Union

If this enterprise succeeds and flourishes, the church is vitally strengthened, globally, for the next generation.

Many organizations will be asking for your money this time of year. Few are as worthy of it as this one, led by Mike Reeves.

We will all be dead soon, the window of opportunity to give to God's work having passed.


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All the Light and Warmth of His Affection

Geerhardus Vos on the love of God, reflecting on Jeremiah 31:

It means that in the most literal sense He concentrates all the light and warmth of His affection, all the prodigious wealth of his resources, his endless capacity of delight, upon the heart-to-heart union between the pious and Himself.

And what God for His part brings into this union has a generosity, a sublime abandon, an absoluteness, that, measured by human analogies, we can only designate as the highest and purest type of devotion. It is named love for this very reason, that God puts into it His heart and soul and mind and strength, and gathers all His concerns with His people into the focus of this one desire.

It is when speaking of this that Scripture employs its boldest anthropomorphisms. Here nothing but the absolute and unqualified are in place. He who would give God less than this total by a mere fraction would give Him nothing at all.

--Geerhardus Vos, 'Jeremiah's Plaint and Its Answer,' in Richard Gaffin, ed., Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos (P&R, 1980), 296

Sons in the Son

Thoroughly enjoying Dave Garner's new book on adoption, which could not be more aptly titled: Sons in the Son. What a rich treatment. Finding myself corrected. I'm reviewing it for Themelios and will say more there but may put up the occasional snippet in the meantime. Here's one.

The union of the sons in the Son grants believers full personal appropriation of the person and work of Christ, their Elder Brother. This exhaustively filial union takes on the deepest implications of solidarity and gracious brotherhood. No greater cohesion exists than the bond created by the Spirit of the Son with the sons.

--David B. Garner, Sons in the Son: The Riches and Reach of Adoption in Christ (P&R, 2016), 251

Complete and Ecstatic Happiness

C. S. Lewis, in a 1933 letter to his friend Arthur Greeves, with a compelling re-orientation to overcoming sin. 

God not only understands but shares the desire which is at the root of all my evil—the desire for complete and ecstatic happiness. He made me for no other purpose than to enjoy it. But He knows, and I do not, how such happiness can be really and permanently attained. He knows that most of my personal attempts to reach it are actually putting it further and further out of my reach.

I may always feel looking back on any past sin that in the very heart of my evil passion there was something that God approves and wants me to feel not less but more. Take the sin of lust. The overwhelming thirst for rapture was good and even divine: that part of lust need not be rejected. But it will never be quenched as I tried to quench it. If I refrain—if I submit to the collar and come round the right side of the lamp-post—God will be guiding me as quickly as He can to where I will get what I really wanted all the time.

When we are tempted, we must remember that just because God wants for us what we really want and knows the only way to get it, therefore He must, in a sense, be quite ruthless towards sin. He is not like a human authority who can be begged off or caught in an indulgent mood. The more He loves you the more determined He must be to pull you back from your way which leads nowhere into His way which leads where you want to go.

I think we may be quite rid of the old haunting suspicion (it raises its head in every temptation) that there is something else than God—some other country into which He forbids us to trespass—some kind of delight which He “doesn’t appreciate” or just chooses to forbid, but which would be real delight if only we were allowed to get it. The thing just isn’t there. Whatever we desire is either what God is trying to give us as quickly as He can, or else a false picture of what He is trying to give us—a false picture which would not attract us for a moment if we saw the real thing.

Apprehending Divine Love

Read a book on the love of God recently. It was fine. True, faithful, careful. It has its place on our bookshelves.

But the ceiling on my wonder at God's love was not raised. It was analytical. Something about it was detached. Removed. The author tried to switch at times into explicit "devotional" mode, which just made the whole thing feel artificial. Why isn't the book devotional in its very nature, in every sentence?

At the same time I was reading Bunyan's The Saints' Knowledge of the Love of Christ, on the last few verses of Ephesians. Just the opposite. Heart-expansive reflection on Scripture. Vision-lifting. Why are books like this so rare today? Why are the Puritans so consistent on this point? I find the same thing in Sibbes and Goodwin. Soul-solidifying. No anecdotes, no jokes, just deep probing of the depths of the human heart's darkness, and bringing that darkness into the full light of divine mercy. I don't need a clever autobiographical hook to get me reading a book. I need immediate, to-the-point unfolding of the truth at hand.

Bunyan:

It is common for equals to love, and for superiors to be beloved; but for the King of princes, for the Son of God, for Jesus Christ to love man thus: this is amazing, and that so much the more, for that man the object of his love, is so low, so mean, so vile, so undeserving, and so inconsiderable, as by the scriptures, everywhere he is described to be.

He is called God, the King of glory. But the persons of him beloved, are called transgressors, sinners, enemies, dust and ashes, fleas, worms, shadows, vapors, vile, filthy, sinful, unclean, ungodly fools, madmen. And now is it not to be wondered at, and are we not to be affected herewith, saying, And wilt thou set thine eye upon such a one? But how much more when He will set his heart upon us?

Love in him is essential to his being. God is love; Christ is God; therefore Christ is love, love naturally. He may as well cease to be, as cease to love. . . .

Love from Christ requireth no taking beauteousness in the object to be beloved. It can act of and from itself, without all such kind of dependencies. The Lord Jesus sets his heart to love them. . . .

