A Deep and Imperturbable Joy

Christianity Versus Ancient Paganism

Christianity proved to be revolutionary to the ancient world partly because it affirmed the creation and the material order as being (originally) holy, just, and good.  The material order was not–at least to Christians–a lower order of being.

(Christianity) was obliged to proclaim, far more radically than any other ancient system of thought, the incorruptible goodness of the world, the original and ultimate beauty of all things, inasmuch as it understood this world to be the direction creation of the omnipotent God of love.

Far from preaching a gospel of liberation from the flesh, moreover, Christianity’s chief proclamation was the real resurrection of Christ, in body and soul, and the redemption this proclamation offered consisted in an ultimate transfiguration of the flesh and the glorification of the entirety of creation (as Paul says in the eighth chapter of Romans). 

Christianity, uniquely, rejected the pagan morphology of salvation, and hence even the church’s ascetic practices were inspired by motives and expectations unknown to pagan thought.  When Christians undertook to discipline the appetites of the body through austerities and renunciations, it was not because they sought release from the “prison” or “tomb” of the body–as did those who belonged to other ascetical traditions–but because they regarded the body as God’s good creature, the proper home of the soul, a worthy temple of the Holy Spirit, requiring sanctification only so as to be restored to its true dignity as a vessel of divine glory and raised to participation in the Kingdom of God. 

And the Kingdom itself was understood to be this world renewed, perhaps broken in order to be knit aright again, but the one creation of the one true God, set free at last from bondage to death.  Robin Lane Fox is quite correct to note that, among the authors of the second century, “it is the Christians who are the most confident and assured”, and that the “magnificent optimism” of Irenaeus of Lyon and the almost innocent cheerfulness of Justin Martyr stand out as distinctively and unmistakably Christian characteristics.  Even Christian funerals took the form of triumphal processions and communal celebrations of the overthrow of death.

Whatever else Christianity brought into the late antique world, the principal gift it offered to pagan culture was a liberation from spiritual anxiety, from the desperation born of a hopeless longing for escape, from the sadness of having to forsake all love of the world absolutely to find salvation, from a morbid terror of the body, and from the fear that the cosmic powers on high might prevent the spirit from reaching its heavenly home.  As Paul had assured the Roman Christians, “neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor power, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other thing created, shall have the power to separate us from the love of God which is Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8: 38-39). . . . (T)he “new thing” that the gospel imparted to the world in which it was born and grew was . . . a deep and imperturbable joy.  [David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 144f.]

Hell Bound

No Earthly Hope

The case of the Turangi child rapist has ended.  The details are disclosed.  Most will be left in despair wondering what on earth can be done to stop this kind of thing happening again. 

The family life of the rapist, Raurangi Marino has consequently come to light.  It is pretty much as we expected.  Broken home, alcohol and drugs, beatings, (rival) gang affiliations, parental desertion, family violence, and sexual assaults (2) upon the young Marino. 

Canterbury University sociology professor and criminologist Greg Newbold said children who got into this sort of trouble come from the worst families.”You don’t get many happy, stable families who produce kids who do things like this.”

Stuff provides the litany:

Ms Wall, a former Black Power associate, said her son endured regular beatings at home. “I wanted it to stop but I couldn’t because I was a hard-out alcoholic and it was the family versus me.” She described Marino as a “good boy, a little naughty. He was just brought up too quick, too young, he got into drugs and alcohol too early. I take a lot of responsibility of what happened, and for his upbringing.”

The family was angry at her, she said. “They call me a bad mother and [say] I have brought up horrible children. I’m deeply sorry for the little girl’s family, she will go through trauma for the rest of her life.”  Marino’s father, Mark Marino – a Taupo Mongrel Mob member – said he feared for his son’s safety in prison.

The question that is in our face is, Can this family, and particularly Mr Marino jr, be saved?  The short answer is, no.  There is nothing, no power upon earth that can change or reform these lives.  They are lost, and lost forever.

Doubtless the Marinos will get a lot of false counsel.  There will be those who will call them disgusting animals, sub-human, utterly worthy of degradation and the torments of  Hell forever.  They will be right.  But unless they add the rider, “And so are we all” they will be deceiving themselves and the Marinos.  When David lamented, “I am evil, born in sin” in Psalm 51 he was both telling the truth about himself, and yet confessing what is also true for every living human being upon the planet.

There will be those who will seek to encourage Raurangi Marino by telling him that the fault was not his.  Rather, it was his dysfunctional family, his evil parents, his circumstances of life as a child, and the debilitating effects of alcohol and drugs.  They will be right.  But unless they add what the sentencing judge added–that Marino and Marino alone was responsible for his actions–they will be deceiving themselves and Marino.  The Bible gives this burning indictment to all such: nothing–neither circumstances nor people–make us do evil.  It comes from within, from the lusts of our own heart (James 1: 13,14). 

There will be those who would try to ameliorate Marino’s guilt, and his conscience, by deflecting blame to society at large.  If society had provided “decent” jobs for Marino’s parents, more benefits, less institutional racism; if society had not stripped Maori of their mana by stealing their lands and victimising the tangata whenua, then his mother and father would not have resorted to criminal gangs for their mana, and Marino would not have committed his crime.  Such false counsellors who say such things are beneath contempt: they demean and degrade the Marinos most of all, making them less than human, easy tools, benighted slaves.  Their indictment of society instead of the Marinos is self-serving and false and they also deserve the Outer Darkness.   

