Where’s the middle ground in all this? Where’s the grey area? Only in our rationalizations that make us believe that “I’m a good person if I do [fill in the blank]” do you find the “moderate middle.” In other words the grey area is really just rationalization of sin.

Now while it’s clear that we’re either sons of darkness or sons of light, there’s a great subtle complexity to this black and white reality we find in the Gospel. That is, once we see and are captured by the love of God revealed in his Son on the cross and poured into our hearts by His Spirit, we enter into the now-but-not-yet tension.  We still reside in the brokenness of this flesh and the realm ruled by the prince of this world, yet we are alive eternally to the Father-Son-Spirit God (Romans 8).   And the truth is, in this place we find ourselves in, we can easily fall back into the ways of the flesh rather than follow the ways of the Spirit.

I might be tempted to go into all the ways we can equip ourselves to conquer our sinful hearts, the things we must do to become fruitful, godly people.  But isn’t that just the way of the flesh not of the Spirit? It’s the way of fear and mistrust to come up with ways of self-improvement; it’s not the way of faith and trust in God to make us good soil that produces good fruit.

When we read or hear someone preach of the Spirit’s fruit (Gal. 5) or the parable of the sower (Mark 4; Luke 8) we automatically think, “I am not good soil”, or, “There isn’t enough good fruit in my life”, and then proceed to plan a way to make ourselves just that.  But again this is the way of the flesh; it’s the way of fear, not faith.

I think, no wait, I know that until we grasp the battle in our hearts in every moment to either live by fear or by faith we’ll never be truly be free in the way Christ came to set us free (Gal. 5:1).  Once we grasp in true absolute humility and helplessness that “I cannot make myself good, improve my life for God to like me more, I am not in control of my life” – only then are we free. Not until we come to the end of ourselves can we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and feel with our hearts the words of Jesus.  Without this helplessness, we’re still bound by the fear of our flesh and love of darkness.

Where am I going with this?

Well in the last few months in my life many significant things have been taken from me, things I didn’t think would happen (unless I messed up big time, hear the fear of flesh?).  But as of a couple weeks ago something happened completely out of my control.  The United Kingdom Visa & Immigration office determined that my missionary organization did not meet the requirements to continue to sponsor work visas. This is very disruptive to say the least! And my family is feeling it as we face saying goodbye to our home and friends.

Now, as we wait, the temptation is to take our eyes off Jesus and to look to ourselves.  It’s a little easier keeping our eyes on Jesus in this sense, we have absolutely no responsibility nor control in this decision by the UKVI.  Yet we are still tempted, motivated by fear, to look to ourselves for the rescue, which leads to anxiety and forgetfulness.   Once you are captured by these motivations it easily leads to all kinds of destructive outcomes: broken relationships, depression, unwise decision that abandon God, etc.

But in a circumstance like this there’s a great opportunity for thankfulness, yes thankfulness (1 Thess. 5:18).  In our helplessness we have the incredible clarity to say to God,  “I’m not God, you’re God, and I’m happy with this arrangement.” As we fear the Lord like this in our hearts we see Jesus.  We see him as a delight to our hearts, therefore the source of our purpose, life, and help. When the eyes of our hearts are captured by him we’re guaranteed to have joy and abound in thanksgiving no matter what.

This is where passages that I’ve taught, memorized, and meditated on come to life.  For instance Romans 5:1-5, it has always been foreign to think of rejoicing in my suffering, but in the midst of a helpless situation and looking to Jesus I can truly rejoice that I have him.   A joy in suffering which leads to endurance, then to character, and then to hope, which will never disappoint.  It’s not on me to do this in a period of suffering, but it’s merely a humble response to God offering his love to my heart by the Spirit.

In all circumstances the way of fear or the way of faith, death or life, evil or good, are placed before us and our choice always reveals our greatest affections: self or Christ.

It’s black and white.

