Arrogance and Irrelevance

Born That Way

It never ceases to surprise how many Unbelievers fail to understand Christians and the Christian faith.  Clearly there are exceptions–some signal and helpful.  But most Unbelievers cannot escape the cocoon of their own Unbelieving perspectives.  When they confront Christians their arguments amount to a bewildered and annoyed “why can’t you think and act like everyone else–that is, like us”?

Why indeed?  Homosexuality right now is a touchstone for highlighting the ignorance of Unbelief when it comes to the Christian position, doctrine, and teaching on homosexuality, in particular and sexual sin, in general.  Unbelievers almost universally assert that homosexuality is genetic: people cannot help be what they are born to be.  To oppose or resist homosexuality is as foolish and blind as opposing blue eyes or red hair.  They cannot conceive why Christians do not grant this.  They are take offence at Christians because they refuse to think in the categories and gratuitous assumptions of Unbelief.  A most bizarre situation.

We will attempt a Christian reply to such nonsense shortly, but firstly, here is an example of that which we speak.  The Guardian, ever a champion of Unbelief, carries a column by Peter Omerod on why discrimination against “Christian homosexuals” must stop!

Church leaders understandably don’t want to appear obsessed with sex but this is a matter of life and death. Festivals for young Christians, such as Soul Survivor, must be explicit about their acceptance of homosexuality, and the wider church’s words on the issue must be matched with actions. The campaign against homophobic bullying in C of E schools is welcome, but when the church itself fails to treat gay relationships as equal to heterosexual relationships, its message is undermined.

Three years ago, the Christian activist Symon Hill embarked on a pilgrimage of repentance for his former homophobia. It’s now time for the church as a whole to follow in his footsteps. As a means of opposing injustice, sitting down and saying nothing may be polite but it’s not what Jesus did, and it’s not what Beeching’s story demands.

Clearly Mr Omerod is frustrated that Christians refuse to think like Unbelievers.  He cannot think outside of his perspectival pre-commitments.  He cannot take off the particular set of glasses that condition, inform, and shape everything that he sees in the world.  He is not alone.  It is endemic.

The Christian is marked by repentance and faith.  Repentance involves a turning away from Unbelief, from disobedience to God, sinfulness, wickedness, and from rebelliousness against the Lord.  It also involves a turning towards God, accepting His pre-interpretation of all reality as true Truth.  Repentance, literally, is a radical change of mind.  Thus, to expect a Christian to think, evaluate, categorise, and assess human realities in the same way as the former Unbeliever he once was, represents a profound ignorance of what it means to be a Christian.

But the Christian also believes in God and entrusts himself to His goodness and care.  What our heavenly Father commands is now our law of life.  If God declares that theft is wrong and that one must not covet, then that’s it.  No matter what pleas or appeals Unbelief might make as to why theft is a natural, ordinary part of what it means to be human, and so forth, the bucket holds no water.  If God declares adultery is evil no amount of Unbelieving rationalising as to why it might be a good thing, revitalising one’s sex life, or some other Unbelieving inanity will ever persuade a Christian because God condemns and forbids it.  Faith requires that response, as well as the profession by faith that all which God commands is for our good.

There have been plenty of people who have claimed that fidelity was not for them because they were constitutionally unable to be faithful.  Fidelity was for people who were wired differently than they.  “I was born with a wandering eye”, they claim–and Unbelief agrees, arguing that impediments to the practice of adultery and sexual promiscuousness are repressive, harmful, and discriminatory.  So all-dominant has this worldview become that “no-fault divorce” is now enshrined in the legal codes.  The Christian, on the other hand, calls this out, accepting God’s commands that, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” trumps any wandering eye.  And our Lord left us in do doubt when He pronounced that even looking upon a woman with lust and sexual desire in one’s heart is adultery in fact.  (Matthew 5: 27, 28).  “I was born this way” may be true, but it is irrelevant when it comes to disregarding and disobeying the holy law of God. 

