Not What I Am, But What He Is

We'll get back to thoughts on the book You Can Change next week, but for now, here's Charles Spurgeon (who appears often on this blog, as you may have noticed):

My hope lives not because I am not a sinner but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died. My trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, He is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am, or shall be, or feel or know but in what Christ is, in what He has done and is now doing for me.

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It Is Finished

John 19:30

When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Matthew Henry:

Let all that suffer for Christ and with Christ comfort themselves with this, that yet a little while and they also shall say, "It is finished.”

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Eager to Do Good

Matt Perman:

Christians are to be eager and enthusiastic in dreaming up ways to do good for others. We are to not just to do good when the opportunity comes to us—although we are to do it then, also—but we are to think hard about ways we can be proactive in serving people. And we are to do this because we are excited about it and because we love to, rather than begrudgingly.

Jonathan Edwards makes this case very well in his book Charity and Its Fruits and his sermon “The Duty of Christian Charity to the Poor.” Charity and Its Fruits, in fact, is just as comprehensive in pulling together the Scripture’s teaching on love and good works as Edward’s other works are on God’s sovereignty and glory and other such doctrines. Edwards is a model for keeping teaching on both theology and practical deeds of lovetogether, rather than focusing on one at the expense of the other.

Anyway, one of Edward’s arguments on how we should be eager in doing good comes from Paul’s discussion of giving in 2 Corinthians 8-9. In his discussion on giving, Paul speaks of how good it is that the Corinthians not only started to be engaged in the work of giving, but that they desired to do it (2 Cor 8:10). He encourages them to excel in the grace of giving (2 Cor 8:7). He speaks approvingly of how Titus was very earnest in his care for the Corinthians (2 Cor 8:16-17). Paul exhorts them to sow bountifully (2 Cor 9:6) and to give not reluctantly but cheerfully (2 Cor 9:7).

What Edwards brings to light is that what Paul is saying here about giving applies to good works in general. That is, we are to be earnest and eager and cheerful and bountiful and thoughtful and sacrificial in regard to all of our good works, not just giving.

In other words, Christians are to be thoughtful people who are eager to do good and proactive in it.

Humble Science

D. A. Carson:

That God normally operates the universe consistently makes science possible; that he does not always do so ought to keep science humble.

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Primary and Secondary Calling

Have you ever had a book on your shelf for years that you intended to read but never got around to it? I've owned a copy of Os Guinness' book The Call for at least four years, and though it came highly recommended, it never made it to the top of my "to read next" list-- until this month. And now, having read it, it is my turn to highly recommend it to you. I'll excerpt a few passages here this week.

Os Guinness:

Our primary calling as followers of Christ is by him, to him, and for him. First and foremost we are called to Someone (God), not to something (such as motherhood, politics, or teaching) or to somewhere (such as the inner city or Outer Mongolia).

Our secondary calling, considering who God is as sovereign, is that everyone, everywhere, and in everything should think, speak, live, and act entirely for him. We can therefore properly say as a matter of secondary calling that we are called to homemaking or to the practice of law or to art history. But these and other things are always the secondary, never the primary calling. They are "callings" rather than the "calling." They are our personal answer to God's address, our response to God's summons. Secondary callings matter, but only because the primary calling matters most.

This vital distinction between primary and secondary calling carries with it two challenges-- first, to hold the two together and, second, to ensure that they are kept in the right order. In other words, if we understand calling, we must make sure that first things remain first and the primary calling always comes before the secondary calling. But we must also make sure that the primary calling leads without fail to the secondary calling.

Let me try to apply and simplify, at the risk of oversimplification. My own primary calling is to live as a disciple of Christ. This keeps my focus on Christ, not on my occupation. My secondary calling happens to be as a pastor-- it is what I do as my ministry/job. However, I will not truly understand or fulfill my secondary calling if I do not remember my primary calling as a disciple and keep it primary. But at the same time, I must not be a disciple that never gets around to doing something.

Spiritual Dehydration

C. J. Mahaney:

Let me begin this post by asking you four direct questions about the condition of your soul right now:

• Do you sense that your affections for the Savior have diminished recently?
• Has your appetite for Scripture weakened?
• Does your soul seem dry?
• Does God seem distant from you?
  