Let me leave you with this thought, a thought that I’ve been blessed with as I’ve wrestled to keep my eyes on Jesus.  How will I face the day of my death? If I fight and claw for my home, my friends, my ministry, my security and stability with fear and anxiety, then what will I be like when I face the most pinnacle moment of faith: looking death in the face?  Will I fight for the last moments of life that I have no chance of keeping, or will I look to Jesus?   I want to live free of Satan’s last grip on my life and peacefully join Jesus in the next life free from this wretched flesh.  So here’s to a life of holding onto everything loosely but holding onto the one I love with all my strength, which he powerfully works in me.

So I’m learning and here’s my invitation to all believers: look to Jesus and live!

The post Life: It’s Black & White first appeared on Cor Deo.

“I want to reside in your home and for you to treat me as your daughter in every way, as if I were married to your only son. But with the stipulation that I don’t have anything to do with your son! I really don’t like him . . . I want to live my life here.”

I don’t know about you, but I doubt any of us would be surprised to hear a wrathful response full of jealousy for his son.   The audacity to demand the rewards of being his son’s wife without any real connection to him, even blatant hostility against him, would deserve her immediate removal. Even by force if necessary!

Another reason that we’d expect a response like this is that we understand there’s only a few ways to enter into a family. We don’t question that the way into a family is either by birth, adoption, invitation, or by marriage. To say it doesn’t offend any of our sensibilities. Family by definition is exclusive. Some are part of your family and others are not. That’s the way it goes.

With that in mind, have you ever been asked, or have you ever asked, a set of questions like this:

“How can you believe that God is good when he offers only one way to heaven? Don’t you think it’s cruel to keep so many good people from entering into heaven?”

Either as the questioner, or as the one asked the question, I’m sure that the answer included Jesus’ words “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and that apart from him no one can get into heaven. While these words are absolutely true, it doesn’t seem to reflect the tone or the nature of Jesus’ last words to his disciples in John 14.

Now in our post-modern western culture it’s apocryphal to claim any views on the nature of truth and goodness that may be exclusive in anyway. The logic goes, “Truth is relative, your truth can be your truth and my truth can be mine. And as long as nobody gets hurt, goodness is relative too.” Although the irony isn’t lost on me – the intolerance of perceived intolerance – the context of John 14:6 may allow for a more effective method for engaging objections to the exclusivity of the Christian faith (as well as honoring the intention of Jesus’ words and the nature of God).

Jesus, to comfort the hearts of his disciples, tells them that they shouldn’t be troubled by his coming departure (14:1-3).   Instead, they should believe that he’s going away for their benefit that he may prepare a place for them in his Father’s house. All the disciples would have noticed the obvious betrothal imagery. At this time in a Jewish culture, a man would propose to a woman (which would be treated just as legally binding as marriage) and return to his father’s house to build an addition to the home for the new couple. After his father approved the addition he would then go and retrieve his bride.

And Jesus tells his disciples that they should feel about the news of his departure just as a new bride would respond to her betrothal (14:28). Think about the thrill that the bride would feel as her bridegroom left to prepare a home for their new life and the all-consuming anticipation of his return. This would not have been lost on Jesus’ disciples. They should rejoice and be excited that he’s leaving to go to his Father!

It’s easy to see why Jesus says to his disciples that they know where he’s going (14:4). As they have seen Jesus, they have seen the Father, because he and his Father are one (14:10ff). And to believe the words of Jesus, to follow his way (13:34-5), and to believe on him for life, are the very fruit of abiding in Christ. To love Jesus is to love and know the Father. Therefore, just as the Father has loved the Son, so too the Father loves Jesus’ disciples, his “bride” (14:18-31).

Jesus’ words then, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” make perfect sense. There’s no way to enter into the relationship with the Father and Son apart from being united to the Son because the Father and Son are one. To know the Father is know Jesus. To love the Father is to love the Son. This is heaven!

Heaven is to participate, to join the family of the Trinity by the Spirit who has been in the business of communicating the depths of the Father and Son’s love for each other for all eternity (1 Cor. 2).

There’s no other way to reside in the Father’s house apart from his Son, because they are one. Anything else, any other way, is no different than a random woman breaking through the window and demanding all the benefits of the house without any love for the members of the family that live there. Even in our post-modern western culture the exclusivity of the family remains the same. Forcing one’s way into the family apart from accepted modes only leads to removal and maybe even restraining orders.

