Vapour Trails

 The Signs of Christ At Work Amongst Us

Some of our readers will be familiar with Rosaria Butterfield.  In this video she responds to questions put to her by Russell Moore, one of the prominent theologians and teachers in the Southern Baptist Confederation.

To those who have not yet come across Rosaria, her experience of coming out of militant lesbianism to faith in the risen Christ is salutary and of great moment for the modern Church.  There is much to learn.  One of the most salutary and encouraging things is how Butterfield responds to questions about her experiences by placing her life within the context of the fundamentals and depths of the Christian faith.  This is what being saved by Christ “looks” like.  There is also important stuff in this video about what the community of the redeemed must be and become. 

Daily Devotional

Repentance–A Divine Work

“Godly sorrow worketh repentance.”
2 Corinthians 7:10

Charles Spurgeon

Genuine, spiritual mourning for sin is the work of the Spirit of God. Repentance is too choice a flower to grow in nature’s garden. Pearls grow naturally in oysters, but penitence never shows itself in sinners except divine grace works it in them. If thou hast one particle of real hatred for sin, God must have given it thee, for human nature’s thorns never produced a single fig. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.”

True repentance has a distinct reference to the Saviour. When we repent of sin, we must have one eye upon sin and another upon the cross, or it will be better still if we fix both our eyes upon Christ and see our transgressions only, in the light of his love.

True sorrow for sin is eminently practical. No man may say he hates sin, if he lives in it. Repentance makes us see the evil of sin, not merely as a theory, but experimentally–as a burnt child dreads fire. We shall be as much afraid of it, as a man who has lately been stopped and robbed is afraid of the thief upon the highway; and we shall shun it–shun it in everything–not in great things only, but in little things, as men shun little vipers as well as great snakes. True mourning for sin will make us very jealous over our tongue, lest it should say a wrong word; we shall be very watchful over our daily actions, lest in anything we offend, and each night we shall close the day with painful confessions of shortcoming, and each morning awaken with anxious prayers, that this day God would hold us up that we may not sin against him.

Sincere repentance is continual. Believers repent until their dying day. This dropping well is not intermittent. Every other sorrow yields to time, but this dear sorrow grows with our growth, and it is so sweet a bitter, that we thank God we are permitted to enjoy and to suffer it until we enter our eternal rest.

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.

 

Saruman Rejoins the White Council–or Not

Not So Fast

Yesterday, we published a piece about World Vision’s announcement that it was going to turn a blind eye to homosexual practice, becoming agnostic as to its ethics.  Now, the reaction . . .   

World Vision USA Reverses Its Decision

Justin Taylor 
Mar  26  2014

World Magazine broke the news earlier this afternoon that the U.S. board of World Vision released a statement reversing their decision to allow Christian employees to engage in homosexual intercourse as long as they are in a legally recognized same-sex marriage. The letter reads as follows:

Dear Friends,
Today, the World Vision U.S. board publicly reversed its recent decision to change our employment conduct policy. The board acknowledged they made a mistake and chose to revert to our longstanding conduct policy requiring sexual abstinence for all single employees and faithfulness within the Biblical covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.

We are writing to you our trusted partners and Christian leaders who have come to us in the spirit of Matthew 18 to express your concern in love and conviction. You share our desire to come together in the Body of Christ around our mission to serve the poorest of the poor. We have listened to you and want to say thank you and to humbly ask for your forgiveness.

In our board’s effort to unite around the church’s shared mission to serve the poor in the name of Christ, we failed to be consistent with World Vision U.S.’s commitment to the traditional understanding of Biblical marriage and our own Statement of Faith, which says, “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” And we also failed to seek enough counsel from our own Christian partners. As a result, we made a change to our conduct policy that was not consistent with our Statement of Faith and our commitment to the sanctity of marriage.

We are brokenhearted over the pain and confusion we have caused many of our friends, who saw this decision as a reversal of our strong commitment to Biblical authority. We ask that you understand that this was never the board’s intent. We are asking for your continued support. We commit to you that we will continue to listen to the wise counsel of Christian brothers and sisters, and we will reach out to key partners in the weeks ahead.

