Mono No Aware

Band: Hammock

Righteousness Cannot Be Mixed

Apostle Paul:

"For our sake [God] made [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in [Jesus] we might become the righteousness of God." 2 Corinthians 5:21

Robert Traill:

"If a man trusts to his own righteousness, he rejects Christ's; if he trusts to Christ's righteousness, he rejects his own." Justification Vindicated, 70.

The Most Damning Sin

17th century Scottish Presbyterian Robert Traill:

"...unbelief is the most provoking to God and the most damning to man of all sins." Justification Vindicated, 28.

This means that whatever horrendous sin that you have committed that haunts you is not close to the damning sin of not believing what God has done in Jesus. Jesus came to die for sinners that are haunted by their sins.

What must you do then? Quit sinning? No, first, believe in Jesus and you will be saved.

The most damning sin is removed, not by ceasing to sin, but by trusting Jesus who saves sinners. Faith in the Savior brings the favor of God and eternal life.

Christianity is About Everything

Anthony Hoekema:

"Being a citizen of the kingdom, therefore, means that we should see all of life and all of reality in the light of the goal of the redemption of the cosmos. This implies, as Abraham Kuyper once said, that there is not a thumb-breadth of the universe about which Christ does not say, 'It is mine.' This implies a Christian philosophy of history: all of history must be seen as the working out of God's eternal purpose. This kingdom vision includes a Christian philosophy of culture: art and science reflect the glory of God and are therefore to be pursued for his praise. It also includes a Christian view of vocation: all callings are from God, and all that we do in everyday life is to be done to God's praise, whther this be study, teaching, preaching, business, industry, or housework." The Bible and the Future, 54.

This means that everything matters. Christianity is not about one corner of spirituality in your life at the exclusion of the other things you do and are. The work of Jesus has implications upon everything, that is, every-single-thing. If all is to be be done for the glory of God, which the Bible declares that it so clearly is (1 Cor. 10:31), than every part of life becomes packed with meaning, becuase every part of life becomes an event of worship.

How to Come to Jesus

Jonathan Edwards:

"If ever you truly come to Christ, you must see that there is enough in him for your pardon, though you be no better than you are. If you see not the sufficiency of Christ to pardon you, without any righteousness of your own to recommend you, you never will come so as to be accepted of him. The way to be accepted is to come--not on any such encouragement, that now you have made yourselves better, and more worthy, or not so unworthy, but--on the mere encouragement of Christ's worthiness, and God's mercy." "Pardon for the Greatest of Sinners," in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 2, 113.

My Earth Day Post

The apostle Paul in Romans 8:19 writes:

"For the anxious longing of the creation awaits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God."

Creation is good. The earth is good. It is so because it was created by God. However, the earth, Romans 8 tells us, has been "subjected to futility" by God. It is enslaved with corruption. It has been cursed because the sin of the first man, Adam (Gen. 3:17). Therefore the earth is "groaning" and suffering "the pains of childbirth" (Ro. 8:22), yet is does so "in hope" (Ro. 8:20).

The subjection of the earth is not unto futility forever. It was subjected by God "in hope." Hope is carrying the whole cosmos, because one Day it will be free from corruption and decay. The earth is longing for that Day.

Therefore today isn't really earth day. There is a much better one coming.

The earth, in fact all of creation, as commentator Douglas Moo points out, is "craning" its "neck to see what is coming" (The Epistle to the Romans, 513). The earth, as it were, holds it breath in eager expectation and "anxious longing" for the revealing of God's sons (Ro. 8:19). When the sons of God are revealed the earth will be transformed and renewed. What was distorted and damaged and destroyed because of the sin of humankind and the judgment of God against that sin will be renewed and restored and redeemed. This Day that is coming is the Day when God's sons will be revealed.

Who are these sons? They are those whose condemnation because of sin has been removed because they are "in Christ" (Ro. 8:1). They are those who are trusting Jesus, and thus have the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God, dwelling within them (Ro. 8:9). Sons of God is not a general term for all humanity. The sons of God are those who trust the Son of God, who was God incarnate--Jesus--who died for sinners. The creation, the earth, awaits the day when God restores the "glory of the children of God." On this coming Day God will fully conform those who are trusting Jesus, the Son of God, into the very "image of [God's] Son," Jesus (Ro. 8:29).

On this Day, the glory will be restored and the curse will be removed and sin will be banished from all creation. The creation will then experience the glory that it has hoped for. Groaning will be gone. God will renew and remake creation into the new heavens and the new earth where righteousness dwells.

