How prone we are to miss the drama. The tyranny of the urgent, the plainness of our patterns, and our propensity to look inward rather than outward all push us to find our callings, our surroundings, our own souls to be rather dull affairs. We read of the great upheavals of history and then find ourselves scraping the burnt bottoms of our casserole off the dish. We watch Hollywood make believe about invaders from Mars and then go home to balance our checkbook. We, according to Jesus, construct foolish drama by worrying about what we will eat or what we will wear, while missing the battle of eternity is going on right before our eyes.
When Jesus calls us to cease worrying about those things the heathen worry about He isn’t inviting us to heave a sigh of relief, and flop down on our hammock with a glass of lemonade. No, we put down our petty concerns, that we might take up the one vital concern, the kingdom of God.
Our Lord reigns. His kingdom knows no bounds, for all authority in heaven and on earth has been given unto Him. But there remains in His realm rebellion. There is work to do. In this country, once a haven for believers, once an errand into the wilderness, to be a city on a hill, we have once again denied the humanity of an entire class of persons- the unborn. Of course we have significant, damning racial issues. The unborn, however, are the only class of people whose murderers the police and the whole justice system labor to protect. How twisted, how distorted, has a state which God ordained to punish evildoers become when they instead use the sword God gave them to guard the grisly practitioners of this crime? How twisted, how distorted have men become, who were made to protect and defend women and children but now drag their girlfriends, wives, daughters to a killing center? How twisted, how distorted have women become, who were made to nurture their babies, but now hire assassins to kill them?
This is the battle. Here is the drama. Souls are being twisted, and slowly dragged into the very pit of hell. And babies are being burned alive, on purpose. And we, even though we have been made alive, even though we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, worry about petty things. Right now, in our own neighborhoods, persons are at stake. Every one of them, young or old, believer or not, every one of them will die. And when they die they will become fully, finally and forever one thing or another.
CS Lewis, in his classic work, The Weight of Glory, reminds us what is at stake. He reminds us what is wood, hay and stubble, and which jewels will shine evermore. And in turn, he helps us see what this means for our todays, that forever counts right now-
“It is a serious thing … to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ‘ordinary’ people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”
We don’t seek the kingdom merely when we read our Bibles, or sing our hymns. We seek it when we love our wives, and cherish our children. We seek it when we weep and mourn for the murder of our neighbors, and when we weep and mourn for our neighbors, murderers. We seek the kingdom when we call on men to be men, and women to be women. We seek the kingdom when we welcome the least of these into our lives, into our homes, into our families.
The righteousness we seek is both ours by imputation, but it is also becoming ours in truth. We in Christ, despite all that we have to repent for, are being made into everlasting splendors. For all that we must repent for, for all that we mourn over, for all the horror of what we as a nation have become, we rejoice to know that we are citizens of another kingdom. We are a royal priesthood, a holy nation. We once were not a people but are now the people of God. We are those who have tasted that the Lord is good. May we then keep our conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against us as evildoers, they may see our good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Thesis 29 We Must Lead Our Homes as Husbands and Fathers.
When God pronounced His curse upon Eve in the garden of Eden, He told her that her desire would be for her husband. Most scholars affirm that the nature of the curse here isn’t that Eve would have a desire to be with her husband, but that she would have a desire to be like her husband, to rule over him. God does not pronounce a corresponding curse on Adam, that he would desire the take the place of his wife, that he would desire to follow rather than to lead. It may be that such a curse would have been redundant. Adam, after all, rather than protecting and guarding Eve against the wiles of the serpent, followed her into rebellion. Adam went further still in relinquishing his role when, as God asks him about the fall, he replies, “It was the woman.” Instead of guarding his wife, he hides behind her leafy skirt.
From that time forward men have continued to skirt their responsibilities, to evade their calling. We have not merely failed to fight to wear the pants in our homes, we have happily handed the pants over not only to our wives, but to our children. We have not only not ruled in our homes, but have let autonomy in the door. We have embraced, at best, the theory that leadership in the home means that when husband and wife, after countless hours of discussion and prayer cannot reach agreement, then the husband must decide. I call it, “the tie goes to the husband.” We call this being sensitive. We call it servant leadership. We call it adapting to the times. We call it everything but what it is, rebellion against the living God.
Our families are a wreck, by and large, because our husbands are a wreck. They are floundering because we are not leading. We are not leading because we are cowards. We are afraid of the watching world and so cave in to its egalitarian mindset. We are afraid of our wives, and so succumb to their desire to rule. We are afraid of our children, and so leave them as orphans. We would rather lead at work, where there are clear lines of authority than lead at home, where the ultimate authority, God Himself, put us in charge.