While World Vision U.S. stands firmly on the biblical view of marriage, we strongly affirm that all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, are created by God and are to be loved and treated with dignity and respect.

Please know that World Vision continues to serve all people in our ministry around the world. We pray that you will continue to join with us in our mission to be “an international partnership of Christians whose mission is to follow our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in working with the poor and oppressed to promote human transformation, seek justice, and bear witness to the good news of the Kingdom of God.”

Sincerely in Christ,

Richard Stearns, President
Jim Beré, Chairman of the World Vision U.S. Board

A number of Christian leaders have hit the “OK.  It’s all forgiven and forgotten” button.  That response has a lot of weight behind it.  Visions of tax collectors and pharisees in the temple spring to mind.  But  Douglas Wilson says, “Hold on.  Let’s think this through.”

Whirled Vision

Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2014  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog 

My brief post on the reversal of the turnaround at World Vision generated some questions and comments, so let me chase them here.

Start with the central thing — and that would concern our duty of not being the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son. If the subject is sin and repentance, it should go without saying that we should never sneer at a broken and a contrite heart. How many times do we forgive someone? Jesus dealt with this famously when He said the right number was 70 times 7. And that does not mean that once the sinner gets past 490, then pow, right in the kisser. Our forgiveness for others should imitate God’s forgiveness of us, and it is obviously impossible to outshine Him.

Jesus taught that someone could sin against us seven times in a day, and that upon a profession of repentance we should forgive him each time. Now, along about the fourth or fifth incident, I might begin to suspect that my friend is not dealing with the root issues — but I am still to forgive (Luke 17:4).

So, how does this relate, if at all, to World Vision? Our problem is that we have confused two categories that must never be confused. In the church, we must learn to maintain an understanding of a fundamental difference between qualifications for fellowship (on profession of repentance) and qualifications for leadership (as found, for example, in 1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1). The former is not based on the record at all — the publican in the Temple professed himself wretched, and went home justified. But the latter is very much based on proven character over time.

If you require that every member of the church meet the qualifications for elder, then congratulations, you’re a Pharisee. But if you think that elders don’t have to meet the qualifications for elder, then congratulations, you’re a anarchist.

If a pastor committed adultery, can he be forgiven? Of course. Can he be restored to the fellowship of the saints, admitted to communion again? Again, of course. Could this happen in a very short period of time? Of course. Could he preach the sermon three weeks later? Of course not. But the fact is that we live in muddled times, and to refuse him the privilege of the pulpit would be seen by many as a “refusal to forgive.” But it is nothing of the kind. Apples and mangoes.

World Vision is a parachurch diaconal ministry. This means that the qualifications for leadership apply, and not just the qualifications for fellowship. And this means that the leaders of World Vision cannot just announce one day that a practice that God declared to be an abomination is now all right with them, and then two days later (after their financial support started to evaporate) drop that position like a hot rock, and yet remain qualified to provide moral leadership. They blew a huge hole in their credibility. Leadership being what it is, they can receive full and free forgiveness — but the hole is still there. The hole is still there because God wants it still there.

They destroyed their credibility, not me. The first step in restoring that credibility is to receive forgiveness. The second is behave in a way that shows that they understand that destroying their own credibility is what they did. The third is to recognize that credibility is something that is built over time, in the very nature of the case. They can’t just “have it back.” The next thing they should do is start accepting resignations. They sinned in a number of different ways, but one of the big ones is that they demonstrated that they were and are untrustworthy.

One of the most important truths I try to communicate in pastoral counseling is the idea that trust and forgiveness are two very different things. Many people cannot see their way to forgive someone else because they assume that forgiveness requires trust, and they are in a situation where trust would obviously be insane. Forgiveness is required of us because it has been sought, and we give it by grace. It is grace. But trust is earned.

So, do we forgive the leadership of World Vision for this sin that they have confessed? Absolutely. Do we trust them? Are you serious?

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

When a Public Mind Cannot Repent

Posted on Thursday, July 18, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog 

Many Christian activists and reformers are in that position because they see — they anticipate, they look forward, they can run out the consequences. If they were in a position to do so, they would be good providers for our society. The word provide comes from two Latin words, meaning to see beforehand. You can give the provision because you saw it coming.

