The Hymn that Makes Me Cry (Almost)

This afternoon at church, we sang several amazing songs (including "Be Still, My Soul" by Katharina von Schlegel).  But our closing hymn was the one that almost always brings tears to my eyes (inasmuch as that happens for me): "For All the Saints" by William How.

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Allelu ...

Thou wast their rock, their fortress and their might;
Thou, Lord, their captain in the well-fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear their one true Light.
Alleluia, Allelu ...

O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor's crown of gold.
Alleluia, Allelu ...

The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.
Alleluia, Allelu ...

But lo!  There breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on his way.
Alleluia, Allelu ...

From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Alleluia, Allelu ...

More than any other, I want this hymn sung at my funeral (preferably in Christopher Miner's tune, but I'll take Sine Nomine).  If songs about Jesus as Victor get my hands raised and my feet a-stompin', then it is songs about Jesus' faithfulness in leading his church to her eternal bliss in the news heavens and earth that bring a quiver to my lips.

Why We're Not Baptizing Our Children (Yet)

While on the phone with my mom a few weeks ago, she asked us again why we belonged to a Presbyterian church which baptizes infants, but we ourselves have not had our son baptized.*  I hope to explain here why I've chosen this path for our family.  I realize this is a huge issue that cannot be covered in a few paragraphs, but here's my best attempt to briefly explain it.  And I write this with great humility--I am fallible and could be wrong--and with great respect for the Reformed heritage and for my brothers and sisters in Christ at URC and City Church of Richmond.

What is the Presbyterian doctrine?

Presbyterian and Reformed churches see baptism as the equivalent of circumcision, which was applied to children to show their status within the Abrahamic covenant.  Start by reading Genesis 12, 15, and 17 to get a picture of God’s promises to Abraham.

Circumcision was the “sign of the covenant” God gave to Abraham (Genesis 17:11 ESV).  It served as a sign (visible representation) of the covenant relationship between God and Abraham and his offspring.  It was also a seal confirming the reality of this covenant relationship and God’s vow to “be God to you and to your offspring after you” (Genesis 17:7; cf. Romans 4:11).  Circumcision signified inner spiritual renewal and cleansing (Isaiah 52:1), as well as the need to live consecrated to God--or else one too would be cursed and “cut off” from life under God’s blessing (Genesis 17:14).  Through bloodshed it prefigured the bloody judgment of Christ that would ultimately earn this spiritual renewal and cleansing for God’s people.  

Of Bills and Babies: Hope for Parents Concerned about Money

Good news: Olivia is pregnant with our second child, due in November!

Of course, this leads me to always wonder how on earth we're going to support a second (or someday third, fourth, ... ) child.  This would require some major restructuring of our work situations, child care, etc.  God clearly has something up his sleeve for us in the future.  (Frankly, I hope it's money for a heat pump.  Two hundred dollars per month for heating oil is killer.)

But to still my anxious heart, God has lovingly been reminding me of Psalm 37:25-26 again and again.  Not that I ever intentionally memorized it, but it has somehow come to my memory almost every day for the past few weeks:

I have been young, and now am old,
     yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken
     or his children begging for bread.
He is ever lending generously,
     and his children become a blessing.

What a blessing!  To know that somehow, some way, God will always provide for us what we need.  I mean, how many families do you see at Walmart where a single, working mom is towing a whole flock of youngsters?  Sure, God's idea of "what we need" might not intersect with our ideas of comfort or convenience.  But when the goal of our life is the enjoy and glorify our Maker and Sustainer, those "c-words" are only added graces.  So I might not have any clue what our life will someday look like, or how he will provide, but I need to choose to trust that God will be faithful to us and look after our family--better and more lavishly than we could imagine (1 Corinthians 2:9).

You may ask, "Andrew, how do you know you're one of 'the righteous'?"  Fair enough--a good look at my life might reveal a whole lot that isn't close to righteous.  But in the Bible, the "righteous" aren't the perfect people, but those who recognize their sinful brokenness and humbly cling to God and follow his ways the best that they can.  And today that means trusting in Jesus, whose perfect sonship and obedience is credited to everyone who hopes in and follows after him.

For additional thought: 2 Corinthians 9:6-11; Philippians 4:10-20.