If so, you are not alone. These struggles are common to even the most mature Christians—so common that Scripture anticipates them. But these are serious problems and must be addressed and not ignored. They don’t just go away over time.

So how should we respond?

Tucked away in the short (and often neglected) letter of Jude we find help and hope:

But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. (Jude 1:20–21)

In these verses we find a command and three practical ways to obey the command.

Read the rest here.

You Can Change #11 (Chapter 1)

Have you noticed the similarities between a couple of passages in You Can Change with our church's missions statement as expressed on the banner in our sanctuary?

The Evangelical Free Church of Mt. Morris:

Our passion is the glory of God in Jesus Christ

Savored through worship

Strengthened through discipleship

Spread through witness

Tim Chester in You Can Change:

The message of this book is that change takes place in our lives as we turn to see the glory of God in Jesus. (19)

So whom do we want to be like? What would you like to change? Please don't settle for anything less than being like Jesus and reflecting the glory of God. And what must we do to reflect God's glory? Look on the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Most of us don't live lives that are considered great by the world. For us, holiness consists not in heroic acts but in a thousand small decisions. But God gives us the opportunity to fill the mundane and the ordinary with his glory. We can be radiators of God's glory in a drab world, reflectors of his light in a dark world. (20)

As our statement says, that's something worth being passionate about!

Both God's Revealing and Our Thinking

From a new book by John Piper, here are some reflections on a passage that was mentioned in our chapter from Tim Chester's You Can Change for this week. First, the passage...

2 Corinthians 4:4-6

⁴ In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. ⁵ For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. ⁶ For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

John Piper:

Six observations that clarify how human thinking and divine revealing work together in awakening saving faith (based on 2 Corinthians 4:4-6):

1. The glory of Christ is seen in the gospel. The revelation of the glory of Christ is not a mystical experience cut loose from our thinking about Christ in the gospel. If we stop thinking about the gospel, we will not see the glory of Christ.
2. The glory of Christ is really there. This divine glory is really and objectively there in the gospel. Otherwise, Paul would not speak of the god of this world blinding the minds of unbelievers. If something is not really there, you don’t need to be blind to miss it.
3. The glory of Christ is seen through the facts of the gospel. The glory of Christ in the gospel—is not seen in a vision or a dream or a whispered word from the Holy Spirit. It is seen in the biblical story of Christ as the inspired apostle preaches the gospel of Christ. Verse 5: “What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.”
4. The decisive ground of saving faith is God’s gift of sight to the eyes of the heart. Our hearts are transformed and brought into harmony with the truth of Christ’s worth. This is why our thinking can now stand in the service of the gospel and become the humble agent of saving faith.
5. Saving faith is reasonable. It goes beyond what mere thinking and reasoning upon the facts can produce, but it is itself reasonable. Jonathan Edwards explains, “By a reasonable conviction, I mean, a conviction founded on real evidence, or upon that which is a good reason, or just ground of conviction.”11
6. This is the only path to spiritual certainty. “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). We are meant to know that the gospel is true and that we are saved, not cross our fingers.

Excerpt modified from Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God

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You Can Change #10 (Chapter 1)

2 Corinthians 5:17

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Tim Chester, in You Can Change:

What does it mean for us to be a new creation? It means we're re-created in the image of God. It means we're given new life so we can grow like Christ. And being like Christ means being like God, reflecting God's glory as God's image. (17)

The next verse he cites illustrates this well.

Ephesians 4:24

[You were taught in Christ] to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

There are plenty of things to say about this, but I'll mention just one. It's important that we do not just talk about "change" and being "new" without saying what we are changing into and what the new is like. These words need to mean something specific. Otherwise, it's all just empty rhetoric like that of politicians and pop psychologists.

The Bible does not use these words in this way. When it talks about a "new self," there is something real and tangible that it refers to. We will be "created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." That has to mean our values, character, and behavior must be changed to reflect God's.

God Surprises

Paul Tripp:

How much have your dreams been personal, earthbound, physical, and here-and-now? Have you been motivated by your kingdom more than God's Kingdom? How is your present discouragement, disappointment, confusion or grief a window on what has actually captured your heart? Have you really wanted God to be your wise and loving Father who brings into your life what he considers best, or have you wanted him to be a divine waiter, the all-powerful deliverer of your dreams?