Which brings us to this touchstone point of difference between the perspectives of Unbelief and of the Christian faith.  The Christian knows and acknowledges that all human beings, apart from the first Adam and the second Adam, Jesus Christ were born constituted as sinful.  “I was evil, born in sin,” lamented David.  Thus, evil and sinfulness are part of the way we all are, unless and until God lifts us out of the miry clay having been born again by the Spirit.

What Unbelievers in general and Mr Omerod in particular repetitively fail to grasp are these crucial differences between the Unbeliever and the Christian.  Christians will agree with Unbelief that all sin is congenital to every human being.  But Christians are those whom God has delivered from the guilt of their sin, whom He is progressively delivering from the power of their sin, and whom He will eventually deliver from the very presence of sin.  To criticise Christians and the Christian faith as if these things were not true simply underscores how ignorant and stubborn Unbelief truly is.  To criticize Christians because they do not think like Unbelievers is about as dumb a position as one can find. 

Homosexuality is an unrighteous lust; it is a vile adultery.  We were all born with such vileness as native to our hearts.  That’s what it means to be fallen, evil, born in sin.  What we Christians, however, cannot accept is the arrogant demand by Unbelievers that we continue to think and act as if we were not Christians; that we should continue to live, move, and have our being in Unbelief.  For Unbelievers to persist in such inanity is to put Unbelief upon the  pedestal of ridicule.  Surely, Mr Omerod can do better.  There are Unbelievers who have.  But, then again, maybe Mr Omerod and his fellow travellers were born that way.

 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Ugly Dies 

Theology – Life in the Regeneration
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, 05 June 2012

George MacDonald once famously said that obedience is the great opener of eyes. But obedience has to come from an obedient heart, and in order to have obedient hearts, we must have new hearts. This brings us (yet again) to the foundational necessity of the new birth. Without that reality, there is absolutely nothing we can do to make the Christian life work. Whatever we try to make it work, without the new birth, we are like monkeys pushing buttons on a broken cash register. Nothing happens.
There is only one thing to do, apart from repentance, which is to pretend that something really is happening, which is an easy reach for monkey brains with monkey hearts.

Those buttons might be ethical — giving up everything for the poor, but without love, which is a big Pauline goose egg (1 Cor. 13:3). Those buttons might be the fancy dress parade of sacramentalism, and yet the Lord wonders aloud who asked us to come around to trample noisily in His courts (Is. 1:12). Those buttons might be doctrinal, as we think we have figured out how to plump up all the cushions on Moses’ seat, and we are quite cozy there as we issue directives for others (Matt. 23:2).

But the natural man, the unconverted man, the unregenerate man, is the same kind of man whether he is inside the covenant or outside it, with the difference that reprobates inside the covenant have greater condemnation. They are sinning against greater light, and to whom much is given, much is required. But they do not have a heart that can meet the greater requirement, and they cannot manufacture the heart they need. If we could repent and believe with our old hearts, then why do we need new ones?

When a natural man is converted, all of a sudden everything that was an opaque mystery to him before becomes a delight, with light shed all over it. The Bible turns into English, the worship of God in a way that honors Him becomes a delight, and the poor turn into Jesus Christ, instead of a rung in somebody’s heaven ladder. Before conversion, these things are covered in darkness. He cannot understand them for they are spiritually discerned. 

“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).

And anybody who believes that such a “natural man” can only exist outside the confines of the visible church is an observer who doesn’t get out much. Churches are shot through with such unconverted parishioners — and by this I mean to indicate Roman Catholic churches, Eastern Orthodox churches, Lutheran churches, Reformed churches, and evangelical churches. Whatever are we to do with this?

Well, we should start by preaching the gospel to everybody. And by “preach the gospel,” incidentally, I do not mean the common travesty of rounding up the truly converted and preaching in such a way as to unsettle their confidence. Once upon a time, as I have heard tell, gospel was thought to be good news.