Earth Day rather then simply a human striving to making the earth better (which of course is a very good thing) should be done in the hope of the Day that God transforms creation and reveals His sons. Therefore humanity, especially those who are the sons of God--that claim a relationship with Jesus--should treat the earth well and seek its restoration. However it will not be human striving that ever fulfills the longing and the glory of the earth.

It will be God, the One who subjected the earth to futility in hope of the revealing of the sons of God and the renewal of all creation that follows. This earth day is a day of expectation for a much more glorious Day to come.

What Holy People Think About Themselves

JI Packer:

"Holy people glory, not in their holiness, but in Christ's cross; for the holiest of saint is never more than a justified sinner and never sees himself in any other way." Keep in Step with the Spirit, 105

The Imagination of New American Religions is the Same

Mary Farrell Bednarowski closes out her survey of new American religions (Mormonism, New Age, Theosophy, Christian Science, Scientology, and the Unification "church") in this way:

"Altogether the new religions claim in various ways that to admit sinful actions and intentions without going so far as to admit a sinful nature is an acknowledgment more in keeping with the human task on earth and with human experience than to claim helplessnes in the face of sin and total dependence on God's mercy for deliverance...For the new religions, as we have seen, the denial of original sin or, in the case of Unificationism, at least the helplessness associated with it becomes a means to affirm human freedom and even human necessity--if we need God, God also needs us. And it has led to that universally strong insistence noted in chapter three that we must save ourselves and the planet, and, perhaps, even God...In regard to the grace-works polarity, there is almost no tension at all. 'Works' and responsibiliy will save us." New Religions and the Theological Imagination in America, 138-139.

The imagination of new American religions is pretty much the same 'ole thing of most religions. The theological imagination, not only of America, but of humanity always invents self-help religion.

The beauty and uniqueness of authentic Christianity is that Jesus came to save sinners. Works and responsibility will not save humanity. God does not need us, yet He chose to reveal Himself and enter into the world incarnated in the flesh in the person of Jesus and die on the cross for sinners who cannot help themselves. Jesus died for the ungodly. He did not come to call the righteous but sinners. Total dependence upon the mercy of Jesus is the faith apart from works that brings salvation. There is no other name under heaven by which humanity can be saved.

This is good news for bad people.

God Humiliated and Defeated Satan at the Cross of Jesus

Colossians 2:15:

"God disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in Jesus."

Thomas Schreiner:

"Christ's work on the cross not only broke the power of sin but also spelled the defeat of evil and demonic powers....[God] publicly exposed them and humiliated them....The triumphal procession was a ceremonial parade through the streets of Rome in which some captive leaders and their wares were displayed. The march concluded with the execution of those conquered...The powers have lost their authority due to the cross of Christ. They have been stripped, humiliated, and led to execution. They no longer exercise any control over those in Christ. In context Christ's triumph over evil powers is linked with forgiveness of sins, indicating that in receiving the forgiveness of sins believers have received everything that they need." New Testament Theology, 271.

The Maundy Thursday Meal

Today is the day before Good Friday. Traditionally it is called Maundy Thursday and a day in which things like the Passover and Lord's Supper are reflected upon. The night which Jesus was betrayed, the night He was given over to death, is commemorated on Maundy Thursday.

On a day like today the disciples of Jesus were preparing a Passover meal for Jesus to eat not realizing that in fact it was Jesus who would be giving the meal (Mark 14:14, 23). One could say that Jesus was the meal.

The Passover lamb of the Exodus was pointing toward this very night where Jesus showed Himself as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. The disciples were ready to reflect upon a day long ago when the Israelites were delievered from Egypt and God rescued His people and did not kill the firstborn son's of those who had the Lamb's blood on the doorposts, but Jesus was preparing them to reflect upon God's passing over of their sins through the death of God's Son, Jesus.

In many ways, it's on odd day to have a meal, but that's what Jesus did. The meal of bread and wine, Jesus' body and blood. One violent and odd dinner.

It's as if Jesus is saying that what happens tomorrow is meant to bring you life, joy, nourishment, and celebration like a meal with friends, and of course it is. Good Friday is not oxymoronic.

The killing of the Lamb of God for sinners removes the wrath of God toward sinners and fills sinners with the favor of God and fellowship with God for all those who in faith receive the meal Jesus offers....which of course is His very Self.

The meal before Jesus death on Maundy Thursday that commemorates the killing of Jesus on Good Friday is the meal that brings eternal life.