Could it be that you have prayed for grace, but that you don’t really like the grace that you have been given? Divine grace doesn’t always make your life simple or your pathway clear. God’s grace doesn’t always provide you with release or relief. God’s grace often brings you hardship, confusion, and surprises. These things are sent to you, not by a God who is messing with you because he’s more powerful than you, but from the hand of a God a glorious grace, who is exercising his power for the purpose of your transformation.

So, the next time God surprises you, don’t doubt his goodness, faithfulness, and love. No, lift your hands to the heavens and celebrate. You are being rescued. You are being loved. You are being delivered. You are being transformed. And be thankful that since nothing can separate you from his love, there are more gracious surprises to come!

This was the conclusion of a larger post here.

You Can Change #9 (Chapter 1)

Tim Chester, in You Can Change:

I want to be like Jesus. I can observe him in action as I read the Gospels. I can study the life he lived and the love he showed. I could try very hard to imitate him. But at best that would lead only to a small, short-lived improvement, and indeed even that small improvement would probably only make me proud.

I need more than an example. I need help. I need someone to change me. Trying to imitate Jesus on its own only leaves me feeling like a failure. I can't be like him. I can't match up. I need sorting out. I need rescuing. I need forgiveness. (16)

I hope you've heard this idea in our church before, but in case you haven't, this is a critical, fundamental point. We need to follow Jesus' example, but we have to have him first as a Redeemer, as a Savior.

Why? Because, as Example-Only, Jesus becomes just another version of the Law we cannot possibly keep. The Old Testament Law was good and perfect, but it only served to highlight the people's sin. Jesus, a perfect God-man, will in this way only reveal our imperfections. If he only serves to point the way, he's not much good, because I can't walk that way as I am.

The other possibility in a law system, which Chester alludes to, is that we may become Pharisees: proud experts on the law, but not truly godly. We could bring Jesus down to our size, then become conceited in our mastery of Christianity.

In contrast with all this, the gospel is good news because it tells us that Jesus not only lived the life I should have lived, but he also died the death I should have died. His sacrificial death means that I can be forgiven and reborn to a new life.

Then (and we'll be talking a lot more about this in the remainder of the book), with that foundational relationship with Christ as my Redeemer, I can live in grace as I seek to grow in following his example.

To put it in more theological terms, we don't want to hold only to justification without sanctification (i.e., forgiveness without personal holiness), but we can't have sanctification without the foundation of justification (i.e., no personal holiness without forgiveness in Christ).

Consider again the quote above from the book. Do I really want to be like Jesus? If not, I need to be pleading with God for this and pursuing it, or considering whether or not I am a genuine believer.

Do you see your need for Jesus as Savior-- even if you've been a Christian for many years? Not that you need to "get saved" all over again, but that you need an ongoing relationship with him as your Redeemer before, and as a basis for, any kind of growth in godliness.

How do you see that need for Jesus as Savior in your everyday life? How can you remind yourself of this each day, throughout the day?

Called Where?

In preparing for my sermon on the topic(s) of work and rest from Genesis 1:26 - 2:25, I looked back at a book I'd read many years ago by Alistair Begg called Made for His Pleasure: Ten Benchmarks of a Vital Faith. In this book, he has a chapter titled "Vocation: Finding the Ideal Place to Serve God," that includes the passage below. It goes so well with the previous two posts, that I had to throw it in here. [Hover over the Scripture references to see the text.]

The Bible makes it clear that God's call is not primarily about geography. Indeed, that comes way down the list. We are called:

According to God's purpose (Romans 8:28)

By His grace (Galatians 1:15)

Through the gospel (2 Thessalonians 2:14)

Heavenward in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:14)

Out of darkness (1 Peter 2:9)

To belong to Jesus (Romans 1:6)

To be saints (Romans 1:7)

To be holy (1 Corinthians 1:2)

To live in peace (1 Corinthians 7:15)

To one hope (Ephesians 4:4)

To His eternal glory (1 Peter 5:10)

Even in this brief selection, it is apparent that God is more concerned about what is happening than where it is happening. We need to be thinking theologically rather than geographically.

Is There a Plan B for My Life?

Have you ever wondered whether God would leave you stuck in some kind of "Plan B" for your life if you couldn't discover his will? Here's a short, biblical answer.

