Jolly Beggars
The following comes from The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis (p. 131):
“For this tangled absurdity of a Need, even a Need-love, which never fully acknowledges its own neediness, Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our Need, a joy in total dependence. We become “jolly beggars.” The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his Need. He is not entirely sorry for the fresh Need they have produced. And he is not sorry at all for the innocent Need that is inherent in his creaturely condition. For all the time this illusion to which nature clings as her last treasure, this pretence that we have anything of our own or could for one hour retain by our own strength any goodness that God may pour into us, has kept us from being happy. We have been like bathers who want to keep their feet-or one foot-or one toe-on the bottom, when to lose that foothold would be to surrender themselves to a glorious tumble in the surf. The consequences of parting with our last claim to intrinsic freedom, power, or worth, are real freedom, power and worth, really ours just because God gives them and because we know them to be (in another sense) not “ours.”
Someone Else-ness
HT: Ray Ortlund
It’s the objectivity, the exteriority, the out-there-ness, the Someone Else-ness of our justification that sets us free, as John Bunyan reminds us:
“One day as I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest all was still not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, Your righteousness is in heaven. And I thought as well that I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God’s right hand. There, I say, is my righteousness, so that wherever I was or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he lacks my righteousness, for that was just before Him. I also saw that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, the same yesterday and today and forever.
Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. . . . I went home rejoicing for the grace and love of God. . . . Here I lived for some time, very sweetly at peace with God through Christ. Oh, I thought, Christ! Christ! There was nothing but Christ before my eyes.”
John Bunyan, Grace Abounding (Philadelphia, 1859), page 75, edited slightly.
Chalmers: The Treacherous Quicksand of Helping Out God’s Opinion of Us
The following post comes from Dane Ortlund’s blog, Strawberry-Rhubarb. This is one of the best things I’ve ever read. I hope that you agree.
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Thomas Chalmers is quoted in a footnote by the editor of Calvin’s commentary on Romans, during the course of Calvin’s discussion of Rom 3:21 (‘But now apart from law . . .’), about which Calvin writes:
. . . the consciences of men will never be tranquilized until they recumb on the mercy of God alone. (p. 135)
Chalmers is then quoted (without reference) as saying:
The foundation of your trust before God must be either your own righteousness out and out, or the righteousness of Christ out and out. . . . If you are to lean upon you own merit, lean upon it wholly–if you are to lean upon Christ, lean upon him wholly. The two will not amalgamate together; and it is the attempt to do so, which keeps many a weary and heavy-laden inquirer at a distance from rest, and at a distance from the truth of the gospel. Maintain a clear and consistent posture. Stand not before God with one foot upon a rock and the other upon a treacherous quicksand. . . . We call upon you not to lean so much as the weight of one grain or scruple of your confidence upon your own doings–to leave the ground entirely, and to come over entirely to the ground of a Redeemer’s blood and a Redeemer’s righteousness. (135 n. 2)
Something I forget every day–and even the forgetfulness is forgiven.
The Plan
The following was written by my wife Meghan. You can access it @ her blog, Life Through Meghan’s Eyes, or you can read below.
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Yesterday I went to put Isaac down for his nap just like every other day. Since we moved into our house about a month ago, Isaac has gotten promoted to a “big boy bed”. In part this promotion was due to his age and readiness, but in part it was due to the fact that somehow in the midst of moving we lost some crucial pieces to Lily’s crib. Since Lily is younger it only made sense that she would get Isaac’s crib, and Isaac would sleep in a big bed.
For the most part this plan has been going pretty seamlessly. Seamlessly… until yesterday. I had already laid down Lily for her nap earlier and I took Isaac up to his bed. And right as I laid him down he said, “I want to sleep in E’s bed”. He calls Lily, E. I said, “no you cannot sleep in lily’s bed, because lily is sleeping in Lily’s bed.” Well, for some reason that didn’t matter to Isaac because for the next 45 minutes straight he wailed and hollered and screamed himself hoarse that he wanted to sleep in E’s bed.
On most days I would have simply said, “no, end of story, you cannot and will not sleep in E’s bed” and then I would have walked out of the room and cry as he may that would have been the end of it. I would have sat downstairs feeling angry and frustrated and wondering why he couldn’t just understand that he is supposed to sleep in his bed, and Lily is supposed to sleep in Lily’s bed.
But yesterday, something just hit me. As I looked at Isaac’s tear soaked cheeks and his tear soaked shirt and watched his chest heave up and down with horrible sobs, I had this very deep sense of compassion and love towards him . To me this seemed like a simple situation with a simple answer, but to Isaac, for whatever reason, this was a very deeply upsetting scenario. And as I tried to pat his back, and wipe away his tears, and eventually just lay on the bed next to him as he sobbed, I saw myself and everyone else in Isaac.
In life we so often get these ideas of how we want things to go, or how we think things should go, or what our future will look like. As long as our life neatly follows the plan, we are happy as clams. But when we find out that our precious plans have gone awry, we find ourselves in Isaac’s shoes.
Because I am an adult, I know that it is not appropriate to scream and sob the way he does, even though it might do me some good, so I scream and kick in a much more subtle way. I do it through manipulation, or competition, or judgementalism. In the adult world, when things don’t go our way, we make a plan of how to get things back the way we want. And before we know it, we are bowing down to that plan; aligning all areas of our life to get the plan back on track.
