Open to Reason

The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. --James 3:17-18 (ESV)

The word translated here with the phrase 'open to reason' is eupeithes, which denotes an instinct to yield, a gentle willingness to defer, an inclination to receive the opinion of another (woodenly translating the prefix-plus-root you might say 'well-persuadable'). 'Open to reason' is a good translation.

At age 32 I don't think I've ever stopped and pondered that phrase till reading James this week.

I want to be wise with wisdom from above. The Bible says: part of that is being what James calls eupeithes.

Let’s be clear—open to reason is not equivalent to spineless. Conviction can happily coexist with reasonableness. James himself was obviously a man of deep convictions.

But there are two ways to have conviction—closed-to-reason conviction and open-to-reason conviction. The first filters all discourse through the assumption of virtual inability to err. It parades itself as conviction but is actually stubbornness. It projects security to cover up insecurity. Way down deep, it is actually less sure of its convictions, because they have never been made vulnerable to scrutiny.

The second operates with a healthy self-suspicion. Not perpetual self-doubt, but appropriate self-suspicion. It sees itself as prone to the same mistakes others make. Its internal security allows for genuine, give-and-take dialogue that sincerely entertains the possibility of personal error. Way down deep, it is more sure of its convictions, because these beliefs have been genuinely tried and tested.

I want to learn more of this in weeks ahead. Will you join me? Open to reason. Ready to jump at the chance to yield. Getting the impulse to defer to other brothers so built into us that it actually gets down to reflex level. It is the path of humility, and ultimately will yield more confident convictions than otherwise. It is the path of the Savior, who humbled himself with the ultimate yielding.

Which brings us to the fundamental resource by which we can learn, in fresh ways in 2011, to be 'open to reason': the gospel.

For in the gospel of grace God comes to us and says: You've been wrong. In the most important way, the most radically rebellious way, you have been wrong. And God did not respond to us with stubbornness simply because he was 'right,' though he was. Rather, he opened himself up to us in mercy. He 'reasoned' with us (Isa 1:18).

How? By becoming one of us. There's one person who walked this earth who was not wrong. Never. He had no reason to be well-persuadable, because he was always right. And he was put on a cross as if he had been horribly wrong.

God was open to reason with us. Won't we be open to reason with others?

Not the Mark of a Christian Mind

The vagueness and slipperiness and elusiveness of some today in their theological discourse is not new, even if you slap a new-sounding label on it (postmodernism, post-postmodernism, etc). Warfield and then Machen were dealing with it a century ago (replace 'assertions' below with 'facts' and you'll think you're reading Christianity and Liberalism), and I'm just now discovering, as I begin Luther's Bondage of the Will for the first time in my life, that this was what drove Luther so crazy about Erasmus.

Early on the irascible German writes:

It is not the mark of a Christian mind to take no delight in assertions; on the contrary, a man must delight in assertions or he will be no Christian. And by assertion--in order that we may not be misled by words--I mean a constant adhering, affirming, confessing, maintaining, and an invincible persevering.

--Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, in LW 33:19-20

It is one thing to be duly cautious in the name of appropriate intellectual humility. It is another to be cowardly under the guise of intellectual humility.

One day God will bring all things out into the open (1 Cor 4:5).

Be Perfect, as Your Heavenly Father Is Perfect (Matthew 5:48)

In the very last of the 430 works Schlatter wrote, a devotional book aimed at undermining rising Nazi nationalism, he comments on Matthew 5:48:

'In this case I am bound, and in this case I am loosed. Now I must obey God, and now I can do whatever I want,' the Jew said. Jesus tells him, 'No!' The heavenly Father is perfect. He does nothing piecemeal, and he does not tolerate anything done halfway. But you dissect God's commandment into many small fragments. It does not seize all of you, does not control your thoughts and volition in their entirety, and does not subject your life in its entirety. This results in your doing things halfway. With your 'half' life you are your own master. One moment you fear God; the next you are godless.