No, there is no power upon earth that can save Raurangi Marino: he is Hell bound.  Only God Himself can save the Marinos–if it were to please Him.  He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and He hardens whom He desires. (Romans 9:18)  But let none be in doubt: the atoning death of our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient and hard enough to atone for all His people amongst whom are numbered some of the worst moral degenerates ever seen by, or known to mankind.   It would be sufficient for the Marinos.

But such mercy will not come cheap.  Did not our Lord say, “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me”  (Luke 9:23)?   If Marino and his family are going to be delivered from Hell it will cost them everything, let none be in any doubt–least of all, them.  

We hope that one day they come to the point where they would count that cost as nothing in comparison to being delivered from Hell and knowing Christ Jesus, their Lord. In the meantime, our confession is, “There, but for the grace of God, go we.” 

Shaking Baradur

But As For Me and My House . . .

The human race is troubled, deeply so.  Existence is not what it should be.  Things are not right.  They must be put to right.  Who or what will do it?  Whilst there may be the occasional Pollyanna who believes in relentless universal goodness, the overwhelming majority of human beings think that things could (and should) be better. Since this is true of most nations and human cultures, we are faced with a dilemma: either we descend into bitterness, or we find a saviour in which we can place our faith and hope that things will improve and eventually be put to rights. 

The quest for, and hope in, a saviour of some kind is pretty much universal. Our age is no exception.
  The ancient Greeks used to apply the title “Soter” or Saviour to gods, titans, and heroes.  It was fairly common.  When Augustus assumed the imperial mantle in Rome amongst his many titles inevitably came “Augustus–Saviour” first declared concerning the Roman Emperor in the hellenised Eastern provinces.  Augustus accepted the title.

Our age is comprehensively secular in nature.  No god exists to be recognized or venerated, we are told.  But a saviour-doctrine surely does.  If one stands back from the public discourse during elections in the West virtually all political parties contend for voter support by promising that they will be best at running the government or ruling so as to save the country and put things to right.  In our secularised world, the government is Soter–something foreshadowed by Augustus and Rome centuries ago.  Things have not changed much. 

Against all this stands the testimony of God Himself.  Yes, the world is deeply troubled and imperfect.  But the cause is not a yet-to-be-completed evolutionary process.  Nor is it chaos. Nor warring amongst the gods.  Nor a lack of philosopher kings.  The cause of trouble is human evil, sin, in every human being.  The cause of all that is wrong and imperfect is our rebellion against God.  The wages of our sin is death. But God has put forth One whose name means (in Hebrew), Saviour.  It is the ultimate Soter doctrine.  “You shall call his Name Jesus for He will save His people from their sins.” (Matt. 1:21)

Herein lies the reason why the Christian Gospel is so offensive to the West.  It confronts and strikes at the heart of our culture’s pride and arrogance.  The West’s Soter doctrine and the Christian faith will never agree, never find common cause.  They remain diametrically opposed; the warfare will not cease until one is triumphant and the other broken and defeated. 

The Christian Gospel also has its Soter doctrine.  Once again, it is emphatic, declarative, fixed, and certain.  The ambassadors of the Lord Christ declared: “There is salvation in no-one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)  The Scriptures declare that Christ alone is the Saviour; no other name has been put forward by God in all heaven and earth to deliver us.  Our culture utterly rejects this.  It asserts that government will be our saviour.  Between these two there can be no final agreement, no working compromise, no ultimate common cause. 

When Christians stand and declare, using the words of the Creed, “I believe in Jesus . . . ” they are not only uttering the words of Scripture, they are declaring that they believe in God.  They side with Him and His truth and His provision of the only true Saviour.  But by this very act they are engaged in subversion.  By their declaration the very foundations of Baradur are shaken. 

“But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”  We utterly reject the West’s false saviour. We will neither acknowledge it, nor bow down to serve it. 

All Things New

 The Renovation of the Whole World

“To the Lord and his kingdom belongs the whole world, http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jtertullian&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1592446787&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrwith all that lives and moves in it.  All is yours, says the apostle (I Corinthians 3:22).  Religion is not a single, separate sphere of human life, but the divine principle by which the entire man is to be pervaded, refined, and made complete.  It takes hold of him in his undivided totality, in the center of his personal being; to carry light into his understanding, holiness into his will, and heaven into his heart; and to shed thus the sacred consecration of the new birth, and the glorious liberty of the children of God, over his whole inward and outward life.

“No form of existence can withstand the renovating power of God’s Spirit.
There is no rational element that may not be sanctified; no sphere of natural life that my not be glorified.  The creature, in the widest extent of the world, is earnestly waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God, and sighing after the same glorious deliverance.  The whole creation aims toward redemption; and Christ is the second Adam, the new universal man, not simply in a religious but also in an absolute sense.

“The view entertained by Romish monasticism and Protestant pietism, by which Christianity is made to consist in an abstract opposition to the natural life, or in flight from the world, is quite contrary to the spirit and power of the Gospel, as well as false to its design.  Christianity is the redemption and renovation of the world. It must make all things new.”

Philip Schaff, The Principle of Protestantism, trans. John Nevin (Philadelphia: United Church Press, [1845] 1964), p. 173.

The Secular Perversions of Gareth Morgan

An Economist’s Gospel of Free Grace

We were struck recently by the following statement which appeared in the NZ Herald.  It was made by economists Gareth Morgan and Susan Guthrie. 

The United Nations in 1948 last gave strong voice to the philosophical values of the classical economists cited above, when its Declaration of Human Rights (which we signed) stated: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and his family including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

This is an inalienable right, not one conditional upon meeting the work-ready tests or whatever the latest set of eligibility hurdles or inquisition practices the Welfare Working Group recommends. It is a human right.  Being in or ready for paid work is not a prerequisite. This right extends to everyone, including the legions of people in our society who perform unpaid work, whether it’s care for children or the elderly, or voluntary work for their communities.

