material as a commodity.

9. There has been a general failure of the clergy to hold itself or its congregants to biblical standards of morality and to impose appropriate church discipline for those who violate the Word of God as a matter of habit or course and not just part of the ongoing sanctification process.

10. This is of exceptional grievousness in the realm of marriage and divorce, where the church has not instilled biblical concepts of marriage, either to its youth before marriage or its adult members in marriage, nor has it applied biblical principles of divorce and remarriage. In this matter, the church is today no different from the world that is careening towards hell.

11. The clergy does not teach, nor is it held accountable, to the biblical standards of marriage and divorce such that divorce, while a confessing born-again believer, should be disqualification for pastoral ministry and church office except perhaps in the most heinous circumstances of unrepentant sexual immorality or abandonment on the part of a spouse. Yet even these should have occurred far distant from a man's seeking church office and even then must be weighed heavily against clear demonstration of sanctification since that divorce, with particular attention to the realm of marriage, personal relationships, and sexual morality.

12. The church has failed to hold Paul's teachings on qualifications for leadership as the absolute requirement for serving in a church office. Rather than divorce and sexual immorality or the rebelliousness of a leader's children being disqualifications for church office, they are now considered an unfortunate but expected part of family and church life, such that pastors and ministers who have been divorced, committed sins of sexual immorality, or who have had children that have abandoned the faith while under their parents’ authority are not removed from office but are allowed to continue in defiance of God's Word.

As always, your comments and criticisms, and especially your biblical accountability is appreciated and encouraged.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sovereignty and Responsibility

2005-04-27T12:59:00.000-05:00

First, I would like to say that I invite and appreciate comments on what I write here. I have no formal theological training, and so expect that I will make mistakes and say things that are in error. I ask you, whoever you are, as a brother or sister in Christ, to help hold me accountable to the truth of God’s Word.

Human responsibility and divine sovereignty must be correlates in the relationship with God. This is an extension of the relationship of Father and Son within the Trinity. Christ was completely responsible for His actions and His submission to death on the cross was a totally voluntary submission. Yet simultaneously, His heavenly Father had complete sovereign control over the situation, including Christ’s choice, so that the Father’s plan for redemption would be executed perfectly. Jesus’ choice was a completely voluntary choice end God’s control was a completely authoritative control. This is necessary, for if Jesus went to the cross by coercion or manipulation, or was somehow programmed to do so, such that His choice was not autonomous, then His death was murder; and if Jesus went to the cross without total assurance of His Fathers complete control over all things, and the knowledge that God would accomplish His plan of redemption, then Jesus’ death was a hopeful suicide. As it is, because these two seemingly opposed principles are actually, mysteriously, correlated, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a propitiating sacrifice: propitiation being God’s sovereign response to Jesus’ willing self-sacrifice, and Jesus’ submission to death being His voluntary action in response to the knowledge of God’s sovereignty.

This correlation of autonomy and sovereignty exists for us who are in Christ as well as those in the world. The significant difference is that, because we are set free from sin in Christ, we have the choice to obey God or not. This freedom is given by the regeneration of our hearts and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Prior to that miraculous conversion we are completely enslaved to sin and our choices, though completely ours for which we are fully responsible, can only be sinful. In both situations, regenerate in reprobate, God is sovereignly, mysteriously, works all things such that our individual choices accord His master plan. Ultimately, our “free will” is a subordinate free will, which exists only within the context of God’s sovereignty. So then, we are equally responsible as God is sovereign, yet the mystery is that His sovereignty is “more equal.” No human action, despite the fact that the human agent is completely responsible, occurs outside of the context of God’s authority such that God would be wondering or anticipating the results. This must be! For every human action, from a single breath to the most historic achievement, all occurs within the context of complete dependence on God to sustain the existence of the universe.

How glorious is this? You and I are free to act as we choose, yet not one of our choices, though they be opposite God’s will and therefore sin, could ever thwart God’s sovereign design for all time.

The Question of Evil, again…

2005-04-26T20:44:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday, a registered sex offender confessed to killing 3-year-old Sarah Lunde, saying he got into an argument with her and choked her to death in her home. He then dumped her body in a fish pond. Oh, yeah, he also dated Sarah’s mom.

As I read the article on FOXNews.com, I was struggling with many emotions and I began to pray. I prayed for David Onstoot, the 36 year-old previously convicted rapist and now confessed killer, that God would bring him the gift of repentance and save his soul from hell, and that God would be publicly glorified by that conversion. I prayed for Sarah's family. I prayed for the members of Sarah's congregation at the First Apostolic Church in Ruskin, Florida. And I thanked God for that little girl's death. I thanked God for taking her to be with Him. Don't get me wrong, I don't go around praying that God will kill people, but when the Sovereign Lord of the universe decides to end the mere breath of a life of one of His children in this world to bring them to eternal glory with Him in heaven, be absolutely certain that I rejoice.