Once converted, everything that used to be “law” is now gift, it is now grace. This includes the grace of dying. The privilege of participating in the cross of Jesus is a privilege, it is a gift. Mortification is grace, it is gift, it is goodness. Mortification is a great kindness.

There are three levels of “dying,” all of which are grace, which I will illustrate using the metaphor of a garden.
The first happens when the Lord rototills a weed patch and turns it into a dirt patch for a garden. This is the foundational mortification, the death of the old man (which was the weed patch) and the creation of a new man (which is a garden). This is what happens at true conversion (Rom. 6:3).

The second kind of death occurs within the Christian life, and can be described as the digging up of big weeds in the garden. Paul, speaking to Christians, tells them that they have already died (level one) and that their life is now hid with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). But then a few verses later, he tells them to mortify the really big weeds (Col. 3:5). This means that real Christians can struggle with big sins.

What problems do these saints have, which Paul calls here their “members which are on the earth?” They include “fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” All pretty bad. But God’s grace is with us still, and if we are converted, we will love the idea of having these big weeds pulled. If we are not truly converted, we will hate the idea.

Hatred of this second level of mortification means that we actually hated the first level, which means that we have not really received the first level. Anybody who loves the weeds is still a weed patch — regardless of their attachment to the visible church. Loving your sin while loving Jesus is an exercise that the Bible calls kidding yourself.

And the third level of mortification is a godly Christian going out to the garden at 6 am to weed every day. There has never been a gardener in the history of the world who went out into his garden to find weeds who couldn’t find any. What diligent gardener ever walked over his garden without finding a single weed? He always finds something, but the weeds (however toxic in their nature) are the size of his thumbnail. They are pulled a lot more easily than the knee high weeds were. This is an ongoing process of mortification (Rom. 8:13), and it too is a grace.

Bonhoeffer said that when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. A gracious heart hears this message, and leaps for joy. An ungracious heart hears it, and looks for a place to hide. Anything but death. Scripture teaches us, and history shows us, that the very best hiding places, at least for a brief time, are found in the things of God — the Church, the Bible, the sacraments, the catechism, the ministry, the Internet theology debates, the church splits over a bunch of nothing, the mercy ministries, and of course, the venerable tradition of the fathers. Those fathers, incidentally, can be found both in the Jerusalem chamber at Westminster and in the Syrian desert.

So here is the good news. So hear the gospel — ugly dies, and loveliness rises.

Can We Prepare Our Culture to Receive the Gospel?

[A powerfully prophetic call from J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) for intellectual engagement in the culture as a means of pre-evangelism–Ed. Hat Tip: Justin Taylor]

We are all agreed that at least one great function of the Church is the conversion of individual men. The missionary movement is the great religious movement of our day. Now it is perfectly true that men must be brought to Christ one by one. There are no labor-saving devices in evangelism. It is all hard-work.

And yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that all men are equally well prepared to receive the gospel.
It is true that the decisive thing is the regenerative power of God. That can overcome all lack of preparation, and the absence of that makes even the best preparation useless. But as a matter of fact God usually exerts that power in connection with certain prior conditions of the human mind, and it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the gospel.

False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.

Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root. . . .
What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires. In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combated; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassioned debate.

So as Christians we should try to mold the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity. . . . What more pressing duty than for those who have received the mighty experience of regeneration, who, therefore, do not, like the world, neglect that whole series of vitally relevant facts which is embraced in Christian experience—what more pressing duty than for these men to make themselves masters of the thought of the world in order to make it an instrument of truth instead of error?

—J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity and Culture,” in What Is Christianity? And Other Addresses, ed. Ned Stonehouse (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), pp. 162-163; emphasis added.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

One Vast Boneyard

Life in the Regeneration
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, October 23, 2011

The end of October approaches, and as we mark and celebrate the great Reformation, our heart’s desire and prayer should be for future historians to be able to describe it as the first reformation, as the small one. “Small” does not mean insignificant, but in this case it does mean early on. Eye has not seen and ear has not heard what God has prepared for those of us who love Him. As we emphasize the five solas (as we should), let us exult in the one which is the true intersection of all of them — solus Christus.

