Changed By Glory

“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another….” Romans 12:9-10a
In the past I assumed that the two sentences in verse nine were two separate trains of thought, both necessary but not directly connected. Today as I was reading this I noticed how God ordained that the statement “abhor what is evil and hold fast to what is good” falls between two statements about love. This strikes a chord with something that is biblical but has been forgotten, that is that love should be “black and white” in nature. Those that would abhor evil would often be accused of being unloving while it is actually impossible to be full of true love without abhorring evil. To be relative in a world steeped in sin isn’t merciful acceptance or loving , it is cruel and unloving. It is because we have not loved through the lens of abhorring evil and clinging to good that so much that was once considered evil is no longer considered evil in the church.
Love! But please let our love be genuine. May God soften our hearts and toughen our skin so that we may love not as the world loves but love in a way that abhors evil and clings to good.

“If the Lord of host had not left us offspring we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.” Romans 9:29
Sold under the curse of sin mankind was doomed from the moment that Adam transgressed. In him there remained no ability to walk uprightly before God on his own agency. “Their foolish hearts were darkened”. Such that if God had not set aside an offspring for himself from among mankind all would have remained doomed, deceived, and darkened. The default of mankind since the fall is to rebel against God and all would unless God would choose to rescue some to display the glory of his grace and the immensity of his mercy. If God had not done this we would be “like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.” Unless God had left us an offspring we would have all headed to destruction and eternal ruin, a display to the universe of the infinite justice of God. In choosing an offspring from among fallen man God did not pervert his justice but he sent Christ “who came in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh”. The curse of Adam became his on the cross in order that God could justly gather in his remnant offspring. We (the elect offspring) were vessels prepared beforehand for glory, but hostage to our deadly curse of sin and the wrath that was stored up against us, thus God ransomed us with the blood of Jesus.
In other words election is God’s vehicle to gather in his children from the corners of the earth. Apart from this wonderful grace of God we would all justly be destroyed. It is a great mystery as to who God has “given the right to become children of God” but it is one that we rejoice in. It is impossible for man to justify himself or even choose a sort of assent to a creed that some might call faith for so deep is our depravity. We would be without hope as the race of mankind if God did not adopt from among us an offspring. In this mystery the mercy and severity of God are made clear.

~Resolved~

Reflections on the Life & Writings of Jonathan Edwards

Intentional Education

   Education is an ongoing part of our lives whether we want it to be or not. Each day we learn new things and implement them into our lives. Learning does not stop after we graduate from High School or College and so the things I learned from examining Edward’s early years in academia apply just as much to me as they do to my children, though I must admit that I found myself challenged as I consider the schooling process of my young children.  Edwards is regarded as one of the most intelligent people in the history of Christendom. His heady writings and ability for deep analyses give evidence of that. It is no accident that he was this way as we consider the foundation that was laid in his formative years. As this is not a biographical sketch of Edwards but merely my thoughts, I will avoid veering off into a history lesson.

  The observations here are really just a focused extension of the thoughts in the earlier post. A home that is rooted in the realities of life and objective truth is one that considers the purposes for the things that we pursue and effects the reasons and approaches that we take in our life choices. We could zoom out and see how living a life rooted in reality and objective truth impacts so many areas of our life, but for now I would like to observe how it shapes our approach to education.

   There is a valuable paradigm which begins with the question “Why do I seek to educate myself or my children?” There are many legitimate reasons why, but as believers our chief end should be to glorify God and reflect the radiance of Christ. With that as our focus we should be moved to approach education with a certain intentionality. If we are seeing life in light of reality and the concrete truth of the scriptures, then we know that all that we do here is in preparation for eternity, which we have already established should be a solid reality in our lives. I do not see in this as an argument to bury ourselves in the Greek lexicon and systematic theology only, for the truth is that we must work, live, and provide for our own. However, the way we approach that preparation is moved if we realize that our eternal destiny is just as much a reality as working a nine-to-five job. If we prepare for life here in a separate category as preparing for life there then we will be tend to take a carnal, temporal, and short-sighted approach to education.

