Friday, December 30, 2011
2012: A Year for Sowing
One of the great privileges of being a Christian is knowing God. In
fact, it could be said this is what a Christian is - someone who knows God. Jesus
said: "And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true
God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (John 17:3).
It is one thing to know when worship starts each Sunday, to know where
your regular seat is, to know the hymns by heart, to know some correct answers to important
theological questions; but it is something much more significant to know God, to know him as your Father,
to know He has dedicated himself to blessing and keeping you forever in Christ (Numbers 6:22-27; Jeremiah 32:41). Knowing
those other things does not work against knowing God, but one can know those other things and still not know God. Jesus' spicy
altercations with the Pharisees makes this quite clear.
Knowing God is a gift from above not a conjured effort from below. I can be born of a woman and know about God but
I can only know God if I am born of the Spirit. Born again. The Spirit presses upon my spirit that I have
God as my very own Father. He - the Holy Spirit - presses this upon me with a knowledge that activates within me a Godward
trust and hope.
Let
me give you a practical example of how knowing God activates trust and hope. It is an example very fitting for being
on the threshold of a new year. Here it is: because you know God you can sow to the Spirit without regret. This
comes from Galatians 6:7-8, which reads: "Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that
will he also reap. For the one who sows to his
own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life."
Notice how the apostle's point turns on either an ignorance of God or a knowledge of God. Those ignorant
of God are going to deceive themselves thinking that the god who is there is blind to their self-centered ambitions ("sows
to his own flesh"). But those who know God know his largeness. They know nothing can be hidden from God. They know God
sees all things and God rules all things. They know God relates all things to himself thus He stubbornly refuses to
honor self-centered wickedness ("reap corruption").
But those who know God know more than the trouble He will bring upon the wicked. They also know God
will not neglect seeds they sow to his Spirit. God will see all such sowing, nurture all such sowing, and bring forth an eternal
harvest of blessedness from all such sowing. This is how knowing God activates trust and hope. Knowing God liberates us from
any suspicion that sowing to the Spirit is foolishness and ignored by heaven. Knowing the seed God prospers gives us all the
more zeal to sow it liberally. What does it then mean to sow to the Spirit?
Well, consider the contrast between flesh and Spirit.
Sowing to the flesh is to invest in the world that is passing away. Sowing to the flesh is investing in the world created
by fallen sinful man where said man strives to rule himself, to make himself out to be god. Sowing to the flesh is to obey our own word not God's. Sowing
to the flesh is to invest in our own glory (“his own flesh”) not God's. Sowing to the Spirit, on the other hand, is to invest in the world to come, to invest in the new creation the
Spirit is making. Sowing to the Spirit is investing in the world where the glory of God and the Word of God and the worship
of Jesus and the righteousness of God’s people are valued above all things. Sowing
to the Spirit is investing in those things that will remain forever in the unshakable kingdom of Jesus.
Are you beginning to see how your knowledge of God will impact your life in
2012? The new year like the old year is a season for sowing. The Lord of the harvest tarries and so the season for reaping
tarries too. It is the Lord's will that we sow to the Spirit while we can sow. Yes, such sowing will appear foolish to those
ignorant of God, much like building a giant ark in the desert. But we will not be deceived. We are certain of things
unseen. By the Spirit we have heard the testimony of the apostles. By faith we see that Jesus born of Mary has been vindicated
and has ascended to heaven's throne. The first fruits of the harvest have been safely gathered to God's temple - in Jesus
our race has already entered the new creation. Very soon He shall send forth his reapers and gather his wheat.
Friday, December 23, 2011
No contemporary poet pondering the incarnation has, in my estimation, exceeded the quality and profundity of Luci Shaw.
She has several books of poetry available for your consideration, two on the incarnation alone. Try the library first so you
can kick the tires, so to speak. Here is her poem, Made Flesh:
After
the white-hot beam of annunciation
fused heaven with dark earth,
his searing, sharply focused
light
went out for a while,
eclipsed in amniotic gloom:
his cool immensity of splendor,
his universal
grace,
small-folded in a warm, dim
female space—
the Word stern-sentenced to be
nine months’
dumb—
infinity walled in a womb,
until the next enormity—
the Mighty One, after submission
to
a woman’s pains,
helpless on a barn’s bare floor,
first-tasting bitter earth.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Did you know that our federal government allows federal employees $5 per day for travel incidentals.