Love in Christ decays not, nor can be tempted so to do by anything that happens, or that shall happen hereafter, in the object so beloved. 

--John Bunyan, The Saints' Knowledge of the Love of Christ, in Works, 2:16-17; emphasis original

Home

A place I love. A place that is home. Deeply so. 

All Sorts of Sins

Thomas Goodwin:

God hath ordered his elect, take the whole body and bulk of them, to fall into all sorts of sins, one or other of them; so as there is no sort, kind or degree of sin, no way of sinning, manner of sinning, or aggravation of sin, but in some or other it shall be pardoned, and he doth it to magnify his grace in Christ, in whom he gathers them. 

--The Works of Thomas Goodwin, 1:156, commenting on Ephesians 1:10

This Isn't About Trump

One Washington Post essay after another these days is blasting away at Trump. Maybe at this point it's the wrong target.

Imagine the following scenario. Trump wins a majority of Super Tuesday states and steps up to the podium for a victory speech in Texas or Georgia or Alabama. He takes off his obnoxious red Make America Great Again hat. He pauses, looking down, somber. Here's what we hear.

I have something to say.

I've made a horrible mistake.

This election process has finally caught up with me and has revealed to me what my whole life is about.

I went into this election really believing that I wanted to make America great. I realize now all I have really wanted--the campaign underneath the campaign--is to make Trump great. I thought I wanted America to win. I see now that all I really want is for Trump to win. I'm grateful for your kind support. But I see now I don't deserve it.

I know my supporters may not like this. But I can't take it anymore. Enough is enough. I am thoroughly ashamed of myself. So what I want to say is: I would like to ask for the American people's forgiveness. If they withhold it I can't blame them. But I have to ask you all to forgive the folly, the bombast, the self-exaltation, the fierce resistance to correction, the pride. I've been wrong.

I have considered quitting the campaign, but I do for now plan to continue. And I have resolved: no more yelling, no more lying, no more name-calling, no more hate-mongering, no more elitism-nurturing, no more boasting, no more question-evading. Yes, this nation is in a downward spiral, but now I see that I and people like me have been leading the way...

And so on.

So implausible as to be laughable, I know. But my question is: How would the millions who back Trump respond?

We know how they would respond. We know because as the outrageously immoral and self-inflating statements from Trump have piled up since last June, his support has not waned. It has increased. We therefore know that those supporting Trump are not doing so because they see him as morally exemplary. In the meantime he remains opaque on his actual positions and how he would accomplish his big promises. We therefore also know that they are not supporting him on account of superior tactics in his policies.

One can only conclude that they like him--including these so-called evangelicals--because of who he is. Because of the bombast, not in spite of it.

They want a man like Trump in charge. They want the big talk, the egotistical claims, the elitist mindset. His supporters aren't overlooking these things for the sake of other virtues in him or his policies. These anti-virtues are themselves what attract Americans.

We therefore know how Trump supporters would respond to such a speech. While true evangelicals would celebrate his recovered moral sanity, his present supporters, including the so-called evangelicals, would howl.

Such penitence would not be a step forward, in their minds. It would be a step backward. It would be the loss of what they crave in a president.

As Trump has gotten haughtier and haughtier the past 8 months, his support has, inexplicably, grown. Do we really not see that if he were to become humbler and humbler, his support would decrease?

If so, then the problem is not Trump. It's Americans. The bombastic, haughty candidate in this election just happens to be Donald Trump. It could be any self-aggrandizing billionaire and the results would look the same. The problem isn't Trump. It's us. Trump is simply a big golden mirror showing Americans, showing Republicans, showing alleged evangelicals, what they really love.

Many are questioning whether Trump is mature enough for our vote. I would question whether we are mature enough to cast it.

When Discouraged

Richard Sibbes, in a book published in 1630, five years before his death:

Suffering brings discouragements, because of our impatience. 'Alas!' we lament, 'I shall never get through such a trial.'

But if God brings us into the trial he will be with us in the trial, and at length bring us out, more refined. We shall lose nothing but dross (Zech 13:9).

From our own strength we cannot bear the least trouble, but by the Spirit's assistance we can bear the greatest. The Spirit will add his shoulders to help us to bear our infirmities. The Lord will give us his hand to heave us up (Ps 37:24).

'Ye have heard of the patience of Job' says James (James 5:11). We have heard of his impatience too, but it pleased God mercifully to overlook that.

It yields us comfort in desolate conditions, that then Christ has a throne of mercy at our bedside and numbers our tears and our groans. 

--Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed (Banner of Truth, 1998), 54-55

A three-minute introduction to Sibbes from Mike Reeves:


The Magnificent Seven 7: The Sweet Dropper from Union on Vimeo.

Moses and Jesus

"The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." --John 1:17

"If you believed Moses, you would believe me." --John 5:46

Evidently there is strong discontinuity between the Mosaic Law and the Christian gospel (John 1) and strong continuity between the Mosaic Law and the Christian gospel (John 5).

What Political Disagreement and Interaction Can Look Like

Thoroughly enjoyed this interaction between a settled Democrat and a settled Republican (one of whom led the other to Christ). Reminds me of the kinds of interactions we've seen between Robert George and Cornel West.