   The content of our education will be dictated by the goals and objectives we set and will be absorbed based on the paradigm through which that content is delivered. Our goals should be rooted in Biblical reality and content/method chosen that best agrees with those goals.

   The problem that arises from considering this in such a simplified manner is that we must not assume that anyone was ever saved because they had a superior education, even one anchored in Biblical truth. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith in Christ alone, made possible by the calling of God alone. Giving our children an education focused on eternity does not give them an advantage in that they are more “save-able” than others. If they are saved it will be totally on the basis of sovereign mercy by the provision of Christ’s atoning work on the cross.

   So why bother? Why not just let them go to fill their minds with all sorts of worldly knowledge and ambition, trusting that if they are numbered among the elect they will be saved and they will fulfill the good works they were created to do in Christ?

   This would seem to be a reasonable question, but such thinking is immensely flawed. Here are a couple of reasons why: (1) “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ”. Every person that was ever saved, as a result of the sovereign calling of God, was saved when they heard the preaching of the Gospel and believed. It should be our desire that our children would be drenched in the Gospel. Many are saved because they grew up in a Gospel-centered home that God sovereignly placed them in. Do not make the arrogant mistake of turning the doctrine of election on its head, removing the Biblical role of man and the will from the equation. Instead, praise God that he has placed children and students in your life, thus allowing you to be an agent in his great work of salvation. Educate them with eternity in mind. Fill their minds with spiritual knowledge having confidence from scripture that if they will only believe they will be saved. (2) Edwards began learning Latin at age seven and Greek/Hebrew at twelve. He knew the Bible inside and out as a result of his education, yet it would appear that he was not actually converted until late in his teen years. All of his knowledge to this point that had been God-ward focuses was not in vain. At the point of being saved it became useful, a glorious tool-kit of knowledge to be used for the glory of God. All education should be focused on biblical truth and reality for the purpose of when that truth meets a heart transformed by the Gospel it becomes a powerful weapon against Satan and a glorious bulwark against worldliness. This is why I do catechism with my daughter though she is only three and has little realization of what she is even saying. One day by the grace of God those truths in her head will spring to life and provide her with a rock-solid foundation to face life and eternity. Giving our children an intentional education rooted in biblical reality is a huge advantage to them and to the kingdom of God.

   It should be my goal to create an atmosphere of learning that is intentional and serious. Intentional with Biblical goals and truths and serious because life here is short and eternity is the epitome of reality that we want ourselves and our children to be anchored in.

A Home Anchored In Reality

Anytime we seek to understand the life of a person it is helpful to explore the seeds that were sown in their youth and what type of environment those seeds took root in. Rather than be biographical it is my desire to simply expound upon factors in the life of Edwards that I find interesting, timeless, and helpful not only for my own life but also for the lives of my wife and children as I desire to provide for them an environment where the seeds of the Gospel can have deep roots and distractions are few.

As I looked at the colonial, puritan home of Edward’s childhood, the first thing that struck me was that it was a home anchored in realities, namely harsh realities. In a time when the mortality rate was high and life expectancy was short it was hard to escape the specter of death from which we so easily and eagerly insulate ourselves in modern, western society. Now there is nothing new under the sun and we would be fools not to observe that even in the 18^th century there was no shortage of vanity or exhibitions of futility. When we observe the excesses of European aristocracy and even the largesse of the American upper crust, we see that even with the grim reaper near at hand man has sought to escape the reality of the inevitable through “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the boastful pride of life”. So though it may have been hard for young Edwards to ignore the grim realities of life at that stage in history, it was still possible. The fact that he seems to have faced those realities with a certain matter-of-fact calm I believe can  be found partly in the fact that the puritan home he was raised in was anchored in and elevated the value of objective truth, God’s truth revealed in the Holy Scriptures.