When someone sees ordinary things coming — springtime and harvest, for example — he is considered diligent. The sluggard is surprised by the arrival of winter. He wants desperately, but has nothing (Prov. 13:4). He is reduced to begging in the time of harvest (Prov. 20:4). But can you warn him beforehand? Not a bit of it — he is wiser in his own conceits than seven men with good reasons (Prov. 26:16).

When someone sees extraordinary things coming — the famine that threatened Egypt, for example — he is considered a prophet like Joseph. When someone truly identifies future things in a way that is not consistent with chance, we say that he is a prophet of God (Is. 41:23). And (in a movie) if someone were able to predict the winning lottery numbers, we would say it was clairvoyance . . . or cheating.

But when someone sees damnation coming to someone, the more his prediction is confirmed, the more it is discounted and despised.
This applies to individuals who are in the process of apostasy, and it applies to cultures that are coming apart. Those who anticipate, those who see, those who predict, are like Cassandra, speaking the truth and never believed. This is because of the very nature of damnation. When someone is spiraling toward the darkness, the light doesn’t get any better as he goes. This is happening to them because they can’t see. This is what a judicial stupor is.

Let me illustrate it with individuals first, and then move on to our culture at large. Suppose you have two partners in a business, fast friends. They have strong fellowship together, and are very much of one mind (Ps. 56:14). After a few years, one of them starts to say and do some strange things — reading odd books, watching movies he shouldn’t, dropping the random comment here and there. The two friends talk about it, agreeing to disagree at the end, but the healthy friend remains worried.

Then one day something happens that makes a bigger confrontation necessary. Not the end of the world, but it needs to be addressed. Suppose the one friend says to the other, in a spirit of frank earnestness, that if you keep this up, if you keep thinking like this, if you continue going in this direction, you are going to wind up divorcing your wife, and you will run off with some teenage boy who wants to become a model in Manhattan. And after you are gone, we will discover how much money you embezzled. “Don’t do this to me, man.” The other friend is shocked, and denies all of it. “That could never happen. It saddens me to think . . .”

Now — five years later, he divorces his wife, runs off with a boy who was 13 when the prediction was made, and the auditor calls the remaining partner with some bad news. And the point is this. For the person who is apostatizing, for the person who is falling away, the accuracy of the predictions made beforehand does not in any way confirm that he is in the wrong. The nature of doing wrong is self-will, with the outside world and all its facts considered to be irrelevant. To the extent they are thought about at all, they are just an additional grievance. Every confirmation of the truth after the event is filed in the “how-dare-he” file.

This is our position as we are trying to confront our nation. Each new outrage is met with a new set of predictions, and is answered with a fusillade of denunciations, denials, and curses. Homosexual marriage doesn’t mean polygamy, you bozo. Polygamy doesn’t mean sanctioned pederasty, you bozo. Then, three weeks after the ink is dry on the Gay-Is-The-New-Straight legislation, who do you find testifying before Congress? Is it the Big Love family? What a shock. But if you hope that pointing out that you called this shot beforehand, and that it was stoutly denied beforehand by everybody in the room, will convince anybody in the room now, you are living in a dream world. Winning an argument, with documents and everything, is not what brings repentance.

This is because cultural damnation is denial of God, denial of the truth, denial of reason, denial of what is obvious, and it is denial of all these things, no matter what. Absolutely anything can be repulsed (and will be repulsed) by a heart in this condition. A private heart in this condition cannot repent. A public mind in this condition cannot repent. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can cause the old heart to see. And that is why, when the Spirit moves, He does what He does by giving a new heart.

And when He does that, nothing can stop Him.

Calvin’s Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

May 20

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? —Acts 2:37

Devotional:
This is the beginning of repentance, this is the entrance unto godliness, to be sorry for our sins, and to be wounded with the feeling of our miseries. For so long as men are careless, they cannot take such heed to doctrine as they ought. And for this cause the word of God is compared to a sword, because it fortifies the flesh, that we may be offered to God for a sacrifice.