You Will Not Restrain Your Mercy from Me

This morning I read this in Psalm 40, and it blew my mind:

As for you, O LORD, you will not restrain
     your mercy from me;
your steadfast love and your faithfulness will
     ever preserve me!
For evils have encompassed me
     beyond number;
my iniquities have overtaken me,
    and I cannot see;
they are more than the hairs of my head;
     my heart fails me. (vv. 11-12)

What is so crazy?  David doesn't say that God will preserve him in spite of his own evils and iniquities.  I fact, he doesn't even ask God to preserve him, as if it were in question.  No, through the Holy Spirit, David spoke for God and testified that "You, O LORD, will not restrain your mercy from me ... For evils have encompassed me beyond number; my iniquities have overtaken me."  It is precisely because David is hopelessly mired the inescapable pit of in his own wretchedness (see vv. 1-2) that God remains faithful and steadfast.  God knew he was David's sole hope for rescue, and David knew it too.

Can you imagine that God is so full of mercy and compassion that when you're at your very worst, a stinking cesspool of selfishness, God is precisely at that point for you and full of love for you?  God delights in being faithful to the unfaithful, a rescuer to the hopeless.  This is what it means for God to be holy: when others would run away, that is when he is near. "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit" (Psalm 34:18; see also Isaiah 57:15).  All he asks is for a needy and contrite heart that cries out for him.

How can we know that God will be like this toward us?  After all, we certainly might be tempted to at least begrudgingly hold back some good from a messy, undeserving person.  But God doesn't curb it at all: "You will not restrain your mercy from me"!  In fact, to restrain his own mercy would be essentially to deny it.  Mercy is compassionate deliverance from an awful situation.  If God restrained his mercy by waiting for us to get our lives together, that wouldn't be mercy at all!

But the sureness of God's mercy rests on more than just a definition of mercy, however.  It rests on Jesus Christ.  Speaking of his looming suffering and death by crucifixion, Jesus said that "I have a baptism to be baptized with" (Luke 12:50).  A baptism represented a chaotic deluge, often of God's judgment (cf. Psalm 69:1-2).  He was overtaken by our iniquities--yours and mine--the "evils beyond number" of fallen mankind, so that only mercy and steadfast love would remain for those who come to God through him.  So the next time your eyes are opened to your sin and life feels like nothing but a suffocating failure, take courage and run to God through Jesus.  He will gladly receive you and rescue you.

[Postscript, 2/14: I realize that in wanting to put the work of Christ at the forefront, I think I've sort of put his person in an erroneous light.  To begin with, saying that God's mercy rests upon Christ and his cross does not and cannot mean that God the Father and God the Son were somehow at odds with each other over whether to have mercy on sinners.  Jesus said that he only did his Father's will and what the Father himself does (John 5:19-24) and that he and the Father are one (John 10:30).  And Paul reminds us that "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19).  God himself was doing the reconciling.  And while in some sense that means the Father, it encompasses all three persons of the Triune Godhead.  And that very God is Jesus.

Second, I neglected to think of simply seeing mercy in Jesus' character--and in God's character throughout the Bible--as a testimony to who he is.  God "cannot deny himself" (2 Timothy 2:13); as he is, so he always will be.  We see God/Jesus doing concrete acts of mercy--raising widows' sons, providing bread to the needy, healing diseases--and that points us to his character as a person of mercy and compassion.]

The Sun of Righteousness

brightersidenow.com

In the final Old Testament prophecy about Jesus--some 400 years before his birth--God spoke through the prophet Malachi that the Messiah would be "the sun of righteousness" (Malachi 4:2).  Later on, the author to the Hebrews said that Jesus, God's Son and this promised Messiah, is "the radiance of the glory of God"  (Hebrews 1:3).  Somewhere a while back I read a quote from John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion.* Calvin said,

Christ, our righteousness, is the Sun, justification, its light, sanctification, its heat.  The Sun is at once the source of both, so that light and heat are inseparable.  But only light illumines and only heat warms, not the reverse; both are always present, without the one becoming the other.  (3.11.6)

I love this, because though it's not up to date with modern physics, it shows so many great biblical truths so clearly.

Those Who Sow in Tears Shall Reap with Shouts of Joy

Do you worry over your child's anger and behavioral failures, fearing he will be ruined by them, or that you are failing him as a parent?  What would it be like instead to rejoice in his failings as tools in God's hands to pave the way toward an infinitely brighter future?