The Spiritual Discipline of Remembering

When life is troubled it is important to remember. If one does not use one's memory life will be extremely difficult. In Asaph's 77th Psalm, one finds Asaph, again, like in his 73rd, deeply struggling with the attributes of God in the midst of trouble (77:2). The questions Asaph asks of God are questions about God's character, questions that call God's very attributes into question (77:7-9):

"Will God reject His people forever?"
"Will God never be favorable again?"
"Has He ceased being loving and kind?"
"Are God's promises even true? They seem to have ended forever."
"Has God forgotten to be gracious?"
"Has God stopped being compassionate because He is angry?" (my paraphrase)

Asaph challenges God's favor, God's presence with His people, God's love, God's faithfulness to His promises, God's grace, and God's compassion. So what does Asaph do, and what should the reader of the Psalm's do when they feel this way?

Remember.

"I shall remember the deeds of the Lord;
Surely I will remember Your wonders of old.
I will meditate on all Your work
And muse on Your deeds." (77:11-12)

Asaph remembers because currently life has dealt him blows by which He questions the nearness of God. God seems distant and different. All that remains is memory of what God has done. What is remembered is what is "old."

Remembering is an important spiritual discipline, sometimes, it is all one has.

What specifically does Asaph remember?

"You have by Your power redeemed Your people,
The sons of Jacob and Joseph." (77:15)

Asaph remembers that God's people, Israel, have been redeemed. They have been brought out of slavery into freedom. After years of slavery under an oppressive Pharaoh God delievered His people from Egypt. Asaph remembers God's redemption of Israel.

God's people are to remember God's rescue of them. Remember Egypt and Exodus. Satan has been defeated at the cross, and is no longer one's Master. One was in slavery to sin, and now, the Passover Lamb, Jesus, has died in the place of sinners, and has brought sinners to God and out of Egypt.

Remember the Gospel of redemption when you feel as if the loving, compassionate, faithful, gracious, "I am with you always" God is unloving, disapproving, without compassion, unfaithful, angry, and far away. Remember those times when you did feel as if you had been "led...like a flock" by a caring Shepherd (77:20).

Remembering is for endurance. Endurance is the Christian life, and the very impulse of endurance arises when God's presence in your life is called into question. God has not forgotten to be gracious to you. If you are trusting the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Jesus is your Shepherd, and He has promised that you will not be snatched out of His hand (Jn. 10:28). Sheep wander, but the best Shepherd never loses a sheep.

Endure by remembering.

Ungodly Godliness

JI Packer:

"Modern Christians tend to make satisfaction their religion. We show much more concern for self-fulfillment than for pleasing our God. Typical of Christianity today, at any rate in the English-speaking world, is its massive rash of how-to books for believers, directing us to more successful relationships, more joy in sex, becoming more of a person, realizing our possiblities, getting more excitement each day, reducing our weight, improving our diet, managing our money, licking our families into happier shape, and whatnot. For people whose prime passion is to glorify God, these are doubtless legitimate concerns; but the how-to books regularly explore them in a self-absorbed way that treats our enjoyment of life rather than the glory of God as the center of interest. Granted, they spread a thin layer of Bible teaching over the mixture of popular psychology and common sense they offer, but their overall approach clearly reflects the narcissism--'selfism' or 'me-ism' as it is sometimes called--that is the way of the world in the modern West.

Now self-absorption, however religious in its cast of mind, is the opposite of holiness. Holiness means godliness, and godliness is rooted in God centeredness, and those who think of God as existing for their benefit rather than of themselves as existing for his praise do not qualify as holy men and women. Thier mind-set has to be described in very different terms. It is an ungodly sort of godliness that has self at its center." Keep in Step with the Spirit, 97-98.

Charles Spurgeon on Asaph's 73rd Psalm

The other day I posted a blog regarding Asaph's 73rd Psalm, and Charles Spurgeon, in his Treasury of David, came alongside to further illuminate:

Verse 12: “Look! See! Consider! Here is the standing enigma! The crux of Providence! The stumbling-block of faith! Here are the unjust rewarded and indulged, and that not for a day or an hour, but in perpetuity. From their youth up the men, who deserve perdition, revel in prosperity. They deserve to be hung in chains, and chains are hung about their necks; they are worthy to be chased from the world and yet the world becomes all their own. Poor purblind sense cries, Behold this! Wonder, and be amazed, and make this square with providential justice, if you can…both wealth and health are their dowry. No bad debts and bankruptcies weight them down, but robbery and usury pile up their substance. Money runs to money, gold pieces fly in flocks; the rich grow richer, the proud grow prouder. Lord, how is this?”

Verse 13: “Poor Asaph! He questions the value of holiness when its wages are paid in the coin of affliction."

Verse 18: “The Psalmist’s sorrow had culminated, not in the fact that the ungodly prospered, but that God had arranged it so: had it happened by mere chance, he would have wondered, but could not have complained; but how the arranger of all things could so dispense his temporal favours, was the vexatious question. Here, to meet the case, he sees that the divine hand purposely placed these men in prosperous and eminent circumstances, not with the intent to bless them but the very reverse…the same hand which led them up to their Tarpeian rock, hurled them down from it.”