OK, so let’s parse this.  In 1948, the UN made a Declaration.  So what.
  If the UN made a declaration that the moon was made of green cheese would we credulously genuflect as if it were the font of all wisdom and the source of truth?  The UN is nothing more than a gaggle of nation-states, vying for control over other nation states, using the UN as leverage.  It is a thoroughly compromised, venal tool of Realpolitik.  The UN has also made asinine declarations about global warming–equally specious, equally pretentious.  So what?  This is the correct response.  It is a disreputable, discredited, thoroughly compromised institution that bears no authority whatsoever. 

Turning to the Declaration itself, what authoritative revelation or standard of absolute truth does it have recourse to in order to make the judgment that everyone has a right to a certain standard of living?  Whose authority is being invoked.  Is is Gaia?  Is is Secular Humanism?  Is it Marxism?  Don’t make the pronouncement without citing the source, lest you are content with being dismissed as a naive utopian or a mere idle babbler. 

Moreover, what is a human “right”.  There are obviously many kind of rights.  One arguably has a right to blow his nose and comb his hair, for example.  Is this the same kind of right as the enjoyment of a basic security?  Is voting in an election a human right?  Is practising a perverse immorality a human right–say, for example theft or homosexuality or abortion? 

Well, we get a pretty fair idea of what the authors mean by the term “human right”.  It is apparently an unqualified, unconditional entitlement.  It is inalienable.  It cannot be lost.  So, for sake of argument, imagine if one were to declare that effort, labour, work, industry, thrift, and prudence be damned.  All the days of one’s life there was to be no work, no labour to put food on the table–by personal choice.  Would the UN Declaration of human rights apply?  Yes, say our authors. “It is a human right.  Being in or ready for paid work is not a prerequisite. This right extends to everyone.” Others would have to provide for you (through the modern taxation system).   

What lunacy is this?  What moral turpitude is on display here? 

Here is where all doctrines of (secular) human rights lead.  They lead straight to unconditional entitlements, with the State as the mechanism and enforcement of provision, because there is no moral foundation to the rights in the first place.  If work and labour is a moral duty; if providing for one’s own household is a mandatory responsibility, if a higher morality and code of ethics is seen to bind every human being, then rights language can be both constructive and helpful.  Remove an absolute moral framework, universally binding upon all human beings, then responsibility and duty devolves merely to ensuring that everyone’s entitlements are delivered.  And if you should so choose not to accept such a responsibility–no problem–your entitlements will be met regardless. 

This is secular humanisms perversion of unconditional election and salvation by grace alone.  It is the secular Gospel.  It is a satanic perversion of grace.  Universal, unconditional, free entitlements. 

Humanistic secular salvation by grace alone. Isn’t the established religion of our day a wonderful thing to behold? 

>Semper Reformanda

>Returning to the God of Our Fathers

J. I. Packer:

I think of the two pans of an old fashioned pair of scales. If one goes up, the other goes down.
Once upon a time folks new that God was great and that man by comparison was small. Each individual carried around a sense of his own smallness in the greatness of God’s world.

However, the scale pans are in a different relation today. Man has risen in his own estimation. He thinks of himself as great, grand and marvelously resourceful. This means inevitably that our thoughts about God have shrunk. As God goes down in our estimation, He gets smaller. He also exists now only for our pleasure, our convenience and our health, rather than we existing for His glory.

Now, I’m an old fashioned Christian and I believe that we exist for the glory of God.

>Tolerable Religion

>Infidelity and Its Tricks

Tolerable religion in our post-Christian world is religion which is essentially private. If a religion has to have a social expression, it might just be tolerable if everyone is a volunteer, involved because they chose to be so. Within a particular religious group, the modern world would give it languid “high fives” if it had no rules, strict regulations, doctrines, or practices to which all participants must conform.

The apostasy of our age would far prefer a religion which is voluntaristic from woe to go. “Here is a neat doctrine or idea” (but it’s up to you whether you believe it or not, of course.) This kind of religion is tolerable. Anything further is offensive at best, harmful to people at worst.

This brings us to the paradox of the Church of Christ. Highly dogmatic it surely is. After all, the core of the Gospel message to Unbelievers is: “Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Reject Him and His salvation, and the wrath of God abides upon you.” It comes with a divine injunction to repent (turn away from) sin. Moreover, the Church of Christ has all sorts of doctrinal particularities, which to the modern Unbelieving ear seem terribly pedantic and irrelevant. Still further, the Church insists upon these doctrinal abstractions, warning that to disbelieve such is to put one’s eternal welfare at risk.

More than any other organised religion found in this world the Church has organised its beliefs and doctrines into formal creedal statement, derived from the Scriptures, but organised in such a way as to present doctrinal precision. “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,” and “I believe one holy, catholic and apostolic church,” for example. If you turn to the Belgic Confession, the Second Helvetic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Westminster Confession, or the Twenty-Nine Articles you will find official extensive doctrinal formulations declaratively stating what the Bible teaches–and calling all Christians likewise to believe.

The Church of Christ is thoroughly dogmatic–although its dogmas are not originally its own. Its doctrinal formulations, if they are to have any conscience-binding authority at all, must be and are derived from Holy Scripture–that is, from God Himself. However, because God alone can bind the conscience, and because the Lord Jesus Christ alone is lord of the conscience, the Church is not entitled to bind in addition to, or beyond, what is revealed and taught in Scripture itself.