Our 23-month-old son Ephraim has developed a recent fascination with blankets.  This evening he tried picking up the blanket my on which my wife was sitting.  When he was unable to do it, he protested vociferously.  Then he tried jumping off the coffee table onto the couch, but he couldn't bridge the gap, which sent him spiraling downward even further.  Exhausted and hungry, he proceeded into a bleary-eyed, wailing tantrum that would last about twenty minutes.

After I took him upstairs for "time out" in his crib, I prayed with him.  At first I asked God to be near to him and give him the ability to calm down because, as John Piper points out, anger "devours almost all other good emotions" and "numbs the heart to joy and gratitude and hope and tenderness and compassion and kindness."*

But then I thought, maybe I shouldn't pray for that.  So instead I began to pray, "God, in times like this when Ephraim can't control his own anger and emotions and tantrums, let him see his own desperate condition.  Let him see that he cannot restrain his feelings and the chaos that floods over him.  Let him see both your forgiveness for him in the cross and also how much he needs the power of the Holy Spirit inside him to give him peace and the ability to calm down."

This was really freeing.  As I thought about it over the evening, I gained a small bit of parenting freedom.  I've been reading through the book of Proverbs recently, which is mostly a book of how fathers should train their children in wise living in fear of the Lord.  Proverbs says that children who grow up to be unruly, disobedient, and unwise are "fools."  And of course I never want my son to be foolish or to be ruled by his desires (which is what anger reveals; see James 4:1-3).  But more than I want him to be "good," I want him to know and receive the goodness of Jesus Christ.  I want him to see how needy and sinful and evil his heart is, and that his outbursts reveal both how selfish his desires are and how he is mastered by his own desires--and that through this his only hope, and his sure hope, is the grace of God in Jesus.

I pray that God will keep this in my mind as the years go by.  Instead of fretting over every tantrum and display of self-will, I want them to become signposts confirming to him his need for Christ and the grace God offers to the humble.  I want to know that the more Ephraim sins--as atrocious as this is--the more cause there will be for him to crave the unfailing love of God.  "With weeping they shall come, and with pleas of mercy I will lead them back, ... for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn" (Jeremiah 31:9).
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*John Piper, This Momentary Marriage (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2009) p. 150.

With Reverence and Awe

I drove past a church in Richmond last week that had a sign which read: "Worship just got better.  Casual.  Contemporary.  Comfortable."  Now when I read more on this church's website, I think their worship might still be pretty legitimate--that is, centered upon God's word to us in the gospel, led by the Holy Spirit, for the sake of exalting God's name through Christ our Lord.  But should we expect worship to be casual and comfortable?

Actually, if we stop and are honest, many of us might use words like mundane or boring.  How many of us can resonate with something so un-noteworthy as a group of ordinary folks sitting around as the preacher goes on and on about Melchizedek-this or Shechem-that ... and you start daydreaming ... and fall asleep. (This was even true when the Apostle Paul taught; see Acts 20:7-9.)

But Jesus reminds us that "where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them" (Matthew 18:20).  Now, in context he is saying this about the leaders of the church in exercising church discipline.  But in doing so, Jesus says that whatever they do on earth is also happening in heaven (see Matthew 18:15-20).  When the church gathers on earth, she is also meeting in heaven.

In Hebrews 12:22-24 we see an even more vivid portrait of what happens when the saints gather:

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly [or church; Greek ekklesia] of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

This is a present reality for the gathered church: you have come (v. 22).  Thus the author concludes with this exhortation: "See that you do not refuse him who is speaking.  For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. ... Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire" (vv. 25, 28-29; see also Psalm 50).

"There I am among them."  What should we expect when Jesus comes in the midst of his people?  What should worship look like?  Again, probably it will appear to our eyes very normal to us most of the time.  But we should never fail to remember that our Lord is active in our midst as one "from [whose] mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and [whose] face was like the sun shining in full strength" (see Revelation 1:12-20).

Source: Wintley Phipps, www.gospelbondservant.com 

When we believe that Jesus is a living person present with us in our worship, we should expect more to be shaken than to be comfortable; we're encountering heaven.  Church gatherings like those we see in the New Testament begin to take on a new light:

Praying saints are shaken and filled with the Holy Spirit to speak the word of God with boldness (Acts 4:31).

The power of the Lord Jesus is present (1 Corinthians 5:4).

Sinners are forgiven and the sick are healed (James 5:14-16).

The dead are raised to life (Acts 20:7-12).

