All posts by dax

Graceful gleanings

Grace, Quotes, ,

Thanks for looking at my bimonthly blog. With great excitement, much planning is being done for a new church plant which will commence in August, 2009… but that has led to a concommitent decrease in thoughts on practical grace.

Which is a bit grevious… my continued walking as a Christian in the depths of Christ, who he is, what he has done and continues to do for us, is both the theme of this site and the single greatest component of my insignificant life.

I was stopped in my tracks last week by this beautiful little book from C.J. Mahaney, titled The Cross Centered Life. It is a small gift book, only 85 pages, but it was wonderfully refreshing. Here is one of his illustrations, along with a few excellent quotes.

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C.J. Mahaney: “On Monday, Alice bought a parrot. It didn’t talk, so the next day she returned to the pet store. “He needs a ladder,” she was told. She bought a ladder, but another day passed and the parrot still didn’t say a word. “How about a swing?” the clerk suggested. So Alice bought a swing. The next day, a mirror. The next day, a miniature plastic tree. The next day, a shiny parrot toy. On Sunday morning, Alice was standing outside the pet store when it opened. She had the parrot cage in her hand and tears in her eyes. Her parrot was dead. “Did it ever say a word?” the store owner asked.

“Yes,” Alice said through her sobs. “Right before he died, he looked at me and asked, ‘Don’t they sell any food at that pet store?'”

Just as no amount of parrot-cage amentities can make up for a lack of parrot food, nothing can replace the gospel in a Christian’s life. Without it our souls will become like Alice’s pet — starving in a crowded cage.” (The Cross Centered Life, 18-19)

 

D. A. Carson, on Paul: “He cannot long talk about Christian joy, or Christian ethics, or Christian fellowship, or the Christian doctrine of God, or anything else, without finally tying it to the cross. Paul is gospel-centered; he is cross centered.” (The Cross & Christian Ministry, 38)

Sinclair Ferguson: “The evangelical orientation is inward and subjective. We are far better at looking inward than we are at looking outward. Instead, we need to expend our energies admiring, exploring, expositing and extolling Jesus Christ.”

Also Ferguson: “Our greatest temptation and mistake is to try to smuggle character into God’s work of grace.” (Know Your Christian Life, 73)

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May we continue to grow in the incredible grace and knowledge of our Savior!

Grace in participation

Grace, In Christ

One of my favorite passages over the past few weeks has been John 21. Most of us know John 21 because of the famous end — where Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him, and Peter responds three times that he does.

Fish also catch us in the grace of Christ
Fish also catch us in the grace of Christ

But I’m particularly thrilled at something that foreshadows Peter’s restoration and usefulness to Jesus that comes earlier in the chapter.

Peter and his cohorts have returned to Galilee after the crucifixion. They are back to fishing, which is what they were doing before they ever met Jesus. Peter in particular is a failure, having publically and emphatically denied that he even knew Jesus (Luke 22).

And Jesus (yea!) comes to them on the shore. And he reminds Peter of his calling, of the joy and absolute change of identity that it entailed.

Hang in there. We’re getting to a really striking Scripture.

Jesus again gives them a huge catch of fish. They realize it is him, and Peter jumps overboard to get to Jesus.

And here’s John 21:9-11: “So when they got out on the land, they saw a charcoal fire already laid and fish placed on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, ‘Bring some of the fish which you have now caught.’ Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty three…”

This is absolutely wonderful.

Jesus, the King of Kings, makes them breakfast. He serves them. That’s amazing, they don’t deserve it.

But that’s not all Jesus does. The text specifically says that Jesus has already made breakfast with supplies that he had. And then the text says that Jesus instructed Peter to bring some fish.

Why? Jesus already made them breakfast. He didn’t need more fish! Why ask for Peter to bring more?

Isn’t it because Jesus is going to allow Peter to participate in Jesus’ ministry? Jesus doesn’t need Peter’s fish… but he is full of grace in bringing Peter in, in having Peter be a part, of what Jesus has already done.

What a statement of divine sufficiency and yet love toward us, that God would want us to be a part of what he is doing.

Jesus even says to Peter, “bring some of the fish which you have now caught.” Remember, they were fishing and had not caught anything (v.5). So the fish which Jesus is referring to is fish that Jesus caught! Jesus told them to put the net down again, Jesus had the fish go in the net… and Jesus refers to the fish as Peter’s.

Lest we think it is just a metaphor, there were 153 of them. Not 152 or 100 or “a bunch.” 153.