Jesus set his disciples free from this kind of 'religion.'

--Adolf Schlatter, Do We Know Jesus? (trans. R. Yarbrough and A. Kostenberger; Kregel, 2005), 159

Gentleness goes all the way to the top

An excellent brief reflection on the book of Jude.

Adam and Satan

The first Adam came, was defeated by Satan in a testing, was thereby bound by Satan, and was kicked out of the Garden.

The second Adam came, himself defeated Satan in a testing (Matt 3:13-4:11), thereby binding Satan (Matt 12:28-29), and kicked Satan's hosts out of bound people's lives time and again throughout the Gospels.

When Jesus exorcised demons, he was doing what Adam should have done to the serpent in Eden.

HT: Greg Beale

It Is a Power

Lloyd-Jones:

What is the gospel? Well, you remember the answer of the Apostle Paul, 'It is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth' (Rom. 1.16).

How easy it is to forget that. How easy to preach it as a system, to preach it as a collection of ideas, or just to preach it as a truth. Ah, but you can do that without power. There are people, say the Apostle Paul, who 'have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof' (2 Tim. 3.5).

Christianity is primarily a life. It is a power. It is a manifestation of energy.

--Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Revival (Crossway, 1987), 123

Proverbs 14:9

Fools mock at the guilt offering,
but the upright enjoy acceptance.

Fascinating and instructive.

Translation: The fool--in Proverbs, the one who obeys his own instincts and resists any word outside his own little internal world of self-generated impulses--rejects and ridicules the notion of substitution. The upright--literally 'the straight,' those whose self-perception is not skewed through stubborn autonomy--enjoy the release of atoned guilt, which breathes new life into them.

Wisdom: opening yourself up to an offering made on your behalf.

Interesting, too, that the guilt offering was the offering that dealt with unintentional guilt (see Lev 5-7). It was the offering sought out by those who knew that their waywardness went well beyond their own immediate moral awareness. It was the offering appreciated by the wise.

. . . how much more will the blood of Christ . . . --Hebrews 9:14

I Believe This

Here's a bit of the Westminster Confession, from the chapter on the decrees of God.

This. Is. Magnificent. (As are the Three Forms of Unity.)

V. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, has chosen, in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of His mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith, or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto; and all to the praise of His glorious grace. . . .

VII. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extends or withholds mercy, as He pleases, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.

VIII. The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care, that men, attending the will of God revealed in His Word, and yielding obedience thereunto, may, from the certainty of their effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal election. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God; and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation to all that sincerely obey the Gospel.

Novenson: Sanctification

Four outstanding messages on sanctification by Joe Novenson, from a conference last month at the Twin Lakes Conference Center (a ministry of First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi, where Lig Duncan is pastor).

Just outstanding. I will be returning to listen to these again.

Profitable Wickedness

'But I say to you, Love your enemies.' --Matthew 5:44

St. Augustine:

Well, you have enemies. Indeed, who could live on this earth without them?

See to it that you love them.

In no way can a raging enemy injure you as much as you injure yourself when you do not love your enemy. He can damage your farm or your flock; he can injure your household--your manservant or maidservant, your son or your wife, or, at most, he can injure your body if he has been given the power. But--unlike you--can he injure the soul?

Dearly beloved, strive toward this perfection, I exhort you.

Is it I that gave you this? It has been given to you by Him to whom you say: 'Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.' And do not think it impossible, for I know that there are Christians who love their enemies. I know this, for I have discovered it and proved it. You will not even try to love your enemy if you think it impossible for you to love him. Therefore, begin by believing it possible, and then pray the will of God be done in you. If your enemy had no wickedness, he would not be an enemy. But, how profitable his wickedness can be for you!

. . . You are still saying: 'Who can do it, and who has ever done it?' May God do it in your hearts. Very few do it, I know. Those who do it are noble and spiritual.

--St. Augustine, Commentary on the Lord's Sermon on the Mount: With Seventeen Related Sermons (Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 252-53