Unbelievers are convicted of sin, the secrets of their hearts are exposed, and they fall on their face in worship because God truly is present (1 Corinthians 14:24-25).

Believers participate in the benefits of the crucified and exalted body and blood of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16).

Sin-sick and life-weary hearts are refreshed and given hope (John 7:37-39; Acts 3:19-20).

Here in September, in the time between Pentecost and Advent, the church calendar says we're in "ordinary time."  However, right worship is anything but ordinary.  Or casual.  Or comfortable.

I'll Do Better Next Time

I recently finished reading Edward Welch's book Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave: Finding Hope in the Power of the Gospel (P & R, 2001).  I found it to be a really helpful guide to the fact that addictions--whatever biological and sociological components may be at play--are ultimately a worship disorder: We worship our own desires and cravings so much that they become our masters and enslave us.  Which, of course, means that there is hope for addicts of all kinds--not in AA, nor rehab, nor medicine, nor counseling, but in Jesus Christ, who died for us to break the power of sin over us, so that we would no longer be its slaves (see Romans 6:1-23).  Jesus sets us free to know and worship the true God.

Anyway, on page 282 amid some practical tips for remembering and applying the work of Christ to our daily battles, Welch paraphrases Martin Luther in offering this tough admonition:

Is Christ always in view when you talk about sin?  Commenting on Galatians 5:4, Luther asks, "What do you do when you are caught in some sin?  If your answer is, 'I'll do better next time,' then you have no need of Christ."  Luther then offers this alternative: "that you despair of your own righteousness and you trust boldly in Christ."

Nothing Can Hinder the Lord

This week I was talking with some other dads at our church about how difficult it is to rear our children to understand both grace and law.  We all recognized this is a tough tightrope to walk!  After all, nearly every New Testament letter was occasioned by either too much reliance on the law (human behaviors and efforts) or a perversion of grace into a license to sin or to live a lax life.  Both errors fail to do justice to the cross of Jesus.

Of course, this concern is even broader than understanding the gospel.  Any honest parent, I'm sure, would be led to some worries about whether they're doing a good job raising their kids rightly in all aspects of wise living.

But thank God I was reminded of this simple truth that evening: The God who gave us children in the first place, the God who has put authority and responsibility into parents' hands, who is himself a loving Father--it is this God who cares more about our children than we do!  He cares more about their faith and salvation than we ever will.  He is the one who designed his great saving plan and sent his Son to die for sinners, at great cost to himself.  He is the one who sends his Spirit to open the eyes of the blind to see the light of Christ's glory (2 Corinthians 4:4, 6).  He is the one who finds immense joy in recovering his lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7).  He is the one who delights in wisdom (Proverbs 8:30; 3 John 4).  As the Westminster Confession of Faith reminds us*, God uses our best efforts to rear our children in the way of the Lord Jesus without exasperating them (Ephesians 6:4), but he is not confined by how well we do.  After all, he is the one who, in his wisdom, has entrusted the passing of his covenant to the next generation into the hands of finite, weak sinners, and so he too will provide amazing grace to see that his purposes for our children are fulfilled.  Why are we sitting there looking at ourselves?  No wonder we have fears about parenting.

"Come, let us go ... .  It may be that the LORD will work for us, for nothing can hinder the LORD from saving by many or by few" (1 Samuel 14:6).
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* "God, in His ordinary providence, makes use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them, at His pleasure." (5:3)

Do Not Be Deceived

When I was preparing the walls of our new house for painting, I discovered the oddest thing: the new off-white paint and even the reddish paint beneath were added over the blue painter's tape around a light switch.  Who paints over painter's tape?  It seemed like no big deal, especially with the tape buried under two layers of paint and concealed by the switch cover plate.  That is, until I tried scraping the wall and taking off the paint. Now that tape is making it a lot harder, and its removal will probably do a lot more damage.

Have you ever done something wrong and tried to cover it up with a lie?  Of course you have.  We all have.  This leads to one of two almost inevitable additional steps--or both: You add to that lie by fabricating an entire deception-filled ruse so that your original lie won't become uncovered, or you repeat that original lie over and over again with greater force and confidence.  Either way, the original truth becomes so buried under a mountain of lies that we cannot even find it anymore.  Eventually we get to the point where we think it would require more work and damage to unravel our wicked web than to maintain the facade.  We come to the point where we've lied so much that our minds become reprogrammed, and the lie becomes our new functional truth.  We become no longer able to tell the truth from the lie; we believe the lie we keep telling is the truth.

