God Won't Meet You Halfway

When I was a boy one of my favorite books was "Where the Red Fern Grows."  When I showed the movie to my kids I tried to stop it before the end, right after his dogs win the hunting contest.  

"Well, what a good story.  A kid gets some dogs, loves them, and they win a contest."  

But they could see there was further to go on the little red line at the bottom of the Netflix screen, and insisted that we watch to the end.  I tried to warn them.  I will try not to spoil it for you.

Anyway, there is a line in the book when the boy is struggling to get the money to buy these dogs that he wants more than anything in life.  His grandpa tells him that he has to meet God halfway, that if he will do his part, then God will do his.  This helps the boy own his responsibility and work hard to get his dogs.

The advice is practical, and it helps the boy to work hard, but there is one problem... it isn't really true.  

This gets us to a theological question that works out in our lives in all sorts of daily kinds of ways.  In theological terms, we refer to this as the interplay between God's sovereignty and human responsibility.  And so we often ask, where does God's sovereignty end and my responsibility begin?  Is it halfway?

It isn't halfway, but neither is it 90/10 or 99/1.  This is the wrong way of looking at the situation.  When we look at it this way, we wonder how much we have to do before God's sovereignty kicks in.  How much planning do I need to do before God's will starts operating?  How many times do I need to tell the gospel to my unbelieving friend before I pass the baton to God?  How much did I bring this bad thing upon myself, and how much was it God doing it?  How far do I need to walk before he meets me?

This question gets ramped up when someone becomes a Calvinist, because they begin to see that the Bible ascribes absolute sovereignty to God.  Our God sits in the heavens, he does whatever he pleases.  God works all things according to the counsel of his will.  The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.  Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord commanded it?  Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?  Etc.

So then we start to wonder where our responsibility fits at all.  What percent is mine?  Is it zero?

But these questions are looking at the whole thing wrong.  God's sovereignty and man's responsibility are not on the same plane, so both are complete.  They do not limit one another.  God's sovereignty undergirds man's responsibility, it upholds it.  This is why it says that you should work out your salvation with fear and trembling because it is God who is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.  God is completely sovereign.  Man is completely responsible.  There is no place where your responsibility ends and his sovereignty begins, or where his sovereignty ends and your responsibility begins.

Does God keep you alive or do you have to eat to live?  Yes.
How much planning do I need to do before God's sovereignty kicks in?  You don't stop planning because of God's sovereignty.  He works in and through your planning and your lack of planning.  

But there is something that is opposite God's sovereignty; your worry.  Plan, be responsible, preach, love, serve, pray, and trust God.  He is working all things for your good if you are in Jesus through faith and rebirth.  Even the bad things.  Do your responsibility and rest in God's sovereignty completely.

If the boy really believed his grandpa in the book, the end would be utterly devastating because it would show that he didn't go his halfway enough after all.  Try harder next time, this one is on you, not God.

We have a better hope, a better message, a better God than one who meets us halfway.  And rather than destroy our responsibility, it enables us to take it in hand freely while still resting fully in God.

One More On Unrest

Friend: Christian, how are you?

Christian: Fine.

Friend: Right, but how are you?

Christian: Oh, yeah.  I am learning through confession, praying out my anxiety, and repentance to let my restless heart find its rest in God more.

Friend: Beautiful.

Christian: It really is.  I know it will take time, but I am learning.

Friend: He does tell us to strive to enter the rest.

Christian: I am striving, and I am gaining.  All by God's grace.

Friend: I'm glad to hear.  I do need to tell you that there is a degree of unrest that you will not overcome until the Day.

Christian: Thanks for the pep talk.

Friend:  Haha.  Yeah.  But it really is encouraging in one way.

Christian: Okay, how?

Friend:  Well, the rest we get now in Christ, which is real, is only the beginning.  It is only a shadow of what is coming.  It is like the first sunny day of spring, even though it starts snowing half-way through the day.

Christian: Okay.

Friend:  The real rest God promises is still coming.  Canaan was a picture of it.  It is the destination, the goal, the country for which you have been longing all your new life.

Christian: Heaven?

Friend: Yeah, the new heavens and the new earth.  The resurrection.  The great hope.

Christian: That is the goal.

