Fearfully Made, and Fearfully Marred

A friend of mine had this as her recent "status update":

I was humbled and asked myself why Holiness would choose dirt, why Royalty would choose poverty, why the Great Provider would choose lack, and ultimately, why God would choose my ugly heart as His dwelling place.

Then one of her friends responded:

Because it's beautiful just like you you are fearfully and wonderfully made..don't you eva forget it girl

I don't know the commenter and don't want to intrude on a FB conversation with theological scolding or something, but I've got to say, God did not choose to dwell in my friend's heart because she is fearfully and wonderfully made. If so, since we are all fearfully and wonderfully made from the start, there would have never been a problem with his living in us. And there would never have been a need for the cross.

Ah well, this is typical "encouragement" in the Christian world. To tell people how wonderful they are. On a perhaps somewhat related note, David Wayne has a thoughtful post called Words of Comfort for the Dying. In this post David is recounting a dialog from a book called Hammer of God. A man on his death bed, who has spent his life trying to cultivate a clean heart before God, is still plagued by the memory of his sin. David writes,

Johannes was trying to cultivate a right heart, a clean heart, before God, but that this is a work. This is a subtle but important point to make especially given the fact that it is common in our day to exhort one another to cultivate a clean "heart" before God. But even this is detour as the emphasis is on our work of cultivation, and it causes us to trust in a clean heart as the basis of our acceptance before God, rather than trusting in Christ.

But Johannes has a friend, Katrina, who is willing to share the Gospel truth with the dying man. Johannes asks her:

"But why, then, have I not received a clean heart?"
"That you might learn to love Jesus," said the woman as calmly as before.

My friend's status update demonstrated an understanding of all this, but her friend rushing in to "encourage" her with talk of how wonderful she is misses the crucial point. Does the dying man need to be told how wonderful he is, or does he need to be told that while he was a sinner, and in the full knowledge of his sin, Christ died for him. How much better than that can encouragement get?

Last comment. Isn't this the problem that the people of God face and have always faced: the seeking of an alternative message that will downplay the supposed "negativity" of the Gospel. But we are all dying men and women, and we need a real reason for hope, not falsely encouraging fluff. Positive thinking will no longer do.

And that's the real reason Christmas is a joyous day. Happy Christmas!

Gethsemane

Hosanna!

I've been journaling through the Gospel of Mark for some time now. I write out a brief passage in my notebook and then work out my own thoughts about the passage by writing down my impressions. The goal is to see the Gospel in the text and preach it to myself. I do not use commentaries or study bible footnotes for this (though I frequently utilize these resources for other purposes).

One side-effect of this process is to keep you attuned to the context of every passage, and also to help you see the dramatic arc of Mark's account and also it's place in God's overall "plan of salvation."

I'm in chapter 11 just now, with Mark's description of the "triumphal entry." I've always wondered about what was going through Jesus' mind as he road the young donkey along its leaf-strewn path into the city. I have wondered if he considered that nearly all these people who were singing his praises that morning would desert him within the week.

But I don't really think so?

They were giving him glory, calling him their king, and talking about the re-establishment of David's kingdom. But he was out for something greater by far than David's kingdom ever was. What he had in mind, I suspect, was how the events of the coming week would initiate something that, no matter how painful for him, would result in such glory and fame for the Father as to make the terrible suffering of the cross--how terrible no man but Jesus will ever truly understand--all worthwhile.

You think of the glorious words written by the author of Hebrews:

"...looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." (Heb 12:2.)

What was "the joy set before him?" The answer to that question is, I believe, the same as the answer to my other question, what was on Jesus' mind as he rode into Jerusalem that long ago day?

I suspect there are many facets to the answer, but one of them surely is this: he was thinking about the glory and praise that will come to God because of the lonely and excruciating suffering that he was riding inevitably toward? Yes, a kingdom was coming, but the kingdom of one greater even than David. Jesus would very soon be addressing this very topic, shortly before his death in Jerusalem (Mark 11:35-37):

And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared,

“‘The Lord said to my Lord,
Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet.’

David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?” And the great throng heard him gladly.

And the point is, hosanna!

The Offense of the Cross

It's a familiar theme of this blog . . . Cross-less Christianity. It's kind of become one of my primary purposes in blogging to keep pointing out this crisis in the Evangelical community. So I'm happy to point out articles like Jared Wilson's Dude, Where's My Gospel?. Here's a snip:

Gospel deficiency is the biggest crisis of the American church. It has been replaced by many things, most commonly a therapeutic, self-help approach to biblical application. Bible verses are extracted to enhance calls to self-improvement and Jesus is preached as moral exemplar (which of course, he is, but then again, so is Mother Theresa). The result is a Church that, ironically enough, preaches works, not grace, and a growing number of Christians who neither understand the gospel nor revel in its scandal.