Rather than deceiving others, you now have deceived yourself.

The Father's Day Gospel

Father's Day provides an annual chance to awkwardly think about why you love your dad.  But what if you are the dad?  Do you start shifting in your chair, wondering if you're doing a good job?  What if you fall short?

Maybe you're a dad who worships the living God and reads the Bible.  What would you do if you came across these passages in the Old Testament?

"You shall have no other gods before me. ... You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments." (Deuteronomy 5:7, 9-10) 

"And the LORD said to me, '... Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and keep my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever!'" (Deuteronomy 5:29)

The Old Testament is rife with examples of poor fathers raising foolish children who don't fear the Lord, and of how indeed the sin of fathers consumes their whole families.  (Take, for example, the families of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram in Numbers 16, or the sons of Eli in 1 Samuel 2!)  God works in and through family relationships throughout the Bible, and for the most part, families rise and fall on the faith of the father who leads the home.

So when we as fathers read these passages about the God who is "the same yesterday and today and forever," how can we have good hope for our children after us?  How can we be sure we will raise a wise family who repent of their sins and embrace Jesus, who fear and trust God and call him Father?  How will we know we will see his blessing upon our households rather than curses?  After all, does not God threaten to return fathers' sins upon their children's heads?

Not in Temples Made by Man

This Sunday will be City Church of Richmond's last worship service at our current site before moving to another congregation's building (we rent the space).  This will be our second move.  (After our inception in 2006 we moved to our present location in February 2011.)  Honestly, this is bittersweet for me, just as the first move was.  And I'm really bummed because I left my camera at school and won't get any photos of our last worship service.

But as I was looking through the photos on our church website, it helped me remember that City Church is not a building; it is the "household of God" (Ephesians 2:19) and the "family of believers" (Galatians 6:10 NIV).  City Church is the Stacks, the Walkers, the Bourgeoises, the Bonkovskys, the Bryants, the Warshaws, the Blanchards, the Shays, the Crawfords.  It's Gabe and Ellen and Ruthie and Todd and Jessee--all the wonderful people who gather every week to hear the gospel of God's grace to us in Christ, respond in prayer and praise, and to gather around the table to eat dinner with Jesus.  The real church sits in the pews.
  
"The God who made the world and everything in it ... does not live in temples made by man," the apostle Paul reminds us (Acts 17:24).  "In him [Christ] you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit" (Ephesians 2:22).  It is the people of City Church that make the building special, not vice versa.  It is when we meet and because we meet in Jesus' name that the building becomes special, infused with the presence of Jesus by his Spirit.  "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them" (Matthew 18:20).  That fellowship with Jesus and one another in him is what brings us joy (see 1 John 1:1-4).  And this is not mere sentimentalism, but some kind of holy mystery that exists among those who belong to God.

Olivia and I are in the process of closing on a wonderful new house God has provided us in the Lakeside area of Richmond.  Just blocks away in "the white house" we rekindled our relationship in 2007 and began our married life in Richmond in 2009.  Yet as sad as it is to leave the white house or even our current apartment of 3-1/2 years, it's not the house that is important.  The address is simply the context for the memories--the questions and anxieties of our lives, the gladness of marital bliss, the challenges faced in our sin and the sweet joys of forgiveness, the birth of a child and watching him grow.  But we are that house, so that house will never die no matter where it moves.

Our new house!

P.S. - Daniel, Jennifer, and Caroline -- Our prayers are with you as you move to DC!  You'll be missed!

In the Flesh I Live by Faith

Ever since I became a follower of Jesus in college, Galatians 2:20-21 has been one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!  (NIV)

It's one thing to be excited about a Bible verse that captures the essence of the good news about Jesus when you're new in the faith.  But it's another thing to look back eleven years later and see more of this.  I guess that's one of the many things I love about the Word of God, too: it's so rich that it never ceases to be relevant.  As I learn more about life, it speaks deeper truths.

Paul wrote Galatians sometime between A.D. 48-52, at least 17 years after he met Jesus on the road to Damascus (see 1:18 and 2:1).  And what did he learn in those 17 years?  "It becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners" (2:17).  When I first began to love the gospel I think I had some idea I'd have grown a halo by now.  But instead I'm pretty sure the opposite has happened.