Of course, this should not lead us to think lightly of sin ("No problem-- God can fix it later!"), because any sin is still sin against God, and we often have to live with its consequences, even if in Christ the guilt and eternal punishment may be taken away. This video is simply trying to help us not be consumed with figuring out every step of our lives. We should seek God's guidance in his Word and the counsel of other believers, but he does not promise step-by-step instructions for life. Study, think, pray, listen-- then live by faith in God!

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You Can Change #8 (Chapter 1)

Romans 8:28-30

²⁸ And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. ²⁹ For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. ³⁰ And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

In You Can Change, Tim Chester cites the above passage, then states:

In Romans 8, Paul says that God uses everything that happens to us to make us like Jesus, both the good and the bad. Indeed, the bad things become in some sense good for us because they make us like Jesus. In themselves they may be evil, but God uses them for the good of those who love him, and that good is that we become more like Jesus. [...] The secret of gospel change is being convinced that Jesus is the good life and the fountain of all joy. Any alternative we might choose would be the letdown. (14-15)

Have you understood this very famous Romans 8:28 verse in this way before? Part of our problem is that we too often quote verse 28 but no further. In the verses that come after, Paul explains what he meant by "purpose" in 28, and when we understand God's purpose, we can start to see how he could work for good through the many confusing events in our lives. The opposite is also true: when we don't understand his purpose, we won't have any category for things like suffering and pain.

What is God's purpose? It is taking us who were to be his image (Genesis 1:26-27), who were not "imaging" him because of sin (Romans 3:23), and conforming us to the image of Christ. How will he do this? It will be by calling, justifying, and ultimately glorifying those whom he had foreknown and predestined.

Many of us tend to read these verses and head straight for a debate on the nature of foreknowledge and predestination, but that misses the point. It seems clear that Paul meant for his readers to take away a strong sense of confidence and assurance that God was for them in spite of all that happened to them because he has a greater purpose for his people-- and his purpose will most definitely be fulfilled.

How should this change the way I think of the difficult and/or confusing circumstances of my life, and my response to them?

When I am struggling with the stuff of life, do I take comfort in the sure and certain purpose of God for me?

Do I want to be conformed to the image of Christ more than I want a problem-free life?

Note: Check out the video in the next post (above) for more on applying Romans 8.

Vision Problem

John Ortberg:

Vision is fundamental to the health of your church, but I'll tell you right now it's probably not the kind of vision you're thinking about.

Dallas Willard was asked by Gordon Cosby of Church of the Savior why so many churches and movements end badly, and his answer was so brilliant they made it into a little booklet.

It all begins with a vision. A Francis of Assisi or a John Wesley is gripped by a vision that will not let them go. But it is not a vision of what they're going to do. It is not a vision of a preferred future. It is not a vision of human activity. It is a vision of what already is. It is a vision of God, and how good he is, and how wonderful it is to be alive and a friend of such a Being.

Out of this vision flows a desire to do good things for such a God. And sometimes these activities may lead to results that look quite remarkable or impressive. And then other people may gather, and some decide they'd like to be involved in such activities because it might give them a sense of significance. People begin to pay more attention to what they are doing than to the reality of God.

At this point the mission replaces the vision as the dominant feature in peoples' consciousness. Once this happens, descent is inevitable. For now people are living under the tyranny of Producing Impressive Results.

The number one "vision problem" with churches today is not (as is widely held) leaders who "lack a vision." The real problem is when our primary focus shifts from who God is (a vision that alone can lead to "the peace of Christ reigning in our hearts") to what we are doing.

You Can Change #7 (Chapter 1)

You Can Change, from the end of the first full paragraph on page 13:

For Jesus, holiness meant being set apart from, or different from, our sinful ways. It didn't mean being set apart from the world, but being consecrated to God in the world. He was God's glory in and for the world.

Some of our confusion on this point arises naturally from the fact that the Bible uses "the world" in a few different ways. For example, we have John 3:16 which says, "For God so loved the world..." and 1 John 2:15, "If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."

Yes, as in the second verse, holiness is the antithesis of worldliness. We are set apart for God in distinction from the way most people have set themselves against him. We must reject these wicked ways, and certainly not love them.

