The Greatest Saints
“The greatest saints are not those who need less grace, but those who consume the most grace, who indeed are most in need of grace – those who are saturated by grace in every dimension of their being. Grace to them is like breath.”
This quote comes from Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Willard.
Come As The Sinner That You Are
A good buddy of mine, Matt Potoshnick, sent this to me yesterday. Wonderful quote.
“He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their…service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break through to fellowship does not occur, because though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among them. So we remain alone with our sin, living lies and hypocrisy. The fact is we are sinners. But it is the grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that it confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great desperate sinner; now come as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you…He does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; He wants you alone. God has come to save the sinner.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
Calvin on the Gospel
This is awesome. Per Justin Taylor’s Blog, Between Two Worlds:
Tullian Tchividjian reprints a beautiful portion of John Calvin’s preface to Pierre Robert Olivétan’s French translation of the New Testament (1534). I reproduced it below (line breaks and italics mine)
Without the gospel
everything is useless and vain;
without the gospel
we are not Christians;
without the gospel
all riches is poverty,
all wisdom folly before God;
strength is weakness,
and all the justice of man is under the condemnation of God.But by the knowledge of the gospel we are made
children of God,
brothers of Jesus Christ,
fellow townsmen with the saints,
citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven,
heirs of God with Jesus Christ, by whomthe poor are made rich,
the weak strong,
the fools wise,
the sinner justified,
the desolate comforted,
the doubting sure,
and slaves free.It is the power of God for the salvation of all those who believe.
It follows that every good thing we could think or desire is to be found in this same Jesus Christ alone.For, he was
sold, to buy us back;
captive, to deliver us;
condemned, to absolve us;he was
made a curse for our blessing,
[a] sin offering for our righteousness;
marred that we may be made fair;he died for our life; so that by him
fury is made gentle,
wrath appeased,
darkness turned into light,
fear reassured,
despisal despised,
debt canceled,
labor lightened,
sadness made merry,
misfortune made fortunate,
difficulty easy,
disorder ordered,
division united,
ignominy ennobled,
rebellion subjected,
intimidation intimidated,
ambush uncovered,
assaults assailed,
force forced back,
combat combated,
war warred against,
vengeance avenged,
torment tormented,
damnation damned,
the abyss sunk into the abyss,
hell transfixed,
death dead,
mortality made immortal.In short,
mercy has swallowed up all misery,
and goodness all misfortune.For all these things which were to be the weapons of the devil in his battle against us, and the sting of death to pierce us, are turned for us into exercises which we can turn to our profit.
If we are able to boast with the apostle, saying, O hell, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? it is because by the Spirit of Christ promised to the elect, we live no longer, but Christ lives in us; and we are by the same Spirit seated among those who are in heaven, so that for us the world is no more, even while our conversation is in it; but we are content in all things, whether country, place, condition, clothing, meat, and all such things.
And we are
comforted in tribulation,
joyful in sorrow,
glorying under vituperation,
abounding in poverty,
warmed in our nakedness,
patient amongst evils,
living in death.This is what we should in short seek in the whole of Scripture: truly to know Jesus Christ, and the infinite riches that are comprised in him and are offered to us by him from God the Father.
Already Sons
Here’s a quote from a friend, Brian Wildman. He left this as a comment on a previous post and it struck me. It pertains to the fact that we are sons of God in Christ now. It seems to me that the crucial factor here is belief. I could use a good dose of increased belief in what Christ has accomplished for me and who I am in Him.
I need to stop trying so hard to become something I already am — HIS.
A Spring, An Impulse, A Stimulus…
Per Horatius Bonar, Scottish pastor from the 1800′s (Per The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges, p. 207):
It is forgiveness that sets a man working for God. He does not work in order to be forgiven, but because he has been forgiven, and the consciousness of his sin being pardoned makes him long more for its entire removal than ever he did before.
An unforgiven man cannot work. He has not the will, nor the power, nor the liberty. He is in chains. Israel in Egypt could not serve Jehovah. “Let my people go, that they may serve Me,” was Gods message to Pharoah (Exod. 8:1): first liberty, then service.
A forgiven man is the true worker, the true Law-keeper. He can, he will, he must work for God. He has come into contact with that part of God’s character which warms his cold heart. Forgiving love constrains him. He cannot but work for Him who has removed his sins from him as far as the east is from the west. Forgiveness has made him a free man, and given him a new and most loving Master. Forgiveness, received freely from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, acts as a spring, an impulse, a stimulus of divine potency. It is more irresistible than law, or terror, or threat.
Children
Per Frederick Buechner in The Magnificent Defeat (p. 134-135):
Matthew 18:1-4
1At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 2He called a little child and had him stand among them. 3And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
…..
“Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” The disciples asked this because they were trying hard, and Jesus showed them a child who in all probability neither knew nor much cared to know what the kingdom of Heaven was nor what such a question might mean. And then he told them to become like that child-neither knowing in the sense of understanding nor caring in the sense of being anxious.
And surely this is a hard saying. After we have given so much of our lives to the task of trying to understand, after we have been so continually anxious lest our faith wither and bear no fruit, then it is a real shock to be told that it is only by not trying to be that we become, that it is only by not resisting evil that we defeat it, that it is only by losing our lives that we save them. Yet if on the one hand we are shocked by this, on the other to know ourselves at all is to know the truth of it.