What I never saw before--and what I love now--is that Paul says that "the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith" (ESV).  For years I read "in the body" (NIV) and thought, Duh.  Of course he lives in the body.  He's a human.  He has a body.  I never understood why that was relevant for Paul.  But seeing "flesh" (Greek sarx) made sense of it: "flesh" is Paul's one-stop-shop for referring to the powers and postures of a fallen world and a sinful nature that tries to exercise every way of achieving hope and peace and life and joy except for submitting to God and trusting in him.  Our flesh represents our self-serving desires bent against God.

So why do I love this?  Because Paul just spent 17 years becoming an even bigger sinner, growing daily in his debt to God.  He knows he still lives "in the flesh."  He still has a "body of death" that perplexes him with his conflicting desires that rear their head without warning (see Romans 7).  And yet he can say that even in the midst of that--in fact, precisely because of that--he lives by faith in Jesus, God's Son.*  He sees he can't earn God's favor and love by his moral rectitude and just gives up, casting his worn-out soul on Jesus who loves him.

And if Paul can do that, so can I, because Jesus is not dead but alive.  In the middle of my perplexing, senseless sin that just grows every day, I can and must live by faith in Jesus.  I can know that Jesus "loved me and gave himself for me."  His death has not only fully paid for all my sins but also served as the culmination of a life of obedient sonship that became a fragrant offering to God (see Ephesians 5:2 and 1 Samuel 15:22).  And now, somehow, mysteriously, by faith his very life replaces mine before God--his obedience, his sonship, his place in the Father's love.

So I can go on living in the flesh, a stinkin' mess of sin and brokenness, knowing and trusting in Jesus.  The gospel is good news indeed.

_____________
*Paul's argument in Galatians 2:17ff. goes something like this: Because Paul and his company are sinners, people are accusing them of using Jesus' grace as an excuse for sin: When people have Jesus, they don't need to be law-keepers to earn God's favor, so Jesus is a "servant of sin."  But Paul denies this, saying rather that they were "found to be sinners," people who by very nature cannot keep the law wholly and so cannot earn a right standing with God through it.  Rather, Paul sees how the law shows him his own sin and then how Jesus fufilled it for him, so that he can say "through the law I died to the law."  That is, the law itself showed him the law was useless but that Christ was faithful in every way Paul himself had failed.

Gladly Being Spent

[Wow.  Blogging again.  At least this once, anyway.]

Today as Olivia and I were planning out our daily schedule, taking advantage of a day off work due to some snow and late-night ice, I realized that her plans to get an allergy shot and go shopping with a friend from work would ax my plans to go running around the golf course.  (Getting pegged in the head by a stray golf ball is not something I generally like to risk, so I rejoiced to think that no one would be out on the links today.)  After all, I had to stay home and take care of our year-old son Ephraim.

I was in a sort of funk for a while after that, which I now attribute to the selfishness of my own heart.  While Olivia was getting ready to leave, I commented on how I really find it hard sometimes to see children from God the Creator's point of view: that they are an unqualified blessing.  "And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth'" (Genesis 9:1; cf. 1:28).  "Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. ... Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!" (Psalm 127:3, 5; see also Psalm 128).  Let's face it: we have it easy.  Neither of us is a single parent, and we only have one child, who sleeps probably 16 hours a day.  And yet how often all I think about is how having a child limits my freedoms and ease of living.  I might be anti-abortion, yet I still functionally imbibe the zeitgeist that unlimited convenience trumps the challenges of raising children.

Then, as usual, God's Word exposed the thoughts and intentions of my heart and found them wanting and selfish.  Yay, I love that.  In 2 Corinthians 12:14-15 Paul sets forth a different attitude for parenting to his "children" at Corinth:

And I will not be a burden, for I seek not what is yours but you.  For children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.  I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you more, am I to be loved less?

As a father, my chief aim should be to love my son the way God loves us in Christ, pursuing us to win our hearts: "What I seek is ... you."  Am I seeking Ephraim's love, trust, and respect so that I can point him to the Father above who loves him far more than I ever will?  Or is my desire and prize to go running, explore the woods, sleep more, have a clean apartment, or watch Parks and Recreation?

And in that pursuit am I joyfully giving up everything I have and expending myself, just like Jesus did for me? "Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich" (2 Corinthians 8:9).  Jesus gladly "emptied himself" of all his freedoms and lived each day in a death to comfort, self-will, and independence in order to win back the hearts of God's straying children (Philippians 2:5-11).  Will I too do this for my son by sacrificing my plans, my free time, my convenience, and my sleep and spending these to serve and care for him?