But there must be added to this pricking in heart readiness to obey. Cain and Judas were pricked in heart, but despair kept them back from submitting themselves unto God. For the mind oppressed with horror can do nothing else but free from God. Therefore we must take a good heart to us, and lift up our mind with this hope of salvation, that we may be ready to addict and give ourselves unto God, and to follow whatever he shall command. —Commentaries

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin’s Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Of Train Wrecks and Car Crashes, Part II

 Faith and Haste Are Usually Like Oil and Water

Conversion for the Apostle Paul appears to have been like a fatal car crash.  The old was smashed.  But out of the wreckage, something new, something wonderful was born.  The Scriptures do not give many details, but it seems that some time after Paul’s dramatic Damascus road experience, when the shards of his former identity lay scattered on the ground, he retired to obscurity and privacy.  It would appear that he needed time to be reconstructed, rebuilt by the Spirit to equip him for the ministry ahead.

Paul tells us that after his initial conversion, he went away into Arabia (a desolate and relatively uninhabited place); then he returned to Damascus and then after three years he “came out”, going up to Jerusalem to visit with the apostles.  Then, subsequently, he went to Syria and Cilicia  (Galatians 1: 11-24)  All up, it appears that there was a period of about fifteen years between his initial conversion and before his public call to the work of apostleship. 

The breaking of an old identity–particularly one very strongly etched and inscribed–takes time.
  In Rosaria Butterfield’s confessions or “Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert”  there are many passages detailing doubts, questions, struggles, pain, and suffering as she moved from darkness into the light.  The idea, fable really, of people painlessly and without friction instantly transforming from the old man to the new is never real. 

At one point she describes it this way:

Two incommensurable worldviews clashed together: the reality of my lived experience and the truth of the world of God.  In continental philosophy, we talk about the difference between the true and the real.  Had my life become real, but not true?  The Bible told me to repent, but I didn’t feel like repenting.  Do you have to feel like repenting in order to repent?  Was I a sinner, or was I, in my drag queen friend’s words, sick? How do you repent for a sin that doesn’t feel like a sin?  How could the thing that I had studied and become be sinful?  How could I be tenured in a field that is sin?  How could I and everyone that I knew and loved be in sin?

In this crucible of confusion, I learned something important.  I learned this first rule of repentance: that repentance requires greater intimacy with God than with our sin.  How much greater?  About the size of a mustard seed.  Repentance requires that we draw near to Jesus, no matter what.  And sometimes we all have to crawl there on our hands and knees.  Repentance is an intimate affair.  And for many of us, intimacy with anything is a terrifying prospect.  [Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith (Pittsburg: Crown and Covenant Publications, 2012), p.21.]

We fear that in our belief in an instant, gratifying creation we expect that conversion will be a relatively quick and instant affair, like Nescafe.  The conversion of Paul fits into this paradigm.  We see him on the road to Damascus.  We see the great light.  We hear the voice of Christ from heaven.  We observe him rising from his blind bed and going straight to the synagogue to confront the Jewish people with Jesus as the Son of God.  That’s the kind of conversion we look for in our Nescafe world.  Right.  Paul is now one of us.  He is arraigned in the ranks.  Let’s go after the next convert.

But it took years to prepare Paul thoroughly for what was ahead of Him.  The Lord is never in a hurry.  His work is most often slow and gradual and far too often Christians and churches don’t have the patience to work with people slowly and gradually.  We think the real and the divine always produces instant and spectacular change: the more spectacular and the more instant the more evidently divine.  In this we are gravely and sadly mistaken.  It ultimately makes us impatient with God and frustrated with the Church and with fellow Christians. 

There are many reasons we don’t have patience, either with God or with man.  One is our own sinful hearts.  Impatience, after all, is a demanding, arrogant attitude towards God and man.  “I want it, and I want it now”, and the reason is I am important in my own eyes.