The post Exclusive first appeared on Cor Deo.

That includes our mind, soul, and strength. Or, in contemporary terms, our time, our employment, our money, our devices, our attitudes, values, marriages, plans, and everything else we can think of.

This radical divine ambition came as a dawning when I was converted: the basis for my response to Christ. Jesus came to me with the language of “two masters” in Matthew 6:24. He was saying, in effect, “I want to be your master but you have another master right now—and that must change.”

I mention my embrace of Christ’s calling for my life to highlight a point that many Christians seem to have muddled. The point is important: God isn’t looking for our cooperation or appreciation. He wants, instead, a marriage-like devotion. So when I next read Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” and responded so that he began to reshape my deepest values, the implications of this calling started to unfold.

My response of, “Yes, Lord, I’m yours!” meant everything started to change. Knowing Jesus became both my immediate and my ultimate ambition. That’s not to say that I was always consistent or wholly persistent: by no means! But my movement toward him was a new trajectory in life. Later on I realized my “yes” reflected the ministry of the Spirit winning my heart and uniting me to the Son as in the marital-union language of 1 Corinthians 6:15-20.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when at theological college a few years later I read a book by a Christian scholar that treated this kind of faith as “crypto-sectarian.” The author actually made the charge against a 17^th century Puritan, John Cotton, but it also applied to me.

Cotton, by the way, was converted by the preaching of Richard Sibbes when Cotton was already a trained and respected Puritan preacher. Sibbes’ teaching of Christ’s love and free grace by the coming of the Spirit caught Cotton’s heart and changed his life. And, obviously, it said something about Cotton’s new view of his earlier version of faith.

What I shared with Cotton, and Sibbes before him, and Calvin before him, and Luther before him, and Bernard before him, and Augustine before him, and the Bible before them, was a marriage-like commitment. God, by the Spirit using unconditional Bible promises of his love and mercy in Christ, made all the difference. His love is both captivating and freeing. And we love him because he first loved us.

The troubling book I read—by William Stoever—was a creed-based critique of the free-grace movement among Puritans. It was, arguably, a lively exercise in Whiggish history—the measuring of earlier historical events by later values. In other words, what Stoever today believes to be correct doctrine was imposed on the 17^th century Puritans. So Stoever’s personal Reformed convictions were his basis for criticizing Cotton as a heretic.

As such it buried the real issue: that the Reformed movement was, and still is, divided by two competing versions of Reformed faith. One version—Stoever’s modern view—treats God’s grace as an empowering gift to the elect. This newly created grace offers power to live in line with God’s demands. In turn this obedience displays their status as genuine believers. Obedience, then, is the hallmark of faith.

Cotton’s alternative version of faith followed Luther’s Reformation insight—also embraced by Calvin—that saving grace isn’t a created power but God’s indwelling presence by the Spirit. He then changes us from the inside-out by changing our desires. And with new and holy desires the fruit of obedience follows. But obedience isn’t the focus of faith. Only Christ has that pedestal and any call to look to self by focusing on obedience is to look in the wrong direction.

What Stoever either missed or dismissed, as a result, was the continuity between Cotton and Calvin. This was a key issue in the original Puritan debate: transformation comes only by the Spirit’s participation in a convert’s soul. He stirs the reciprocity of mutual love.

So Calvin himself would need to be seen as a “crypto-sectarian” along with Cotton if Stoever had followed the trail of evidence based on what Cotton kept saying to his colleagues, “I’m just following Calvin!” And he was.

In a nutshell Stoever insisted that God wants a balance between himself and his believers—a symmetry between Nature (humans) and Grace (God). Stoever argues that Cotton’s newfound belief in the abiding presence of the Spirit violates this symmetry. How? By Cotton’s claim that believers, by this union with Christ, are fully dependent on God.

Such complete dependence, Stoever warns, violates God’s desire for a Nature-Grace partnership by means of enabling and saving grace. Grace, as a booster force given by God to the Elect, allows them to retain a certain independence that pleases God.

