These are a few of my favorite teachers

I wrote something the other day that might just need some clarification. I said:

What amazes me lately is . . . just how many people have national/international ministries, glossy websites, books, speaking schedules, podcasts, marketing plans, etc. All of them claiming to have some special angle, or a unique message to help the vast needy masses become un-needy at last, achieve that great triumph they've been dreaming of (or that they've been trained by marketers to think they must achieve, or else life will not be whole). It's a great big house of cards, that's what I think.

I want to emphasize today that there are a lot of teachers and preachers out there whom I admire and am happy to learn from. One of those is Terry Virgo, of the New Frontiers family of churches. here are a couple of example's of Terry's fundamental message.

3a. The Gospel of Grace from Terry Virgo on Vimeo.

3b. The Gospel of Grace from Terry Virgo on Vimeo.

What I appreciate about Virgo is his focus on the one single central message of grace. This puts him in league with another of my other favorite teachers, Steve Brown.



And then there's Dallas Willard.



And just for good measure I'll throw in one more. One of the writer/bloggers who frames this message of grace (the common thread among all these teachers) in unique and sometimes startling ways is Jared Wilson. Read, for example, The Gospel Against Hyper-Spirituality.

By the way, I've noticed that it's mostly old guys that honor the message of grace most persistently (Jared's the exception here, of course); folks like Virgo, Brown, Willard, and for another example, Brennan Manning. The message of grace takes a while, apparently, to really sink in. Life has to humble you a little first, perhaps.

Meanwhile, it's the young church planters and "leaders," so full of visions and plans and gifts of persuasion, who seem to always want to catch people up in their grand designs for the church rather than simply to refresh them with "glimpses of liberty" (Virgo's phrase).

See, I just want to be an ambassador for Jesus, growing into him with others through the living out of this message of grace. The message is about freedom, not more things to do. Me, I don't want to be a counselor or for that matter to be counseled. Also, I don't want merely the language of grace if it's just going to be a bait-and-switch to try to get me involved in your program (or buy your book, or adopt your seven steps to victory/breakthrough/prosperity/whatever). I just want to be a carrier of grace--the grace of God. Those teachers who can help me keep the focus right, who can remind me now and then of the freedom that is in Christ, those are teachers I appreciate and want to hear more of. That's the teaching I'm needy for.

The Solution

Check this out:

It sounds backward, but the path to holiness is through (not beyond) the grace of the gospel, because only undeserved grace can truly melt and transform the heart. The solution to restraint-free immorality is not morality. The solution to immorality is the free grace of God—grace so free that it will be (mis)heard by some as a license to sin with impunity. The route by which the New Testament exhorts radical obedience is not by tempering grace but by driving it home all the more deeply.

It's from The Radical Gospel, Defiant and Free, by Dane Ortlund. [HT: Justin Buzzard]

We're not adequate?

Ah, sorry for making myself scarce around here. Blogging has sort of fallen through the cracks. I'm not through here, just needing to find a niche in my day where blogging can routinely fit.

***

Saw this wonderful quote from one of my favorite books, Brennan Manning's The Ragamuffin Gospel. The quote, by the way, was featured in a post over at It's a beautiful gospel. Here 'tis:

The portrait of Peter, the rock who proved to be a sand pile, speaks to every ragamuffin across the generations. Lloyd Ogilvie notes: “Peter had built his whole relationship with Jesus Christ on his assumed capacity to be adequate. That’s why he took his denial of the Lord so hard. His strength, loyalty, and faithfulness were his self-generated assets of discipleship. The fallacy in Peter’s mind was this: he believed his relationship was dependent on his consistency in producing the qualities he thought had earned him the Lord’s approval.

“Many of us face the same problem. We project into the Lord our own measured standard of acceptance. Our whole understanding of him is based in a quid pro quo of bartered love. He will love us if we are good, moral, and diligent. But we have turned the tables; we try to live so that he will love us, rather than living because he has already loved us.”