Thankfully, all of this came to me while Ephraim was taking a nap.  When he awoke, God gave me so much happiness as I picked him up, fed him, changed his stinky diaper, and danced with him to Caedmon's Call's 40 Acres album.  Thanks, Lord, for my little boy, and every moment with him.  He's growing up so quickly, and these days will soon be only photos and memories.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Why is it that at times we may confess our sins to God in personal prayer, and yet feel no relief of forgiveness?  Doesn't Jesus teach us that "your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you" (Matthew 6:4 NIV)?  Isn't David's inspired psalm true when he attests, "I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,' and you forgave the iniquity of my sin" (Psalm 32:5)?  Why then does our sin still feel like a burden on our shoulders, sapping our strength as the midsummer heat?  And why do we end up falling back into those same sins instead of experiencing a greater measure of victory over them?  (Surely I am not alone in having experienced this.)

It may well be that we're looking for Jesus in the wrong places.

When Saul was on the road to Damascus to persecute early disciples of Jesus, Jesus met him in a blinding vision.  "Saul, Saul," he said, "why are you persecuting me?" (Acts 9:4).  Wait a second.  Saul was causing trouble for Christians, not for the Christ, right?

But Jesus said Saul was persecuting him.

This is because by his Holy Spirit, Jesus lives inside his people and is organically tied to them, so that Jesus can say, "As you did it to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40).  The saints, Jesus' faithful followers, are in fact where we encounter Christ this side of heaven.  We speak his voice, with his words (see Romans 10:14 NASB; 1 Peter 4:10-11).  He has put into the mouths of his people the Word of the gospel, the proclamation of forgiveness.  He has given us power to release people from their sin or to exclude the unrepentant from fellowship with him.  Jesus said to his disciples after his resurrection,

"Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld."  (John 20:21-23)

Think about that.  Jesus commissioned his disciples with the power to proclaim or withhold his own words of forgiveness (see also Matthew 16:19).  Could it be that in our silent, private confessional times we do not break through to relief because we're not swallowing our pride enough to go to a brother or sister with our sins?  It's as if Jesus is saying, "I was standing there, ready to assure you of my love and grace, of the wonders of my cross, with arms open wide--if you would but come to me!  I was there, ready to be found by you in the arms and words of your brother, but you would not go to me there.  As you did not do to the least of these my brothers, so you did not do it to me."

Looks Can Be Deceiving

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.  So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." - Jesus (Matthew 23:27-28)

Christ and Our Callings, Part 3

As I think about my calling in life, I have to grapple with two things.  First, who's doing the calling?  Who is the one calling me?  It's not myself.  Callings cannot come from within.  (But how often we live as though they did!  We hark to Socrates's cry: "Know thyself!")  It is God who is calling me to belong to him and to live under his reign--the reign of his Son Jesus--in every breath.

But I also wrestle with the order or priority of my callings, of the roles and responsibilities I've been given.  Even if not chronologically derived, my foremost commitment is to my wife as her husband.  I've entered into a covenant with her to hold fast to her until death parts us.  Beyond that, I'm now a father.  Those are my primary callings.  Only after that am I a science teacher/coach/whatever.  I suppose a good glue holding all those other callings together is the call to be part of Christ's body (Romans 1:6-7).  Which just gets me back to the first calling in the first place.  (See "Christ and Our Callings, Part 1.")

In Philippians 3:12-16, Paul sets up a paradox that surrounds the Christian life.

¹² Not that I have already obtained this [becoming like Christ, vv. 10-11] or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ¹³ Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵ Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.¹⁶ Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

Paul somehow rests content in all that Christ is for him and all who is in Christ's hands.  "Christ Jesus has made me his own."  Because his righteousness is that of Jesus and comes through faith, not his perfection in good deeds or service (v. 9), he knows his life and identity are secure.  But at the same time, he knows Christ has grasped him for the sake of "the upward call of God."  As a result he presses upward, never resting on his laurels or living out of his past, but always pushing to enjoy and love and serve Jesus more and more.  

Still, Paul closes with an urge to "hold true to what we have attained."  That is, while we should strive to grow in our knowledge and service and ever press on in the Christian life, we should also make sure we're living faithfully within the callings and circumstances and knowledge we have at the present.

