It's just a "flesh" wound...

     "I'm getting better!"  I write this as I sit at home with strep throat... 3/4 of my family has been stricken with this dreadful affliction (to emphasize the melodramatic).  So we proceed with a healthy (pun intended) sense of comedic irony...
     I've noticed I have a tendency, both in living and writing, to be pessimistic and negative (or as I put it, realistic and rational!);  so it is my pleasure in our jaunt through 2 Corinthians to zoom in on a passage that holds great encouragement for us in the suffering this life holds for us, both unintentional (general pain common to all people) and intentional (persecution for the cause of Christ):

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.  For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,  as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.  (2 Cor 4:16-18)

     There are so many themes in these few verses to discuss... the transience of mortality, the proper Christian perspective on pain, the superreality of the spiritual, and what we dealt with last time, the selectivity of divinely-empowered perception.  We'll touch on all these as we stroll along...
     I love it when the biblical authors provide a unpolitically-correct "cup-check";  other great examples would include 1 Cor 16:13 and Heb 12:4.  And to be sure, these are gender-neutral:  men have no monopoly being commanded to or provided with spiritual toughness, as opposed to the insensitive, uncommunicative "manliness" that's often marketed in our culture.  So the point Paul intends is to combat the natural despair we experience when things are not precisely as we would wish them;  I was lamenting my own unconscious wimpyness when ill with a friend recently, and this has given me a new look at how to endure physical weakness to succeed in glorifying God through my words and deeds (especially helpful today!).  So all that to say:  Man Up!

"Death cannot stop true love..."

     Next, Paul forces us to admit the limitations that the Fall have introduced into the perfection God created;  namely, we die.  The moment we're born, our bodies begin to "waste away", and no amount of plastic surgery, Rogaine, or even Viagra can restore vitality to our moth-eaten corpses.  This adds new richness to the passages that describe us as spiritually dead (Rom 5:6, Eph 2:1, 5, etc.):  our bodies just take a while to catch up to the spiritual necrosis we experience at birth.  Or to put it another way, birth cannot stop true death.... "all it can do is delay it for a while".  God's word to Adam and Eve ("...you shall die") was true in every sense.
     But the breakdown of our bodies, and by extension every other trial, affliction and discomfort, is no excuse to descend into the doldrums;  on the contrary, the loss of everything our world prizes (youth, strength, energy, and most of all, life!) is merely a tool used by God to fix our attention on what God prizes:  an immeasurably rich, potent measure of the glory that belongs to Him!  If we weigh the pain possible here and now, even in Paul's life which was far beyond what 99.9% of us will experience, it simply doesn't compare to what will be ours in Christ for all eternity. Only by focusing on what's to come can we enjoy it now.

Yes, the stove is hot!  Once is enough...

     This reality is not apparent to everyone;  and a good thing too... if we focused on eternity, it would render all infomercials worthless!  So of course, just as no unbeliever would joyfully anticipate God's glory (or His judgment), the perception necessary to enjoy God's glory is restricted to the saints.  But equally obvious is the fact that Christians are not fixated on God every moment of their lives... they would be very different if we were.  This must be remedied, and in God's timely sanctification in each individual Christian, it will be.  Our text is just one of the many means used to change us into forward-looking, content folks... another is the actual experience of suffering.  As we wrestle with the seeming harshness of God's providence, we will be driven to the sufficiency of His grace and comfort.  If we come to this understanding sooner rather than later, further pain might not be necessary!

P.S.  During the course of writing, the nurse called and notified us we don't have strep in the technical sense, but just a nasty flu.  I feel better already.

Photo courtesy of tychay and eric pas d'accent

A Dim View...

"But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.... And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.  In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." (2 Cor 3:14, 4:3-4)

Granite countertops look great, but granite minds?

    How important is the Bible?  Even more to the point of our text, how important is the Old Testament?  Tremendously vital... just ask any practicing Jew, Mormon, Jehovah's Witness or Muslim.  The narratives of the O.T. form the historical foundation for all of these faiths;  the moral content is believed to be synonymous and provides a shared code and bond;  the religious authenticity and authority of these 39 books is revered and held to be secondary only to these religions' primary documents (except Judaism, in which it's primary).  Yet all of these faiths are rightly denounced in principle by the teaching of our premier expert on the O.T., Jesus Christ... where do they go wrong?