Jared lists four reasons why we need to keep repeating the Gospel to ourselves and to one another. I heartily concur.

Along similar lines, we have Michael Spencer's recent post, The Word of the Cross. Check this out:

The cross is, as Paul says elsewhere, an “appeal” from God to reconciliation. It is an announcement that contains an offer. It is a proclamation that has ultimate relevance. It is a word that divides the world into cross appreciators and cross enemies.

The word of the cross is foolishness to a religious world that demands God respond with a miracle when they pull the string. The God of the cross is not a performer. He is not a cosmic servant or entertainer there when religious people insist he show up and do what is necessary to convince the sleeping and the bored.

I like it that Michael speaks of "the word of the cross," not simply "the cross." The word of the cross is, as he says, an announcement, a message. We can downplay the importance of this, but when we do so we inevitable circle back to works, as Jared points out above. Like a dog returning to its vomit, you might say. If we don't speak it, we have not really communicated it (St. Francis notwithstanding).

Notice also that Michael says that the word of the cross "is a word that divides the world into cross appreciators and cross enemies." That's so true. I used to think that the real dividing line among Christians had everything to do with what they thought about the gifts of the Spirit. The zillion dollar question was, Have the gifts ceased, or do they continue among us by the power of the Spirit? It seemed to me then to be a question of ultimate importance. But now, after worshiping in a charismatic church for 8 years now (following about the same period of time in a "cessationist" church) I no longer believe that.

What matters most is Christ and his cross. When the word of the cross is missing, the church is an exercise in do-good clubbiness and that's all. The word of the cross is truly the defining issue. That's where churches stand or fall, where Christians either hold firm or drift. Thanks to both Jared and Michael for pointing these things out with eloquent precision.

The Joy of all Our Joys

A friend of mine recently sent me a brief article by Francis Frangipane. Frangipane writes:

People give their lives to Jesus Christ for many reasons. Some need physical or emotional healing; others are in search of peace and forgiveness. Whatever our condition, God meets us in the valley of our need. Indeed, the Lord reveals Himself to man as heaven's answer for our needs. He is a "father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows." He even makes "a home for the lonely" and leads "out the prisoners into prosperity" (Ps. 68:5-6).

God uses our need to draw us to Christ. Yet, the consciousness of our need narrows our revelation of God, limiting His activity in our lives to the boundaries of our struggles. Thus, many Christians never awakened spiritually to the deeper call of God, which is to attain the likeness of Christ. We are forgiven, healed and blessed, but we experience a ceiling on our spiritual growth.

I'm not necessarily in accord with where Frangipane goes with all this in his article, but he does draw a fairly accurate portrait of many churches, in my opinion. We limit Christ to the "boundary of our struggles." And it seems to me that churches often encourage this limiting. It is, in essence, the default position of much preaching. I have addressed this issue often myself, under the label of the therapeutic gospel.

Frangipane said that "the consciousness of our need narrows our revelation of God." To that I would add, we don't even know what we really need. We think we need healing, or that we need a loved one to get right with God, or that we need to beat an addiction, or to forget a nightmarish past. But what we really need, above and beyond all that, is to know Christ, the height and depth and length and breadth of his love, and the power of his resurrection, and yes even the fellowship of his suffering.

And here's the thing. I don't truly understand any of this and I'm willing to bet you don't either. I don't understand my own need. I don't understand Christ. I have not been so "renewed in knowledge," as Paul says in his letter to the Colossians, that Christ is truly all in all to me.

If we are really to understand our own need, we will have to learn with a keener and more ruthless insight just what sin is and what sin has done to us. Sin leads to death, but there is an author of life who has conquered sin and death, and he did so at the cross. To even grasp one thin thread of this knowledge, like the woman who grasped the hem of Christ's garment, is not only to be healed, but to be saved.

Here's my point: the solution to the problem identified by Frangipane is the cross of Christ. Look upon that scene. Perhaps we cannot fully grasp the full worth of that which took place at Calvary that day, but we can see at least that it is awesome and majestic and world-shaking and paradigm-shifting and presumption-shattering beyond all human kin, and that it is, as John Piper says, the sweetest thing we've ever seen, "the light which is the joy of all our joys."