Friend:  It is the goal and it is our home.  We are exiles, away from home, traveling.  We are ambassadors sent here from a future kingdom to establish outposts and offer citizenship to all through the blood of our king who will come to establish his kingdom.

Christian: That is a cool way to think of it.

Friend:  It is what the Bible says.  And since we are exiles and ambassadors, we have a longing for our home.  We are not fully at rest here.  When you are traveling you can get rest at a hotel, and it can be refreshing, but there is nothing like the rest you have when you finally get home.  

Christian:  So that is the restlessness that I will always have here?

Friend:  Yes.  But it is an expectant restlessness.  It is a restlessness that keeps you moving towards the rest.  We call it hope.  It reminds us of the perfect rest that is coming.

Christian:  Right, who hopes for what he sees?

Friend:  Exactly.  But we will see it eventually, so keep working on your restlessness by faith, and what remains will chase you home to the rest that is so perfect that no vacation, no weekend, no summer, no perfect night of sleep will seem to have ever had a hint of true rest in it by comparison.  

  

Sanctification by Faith

There have been lots of discussions surrounding sanctification lately, and they are good discussions to have.  Being made holy (sanctification) is a beautiful gift from God, and one to be sought after with care and delight.  There are lots of things that can be said about it, and I want to say just a few today.  

I want to talk about the incredible power of sanctification by faith in God's promises.

There has been much discussion lately on the sanctifying power of believing God's promises of justification.  Justification is a critically important and amazing truth about our being reconciled to God through his legal declaration of us as righteous based on the righteousness of Jesus alone, accounted to us by faith alone.  It is because of this that we can stand before the holy God despite our sin.  There are lots of uses and applications of this great truth.  It gives deep comfort to the troubled conscience, it gives massive rejoicing to the poor in spirit who know they cannot approach God without a mediator, it provides the promised blessing of access to the Father to all the nations, and enables us to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

What has been emphasized lately in neo-calvinist circles has been the powerful sanctifying effects of resting in our justification by faith alone.  When we come to rest in Christ for our acceptance with God, it heals all sorts of weird human behaviors that stem from compensating for things like fear, guilt, shame, longing for acceptance, identity, etc.  Another way to say this is that our lack of justification before God has led to all sorts of bad things in us at a very fundamental level.  So, for example, the more you believe that you are justified in Christ, and accepted with God, the less you will need to compensate for feelings of guilt and shame by deceiving others to appear better than you are, or acting out violently when your guilt and shame are threatened to be exposed by others.  For another example, the more we come to rest in God's declaration of us as accepted with him, the less we will live in fear and be slaves to the approval of others.  We will feel so safe in Christ that we will not seek security in comfort foods, overworking, body image, etc.  And we will feel so approved by God that we will not have to manipulate others to get approval either by belittling others, or by using them to bolster our sense of self-worth.  Much that is helpful can be explored in this, and Tim Keller is a great teacher to guide you through it.  His book Counterfeit Gods is a good place to start.

And God gives even more grace.

While God's word is full of promises to us about our justification in Christ, which have a dramatic effect on our sanctification, his word is also full of promises to us about our sanctification in Christ.  When these promises are believed, they have an incredible, transforming power.

Let me give a few examples.

Ezekiel 36 is a beautiful passage giving predictive promises about the new covenant in Christ.  If you are not familiar with this passage, you should make it a priority in your study.  Within this great chapter, full of incredible promises of what God will do (has done in our day) is a verse that reads, "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules."*  

If you are a Christian this has happened to you.  You have been:

-sprinkled with clean water to cleanse you from all your uncleannesses and idols.
-given a new heart and a new spirit
-had your heart of stone removed and been given a heart of flesh
-been inhabited by the Holy Spirit of God with the result that you walk in God's statutes and are careful to obey his rules.

Do you truly believe these things about yourself?  Do you think of it as a mark of humility to refuse to believe these promises?  Is refusing to believe God humble?  If you are in Christ, these things are true of you.  If they are not true of you, you are not in Christ.  If you stumble over that, please stop reading this and go read 1 John 3:1-10 carefully.  If you are not in Christ, you may freely come to him through faith and repentance.