Christ died for the world, and if we are to follow the apostle Paul’s argument, this means that we have an obligation to see that world differently.
We are not to see the world as saved after it is saved in fact. We are called to see the world as saved in principle, beforehand, in the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection. We should not see the world as saved when our eyes tell us it is all right for us to believe. Who hopes for what he already has? The world will be saved because we see Christ crucified and risen, and so we declare to the world what that means. What is it that overcomes the world? Is it not our faith?

The apostle tells us that how we see non-Christians is directly related to how we see Jesus (2 Cor. 5:16). We like to think that a high Christology and a low cosmology go together, but they do not. We like to think that a high Christology and a low anthropology go together, but they do not. New Age mystics and distorters notwithstanding, we worship a cosmic Christ. Externalists notwithstanding, we worship a personal, heart-felt Jesus.

“For we commend not ourselves again unto you, but give you occasion to glory on our behalf, that ye may have somewhat to answer them which glory in appearance, and not in heart” (2 Cor. 5:12).

We are constrained by the love of Christ, knowing that His was the kind of death that encompasses. If one died for all, then all for whom He died have also died. He died for them in their sins so that they might live for Him outside of their sins. He died and rose. How can anything be the same anymore?

Believing this to be the case, we are not permitted to understand any man “after the flesh.” There is a way of understanding humanity that does not take into account what Jesus did on the cross, and what He accomplished when He rose from the grave. That way of understanding humanity may call itself “realistic,” but how is it realistic to ignore the new creation? That way of understanding may point to the orthodox doctrine of total depravity (which is the orthodox and biblical doctrine), but how is it that we have come to believe that total depravity has more power to hold down Jesus than the stone tomb did? The fact that Jesus was buried in a stone tomb is a biblical doctrine also, but that was not the end of the story.

Yes, unregenerate mankind is totally depraved. Yes, it is true that we cannot autonomously contribute in any way to our own salvation. Yes, it is true that we were dead in our trespasses and sins. But let us never preach the doctrine of total depravity without also declaring there has been a great earthquake, and that an angel of the Lord has rolled away the stone in front of that imposing doctrine.

“Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more” (2 Cor. 5:16).

This is crazy talk, I know. But it is also biblical talk. This whole world, since the sin of Adam, has been nothing but one, vast, pole-to-pole boneyard. Whatever would Jesus do in a world like that? What could He possibly do that could transform a world like that? The gospel reply is that He could come back from the dead in it.

Billions of sinners, dead in their sins. Son of man, shall these bones live? Ah, sovereign Lord, you know. Son of man, prophesy to the bones. But Lord, bones can’t hear. Son of man, prophesy to the bones. But Lord, they are not paying any attention. Son of man, prophesy to the bones. But Lord, that’s not how I learned to do it in seminary. Son of man, prophesy to the bones. But Lord . . . but Lord . . .

To see men after the flesh is to see nothing but the bones.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).

The newness does not follow the gospel result, but precedes it. The newness calls new life into being. The gospel is not vindicated by conversions; conversions are vindicated and made possible their participation in the great cosmic conversion. We do not invite Jesus into our lives — down here in the boneyard. Jesus invites us into His life, and the whole world is invited.

“And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:18-20).

The ministry of reconciliation is based on the fact of the cosmic reconciliation. People reconciling with God does not create the ministry of reconciliation. The ministry of reconciliation brings the fact to those who have been reconciled and still need to be reconciled. What is so hard about building on the foundation that God has established? You have been reconciled; therefore, be reconciled.

Some may object that this dilutes the truth of definite atonement. Not in the slightest. All who were purchased for eternal salvation by Christ will in fact be eternally saved. Those who were not so purchased will not be. The point here is not that Christ died indiscriminately for every last man, whether elect or damned. The point is that Christ died for the world, and those who are excluded from Christ are excluded from that world — they are cast into the outer darkness. To be saved is to be saved into the new humanity. It is to be saved into the world.