Verse 25: "Thus, then, [The Psalmist] turns away from the glitter which fascinated him to the true gold which was his real treasure. He felt that his God was much better to him than all the wealth, health, honour, and peace, which he had so much envied in the worldling…He bade all things else go, that he might be filled with his God."

When the Only Good is God

Some meditations on a Psalm of Asaph:

"Whom have I in heaven but You?
And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever...
But as for me, the nearness of God is my good;
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
That I may tell of all Your works." Ps. 73:25-28

What will I do when the only good I can see in my life is my God, and when He is only dimly seen? What will I do when the plague, the disease, is in my body, and I notice that the wicked around me are healthy and happy? What will I do when I am lonely, the friends are dead and gone or only broken relationships remain, and others are surrounded by frienship? What will I do when there is no ease? Physically I'm shot, mentally I'm distracted, forgetful, depressed, little remembrance of God or His Word or friends and family, and emotionally I'm either dry to the point of no feeling or like a waterfall of out-of-control emotions? What will I do when the echoes of Christian culture and the words of well-meaning friends that are ringing in my ears is that blessing is my destiny, healing is my right, and with Jesus all things get better, and I am experiencing nothing of the sort? What will I do?

Honestly I don't know, but I pray I will open my Bible and listen to the counsel of the Holy Spirit in passages like Psalm 73.

I pray that even now my friends who know Jesus, and those that surround them watching them suffer with cancer and with brain tumors will remember that when everything fails: "flesh"--one's body--"heart"--one's dreams, desires, emotions, aspirations, longings, affections. When all of that fails that they would remember that God is their strength and that God is their portion.

For the one who trusts Jesus the failing of flesh and the failing of heart is all momentary anyway. The body will be restored and resurrected, and the heart will receive unbridled joy and the fulfillment of all one as ever wanted or all one ever dreamed would be possible. This will all take place in the new heavens and the new earth, and, most importantly, Jesus will be there.

The best good is God, and He will be near, because He will dwell with His people, and, in fact, does so even now with the cancer and with the tumor. Somehow all affliction is momentary and light, and the weight of glory ahead outweighs tiny afflictions like cancer and brain tumors, but it sure as hell won't feel that way sometimes. It will feel like all is failing, and, like this Psalm says, it "may fail."

But God. But God. But God.

Psalm 73 gives me the testimony of a godly man who experienced all of that and what he did in that state. I pray that that is what I will do, and that this is what you will do: First, remember that the end of the wicked, they that don't repent of their sins and trust Jesus, is destruction. Even if happy and healthy and wealthy till death--God despises them (Ps. 73:18-20). Second, repent of envy and being embittered (Ps. 73:21). Third, desire the only good one has, which is God (Ps. 73:28). Stay close to Jesus. Third, start talking about God and the things He has done (Ps. 73:28). Do this by preaching to your own soul and by telling others.

God is good all the time, even when every other good in one's life appears to be gone.

This is good news.

The Hottest Jealousy - Part 10

It is sentences like this that make reading John Calvin so worthwhile, and, yes, it is one sentence:

"Therefore, as the purer and chaster the husband is, the more grievously he is offended when he sees his wife inclining to a rival; so the Lord, who hath betrothes us to himself in truth, declares that he burns with the hottest jealousy whenever, neglecting the purity of his holy marriage, we defile ourselves with abominable lusts, and sespecially when the worship of his Deity, which ought to have been most carefully kept unimpaired, is transferred to another, or adulterated with some superstition; since, in this way, we not only violate our plighted troth, but defile the nuptial couch, by giving access to adulterers." The Institutes of Christian Religion, 331.

Evangelicalism loves to attribute the great love of God for His people and the great love people should have for their God; often, especially in more Charismatic and Revivalistic circles, this language is couched in romance and the language of lovers. This is not unbiblical, but it can be reductionistic. God's romance toward His Bride, the church, is to be known and experienced, but the flip-side is, that God is a jealous lover. His love is not the petty love of a boyfriend just showering his girlfriend with nice compliements and constant cuddling, but the faithful love of a husband jealous for the affection of his wife who is often prone toward adultery.

God's love for His Bride should be known and experienced, and sure, say so in romantic terms, but don't take the jealousy out of the romance and strip the holiness from God. In all honesty it starts sounding a bit weird, too much like a pubescent boyfriend and unlike the faithful Husband pictured in radically holy terms in the book of Revelation, whose name is Lamb and Lion, Alpha and Omega.