Another great chapter along these lines is Romans 6.  Again, if you are not highly familiar with this chapter, I encourage you to make that a priority in your Bible reading.  Paul has been laying out the doctrine of justification, that we are accepted by God apart from our works, and so the objection comes: should we just keep on sinning then?  His answer is awesome; how could that be possible in light of the radical change God has effected in you?  "How can we who died to sin live any longer in it?"  The rest of the chapter unpacks this idea.  Here are a few highlights:

"We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin" (6).

"So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus" (11).

"For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace" (14).

"But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed" (17).

"But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life" (22).

Do you believe these things about yourself?  Do you believe that your old self is crucified and dead with Christ?  Do you believe you are not a slave to sin?  Do you consider yourself dead to sin?  Do you believe that sin will not have dominion over you?  Do you believe that you have become obedient from the heart?

This is how you fight temptation to sin at the root level, at the level of faith.  You remind yourself who you are, and what God has done for you and in you, no matter how you feel or how strong the temptation is. This is what Paul teaches in Colossians 3:9-10.  "Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator."  How do you not lie?  By seeing (by faith) that your old self is gone, and you are a new self in Christ, who is being renewed.  

Believe and walk in freedom.  It is hard to overstate the importance of faith in the Christian life.  We have incredible promises, lets reach out for them in faith and find greater growth in our sanctification.  And if you have come to think that sanctification only comes through resting in the justification promises, I encourage you to widen your scope.











*Ezek. 36:25-27

Yet More Empty Nagging Unrest

Friend:  Christian, it's been a little while.  How is your soul?

Christian:  Ultimately it is well.  I still hunger for a greater experience of God's grace in my life.

Friend:  Still don't feel at rest?

Christian:  Not fully.  Growing in confession and bringing my worries to God has been awesome.  It has taught me to learn to rest by faith in his forgiveness and in his sovereign care.  And it increases my appetite for more of that rest.  When I hear Jesus say "Come to me and I will give you rest," my heart reaches for more of that.

Friend: Yeah, mine too.

Christian: I wonder what that coming to him looks like?  Any other ideas?

Friend: It is super important that we always remember that it is by faith.  We find his rest not by working enough for it, but by resting in him.  But because our hearts are restless we have to learn to rest in Christ.  We learn to trust him.

Christian: Yeah.  I have found rest in Christ, and yet my heart grows restless again.

Friend: Like the Psalters say, the road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but the road to heaven is not paved.  It is an uphill climb.  Think for a minute with me.  What else leads you to unrest?

Christian: Oh, that is a good question.  I guess, sometimes I feel like I am always looking for something.  Kind of like I am hungry but food doesn't really help, homesick at home, and so I restlessly look for completion.

Friend:  There is a lot there.  That statement might take a few conversations to explore.

Christian:  Okay.

Friend:  Well, for starters, that is how sin works; always hungry never satisfied.  Always looking, never finding.  Always working, never resting.

Christian: Yeah, always winter, never Christmas.

Friend:  Always winter.  It is really obvious with some sins.  Take lust for example.  Lust refuses to be satisfied with the beautiful thing right in front of it.  It always wants more.

Christian: Yeah, it leads from one kink to the next till water won't even come through the hose. 

Friend:  Right.  Or greed and covetousness.  Always wanting a little more, always longing for what someone else has.  Even if you get it, your eye moves to the next thing.

Christian: It's true.

Friend:  You can do it with religion or spirituality too.  One more rule kept, one more service attended, and then I will be satisfied.  One more spiritual experience, one more hour of solitude and I will reach it.  One more mountain climbed, blog read, vacation taken, opponent disproven, Netflix binge completed, one more drink consumed, promotion won, friend made, pound lost...but it is chasing the wind.

Christian: You describe my symptoms well, but what I need is a cure.

Friend:  Haha. Truly.  Jesus is the cure.  Faith in him.  Believing that it is finished.  And it is.  The thing you are striving for by lust, by covetousness, by religion, you can't get to it.  It is too far to reach by either path.

Christian: It is.

Friend: That is a necessary truth to come to.  And that is why Christmas came.  Jesus was made man to get the blessing for you, he got the rest to give it to us.  And to do it, he had to swallow the curse.  At the end of his day was no happy rest.  But because of that, it is finished.