Christ and Our Callings, Part 2

Atop psychologist Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs sits "self-actualization."  This is said to be the greatest need of all humans.  Understood rightly, Maslow said self-actualization is really a person who gains increasing awareness of himself, the world, and his place in it; lives honestly and transparently; and has a sense of mission, duty, and responsibility to other humans.  Through this, a person lives beyond himself and finds a place of transcendence in the world.

I would argue that in our souls, deep within, all people know we have fallen from something great.  We suffer as much from original glory as we do from original sin.*  Not that our original, God-given glory was bad.  But sin has caused us to shrink away from God, others, nature--even our true selves--into the hollow recesses of our own deceitful self-honor and self-wisdom.  We climbed upon a tiny throne but away from everything else weighty and good.

The problem is, we often try to discover who we are or fix our resulting sense of loneliness and angst by taking on roles in life that we think will restore to us a sense of fulfillment and transcendence.  How easily I can do this with a job!  If only I got some recognition for my awesome "21st century skills"-based lessons.  If only someone thanked me for my high SOL pass rates.  If only Libbey would let me teach my new stoichiometry methods at the district inservice.  If only I could teach AP Biology and get some cred.  If only I could do more ecology field trips and get kids involved in nature's web hands-on.  If only the cross country team would win the district title.  Of course, this works the same way in "sanctified" callings within the church.  If only I could use my gifts to teach theology full-time.  If only I could read that John Stott book and learn more about the cross of Christ.  If only I could grow more competent in counseling others.  If only I could teach the church in [enter largely Muslim nation here].

But it's not a job or any supposed "calling" that is meant to fulfill our souls and give us real life; Jesus said we can find that only in knowing him.  "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10).  "And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3).  What John calls "eternal life"--life without limits, in satisfying wholeness--is nothing other than coming to God through Jesus and being satisfied in him.

That's why Paul labored and strove at great cost to himself, not to discover through his jobs and callings more about himself or to "find himself," but to find and discover Jesus his Lord.

Christ and Our Callings, Part 1

I've invested ten of the past twelve years of my life into being a high school science teacher (five years of schooling plus five years of service).  In many ways, it's been wonderful.  Let's face it: how many people get to choose a career path, study for it, and then actually find continual employment in that exact role?  I have a stable job at a top-notch, innovative public high school, my students earn pretty good scores on the state benchmark tests, and I get to coach cross country as well.  On top of that, the pay is decent enough, the benefits are great, and I have a continuing contract.  Still, I often find myself looking out the window with a restless spirit, wondering what lies beyond being a science teacher.

For years now I've had a vision of serving the church in a country where sound theological education is needed, either where the church is small, dead, or has strayed from orthodoxy (e.g., Germany, France, Czech Republic), or in a nation where the evangelical church is young and persecuted (e.g., Turkey, North Africa).  I've never thought of this as a necessarily "higher" calling, but being able to devote myself to teaching God's Word just seems awesome.  After all, I already love studying the Bible and getting chances in the local church to lead studies and teaching.

But when I look at my passions and gifts and wonder about my "calling" in life, I find myself face-to-face with the question, "Who am I?"  It's really a question that shapes all our pursuits in life.

God's answer to the question of my calling is the same answer he gives to my identity: I am "called to belong to Jesus Christ" and I am among those "in Rome loved by God and called to be saints" (Romans 1:6, 7).  Now of course I'm not in Rome proper, but I have a city, a concrete location and context in which to live my life as a saint, that is, a justified sinner possessed by Jesus Christ.  It is this identity as one belonging to Jesus that shapes and defines the "calling" of all Christians.

The Process Is the Point

When I was raising support in 2005 to go to Turkey, the story of Jesus walking on water (Mark 6:45-52) took on new light.  And again I'm at a time in my life when I'm faced with some new opportunities that have set me out "rowing to Galilee."

⁴⁵  Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. ⁴⁶ And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray. ⁴⁷ And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. ⁴⁸ And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, ⁴⁹ but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, ⁵⁰ for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart; it is I.  Do not be afraid.” ⁵¹ And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, ⁵² for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.  ⁵³  When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. 

Jesus had told the disciples to go to Bethsaida, where they were to continue their ministry to the poor and afflicted, proclaiming the kingdom of God.  So when the disciples got into the boat, I'm sure they thought that their rowing was all about getting to Bethsaida and what they were going to do there.  How many would Jesus heal?  What new mysteries would he unfold?  But that wasn't even the point.  It wasn't about Bethsaida.