The Church commands belief in the Name of God. But it does not compel belief. Faith must be what every individual person believes, as well as a common corporate commitment.  In that sense the Church is voluntaristic. It invites people to enter into covenant with God. But the terms and conditions are God’s; they are not negotiated. “Choose you this day whom you will serve,” commanded Joshua. “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Such religion is deeply offensive to the modern ear. To the spirit of Unbelief such claims to authority are not just wrong, they are inappropriate to humanity. They denigrate and risk harm the psyche. They are implicitly abusive. But David Brooks, writing an Op-Ed in the New York Times sees right through the contemporary zeitgeist of Unbelief.

Vague, uplifting, nondoctrinal religiosity doesn’t actually last. The religions that grow, succor and motivate people to perform heroic acts of service are usually theologically rigorous, arduous in practice and definite in their convictions about what is True and False.

That’s because people are not gods. No matter how special some individuals may think they are, they don’t have the ability to understand the world on their own, establish rules of good conduct on their own, impose the highest standards of conduct on their own, or avoid the temptations of laziness on their own. . . .

Rigorous theology provides believers with a map of reality. These maps may seem dry and schematic — most maps do compared with reality — but they contain the accumulated wisdom of thousands of co-believers who through the centuries have faced similar journeys and trials.

Rigorous theology allows believers to examine the world intellectually as well as emotionally. Many people want to understand the eternal logic of the universe, using reason and logic to wrestle with concrete assertions and teachings.

Rigorous theology helps people avoid mindless conformity. Without timeless rules, we all have a tendency to be swept up in the temper of the moment. But tough-minded theologies are countercultural. They insist on principles and practices that provide an antidote to mere fashion.

Rigorous theology delves into mysteries in ways that are beyond most of us. For example, in her essay, “Creed or Chaos,” Dorothy Sayers argues that Christianity’s advantage is that it gives value to evil and suffering. Christianity asserts that “perfection is attained through the active and positive effort to wrench real good out of a real evil.” This is a complicated thought most of us could not come up with (let alone unpack) outside of a rigorous theological tradition.

Rigorous codes of conduct allow people to build their character. Changes in behavior change the mind, so small acts of ritual reinforce networks in the brain. A Mormon denying herself coffee may seem like a silly thing, but regular acts of discipline can lay the foundation for extraordinary acts of self-control when it counts the most.

He concludes with this pearl of wisdom:

I was once in an AIDS-ravaged village in southern Africa. The vague humanism of the outside do-gooders didn’t do much to get people to alter their risky behavior. The blunt theological talk of the church ladies — right and wrong, salvation and damnation — seemed to have a better effect.

>"Miserable Sinner" Christianity

>A Life of Exultant Joy

B.B. Warfield (1851–1921), Professor of Polemical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, wrote an essay in 1920 entitled, “’Miserable-Sinner Christianity’ in the Hands of the Rationalists,” published in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 7, pp. 113-114.

The essay deconstructs the attempts by rationalistic theologians of his day to re-interpret the Gospel of Christ to make salvation a synergistic work between man and God. Here is an excerpt:

We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all.This is not true of us only “when we believe.” It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live.

Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in Christian behavior may be.

It is always on His “blood and righteousness” alone that we can rest. There is never anything that we are or have or do that can take His place, or that can take a place along with Him. We are always unworthy, and all that we have or do of good is always of pure grace.

Though blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, we are still in ourselves just “miserable sinners”: “miserable sinners” saved by grace to be sure, but “miserable sinners” still, deserving in ourselves nothing but everlasting wrath. That is the attitude which the Reformers took, and that is the attitude which the Protestant world has learned from the Reformers to take, toward the relation of believers to Christ.

There is emphasized in this attitude the believer’s continued sinfulness in fact and in act; and his continued sense of his sinfulness. And this carries with it recognition of the necessity of unbroken penitence throughout life. The Christian is conceived fundamentally in other words as a penitent sinner.

But that is not all that is to be said: it is not even the main thing that must be said. It is therefore gravely inadequate to describe the spirit of “miserable sinner Christianity” as “the spirit of continuous but not unhopeful penitence.” It is not merely that it is too negative a description, and that we must at least say, “the spirit of continuous though hopeful penitence.” It is wholly uncomprehending description, and misplaces the emphasis altogether.

The spirit of this Christianity is a spirit of penitent indeed, but overmastering exultation. The attitude of the “miserable sinner” is not only not one of despair; it is not even one of depression; and not even one of hesitation or doubt; hope is too weak a word to apply to it. It is an attitude of exultant joy. Only this joy has its ground not in ourselves but in our Savior.

We are sinners and we know ourselves to be sinners, lost and helpless in ourselves. But we are saved sinners; and it is our salvation which gives the tone to our life, a tone of joy which swells in exact proportion to the sense we have of our ill-desert; for it is he to whom much is forgiven who loves much, and who, loving, rejoices much.

Hat Tip: Justin Taylor

>John Piper in Angola Prison

>“I was in Prison And You Came to Me”

According to Wikipedia,

The Louisiana State Penitentiary (also known as Angola and “The Farm”) is a prison in Louisiana operated by the Louisiana Department of Corrections. The prison is the largest maximum security prison in the United States with 5,000 inmates and 1,800 staff members. It is located on an 18,000 acre (73 km²) property that was previously the Angola and other plantations owned by Isaac Franklin in unincorporated West Feliciana Parish, close to the Mississippi border. . . . Current Warden Burl Cain maintains an open-door policy with the media, which led to the production of the award winning documentary The Farm.