Peter hasn’t even been restored.

God is so good to us. He saves us through faith in Jesus Christ, He restores us, and He lovingly and amazingly uses us… He doesn’t have to. He doesn’t need to. But He does.

Praise be to God! May He use us to catch much fish!

Grace found

Grace

Luke 5:11 “And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.”

I’ve been thinking on Luke 5 for the past week, preparing a bit for an upcoming family camp on the life of Peter. This verse, in particular, has struck me.

This verse is the summary of Peter’s, James’ and John’s response to the call of Christ.

There they were, set for life. They knew who they were – fishermen. They had a steady job. They had partners and families. They had an identity.

And Jesus came and turned that identity upside down. “Get away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” Peter exclaims. Knowing who he was, and then understanding that Jesus was calling him, Peter gladly dropped all he was to follow.

The way that Jesus enters the life of Peter is a longer subject. What I’ve been marveling at here in v.11 is the response that Jesus provokes in the ones who respond to the call.

They don’t need whipping. They don’t need another check on the radical commitment of the Christian. They don’t get a rulebook on what they need to do to follow Jesus.

Rather, the sign of the changed life of these men is that they “left everything and followed him.”

As I reflect on my own life and the lives of others I know who are Jesus followers, this is the radical heart-change of brokenness and Jesus-focus that He has brought about in them, too. To His glory and by His work.

The wondrous reality of a life invaded by God is that He’s utterly worth following. He has changed our identities forever, from electricians and mechanics and doctors and housewives, from husbands and fathers and wives and daughters, from honor student and musician and pauper and millionaire… to abject sinner. To adopted child. To follower of Him. To eternal worshiper.

This response in Luke 5:11 is the glad response of a changed heart.

I suppose I could stop here and ask, “Christian, do you have this all-encompassing changed heart?” or “Christian, here are four commands to make sure that you are following Jesus rightly.” But don’t you see that such questions miss the point? If the answer is “no,” then you’re not a Christian. If you’re whipping yourself to show you’re following, maybe you need the essential life-alteration of the risen Christ.

Perhaps you need Peter’s perspective, seeing his own sinfulness then joyfully discovering that Christ wants him nonetheless (and not just wants him, but will die for him).

Our response to the incarnate God who has invaded our lives is such a radical identity shift, that we will lay down our own rights, our own desires for self-justice, for self-worth, for self-fulfillment… and run after the only one who really saves.

Praise to our Savior, our blessed hope… may we joyfully follow Him forever, because like Peter, we’ve found grace.

A proclamation for today

In Christ

Well… I should be calling this “practical grace, monthly” for all the paucity of posts… much (good) going on in other areas of my life, for which I daily praise our Savior!

Proclaim the good news: we're in Christ!
Proclaim the good news: we are in Christ!

I’ve been chewing on Colossians 1:28 today, after discussing it with a friend. So often my post-conversion Christian life becomes about worrying if I’ve broken the rules, or slogging through a tough day. My Christianity can become one more task to be done, one more responsibility to be handled.

Which is why this verse is really exciting. Here’s the verse:

“We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ.”

Hmm. Admonishing and instructing doesn’t sound all that grace-oriented, does it? Great, you might think, another warning, another heavy burden of what I have to do as a Christian.

But that’s not it at all. Two really wonderful observations:

1. “Him we are proclaiming” — Paul is talking to the church, to believers. And he cries out, we are proclaiming Jesus! So day by day, after the Colossians were saved, Paul was still proclaiming Jesus. Still focused on the Savior. Still talking about the impact of who Jesus is, what he’s done, and why it matters. Preaching Jesus isn’t “just” to get people saved… He’s for every single moment of our lives on earth.

Wow, how I need to hear that every day. My Savior lives! His blood spilled for me! His perfections, mine! His righteousness, given! My salvation, assured — because of Him. And He continues to mold me, shape me, pray for me. “Him we are proclaiming,” that’s the focus.

2. The continual wonder of the Gospel is driven home by the context. Paul writes that He proclaims the mystery shown to the saints, to whom “God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). The Christ that Paul is proclaiming is the Christ who is in us, our only hope of glory.

This leads to a bit of a different emphasis for the “warning” that Paul is doing. Warning — don’t find your hope of glory in anything else. Warning — don’t swim back to self-righteousness, merit, or anything that might de-emphasize the amazing union you have received, being in Christ.

