Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound, Given To All Around

Posted on August 23, 2024 by RC

Perhaps the most subtle verbal sleights of hand are acts of equivocation. We commit equivocation when we use one word, but with two different meanings. We make the change so quickly we miss the palmed meaning, and are made fools. Consider this classic illustration— God is love. Love is blind. Ray Charles is blind. Therefore Ray Charles is God. Something isn’t right there, and what it is, is shifting meanings.

When dealing with pronouns we face the toughest temptation. Antecedents get lost in a sea of pronouns, and soon enough we not only don’t know what he said but don’t know who he is. And where confusion abounds, there you will find the devil. It is one of his favorite weapons.

Consider for a moment the wisdom in the Bible about loving one another. Love is indeed a dominant theme in the Bible. The Bible is so full of injunctions to love that we in turn have great difficulty reconciling that teaching with this: “Oh Lord, dash their heads against the rocks.” The Bible contains sundry summons to love. It includes also what we call imprecatory psalms, wherein the psalmist calls down God’s judgment on His enemies.

Read through Moses’ celebration of the deliverance of the people and the destruction of Pharaoh’s army, and you probably won’t feel the love. How do these things cohere? Lest you think the solution is a division between the old and new covenants, give a read to Paul in thundering against the Judaizers in Galatians.

God commands of us a love toward those outside the kingdom, (that is, we are called to love our enemy). That matches a kind of love God Himself has for His enemies (the love of benevolence). By the same token, we are called to love discriminatingly. We have different kinds of loves for different kinds of people. I love my wife one way, and I love my neighbor an entirely different way. We miss this, because our enemy has confused us on the pronouns. The Bible’s call that “we” love “one another” isn’t ultimately about man’s call to love man. The “we” isn’t human beings, but the redeemed.

Wolves in the church began this sleight of hand when they first spoke of the “universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man.” The evangelical church, as with so many from this particular pit of hell, eventually accepted this “wisdom.”

It operates under the assumption that God has a duty to treat all people exactly the same way, an assumption that the Bible explicitly denies: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy” (Rom. 9:15). There is no getting around the fact that God did not treat Esau as He treated Jacob, and this before either had been born. And He does not treat the seed of the serpent the same way He treats us, the seed of the woman.

Why not? What accounts for the difference? The answer is simple enough — our union with Christ. Pardon the confusing pronouns, but while we love Him because He first loved us, He first loved us because He first loved Him. We are in ourselves, just like the seed of the serpent, merely dust and rebellion. But in Christ we are altogether lovely. It is not for mere pity that He loves us, but for His Son.

But what of His love for the lost? If they are not in union with Christ, why would they be loved at all? How do we account for what the theologians call this “love of benevolence”? Why He brings the rains upon the fields of the unjust isn’t union with Christ, but the image of God. There is, in short, something lovely about the lost, the very remnants of the image of pure loveliness. What God loves in the reprobate isn’t the reprobate, isn’t the Son, but is Himself, something indeed worthy of His love.

And we who are in union with Christ not only bear that same image, but are called to polish it, to improve upon it, to labor with the Holy Spirit that we might more and more reflect His glory. Which in turn means that we too ought to love the lost, for the very same reason.

We love one another with a holy love, because we are together in union with Christ. But we love outside the circle of the kingdom because they yet maintain the fragments of the image of God. In their depravity, they do everything they can to smash that mirror to ever tinier pieces. Their degeneration is nothing more than leaving that image behind. At their death, they reach the opposite of glorification, utter horror. They become nothing but dust and rebellion, enveloped in eternal flame.

But not here and not now. Ironically, He shows them kindness due to His love for us. If He released the restraints, we would find ourselves living in a living hell. But by His grace toward us, He restrains them, and He kindly showers them with His beneficent love. In His grace toward us, He teaches us our pronouns. Like Him we too must love His sheep as His sheep, and love the goats for the image of the Shepherd.

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Hearts, Heads and Hands, Knees and Toes, Knees and Toes

Posted on August 22, 2024 by RC

Much ink has been spilled over the centuries over what constituent parts make up man. Not a man, but man. It took us until the 21st century to get confused over what a man is. What man is, on the other hand, we still haven’t nailed down. Are we bodies and souls? Bodies, souls and spirits? Hearts, minds, souls and strengths? I’m comfortably in the first camp- we are bodies and souls. I don’t, however, wish to go to war over the issue with anyone who differs.