Christian:  I know this, I have believed it to become a Christian. 

Friend:  You have.  And you need to believe it again today.  You need to believe it enough to rest in Jesus now.  

Christian: Yeah.  When I am restlessly searching for something, I am not resting in the everything that is promised to me in Jesus.

Friend:  Right.  Stop looking for it in sin.  It isn't there.  In the words of Jesus and the prophets, repent.

Christian:  It really isn't there, but why do I keep looking?

Friend:  That is sin and death at work in your heart.  Always promising, never delivering.  But Jesus promises and delivers.  And you can rest in that by faith in repentance now.

Christian: That's why Martin Luther said repentance is a daily thing.

Friend:  It is.  And somehow we have come to think of it as an ugly word, a monstrous thing.  But repentance is beautiful.  It is refusing to drink the poison.  It is sitting down to breakfast on the beach instead of running from the sunrise.  

Christian: It is coming to Christ to find rest.

Friend:  Exactly.  So repent daily.  Believe that Jesus' work for you is enough today.  Rest from your lust.  Rest from your covetousness.  Rest from your endless religious pursuit.  

Christian: That sounds perfect.  So the road to heaven is paved after all.

Friend:  Oh.  It most certainly is not.  The rest now comes in the middle of tears.  It comes alongside the hardship.  It comes with affliction.  It is an appetizer of the feast to come.  And the perfect rest is coming for all those who rest in Jesus now.

Christian: It is.

Friend: That is for another day.  Today remember what the prophet said:

               "In repentance and rest you shall be saved;

               In quietness and in trust shall be your strength."*

*Isaiah 30:15

Tasty Christians

Being occupied this week at a conference, I asked my brother Sam Thiessen to do a guest post to keep things moving forward here at the Lamp Post.  He has not disappointed.  If you enjoy it, click on his name above for more.

Although I might be running the risk of stepping on the toes of my gracious host here, I'm going to talk about something from the Sermon on the Mount. Something I even learned from Tom, although I have since added my own little Levitical spin on things.

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus tells his followers that they are the salt of the earth. For a long time I heard this explained in terms of the preserving qualities of salt, especially in the days before refrigeration. Christians were to be a preserving element in an otherwise decaying world (certainly true, but is that the focus of the text?). Under this view, Christians are a sort of righteous Lot and his family, preventing the judgment of God from descending on a world in rebellion against Him. It was Tom who first pointed out to me that this view fails to see what is right there in the same verse: “...but if salt loses its flavor, how shall it [the earth] be seasoned? It is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.”

So the important salt-characteristic in the text is not its preserving quality; but its flavor, its ability to season an otherwise bland meal. And so I was satisfied, the text is not about preservation, but about flavor, and I went on my merry way. But there were more questions to be answered: who is concerned with the flavor of the world, who is tasting the earth, and either enjoying it or spitting it out? 

I think the answer is found in Leviticus 2:13: “...with all your offerings you shall offer salt,” and also in Ezekiel 43:24: “when you offer them [consecration sacrifices] before the LORD, the priests shall throw salt on them, and they will offer them up as a burnt offering to the LORD.” (see also Rev. 3:16) The sacrifices laid out in Leviticus are full of meal language, of killing, separating, burning (cooking?), and eating. The sacrifices are a pleasing aroma to God, but under the Old Covenant, the meals that men could bring to God were very limited and specific.

But with the coming of Jesus, in the New Covenant and New Creation, God lays claim to the whole world as His, as a meal for Him to enjoy. And Christians are what makes the food flavorful and savory in His mouth. This idea brings the interpretation of Christians-as-flavorful-salt around full circle to the idea of Christians-as-preserving-salt, the Christian brings flavor to the earth so that it may be acceptable to God as a sacrifice. Both function to save an otherwise dying and decaying world (of course, only through the death of being eaten and the resurrection thereafter).

The Christian, like Jesus, is engaged in making all things new, in redeeming the world from the curse of the fall. It is a continuation of the idea of becoming like that which you worship and serve. We, as followers of Jesus, are made little conquerors of death, small bringers of new life, and agents of the restoration of all things. We, as Christ's disciples, are to be the flavorful salt of the covenant (Lev. 2:13a), bringing the earth and everything in it to our God for his pleasure.

“Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another.” (Mark 9:50)

Porn, Laziness, and Facebook

I got started thinking about this topic because I was reflecting on why Facebook can be so addictive.  

What is it about Facebook that has so many of us repeatedly engaged throughout every day?   
Why do we compulsively come back to it to check in?
Why is it such an easy break?
Why is it so popular and almost addictive?

There are lots of different factors at play here.  To hang it all on one branch would be reductive.  We could consider things like the ego inflation from friends and status likes, and the opportunity for self-aggrandizement.  We could bring up the good motivations like keeping up with distant friends and family.  We could think about the power of habits.  But I want to focus on one element that I think comes into play, yet isn't highly visible at first glance.  That is Facebook as social pornography.  In order to explain myself, I will start by talking about pornography. 

Somewhere C. S. Lewis invites us to consider a person who loves eating, and eventually twists that desire to the point that sometimes when he is hungry he will go look at movies of people eating, audibly enjoying themselves.  It is laughable because it is weird and out of place.  I figure you see the analogy.

So, since porn is weird and out of place, why do people engage in it?  What is the draw?  Again, reasons could be multiplied, but I want to point to one specific reason.  Why would a husband or wife look at pornography when they have their own spouse to enjoy?  Why would a hungry person choose to watch a movie of people eating rather than sit down to a meal?  And similarly, why do young men delay marriage for years, content with their porn habit to keep their desires (somewhat) met?  I think a huge factor that plays into it (besides the obvious lust) is laziness, which, not surprisingly is a besetting sin of men.

To cook a real meal involves some preparation.  Likewise to engage a real woman involves some preparation.  The work is fun and good, and all part of the enjoyment, but the point is that it requires something of you in the big picture.  You can't be a self-serving jerk and then expect her to be warm and ready.  And even if she is, she is probably hoping for some consideration in the exchange.  It is not about using another person merely as an object for your own personal pleasure.  You might have to take a shower and put down whatever you are snacking on.  For a single man, it requires the work of pursuing a woman as a wife.  It involves having a place where the two of you can live and make a home.  It involves having a steady job.  It involves thinking about her and putting her ahead of yourself.  These things are glorious, and life is in them, but to the lazy man they seem better pursued tomorrow than today.  So he takes the easy route and touches the screen.  And the woman on the screen always seems warm and ready.  And she asks nothing of you...except for your soul.

Okay, remember we were actually talking about Facebook?  We are a people hungry for community, and Facebook is always warm and ready.  And it is all on my terms.  I don't have to look you in the eye, I don't have to give any more than I feel like giving, I can always just close the browser.  I can take my quick little fix of community without having to really care or invest.  If I don't like what you are saying, I scroll past.  To stop being friends, I just click the button.  We can even continue to have mutual friends and it won't really get awkward.

But real community is much harder.  In the pursuit of real community you may actually want me to listen to you, and if I check out, you might take offense or go away.  Real community takes self-sacrifice to do it right.  If I go on a confused rant during lunch I will still have to sit at the table with you and see the bewildered look on your face.  If I sin against you, I need to humble myself, say I am sorry, and make it right.  Yet real community means real people, people who strive with me.  It means learning emotional and spiritual maturity together.  It means really hearing you laugh and really seeing you cry.  It means tasting the food you made and singing with you when one of us is a little off key.  It means approaching God together in worship when we know each others' sins.

So a major snare of Facebook, though it surely has legitimate uses, is that it can become a kind of social pornography.  But here is the problem with the path of the lazy; it keeps promising and never really delivering.  And so you have to keep checking back.

Thankfully we know the One who promises big and delivers even more, and he is inviting us to have real community with Him through Jesus.

Holy Weak

Hungering for something,

enacting my scarcity.

Running lamely for strength,

and losing clarity.

Letting laughter be turned,

in the house of tears.

Surrendering my will

to kick against the spears.

It's Friday, I'm in love.

Sunday, don't come too late.

When new volition springs,

to kick sulphury gates.

Wisdom makes a home

and laughs at darkest fates.

The clear Word rises,

new legs alight.

Festival tables spread,

Hunger dances with delight.