That’s why he’s so eager to be proclaiming through “teaching,” too. He has such a great struggle that the Christians there — and us, too — might have the “full assurance of understanding… of Christ Himself” (Colossians 2:2). We have been given such riches! If only our eyes would be opened to the amazing knowledge of God’s reality: we are His children, we have an eternal inheritance, and the mere moments on earth that we have should be gloriously poured out in moment-by-moment proclaiming of the wonders of our Savior.

So consider this proclamation for you, for me, today: Christ in you, the hope of glory! May we rejoice in our union, lean on Him, live lives for Him, because of what He’s done.

May we proclaim on earth what we will shout forever in heaven: Worthy is the Lamb!

A Few Words About Grace

Grace

I wonder sometimes how much wisdom we miss in the gathered wisdom of earnest believers in years past. We all know names like Calvin and Luther, but how many other Saints joyfully proclaimed the truth of the Gospel and are never read?

In that vein, I was reading a not-so-old-but-not-contemporary book on Romans by William R. Newell, published in 1938. It happened to be on my shelf, and several sections really caused me to pause and think… in a good way.

So I share a couple of sections with you, from Newell’s Romans Verse By Verse, pp. 246-247. May they also cause you to reflect on the wondrous grace that has been poured out on us in Christ!

 

“A FEW WORDS ABOUT GRACE”

[The first two sections were also good, but I’ve left them out for space constraints.]  

“III. The Proper Attitude of Man under Grace

1.  To believe, and to consent to be loved while unworthy, is the great secret.

2.  To refuse to make “resolutions” and “vows”; for that is to trust in the flesh.

3.  To expect to be blessed, though realizing more and more lack of worth.

4.  To testify of God’s goodness, at all times.

5.  To be certain of God’s future favor; yet to be ever more tender in conscience toward Him.

6.  To rely on God’s chastening hand as a mark of His kindness.

7.  A man under grace, if like Paul, has no burdens regarding himself; but many about others.

 

IV.  Things Which Gracious Souls Discover

1. To “hope to be better” is to fail to see yourself in Christ only.

2. To be disappointed with yourself, is to have believed in yourself.

3. To be discouraged is unbelief,-as to God’s purpose and plan of blessing for you.

4. To be proud, is to be blind! For we have no standing before God, in ourselves.

5. The lack of Divine blessing, therefore, comes from unbelief, and not from failure of devotion.

6. Real devotion to God arises, not from man’s will to show it; but from the discovery that blessing has been received from God while we were yet unworthy and undevoted.

7. To preach devotion first, and blessing second, is to reverse God’s order, and preach law, not grace. The Law made man’s blessing depend on devotion; Grace confers undeserved, unconditional blessing: our devotion may follow, but does not always do so,-in proper measure.”

Graceful Thoughts IV

In Christ, ,
The word of the cross illumines our lives
The word of the cross... is the power of God.

I’ve been thinking alot about the importance of the gospel recently. Particularly I’ve been thinking about how important continuing, increasing knowledge of Jesus Christ is to our ongoing life on earth.  In the midst of this thinking, my wife read me this quote from Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington, in The Great Exchange (p.129):

“Paul declares, ‘The word of the cross is… the power of God’ (1 Cor. 1:18). What a remarkable statement! God’s almighty, supernatural power is connected to a specific ‘word’ – the message of the cross – the preaching of the great facts of Christ’s atoning sacrifice as the provision of God’s love for guilty sinners. When this gospel of Christ’s great atonement is preached, God’s miraculous power to regenerate, restore, and renew sinners is displayed in those who are saved by it.

“This is the true gospel, the only gospel that unleashes the power of God by which those dead in sin are saved from the guilt, the consequences, and the enslaving power of their sin. Therefore, Paul was ‘not ashamed of the gospel’ because this message of the cross ‘is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek’ (Rom. 1:16). Substitute anything for the cross or add anything to the cross, whether good works or human philosophy, and the preaching is stripped of God’s power – for it is no longer God’s message. It ceases to be the gospel.”

 I liked the “word of the cross” being the power of God… may we never add to or take away what our Savior has paid for. Blessings!

In Step with the Truth of the Gospel of Grace

Grace,

But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?” (Galatians 2:14)

Galatians is a wonderful epistle where Paul vibrantly defends the gospel of grace. One well-known episode that Paul describes is his confrontation with Peter. Peter, after salvation, decided that he should start making differentiation between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians.

Paul “opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned” (Galatians 2:11). Peter was condemned because he was hypocritically acting as if a man were justified by the works of the law, not through faith in Christ.

Remember, this is after Peter’s conversion.