     If we go to a rabbi, ward elder or imam and ask "Is stealing wrong?" or "Can I cheat on my wife?", we know what the answer will be:  one in accord with the teaching of the O.T.  "Should I be generous with the poor?" and "Can I abandon my children?" (an especially tempting option sometimes!) will also elicit similar responses lining up with biblical morality.  So where's the sticking point? 

"Who do you say that Jesus is?" 

     That bomb will cause our guinea pig clergy to explode into various denials of biblical orthodoxy:  he's an angel, he's a human prophet (secondary to Muhammed), he's a good man who became a god... and when you look at every manmade religion, the same theme prevails:  a superficial similarity on the Golden Rule and other general morality, but irreconcilable dispute over the Person and Work of Jesus Christ.  What's up with that?

     I believe the answer is found in the verses above, and in a firm grasp of what theologians call general and specific revelation;  so last things first:  all people in all times and in all places have been and will continue to be blessed by God with a dim, but inescapable, awareness that they are not alone.  Humanity inevitably clings to the hunch that we've been created, and that our Creator is still hanging around;  we suspect that since we've been created, we are accountable to the One who formed us, and most convictingly, we think He's not exactly happy with us.  Hence the word "general":  God gives every person a conscience with an impression of His Law upon it, and we are "accused or even excused" (Rom 2:15).  On the other side and, in the sense of God's redemption, completing the circle, is specific revelation:  relatively few people are given the spiritual sensory apparatus ("ears to hear" and "eyes to see") to perceive more than this... namely that God has spoken to mankind, most clearly through His Son, and it is the content of this revelation, recorded in the Bible, that dictates ultimate reality and conveys the graciousness of God in the potential of reconciliation with Him in Jesus Christ.  The necessary result of this vision (through regeneration) is an acceptance of and reliance upon the work and Person of Christ and a receipt of the merit of His obedience.

At God's command...

      So what do our texts say about this?  That "their minds were hardened" ("they" meaning the nation of Israel as a whole specifically in chap. 3, but expanded to all "unbelievers" in chap. 4).  By whom?  "The god of this age"...  Wow, that's terrible!  God wanted to save these folks, but Satan was just too quick for Him!  He snuck in and did his mind-hardening hocus-pocus and now there's no hope!  Wait a sec... that's not right!  No one frustrates God's purposes or plans, and "none can stay his hand or say to him, 'What have you done?' " (Dan 4:35).  And above all, "Satan...can do nothing without God's will and consent." (Calvin's Institutes I.xiv.17)  I love when Satan does his worst to Jesus, and then frantically flees at 2 little words:  "Be gone!" (Matt 4:10)  Likely the best example of God concealing His truth from the unbelieving is Christ and His parables:  spoken in simile and metaphor for the express purpose of withholding spiritual insight (Matt 13:13-15).  It is entirely within the realm of God's sovereignty when He ordains that the wicked be confirmed in unbelief.  The terms "double predestination" and "reprobation" are worthy of study, but this post is running a bit long already... I think the best place to close it off for now is where we began:  in and of ourselves, we have no apprehension of, or appetite for, God's truth.  Even repeated, continual exposure to Scripture is insufficient to open our eyes (Jn 5:39).  God must personally intercede with us to enlighten and rescue us.  May this reality encourage and direct your hopes and evangelism.

 Photos courtesy of granite-charlotte and danny.hammontree

Jesus loves the little children...

Ps 58:3 in action...

   I've got an exciting/terrifying experience to share with you... many, if not most of you have children and can relate to the incessant, repetitive lessons that parents must administer to their offspring.  But there are always the new expressions of depravity that surprise you... the first time they steal, lie, or violently assault their siblings/playmates.  Yesterday, my daughter blasphemed for the first time;  she was playing by herself, got exasperated and blurted out the first name of the second Person of the Trinity!  I know she has heard Jesus's name used sinfully before, so I guess it was only a matter of time... but it still took me offguard momentarily.  I said her name sharply to get her attention and then put her on my lap to explain the situation:

"Tabitha, what's the third commandment?"

"You shall not use God`s name in vain." (if I start her off, she can finish it!)

"Who is Jesus?"

