New Theses, New Reformation

Posted on September 14, 2021 by RC

Thesis 91 We must pray for Reformation.

Praying for something happens when two circumstances are met. First, we the ones praying must recognize that what we want is a good thing. No one prays to lose their job or to need a new heat pump. Second, we the ones praying must recognize that it is God who gives us every good gift. Reformations are not bootstrap efforts. If ever a man understood that, it was the leader of our last Reformation. When Luther was called to the Diet of Worms to recant his teaching he did not, at first, deliver his famous speech. Instead he asked for a day to pray about it. The next morning he took his stand. In between he prayed this for Reformation:

Almighty, eternal God! How dreadful is the world! Behold how its mouth opens to swallow me up, and how small is my faith in You!
O the weakness of the flesh and the power of Satan! If I am to depend upon any strength from this world, all is lost. O my God! Help me against all the wisdom of this world. Do this, I beg You.
The work is not mine, but Yours. I have no business here. I have nothing to contend for with these great men of the world! I would gladly pass my days in happiness and peace. But the cause is Yours, my Lord; and it is righteous and everlasting! Stand by me! O faithful and unchangeable God! I lean not upon man. It would be vain!
You have chosen me for this work. I know it! Therefore, O God, accomplish Your own will! Stand by me in the name of Jesus Christ, who will be my shelter and my shield, yes, my mighty fortress, through the might and strengthening of the Holy Spirit.
I am ready, even to lay down my life for this cause, patient as a little lamb. For the cause is holy. It is Your own. Though this world be filled with devils, and though my body, originally the work and creation of Your hands, go to destruction in this cause — yes, though it be shattered into pieces — Your Word and Your Spirit they are good to me still! It concerns only the body. The soul is Yours. It belongs to You and will also remain with You forever. God help me.
Amen.

I would argue that Reformation began not at Luther’s tower experience. Nor was it October 31, 1517 with the nailing on the church door of the 95 Theses. Neither was it with the speech he would deliver at Worms. It was the prayer, the meeting with the living God at the throne of grace. It started on this day not because of Luther himself but because of the Spirit that dwelt within him.

The leader of an earlier Reformation learned this lesson well praying for relief from the thorn in his side,

And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me (II For. 12:9). May God grant us the grace to instill us an immovable certainty in our dependence on His grace.

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Classism; Catechism 91; God Changes His Mind?

Posted on September 14, 2021 by RC

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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How do we judge rightly?

Posted on September 13, 2021 by RC

“Judge not, lest ye be judged” (Matthew 7:1) is surely the most popular Bible verse among all unbelievers. Such ought not to mean, however, that believers don’t much care for it. That it is wildly misused by the unbelieving Pharisees in our day doesn’t mean it has no use. Jesus is not, of course, condemning all judgments. Indeed He couldn’t coherently do so for such is itself a judgment. Which is precisely where the unbelievers get all tangled up. If you say, “People ought not to kill their unborn children” within earshot of an unbelieving Pharisee, with all the speed of Superman in a phone booth said Pharisee will don a black robe and a white wig, grab a gavel and thunder down on you with all the grace of a Puritan preacher on an all persimmon diet, “THOU SHALT NOT JUDGE!”

We all have to make judgments. The trouble is, as I constantly seek to remind my ethics students, that we are prone to judge by different standards. We judge our enemies and their friends with the strictest standards, ourselves and our friends by the loosest standards. Which is precisely how we can all end up looking down our noses at those horrible, awful, world-would-be-better-off-without-them judgmental people without a clue that we are able to look down because we’ve been hoisted on our own petard. Heck, we didn’t even know we had a petard.

Here are some suggestions on how we might learn to judge rightly. First, the standard is the law of God. Not our preferences. Not the culture’s current preferences. Not the culture of fifty years ago’s preferences. To judge rightly we have to judge by the standard of the only being who has only ever judged rightly, the Judge of all the Earth. We don’t whittle it down to make room for us and our friends to wiggle under it. We don’t add to it to make room for us and our friends to batter our enemies with it. Just God’s law.

Second, we keep ever before us our own failure to keep the law. The law by which we judge others isn’t the standard we keep. It’s the standard we break. All the time. Often while being oblivious to it. God has the right to have sheer disgust at our neighbor’s sins. We have the right to acknowledge that He also has the right to have sheer disgust over our own. It is true enough to might be holier than your neighbor. It’s also true Hitler might have been holier than Stalin.