However, we must also see the point that author Tim Chester is trying to make. The world-- that is, the lost people in this fallen world-- desperately needs to see the glory of God in Jesus Christ through us. If that's going to happen, we need to be in the process of becoming more and more like his true image of God and less and less like our broken one.

This helps us understand the point of his little story on page 15 about his daughter's friend who said, "Be a good Jesus today." Of course, we mustn't emphasize Jesus-as-example in a way that marginalizes his unique and exclusive work in dying for us, but it is essential that we live our lives according to his example, being conformed to his image.

Do you have an everyday awareness of living like Jesus?

Do you see how this Christ-likeness must be in the world, not cloistered off from it?

Can you explain how it is both against the world and for the world?

Delight in God's Creation

Go here to this picture and dozens more from our solar system.

Charles Darwin, from his Autobiography:

Up to the age of 30 or beyond it, poetry of many kinds . . . gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare. . . .

Formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great, delight.

But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.

I have also almost lost any taste for pictures or music. . . .

I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did. . . .

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. . . .

The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

It's true-- there is no genuine pleasure in a world that is not understood to have been created by God.

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You Can Change #6 (Chapter 1)

In You Can Change, the second and third sections of Chapter 1 are "Broken Image" and "True Image."

The author says that we do not function as the image of God we were made to be because of sin, citing Romans 3:23 ("All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God") and then quoting Sinclair Ferguson:

Paul's language here is loaded with the biblical motif of the divine image. In Scripture, image and glory are interrelated ideas. As the image of God, man was created to reflect, express, and participate in the glory of God, in miniature, creaturely form.

As I began to read the very next section, where Chester points to Jesus Christ as the true image, I could see in one of the verses this relationship between image and glory. This is Hebrews 1:3:

He [Jesus] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.

It's worth considering how sin is not just breaking God's laws, and the damage of sin is not just the "natural" consequences of breaking those laws. It goes much further than that! I sin when I do not reflect the glory of God, and my sinful actions keep me from being a faithful representation of his glorious character.

How becoming it is when I am godly! How unbecoming it is when I am not! I fail to point to God, and I become disfigured myself.

Holiness and Love

Francis Schaeffer:

If we stress the love of God without the holiness of God, it turns out only to be compromise. But if we stress the holiness of God without the love of God, we practice something that is hard and lacks beauty. And it is important to show forth beauty before a lost world and a lost generation. All too often young people have not been wrong in saying that the church is ugly. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ we are called upon to show to a watching world and to our own young people that the church is something beautiful.

Several years ago I wrestled with the question of what was wrong with much of the church that stood for purity. I came to the conclusion that in the flesh we can stress purity without love or we can stress the love of God without purity, but that in the flesh we cannot stress both simultaneously. In order to exhibit both simultaneously, we must look moment by moment to the work of Christ, to the work of the Holy Spirit. Spirituality begins to have real meaning in our moment-by-moment lives as we begin to exhibit simultaneously the holiness of God and the love of God.

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You Can Change #5 (Chapter 1)

Chapter 1 of You Can Change is one of the longer chapters of the book, but don't let that discourage you. While we broke up some of the other chapters, this one seemed important to keep together. It's a lot of doctrine, but it serves as an essential foundation.

It might be good just to see the section headings of this chapter all at once in order to get the flow:

Created in God's Image

Broken Image

True Image

Re-created in God's Image

Seeing Glory and Reflecting Glory

The first section goes right along with the sermon for this coming Sunday. We'll be looking at the latter part of Genesis 1 as well as Genesis 2, focusing on what it means to be created in God's image.

Commenting on Genesis 1:27, Tim Chester explains,

We were made to be God's image on the earth: to know him, to share his rule over the world, to reflect his glory. The idea is probably that of a statue of a god that represents the authority and glory of that god. But we're not to make images of the living God precisely because we are his image. We're God's representatives on earth. We're God's glory, displaying his likeness.

If we don't understand this as the core of our identity, we won't realize how wonderful it is to be human, and how tragic it is that we fall so far short. Before we consider that aspect, let's think some more about the positive dimension of our creation.

How does being created in the image of God change your thoughts about yourself?

How does it change your estimation of other people?

How should it affect your attitudes and actions in everyday life?

What would be some examples of living your life as God's image in the world?