But it further means that definite atonement is not synonymous with “tiny atonement.” The reality of definite atonement is seen in the specific numbers alloted to each tribe — 12,000 from each tribe, no more, no less. The majestic extent of definite atonement is seen when John turned and looked. What did he see? He saw a multitude that no man can number. How many will be saved? We can’t count that high. Look at the stars, Abraham. Use the Hubble telescope, Abraham. So shall your descendents be.

How will these things happen? What will bring it to pass? The glorious message of a glorious substitution will be declared and presented to every living creature. What shall we tell them? We should give them the message we we were told to give to them. We should prophesy to the bones.

“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21).

>Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

>No Root in Himself

Theology – Life in the Regeneration
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, January 23, 2011

One of the reasons why we talk past each other on the question of apostasy is that we succumb to the common mistake of choosing which verses are the “clear” ones. A hermeneutical rule of thumb (quite a good one, I should add) is that unclear verses should be interpreted in the light of the clear ones. But however wise this is — and it is wise — we also have to distinguish between verses which are unclear, and verses that are excruciatingly clear but which conflict with the received interpretation.

It is this latter situation which causes Christians to arbitrarily dub these as the clear verses, and those other verses as the ones which must be massaged. On this question of apostasy, both Calvinists and Arminians do this. Calvinists take the verses outlining God’s sovereignty at face value (which they should do), and explain away the apostasy passages. Arminians take the apostasy passages at face value, and explain away the glorious promises of a guaranteed perseverance. Thought experiment. What would happen if you took them all at face value? You would get in trouble with everybody, like the guy in the Civil War who tried to make peace by walking in between the armies with a blue coat and gray trousers.

The Bible emphasizes, through some of its illustrations, a certain continuity of type between the converted and unconverted covenant member. In the parable of the sower, the converted and unconverted both spring from the same seed, and they are both wheat. The Bible emphasizes, in other illustrations, a radical discontinuity of type between the two — a sow that is washed is always a sow. Tares are not wheat — they are an alien plant in the wheat field. We should take both kinds of illustration at face value. In one respect, there is a radical gulf between converted and unconverted covenant members, a gulf as wide as the distance between Heaven and Hell. In another respect, there is a shared covenantal identity of some sort. Fruitful and fruitless branches are found in the Vine, although the fruitless ones are not found there for long. Fruitful and fruitless branches are found in the olive tree of the true Israel — although the only way to remain in that tree is by having the faith of Abraham.

So much is a statement of the problem. What is the solution to the problem? How can we take both kinds of passages at face value? There is only one way — and that is by emphasizing, in its right biblical balance, the absolute necessity of the new birth for every last human being, not excluding those who are baptized Christians.

Even in the parable of the sower, note how Jesus explains the difference between different kinds of wheat. The wheat in rocky soil sprang up quickly. It sprang up from the seed that was sown. It was wheat, but it was wheat that died, wheat that did not persevere to the harvest. And why? Jesus says that it was because that man had “no root in himself” (ouk rhitzan en auto). This wheat did not have within itself something that the abundant wheat did have (Matt. 13:21). You must be converted to God.

Jesus told a teacher in Israel once that he needed to be born again. Israel today, the new Israel, is filled to overflowing with that same kind of teacher.

>Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

>Your Doctrine is Too Small

Theology – Life in the Regeneration
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, July 08, 2010

J.B. Phillips famously wrote the book Your God is Too Small, and I would like to do a little riff off of that. Your doctrine is too small.

What is that supposed to mean? Often particular Christian doctrines are set forth in a way that contains enough of the truth to annoy unreasonable people and not enough of the truth to answer the concerns and objections of reasonable people. Let’s take three examples — the sovereignty of God, the necessity of the new birth, and the potency of the Incarnation. In each case, when the doctrine is stated in its small version, the reaction is to fix the problem by reeling it in, by making it smaller.