Third, we have to keep before us that the only difference between us and any other sinner, whether Hitler, Stalin, Ted Bundy, Sister Boom Boom, Al Capone or Fred Phelps, is the grace of God at work in us. We have nothing to boast of. In the race toward righteousness, for which we all still have light years to go, we may have a ten yard lead over the rogue’s gallery above, but we have been blessed with shoes we didn’t earn, lungs we didn’t create and we’re being carried by the omnipotent Holy Spirit. So yeah, looking down our noses is a failure to judge rightly.

Humility, in acknowledging it is God’s law alone that is the standard. Humility, in acknowledging that we fall immeasurably short of that standard. Humility, in acknowledging every inch of progress has been powered by the grace of God. That’s how we aspire to judge rightly, just before we repent for how wrongly we judge.

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Unmasking Biden’s Power Grab; Bible in 5, II Thessalonians

Posted on September 13, 2021 by RC

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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Days of the Dead 9/12

Posted on September 11, 2021 by RC

September 11, 2001, was, in many respects, a rather ordinary day. I began the day working at my desk, writing. But my plans quickly changed. Many of us spent hours staring not at our computer screens but at our television screens. We were stunned, staggered, overcome with disbelief. But others still managed to put in a full day’s work. American business continued on. American culture, though shocked, continued on. We were dismayed, terrorized, but we kept on. Because the business of America is business, we kept going.

Among those keeping on, having productive days, were those who brutally murdered more than three thousand innocent people. It was all in a day’s work for them — an ordinary day’s work. The police were there, representing the full force and power of the government, protecting these men. On September 10, 2001, these men also took more than three thousand innocent human lives. On September 12, they did the same. Today, ten years later, they are still about their grisly work of butchering babies. Today, thousands will die. Just like yesterday, and like tomorrow. That Muslim terrorists took thousands of lives on one day causes us to wring our hands, to weep and mourn, to implore heaven for answers. That abortionists do the same each and every day doesn’t even register with us. It is business as usual. Today it is happening again.

It was Joseph Stalin who cynically quipped that one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic. He touched on a hard truth. We have a finite amount of compassion, a finite ability to enter into the suffering of others. It is the diabolical art of the propagandist to tap into and direct our compassion for his own purposes. What happened on September 11, 2001, was reprehensible, tragic, evil — a vile, unprovoked attack on civilians. We need not diminish this evil in order to better see the evil of every day. Neither, however, can we let that momentary evil distract us from every day evil. We cannot, in fact, allow the evening news to establish our priorities, the shape of our thinking.

My fear, however, is that the stunning gap between the time and energy Christians have devoted to 9/11 and the amount of energy we don’t devote to the evil of abortion is not a function ultimately of television’s priorities. Neither is it, I fear, due to the very ordinariness of abortion. My fear is that we are at ease about abortion and up in arms about militant Islam because, having already been born, we are not afraid of abortion while we are afraid of terrorist attacks. Our outrage is doled out not on the basis of the moral evil but on the basis of how likely we are to be victims. When others are in danger, we murmur about what a shame it is and move on. When the target is on our own backs, that’s when we know that something must be done.

The evil of abortion, then, isn’t just something out there, something sinister abortionists and ignorant women are guilty of. We’re all guilty. The evil that drives terrorism and the evil that drives the abortion industry is the same evil that drives us to be more concerned for our own safety than for the least of these.

Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount reminds us of at least three important truths. First, God is intimately involved in the smallest details of life. The hairs on our heads are numbered, and indeed it is He who knit us together in the womb. Second, God cares about the littlest things. He controls all things precisely because all things matter to Him. Because all things exist for the sake of the one thing — His glory — there are no small things. If He cares for the sparrows, and He does, how much more does He care for each of us, even those who are yet unborn?

The third point is a little more difficult. Jesus doesn’t tell us that because God is concerned about everything, we can therefore be assured that He is concerned with what concerns us. Instead, He tells us that because God is concerned about everything, we are called to be concerned with what concerns Him. He is to set our agenda, not the world around us. The problem, rightly understood, with Muslim extremists isn’t that they kill us. The problem is they go to hell when they die. The problem with abortion isn’t that those involved in that grisly trade are so wicked but that we are so wicked. The solution, then, is to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

We weep like the Pharisees prayed — to be seen by men. We contort our faces over one evil while we smile our way through the greater evil. We wring our hands over Islam and its bloody scimitar. We fail to notice the blood on our own hands and the bloody scalpels in our midst. One day we remember. Every other day we forget. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereunto. May He daily grant us the grace to see the evil, to repent, and to seek His kingdom, His righteousness.