But Independence, even of this type, is a curious thought to all of us who were converted by repenting of our independence. Adam started the problem by declaring independence so it’s certainly not likely to be a feature of salvation. So Cotton dismissed independence and moved from one version of Reformed faith to another. And he got it right.

Go read and see for yourself. Boasting or Nature-boosting just doesn’t cut it. God still wants everything.

The post You want what?! first appeared on Cor Deo.

So what am I getting at?

I love history, and am an American living in England, so I often catch myself thinking how idealistic it would have been to live several hundred years ago. But when one of my children gets sick and I rush them to the hospital in my car, I quickly drop all sense that living in the 17th century would be something I would enjoy.   I have no idea how many times my children’s lives have been saved because the quality of life I take for granted.

The great blessings of modern medicine and living standards have created the strange reality that we are rarely reminded of our mortality. We waste time with our amusement, live with no sense of urgency (at least for eternal things), and forget that every moment matters because we think we’ll live forever. Maybe, at the very least, we assume we’ll make it to our 80s, therefore we have time to waste.

This, I believe, has great consequences for those of us who call ourselves Christians. Unlike Paul in Philippians 1:23-24, we don’t have the desire to leave this life and be with Christ.   We don’t actually look forward to death. Yes, we don’t look forward to death.

Now, it may seem strange to say this, but let’s try to look at it from a different angle. My wife and I have come to find out that 10 days or so is about as long as we can handle being apart from each other. Just a couple days away and we are looking forward to seeing each other and begin to prepare for our reunion as a family. It’s not a duty or an obligation to prepare, we just delight in one another, and it’s natural to miss the other.

Shouldn’t we be like this with Christ, our Bridegroom? Do we delight in Christ so much that we can’t wait for his return, so we get ready for him? Or, because we know to be with Christ is best, we desire to go be with him? We all know it would be strange for a “devoted spouse” not to yearn for their other-half to return or to go be with them. Yet, so often we live as though either Christ isn’t going to return, or we don’t look forward to the passage that brings us to Christ–death.

Please hear me, I’m not advocating that we don’t live healthy lives or somehow force death upon ourselves. Rather, I want us to see that we can look forward to heaven because Christ is heaven. We can look forward to the next life and live for the next life because Christ is the next life.   Looking forward to death is like looking forward to the end of a long business trip and returning home to reunite with your spouse.

For our brothers and sisters who lived 400 years ago, they needed to hear this as well but for other reasons. Facing death, plague, and famine on a regular basis could only make one to think of the time where there would be health, happiness, and no tears. The hope of health and happiness could very well become an idol. That heaven could only be the escape of difficulty. Richard Sibbes said it beautifully in a sermon called Christ is Best:

“Why does [Paul] not say I desire to be in heaven? Because heaven is not heaven without Christ. It is better to be in any place with Christ than to be in heaven itself without him.   All delicacies without Christ are but as a funeral banquet. Where the master of the feast is away, there is nothing but solemnness. What is all without Christ? I say the joys of heaven are not the joys of heaven with out Christ; he is the very heaven of heaven.”

We don’t look forward to heaven because maybe our comfort, security, and amusement has lulled us into believing we can have “heaven” now. We don’t look forward to death, or we hold tightly to this life, because we don’t delight in the “very heaven of heaven.”

Maybe it would be best to leave you with the same thoughts that the heavenly Dr. Richard Sibbes left with his listeners:

“Therefore, if we desire to end our days in joy and comfort, let us lay the foundation of a comfortable death now speedily. To die well is not a thing of that light moment as some imagine; it is no easy matter. But to die well is a matter of every day . . . To die well is the action of the whole life. He never dies well for the most part that dies not daily, as Paul said of himself, ‘I die daily,’ I Cor. 15:31; he labored to loose his heart from the world and die daily, how easy will it be to die at last! He that thinks of the vanity of the world, and of death, and of being with Christ forever, and is dying daily, it will be easy for him to end his days with comfort. “

May we desire for God to set our hearts on having the best here and now, the very heaven of heaven, Jesus our Husband.

