A Recipe for Despair

With Jesus and determination
I will do my best
With Jesus as my strength
I'll do my best
He'll do the rest

--the tape (yes, tape) in the background that my 3-year-old is listening to as I am on the computer

Rather:

You must die before you die. There is no chance after.

--C. S. Lewis, Till We have Faces

Luther: Adopted by God

Get a load of this. In John 1:12, the apostle writes that 'to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.' On August 25, 1537, Martin Luther entered a pulpit in Denmark to fill in for a friend and preached on this text.

No man, no matter, who he may be, can ponder the magnificence sufficiently or express it adequately in words. We poor mortals, who are condemned and miserable sinners through our first birth from Adam, are singled out for such great honor and nobility that the eternal and almighty God is our Father and we are His children. Christ is our Brother, and we are His fellow heirs (Rom 8:17). And the dear angels, such as Michael and Gabriel, are not to be our masters but our brothers and servants. . . .

This is a grand and overpowering thought! Whoever really reflects on it--the children of the world will not, but Christians will, although not all of them either--will be so startled and frightened by the thought that he will be prompted to ask: 'My dear, can this really be possible and true?'

. . . [T]he world rates it a much higher honor and privilege to be the son and heir of a prince, a king, or a count than to be the possessor of God's spiritual goods, although by comparison all these are nothing but poor bags of worms and their glory sheer stench. Just compare all this with the ineffable dignity and nobility of which the evangelist speaks. . . . If we really believed with all our heart, firmly and unflinchingly, that the eternal God, Creator and Ruler of the world, is our Father, with whom we have an everlasting abode as children and heirs, not of this transitory wicked world but of all God's imperishable, heavenly, and inexpressible treasures, then we would, indeed, concern ourselves but little with all that the world prizes so highly; much less would we covet it and strive after it.

Indeed, we would regard the world's riches, treasures, glories, splendor, and might--compared with the dignity and honor due us as the children and heirs, not of a mortal emperor but of the eternal and almighty God--as trifling, paltry, vile, leprous, yes, as stinking filth and poison.

--Luther, preaching on John 1:12, in LW 22:87-89

Quit trying to get discovered. Just quit it. The inheritance is coming.

You've already been discovered.

Believing Is Coming

'I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.' --John 6:35

Believing in Jesus is not agreeing with him, it is coming to him. Not nodding; walking.

Resting in Christ's Finished Work Today?

Just asking.

Iain Murray on Expository preaching

Good food for thought from Iain Murray on the weaknesses of making (consecutive) expository preaching the sole method in preaching.

Wright: Through Death and Out the Other Side

[Rembrandt's 1648 'The Supper at Emmaus']

N. T. Wright on the intercanonical connection between Gen 3:7 ('and their eyes were opened, and they knew') and Luke 24:31 ('and their eyes were opened, and they knew [him]')--both of which describe two people who have just eaten.

Luke, echoing that story, describes the first meal of the new creation. . . . [T]he long curse had been broken. Death itself has been defeated. God's new creation, brimming with life and joy and new possibility, has burst in upon the world of decay and sorrow.

Jesus himself, risen from the dead, is the beginning and the sign of this new world. He isn't just alive again in the same way that Jairus's daughter, or the widow's son at Nain, were. They, poor things, would have to face death again in due course. He has, it seems, gone through death and out the other side into a new world, a world of new and deathless creation.

--Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (SPCK 2001), 296

Luther: Two Kinds of Evil

[T]he devil seduces man in two ways. He either lures him to the left, so that he believes nothing at all; or he entices him to the right, where he plagues him with holiness and human wisdom.

--Martin Luther, LW 22:313

Lewis: Leaving the Land of Dreams

On Friday, June 28, 1963, C. S. Lewis wrote a letter to his long-time American correspondent, Mary Willis Shelburne. She had been suffering. He closed--

Think of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the earth: waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener's good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams.

But cock-crow is coming. It is nearer now than when I began this letter.

--The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (Cambridge University Press), 3:1434

Jesus Is Interesting (Not the Dos Equis Guy)

Jonathan Acuff:

Why is Jesus the most interesting man in the world?

1. His birth was announced by a powerful supernova star, not a cheap greeting card.

2. As a child, he used to go to the temple to teach old men.

3. He once celebrated a 40 day fast by headlocking the devil himself into verbal submission.

4. He is known to go for long walks. On water.

5. When his friend Lazarus died, he didn’t bring him flowers, he brought him back to life.

Read the whole list.

Bible Summaries

Is Titus 3:4-7 the best summary statement of the soteriology of the New Testament? I would say 'the theology of the NT' but it doesn't mention Gentile-inclusion. Yet if we're talking strictly soteriology, this seems to pretty much cover it all--

4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

And, stepping even further back, is there a better summary statement of what the whole Bible is about than Ephesians 1:7-10, particularly v. 10?

7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite [anakephalaiosasthai - to sum up, recapitulate, gather together, organically synthesize, bring under a single head/kephalos; see Rom 13:9!] all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.