"Jesus is God." (she knows that one pretty well!)

"So you just broke the third commandment... You used God`s name in vain."

"..."

"How did you say Jesus's name? How was your attitude?"

"Mad..."

     I could see the wheels turning, and she's always been sensitive (she`ll cry if you look at her funny!), so I wasn't shocked to see the floodgates burst open.  I let her mourn for a second, then explained to her I wouldn't spank her this time.  She nodded, but continued whimpering and went to her room.  After a couple minutes, I heard her start up again, and headed upstairs to console her.  Nearing the top, I heard what I certainly didn't expect to hear for a couple years, and feared I would never hear:

"What have I done?!?"

     My mind raced... was my little 4 year old actually beginning to understand the implications of sin?  I asked her if she meant what she said downstairs, and she nodded.  I told her that Daddy has broken God's commandments, and if she understood what that meant.

"Remember Adam and Eve?"

"Yeah, they disobeyed God."

"And what happened to them?" 

"They died."

     I explained that everyone who has disobeyed God's commandments deserves to die, but God loved us so much that He sent His Son to die for us, so that we could be forgiven.
     I know my daughter is too young to understand propitiation and substitutionary atonement;  I might be going out on a limb, but I would say she's too young to comprehend most of what the gospel contains and requires.  But she does understand guilt... please pray for her, as I do:  pray that as she grows, God would be merciful to replace her heart of stone with a heart of flesh, and that she would repent.

P.S.  This is my first post entirely on Kindle;  please forgive any grammatical errors!

A Superior Contract

     So in this series (2 Cor 3:6), we‘ve explored what it means to be a minister, and the context of the New Covenant (i.e. the Old Covenant)... it‘s finally time to define what‘s so new about it! What‘s so special and unique that Jesus instituted a timeless ordinance (at least until He comes again!) to remember how it was “the New Covenant in His blood“?

     Now that we‘ve been introduced to its predecessor, we can truly appreciate what‘s so great about our relation to God through Christ; there are 2 or 3 other passages that prophesy and sum up the New Covenant, but my favorite is Ezk 36:22-28:

"Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”

     Several wondrous lessons can be drawn out of this passage, but I think we can briefly highlight 2 contrastive characteristics between the Old and the New, and 1 contiguous: the power behind the covenant, the direction of that power, and the purpose of the covenant.

God's got a big stick...

     One tiny word dominates the narrative of the Old Covenant: “ if ". What sounds so appealing to modern ears, namely the opportunity and freedom to choose one‘s course, is in reality the death knell of all mankind. The subtext underneath all the blessings promised is “If you obey, you'll be blessed...but you CAN NOT and WILL NOT obey!“ This is painfully proved over and over and over again in the narrative of the O.T.; starting the moment Moses comes down from the mountain, the moment Joshua (or any succeeding godly judge) dies, the moment Solomon starts marrying pagan foreigners... it makes you want to cry over the blindness and stupidity of these people, if the same idiocy was not firmly entrenched in us. We remember Jesus's words of law to the Pharisees: “yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life" (Jn 5:40) and his lament over all Jerusalem (and the nation by extension) "...How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!" (Mt 23:37)  In ourselves, even under a good, right and fair law, there is no hope of blessing.

     So what's a just yet merciful God to do?  How can He be "just and the justifier"?  As an admittedly weak illustration, my wife is OCD about organization;  every chore must carried out and completed according to her exact specifications!  She sometimes wants help, but she is driven crazy by the "unauthorized" methods of other members of the household.  So she is trapped by the maxim:  "If you want something done right, do it yourself!"  God will not accept a hasty, haphazard, sloppy justification;  so He does it all Himself.  You may have noticed the repeated emphasis in the Ezk passage...  the Law of Moses says to us "if you obey... if you keep My statutes... if you do not turn to the right or to the left".  In the New Covenant, God replies "I will..." (9 times!).  Since He requires perfection, and we are wholly corrupt, only God can accomplish and provide the flawless obedience and righteousness we so desperately need.  And this is exactly what He has done in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

"You want me to do what?"

