Ordinary Heroism

A good word from my friend Geoff Ziegler on Hollywood's latest unwitting depiction of the consummated eschatology that every fallen-but-God-imaging-and-thus-Eden-remembering human longs for.

As the film progresses we discover that the only hope for the city is found in people who devote their lives to making it better. “You don’t owe these people anymore. You’ve given them everything,” someone says to Bruce Wayne. His response reveals the heart of the film: “Not everything, not yet.” The fate of Gotham will be determined by just how much he and others are willing to give.

At the risk of being over-dramatic, it strikes me that each of us are called by God to just this sort of heroism. Though tempted to remain content in our own prosperity, or to complain against the mistakes of others, or to simply try to “wait things out,” we are summoned by God to lay down our lives in service to the world around us. “A new commandment I give you: love one another as I have loved you.” We have been loved completely by one who gave everything for us, and that very love compels us to do likewise. And unlike the superheroes of our age who must only rely on themselves, we can give ourselves without fear, for our lives are hidden in Christ, securely kept for us.

I am left with two simple questions: what does it mean for me to give my life to the family and community God has placed me in? And will I be willing to do it?

The more blockbusters I see the more clear it becomes that every one of them is a shadow of which Jesus is the substance.

Gospel Yoda

In a heart-strengthening interview of Scotty Smith, Darryl Dash asks about the influence of Jack Miller in Scotty's life. Jack is someone I cannot wait to meet in heaven.

Jack Miller had a marked influence on your life. What are some of the ways you've been shaped by him?

Jack’s influence on my life was (is) immeasurable. I first met him as my advisor at Westminster Theological Seminary in 1975, and for the next 21 years he became my professor, spiritual father, mentor and gospel Yoda. His life of humility and boldness, joy and laughter, love for grace and commitment to prayer are ever before me. I never knew a freer man, a more welcoming soul, a more caring evangelist or a more playful saint than Jack. Selfishly for me, I hate the fact God took him to heaven when he was just 64 and I was just beginning to move into one of the more difficult seasons of my life as a pastor and man. But Jack married my heart to Jesus, more than to his own.

Zeal: Necessary, Dangerous

Lukewarmness in religion is abominable, and zeal an excellent grace; yet above all other Christian virtues, it needs to be strictly watched and searched; for 'tis that with which corruption, and particularly pride and human passion, is exceeding apt to mix unobserved. 

--Jonathan Edwards, The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, in Works, Yale edition, 4:243

Does Genesis 2 Contradict Genesis 1?

Lots to say on this of course, but it's hard to imagine a better, wiser, more concise note on the relationship between the two creation accounts than what is offered in the ESV Study Bible:

Gen. 2:4–25 The Man and Woman in the Sanctuary of Eden. The panoramic view of creation in ch. 1 is immediately followed by a complementary account of the sixth day that zooms in on the creation of the human couple, who are placed in the garden of Eden. In style and content this section differs significantly from the previous one; it does not contradict anything in ch. 1, but as a literary flashback it supplies more detail about what was recorded in 1:27. The picture of a sovereign, transcendent deity is complemented by that of a God who is both immanent and personal. The two portrayals of God balance each other, together providing a truer and richer description of his nature than either does on its own. In a similar way, whereas ch. 1 emphasizes the regal character of human beings, ch. 2 highlights their priestly status.

The Struggle

The new Tenth Avenue North record looks solid: their typical exaltation of a robust gospel, injected in this album with an awareness of the despair and feelings of futility that are a regular part of any Christian's ongoing walk with the Lord. Here are a few tracks.

The Struggle:



Worn:



Grace:



HT: Wade Urig

Glorifying God Is Seeing Him Truly

In August 1949 C. S. Lewis wrote a letter to Dr. Warfield Firor (right, top). Firor was a famous American surgeon at Johns Hopkins who supplied Lewis with an endless stream of hams and other gifts in the late 1940s, when post-war Britain was limping along economically. It is amusing, reading through his letters from this period, to see Lewis try to express appropriate gratitude every time yet another ham shows up at the Kilns. He shared most of them with others.

Following up on Firor's only visit to Britain to meet Lewis earlier in 1949, Lewis explores a theme raised also in Reflections on the Psalms.

When you were here you started the subject of Praise as Worship, which has led me to some bewilderment. Take the traditional language: glorifying, i.e. literally 'making glorious' what is already not only glorious but Glory itself and the source of all other glory--magnifying what is already infinite--exalting what is already highest.