The practical result of creating an environment, home or church, where objective truth is central is that there is little room for self-deceptive insulations from reality and wasting of thought, energy, and time investing in fantasy. The desire to depart from reality and withdraw into the safety of our own illusions is a form of idolatry. When we do not create a life, a reality based in objective truth, we are creating something that we believe is better deserving of our affection and attention than God. Death, for example, is one of the harshest realities that we face and we try our best not to think about it or to insulate ourselves from it, rather than facing it in light of the objective truth of God’s word. As believers a view of death that is  bold and based in truth should first of all replace fear with joy and anticipation of glory and secondly motivate us to mission as we consider the true end of Christ-rejecting mankind.

A life rooted not in fantasy but in objective truth is a life unwasted. It is a truly happy life and one that frees us to use the greater capacity of our mind and emotions for the glory of God. It is time that we stop daydreaming and we begin meditating on God’s word. We should consider our last breath, only taking consolation in the Gospel and examining in light of truth if we are in Christ. As parents we can do our children a great service by feeding the young minds of our children with glorious reality. They will not be morose, but truly joyful in time as the Gospel takes root. We should take care what movies they watch, what books they read, lest we find that they go into their adult lives without a firm grip on the realities in life viewed through the glass of God’s absolute, objective truth.

I am challenged to examine my own life. I am shocked with the amount of time that is spent in petty fantasies and imaginations and the urges I feel to feed that desire for non-reality. May God grant us the grace to be joyfully sober, rooted in God’s truth. That is true reality and is above and beyond the bounds of our feeble, vain imaginations

II Corinthians 1:1

“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God , and Timothy our brother. To the church of God that is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia”

  In his second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul begins by declaring by what authority he writes to the “church of God which is at Corinth”.

   It would be good for us, in understanding what exactly Paul is asserting here to exam two parts of this passage, namely the characteristics of who he claims to be, which are:

1. “An Apostle of Christ Jesus”
2. “…By the will of God”

An Apostle of Christ Jesus

In nine of the thirteen books that we know Paul wrote (with the possibility of Hebrews being a fourteenth) he introduces himself in a variation of this greeting, affirming himself to be “an Apostle of Jesus Christ”. I am not a Greek scholar, but if I trust what I am told this noun  “Apostle” comes from the Greek verb apostello, which means “to send out”, making an Apostle a “sent one”.

  Even though Paul had not been numbered among the original twelve that had walked with Christ, he had received a personal call on the road to Damascus from the risen Christ himself (Acts 9:3-16). Paul saw this event as his commissioning, as he states in the defense of his apostleship in I Corinthians 9:1 “…Am I not an Apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”

   It is easy to ask the question “Why would Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit to write each word, choose to open nine of his letters with this claim? Why here to the Corinthian church, whom he had already written in defense of his apostleship (I Cor. 9)? The answer lies in the centrality of Christ in his claim of apostleship. I believe Paul wanted to be clear that he was not just any “new kid on the block” and that the words he wrote were not on the basis of his own authority, but the authority of Christ. Paul was not an apostle of the church in Jerusalem or Antioch, he was not an apostle of his own learned philosophy. He was an apostle of the one who had died for these Saints in Corinth, an apostle of the resurrected God-man, an apostle of Christ Jesus. Paul was not speaking on his own authority and he desired that from the beginning his audience would know that, even at the risk of being redundant. Finally, Paul was not an apostle by his own appointment or the appointment of mere men. He was “an  Apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God”.

…by the will of God.

  It is one thing to say that you have been sent out by someone. If I go to the store and say to the clerk, “I have been sent to buy diapers by the will of my wife”, it would sound humorous and perhaps in the culture I currently live make me appear weak. Let’s say on a higher level, that I walk down to the park and see a man sitting on a bench and I walk up to him and say, “I have been sent as a messenger of Christ”, that ups the ante a bit. What if I then have the audacity to tack onto that, “I have been sent as a messenger of Christ, by the will of God”, I might get a different response. The man on the bench may think I am just that much more crazy, but it may be intriguing. It is a powerful assertion to the say that you are appointed by the will of God. I myself feel a little uncomfortable when people go around saying that they are doing this or that because it is the will of God, as if they had received special, extra-biblical revelation.  Paul was not content to just make the general statement that he is a sent one, but goes on with the bold assertion that it was the will of God. That confidence was not just rooted in his Damascus road experience, in Galatians 1:15-16 in the midst of the account of his calling he says “…he (God) who had set me apart before I was born and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me….”  Paul’s understanding of his calling went beyond the words of the risen Christ to Saul, the enemy of the church, the roots of his calling went deep into his understanding of the sovereignty of God. Paul new his Bible, what we call the “Old Testament” well, so when he heard the voice of Christ, declaring that he was God’s chosen instrument to the Gentiles, his scripture saturated mind must have gone directly to the words of another chosen mouth-piece, Isaiah, when he declared “The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name” Isaiah 49:1