Reformation will not come to our land until it comes to our churches. It will not come to our churches until it comes to our homes. It will not come to our homes until fathers take back their pants, and take up their mantle. We lead our families as we turn back to sola Scriptura. We are led by the Spirit breathed Word of God, rather than the spirit of the age. And we turn back to faith alone, following in the footsteps of our eternal Husband, the second Adam. We trust Him, and Him alone, walking by faith and not by sight. We will not have Reformation until we recover an understanding of the priesthood of fathers. We will not have Reformation until we recover an understanding of the prophetic call of fathers. We will not have Reformation until we recover an understanding of the kingship of fathers. We will not have Reformation until we seek once more to be Jesus in our homes, in His grace and for His glory.
Neither. I get the issue. I’ve heard the arguments on both sides. Those who are zealous to affirm that all lives matter seem to hear in “Black lives matter” that non-black lives don’t matter. They in turn seem to hear, “In order to be a decent human being you have to embrace the rhetoric and the tactics of that organization known as “Black Lives Matter.” Those who are zealous to affirm that black lives matter, on the other hand, seem to hear when others retort that “All lives matter” a denial not only that black lives matter, but a denial of the pain and fear they have experienced as a mistreated minority.
The good news is that everyone on all sides of this struggle is wrong. Black lives don’t matter, not because the lives are black, but because no lives matter. Which means all lives don’t matter. More good news- this, no lives matter- is not just true, but is a conclusion that is inescapable whether you are a Christian or an atheist.
First, the atheist. Why must the atheist conclude that no lives matter? Because matter can’t matter. If all there is is a physical universe that came to pass by random and meaningless forces then all that is is meaningless. If humans, whatever skin tone, are the result of the intersection of time, energy and chance, and will end in nothingness, from whence comes this meaning? How could we possibly matter if all we are is matter? There is, if there is no God, no moral injustice in people of one skin tone oppressing people of another, no moral injustice of some people stealing or destroying the property of other people, no moral injustice of any kind if there is no transcendent moral standard. If there is no transcendent anything, there can be no transcendent moral standard, no law we are all beholden too. There is just meaningless, individual preference.
The Christian, however, affirms such a standard. The Christian acknowledges that there is a transcendent God who has revealed to us a transcendent law, a law we are all obligated to obey. That law requires of us that we treat all men with dignity. It forbids racial vainglory. It commands equality before the law. So then why must the Christian say no lives matter? Because we are commanded to treat all men with dignity not because men have dignity in themselves, but because they have been gifted with dignity. We, all of us, have had it bestowed on us, stamped upon us. It is His image in us, the imago dei where the real value lies. His image is what matters.
And His image has been given to George Floyd. It’s been given to Derek Chauvin. It’s been given to David Dorn, Ahmaud Arbery, Greg and Travis McMichael, and to Breonna Taylor. It was given to every person killed in the midst of our civil unrest and every person killed by Covid-19. And God’s image was given to the more than 60 million unborn babies that have been legally executed in this country in less than fifty years.
Our value, our dignity is not grounded in us. Apart from His grace we are the kind of people who chase down people and shoot them, the kind of people to kneel on a man’s neck for over eight minutes, the kind of people who break into a woman’s home and shoot her. We’re the kind of people who loot and murder. We’re the kind of people who hire assassins to kill our own unborn children. Our lives don’t matter. They are, before the heavenly tribunal, forfeit from before we were born. What matters is the life of the one innocent Man who was put to death. But death could not hold Him. Apart from His perfect life, atoning death, vindicating resurrection and ongoing reign, nothing matters.
There is real poverty in the world, more than we would care to admit. Jesus, after all, told us that the poor would always be with us. But just as all Israel are not Israel, so all the poor are not truly poor. The true poor are those who on a given day face the real prospect of not being able to produce more calories than they consume. They are the truly hungry, the truly naked, the truly thirsty. They are not, on the other hand, those who buy store brand cereal, purchase their clothes at the local Goodwill store, or who can’t afford a daily sugar and bitter beans concoction from the local Starbucks.
The faux poor are those who merely feel poor. This feeling creeps upon us when we find a gap not between how many calories we consume and how many we burn, but between the lifestyle we believe is our due and the lifestyle our production allows. Or to put it more simply, feeling poor is the result of wanting more than we have, more often than wanting more than we need. It matters not whether we measure our wages in thousands or billions. What matters is the gap.
The Christian, of course, ought never to go through this hardship. First, we are called to daily ask God for our bread. We are to ask confident that our Father will not give us a stone. We know that we have what we have not because of chance, but because our God reigns. More important still, even if we are not given sufficient calories to make it to the next day, we have been given the Pearl of great price. Christians are the richest of all.