I know many Christians who "turn the tables" in this way. And I know many non-believers who think that the idea that we might not actually "deserve" the love of God is sheer effrontery. The notion that "but for the grace of God" we are in deep trouble turns out to be, for these people, supremely arrogant and judgmental.

Grace, it seems, is a hard doctrine to swallow. Buried beneath its winsome finish is a difficult truth: we deserve nothing. Calvinists may be outspoken on this score, but most evangelicals throw the word grace around while avoiding this core truth. Perhaps that's the reason that many non-believers find the doctrine of grace less attractive than we expect. And yet without this core truth, grace would not be grace.

Anyway, good to be back at WF. I'll try to visit more often!

Yes!

Ray Ortlund recently quoted Anders Nygren, and I'm just repeating after him, because some things are just worth repeating:

This life we live is not life. This life is a living death. This whole world is ruins brilliantly disguised as elegance. Christ alone is life. Christ has come, bringing his life into the wreckage called us. He has opened up, even in these ruins, the frontier of a new world where grace reigns. He is not on a mission to help us improve our lives here. He is on a mission to create a new universe, where grace reigns in life. He is that massive, that majestic, that decisive, that critical and towering and triumphant.

Going on about Bob

I have a new job!

I'm working as a general get 'er done guy at a cartographic library/museum. That means maps, son, and don't you forget it.

Actually, this institution is a division of the university library where I have worked for the past 7 years or so, so I'm still swimming in the same pool, ya might say.

Which has little to do with what I was going to say. I was going to say, I really like Ray Ortlund's blog, Christ is Deeper Still. That's a good title, don't you think? By way of personal application:

Christ is deeper still than my new job.

There you go! And all the stuff going on at that job, and the pressures and "circumstances" associated with it. In fact, speaking of circumstances, Ray recently quoted Francis Schaeffer concerning them:

The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us [nor, I would add today, postmodernism or materialistic consumerism or visceral sensualism or whatever]. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually or corporately, tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them.

Wonderful startling truth, that. Again, by way of application: whatever is going on around you at your job (conflict with your boss, boring work, low pay, etc.), the real problem, Schaeffer would say, is in you trying to deal with these things and navigate these circumstances "in the power of the flesh."

Hmmm. I plead guilty. Guilty as it gets.

Along the same lines, Ray recently excerpted a 1987 interview with one of my spiritual heroes, Eugene Peterson, in which Peterson said this:

...my job is not to solve people's problems or make them happy, but to help them to see the grace that is operating in their lives. It's hard to do, because our whole culture is going the other direction, saying that if you're smart enough and get the right kind of help, you can solve all your problems. . . . The work of spirituality is to recognize where we are -- the particular circumstances of our lives -- to recognize grace and say, "Do you suppose God wants to be with me in a way that does not involve changing my spouse or getting rid of my spouse or my kids, but in changing me, and doing something in my life that maybe I could never experience without this pain and this suffering?"

Ah, circumstances again. Have you noticed that we use that word as a euphemism for things we'd rather not be going through. I mean, a heavy debt load is a "circumstance," but a holiday in Hawaii certainly is not. Which leads me to this thought: we're so emotionally preoccupied with wishing things were not the way they are. Have you ever noticed that? As an alternative, we might want to try being preoccupied with what God would like to do in and through us right there in the midst of the circumstances.

Well, that's all. Now go over to Christ is Deeper Still and just read. Good stuff over there.

Imperfect Bootstraps

I just love these words of Robert Farrar Capon:

"The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof grace--bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us singlehandedly. The word of the Gospel--after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps--suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home free before they started...Grace was to be drunk neat: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale..."

HT:Buzzard Blog

Death, where is thy sting?

I don't want to break anyone's heart, but I hope you all know you're probably going to die someday.