   Paul wished to make it abundantly clear to the church in Corinth that he was not writing to promote his own agenda and he starts by making a bold assertion, that he was sent out by Jesus Christ according to the will of a sovereign God determined before he was even born. It may be asked how he could substantiate such a bold claim and he addresses this issue and spends much time presenting fruit of his apostleship later in the letter, but that is for another day.

   Paul, who admonished against false-teachers (i.e.Galatians 1:9), I am sure wished that his readers would indeed test his apostleship and make certain that his teaching and conduct were consistent with that of an Apostle of Christ. His introduction serves to clarify on what basis and authority he spoke, in order that his teaching would be authoritative and his conduct be glorifying to God and not to himself. He wished that we would be able to go into the letter with the knowledge that these words are not merely good ideas or vain philosophies, but words inspired by God and spoken through his chosen instrument, commissioned by Christ.

  Holding dear to the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture, we now look to these words in II Corinthians, inspired by the Holy Spirit through a Christ appointed apostle and we should test all teaching by them. May we only give ear to teachers who root their authority not in themselves, but in Christ and his word, teachers that can make a clear substantiated claim that they in fact are striving to teach on that authority and not their own.

Doctrine should never be understood from our experiences but we should always understand our experiences through sound doctrine. -or- The way we understand our life and all it contains should be on the foundation of sound doctrine. We err when we draw conclusions about the scripture from what we have felt, needed or experienced. Instead we discern the truth about what we feel, need and experience through the truth of scripture.

As I was walking to language school this morning and thinking over my life, the recent words of a friend and some experiences I have had I came to a conclusion that I hope to further explore. That is that whether a person is in error by minimizing the doctrine of holiness and sanctification on one hand or in error by minimizing the fullness and completeness of Justification by faith alone apart from works on the other hand, they basically stray on the same basic issue, having to do with whether Salvation is mostly or primarily man-centered or God-centered. If your basic understanding of God’s eternal purpose in salvation is to make much of man you will err in either of these camps. On the one hand you will believe that God’s aim in loving you and saving you is to make much of you, primarily, and to give you happiness and eternal life in heaven or perhaps even many earthly pleasures in this life. The other ditch, stemming from the same problem tends toward the belief that I must work and fight sin in order to make myself pleasing to God, thus worthy of obtaining eternal life. The fear of turning the grace of God into licentiousness will often drive a person that errs in this way to not trust God’s grace at all in reality, but to carry the burden of making themselves holy on their own, though perhaps admittedly “with God’s help” (I speak from experience).
Both are man centered views, on one hand God is condescending and benevolent, at work to show mankind their worth through abounding grace without accountability and on the other hand by requiring man to prove his worth and to attain to a certain standard, working to show himself deserving of God’s mercy.
I would argue that both are symptoms of the same poison. A Gospel that does not hold up a holy, just, sovereign God who alone can save, who alone can justify, sanctify and preserve to glory those whom He has chosen by His mercy according to the glorious council of His sovereign plan for the glory of His name. A gospel that exalts this God who saves men from all tribes and nations for His glory and the praise of His glorious grace. A God who with such mercy saves by grace through faith alone freely and doesn’t stop there but works to sanctify that person day after day more into His likeness so that He may have a holy people, called out from corruption for His glory! How great is THE Gospel and Oh! How great is the God of the Gospel!