These incidental expenses include things like tips for the taxi,
tips for the bellhop, or even a quick load of laundry at the hotel. Incidentals
are called such because they are not the primary expenses of a trip. Plane tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars and meals are
the chief expenses of business travel. The incidentals may or may not be necessary. They are peripheral and thus soon forgotten.
As Christians I think we can easily slip into seeing the incarnation
this way. It is easy to think that "the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us" was only an incidental expense
of our redemption. It is easy to think that Jesus briefly and begrudgingly took on our flesh only to accomplish a much more
important task, then when the task was finished he disrobed from our nature back into something much more glorious than our
filthy humanness.
But seeing the incarnation
this way - as an incidental incarnation - is an error against the glory of the eternal Son and contrary
to God's revelation of Christ.
Said
error is present whenever I think that because sin clings so closely to my humanness Jesus must have come to deliver me from
my humanness. Said error is present whenever I think that escaping my
humanness is the blessing and joy of entering heaven. Said error is present whenever I think that my redemption will be complete
once I am dead and in the presence of the Lord as a conscious spirit. Said error is present whenever I think that Jesus no
longer has a human nature in his present glorified state.
When we think about the incarnation we should always bring forward in our minds two
other great scriptural doctrines: creation and resurrection.
The biblical doctrine and historical fact of creation reminds
us that God does not despise our creatureliness. The doctrine of creation confirms that we did not make ourselves nor did
impersonal cosmic forces makes us. God made us. Man, humanness, creatureliness - it is all God's idea, God's initiative, and
God's design. Thus our creatureliness is not some intrusive space junk nor is it the work
of our own hands, some mutinous usurping of God's will. The implications of this for
the incarnation are enormous. It means the incarnation is not a sordid affair, an incidental necessity for which God holds
his nose until its over as if He's disappointed we're not angels. God is pleased with
men to dwell, as the great Charles Wesley hymn says, to covenant and unite himself to them. Theologian and bioethicist Nigel Cameron puts it just as well: “The dignity of human nature, fashioned
in the divine image, is such that God can take it for himself—and keep it.”
The doctrine of the resurrection also aids our
understanding of the incarnation. That Jesus was raised bodily from the dead - not just as a conscious spirit - confirms to
us that our flesh was made for heaven. He was raised from the dead and ascended to heaven, victor over sin and death. Heaven,
therefore, is not the place where we finally put off the body but the place where the body is finally glorified by putting
off sin. The eternal Son of God, who once had no human nature, now in heaven has a human nature forevermore. He came to
earth and received it so he could rightly offer himself as a sacrifice for his rebellious brothers and so take their nature,
purified and made just, into heaven. In other words, we are saved in order to fulfill our humanity not to abandon it. It is
with our humanness that we will glorify God and enjoy him forever. Our brother Jesus leads the way for all such creatures.
So there is no reason to be found in all the standards of holiness
and glory that requires us to lay aside our humanness. Yes, our sin must be disrobed and put to death, but our humanity shall
live and be glorified. This means then that our redemption is not complete upon our death but upon the resurrection of our
humanness into a state of glory on the last day when our Redeemer appears. His incarnation and our humanness in no way is
incidental to our salvation. Nor shall his incarnation and our humanness soon be forgotten for we shall never know Jesus any
other way than in the flesh - his and ours.
"When thou tookest
upon thee to deliver man: thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb." - Book of Common Prayer
Friday, December 9, 2011
The following Advent poem was written by Robert Southwell (c. 1561-1595) found in a "must have"
book, A Sacrifice of Praise: An Anthology of Christian Poetry in English from Caedmon to the Mid-Twentieth Century. May
this poetry deepen your joy at the wonder of the incarnation.
Behold a Silly, tender Babe,
In freezing winter night,
In homely manger trembling lies,
Alas! a piteous sight.
The inns are full,
no man will yield
this little
Pilgrim bed;
But forced is He with silly beasts,
In crib to shroud His head.
Despise Him not for lying there,
first what He is enquire:
An orient pearl
is often found,
In depth
of dirty mire.
Weigh not His crib,
His wooden dish,
Nor beasts that by Him feed;
Weigh not His mother's poor attire,
nor Joseph's simple weed.
This stable is
a Prince's court,
the crib
His chair of state;
The beasts are parcel of His pomp,
the wooden dish His plate.
The persons in that poor attire,
His royal liveries wear,
The Prince Himself
is come from heaven,
this
pomp is prized there.
With joy approach, O Christian wight!
Do homage to thy King,
And highly prize this humble pomp,
which He from heaven doth bring.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Always Tested Never Rested
Do you live your daily life on a stage or an altar?
