Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

Home Archives for 2014

Archives for 2014

Love and the Cross

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Love and the Cross“Only love for Christ has the power to incapacitate the sturdy love for self that is the bane of every sinner, and only the grace of Christ has the power to produce that love” – Paul David Tripp

Tripp goes on to point out that death of self is a prerequisite to fulling loving Christ. Jesus tells us in Luke 9:23 that we are required to daily take up our own cross. This is not a one and done type event but a continual process that requires discipline.

It was love for us that put Jesus on the Cross. It is love for Jesus that compels us toward our own cross. It is love for Jesus that motivates us to die to self. Love always involves a cross; love requires the death of our own desires for the sake of the one we love.

I know that I have only a partial understanding of what it means to take up my cross. What would it look like if I died a complete death to self? My self is a stubborn old coot and refuses to die.

Consider these verses from Paul:

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20, ESV)

“And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,” (Colossians 1:9, ESV)

One takeaway from these verses is that while I must participate by taking up my own cross, I cannot do it in my own strength and wisdom. Christ must empower me to do so. It was Jesus’ love that bound him to his cross on my behalf and it is his love that can propel me toward my own cross. As David Trip reminds us in the quotation above, only Christ’s love can conquer my stubborn self-love. Apart from his love, I have no available power to conquer my pride and self absorption.

By the book – A Quote from Henry Halley

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Halley's HandbookIsrael had a Book. It was only a fraction of what we now have in God’s Word, but oh how important! God’s solemn warning to Joshua, standing at the threshold of a gigantic task, was to be very careful to keep close to the words of that Book. Joshua listened and obeyed, and God honored him with phenomenal success. What a lesson for church leaders!

-Henry Halley

The danger is that we can ignore the bits of Scripture that make us feel uncomfortable and emphasize the bits that make us feel superior to others. The point is that we need to be diligent to be obedient to all of Scripture and seek to understand it and apply it to our lives.

We should not add to Scripture and fall into the error of the Pharisees, both modern and ancient. Nor should be subtract from Scripture and fall into the error of the main line denominations that have abandoned their belief and commitment to Scripture. We should rather be like the Bereans (Acts 17:10-11) who searched the Scriptures to conform their belief to what has been revealed. Their commitment to the Book was commended and we should follow their example.

Pursue the reality beyond

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Reality beyondHaving been born at the tail end of the baby boom, I have the dubious distinction of being part of what the psalmist describes as being “a generation that did not prepare its heart” (Psalm 78:8 NASB) or “A generation that did not set its heart aright” (NKJV). The point is that the psalmist laments the lack of intentionality of that generation in following God.

Matthew Henry, in commenting on this Psalm makes the statement, “hypocrisy is the high road to apostasy.” This makes sense to me. If one generation is paying lip service to the Gospel but not living it out, it will make it difficult for the next generation to pay the Gospel any attention at all.

Unfortunately, I have seen this played out. Too often, a church does a good job of preaching grace, but the church culture is one of legalism and works-based acceptance. It is not surprising that such a church has a poor track record for retaining its youth. The pattern is too often repeated where a student leaves for college and drifts away from following Christ, many never to return. The hypocrisy in the practice of the church provided a ready excuse for the claims of Christ to be rejected.

To the generations that follow us “boomers” I offer the advice given in vv. 7-8 of Psalm 78:

“That they should put their confidence in God
And not forget the works of God,
But keep His commandments,
And not be like their fathers,
A stubborn and rebellious generation,
A generation that did not prepare its heart
And whose spirit was not faithful to God.” (Psalm 78:7–8)

Don’t be like the previous generations that willfully ignore God. Don’t give yourself the option of being blind to any reality beyond the physical universe. Don’t summarily reject the God of the Bible without examining the revelation he entailed to us. Don’t let the gap between what my generation says and what we do be an excuse to reject the God we claim to worship.

For my generation, I would also offer the hope that it is never too late to return and see the reality that you’ve been ignoring. I must constantly remind myself that there is a reality beyond the thing that consumes me at the moment. I must, as the psalmist reminds me, “prepare my heart” to be conscious of the eternal. I must not let good things become ultimate things in my life.

 

Please God alone

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ThinkerMy greatest struggle in being part of the church has been when leaders possessed a certitude about how things should be done that borders on presumption.

If I have learned one thing about humanity, it is that we are all inherently flawed. I have ample evidence in myself and others of the depravity of man. We are broken and that brokenness affects everything that we touch. As a result, we should have a healthy distrust of ourselves and a confidence in God alone.

If we are flawed, we must assume that those who initiated what we now call tradition were similarly flawed and therefore the traditions are flawed. We should constantly acknowledge that our idea of how church should be conducted may not be according to God’s plan. Jesus tells us:

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:1, ESV)

I had previously written about this verse in a post entitled Righteousness before men, In the previous post, I identified pride as the reason that we try to appear holier than we are. The provided antidote is humility. In this post, I would like to examine the results and practical implications of our desire to look cleaner than we are.

Somewhere in between complete denial of our dysfunction and a wallowing in it is an appropriate response. Not everyone I meet at church or at work needs to know all of my struggles. Wisdom is required to know what is appropriate to share and when it should be shared. But we must admit that there is something inside us that seeks to present ourselves as better than we are. We are all hypocritical to some extent.

This hypocrisy can works itself out in a variety of ways. First, we can be overly concerned with what other people think of us. This can influence who we associate with and where we go. Our Enemy wants nothing more that to have all Christians think that non-believers are not to be associated with. This will prevent them from hearing the Good News.

“How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”” (Romans 10:14–15, ESV)

Thus, we limit our usefulness to God when we are too concerned about our reputation. Jesus was criticized as being a friend to sinners, perhaps we would do well to be the same.

Secondly, our pride and hypocrisy can manifest itself in our thinking that our efforts are essential for the work of God to continue. God may choose to use us in a particular situation, but when we feel that it is entirely up to us to accomplish God’s purpose, we have ceased to be truly useful to God.

It is one thing to be responsive to the prompting of God to accomplish a certain task. It is entirely another thing to take something on just because we think it needs to be done. How many church programs are begun and continued by man’s effort and produce little or no fruit of eternal value? How many people enter “vocational” ministry feeling pressured to do something for God that God has not prompted them to do? How many of our traditions and doctrinal litmus tests inhibit rather than promote our usefulness to God?

The “King James Only” crowd comes to mind as an egregiously negative example. In their pride in using the “correct” version of the Bible, they are limiting their ability to minister to their community. We are to make the Bible more understandable, not less. I grew up with the KJV and still have to work hard to get the meaning when I read it; how would someone with no exposure to 17th Century English get anything at all out of it?

The point of this post is to remind myself and others that our fallenness taints everything that we do. If we are to be confident, it should be confidence in the providence of God rather than in our ability to sort things out. We should be responsive to the prompting of God rather than certain of our own assessment of how to proceed. We should spend more time in prayer seeking God’s opinion and less time figuring out what is best.

Rather than play to the crowd around us, we should seek to please God alone.

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