Angola Prison, under the leadership of Warden Cain, encourages an active Christian ministry throughout the prison, which is actually one of the largest working farms in the US. Many of the prisoners are “lifers”: while not on death row, their prison sentences are so long, they will die in prison. Many prisoners have been converted. A mission training institute has been set up, and missionaries have gone from Angola into other prisons in the US to spread the Gospel amongst prisoners in other prisons.

In the video below, visiting Pastor John Piper conducts a 30 minute Q&A session with prisoners. The calibre of the questions would put many contemporary Christians to shame. When you consider the background of the audience you cannot but marvel at the wonder of God’s redeeming grace in Christ. God alone can do what man cannot do–save sinners.

Hat Tip: Justin Taylor

>A Sorrow That Leads to Death

>Humanists Always Get Christmas Wrong

The modern humanist’s version of Christmas is relentlessly secular. He manufacturers all sorts of work-arounds to re-interpret, re-frame, reconstitute Christmas so as to avoid its meaning and implications which are, after all, painful.

Christmas is painful because it reminds us that we need atonement. We are lost, cut off, and alienated from God. There is never a day in which we have not sinned in thought, word, or deed. It is not just that we do the odd, occasional wrong. It is that we are sinful and sin touches and perverts everything. We commit true moral evils by what we commit and omit. The joy of Christmas is that God has provided atonement for our sins and that the atoning One is the child born of Mary in Bethlehem.

This should be good news to all who realise their unworthiness and moral defalcation. Humbling news, but good news. But humanists have a thousand work-arounds to avoid this truth, to pass hurriedly by on the other side of the road. To accept Christ’s atonement on our behalf is the ultimate humiliation of man, whilst at the very same time it is his ultimate glory. The humanist always wants the glory, but not the other.

One Judy Lightfoot, an educator from Seattle, wrote a personal reflection about Christmas that involved her coming to understand she was sinful. Well, she did not put it in those terms–she did not believe she had true moral guilt as a sinner before a holy and angry God. But she came to a point in her life, she said, where she understood that although she was successful in the world’s eyes, she had done some truly evil things.

On the whole, I thought quite well of myself until several years ago, when one winter night I sat up in bed next to my sleeping husband with the sudden realization that I’d done terrible things. You know the kinds of regrets you periodically remember through your life, and the way they sting every time? That night I thought about how I’d cherished grudges against a difficult colleague — perhaps because news of her serious illness had arrived that day. Right on top of it came the thought that my marriage to the father of my children hadn’t lasted nearly as long as hers, and that I’d gotten divorced — more than once. Then the abortion I had in grad school came crowding in. And so on. The memories were old and familiar, but taken together they imposed a new and heavy weight. I’d cultivated my pleasure in someone else’s pain. I’d broken solemn promises to “love and honor until death do us part.” I’d even ended a human life. And so on.

Maybe it was because I’d been reading C. S. Lewis, but sitting there in the dark I realized that I had cut myself a lot of slack. My pride in being a pretty good person had rested on thinking like the Pharisee who plumed himself beside the tax collector: comparing myself with others I deemed less worthy (“Which one of you did it?” …“Not me!”). You know the drill: “I may be selfish and greedy sometimes, and I may cut corners on my tax returns, but I’m no Bernie Madoff.” My sense of virtue was merely comparative, and it had separated me from other people in ways I hadn’t been aware of. But with this recognition my blind pride began dissolving — leaving room for something new to be born as days went by. Was it merely a coincidence that this happened around Christmastime?

Now at this point, the interest of every Christian perks up. We have all heard hundreds of such personal accounts and we would all be able to add our personal “amen”. The conviction for sin, such that we own up to it for what it really is, without excuse, flattery, or equivocation is something all Christians know. It is those who mourn and weep who are blessed. Maybe Judy is going to tell us how, under this new realisation of who she really was, that she began to long for God and His Saviour.

But no. In this case, another great humanist work-around emerges.

I’m still excessively proud of my writing, my productivity, my good taste, my politics, and my résumé. Habits of mind hardened through my decades on this earth still tend to make me hypercritical, judgmental, and competitive with others to the point where I can sometimes actually be glad when they fail. But instead of shuddering when struck by my shortcomings I can smile (wryly) because my radical imperfection helps me. I don’t mean that I open an accounting business: “I’ve got some black marks, so I better earn some gold stars to balance the books.” I mean that a sense of my sinfulness is a bridge linking me with others who might otherwise seem unapproachably different.

So the sum of this darkened soul’s personal conviction for true moral guilt and evil is that it has made her more tolerant of the imperfections of others. It helps her live in amity with others she may not otherwise like. Well, clearly Judy is too good to need a Saviour. She will not be found in Church, beating her breast, crying, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

The Scriptures speak truly when they declare there is a sorrow that leads to death (II Corinthians 7:10). It is the sorrow for sin that leads to work-arounds to avoid the open hand of the Saviour.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>We are Free Indeed

For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His
Romans 6:5

This one short verse contains the heart of the Gospel—the good news of God’s mercy and salvation to fallen mankind. The essence of eternal life is contained in our being united to Christ’s death and resurrection. All that is good to us from God, comes in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. We are blessed by being in His train, by being united to Him.

We who believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ are legally united to His death. Adam, the first head of the human race was legally representative of all humanity—so that in his sin and its punishment, all his descendants were adjudged by God to be equally sinful and all were, therefore, bound over to the punishment of Adam’s sin, which was and is death.