I recently heard a Christian friend of mine say, "I just don't understand how God can allow so-and-so to get cancer." I wanted to say, do you really think certain people should be immune from the normal frailties of the flesh? Or that being a believer should mean not getting cancer, heart disease, MS, etc.? The real question is, why shouldn't he or she get cancer? Or you? Or me? Or anyone else?

Where did we get this idea that it should be disturbing when a wonderful Christian believer gets sick or dies like everyone else in the history of the human race (with a couple of Biblical exceptions)?

I think I know where we get it. Three kinds of teaching in the church: Poor teaching. Lousy teaching. And downright creepy teaching.

Here's an example. In certain Christian circles it's very common to hear talk about the Christian life as if it were a battlefield between God and the devil. Good things happen, and that's obviously attributable to God, the author of all good. Bad things happen, like serious illness, and clearly the devil is trying to get to us. The universe, in this view, is pretty clearly a dualistic place. Good vs. evil in a fight to the finish. Mankind in the middle, choosing sides.

But much trouble comes of this dualistic cosmology. For one thing, the devil is given way too much credit for the world's evil. It's as if the greatest problem we face is "the enemy." It's the devil makes us sick, causes us to lose our jobs, messes up our relationships, causes automobile accidents . . . I've heard it all. But this view makes us out to be more or less innocent victims. We wind up crying out to God (who apparently should have been protecting us better), "How could you let this happen!"

Let me go at the problem from a different angle. If the sickness and death is from an enemy who means us harm, then the greatest problem we face is that enemy. We need God to stop him in his tracks. We have a powerful assailant, so we need an even more powerful protector (God). And we call it faith when we firmly believe that it is surely that protector's will to protect us from every harm.

Therefore, whenever someone gets sick and dies, it seems a kind of failure of God's. "How could you let this happen?"

But what if our greatest problem is not "the enemy"? Or, what if, like Pogo, we have met the enemy, and he is us? What if death is really directly related to sin (Rom 6:16)? Billions of people, throughout history, sinning. You. Me. Everybody. Ever since Adam.

If the devil is our main problem, repentance is not really necessary. We're victims, that's all. The solution is to get on God's side, because He's the more powerful one, and He will protect us. To put it another way, our most pressing need, in that case, is not grace, but power. Superior Spiritual power for vigorous devil-rebuking. If only we had more power! And here good old fashioned legalism has a chance to rear its hoary head, as we study how to coax this needed thing, power over sickness and death, from an apparently somewhat uncooperative deity.

But of course our most pressing problem is not the devil, but sin. And therefore that which we most need is not superior power for fighting the devil, but grace. Again and again grace. Again and again the knowledge of Jesus and his cross, and its victory over every enemy, including death.

I want to insert here Ray Ortlund's brilliant metaphor for the process of sanctification. Read this carefully:

I think of my inner self as a globe, a world, with many dark continents still unexplored, uncivilized, vast jungles of primitive impulses. But Jesus the Liberator steps ashore on the coast of one of those continents, plants the flag of his kingdom in my consciousness and declares peace. That is justification.

Then sanctification begins. For example, it doesn't take long for a half-naked savage to run out onto the beach with spear in hand to attack Jesus. This is some selfish desire in me rising up against the King. But he declares peace all over again and subdues that aspect of me by the force of his grace. "Clothed and in his right mind" (Mark 4:15) is the picture.

The King starts moving steadily inland, planting his flag in ever new regions of my being. He brings one dark thing after another into my awareness, declares peace again and again and again, and thereby establishes civilization.

Here's my point in inserting this passage. One of the darkest regions of our interior continent is that place where we harbor our thoughts about death. Our selfish feeling that death is just not fair, and our childish fear of it, which only reveals the shallowness of our faith. We just don't want to give up this cherished complaint. We don't want to let Jesus plant his flag of grace here, for then we'd have to admit that death for us was justice after all. But Jesus will plant his flag, nevertheless. See, the wages of sin is death, but when Christ took care of sin on the cross, he took care of death. The crosswork of Christ took care of both sin and death.