Rosaria Butterfield talks about learning to obey God one step at a time, slowly, gingerly, painfully.  When she first started attending church she felt awkward and uncomfortable–despite the warmth and welcome of the congregation.  In one sermon she heard of Jesus’ dictum that if men obey Him they would find out soon enough whether His word was from God (John 7:17).  She learned, as she puts it, that obedience comes before understanding.  Then she says:

I started to obey God in my heart one step at a time.  I broke up with my girlfriend.  My heart really wasn’t in the break-up, but I hoped that God would regard my obedience even in its double-mindedness.  I started to go to the [Presbyterian Reformed] church fully, in my heart, for the whole purpose of worshiping God.  I stopped caring if I looked like a freak there.  I started to receive the friendship that the church members offered to me.  I learned that we must obey in faith before we feel better or different.  (Ibid. p.22)

It takes time for the new person to grow out of the fatal car crash of repentance.  And, let us never forget this: in more Christian times, when the truths of the Gospel and the law of God were institutionalised and socialised into the warp and woof of the culture, many folk would become Christians and would end up doing and behaving in their new Christian life as they had been raised.  They, like the Prodigal, would return to the household culture of their youth. This is no longer generally the case.  Sin and its fruits have so perverted the West that the average person is self-identified, socialised and institutionalised  into unbelief and sin.  These generations of unbelief and rebellion has born consistent fruits.  Conversion now requires transformation, not a returning home.  Most people today have never been in the home in the first place.  It is a totally foreign place to them.

Today, as not seen in the generations of our forbears, ministry to the lost and the dying requires much care, much patience, and much faith.  Above all, we must be willing and prepared to work and serve at God’s pace, not our own.  One day with Him is as a thousand years.  This means that the little things of daily life are to be counted as vitally significant and important.  He who believes will not be in haste.  

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

God’s Gonna Cut You Down 

Money, Love, Desire – On Scandal
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, 16 February 2013

Now if we come to the understanding that the devil is “the accuser,” and not God, what are we to make of the necessary holiness of God’s law? And how can we make sense of the Last Judgment? Doesn’t God run the Last Day, and not the devil?

Go tell that long tongue liar,
Go and tell that midnight rider,
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter,
Tell ’em that God’s gonna cut ’em down.

This is true in staggering ways, but how it is true matters a great deal.

God dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16). The seraphim fly in His courts, crying out holy, holy, holy (Is. 6:3). And when that holiness is juxtaposed with our sinful condition, we are immediately aware of the gulf between us. When Isaiah sees the vision, he cries out that he is a man of unclean lips (Is. 6:5). When Joshua the high priest stood before the angel of the Lord, Satan, the celestial prosecutor, was right there to accuse him (Zech. 3:1). And although Joshua was aware he was indeed deserving of accusation (Zech. 3:3), because his clothes were filthy, God’s response is to clothe him appropriately. When the apostle Peter caught a glimpse of the Lord’s holiness in the miracle of the fish, his response was to collapse, aware of his own sinfulness (Luke 5:8).

When we find ourselves in the numinous presence of God, our response is the right kind of self-accusation. And in such juxtapositions, notice how God responds in grace — because the right kind of self-accusation is evangelical repentance.

But there is a wrong kind of reaction to God’s presence also.
The sinful heart can repent, but it can also recoil. When it recoils from God’s holiness, suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, the fundamental motion that the soul is making is that of preferring to accuse God than to accuse self. If you have repented, if you have received John’s baptism, then what you do is justify God (Luke 7:29). If you have not, then you justify self, and accuse God.

So the law pierces, but it does not always pierce all the way through. When the law pierces partially, the response of the sinner is anger directed toward the one who wielded the spear — whether that is the preacher or the God who sent him. When the law pierces fully, the result is down to the ground self-accusation, which is repentance. When the law pierces partially, the result is an accusation directed at God. How could a loving God condemn anyone? This is said by the one who is rejecting and despising the love of God being extended to him at that very moment. “I know that He is offering me everlasting life right now, purchased by the blood of His Son, but I insist that He is not loving enough for me.” If this is not the spirit of irrational accusation, what is?

One of the ways we make our accusations against God stick is by pretending that in the Last Judgment, He will lose it and act like the devil. We assume the wrath of God is God flying off the handle. We want to pretend that the Day of Justice is actually the Day of Injustice, and that it will be the day when the Maker and Sustainer of all things loses, for some reason, all sense of proportion. But the Day of Justice is what it is precisely because everything will be perfectly proportioned. The Last Day will be nothing but justice.