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A Greater Gr-Attitude

Posted on September 10, 2021 by RC

Each week, on my daily podcast, Jesus Changes Everything, I include a segment titled “Forever Friends.” In said segment I give thanks to God for the friends He in His grace placed in my life at different times. Some of these friends have passed on. With others in time the relationship was broken. With still more I’ve simply lost touch. Typically I seek out, with the help of our overlords at Google, to find the person to let them listen in while I speak well of them. I also, however, most every segment, encourage my listeners to do the same, to contact an old friend and let them know of your gratitude.

Because we are made for relationship, reflecting the trinitarian nature of the living God, we are most ourselves in relationship. Which means in turn that among the greatest gifts our Father has given us is strong relationships. These segments are not merely remembering old friends, but giving thanks to Him for them. Which we ought to do not just for old friends, but all friends, including the one who should be our closest friend.

I was, little more than 5 years ago, a profoundly lonely man. God sent into my life a friend who needed a friend as well. This friend shared interests with me, and had the kind of sense of humor that meshed seamlessly. The friendship began at a distance, which distance remains no more. Lisa Sproul is my best friend. She is, in turn, the best gift, apart from my redemption, He has ever given me. She encourages me when I am down and joins me when I am up. She comforts me and inspires me. She feeds me like a king. Wisdom drops from her lips. She has eyes I get lost in and a voice that soothes me and all who hear it. She is kind to those in need, gracious to those who have harmed her. She speaks God’s Word into my life and the lives of others. (You can keep up with her here.)

It is grace, every bit of it. It is His grace toward her and His grace through her. It is His grace in her and His grace on her. It is His grace to me that He has blessed me with her grace. My job? To give thanks. To thank her and to thank Him. To never lose sight of the grace. My job is to remember, no matter what is happening that “I don’t deserve this” cannot mean I’m owed more but always means I’m owed less.

Jesus told us the story of the importunate widow. He encourages us to not lose hope as we bring our petitions before Him. How much more out we to not lose gratitude as we bring our praises before Him? I am ever so grateful for my wife, so beautiful inside and out. And I am ever so grateful to my Maker who brought her to me. She shall be called woman, for she is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. Give thanks friends.

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The Gospel at Work on 9/11

Posted on September 10, 2021 by RC

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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What is a liturgy?

Posted on September 9, 2021 by RC

Liturgy is one of those words that manages to be both rather vague, but also, in the right place, the perfect word. It is simply a tool of remembrance. Such tools can include everything from the yearly flow of the feasts God established for His people, Israel, to the order of worship at your local church, to returning thanks before a meal, or even my own habit of always breaking my bread before eating it.

Because of the baleful influence of romanticism we have grown suspicious of liturgies. We have come to believe that spontaneity is the font of sincerity, and sincerity the benchmark of authenticity. Liturgies seem to us old and outdated, inseparable from rote repetition, even a gateway drug to the dangers of Roman Catholicism.

The trouble with such culturally bound sweeping condemnations is they not only assault the real problem of formalism, but the very established patterns given by God Himself. That is, it is one thing to scoff at mindless repeating of the Hail Mary, quite another to look down our noses at the celebration of the Lord’s Table. If God has established liturgies for us, and He has, it cannot be that liturgies are bad things in themselves.

Consider how often God calls His people to remember. We are given to forgetting. When we bow our heads before our meals, we are laboring to remember that every meal is an answer to another liturgy, our prayer that He would give us this day our daily bread. When we come to the greatest of all meals we are laboring to remember that we broke His body, spilled His blood, and though we often forget, that He welcomes us as His children to His own table, that we are at peace with Him.

What though about personal liturgies? Are these legitimate, or are they strange fire, a violation of the 2nd commandment? I would suggest the dividing line between the two has less to do with what the liturgy in question is, more to do with how we see it. When I break my bread before eating it I am simply seeking, in the midst of daily life, to remind myself that He died for me. When I open my wife’s car door I am reminding myself of her great value and blessing.

