Insidious Pride

From Jerram Barrs' wonderful book on evangelism, wonderful not because it gives new insights so much as old reminders.

Scripture teaches us that God resists the proud but gladly receives the humble. Humility is to be a lifelong attribute, not simply the attitude of our hearts when we first come to Christ. Every day we are to remember our own need of God's mercy, the problems and failures in our own lives, rather than making ourselves blind to our own sins by concentrating on those of others. . . . Even biblical knowledge can make us proud, not because sound biblical knowledge is a problem, but because of the pride in our hearts that clasps on to anything that will help us to feel a little better about ourselves than about our fellow believers.

--Jerram Barrs, The Heart of Evangelism (Crossway 2001), 164; see now also this resource

I had a few classes with Jerram while a student at Covenant Seminary; he lives what he writes about here. Thanks for the reminder, brother.

Edwards on Why Seeing God Would Kill Us

From a sermon on James 1:17--

God is arrayed with an infinite brightness, a brightness that doesn't create pain as the light of the sun pains the eyes to behold it, but rather fills with excess of joy and delight. Indeed, no man can see God and live, because the sight of such glory would overpower nature, . . . 'tis because the joy and pleasure in beholding would be too strong for a frail nature.

According to Edwards, it isn't God's holiness that would incinerate us. It's the joy that would erupt within us that we can't handle.

Yet.

--Jonathan Edwards, 'That God is the Father of Lights,' in The Blessing of God: Previously Unpublished Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, 346

Defending Truth or Yourself?

In reflecting on the strange objections and odd misunderstandings and striking displays of the very thing he was warning against in my dad's wonderful post this past week, I'm struck by my own and others' inability to discern between concern for the truth and concern for being right. One cares about God's honor, the other about mine. Yet what we assume to be truth-concern as we type our blog comment and hit 'submit' (a more inappropriate verb could not have been picked) is often self-concern.

How easy it is to act on that sense of truth-violation we perceive in others when it wells up within us, yet the intense emotion of that moment may so easily--so, so easily--simply be a desire that we be seen to be right. It's alarmingly natural to pass off cantankerous or scoffing comments as concern for truth when really it is just a form of self-vindication.

The ironic thing here is that some who read this will already find welling up within themselves an objection. 'How can you take truth so lightly? Paul certainly didn't mince words about theological error!'

So true! And not only Paul--the apostle was a boy scout with his language compared to Ezekiel. The culture in which we live certainly devalues objective truth. I cringe at the thought of truth-whittling Kumbaya-singing hand-holding Rodney King-echoing creed-demoting confession-neglecting lowest-common-denominator fluff. That's about as attractive to me as Dennis Rodman in high heels and lipstick. But if our deepening knowledge of God and grace in all its doctrinal contours creates in us, imperceptibly perhaps, impatience or frustration with other believers, it is not knowledge of God and of grace that fuels our frustration and snide tone but concern for being personally right. It is sin.

Paul said that if we have all knowledge and all faith but lack love, we are nothing. What if we made every blog comment mindful of that?

If you define yourself as Reformed (whatever you say that means) yet find within yourself, as I often do, an impulse to vehemently correct others doctrinally, will you join me in questioning of your own heart whether it is an urge to defend the truth or an urge to defend your own rightness? I need to grow in this and I invite you to join me.

By the way, at my own discretion I'll be deleting any comment on this post that I deem unedifying. There are enough platforms for theological hotheads already out there without providing one more here.

A Bit of Tinkering with the Blog . . .

. . . over the next several days (weeks?) as I experiment with different templates, etc. Thanks for bearing with me. The URL will not be changing.

Joy Reminds

All joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still 'about to be.'

--C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (Harcourt 1955 edition), 74 (HT: Robbie Sagers)

Accepted

A good gospel word from my brother Eric.

C. S. Lewis on Sexual Temptation

From a 1958 letter to 'Mr. Pitman'--

The great discovery for me was that the attack does not last forever. It is the devil's lie that the only escape from the temptation is through yielding. After prolonged resistance it will go away: what seemed yesterday impossible to turn one's mind from will today be utterly unenchanted, insipid, tedious.

--Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, 3:920; emphasis original

Justification-Fueled Sanctification

Justification by sanctification is man's way to heaven. . . . Sanctification by justification is God's.

--Thomas Adam, English pastor who served a single church for 58 years, in his posthumously published diary entitled Private Thoughts on Religion (1814 edition), 219

Ladd: Jesus' Disciples vs Rabbinic Disciples

Discipleship to Jesus was not like discipleship to a Jewish rabbi. The rabbis bound their disciples not to themselves but to the Torah; Jesus bound his disciples to himself. The rabbis offered something outside of themselves; Jesus offered himself alone. Jesus required his disciples to surrender without reservation to his authority. . . . This relationship had no parallel in Judaism. Discipleship to Jesus involved far more than following in his retinue; it meant nothing less than complete personal commitment to him and his message. The reason for this is the presence of the Kingdom of God in Jesus' person and message. In him, people were confronted by God himself.

--G. E. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, 105-6

Schlatter: What Caused the Outrage against Jesus?

[T]he attack against Jesus was mounted, not owing to the harshness of his demands, but owing to his forgiveness. Not the harsh but the gracious element of the call to repentance incited the Galileans against him, not the fact that Jesus called Capernaum evil and impure but that he completely overlooked sin in his dealings with those who repented. This resulted from the fact that the inner situation of the Jewish community was determined by Pharisaism. The consciences were awake, sin was feared; there was a readiness to do difficult things and to suffer for God's sake. 'What is God's work in order that we might do it?' they asked, reay to undergo whatever he might demand (John 6:28).

This zeal, however, was interwoven with a concept of righteousness that rejected grace.

--Adolf Schlatter, The History of the Christ, 164