From the small amount of evidence I've gathered, Sarah was a Christian, the only one in her house, a house which she ran away from to her church on several occasions. At her church she found love, people that cared for her and something that made this young girl want to give up her time off from school to walk around town, knock on people's doors and hand out Bibles. What do you think that was? Of course I can't be certain, and I strongly suspect it was the saving love of Jesus Christ.

And so the question will come up again, as it always does, and unfortunately from so many people in the church: "Why do bad things happen to good people?" This is a theologically inaccurate question. It is built on the premise that there is such a thing as a good person. The right question would be, "Why do good things happen to anyone?"

A biblically accurate view of the world recognizes that all people - I mean all, even 13 year old girls, even 13 month old girls, even a little baby girl that just took its 13th breath - are sinners, vessels of God's wrath and worthy of destruction. Yes, even the newborn is lumped in with the whole sloppy mess of the rest of us sinners. It's called Federalism, it's the doctrine that says one man can be the perfect legal representative for all others, and it is absolutely necessary if you are to be saved from your sin. Because in the same way Adam is our federal representative in sin, making all humanity guilty in God's legal, judicial eyes, so also is Christ our federal representative in righteousness making all of God's elect perfectly pure and worthy of love. You can't have one without the other.

People will also ask the question, "Why did God let such a terrible thing happened to this young girl if she was a Christian and he is a God of love? Why did God let her die?” These questions also are built on a premise of theological ignorance. Forgive me if I am sounding harsh right now, but this is a question that the church should not need to answer to its own flock because we should know the answer already. We need to know the doctrine of suffering, and recognize that Christ didn't die on the cross to give us a happy-go-lucky carefree life in this world. He died to give us a blissful eternity after this life, specifically after we die in this life.

This life is a breath. In Sarah's 13 years she received the most important gift a human being could ever receive, adoption into the family of God. Becoming a Christian doesn’t mean you get a free ticket to die peacefully in your sleep, surrounded by your family at the ripe old age of 86, without ever suffering from gout, or Alzheimer’s or having been beaten or raped. It means that whatever God does to you in this life is for your discipline and your good, not your punishment.

To be honest, I envy Sarah. She is with Jesus, and I want to be with Jesus. She will never suffer a single pain, not even a splinter in her finger, forever. Brothers and sisters, we need to have an eternal view. Otherwise, when God takes our wife or husband or child or parent, we will not have a right attitude of heart, we will not fall on our knees and worship Him as he deserves, but will shake our puny fist at the Sovereign God of the universe, and incur His wrath.

On Creeds

2005-04-25T20:22:00.000-05:00

Rear Admiral Ann E. Rondeau, as commander of Commander, Naval Service Training Command, instituted a policy whereby each morning all students in the command, officer and enlisted, would recite the Sailor’s Creed. Some, especially some officers, have dissented, for various reasons. What I found disturbing about several of the cited opponents was a disregard or even distain for authoritative institutional values. The admiral rightly responded that people are dying every day for the things that we believe, so we ought to know what we believe.

I whole heartedly agree.

Definition of a creed:

A Creed, or Rule of Faith, or Symbol, is a confession of faith for public use, or a form of words setting forth with authority certain articles of belief, which are regarded by the framers as necessary for salvation, or at least for the well-being of the Christian Church.
John Brokhoff asks, “Why bother with the Creeds? Why not let each Christian decide what to believe?” He answers, “The Creeds have at least a three-dimensional purpose: Definition, Defense, and Declaration.”

With creeds we define our belief system, consolidating the themes and doctrines expounded upon by the sum of Scripture into concise statements of truth. They help us know what it is we say we as Christians are supposed to believe. They equip us to defend ourselves and our religion against attacks from heretics and false teachers. They are tools for fulfilling the Great Commission, giving us simple but accurate messages to communicate to the unbelieving world. They range from Peter’s simple statement, “You are the Christ” (Matt. 16.16)to the almost universally accepted Nicene Creed to the Westminster Confession.

From “The Case for Creeds,” on the website of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland:

“The need for confessions and symbols did not cease with the close of the canon of Scripture…While there would have been creeds even if there had been no doctrinal controversy, most of the historic Christian creeds and confessions were hammered out on the anvil of controversy. These creeds…were statements of doctrine in which the imperiled Church sought to express truths that were vital to her very existence… There have always been those who wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction and to that of others (2 Pet.3:16)…As summaries of biblical doctrines and aids to their understanding, creeds edify the Body of Christ. The purpose of the early creeds was that of popular instruction. The more detailed confessions of later date are also useful in the instruction of the members and prospective members of the Church and the catechisms were designed expressly for this purpose.”

I frequently use the Nicene creed as a foundation for my prayers, as I pray to and worship God for who He is in all His triune glory. It is a tool, when my mind drifts to worldly things, to remind just how awesome is the truth of Christianity, how amazing and unhuman its doctrines. It continues to convince me that men did not make this up.

These creeds are girds for our faith. I spent half my life believing most every pluralistic, relativistic, post-modernist lie. I thank God that He has blessed His church with doctrinal statements that declare firmly the truth from His word. Learn them, teach them to your children, consider them as a model for your prayers. “Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.” (Titus 2.15)