If you live your life on a stage then you see the big assignments of life as places where you are called
to perform. You see marriage or parenting or religion or even your personality like a stage whereon you perform sufficiently
well that your worth to God is validated and found legitimate. This is life as performance. This is life always tested but
never rested.
In a sneaky subtle
kind of way this happens to us "by-grace-alone-Christians" too. We easily slip into a mindset that says, "God
has saved me by grace but now it is my job to validate his choice of me by performing so well in the various tasks of life
that God's choice is confirmed and his saving me is proved as worth the effort." Oddly, this is simply bringing
works righteousness in through the back door and it always leads to the same trouble that works righteousness leads to - resentment.
Not so oddly, this sprouting weed of self-righteousness remains in us all.
Why will works righteousness always lead to resentment, even in Christians? Because if every divinely
assigned task is a stage upon which I perform - my diet, my parenting, my marriage, my neighborliness, my personal
devotions, my attention to social causes - then success in those tasks becomes exceedingly important to the rest
I allow my soul. But here's the problem: I can not succeed in those tasks. Even an amateur investigation - and God is no amateur
- will find holes, gaps, negligence, and sin.
My failures in life's tasks will also be shown up by others. I will always meet somebody (unless I become a hermit)
who is doing one of life's tasks, if not all, better than me. When I meet them they will be awfully hard to love because they
incite self-loathing. Why? Because they confirm that I am not succeeding on the terms my soul has erroneously and vainly established
- validation and legitimacy through performance. It won't be long before I settle into a low-grade fever of resentment.
I will resent those who excel where I do not and I will resent
having been assigned tasks in life where I can not cash out the validation and legitimacy I seek. And so I begin to resent
the parenting, the marriage, the religious devotion, and all the rest. I resent because in my sneaky validate-my-salvation-by-performance-scheme all
these tasks now only testify that I am failing to validate. But of course this scheme is no salvation at all. It is a
mere fabrication yet it grips us all in some measure. Here is what we must know and believe to be saved from these subtle
soul-crushing lies of our own telling: life in Christ is an altar not a stage.
In Romans 12:1 the Lord tells us that daily human life, when lived in light of
Christ's mercies, is a "living sacrifice" kind of life. This is altar language. But notice the
most obvious thing about it: the sacrifice is alive not dead. Why? Because the altar is already covered in blood.
The one sacrifice that lifts all condemnation off me, that
reverses all judgments against me, that stops all prosecution of my sin has already been sacrificed - Jesus, the Lamb of God.
To be united to Christ by faith is to live life on an altar already covered in holy covenant blood. The perfect performance
demanded by God of human flesh has been provided by God in human flesh. It is finished. Jesus' holy performance
of my human life as the God-man is the only performance that legitimizes God's choice of me. His life and death alone validate
God's wisdom in saving me. I can point to nothing in my life and say, "See, God was right to save me, look what I can
do." But I can point to Jesus and say, "At the end of this day - this day shot through with holes, gaps, negligence,
and sin - God and I both look to the Son's work and see the glorious performance that puts my soul at rest."
But what of life's tasks, that host of divinely appointed tasks
we call living? If they are not stages upon which I perform and prove myself worthy of God's selection and salvation, then
what are they? In a word, they are gifts. Your body, your parenting, your marriage, your neighborliness, your religious devotion,
your attentiveness to social concerns, all these have been given to you not as tests but as gifts from God that you give back
to him as a sacrifice without blood. Why would God want them if they are shot through with holes and gaps and negligence and
sin?
Romans 12:1 explains: "...in
view of God's mercy...offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."
The Lord is not saying we take life's tasks and make them "holy and acceptable" by scrubbing out all the imperfections
and then offer them to God. No. By God's mercies Christ has already made our lives "holy and acceptable," fit
to be offered. Thus every duty and every day is already covered in the blood and righteousness of Jesus.
The more this gospel truth grips my soul the more liberated
I am to engage life's tasks without performance anxiety. The more I realize I am not on a stage but on an altar the more willing
I am to engage all life's duties with zeal fired by love instead of zeal fired by fear. The gospel allows me - no, demands
me - to see that God's grace was given not so I can disengage from life's tasks but engage them with a "rest of soul"
that knows God takes everything from me and washes it in Christ's blood and so declares it holy and acceptable. Every day
lived in Christ is a day lived as holy and acceptable before God.
Your whole life is now hidden in Christ. Knowing and believing this glorious gospel of grace permits
us to bravely get out of bed without pride or fear.