So what must we sort out? In short, everyone who believes in the Final Judgment knows what God is going to do. But what we miss is how He will do it. His judgment will be holy and therefore the wrath will be holy wrath. It will not be a Day filled with vindictive and petty finger-pointing. God is not the devil. That will be the Day when all vindictive and petty finger-pointing will be thrown into the lake of fire, where it belongs (Matt. 25:41). Accusation will not only be accused on that Day, but it will also be condemned. But not only will condemnation fall on the Accuser, but also on all his angels. What are angels? They are messengers.

Messengers of the devil are the delivery boys of accusation. Accusation, and all its messengers, will be thrown into everlasting fire, where they may blame everybody else to their heart’s content.

Accusation is holy law poured through the filter of a tiny and defiled soul. Justice is holy law, unfiltered. Love is holy law poured out on the only sinless man, broken on a tree. And why was He willing to be broken there? He did it so a world full of accusers could become a world full of former accusers.

So the fundamental accusation that is appropriate is directed against the spirit of accusation. But even here we must be careful, lest we not know what spirit we are of (Luke 9:55). “Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee” (Jude 9). When Michael was fighting with the accuser, he was careful not be bring a railing accusation — lest he be sucked into that malicious vortex. He left that rebuke to God. We see the same thing elsewhere. Another time Satan, the accuser, was being resisted by the angel of the Lord, but without a return accusation (Zech. 3:2). The Lord rebuke you.

The reason the devil’s accusation have force with us is that because we have broken God’s law, we are indeed subject to death. He wields that threat of death very effectively. God gives law its potency, the law gives sin its strength, sin gives death its sting, and the devil tells lies with all of it. And as with all effective lies, there is truth in it. That’s why it works so well.

“Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb. 2:14-15).

“Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:54b-57).

If you want out of the devil’s realm, you want out of the world of accusation. If you insist on remaining there, you will discover that those who live by the sword die by the sword. Those who feast on accusations will eventually be eaten by them.

This won’t necessarily happen tomorrow.  You can run on for a long time.

Deathbed Confessions

The Dying of Sir Paul Holmes

God tells us that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their evil ways to Him.  For the past months we in New Zealand have been publicly made aware of the imminent death of Sir Paul Holmes, a broadcaster and interview host.  His deteriorating health, his accomplishments, his family relationships–all have been played out in the public eye.  Deliberately.  Sir Paul, is–and always has been–a showman.

That’s all fine.  Today a newspaper published his final thoughts–sort of the modern version of deathbed reflections and confessions of the famous–a well known historical genre.  We read this:

In an emotional interview with TVNZ’s Sunday programme last night, the veteran broadcaster revealed his innermost fears and reflections as his life draws to a close.  He admitted death was a scary prospect, but said he had made peace with all he needed to.  “I’m a bit frightened, but I plan to increase my peace with God,” he said in the interview aired last night.  “I’m worried about what’s over the hill. I don’t know what there is.”

“I plan to increase my peace with God.”  Striking expression.  What does he mean?

We believe in death-bed repentance, confessions and conversions.  It pleases God to call whomever He will, when and where he chooses.  For some it is on the road to Damascus bearing thither a heart filled with bitter anger and murderous intent.  For others it is amidst excruciating pain whilst racked on a Roman cross. 

Throughout his professional, public life Paul Holmes has mocked Christians, sneering at their “narrow mindedness”, mocking their (to him) simplistic credulity, their failure to conform to the dictates of  modern “scientific” reasonableness, and so forth.  If a Christian publicly criticized abortion or homosexuality the audience was treated to Holmes’s wrinkled lip and sneer of cold disdain  poured forth upon the miserable miscreant currently before him. 

To us, as Christians, it’s not personal.  That’s what pagans do.  They hated the Lord Jesus Christ.  His followers they must also hate.  We extend our free forgiveness to Sir Paul and those who follow in his train.  We are content to leave their judgement to the Judge of the heavens and the earth, Who tries the thoughts and intents of every heart.  We Christians have already been judged.  Our judgement has been certain, final, and deadly–and has been already exacted upon the One Name fully and finally.  We are forgiven because He was condemned.