However many parts we may think we are, however many parts we actually are, all of us and every part of us recognizes our calling to commit all of us and every part of us to the living God. When God commands us to love Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength He’s not suggesting that we can keep our spirit to ourselves. He demands of us all of us.

Paul spills a great deal of ink in his first letter to the church at Corinth on the parts of the body. He is not describing man, but the church, how we are one body made of different parts. He is impressing on us that we no one part of the body of Christ can thrive without all the other parts. Eyes ought not to boast over ears, nor ought feet bemoan not being hands.

Fools that we are, I fear we take Paul’s wisdom and use it to justify our failure to serve the Lord with all that we are. Those who love the study of theology consider themselves to be loving God with their minds. Those less inclined to study theology consider those more inclined to be captive to “head knowledge,” or to be “puffed up.” Those with a passion for the lost see themselves as wise (Prov. 11:30) while those given to service think they alone practice pure and undefiled religion (James 1:27).

Sound doctrine matters. But it is not by itself sufficient. Seeking those still dead in their sins matters. But it is not by itself sufficient. Serving those in need matters. But it is not by itself sufficient. And no one person can excuse failure on one of these callings on the grounds of success on another. A swelled brain won’t make up for an atrophied heart, nor a heart filled with passion for a lazy hand.

Try this experiment. Quickly, without giving it a thought, which one are you? If the answer doesn’t come to mind, it might be that you are none of these. If it does come to mind it’s likely you need to strengthen the others. Don’t reject the strength you have, but strengthen the things that remain. You will be stretched and you will grow. More important, the body will be served and its Head, our Lord, will be glorified.

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No JCE podcast today.

Posted on August 21, 2024 by RC

Sorry friends but as I am still recovering from cryptosporidium, I have no podcast to share today. God willing we’ll have one next week, and we will continue to post blog pieces as well. Thank you for understanding.

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Dominion- Reigning for the Glory of Our King

Posted on August 20, 2024 by RC

I’m not in the habit of citing Karl Barth favorably, but when you’re right you’re right. Counter-intuitively, but insightfully Barth considers the sin of sloth to be on par with the sin of pride. We are prone to it, and our embrace of it is profoundly destructive. It is our habit, when speaking of the imago dei, the image of God in man, to see it principally in terms of our capabilities. We are like God, we bear His image because He thinks and we think; He feels and we feel; He wills and we will. It’s all true, of course, but there is so much more. We reflect His image not just in our capabilities, but in our calling.

The first command of God, the one Eve was made a helper suitable to Adam for, is what we call “the dominion mandate.” They were to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it, to rule over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea and everything that creeps upon the ground (Genesis 1:28). Lest you think the fall set this command aside note two things. First, one of the curses Eve was given was pain in child-bearing. The call to be fruitful abides. Adam received thorns and thistles that would multiply. The call to exercise dominion abides. Secondly, the same command is to Noah after departing the ark.

That command, the dominion mandate (sometimes called the cultural mandate) is still with us, and we, because we are given to sloth, are prone to falling down on the job. Reformation demands that we pick up the calling we have never lost.

The first Reformation, in fact, understood this. In the Middle Ages Roman Catholicism had come to divide reality into the sacred and the secular, seeing the first as good and the second not so good. If you wanted to be godly you needed to work, live, operate in the sacred realm alone. The Reformers understood that the reign of Jesus is over all things. Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch Prime Minister, theologian, publisher followed in that pattern when he said “There is not one square inch in all of reality over which Jesus does not cry, ‘MINE!’”

Jesus is succeeding where the first Adam failed, bringing all things under subjection. Under His reign every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord. And Jesus, the last Adam, has been given a help suitable to Him, the last Eve, the church. Of course we are to proclaim the good news to all men, to be witnesses of His work on the cross. We are also, however, to make known the beauty, the glory and the power of His reign over all things, ruling with Him, under the Father. We are indeed to make disciples of the nations, which means in part, teaching them to obey all that He has commanded.

Reformation is not for the faint of heart, for the slothful of spirit. We are kings and queens with the King of Kings. May we rule well.

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What’s missing from the contemporary church?