So, knowing this, what are we to do? The very question is part of our unchild-likenesss: to feel that when we know something to be true we must immediately do something about it. And Jesus tells us again, “Become like children.” Yet we know that this is impossible. In the very effort of trying to become like children, if the effort can so much be imagined, we put our goal still farther out of reach. But it is precisely here, perhaps, that we come as near to the heart of the mystery as we are able. It is just when we realize that it is impossible by any effort of our own to make ourselves children and thus to enter the kingdom of Heaven that we become children. We are children, perhaps, at the very moment when we know that it is as children that God loves us-not because we have deserved his love and not in spite of our undeserving; not because we try and not because we recognize the futility of our trying; but simply because he has chosen to love us. We are children because he is our father; and all our efforts, fruitful and fruitless, to do good, to speak truth, to understand, are the efforts of children who, for all their precocity, are children still in that before we loved him, he loved us, as children, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
“YOU will be with me in Paradise”
Luke 23:39-43
One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds: but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
…..
I’ve read this story many times, but only today has the account of the criminal’s salvation caused me to stop and reflect.
Previously, I’ve looked down at this man. Yes, Jesus saved him, but he didn’t do anything in his “christian life.”
Or did he? Maybe he glorified God more than the heroes of the faith that we esteem. Here’s the reasoning: He knew he was going to die. He knew that he was condemned out of justice and that he absolutely deserved what he was experiencing. In that place of condemnation, he looked to His Savior and requested mercy, Mercy, MERCY. In exchange for the death of silence that he knew was rightfully his, he received the Life of celebration per grace. Maybe his joy in Christ overflowed because he more than most, was aware of his great sin and also the beauty of the Lamb who looked at him and said he would be with him in Paradise. His great joy in Christ glorified God.
John Calvin said, “Each of us must, then, be so stung by the consciousness of his own unhappiness as to attain at least some knowledge of God. Thus, from the feeling of our own ignorance, vanity, poverty, infirmity, and-what is more-depravity and corruption, we recognize that the true light of wisdom, sound virtue, full abundance of every good, and purity of righteousness rest in the Lord alone.” ….. “The knowledge of ourselves not only arouses us to seek God, but also, as it were, leads us by the hand to find him.” (Institutes, Book I, p.36-37).
We are all like that man on the cross, next to Christ. We are condemned with nails in our hands, undeserving of paradise, but for those who have looked to Jesus and asked for His mercy, Paradise awaits and even breaks forth (in-part) now. Oh, how I want to increasingly live in the reality of my son-ship with a keen awareness of what I deserve. This grace is inexhaustible and we will forever be filled with joy as a result of it.
The Magnificent Defeat (Frederick Buechner)
Genesis 32:22-31
22The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. 24And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. 25When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 27And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” 29Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” 31The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.
…..
The following reflection on the above Scripture comes from The Magnificent Defeat by Frederick Buechner (p. 17-18):
And then it happens. Out of the deep of the night a stranger leaps. He hurls himself at Jacob, and they fall to the ground, their bodies lashing through the darkness. It is terrible enough not to see the attacker’s face, and his strength is more terrible still, the strength of more than a man. All the night through they struggle in silence until just before morning when it looks as though a miracle might happen. Jacob is winning. The stranger cries out to be set free before the sun rises. Then, suddenly, all is reversed.
He merely touches the hollow of Jacob’s thigh, and in a moment Jacob is lying there crippled and helpless The sense we have, which Jacob must have had, that the whole battle was from the beginning fated to end this way, that the stranger had simply held back until now, letting Jacob exert all his strength and almost win so that wen he was defeated he would know that he was truly defeated; so that he would know that not all the shrewdness, will, brute force that he could muster were enough to get this. Jacob will not release his grip, only now it is a grip not of violence but of need, like the grip of a drowning man.
The darkness has faded just enough so that for the first time he can dimly see his opponent’s face. And what he sees is something more terrible than the face of death-the face of love. It is vast and strong, half ruined with suffering and fierce with joy, the face a man flees down all the darkness of his days until at last he cries out, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me!” Not a blessing that he can have now by the strength of his cunning or the force of his will, but a blessing that he can have only as a gift.
Power, success, happiness, as the world knows them, are his ho will fight for them hard enough; but peace, love, joy are only from God. And God is the enemy whom Jacob fought there by the river, of course, and whom in one way or another we all of us fight-God, the beloved enemy. Our enemy because, before giving us everything, he demands of us everything; before giving us life, he demands our lives-our selves, our wills, our treasure.
Fellow Citizens with the Saints
Per Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon (July 10th)
The glory which belongs to beatified saints belongs to us, for we are already sons of God, already princes of the blood imperial; already we wear the spotless robe of Jesu’s righteousness; already we have angels for our servitors, saints for our companions, Christ for our Brother, God for our Father, and a crown of immortality for our reward. We share the honours of citizenship, for we have come to the general assembly and Church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven. As citizens, we have common rights to all the property of heaven.
A Burning Coal
Isaiah 6:1-8
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” 4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” 6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
…..
There are 3 things that stand out to me as I read this passage.
- My view of God’s Holiness is so small and limited. He is infinite in beauty, power, glory, etc. and yet my perception of this is so dim. The angels cover their faces and their feet. The foundations tremble.
- Isaiah recognized his unworthiness and the infinite contrast between him, a sinner, and the Glorious Perfect God.
- In light of beholding God’s glory and his sin being atoned for, you see Isaiah’s desire to serve God burst forth.
It is my prayer that we will see the grandeur of God and humbly recognize who we are. Further, I pray that we will know, believe, see and revel in the grace of Christ. We have not been touched by a live coal, but rather we have been touched by the lamb of God who bore our sins in His body on the tree so that we would be called the righteousness of God.
