Category: Uncategorized

Not Doing Much

He is not righteous who does much, but he who, without work, believes much in Christ. Martin Luther.

Every day a person must ask themselves how is it that they can stand before a holy God. If they don’t ask this question they are kidding themselves. If they find wrong answers to this question then they are condemned to live a lie. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ provides a correct answer to this problem.

The gospel of Jesus Christ provides the necessary infrastructure the necessary preconditions the fundamental bases by which a person can stand before a holy God. Only through the blood of Jesus Christ atoning for sin and the rendering of his active obedience in fulfilling all righteousness-only through these can a person put their faith and trust in Christ and so be accepted in the beloved.

Each day we must go about the business of life with these first principles in our mind. These first principles are the principles of the gospel. We must ask ourselves how can we stand before a holy God? As we carry out our day we find that we transgress we injure we break laws we cross boundaries, we trample upon prohibitions, And above all we offend the integrity of the essence of God who is holy. Not only that each day we fail to do all that we ought to do. We omit all of the love all of the right doing all of the right-thinking all of the right being that we ought to do. These omissions are crippling. The omissions expose how sinful we really are. For all that is required of us all that would be in our power yet, we failed to do. And so Jesus has fulfilled the law fulfills all the things that we have omitted. His obedience is impeccable. Even as we failed to climb the mountain of each day, Jesus has climbed it and climbed it again and again and again. There is no aspect of the ascent that Jesus has not mounted he is obeyed all fulfilled all reached the pinnacle and remained. Jesus himself in his moral purity can stand in the presence of God.

So the real and legitimate question of how can we stand before a holy God must be asked in a new way every day. It is the question of justification. How can we be justified before God? Of course, this brings us back to the necessity of a saviour who can both atone for sin receive just punishment for those acts and yet also have fulfilled all the laws demands bringing us not merely to zero but bringing us even to God.

Although scholars may debate whether or not justification by faith alone is the centre of the apostle Paul’s theology, it cannot be debated that justification must be at the centre of ours. Without justification by faith alone, there is no way for sinners like us to stand before a holy God. We’re in trouble if we neglect the answer, or rely upon false answers. We cannot continue to live with any kind of honesty, transparency, authenticity, or reality without justification by faith alone. Only as we have this true answer, namely reliance upon the atonement and the imputation of the obedient righteousness of Jesus Christ, that we received simply by a pure reliance upon him-only as we do that can we have acceptance with God. Only then can we stand.

A Dispenser of Salvation

Helmut Thielicke, Politics.

When Helmut Thielicke, the Lutheran pastor, ran afoul of the Nazi regime in the mid-1930’s he had to wrestle with how to submit to government, how to resist encroachment on the advance of the gospel, and how to discern which political groups to associate with.

In his later volume, titled simply, Politics, published in 1979, he employs much of Luther’s theology, which has come down to us popularly as a Two Kingdoms approach. Nevertheless, Theilicke has a category for understanding totalitarian governments in a way that differs from authoritarian ones. This difference demands a different approach.

Thielicke notes that a state can switch. The state can move from “its sphere of competence as an order of secular power, a kingdom on the left hand, and purports to be a dispenser of salvation.”

This move of totality, is a religious claim on all citizens, all souls.

What is the threshold in Western democracies for a move toward totality? Do the technological abilities of the surveillance state create a new totality even as the remnants of the old liberal democracy offer a familiar facade?

“Hungering for genuine revival”

By this late date, evangelicals should be hungering for a genuine revival of the church, aching to see it once again become a place of seriousness where a vivid other-worldliness is cultivated because the world is understood in deeper and truer ways, where worship is stripped of everything extraneous, where God’s Word is heard afresh, where the desolate and broken find sanctuary.”

David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland, 226.

Tracking Newspeak

This is my personal attempt to keep up with new terms or old words used in new ways as they relate to social tensions.

Abolitionist

No Platform Policy

  Autogynephile

  • A person who is attracted to women only. 

Sometimes we fight differently, and sometimes old fashioned, pre-internet, real-world, peaceful man behavior is what is called for when dealing with autogynephiles who get aroused by entering women’s spaces.

Extractive Political Leadership

  • Leaders who exploit or extract from the public good, rather than building, growing or stewarding it. “…helpful if you are trying to understand our current extractive political leadership and its seemingly bizarre indifference to the future.”
  • “https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1420422688112201742

Moralistic Authoritarian

Medical Apartheid

Locking Out

Deep Wells 01 “Cacophony, Coercion, Confusion”

This is the first in a series of quotes from the old ‘new’ book, Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World, by David F. Wells.

Now the divine imperative — “your will be done”– has gone and all that remains is the cacophony of opinions, the coercion of fashion, and the confusions of a broken world. The once grand, majestic purposes of God have slipped from our sight. Now what we see are only the blind workings of nature with their tragedies, the impersonal forces of the economy which often seem so callous, the malice of evil people, and the peculiar anxieties of those adrift in a sea of affluence. 

249-250. 