When Jonathan Edwards was struggling with the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, he found the solution where it ought to be. Learn to see God’s sovereignty as “bigger than that.” If the sovereign God is simply an omnipotent Zeus, contained together with us inside the universe that is, and he goes around making people do whatever he wants, then the freewillers are right — he is just a bully. Not only are the freewillers right, they are often courageously right.

But the problem here is that he is seen as a bully because he is seen as too small, and it is no solution to make him smaller. A Calvinist (who has made this mistake) agrees that God is like this, but argues a theology of prudence. “Look, go along with the bully, wouldja?” The Arminian resists this, but does it by preferring to see the bully as a kinder, gentler Zeus. The end result of this business is a wimp subbed in for the bully. But the triune God of Scripture is the Creator of all that is, and there is a Creator/creature divide. To attribute exhaustive sovereignty to any entity on this side of that divide (apart from the humility of the Incarnation) is to ask for, and find, monstrosities in your theology. But the solution is not to be found by dragging the whole thing down to a religion just above tree top level. God dwells in the highest heavens. He does what He pleases, and what He pleases is righteous, holy, and good. 

While evangelicals have rightly seen the need to be born again, this too can be seen in a way that is far too small. If the old nature/new nature question is seen as a toggle switch somewhere down in your heart, and at some time in your life you have to pray a prayer that makes God flip that switch, and if you don’t do that you are going to go to Hell, this truncated vision is going to lead to extreme sectarianism. Evangelicals will become star-bellied sneetches, and this one isolated experience is the point of their distinction. Lack of regeneration is seen as the switch in this position, and you have to have it in the “on” position. Now when people see the spiritual pride that often arises from this kind of thing, the temptation is to back away from the evangelical position — well, maybe being born again is not all that it is cracked up to be. Regeneration is seen as too small, and the reaction is to make it smaller. The movement is from a message preached by a narrow hot-gospeler to a broad latitudinarianism that walks away from the little bit of truth that was there.

But when a man is born again, all of him is. Regeneration commences at the point of conversion, and this principle of new life then grows and spreads everywhere. Regeneration is not a little toggle switch, but is rather the main power breaker. And after it is flipped, there are still five thousand other switches to find and adjust before this new life spacecraft is ready to fly again. And that is what is happening — we are readying a spacecraft to fly to the heavens. We are not changing a light bulb in the barn. Don’t see regeneration as a little thing — there is no way to do that and maintain the necessity of it without that position degenerating into a doctrine that insists that God has no sense of proportion whatever.

And, then, the Incarnation.  When the eternal Word of God became a man, He thereby honored the material world, and did so in a very permanent way. This has always been embarrassing to the Hellenistic mind — this has been seen as a doctrine that maintains that God abandoned His spiritual dignity. No, this actually is the divine glory. But once the doctrine is stated, if it is limited to the body of Jesus, it remains too small. Incarnational heresies take something that is true as far as it goes, but is still too small, and then try to whittle away at it, making it smaller.

The orthodox should not try to hold the line by holding the line, but rather should move on to the other outlandish ramifications of this truth. If Christ is the groom, and the Church is His bride, His body, what does this mean? We have not understood the Incarnation unless we have come to understand that at some point in the proceedings, the incarnational power that God has placed in the world runs amok. And when it runs amok, this has ramifications for beer, sex, mowing the lawn, planting hedges, gravy, beekeeping, driving on the freeway, and diet soda. And no, those ramifications do not mean pantheism.

Just as grace does not mean antinomianism, but will always provoke charges of antinomianism, so also an understanding of the incarnation as God’s reckless grace to the whole universe will provoke charges of some heresy or other. And perhaps some will veer off into those heresies, but it cannot be unorthodox to say that our orthodoxy has been too small, and that we need a whole lot more of it.

“But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor. 2:9).