     Then there's the direction of influence upon us...  God's instruction to us in the Law is holy and good, but it always slams into this limitation:  it is external pressure.  The Law's effectiveness in producing holiness is utterly shut down by our stubborn unwillingness to follow/obey.  Just as the external yank on the reins you can give to a donkey, you can brutally pull us around by the threat of pain, but no one can make such a recalcitrant beast submissive and helpful.  Moses laments "O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!" (Deut 5:29)  And Christ's analogy of the sheep and the goats:  those animals are different in their innermost sheepness and goatness, and so behave in different, identifiable patterns.  So since external influence will not manufacture holiness, in the New Covenant God changes our internal makeup:  He gives us a new heart and spirit at regeneration, and we are "born again".  Stupid rocklike stubbornness is replaced by a sensitivity to the Person, character and will of God.  The pressure of God's own Spirit is at work, as He begins to manifest Himself in new patterns and new ways of thinking, inevitably leading to new behaviors.  It is God who works in us both to desire and to do His good pleasure.
     But are the Old and New Covenants totally dissimilar?   No, that last verse in Ezekiel gives us a valuable link to what God had revealed to His people centuries before, and what He desires for all of His people throughout the ages:  "you shall be my people, and I will be your God."  Both in the Law (Ex 6:7, Lev 26:12, Jer 7:23) and in Christ (2 Cor 6:16-18, Heb 11:16), God tells us He wants us for His own!  This is the restoration to Edenic fellowship that we unconsciously long for with every tear and heartbreak we inflict upon ourselves;  to "walk with God" and bask in His Presence, to know, love and serve Him as He deserves to be.  The New Covenant succeeds as only a divinely conceived, divinely empowered and divinely accomplished contract can, remaking us into the people of God's pasture.

Photos courtesy of KairosOfTyre and Knight 725

  

Evangelistic Summaries

Way better news than in here!

     A friend recently suffered the loss of a presumably unsaved family member, and he admirably sees this as motivation and an opportunity to share the gospel more faithfully and fervently.  I wanted to help, and came up with what I think are the 3 best texts that concisely, yet completely, explain what's so good about the Good News...

Gal 3:10-14:  Paul opens with how all who put their trust in themselves are under the Law, the Old Covenant which promises blessings for obedience and curses for failure.  The kickers are the words "continues" and "all";  the first word communicates a perpetual success in obedience and the second shows how comprehensive God's expectations are (every single one of God's commands).  Paul concludes that justification (God's declaring us innocent) must come another way, especially since the O.T. prophesies a righeous man who is reconciled to God ("shall live") by faith.  The 2 ways can't be mixed:  either we trust in God or we trust ourselves.  We can only trust Christ because He took our place (subsitutionary atonement) as accursed in God's court, and we can be included into God's family in Him.

Eph 2:1-10:  Paul (again! all these are him!) speaks to believers, reminding them about where they came from:  we were corpses spiritually and we proved it by our heinous acts and affiliation with Satan.  We were not victims of sin, but willing participants, relishing our rebellion and storing up God's wrath upon ourselves.  "But God..."  that's the only source of relief or hope;  God, while we were yet sinners, acted to rescue us, regenerating us to see Him in His mercy and restoring us in Christ to the position that Adam forfeited, back to His side seated with Jesus.  And this is only possible in the trust that God gives us, to cling to Him and renounce our self-sufficiency forever.

Rom 3:10-25:  This is the best of the 3;  it's called the "acropolis of the faith", an armed fortress that keeps and holds the essentials of the gospel.  We are universally condemned as law-breakers, Jews and Gentiles alike.  We are evil and wretched, and guilty before God.  God's Law is shown to be the light that shows us
all this, but because of Christ, there is a way apart from our own accomplishments that we can be saved:  the righteousness that Christ has and earned for us.  The word "propitiation" is an offering that satisfies the demands of justice (i.e. God's wrath);  Christ on the Cross explains how God could "pass over" the sins of those before Him (Noah, Abraham, David)... because God looked at the sure work of Christ as a guarantee and payment, allowing a perfectly just God to pardon perfectly wicked people.  This is a key distinction:  God must satisfy the demands of His justice to forgive;  if not, He is not the Judge of all the earth who always does right.

Photo courtesy of VermontJim

What is the New Covenant?