[Check out this brief clip of John Piper for a sense of what I'm talking about. HT: Jared Wilson.]

"As Ages Roll On"

Found at The Shepherd's Scrapbook, wise words from Octavius Winslow about valuing the cross of Christ for its true worth:

Keep your heart, O believer, much beneath the cross, your conscience in frequent and close contact with the blood, and the slightest touch of sin will make you restless and unhappy until you have confessed, and God has forgiven. This is the secret—which, alas! few see, or care to know—of preserving the garments white amid pollution, the mind serene amid turmoil, the heart happy amid sorrow, the life radiant and transparent as the sun, and the spirit, temper, and carriage Christ-loving, and Christ-like. Oh the wonders of the precious blood of Christ! Who can exalt it too highly, adore it too profoundly, love, magnify, and honor it too deeply and exclusively? Will it not constitute the theme of our study, the burden of our song, and the source of our bliss as ages roll on, and never cease to roll? Beloved, the surprise then will be, that here below we should have prized it so little, traveled to it so infrequently, and glorified it so imperfectly, and have regarded it with an affection so fickle and so cold! (pp. 178-179)

We Must Never Assume the Gospel

I'm certainly not the only Christian blogger who is excited about the fact that C. J. Mahaney has joined our ranks. I have a feeling that I'm going to have to put myself on some sort of Mahaney-rationing plan, or I'll be quoting his posts every day. Mahaney was one of the voices amidst all the Christian crowd-noise that calmly called my attention back to the cross, whispering quietly, "Did you forget something?"

I recall discussing a sermon with a friend of mine. I said, "Did you notice? There was nothing of Jesus, and nothing of the Gospel in all of that?" My friend replied, "Isn't the Gospel just assumed sometimes?"

C. J.'s latest post provides the answer to that question. I'm going to snip a large chunk of it here, but by all means go over there and read the whole thing:

We must never assume the gospel. We must always assume that those we serve need to hear the gospel yet again. Any sermon we preach is incomplete and insufficient until we explicitly reference Christ and him crucified.

In the book A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life, J.I Packer writes,

"The preachers’ commission is to declare the whole counsel of God; but the cross is the centre of that counsel, and the Puritans knew that the traveller through the Bible landscape misses his way as soon as he loses sight of the hill called Calvary."

Every sermon must have a sighting of the hill called Calvary, because each passage of Scripture points us to the cross. In Christ-Centered Preaching, Bryan Chapell writes,

"In its context, every passage possesses one or more of four redemptive foci. Every text is predictive of the work of Christ, preparatory for the work of Christ, reflective of the work of Christ, and/or resultant of the work of Christ."

And because every text of Scripture points us to the cross, every topic should likewise point us to the cross. Thomas Jones says, "No doctrine of Scripture may faithfully be set before men unless it is displayed in its relationship to the cross."

The message of the cross is central to the commission of the preacher, is to be on display in every sermon, is cultivated from every text of Scripture, and is embedded within every topic and doctrine intended to nourish the church.

Book Recommendation

Over the past few months I've been slowly reading through a little book by John Piper called, Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die. This book came out a few years ago under a different title. It was called "The Passion of Jesus Christ" . . . back when every book published by a Christian publisher was using the word "passion" in the title . . . you know, just after that phase when they were all using the word "purpose" . . . Christian publishers are not an especially creative bunch.

Anyway, the book is composed of 50 2-page meditations on the reasons--in the plan of God--that Jesus came to die. I have read the book as a devotional, one reason at a time, and have found it to be stirring, powerful, and thought provoking.

Piper does not eschew Biblical or theological language in order to be "winsome."

• Reason 1) To absorb the wrath of God.
  
• Reason 8) To become a ransom for many.

And yet he consistently brings eloquence and insight to his subject, and is able to startle his readers from the drowsy blur with which we often receive theological language. Among those that I was especially "startled" by:

• Reason 28) To free us from the futility of our ancestry
• Reason 33) To make his cross the ground of all our boasting
• Reason 35) To give marriage its deepest meaning
• Reason 43) To unleash the power of God in the Gospel
• Reason 44) To destroy the hostility between races.

But the real power of this little book is in its cumulative effect. Used as a daily devotional, again and again the reader is encouraged to turn and look "with fresh eyes" at the cross of Christ and think again of what it really means for each one of us who believe.

I am not done with this little book. I intend to read it again, and perhaps again. I give it my highest recommendation.

[BTW, you can get a pdf of the first five chapters here.]