Jesus reminds us in the Sermon on the Mount to consider the lilies of the field. We are not to be anxious about what we will eat, what we will drink or what we will wear. The Gentiles, Jesus tells us, seek after these things. But we are called to seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness. And all these things will be added to us. The point here isn’t that the Gentiles get all the good stuff, while we have to learn to be satisfied with abstract things like the kingdom of God. Jesus is instead expressing the answer to Augustine’s problem who mourned, “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they find their rest in Thee.” Jesus is telling us to store treasure in heaven, which is the only treasure that satisfies.
In light of this we ought not be surprised at the depression that weighs down the world around us. They are spiritually poor, rather than poor in spirit. That is, they have nothing of value. Their accumulated stuff amounts to striving after the wind. They miss that they deserve nothing. They miss that all that they have has been given, the common grace of God. (We simply have to find better language for this reality. It is true enough that this grace is given to all men, that He causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. It is true in turn that this grace isn’t as astonishing as the grace He gives to His elect. But it is still amazing grace. God is shockingly, not commonly, good to His enemies.) They look at the world as a random collision of time, space and energy, and so see what they do have as an accident. They can no more give thanks for the food on their table than they can for the rain that falls. The bankruptcy of evolution isn’t just that is deracinates the dignity of man, but that it destroys our ability to give thanks. Remember how Paul sums up the universal problem of the sinfulness of man, “For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him” (Romans 1:21).
What separates the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent isn’t that the former receive the grace of God while the latter do not. The difference is that the former have been given this grace- the ability to give thanks to God for all that He has provided. This in turn directs us toward the cure for our own spiritual depression. We do not need to have our circumstances changed. We do not need another lecture on sound thinking. What we need is to give thanks.
This in turn is how we wage war against the seed of the serpent. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual. Is there anything more spiritual than a heart filled with gratitude to God? Is there anything more potent than joy? Is there anything greater than love? This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. As we do so we will change our souls. As we do so we will change our families. As we do so we will change our churches. As we do so we will change the world. If we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, the good news isn’t that all these things will be added to us. The good news is that we will find the kingdom of God and His righteousness. And having found this, we have found joy at His right hand forevermore.
How do you know you’re getting better? The answer may well be a potent clue in determining just how sick you are. A miser, for instance, judges his health precisely by how much wealth he has managed to hoard, the very sickness from which he suffers. An anorexic measures his health by how thin he is, how well he is practicing the folly from which he suffers. A scholar judges his health by the size of his library, or how many letters dangle after his name, again indicating the illness rather than the health. One need not, however, find oneself in such unusual company to find much the same problem.
The issue isn’t, of course, health per se but our growth in grace. How do we measure spiritual maturation? If we think spiritual maturity is roughly equal to greater and greater theological precision, as I spent decades believing, we understand neither theology nor spiritual maturity. If we think spiritual maturity is roughly equal to greater and greater success in avoiding the really bad sins, the ones that involve pleasure of one sort or another, then we understand neither temptation, nor spiritual maturity.
It is, of course, a good thing to study theology. It is a good thing as well to fight off temptation. But theology teaches us that we have desperately deceitful hearts. And the greatest temptation we face is always to think too highly of ourselves. Ironically, the more sound we are in our theology, the more we think lowly of ourselves. King David, for instance, was a man after God’s own heart not because he successfully fought off temptation in the case of Bathsheba, but because in response to his sin, he penned Psalm 51.
Which means in turn that the more sick, or rather sinful we understand ourselves to be, the more healthy, or rather spiritually mature, we may well be. John adds this symptom as well. He argues throughout his first epistle that what separates the children of God from the sons of the devil is this, that we have love one for another. What defines us vis a vis the world around us is that we love our brothers in Christ, while they hate us, and each other.
These two symptoms, however, come together in the end. The more conscious we are of our own sins, the less conscious we are of the sins of our brothers. The more aware we are that our hearts are deceitful, the less likely we are to trust our judgmental judgments against our brothers, the more likely we are to think no evil as love calls us to do in I Corinthians 13. As we own our sin, remembering of course that in Christ we are beloved of the Father, then we better love the rest of those who in Christ are beloved of the Father, our brothers and sisters.
Want to know how well you are? Look at your neighbor in the pew. Is your first thought, “How can I be expected to be gracious to someone like that?” Or is it instead, “How astonishing that they should be so gracious to me, a sinner!” And after you fail this test, repent, believe, and ask for the grace to know your sin more and to love your brother more.