Our Lord Jesus Christ comes forth as the second Adam, the new, replacement Adam. He is legally united to all His people—all whom the Father has given Him—so that when He died and was punished for sin, He bore the guilt of all the sin of all His people, including the first sin of Adam which had been laid to our charge. This is the ground of why we are able to believe in the mercy of God toward us. The evil which we have done in thought, word, and deed has been fully and completely punished in His death in our place. We have been united to Him in His death.

But there is more. We have legally also been united to Christ in His resurrection. Note the change in tense in our text. We have been already (perfect) united to (lit: “planted together with”) Christ in His death; we most certainly shall be (future) united to Him in a resurrection like His. The day is coming when we will be like Him in His resurrection, bearing new and perfected life in body, mind, and soul. These things are as certain and life and death itself.

God’s dealings with us are now mediated through the Son. Just as His dealings with us had once been mediated through Adam, the consequence of which was certain death—even death within the womb, before an unborn child had done anything good or bad on their own account—so now, the death and resurrection of Christ is mediated to us; all His perfect work is put to our account. God deals with us accordingly.

We are conscious, then, that we have been known by God long beforehand. Long before we were, He has set His love upon us in Christ, from eternity. We have been embraced and taken up in a salvation so complete, so perfect, so impeccable that it is beyond our comprehension. Even our faith, which joins us to Christ existentially, so that in our believing we come to know and experience Him as our covenant Head—even our faith comes from God and is not of ourselves.

This, then, is the Gospel. From beginning to end it is God and the work of His Christ, anointed as our representative before God. To Him belongs all glory, all honour, and thanks. The debt we owe can never be paid, but it demands (and receives) our unending gratitude.

Far too often we spoil the happiness and felicity of the Gospel by not daring to believe it. We think it too good to be true. We start to mix it up with our unworthiness, or our failures, or our sins. It is when we start to consider ourselves too much that we think less of Him and the perfection of His work for us. Every day it would be good to remind ourselves that God regards us and considers us to be perfect, without any blot, blemish, or imperfection. He regards only the perfection of His Son that abides upon us.

>Thy Kingdom Come

>The Weak and Despised

We recently came across a piece highlighting some of the evidences of God’s grace, mercy, and power in Rwanda. That country, you recall, has been ravaged by tribal genocide. Well beneath the radar screen of the secular media, it seems that there is a day of visitation taking place in Rwanda–a visitation from Him, Who invites all who weak and heavy laden to come to Him, that He might give them rest.

The article was an interview with one Catherine Claire Larson who has written a book entitled, As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda. She reports on the reconciliation that it taking place in that nation as Hutu and Tutsi hear about and believe upon Him who breaks down every dividing wall and creates one new mankind.

In the first place, the number of orphans now approaching adulthood in that country is large (as one would expect.) Many of these orphans are coming to experience the grace of God’s adoption into His family. Larson says:

Imagine for a moment the loneliness that a thirteen year-old would feel having lost every member of his extended family, except his sister. Claude (an orphan she got to know) had been walking around for years with this incredible sense of loneliness. I think in part, the desire for vengeance, was a coping mechanism to keep him from feeling the depths of this profound sadness.

When he learned that he was adopted by God—and when he had that spiritual reality really re-enforced through the real tangible expression of the embrace of what he describes as “the family” Solace (a Christian ministry) became for him, I think it enabled him to begin the journey of healing.

She goes on to explain how Claude first got involved with a non-Christian “Survivor’s Club” where people sought strength and consolation in their common bond of suffering. It was destructive:

Well, according to Claude, the Survivors Club was a place where people simply went to vent their grief and their pain. And the experience seemed to only foment his rage as he heard other people’s experiences of horror. But the group called Solace, a Christ-centered group of widows and orphans, took it a step beyond simply sharing their grief. This group taught Claude how to pray and told him about Christ. Becoming involved with Solace, a group that became like a second family to him, was really the turning point for this young man who had been so full of vengeance.

But does the Gospel of Christ really make a difference? Larson writes about a school established for orphans by one Bishop John. Hutu and Tutsi orphaned youngsters lived together in harmony, evidencing the “one new mankind” being created by Christ, our Lord. But at times this has been put to the ultimate test.

I think in certain places, Rwandans have definitely made that connection (of being reconciled into one new mankind). In one of the stories I tell about a school that was attacked by rebels three years after the genocide; many of the students inside had really latched onto this sense of higher identity in Christ.

When these rebels demand that the students separate into Hutu and Tutsi, all of them, without exception refused. When asked if they were Hutu or Tutsi, they replied, “We are just Rwandan.” The rebels finally threw grenades into their classroom and many of them were killed. But the more significant wall that came down that day was a living picture of that dividing wall of hostility among the students. The wall was gone because so many of them understood their higher identity in Christ. They were willing to face death rather than betray their classmates. And many of them did.

Now, that is a power not of this world.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>Cutting to the Heart of the Matter

But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God
Romans 2:29

One of the great contributions made by the Evangelical movement to the history of the Church has been its emphasis upon this one great truth: that in order to enter the Kingdom of God everyone, without exception, must be born again or anew. Jesus said flatly and emphatically that unless one is born again, he will not see the Kingdom of God. (John 3:3) The Evangelical movement has helped bring that truth to the fore in a way not before seen.

This emphasis has led to the phrase “born again Christian”. Amongst evangelicals the phrase refers to one who is a genuine or true Christian. Amongst Unbelievers, the phrase is usually a term of derision and contempt. Amongst those in the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions the doctrine of being born again has never had the prominence and central importance it has achieved in the Evangelical movement. Amongst the Reformed, the doctrine of the new birth has always been believed and confessed.

