Drawing Near in 2012

My dad's post a few days ago is worth reading, rereading, printing out, putting on the dashboard, whatever--get it.

Looking forward to more of this, and more deeply, with Wheaton College men Ian, Tanner, Erik, Wade, Ben, Bobby, Dave, and Mark. Eight men who make me want to live well.

I get one shot--one shot--at 2012.

Life Requires Death

In April 1983 Jack Miller, pastor of New Life Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, wrote to a young woman named Catherine who was considering going to the mission field in Uganda. She was held back by fear.

Toward the end of that letter Jack said the following, the second paragraph of which I find rebuking, igniting, and illuminating of past and present experience in my own life.

Open up the Scriptures which give us the full picture of the glory of suffering for Christ. What you discover is that there is no permanent joy in Christ apart from a willingness to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him. That is, your life cannot have power in it or even salvation if you refuse to be like a grain of wheat that must fall to the ground and die in order to bring forth much fruit. God calls you to greatness, Catherine, but greatness means fruitfulness, and fruitfulness comes as we die to self and our fears and rise from the dead.

I do not presume to know whether you should go to Uganda or not. Only God can finally show you that. . . . But your life must have a death in it if it is to go anywhere. The greatest thing hindering revival at New Life is the way we tend to run away from our own death. The cross can be evaded only so long. Then if we keep away from it we begin to create our own deaths, and we die thousands of times over, killed and rekilled by our anxieties.

--The Heart of a Servant-Leader: Letters from Jack Miller (P&R, 2004), 230

Does that last sentence explain why so many Christians are so weak, so joyless? I want to make my own failings, not others', my biggest concern, so I say it cautiously; but is it not the case that most of us who have had our eyes open to Christ, have truly embraced him and been born again, refuse thereafter to let go of the more immediate security of reputation, or comfort, or career achievement, or _________? Creating a breeding ground for innumerable anxieties? Holding on to hollow 'life' when Life awaits, if we will simply release our hold on a handful of pennies to fill out the blank check being offered us?

There is so much uncrucified Dane in me. Onward to death and joy in 2012. It really is possible.

'I died.' --the apostle Paul

'Die before you die. There is no chance after.' --C. S. Lewis, Till We have Faces

Death and joy. Both or neither.

Take This With You into 2012

John Owen on the Bible:

O heavenly, O blessed depositum of divine grace and goodness! . . . although every humble soul may learn and receive from it what is absolutely sufficient for itself on all occasions, with respect to its own duty and eternal welfare, yet the whole church of God, neither jointly nor severally, from the beginning to the end of the world, have been, are, or shall be, able to examine these stores to the bottom and to find out perfectly all its truths, in all their dimensions, concerns, and extent, that are contained therein.

--quoted in Sinclair Ferguson, John Owen on the Christian Life (Banner of Truth, 1987), 189-90

Get it.

Jeremiah Owen Ortlund

The army grows.

'Before I formed you in the womb,
I knew you,
and before you were born
I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.'
--Jeremiah 1:5

'So much as we see of the love of God, so much shall we delight in him, and no more. Every other discovery of God, without this, will but make the soul fly from him; but if the heart be once much taken up with this the eminency of the Father’s love, it cannot choose but be overpowered, conquered, and endeared unto him.'
--John Owen

Fulfilling Genesis 1:28

No posting for a bit as my wife and I prepare to receive Ortlund son #3 into the world.

Our Fundamental Loyalty

Packer:

Our business is to present the Christian faith clothed in modern terms, not to propagate modern thought clothed in Christian terms.

Our business is to interpret and criticize modern thought by the gospel, not vice versa.

Confusion here is fatal.

--J. I. Packer, "Fundamentalism" and the Word of God (Eerdmans, 1958), 136

Mighty Weakness

Just the right title--The Mighty Weakness of John Knox--in a book that avoids the hagiography of some other titles in this series.

The author, Doug Bond, writes in the opening chapter:

Who has not felt within him that he was too simple a man with too little to contribute to so great a cause as that of Christ and His church? What young woman, wife, mother, grandmother, or aged spinster has not wrung her hands, fearful and weak against the enemies of her soul and the church? Who has not thought that his gifts were too modest, that others could serve far better, and that he was too frail and timid to help advance the gospel of our Lord Jesus? Or who has not felt that hew was being unjustly maligned by critics, assaulted by the mighty, mocked and insulted by the influential?

So it was for Knox, but as he wrote of the Reformation in Scotland, 'God gave his Holy Spirit to simple men in great abundance.' His contemporary Thomas Smeaton said of Knox after his death, 'I know not if God ever placed a more godly and great spirit in a body so little and frail.'

. . . The Almighty is in the business of raising up simple, frail, and little people, and empowering them to be strong in Christ.

--Douglas Bond, The Mighty Weakness of John Knox (Reformation Trust, 2011), xxi-xxii

Life from Death

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. -Romans 6:4

(Thanks to Z for pointing us to these pictures.)

Noah and the End of the World

Excellent discussion here from Mike Williams answering the question, Will this world be annihilated one day? Is that what 2 Peter 3 and Matthew 24 teach?

Amen, Dr. Williams.



HT: Joel Hathaway

Zeal without Knowledge

"There is nothing that belongs to Christian experience," wrote Edwards, "so liable to a corrupt mixture as zeal." After three years studying Paul's references to zeal against the backdrop of his Jewish upbringing I've concluded that the apostle would agree. Those conclusions and the exegetical arguments that led to them will be published next year in this volume. Yours for the low low price of $110.

My argument runs somewhat against the grain of the direction NT scholars are increasingly going in understanding the heart of Paul's concerns as an apostle. More and more I discern in NT scholarship an unhealthy over-horizontalization of the core of what animated Paul, prioritizing human reconciliation (Jew-Gentile) over vertical reconciliation (God-human). Zeal-language in Paul is a slice of his thought world that clarifies the priority of the apostle's concerns.

To the degree I've explained Paul rightly I hope students of the Bible will consider and be persuaded. It is not irrelevant to the gospel itself. I believe Paul will be better understood, and therefore Christ and his gospel more deeply cherished, and therefore God more reverently adored, if my arguments are read with genuine openness and textual submissiveness.

So it is gratifying to see three years' work come to fruition in this way. Glory to God.