Maybe it’s not about the plan. Maybe what I want, or the way that I think things should go, isn’t even good for me or for the ones that I love. Maybe I am too short sighted to be able to make good plans. Maybe there is Someone who is really in charge making a wonderful and beautiful plan that I need to trust and submit to.
Isaac couldn’t really see that he is too big for that crib. A bed will be more comfortable and well suited for him, and ultimately it will allow him the freedom that a crib will not. All he could think was that his crib was comfortable and it was part of his plan, and whatever he knew, he couldn’t let go of the plan. He ended up sleeping on the floor, because I guess in some way, the hard cold uncomfortable floor represented getting his way more than a cozy bed.
Joy and Hope
Per Here and Now by Henri Nouwen:
Joy does not come from positive predictions about the state of the world. It does not depend on the ups and downs of the circumstances of our lives. Joy is based on the spiritual knowledge that, while the world in which we live is shrouded in darkness, God has overcome the world. Jesus says it loudly and clearly: “In the world you will have troubles, but rejoice, I have overcome the world.”
There is an intimate relationship between joy and hope. While optimism makes us live as if someday soon things will go better for us, hope frees us from the need to predict the future and allows us to live in the present, with the deep trust that God will never leave us alone but will fulfill the deepest desires of our heart.
Joy in this perspective is the fruit of hope. When I trust deeply that today God is truly with me and holds me safe in a divine embrace, guiding every one of my steps, I can let go of my anxious need to know how tomorrow will look, or what will happen next month or next year. I can be fully where I am and pay attention to the many signs of God’s love within and around me.
We often speak about the “good old days,” but when we think critically about them and let go of our romanticizing memories, we might soon discover that, during those very days, we were doing a lot of worrying about our future.
When we trust profoundly that today is the day of the Lord and that tomorrow is safely hidden in God’s love, our faces can relax, and we can smile back at the One who smiles at us.
An Exacting Boss or a Loving Father?
The following comes from Tim Keller’s book, The Prodigal God. I have copied some of the quotes or sections that I found particularly helpful (coming from Ch. 5). I highly recommend this book as well as his recently published book, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex and Power and The Only Hope That Matters.
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(In reference to the elder son in Luke 15) His spiritual problem is the radical insecurity that comes from basing his self-image on achievements and performance, so he must endlessly prop up his sense of righteousness by putting others down and finding fault. As one of my teachers in seminary put it, the main barrier between Pharisees and God is “not their sins, but their damnable good works.” … To truly become Christians we must also repent of the reasons we ever did anything right… We must learn how to repent of the sin under all our other sins and under all our righteousness-the sin of seeking to be our own Savior and Lord. We must admit that we’ve put our ultimate hope and trust in things other than God, and that in both our wrongdoing and right doing we have been seeking to get around God or get control of God in order to get hold of those things… When you realize that the antidote to being bad is not just being good, you are on the brink (of getting the gospel). If you follow through, it will change everything: how you relate to God, self, others, the world, your work, your sins, your virtue. It’s called the new birth because it’s so radical.
Keller points out that this recognition is necessary, but it is equally imperative that we understand the love of the Father in Christ… How can the inner workings of the heart be changed from a dynamic of fear and anger to that of love, joy, and gratitude? You need to be moved by the sight of what it cost to bring you home. The key difference between a Pharisee and a believer in Jesus is inner-heart motivation. Pharisees are being good but out of a fear-fueled need to control God. They don’t really trust him or love him. To them God is an exacting boss, not a loving father. Christians have seen something that has transformed their hearts toward God so they can finally love and rest in the Father.
Jesus Christ, who had all the power in the world, saw us enslaved by the very things we thought would free us. So he emptied himself of his glory and became a servant (Philippians 2). He laid aside the infinities and immensities of his being and, at the cost of his life, paid the debt for our sins, purchasing us the only place our hearts can rest, in his Father’s house. Jesus was stripped naked of his robe and dignity so that we could be clothed with a dignity and standing we don’t deserve. On the cross Jesus was treated as an outcast so that we could be brought into God’s family freely by grace. There Jesus drank the cup of eternal justice so that we might have the cup of the Father’s joy. There was no other way for the heavenly Father to bring us in, except at the expense of our true elder brother.
The selfless love (of Christ) destroys the mistrust in our hearts toward God that makes us either younger brothers or elder brothers.
Temptation and the Gospel
The following comes from Ray Ortlund (I love his blog):
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A voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Matthew 3:17
“There are many other voices speaking — loudly: “Prove you’re worth something.” “Prove you have any contribution to make.” “Do something relevant.” . . . These are the voices Jesus heard right after he heard, “You are my beloved.” Another voice said, “Prove you are the beloved. Do something. Change these stones into bread. Be sure you’re famous. Jump from the temple, and you will be known. Grab some power so you have real influence.” . . . Jesus said, “No, I don’t have to prove anything. I am already the beloved.”
Henri Nouwen, Leadership Magazine, Spring 1995.
There is more than one way to be strong. We can be strong with the dark energy of anxiety, because we need approval, or we can be strong with the bright energy of assurance, because we are already approved.
We have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. 1 Thessalonians 2:4
You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. 2 Timothy 2:1