We believe the doctrine of the need to be born again is particularly relevant and needs to be appropriately emphasized in a culture that has moved from a Christian position to a post-Christian one. That is, in a culture such as ours–the post-Christian secular west. In such a time and in such an age there are many people who consider themselves to be Christian (they declare is to on the census forms) and they retain an outward conformity to the Christian faith.

Now, in a general sense, this self-deceit is rapidly dissipating in the West with each successive generation. The West is becoming more and more overtly pagan and therefore not only non-Christian, but increasingly anti-Christian. A generation that only conforms outwardly to the Living God will be followed by a generation that openly worships idols and militantly rejects God. This will continue until the time of God’s choosing when He will judge Unbelief and revive and restore the Kingdom amongst us.

The Jewish people at the time of Christ were led by men whose conformity was outward only; many followed in their train. In our text, Paul, under the inspiration of the Spirit of God Himself, reveals that there were many people in his day who were Jews outwardly, but were not Jews at all (Romans 2:28). The true Jew—or one who in truth and actuality was a Jew—was not someone merely descended from Abraham, or who attended synagogue, or paid tithes—although of course true Jews also had these outward conformities and practices. But the true Jew was someone whose heart had been changed—“circumcised” is the metaphor used by Paul—and who, out of his changed heart, attended synagogue, paid tithes, revered his forefathers, and feared God.

This inner circumcision wrought an inner change; it cut away that which was evil and dead in the intellect, emotions, and will of an individual, and replaced it with truth, light, and faith. To become circumcised in heart is an equivalent metaphor to being born again. Both come from the Spirit of God, not man. Paul declares that circumcision of the heart is “by the Spirit”, just as Jesus declares that being born again is by the Spirit, and the Spirit only.

Just as with our Jewish forefathers, not all Christians are truthfully Christian. In fact, in an age such as ours, many who profess on the census forms are only outward Christians, not true Christians. Their objective and motivation is to have a “little bit” of the Christian faith as an insurance policy, in case it is true and they need it to access the after-life. They remain Athenians, preferring the City of Unbelief, although they concede that fashion and dress sense in Jerusalem has a few things going for it. These people are pulled up short in their delusions with the emphatic Scriptural declaration that they will never get anywhere near the Kingdom no matter how many times they tick the Christian box in the census form, or attend church, or confess, or communicate—they will never even see the Kingdom of God, unless they are born from above, by God’s Spirit.

And here is the rub. Being born again is a divine work, not a human work. You cannot do things to make, engineer, or ensure that you are born again. You cannot auto-generate. It is as impossible in the Kingdom as it is in the first birth. That is why Paul says that praise for being circumcised in heart comes not from men—but from God. Men cannot do or achieve this.

What then are we to do? Once again, the Bible is very clear on this. We are to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ in our hearts, coming out of the crowd of Unbelievers, and picking up our cross to follow Him. And we are to profess Him with our lips. “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved. . . . For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.” (Romans 10: 9—11)

Those who have been born again by the Spirit of God, falling from above, will be so changed inwardly that repentance and belief in our Lord inevitably and irresistibly follows. Those not circumcised in heart by the Spirit will continue to tick census boxes, and will maintain a Christian appearance hoping that God will notice and have regard for their efforts. He will not. Such a one will not even see God’s Kingdom, and the King will say, “Depart from Me, for I never knew you.”

To the one who hears this and becomes deeply afraid, the first signs of new birth from above are showing. To the one who shrugs or who mocks or denigrates, or who starts taking inventory of their “spiritual” accomplishments to counterbalance the threat—while these remain, the outer darkness awaits.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>Here I See My Father and My Mother . . .

And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.
Galatians 3: 28

When we were tyros, setting out on the grand march of life, we were amongst those who had conveniently swallowed the great humanist illusion that our day was the high point of human achievement, insight, and wisdom. Our generation was the biggest, the brightest and the best.

Having been converted to the Christian faith relatively early on, we had foolishly brought our humanist arrogance into our understanding of the faith. We were completely unaware of how many unbelieving assumptions were actually shading and blotting our understanding of Christ and His redemption. We were, in a word, Cartesians. We thought that the ultimate reality in our limited world was our own believing heart.

But, thankfully, the Lord was not finished with us. As time passed we came to understand that the world was not about us; that faith was not grounded in our human hearts; and that God and His creation did not turn around us, but that we turn around God. We eventually understood that life was for the glory of God, not for the glory of man.

We came to understand that our personal faith was grounded in God’s gracious election in Christ from the foundation of the world. We eventually understood that personal faith was not a function of our rationalisms but was a gift from God. With Augustine, we reached the point where we saw that we first of all believed in order to understand anything properly and correctly. We also came to understand that we had been grafted in to a long line of redemption. Our in-grafting meant that we had inherited the structures and paradigms of redemption which the Lord had first established with our (new) fathers.

It was around about at this point that we came to see and believe one of the most wonderful truths in Scripture—that we had inherited God’s promises to Abraham, because in Christ we had been declared to be Abraham’s offspring or descendants—and that, therefore, we had inherited the same promises that God had made to our father, Abraham.

Upon us, therefore, rested the great promise, first made to Abraham, but now in Christ, made to us as well—that God promised to be God to our children, even as He had become to us. The great promise of Genesis 17:7—first made to Abraham, but now also to us—dawned refulgently upon us.

And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you.