So it is possible to act in such a way, after we become Christians, that we with our actions deny the wondrous truth of salvation by faith alone.

By inspiration, Paul has a wondrous way of referring to Peter’s actions. “They were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel,” he says (Galatians 2:14). Literally the verse could be translated, “they did not walk uprightly with the truth of the gospel.”

If even Peter, the first of the apostles, could walk out of step with the good news of Jesus Christ, then perhaps we also can. We don’t make distinction between Jewish and Gentile believers, but we can also not be straightforward with the truth of the gospel.

• Do you feel like a better person when you’ve had a quiet time, read your Bible, been to church? Is God happier with you in these times? Perhaps you’re getting assurance not from Christ but from self.

• Do you think that not living up to certain standards makes a person an unbeliever? A backslider? Perhaps you’re making distinctions like Peter.

• Do you feel depressed and guilty when you don’t live up to behaviors that you would like to? Perhaps you’re applying Peter’s distinctions to your own life, and missing the gospel.

• Do you think you’re not so bad – as compared to others? Perhaps you are missing the depth of what Christ has done. Without proper perspective on the depth of sin, our own efforts can be much magnified.

Peter’s problem – and ours – was why he was trying to go back and keep the moral law. Making distinction over the keeping of the law – as opposed to the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross – was cheapening true grace. Making God’s approval (and salvation) contingent on personal morality rather than the work of Christ led to Peter’s condemnation.

Having begun by the Spirit, we know that we are not being perfected by the flesh (Galatians 3:3). We are being perfected by the Spirit, in the ongoing work of our increasing knowledge of what Jesus Christ has done for us, which produces the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control. We gladly respond to the wondrous truth of the gospel.

May we never stray from this wondrous grace. And if we do, like Peter may we quickly return.

To our Savior be the glory, forever and ever.

Grace in Truth

Grace, ,
Though inconvenient for some, truth exists!
Amazing... truth exists

Knowing truth is grace from God.

“Postmodern” has become something of a bad term in Christian circles. The general claim of postmodernity is that absolute truth is impossible to establish. We are too bound up in our subjective points of view, in our experiences and cultural limitations, to really be able to have a claim to objective truth.

If you think about it for a while, there is something to be said for the humility that this viewpoint entails. If I become less sure of my own perspective as the only truth, I’m less likely to impose my way of thinking rigidly on everyone around me. Science seems to have grasped at least a portion of this. It deals in hypotheses, not absolute truth; even the most dearly held theorems and “truths” are actually not, at their core, stated as absolutes.

Although postmodernity is wrong, it highlights that truth itself is an incredible grace from God.

I don’t mean the concept of truth. I mean actual truth. Truth that is correspondence to reality, the reality of the One who matters, our creator God. God has chosen to give humanity His Word, His Truth. This truth isn’t only a set of propositions, but narrative, metaphor, and ultimately relationship. Truth for us is made possible because the Holy Spirit opens eyes and biblical revelation leads to lives that are submitted to God’s reality. Truth is possible because true reality actually isn’t my perception, or your perception, but how things really are in the eyes of the only One who can be truly objective: our saving, redeeming, creating, judging, all-powerful God.

I know that’s a heady paragraph. But the Bible clearly affirms truth, and links it to grace. Colossians 1:6 says that truth is the way in which we understood the gospel of the grace of Christ. John 1:17 proclaims that grace and truth came to us in Jesus Christ. John 1:14 declares that His glory is full of grace and truth.

Our salvation is based on belief in actual truth. 2 Thessalonians 2:13 proclaims that “God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.” This verse clearly assumes that there is an actual truth, and belief in that truth is what, along with the Spirit’s work of sanctification, is what saves.

Grace and truth, connected to salvation and Jesus Christ.

All this isn’t just for the theologian. Our lives, spent in study of the Word, prayer, communion, and devoted following after Christ, are being more and more molded into the true reality – the reality of relationship with our Savior. We get to more and more see the world as He sees it; more and more have our own personal subjectivities submitted to Biblical reality. Our lives in Christ more and more resound with the reality of the living God.

Truth matters. The Bible is God’s truth, not only in proposition, but in its being used by the Holy Spirit to shape our understanding of reality into what reality actually is. Postmodernity is right in that I, a fallen human being, could never understand true reality. It takes a perfect God, who does know and understand all reality, to declare what truth is.

That our God would go to the effort of not allowing us to simply live in our “rational” self-deluded state, but break through our blindness, patiently direct us and mold us and grow us more and more into correspondence to what reality is: this is amazing grace.