What I don’t do with these two liturgies is elevate them to the level of God-given liturgies. I don’t seem to impose them on others, or even proselytize for them. They are personal, and except insofar as I use them as an illustration of a broader point in this piece, private. They are personal habits of the heart, not a command from on high. They are useful, in their place.

The irony is that liturgy is inescapable. That moment when the worship leader looks off in the distance while imploring the assembled to sing the chorus one last time is as much a liturgy as chanting the Apostles’ Creed. Wisdom dictates that we fight against forgetting, whether our forgetting flows from mindless liturgy, or from a lack of liturgy. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Lord, help us to never forget.

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Atin-Lay, Notitia; Curating Books, From Eden to the New Jerusalem; Psalm 2

Posted on September 9, 2021 by RC

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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Keep it Simple, Stupid

Posted on September 8, 2021 by RC

The KISS principle—Keep It Simple, Stupid—is itself a rather simple principle. It argues that when we find ourselves entangled in complex and complicated arguments, chances are we have already left the proper playing field. While, for instance, the gospel is a glory that can be studied and expounded upon for a lifetime of lifetimes, we nevertheless confess that something has gone wrong if we cannot rejoice in our salvation simply by confessing, “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner.” Jesus said that the man who prayed that way went home justified (Luke 18:14).

The same is true after our souls are saved. Our forgiveness, our justification, our adoption all flow out of a glorious but simple truth that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). Our sanctification, however, our calling to grow in grace and wisdom, to put to death the old man, to become more like Jesus—this is simple too. There is no great and deep secret—we are called to trust and obey.

This not only describes our sanctification, but as the old hymn points out, this describes the only way to be happy in Jesus. That is, the key to having a good life is profoundly simple. Now there have been many who complained about the bestselling book Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen that it was way too simple, that it lacked substance or heft, that it was the spiritual equivalent of a spool of cotton candy. I haven’t read the book, but I suspect my concern would be just the opposite. I’m not opposed to having a good life. I wish it for my family, for my friends, even for everyone who reads this piece. So I am not opposed to advice on how to have a good life. I am opposed to bad advice.

The key to living a good life is abundantly simple. According to our Maker, what we must do if we want things to go well for us in the land He has given us, is to honor our fathers and mothers. This is the first command with a promise (Eph. 6:2–3). The promise is that it will go well for us in the land.

The world tells us that the key to a good life is a good education. Do well in school and you will get into a competitive college. Do well there and you will get into a competitive graduate school. Do well there and you will get a good, high-paying job. Then you will be able to afford a house in a neighborhood with good schools so that your children can do just what you did, and your grandchildren after them. I call this hell’s hamster wheel.

God’s plan is so much more plain, so much more simple. Which is likely why we don’t believe it. We are offended by simplicity. In our pride, we like to believe that anything worth having must be terribly difficult to get, and terribly difficult to figure out how to get. We would rather go it alone and have it go poorly for us in the land than embrace the simple truth that we just need to honor those God has placed in authority over us.

Or is that the real rub? Is our objection not the simplicity of the rule, but the rule itself? That is, do we object to God’s promise that it will go well for us in the land if we submit to those in authority over us because we don’t want to submit to those in authority over us? The devil, before his fall, lived a rather spectacular life. He threw it all away because he didn’t want to be ruled. Adam and Eve lived in a literal paradise, the land God had given them. All they had to do to stay there forever was submit to their Father. They threw it all away. And we are their children. Is this not the very essence of what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount? What does it mean to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness but to pursue obedience to our heavenly Father with a single minded passion? Does He not tell us to set aside our worries about all those things we think will give us a good life and to give ourselves to seeking His righteousness? The simple question is, do we trust our Father? Do we believe that His law is a burden to submit to, or a map to joy?

Of course there are selfish husbands. There are sinful parents. There are faithless elders. There are corrupt civil leaders. All of these, however, existed when our giving, sinless, faithful, pure Father promised us it would go well for us if we would submit to those in authority over us. He not only knows best, but He controls all things. He, after all, has the whole world in His hands.

There is no need to toss and turn all night wondering what you should do differently to make a better life. Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness. Submit to those in authority over you: “Obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’ (this is the first commandment with a promise), ‘that it may go well with you and you may live long in the land’” (Eph. 6:1–3). Keep it simple, and be wise. It will go well for you.

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