Now time has moved on and our descendants are walking before Him, even as He promised. Their children are now being born to take their place in the vanguard of the long line of redemption. Two of our grandchildren were recently baptised, which gave us cause to reflect upon the promises of God which we have inherited in Christ, our Lord. Unable to be present at the occasion, we wrote the following to one of our sons:

Dear whanau

We have not enjoyed knowing that we would miss the baptism of your wonderful children—but we are sure that it would have been a blessed time.

There are two special aspects of being able to baptise your children that have become more and more important to us as we have thought about them over the years. We hope they will be so for you as well.

The first is that baptism, being God’s sign as commanded by Him, says something about God’s relationship to each one of your children. It is a great blessing to know that the first and most important relationship which your children enjoy is the one already established by God with them. Before even you knew your children, God knew and loved them. Knowing that your children belong to Him is a great comfort—and when times get difficult, remembering that the sign of God’s love and loyalty to them has been placed upon each one of your children can fill us with faith and hope.

The second is that baptism is a great foundation to teach your children just how special and loved they are. To be baptised is a sign that your children are special in God’s eyes and that they belong to Him. As kids grow, wise parents will often remind them of just how special they are, and will use the fact of their baptism as a proof and evidence. This may not be so vital now, but when they enter the pre-teen years and begin to wonder who they are, and what they are, and where they fit in the world, you can use the fact of their baptism to remind them of their calling and true significance in this world as honoured servants of the Lord.

Children, and more so pre-teens, and even more so teens need to know they are special and loved people—not just special to you as parents, but more importantly, special and loved in the sight of God. And baptism which is based upon God’s promise to be God to you and to your children after you, is His outward sign that this is true.

It is also a great foundation to teach your children their distinct responsibilities and duties to love God and live for Him. Privilege brings responsibility of course, so baptism—reflecting such great privilege—brings great responsibilities. You probably have not faced it yet, but as your children grow and begin to become more conscious of themselves and of you as their parents, they will contrast and compare your family with others that they have come to know—as you once did so many years ago. They will see differences. “Why do we do this, when so-and-so’s family don’t? Why are we different?”

Such questions are great questions—and it is wonderful to be able to tell our children that our family is different because each one of us belongs to God, and we know this because He has made promises to us and has put His sign of baptism upon each one of us.

Sorry, once again, to miss this special day—but it brings us great joy—and we know that it will to you as well.

We love you so much—and with the Apostle John we declare that we have no greater joy than this but to hear that our children are walking in the truth.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>Can God be Bought?

With what shall I come to the Lord and bow myself before the God on high? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings, with yearling calves? Does the Lord take delight in thousands of rams; in ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my first-born for my rebellious acts; the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6: 6—8

Ever since the Fall, God has remained on the fringes of human consciousness. He has not gone away. But He has become intimidating and threatening. Adam and Eve, you recall, hid from God after the Fall. They did not want to face Him. In that one act of hiding, our first parents constructed the paradigm of all human history and consciousness, apart from the inbreaking of the life-giving, healing Spirit.

Human history, apart from the redeemed people of God, can be characterised as life and culture lived so as to hide from God. Part of the hiding charade is a life lived to “buy God off.” When an enemy confronts, it is often politic to buy him off in some way. Gifts open the way to the king. Bribes can get things done.

So, we have done a few things wrong. Or, we have a few challenges and needs. Let’s do a few religious works. Maybe a sacrifice or two. A kind deed. Maybe if things are really stretched, I would be prepared to impress God by offering up my first born. Let’s get a bit of insurance in the bank. Manipulate God. Buy Him off. Bargain with Him. That is sinful religion in a nutshell.

All men practise this kind of religion, apart from those whose hearts have been transformed by God’s Spirit. But the Lord hates it. How can the Lord, Who created all things of nothing, and to Whom belongs all things, be bought off? How can He be bargained with? Imagine the consequences of appearing before a High King to plead for clemency, offering up a gift which consisted of goods stolen the day before from that same king. What dishonour. What an insult to the king. It is to act as if the king were just as much a cheat, just as much on the lam, as the briber. It is to imply that the king were stupid, blind, and obtuse.

How much more with respect to the Living God. Anything we might do, anything we would bring to Him, belongs to Him already. He cannot be bought off. To attempt to do so, to think for one moment that He can be so manipulated, is to offer deadly insult to Him.

For those whose eyes have been opened the truth is almost self-evident. God cannot be manipulated. If there is to be atonement, it can only be one which He provides. The only appropriate response—the non-manipulating response—is to humble oneself before Him, gratefully accepting His decree and counsel and provision. There can be no buying off, only faith and trust. This humble acceptance of God leads us to strive to do whatever He commands. It leads us to act according to the standards of His justice—as summarized in the Ten Commandments. It leads us to live in loyalty and lovingkindness toward God and His people.

That is what the Lord requires of us. Not bargaining. Not actions attempting to buy God off. Not manipulation. What the Lord requires is a reverent submission to His rule, His provision, His command. This is what the Bible, in other places, calls faith. Without this faith it is impossible to please Him.

Of course faith, like any other duty or obligation, can also be distorted and perverted into an attempt to buy God off. And many have made it so. But the instant it is so perverted it ceases to be a humble walk before God. It has become instead a negotiating tool, a bargaining chip. The Lord abhors and hates such things.

Genuine faith, however, submits humbly to God, and gratefully accepts His covenant, in which, through His beloved Son, atonement comes to us. No longer do we need to attempt to hide from God, or assuage His anger. We can walk and live as His beloved sons and daughters, able to love and serve Him freely from the heart. Every obedience is no longer a crass or crude attempt to manipulate the Lord, but a blessed act of thankfulness.