      What is the New Covenant? I find it tragically odd that something so foundational is so neglected in mainstream evangelicalism. After all, a full quarter of the Bible is named after it (“testament“ is a synonym for covenant!)... so why is it so overlooked? I believe that this woeful ignorance is due to a departure from seeing people related to God and other people covenantally; and looking at our culture, it‘s not hard to see why. We do business with faceless corporations through contracts filled with terms no one reads; we routinely rack up epic financial obligations and then escape them by declaring bankruptcy; and the last figure I saw stated that nationally, less than half of all marital covenants (in some states, barely a third!) survive “till death do us part“. The age of “a man‘s word is his bond“ has given way to contract termination fees. So instead of a covenant with God, we‘re more comfortable with a “personal relationship“ with Jesus, a nebulous, often subjective concept based on an extra-biblical term.

      So just like an actor with a lisp, we must work extra hard to overcome our handicap, and gain a true biblical understanding of what the New Covenant entails. Paul gets us started with the last half of our text: “not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter kills, but the spirit... “ (2 Cor 3:6). The best way to grasp the New Covenant is to master the Old (just like the Testaments!): the letter is not only what Paul‘s countrymen (the Jews) were accustomed to, but what all people through all times and places default to: an inescapable foundation of human religion (as opposed to true divine religion) is the correct suspicion that the gods are angry and the faulty belief that there‘s something we can do to get on their good side again. Offerings of food, wine, animals, silver, gold and even infant children were/are all employed to placate them and hoped to be the means by which we can deliver ourselves. Therefore every human stretch upward is tainted by our supposed self-reliance, our labor, by the burden of reconciliation firmly upon our shoulders.

Think that looks hard?  Just try keeping the Law!

      With all this in mind, one has to marvel at the wisdom of God; surely this attitude predates Moses and the giving of the Law at Sinai (one could argue it goes back to Cain). So God in His providence chose to use this foolish self-reliance to cultivate what Paul will later call in 2 Cor 7 “godly sorrow“. Under the Mosaic Law, every transgression has its recompense; imagine the cumulative effect of thousands of sacrifices over dozens of years upon the conscience of a faithful Jew! The ceremonial and ritual demands of the Law were exact and exhausting; surely before long, that Jew would begin to wonder if there was enough animals in the entire world to cover his sin (there aren't; Heb 10:4)! So the end point of the Law, its greatest purpose and goal is utter frustration at our impotent efforts to cleanse ourselves, and total desperation for Someone else to accomplish the work we can't. This is what “the letter kills” entails. We'll apply this to the New Covenant next time, but here's a sampling of verses that demonstrate the economy of the Old Covenant...

Gen 2:17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."

Lev 18:5 You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the LORD. (quoted in Gal 3:12)

Deu 27:26 "'Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.' And all the people shall say, 'Amen.' (quoted in Gal 3:10)

Eze 18:4 Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.

Jam 2:10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.

Photo courtesy of Wessex Archaeology

Diagnosis: Depravity

     I'm sure most of you have heard about the school shooting today in New York;  of course, our condolences and sympathies go out to the families of the injured and especially the dead.  This is the latest in a rash of such violence, and I heard Bob Schieffer ask his audience whether this headline was now the new norm;  whether we should just expect those who most folks describe with the words "sick", "mentally ill", and "unbalanced" to routinely murder dozens of everyday citizens, even children, in one fell swoop. 
     Sadly, the answer is yes;  as our country frantically flees everything resembling biblical morality, we can expect more and more of our inherent wickedness (not a blameless illness) to be set free to terrorize even the most vulnerable.  This is the "norm" of human existence after the Fall in Eden;  we are "a fire, a world of unrighteousness... setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell." (Jam 3:6).

the best of things...

     Lastly, I am warmed by God's grace for us at a time like this:  nationally, we are enthusiastic converts to the gospel of human innocence, preaching and proclaiming our goodness and worthiness and how much we deserve not just good things, but the best of things.  But God, who is rich in mercy, will not allow us to slumber in this deluded dreamland;  His providence shakes us awake to the reality of our shocking potential to express the evil lurking within.  We are not merely sick or confused;  we do not need to have a sit-down with Dr. Phil.  We are wretched to the core... we must die and be reborn.  Without this, the best we can expect is a hopeless drowsiness, a satanic abyss which awakens to the fire of divine judgment.


Photo courtesy of John H Wright