I know a fellow whose ministry it is to "walk with the dying." He befriends and advocates for dying people, and he's often at their side when they pass from this world. He told me once, "Bob, there's no way to predict how someone is going to die. I've seen atheists die peacefully in their beds and lifelong Christians die in abject terror. You can never tell."

I am not foolish enough to claim to know in what way I will face my end, whether in terror or in peace. But I know how God would have me go. Giving him the glory right to the end! I hope I go out whooping and hollering like a rodeo cowboy riding Elijah's whirlwind heavenward. I pray that before my last day comes, whenever that shall be, I will have so feasted on the grace of God, day in and day out, that in the end it will be clear to all who knew me that for me, as for Paul, to die was truly gain (Phil 1:21).

A Luther Gem

I found this one at Ray Ortlund's blog. He's quoting an old time blogger by the name of Martin Luther.

It's the supreme art of the devil that he can make the law out of the gospel. If I can hold on to the distinction between law and gospel, I can say to him any and every time that should kiss my backside. . . . Once I debate about what I have done and left undone, I am finished. But if I reply on the basis of the gospel, 'The forgiveness of sins covers it all,' I have won.

Luther rocks.

Send Grace

I'm simply repeating after Adrian Warnock, but that's not such a bad thing. Adrian shared a snip from a recent post by Terry Virgo, and I'm going to share the same passage, because it's just prime cut, if you know what I mean. Virgo is commenting on one of my favorite passages of Scripture, Hebrews 12:15.

See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled....

Virgo's comment is, as I mentioned, well worth repeating:

When you go through hard times, bitterness is waiting at the door, offering you fellowship. ‘What a terrible time you’ve had,’ it says. ‘How cruel they’ve been! How unjustly you’ve been treated.’ But bitterness isn’t a friendly companion; it’s a vile weed which puts its roots down deep into people’s personalities. Not content to disfigure just one soul, it grows up searching for others who might be willing to draw near. If you yield to its offer of companionship, a root will grow in your soul and you’ll defile many others.

The only way to withstand bitterness is to make sure that you don’t miss the grace of God. Grace, like an effective weed-killer, can get to the root of bitterness and destroy its power. But you must deliberately obtain grace. You must make a specific choice to refuse bitterness, not once but many times. Bitterness will repeatedly knock your door and you must always send grace to answer it.

Enduring, abounding, all-satisfying grace!

You hear it all the time. People say, "I know that God has forgiven me, but I'm still having trouble forgiving myself."

I understand that people really do believe this when they say it. They believe they have diagnosed their problem sufficiently to explain their lack of joy, their depression, their inability simply to move on. They are trapped, they realize that much, and they sincerely believe they will break free once they learn to forgive themselves.

But they're wrong. However plausible it may seem, it's a dark and nasty lie. They're confused and deceived. The devil has kicked sand in their eyes. They're operating in a fog. They have added . . . listen to me . . . they have added to the grace of God.

In fact, they've created an idol of their own self-forgiveness. Something on which they place an even higher value than on what Christ has accomplished on their behalf. The thing is, that's a sin, and unless they understand it as such, repentance will remain far from them, which is a crying shame.

I speak for many. I speak out of experience. I speak with authority. I have said those things. I have operated in that fog. I have carved that idol and set it up in a special corner of my heart.

Listen. Here's how God smashed it to smithereens. He said, Son, listen to me carefully. I am your creator, God almighty. I don't mess with half-measures. My declarations are not ineffective. My works are not fruitless. Go back to the cross, son. Go ahead. Go back and hear the lacerated dying Jesus say, "Forgive them, Father. They don't know what they're doing." Wait, stay there longer and here him say with his dying breath, "It is finished." Then walk away from that place saying, "Yeah, okay, but I still have to learn to forgive myself..."