Posted on August 19, 2024 by RC

Sinlessness. That is, the weaknesses that plague the contemporary church aren’t, in the end, all that different from the weaknesses that plagued the historical church. The more things change and all that, after all. It is said that one Lord’s Day a parishioner asked Martin Luther, “Brother Luther, why do you preach the same message every Lord’s day?” To which he responded, “Because every week we forget.”

I’m not prepared to say that in the western world the church is at its lowest point. I am prepared to say that it’s not in good shape, just like normal. I would also suggest that what is missing is what is usually missing- a deep, heart, mind, soul and strength grasp of this message: I am in myself a vile sinner at war with a holy, omnipotent God. Jesus came and lived a perfect life in my place, then received the wrath of God in my place. Now, because the Spirit gave me faith, I am forgiven, beloved, adopted, secure.

That message is not new. It’s not especially insightful. Nor is it complicated. It’s not appealing to those outside the kingdom. It’s not especially appealing to those inside the kingdom. It is not the fullness of the message. It is, however, the center of the message, and the most needful thing to be proclaimed, believed and lived out in the church of Jesus Christ. It is the health of the church.

Everything in the contemporary church that shouldn’t be there would be quickly driven out by this simple message. The most potent weapon against our problem of sinfulness is believing this simple message. Programs, celebrity, entertainment, worldliness, compromise, these are the things we glom on to because we are not, as we should be, convinced of our own sinfulness, persuaded of Jesus’ payment for all our sins, comforted by the sure knowledge that our heavenly Father loves us infinitely, immutably, and by name. We have feel-good, white-washed, motivational messages because we feel bad, are ignorant of ourselves and are unmotivated to get back on the world’s hamster wheel.

As we come to a deeper grasp of our need and His perfect provision we are better able to stand on the Word, for we don’t need the world’s approval. We are better equipped to walk in the way, for we know where we are going. We are better driven, for we know our calling to run to the battle. We are at peace, for we know that we rest in the Son.

What the church needs in our day is what the church has always needed and will need until He returns. We need the gospel. We need to repent and believe. We need to teach our children that their need is the same, that our grandchildren will be fed the same truth. No branding, no marketing, telling not selling. It needs sheep that demand the message and under-shepherds who proclaim the message even when the sheep demand something else.

This is the eighth installment of an ongoing series of pieces here on the nature and calling of the church. Stay tuned for more.

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Theological Socialism and God’s Good Grace

Posted on August 16, 2024 by RC

Karl Marx himself recognized that a free economy created a great deal of stuff. Productivity wasn’t the problem, according to Marx, in the capitalist economy. Instead, the problem was the distribution of the wealth that was created. Which is what gave rise to this pithy bit of wisdom- “Capitalism provides different sized portions of the donut. Socialism provides equal portions of the hole.”

There is a simple question that can reveal whether your heart wants prosperity, or equality- Would you rather live in a world where everyone makes $5000 a year, or would you rather live in a world where the poorest people earn $100,000 a year, but the wealthiest earn $10,000,000 a year? Too many choose the former.

Egalitarianism runs deep in our culture. We have taken the wise notion of our fathers, that all men are created equal and twisted it beyond recognition. They, in so claiming, were arguing that the law was to be blind to issues of background and wealth, that justice was indeed for all. The camel nudged its nose into the tent when we began to clamor instead for “equal opportunity.” When this didn’t achieve the results desired we slipped to handicapping the race such that everyone will finish the same. Now we want an equal ending.

Which may explain why it is that Americans Christians seem to have such a difficult time with the doctrine of election, especially as it is expressed in the doctrine of limited atonement. We tend to treat the grace of God the way our school teachers used to treat our treats — we were only allowed to eat them if we had enough for everyone. If God should show kindness toward one human, we reason, He is duty bound to do the same for everyone. Praise God that our king transcends these cultural quirks. Praise God He is not subject to the folly of His subjects.

John Owen, in what is perhaps his greatest work, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, goes to great pains to help us see the fulfillment of God’s divine prerogative, that He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy. Because we are all sinners, God owes us all only His just condemnation. But God, who is rich in mercy, has condescended to shower His mercy upon those whom He has chosen, for His good pleasure. To some He shows this mercy; to others He manifests justice.