At first it is hard to see what all this means. It sounds like the most famous flunkeyism, like telling a rich man that he is rich: and I am sure that this impression has a powerful and repellent effect on modern people, especially in democracies. I take it the truth is that in so far as a creature sees God it cannot help in some way (not of course necessarily by words) telling Him what it sees (silence might be one way). Its 'praise' is a necessary reaction: the divine light sent back to its Source from the creature which has become its mirror. The sun is not brighter because a mirror reflects it: but the mirror is brighter because it reflects the sun.

On a lower level this necessity of telling the object what it is has been experienced by every man in love. True, he may tell the girl she is pretty in order to please her: but he'd have to tell her anyway. Thus 'exalting the Lord' is in reality indistinguishable from seeing Him. There's no question of flattery or even courtesy about it: the moment the Creator-Creature relation is normal (in the proper sense of the word normal) praise or worship is there automatically. The picture of Heaven as perpetual worship, a place, in the hideous words of the hymn

Where congregations ne'er break up
And Sabbaths have no end

which has tormented many a luckless child (finding one Sabbath per week a ration only too liberal!) comes alright when one sees the real meaning: the perpetual worship is the perpetual vision, the perfect exercise of all one's faculties on the perfect Object. Of that, one could never have too much.

--The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 2 (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 970-71; italics original

Calvin on the Christian life

It's been fun working slowly through John Calvin: Writings on Pastoral Piety, edited by Elsie McKee, in the Classics of Western Spirituality series.

I sat in on an M.A. class on Calvin's theology a few years ago and am just now getting around to reading this text, highly commended in that class. The book is a representative sampling of material from Calvin's life as a Geneva pastor--his sermons, liturgy, prayers, and a smattering of related essays by Calvin concerning the Christian life.

In short, this is Calvin the pastor more than Calvin the theologian.

In his sermons, prayers, and other pastoral writings I see coloring Calvin's whole ministry the same two great traits that struck me in the Institutes: one, an enthrallment with God's majesty; two, a tender concern for the afflicted consciences of Christians and the power of the gospel to calm such internal afflictions.

Here is how McKee concludes her excellent opening introduction to the volume.

These few selections cannot give voice to the full range of Calvin's pastoral piety, but they may offer an introduction to the varied expressions of his personal religious experience and his teaching. They can perhaps suggest something of the intensity and practicality, the biblical and all-encompassing character, the active and social manifestations of this piety--a piety that reshaped religious life in the city of Calvin's exile and made it a 'school of Christ' for many people who never met the pastor of Geneva.

So what was Calvin's pastoral piety?

Intensely personal but never individualistic. Woven through with the great doctrines of justification by faith and regeneration of life, the glory of God and providence. Undergirded with prayer, proclaimed in word and shared in sacraments, sung in psalms. Embodied in action and demanding respect for the neighbor and solidarity with those who suffer in spirit, mind, or body. Not an easy or comfortable piety; it asks for one's all. Sturdy and down to earth, lived in the mundane context of daily work, yet always conscious of the presence of the transcendent God and the high calling of living before God. An energizing, lifelong response to God's liberating claim, God's righteous mercy, God's compelling love, a belonging that is all our joy.

--Elsie McKee, ed., John Calvin: Writings on Pastoral Piety (Paulist, 2001), 34-35

Could a better statement be made on John Calvin's understanding of what it means to walk with Christ?

Whitefield: The Love of Jesus

It is condescending love, it is amazing, it is forgiving love, it is dying love, it is exalted and interceding love and it is glorified love.

I am talking of the love of Jesus Christ, who loved me before I loved him. He saw us polluted in blood, full of sores, a slave to sin, to death and hell, running to destruction, then he passed by me and said unto my soul, 'Live,' he snatched me as a brand plucked from the burning.

It was love that saved me, it was all of the free grace of God and that only.

--George Whitefield, 'Christ the Support of the Tempted,' a sermon preached in 1740 in England, from Lee Gatiss, ed., The Sermons of George Whitefield (2 vols; Crossway, 2012), 1:341

There's Grace Enough for Us

P.S. I am a Calvinist of the five-point variety and it is no trouble to say that I wholeheartedly agree with 'There's grace enough for us and the whole human race.'

Eden 2.0

Offline for a week, heading out for vacation.

Which reminds me of this amazing picture.

Which in turn reminds me of the true and final Vacation just over the horizon of my short little life. Freely mine. Because of the work of Another.

HT: Stronglite