Listen! Don't you dare presume to add anything to what Jesus has called finished. Don't you dare! As if you needed something more than my forgiveness! As if my mercy were not sufficient! If you are not satisfied with what I give, you have no part in me! Turn again, and receive what I continue to offer, that for which the whole universe longs: enduring, abounding, all-satisfying grace!

Self-justification ain't what it used to be!

I have a settled internal system of self-justification. It used to be a smoothly-whirring machine, silent and reliable, so that I never even sensed its presence. If I got angry, the anger was always automatically justified. In fact, it was most definitely "righteous indignation" of the Christlike kind. If I lashed out, the victim always deserved it. Ah, those were the days. . . .

It's different now. It has become clear to me that God has thrown a spiritual monkey-wrench into my well-oiled machine. What had once purred like a kitten now sputters and backfires. Take anger, for example. Oh, at first there's the usual rush to self-justify, but soon a simple question begins to needle my inexplicably sensitive conscience. You think you're anger is so reasonable, so right, but is it really? Is God pleased by your bluster and fury, do you think?

And thus I move on to the internal debate phase. On the one hand, I try to reassert the utter reasonableness of my actions. On the other, I am keenly aware that all my excuses ring hollow. Worse, by my actions I have wounded another at the heart-level with my precious indignation. And a new and ominous thought rises to the surface. It was sin, plain and simple, and you're going to have to apologize.

Aaargh! I preferred my well-oiled machine. Is life in Christ always going to be so dang humbling! Am I always to endure this internal warfare between the self-exalting flesh and the Christ-exalting spirit? No wonder I so often find myself crying, who shall save me from this body of death?

The answer, of course, is Christ. He shall save me, and has saved me. Somehow, despite my obvious guilt, I am not condemned! My burden of guilt has been born by another! And here's my starting-over-point once again. I, whose love for Jesus falls so far short of what he deserves, and whose love for myself is by comparison monstrously huge, have nevertheless been offered, not justice, but an entirely unjust freedom from what was most certainly my due.

So what do I do with this gift, I wonder again, startled to have received such crazy largess. And the answer comes, Work out your salvation in fear and trembling, saved one, for it is no less than God Himself working in you--monkey-wrenches and all--to transform you in accordance with his good and sovereign pleasure!

Note: Rick Ianniello quotes C. J. Mahaney on the same theme here.

Jonathan Edwards said:

Grace is but glory begun, and glory but grace perfected.

3 Qutoes on Discipleship

In the past few days a couple of books about discipleship have arrived in the mail. The first was Bill Hull's Choose the Life. I gobbled that one down pretty quickly. It is not exactly the book I was looking for, but it definitely got me thinking. Hull writes:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ." Enough of the church has adopted a nondiscipleship Christianity to render it ineffective in its primary task--the transformation of individuals and communities into the image of Christ. This Christless Christianity has create leaders who are addicted to recognition and success and congregations that believe forsaking all things to follow Jesus is optional and a separate issue from salvation.

The latter part of Hull's book is directed at leaders and it becomes in some ways a typical "leadership" book, which I generally try to avoid like the plague.

The second book on discipleship is James Montgomery Boice's Christ's Call to Discipleship. This book came out back in 1986, so I suppose it ranks as a "classic" by now. Boice's opening paragraph:

There is a fatal defect in the life of Christ's church in the twentieth century: a lack of true discipleship. Discipleship means forsaking everything to follow Christ, but for many of today's supposed Christians -- perhaps the majority -- it is the case that while there is much talk about Christ and even more furious activity, there is actually very little following of Christ Himself. And this means in some circles there is very little genuine Christianity.

Those are stern and penetrating words -- the kind of words, in fact, that pierce to the very marrow. Just as an aside, I have come to think that we Christians have grown very shy of letting the Word of God pierce us in this way. How often do we really allow God to question us the way He questioned Job? And it so happens much of what Jesus had to say that was challenging and "piercing" had to do with discipleship.

As it happens, Boice also quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who is famous for writing about (and paying with his own life) The Cost of Discipleship:

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price, to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; and it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be askedfor, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.