It is not, however, simply the American spirit of egalitarianism that gets in our way. We are a strange bunch, who want at the same time to live in that place where we all receive blue ribbons, but we also want to earn what we have. We are at the same time a bootstrap people. You don’t conquer a continent, after all, by sitting around waiting for your fair share of the donut hole. This pushes us to sundry forms of Pelagian theology wherein we claw our own way to heaven.

These paradoxes are reconciled then when we see that we want God to treat us all the same not because that is our only chance, but so that when we do win the race, we can brag that we did it on our own. It is not ultimately a desire to make God look good in the eyes of socialists that makes us push Him to treat us all the same. Instead it is a desire to make ourselves look good. We want the credit.

While The Death of Death in the Death of Christ dealt a death blow the notion that God treats us all exactly the same, it is the death of Christ that puts to death any notion that we can do it on our own. The death of Christ does not make it possible for all of us to be saved, but certain for none of us. His death doesn’t move us closer to the finish line, and those who are good will finish. No, He died because we are dead in ourselves. Put a dead man just one inch from the finish line, and he will never finish.

Instead, by His death we were made alive. As one wise wag put it, man doesn’t bring the final push to salvation. He doesn’t bring self-generated faith to the party. He doesn’t add his paltry works to the equation. No, what man contributes to his salvation is the need for salvation. We bring the sin that needs to be covered. Let, therefore, no man boast.

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Better to Have Loved and Lost- Burying Duke

Posted on August 15, 2024 by RC

We buried Duke. We had not known him long. We didn’t have a great deal in common. His illness came on suddenly. Lisa and I had visited him, sought to comfort him, and prayed for him. When the sun rose the next day, however Duke had gone the way of all flesh. There were some who warned me against becoming close, knowing this death was, sooner or later, inevitable. But Duke was so friendly, so fun, so handsome, we had little choice.

Duke was a young bull Lisa and I had purchased at auction just a few weeks ago. A beautiful red calf, we brought him to our farm to raise him up for meat. That’s why people warned us. “How are you going to be able to eat an animal you’ve named?” I didn’t heed that counsel. I explained, in fact, that I would have no trouble eating him when the time came. That’s the strange, but I’d argue, wonderful place farm animals put us.

Proverbs 12:10 tells us “A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal.” Nathan the prophet, in II Samuel 12, in his allegory that exposed David’s guilt with Bathsheba, describes a man who so loved his lone lamb that she was like a daughter to him. In both instances we see that it is fitting for a man to care for his animals, understandable. We don’t take a coldly efficient perspective on our animals. We don’t treat them like living automatons, like fleshy machines.

Instead, we care for them, meet their needs, even love them. None of which undoes the great gap that separates man from animals. Grown adults referring to their pets as “fur babies” is lunacy on the level of a boy who thinks he’s a girl. But that doesn’t mean there is something wrong with loving our pets, or our farm animals. We don’t elevate animals above their station, but we do stoop down to it.

The gap between man and animal, however, is microscopic in comparison to the gap between Creator and creature. We exist for His glory. We belong to Him. We are not merely sustained by Him, but it is in Him that we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). We are, apart from His grace, nothing more than dust and rebellion. And yet, He loves us, every mother’s son of us.

This doesn’t make us His equal. It doesn’t change our purpose, which is always to make manifest His glory. But it reminds us that one way He is glorified in us is by how He condescends to us. Perhaps nothing sets Him apart more from us than that He draws near to us.

We should not be surprised to find His transcendence and His immanence would be inseparably bound together. The Lord our God, after all, the Lord is one (Deut. 6:4). What has surprised me these past few days is the blessing of getting just a taste of this in the midst of the hardship of losing our beloved friend Duke.

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Kamilli Vanilli; Marcia Montenegro; Sodom; Prayer & More

Posted on August 14, 2024 by RC

This week’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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Resenting Grace: Parable of the Miserly Son

Posted on August 13, 2024 by RC

It is counter-intuitive, but nevertheless, there it is. We all, from time to time, take offense when grace is offered to us. We all, even more of the time, take offense when grace is offered to others. Two different circumstances, one reason to rule them both.

It is not, strictly speaking, receiving grace that offends us. Rather we take offense at the notion that we are in need of it. When it is offered, either by the God whom we offend daily, or another person that we offend less frequently, we recognize that to accept it is to acknowledge we have done wrong, that we have failed.