But now Sir Paul tells us he is planning to “increase his peace with God”.  One has the uneasy impression that he is preparing to meet God as if he were preparing for an interview.  Only now the interviewer is about to be God; the interviewee is to be Sir Paul. Finally the tables are turned.  Knowing that he will have to “spit out all the butt ends of his days and ways” he is polishing up his apologia, his arguments, his extenuations–in a word–his case.  One fears he is doing his research through his memories, aligning his evidences.  One fears that he is approaching this with his trademark, cheeky laddishness, ready to try out the odd flippant remark or joke to get a laugh out of Almighty God. 

We hope not.  All Unbelievers, when they contemplate the Judgment to come, operate a version of the “scales” model–believing that all they need do is demonstrate enough moral worth and achievement to outweigh any evil they may have done.  To see the scales tip ever so slightly in their favour.  The Scriptures will have none of it.  God has already declared to us the uselessness of such thinking.  God’s holiness is infinite; it is absolute.  He is not a mere creature with which to bargain.  To fall short, to miss the mark in one thing is to become guilty in all.  James says, “for whoever observes the whole law, but slips in one point, becomes guilty in every respect.”  (James 2:10).  These words are God-breathed; they are literally God’s words. When One is so holy, so pure, exacting, so infinitely intolerant of sin the “scales” model of judgment is an insult, a blasphemy. 

We hope that Sir Paul is seeking God in repentance, not negotiation; in submission, not haggling; trusting in the mercy of Christ, not false balance weights. 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Seven Post Mortem Principles 

Politics Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, 07 November 2012

1. The first principle is not just that Jesus is Lord. That wonderful phrase is our foundational confession; it is not simply a sweet sentiment to tide us over until the sweet by and by. Rather we must say that Jesus is the Lord of history, and so He is the one who gave this electoral outcome to us. We don’t fully know why He did, but we know that He did.

2. Given the wickedness of key elements in Obama’s agenda (abortion, sodomy, thievery through taxation, etc.) we know that whatever the Lord is doing, it is for judgment and not for blessing. And in Scripture, whenever judgment is pending, or has begun, the appropriate response is repentance — not mobilization or organizing our remaining tatters.

Postmillennial optimism does not mean the world gets better without repentance. It means that the gospel is powerful to save, and when the gospel is preached rightly it comes in the form of “repent and believe.” Repent of what? Repent of our sins. Believe what? Believe in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.

3. No principled vote cast yesterday, offered in faith before the Lord, was a wasted vote. Those who went to the polls with true faith in Christ and a sincere commitment to do what His Word required of them offered up a vote that was part of their living sacrifice (Rom. 12:1-2). And if He received it, so should we — even if the vote cast differed from our own.

4. Every unprincipled vote, offerred to the bitch goddess of the state on the left, or the bitch goddess of pragmatism on the soft right, or the bitch goddess of ideology on the libertarian right, was simply thrown away. Professing Christians who voted for Obama were either confusedly or rebelliously heaping up judgment for all of us. Christians on the right who voted for Romney for no other reason than that he was “electable” found out that he was not as electable as all that. And Christians who voted for absolute ideological purity (which is, remember, a form of impurity) found out that that kind of purity wasn’t in the running.

5. Consistent biblical thinking required us to be preparing to oppose the proposals of either a re-elected Obama or a newly-elected Romney. In my judgment, opposition to Obama will be much tougher, which is why I would have preferred to have been opposing Romney. But if the Lord has given us the tougher assignment, our responsibility is to take up that tougher assignment with a gladness that submits to His will.
So my predictions of a Romney victory did not proceed from support for Romney. I didn’t want to vote for Romney, and I didn’t. I didn’t want to work for Romney, and I didn’t. I was preparing myself to oppose either Obama and Romney, and would have preferred to go against Romney.

6. If you want this conservative to vote with you, stop trying to entice me with non-conservatives. Stop trying to feed bacon to your horse. One of the numbing numbers to come out of this fiasco is the fact that if Romney had simply gotten the same number of votes that McCain did, Romney would have won. This deflation happened without a robust third party candidate siphoning off a large number of votes. The results of this election should not cause us to think we need to “move to the center.” Two establishment Republican candidates in a row have gone down, and this second time the centrist lost to a failed presidency. I mean, think about it.