I've just started reading the Boice book. After that I will probably move on to reread Bonhoeffer's classic. So you can guess what I'll be posting about in the near future.

Just Be a Son: On Holiness and the Cross of Christ

It isn't particularly hard to tell someone how to live. It's not difficult to set forth a high standard of moral righteousness. It is easy enough to say that people ought to be more patient, or forgiving, or caring, or generous, or . . . you get the picture. Every one of these sentiments is valid, and to support and avow such sterling behavior is quite inspiring at times. Nevertheless, a good man, as Flannery O'Connor has said, is hard to find.

But to hear such recitations in the form of a Sunday morning sermon leaves me feeling deeply sad. He's missing it, I find myself muttering. Is he really going to keep missing it? He should have got to it by now. When will he get to it? He's almost finished and he still hasn't got to it. He's still talking about the importance of patience [love, generosity, etc.]. He's finishing up now and by golly he really has completely missed his chance to speak of the cross, the new life in Christ, or the Gospel.

Oh well, perhaps I'm just being negative. Perhaps all I really need to hear is how absolutely fine it would be if I just guarded my tongue more often (okay, I give you that). Nevertheless, I need to say it: a sermon without the Gospel is not a Christian sermon at all. It may quote the Bible from start to finish, but it is simply a Biblical values-statement and nothing more. My problem is, however hard I try to live up to that standard you're so keen on, I fall flat on my ever-lovin' face! I need something more, I guess, than a restatement of the standard.

Pastor, I'm just speaking for myself here, but it would be safe for you to make that presumption about all of us. The question for us is not, "What is the good life?" But, "How do we live it?"

It's the "how question" that counts for something. That actually leads somewhere other than a stark and lonely dead end. And where then does it lead? Well, if we're thinking Biblically, it leads to the cross. What difference does the cross make? How can the cross possibly help me with my usual quick-to-talk/slow-to-listen approach to life? Well, I would say the answer to that question has everything to do with access.

Remember Romans 8:15? "For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back again into fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship by which we cry, 'Abba! Father!'" Listen, after the cross, all the many imperatives of righteousness found in the Bible are replaced by one and one only: Be a Son.

And what distinguishes a son? Simply this: his status with, and access to, the Father. He's a chip off the old block, sometimes without even trying. The very characteristics so noteworthy of the father in time begin to show themselves in the children. More importantly, when he fails--when he strays, rebels, or just misses the mark--he can always cry "Daddy!" His father is incredibly patient, mind-bogglingly forgiving. This patience, this acceptance, this access, is founded on the historical fact that all the failings, rebellions, and mark-missing of his wayward children were anticipated by the Father long ago and taken care of. At Calvary. Negated, put aside, wiped out. In actual fact, nailed to the cross--put to death there.

Conclusion: because Jesus became sin for us, all discussion of God's holy standards should lead our gaze inexorably toward the cross and thereby to thanksgiving for his wonderful grace.

The Gospel is the Fittest Tool for Godliness

Over at The Next Reformation I found Thomas Chalmers' classic sermon, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. This is a beautiful document. I highly recommend that you not only read it, but meditate on the truths you find there. Here's a taste:

Salvation by grace--salvation by free grace--salvation not of works, salvation on such a footing is not more indispensable to the deliverance of our persons from the hand of justice, than it is to the deliverance of our hearts from the chill and weight of ungodliness. Retain a single shred or fragment of legality with the Gospel, and we raise a topic of distrust between man and God. We take away the power of the Gospel to melt and conciliate. For this purpose, the freer it is the better it is.... Along with the light of a free Gospel, does there enter the love of the Gospel, which, in proportion as we impair the freeness, we are sure to chase away. And never does the sinner find within himself so mighty a moral transformation, as when under the belief that he is saved by grace, he feels constrained thereby to offer his heart a devoted thing, and to deny ungodliness. To do any work in the best manner, we should make use of the fittest tools for it