The grace of truth.

“For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17).

Graceful Thoughts III

Quotes,

Here’s a brief quote from J.I. Packer’s Knowing God (p. 250-251). My wife has been blessed with a recent book study on this classic Christian text, and occasionally shares a wonderful nugget. Enjoy!

“This is what all the work of [God’s] grace aims at – an ever deeper knowledge of God, and an ever closer fellowship with him. Grace is God drawing us sinners closer and closer to himself.

“How does God in grace prosecute this purpose? Not by shielding us from assault by the world, the flesh, and the devil, nor by protecting us from burdensome and frustrating circumstances… but rather by exposing us to all these things, so as to overwhelm us with a sense of our own inadequacy, and to drive us to cling to him more closely. This is the ultimate reason, from our standpoint, why God fills our lives with troubles and perplexities of one sort and another: it is to ensure that we shall learn to hold him fast.”

“This truth has many applications. One of the most startling is that God actually uses our sins and mistakes to this end. He employs the educative discipline of failures and mistakes very frequently. It is striking to see how much of the Bible deals with godly people making mistakes and God chastening them for it.”

“… Is your trouble a sense of failure? The knowledge of having made some ghastly mistake? Go back to God; his restoring grace waits for you.”

 

And one brief verse for today:

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18, ESV)

Praise be to God for His continued care for us, and His work on us, every day!

Absolute Security

Grace, ,
An oft-needed remembrance of the New Covenant
What does communion have to do with security?

My Lord is so constantly good to me that I take it for granted. I’m thinking today that when I get to heaven, I’ll fall and worship as I become aware of all the ways that my wondrous Savior protected and delivered me while I blissfully went about my oft self-centered life.

As the popular song goes, “I can only imagine…”

I was struck anew by the depth of my Savior’s love for me as I thought about “covenant” this weekend. I was reading 1 Samuel 18-20, where David is in such trouble. God delivers him time after time, but it seems like David’s always getting away from Saul by the skin of his teeth. (Do teeth have skin? I guess that’s probably the point.)

So David turns to the one he can absolutely trust: Jonathan.

Why could he trust Jonathan? 1 Samuel 20:8 tells us, as David says, “Therefore you shall deal kindly with your servant, for you have brought your servant into a covenant of Yahweh with you.”

David knew he could absolutely trust Jonathan, because of the depth of covenant faithfulness. Jonathan’s covenant (a covenant before God) meant David had one person he could absolutely trust.

When circumstances are going haywire, when the world seems against me, when other friends seem distant, when there’s nowhere else to go… David knew where to go. To the one he had a covenant with.

I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to see that the text in 1 Samuel is pointing us to the security of a true covenant.

As a New Testament believer, I know that I have this kind of relationship with someone. A covenant relationship. The word is used 33 times in the New Testament, particularly to refer to what Jesus Christ has done.

Jesus Christ is “the guarantee of a better covenant” (Hebrews 7:22). Jesus is the “mediator of a new covenant” (Hebrews 9:15), a covenant that the only true God makes with those who put their faith in Christ (Hebrews 10:16-23).

There is a depth of faithfulness, not by me, but for me. Because the covenant giver promises steadfast love to the receiver of that covenant. And we have received a new covenant from God himself.

So no matter what I’ve done, no matter what scrape I’m in, no matter how frightened I’ve allowed myself to be in this world, I know where to go for help. For faithful love. For merciful care. For security. I go to the one true God, through Jesus Christ.

Because of the covenant He has extended to me.

This steadfast faithfulness of God toward me is something I’m so prone to forget. So I have to remind myself all the time. God is so gracious to me, not because of my adequacy, but because of His covenant (2 Corinthians 4:4-6).

Thankfully, God knows that I am prone to discount His faithfulness. So He’s given me, us, a constant reminder. It’s called communion.

Look at what communion is a reminder of:

Luke 22:20: “And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.'”

1 Corinthians 11:25: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.”

When I remember the blood of Christ, I’m remembering the new covenant. I’m remembering that God himself has declared covenant faithfulness to me. I can trust in His loving care. I can rest in His fantastic mercy.

O, the depths of the riches and the kindness of God. How unsearchable His ways! How wondrous is His grace!

In the words of D. Ralph Davis, a commentator on 1 Samuel,
“Security is an eight-letter word. It is spelled C-O-V-E-N-A-N-T.”

Praise be to the mediator of the New Covenant!