The post Looking Forward to Death first appeared on Cor Deo.

This week’s entry was originally written by Ron on his blog: Spreading Goodness. It’s so good we wanted to share it!

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The Council of Nicaea in 325 worked hard to summarize a sound understanding of the Triune God in the face of Arian error. They explained how Jesus, the Son, exists in eternal relationship with the Father. In a final document they added this truncated final object of proper faith—“And in the Holy Spirit.” The Father-Son reality was their main focus; yet the lack of substance in their mention of the Spirit reflected an uncertainty about his being and work.

The Council of Constantinople in 381 addressed the Holy Spirit more fully by describing Him as “the Lord, the giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, and who spoke through the prophets.” A much better summary.

My own theological heritage was more like the theologians of Nicaea than the theologians of Constantinople—wary of the Spirit—as they minimized the Spirit’s role in the church. I suspect it reveals an enduring reaction to the overstated focus on the Spirit found in some Christian traditions. The errors of past—as in the teachings of Joachim of Fiore, or the prophets of Zwickau, or the radicals of Munster, or the Familists of England—still haunt the church. Some are still promoting these excesses. But folly must not cause us to retreat from what the Bible tells us of the Spirit’s ministry.

Let me raise three issues for conversation.

First, all Christians affirm the Spirit’s place in the Trinity as a necessary feature of faith. This goes beyond the mere title offered at Nicaea. We must adopt, at least, the biblical premise of Constantinople: the Spirit is our Lord and he brings God’s life to believers. This is the truth Jesus offered Nicodemus in John 3. Without the Spirit of God there is no eternal life—a person is dead in sin until the Spirit comes and brings God’s life.

One can draw from this that in the day Adam sinned he died as God had promised—“in the day you eat [the forbidden fruit] you shall surely die” versus Satan’s claim, “You will not surely die.” Here Satan deceived Eve, and Adam then joined her in eating and dying. The Spirit—the source of Adam’s life—was grieved by this rejection and departed from Adam.

When Adam died so did all of his extended offspring: since the fall no human has ever been physically birthed with the Spirit in his or her soul. His role as the means of spiritual life ended in Eden and now must be reengaged. As Jesus put it to Nicodemus, “that which is born of the flesh is [merely] flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

So Christ, by the Spirit, now stands outside human souls—unloved and uninvited but still speaking his own words of love. What Adam once enjoyed—God’s love, joy, peace, and more—is still available, shared in quiet whispers. But our human appetite to be independent—to “be like God”—carries us in an opposite direction.

Second, the Spirit communicates God’s heart so that he is effective in drawing some, but not all, back into the life Adam despised. This is our new spiritual life. John Calvin captures this:

“He [God] wills to work in us. This means nothing else than that the Lord by his Spirit directs, bends, and governs, our heart and reigns in it as in his own possession. Indeed, he does not promise through Ezekiel that he will give a new Spirit to his elect only in order that they may be able to walk according to his precepts, but also that they may actually so walk.” [Institutes, 2.3.10]

The richness of the Spirit’s activity in believers is what makes the book of Acts so lively and also so promising: lively in its portrayal of the Spirit’s past initiatives, and promising in what the range of the Spirit’s role can be among us today. What we must remember is that the Spirit’s ministry is always self-defined by what Jesus shared – “he [the Spirit] will bear witness about me.”

The third reality of the Spirit’s ministry is that he changes us from the “inside-out”. The spiritual life relies on the Spirit and not on our old and fallen habits of trying to “be like God”. Paul all but shouts this in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 when he wrote that the Spirit moves us “from glory to glory”—into an ever-increasing likeness to Christ who is the Image of God. He uses the gospel to win our hearts with God’s love and then to reshape our hearts into an alignment with God’s heart.

How does he do this? By pouring out God’s love in our hearts. It’s like a breeze coming into a forest that was once still and dormant in death: with his arrival the wind of the Spirit brings a wonderful animation that all can see and Christians will enjoy.

The post “And the Holy Spirit” first appeared on Cor Deo.