Observations about Treaty Seven Nations

My family made the pilgrimage to the Calgary Stampede and visited the Elbow River Camp. Here are a couple of thoughts:
1)Most of the tribal flags of the Treaty 7 nations incorporated a Union Jack. It was quite striking to see so many representations of Great Britain on Canadian soil. In the flags, there is a keen awareness of the relationship between these Treaty 7 signers and the Crown. Since these nations border the United States, it seems like these flags were clearly distinguishing who the nations had brokered their treaties with.
2)In one booth selling crafted beadwork, a necklace had this verse written on a medallion, John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” I asked the owner if she was a Christian. She confirmed that she was a Christian and proceeded to tell me about all of the different Christian ministry among local Siksika (Blackfoot). We knew some people in common and encouraged each other in the Lord. Although there is a lot of publicity for indigenous peoples to reclaim religious practices, it can be overlooked that the history of Christianity among indigenous nations is older than Canada’s Confederation, and the gospel is still being embraced and promoted.
3)I was reminded that contrary to what the media reports, there are those among the Treaty 7 nations who embrace all of their history (including the painfully tragic parts), who are nevertheless supportive of longstanding relationships, as well as those who live for Jesus Christ without denying their history.

Sorting and Organizing.

I’m going to make an attempt at consolidating and reorganizing some of my writing. I’ve tried substack, but it’s word processor is a nightmare. Christel and I have tried to blog together, but we tend to write on different themes so it can be a bit of a schizophrenic thread. I also write for The Gospel Coalition Canada, which is a great privilege. I’ll continue writing for them with devotional and pastoral themes.
I keep a scholarly blog on the Scottish patron Robert Haldane (my PhD studies). Finally, but most importantly I write for my local church, culminating in preaching regularly from God’s Word.

The Christian’s Passport

Do you have a passport? If you don’t it likely means that you haven’t had the opportunity to travel outside of the country. If you’ve had to travel for work or a vacation, you know that a passport is essential. It’s how you’re identified.

Christians have a passport too. It is given to them by God. It is the gifted identity of being a believer and a sufferer. Paul says:

For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake (Phil 1:29).

To believe and to suffer are the two great gifts which God grants to each citizen, sojourning toward the heavenly city (Phil 3:20, Heb 11:10,16). Their passport is a two-part gift. First, the Scripture says that believing in him is something granted.

To believe is a gift. Faith is a gift given by a generous God

You cannot earn the type of belief that saves.
Faith is not achievement. It is a gift that recieves what Jesus has done. Faith is a gift recieved with a personal note that says, “It is Finished.” The classic summary of this gift of belief is Ephesians 2:8, “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”

Second, is the other part of the gift that must be included. It has been granted to you, not only to be believe, but to suffer for his sake.

Suffering is a gift, as much as believing is. But notice again, very carefully here. It is not pointless suffering. Ours are not nihilistic agonies.

The gift is to suffer for his sake. It’s so important that Paul repeats this purpose twice in this verse “for the sake of Christ” “for his sake”.

Recently I’ve been working at getting a travel visa to go to a foreign country. What is clear to me, is that this country considers it a privilege to come there. So they extend visas to foreigners, as a gift. It’s become clear that no foreigner has a right to enter that country. It is the same in Canada.

In the same way, God gives travel documents to citizens of his kingdom. Faith and suffering are the gifts that God gives to us as visa documents to permit our entrance into his kingdom. If we are citizens of the kingdom we will have both: faith in him and suffering for his sake. If we don’t then we will be illegal aliens and will be banned from entering Christ’s kingdom. Like the fool Ignorance in Pilgrim’s Progress, we will attempt to enter the Celestial City and yet have no parchment giving us admittance. Jesus will say, “Depart from me, I never knew you” (Matthew 7:21-23).

Now you might be thinking, “I’m suffering with chronic illness, or depression or unemployment or lonliness, but I’m not really being persecuted for the sake of Christ. I’m not suffering like Christians in Western China or Northern Sudan, or North Korea.”

First we need to recognize that suffering in faith is a great trial. Because although you may not be persecuted (technically), all Christian suffering is a type of persecution, because the world the flesh and the devil wants us to forsake Christ.

Every bit of suffering is an occasion for us to be opposed by the voice that says to us like Job’s wife, “just curse God and die!” (Job 2:9).

So when you suffer, you can still sing the hymn and claim the promise that, “Jesus Shall Reign”.

This is our calling, namely to live by the gifts given to us. That gift is to believe and to suffer for his sake. It’s revolutionary, because it shows that we are “strangers and exiles here” (Heb 11:13, cf. 1Pet 2:11).

Do you have this passport?

Poetry for Pastors: Two Tramps in Mudtime by Robert Frost

I thought I’d post some poems that I’ve found helpful over the years. Poetry stirs both mind and soul. It gets beneath the layers and chills you or warms you as need requires.

When I look at the critical assessments of most poetry, I find that they sterilize all of the good bacteria out of them. Literary analysis can be helpful, but too often it microwaves the germ of the seed and kills any possibility that a poem can be fruitful. Its the same thing many scholars do with the Holy Scriptures.

So instead of analysis, I’ll leave my own comments to lie unfiltered except by my own limited understanding.

The following poem by Robert Frost is for the pastor on Monday. After preaching on Sunday and doing good ministry, he can enjoy the benefit of a job well done, a recognition of relative faithfulness to his calling, and hope for good fruit to result as God gracious works.

But on Monday, the pastor receives, or has received already, the cold criticism of others. The criticism comes up out of nowhere and more often than not, the criticism is correct, as far as it goes. The task for the pastor is to remember that while the critics corrections may be true, they don’t necessarily mean that the pastor shouldn’t be pastoring. His flawed labour is part of his calling. He knows he’s not perfect, but he is called to the work by his Lord, and that is warrant enough to do his job, albeit imperfectly.

If you are feeling a cold blast on Monday, then read this poem and remember the words of Paul:

This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.  I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.  Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.  1 Corinthians 4:1-5

Two Tramps In Mud Time

By Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily “Hit them hard!”
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn’t blue,
But he wouldn’t advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut’s now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You’d think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man’s work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right–agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.