We don’t want grace, pity, charity because such means we cannot do what needs to be done on our own. And that hits right in our most vulnerable spot, our pride. We prefer to live in the most dangerous delusion, that we got this. We are not just waving off the lifeguard in the midst of our second drop below the surface; we wave off the Live Giver while dead at the bottom of the sea.

Why though do we resent the offering of grace to others? Such says nothing whatsoever about our own need or lack of need. Yet we grumble, complain, even respond in bitterness when we see others receive grace. Jesus even gave us the parable of the vineyard workers to show us this (see Matthew 20:1- 16).

The root of this, despite the different circumstances, is the same as above- it hits us in the pride. Here the issue isn’t our need to be self-sufficient, but our felt need to be treated as special, inviolable. When others receive grace it leaves us open to be mistreated. If people aren’t punished for treating others poorly, I will end up being treated poorly. And surely I’m too important, valuable, precious to have anyone get away with harming me.

The solution in both instances should not surprise us. What we need is humility. We need, in the first instance, to give up the barking at the moon lunacy of thinking we don’t need God’s grace. The pride that says, “I got this” is the equivalent, and just as embarrassing at the emperor’s pride in his new set of clothes. I don’t need a little grace. I need all the grace there is. I’m not dependent on God to get me through the last twenty yards of the marathon. I need Him to carry me.

When the unbeliever accuses us of using God as a crutch denounce such nonsense with vigor. A crutch? A crutch? Of what use is a crutch to a dead man? I don’t need a crutch. I need life itself, given to me by the Lord of Life.

As for the second circumstance, humility acknowledges that we are not special. We are not true special treatment of special protections. We are not the priceless china in the shop but the bull. We are not God, but God is. Though we can be and have been wronged, no wrong we have ever received is worthy to be compared to the daily wrong we do to our Redeemer. We have been forgiven much. Surely we should rejoice in forgiving others little.

The church is not the fellowship of those fighting over a small serving of grace. We are those celebrating being invited to feast upon that grace that covers not only us, but every one of our brothers and sisters, and all who are afar off. Let us acknowledge our need and proclaim His provision, putting pride on the run.

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What does it mean that the church is the bride of Christ?

Posted on August 12, 2024 by RC

When a writer makes an analogy he seeks to draw out truths about one thing by drawing out its similarities to the known qualities of the thing to which it is compared. If I say, “Life is like a roller-coaster” I’m not suggesting that life is something you find at an amusement park or that life is something closed in the winter. Instead I’m suggesting life has a lot of ups and downs, that it comes at us fast.

In like manner, when Paul tells us that the church is the bride of Christ he’s not saying the church wears something borrowed, something new, something old and something new. Such may be true of a bride, but is not essential. What defines a bride?

A bride loves and honors and delights in her groom. Which is precisely what we are supposed to do. This is surely the center of Paul’s point in Ephesians 5. Wives there are called to submit to their husbands as the church is to submit to Jesus. The groom is the focus of the attention of the bride. She is not distracted by anything or anyone else. So the church must be toward Jesus.

A bride is the glory of her groom. All the fuss and investment, the bridal gown, these things exist that the glory of the bride might be a glory to the groom. This is why all those in attendance turn and watch as the bride makes her way down the aisle. That trip isn’t designed for efficiency. Nobody is wowed by the torque a bride’s ankles can handle. She is made to be beautiful.

This is why the groom stands with her, filled with pride as the pictures get taken. Wives reflect their husbands, just as the church is to reflect Jesus. As the church walks out the character of Jesus she fulfills her bridal calling.

A bride is beloved of her groom. Bride and groom belong with and to each other. Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. It is, in both marriage and in the church’s relationship to Jesus, the love of the groom that beautifies the bride. The love of the groom is what defines the bride.

How might I be a different man if I truly believed, from top to bottom, with fervency, that Jesus loves me from top to bottom, with fervency? Remembering that we are together the bride, the same question arises with respect to the church. How might the church be different if we all together believed fully that Jesus loves us?

When the marriage feast comes, by His grace, we will so believe. We will not only be His bride, but will be spotless, without blot or blemish. As we now grow in grace and wisdom we become more and more what we will be. He has gone to prepare a place for us. Let us prepare, by the power of the Spirit, for that place. Let the Bride say, “Come, Lord Jesus.”

This is the eighth installment of an ongoing series of pieces here on the nature and calling of the church. Stay tuned for more.

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