7. Some of the post-mortems will rightly focus on particular political judgments made (e.g. the alienation of Ron Paul supporters). But the long game requires us to be thinking in broader cultural ways, not explicitly political ways. Here are several examples.

Over the next four years our energies should be focused on getting all Christian kids out of the government schools. If your kids are educated by people who are soft in the head, why would you expect them to grow up and not vote for people who are soft in the head? Students become like their teachers (Luke 6:40). Don’t lament the fact that Obama won if over 90% of your children’s teachers voted for him.

We also need Christians with a thorough-going biblical worldview writing good books, making good movies, and recording good music. As I have argued before, you can’t have a naval war without ships, you can’t have tank warfare without tanks, and you can’t fight a culture war without a culture. And by Christian culture, incidentally, I do not mean pious schlock and I do not mean hipster poses with extra mousse in your hair to make it stick up.

So don’t despair. As the Marine general said in the Korean conflict, when his forces were completely outnumbered and surrounded with Chinese troops — “Well, they can’t get away now!”
When the history of our time is written, and they are trying to describe us, we should want historians to have to use the word irrepressible.

>Doug Wilson’s Letter From America

>European Style Cancer
Political Dualism – Mere Christendom
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, June 12, 2010

A common rallying cry for conservative activists, including Christians, is that we need “to take America back.” Okay, sign me up. Take America back where?

Generally the point is that we need to take America back from the liberals and progressives — the secularists in the academy, the homosexuals in the streets, and the raunchy movie producers in our very own Netflix queue. Okay, sign me up again. Once we have taken America back from those guys, what do we do with it?

The assumption is that the underlying America is just fine the way it is unless some progressive has been messing with it. We need to “save America,” the thinking goes, and so the language of salvation is used all the time. But in our heart of hearts, we believe we are saving an innocent kidnapping victim, and not a skid row bum who became a drunk because of his own stupid choices.

In other words, all too often we believe that once the progressives, that alien force, are taken out of the picture, America’s native good sense will return, the nation will right itself, common sense will again prevail when it comes to the national budget, we will stop killing the unborn “because we are too good for that,” and so on. In short, America gets to be saved without a savior. America gets to be saved without repentance. America gets to be saved without hearing and believing the gospel. In other words, if the terms of the Great Commission were a great tournament, America always gets a bye.

This is not just a trivial error; it is heresy. It is another gospel. It is false, damnable. Further, it is a basic reason why we have so little success in fighting the progressives, whose vision for society really is a lunatic vision. Traditional values can’t fight sin, for the same reason that healthy tissue can’t fight cancer — but they are rather the tissues that provides cancer with its scope and its future.

You can tell this assumption is operating when somebody says that progressive socialism is “unAmerican.” No, our leftists are homegrown, and every bit as American as, say, an amber wave of grain. To return to the cancer illustration, what good does it do to say that this cancer is not “my cancer”? It shouldn’t kill you then, right? To say this cancer in my body is not my cancer, but is rather some kind of “European-style” cancer makes no sense, other than perhaps as an exercise in blame shifting.

If you persist in saying that the healthy tissue is the “real you,” and that the moral cancer rotting out your bones is not, then this precludes repentance. And yet, the declaration of the gospel — that Christians were told to preach to all nations, including ours — includes preaching repentance and faith. Nations means nations, repentance means repentance for our own sins and not other people’s, and faith means faith in Jesus Christ. Baptism means baptism into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Sorry to get into all the deep theology here but the Christian faith means calling everyone to believe in Jesus. The name for not wanting to do that is unbelief.

This is what we must do in order to “take America back.” Any attempts to take America back without an explicit call for America to become (again) a Christian nation is an exercise in futility, and far from taking America out of the saloon, it is actually buying her another drink.

I am not calling for America to join a particular denomination. This is by no means sectarian. I am simply saying that our nation — our leaders, our judges, our poets, our jesters, and our people as a whole — must confess that Jesus is Lord. They must confess that only Jesus is Lord. Other nations are called do the same and, as they do, they would of course recognize one another. This is what I would call mere Christendom.