Help!

When I was growing up my grandparents had an in-ground pool in their backyard.  It was the place to be on a hot summer afternoon in Oregon.  Here the whole extended family would gather around good food and the coolness of the swimming pool. We all loved these days.

As the family enjoyed each other in conversation, you can easily imagine the adults’ full attention was drawn away from the youngest of kids.  One of these times, I, a young toddler, rode my tricycle around the pool until I rode it into the pool without anyone noticing.  As the story goes, when my grandmother saw me face down in the pool she jumped in to save me.  The only problem was that she couldn't swim either.  Her cry for help and the sound of the splash grabbed my father's attention and he jumped in to save both of us.

If we rewind the story just a couple moments back to the point when my father heard the splash and cry for help, at that moment in time he had two options. One option was that he could save his mother and his son by throwing some kind of flotation device to us.  The device would give my grandmother the ability to float and swim to the side of the pool on her own.  Or he could jump into the pool so that he himself could be the swimmer and save us from death.

Let me posit this episode as a possible picture to speak about the differing views on the nature of grace. That either grace is a flotation device given from afar that enables one who cannot swim to swim, or that grace is a person jumping in to save and be depended on for everything.  This contradistinction is the Rubicon between Christian traditions formed by systematic theology and biblical theology. Systematic or scholastic traditions start with certain philosophical presumptions and categories about God and humanity. These presuppositions are supported with proof texts from the Bible.  Whereas biblical theology attempts to let the story of God's pursuit of a people for himself shape the way we speak of God, man, sin, and grace.

In terms of grace, this distinction is best seen by beginning with Peter Lombard  (c.1096-1164). He, in his Sentences, asked, "Is the love by which we are saved a created habit of our soul, or is it the very person of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us?"(Lombard, Sentences 1.17; in Ozment, The Age of Reform, 31).   Lombard, in agreement with Augustine's use of Romans 5:5, states that the "Holy Spirit is the love by which we love God and our neighbor."  That grace isn't our nature to offer charity or a new habit given to us by the Spirit, which enables us to consistently live a life of love. Rather, the gift purchased by Christ according to Augustine is "plainly the Holy Spirit who is God and the third person of the Trinity..." (Sentences, 1.14.46).  In other words, the Spirit doesn't give us a lifesaver that enables us to swim when we can’t.  Instead Christ jumps in and unites himself to us by the Spirit, just as the Father is one with the Son by the Spirit (Sentences, 1.17.65).

Thomas Aquinas' commentary on Lombard's Sentences rejected the notion that the Spirit is the gift given because this would mean our love would not be in our control nor responsible for our good acts.   Also, if this were the case, according to Aquinas, it would mean that God would then have to jump into the pool of creation, which would be an absurdity when God and creation are incommensurate – that is, two natures that cannot correspond.  These conclusions aren’t based on Scripture, but are presuppositions based in Aristotle’s view of God as the unmoved mover and humanity as independent self-moved choosers. Therefore God, from a transcendent distance, throws a lifesaver, i.e. he gives the capacity to swim to people who don't have the ability to swim.

To put it in terms of sin and righteousness, Aquinas and Aristotle assumed that the practice of righteous deeds makes one become righteous.  But here's the problem, sin keeps me from practicing righteousness consistently long enough to form a habit of righteousness.  So God gives me the habit of righteousness by the Spirit. However, we find Jesus said that a bad tree only produces bad fruit. Not until a bad tree is made into a good tree can good fruit be produced.  Jesus assumed that being actually leads to doing, not the other way around.

Listening to Jesus’ words the Reformers rejected Aristotelian categories and sided with Lombard. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Cranmer all rejected the use of habitus as a way for God to give grace without jumping into the swimming pool.  From Luther's commentary on The Sentences to Cranmer's tenth article in the Forty-Two Articles of Religion, grace was the person of the Spirit pouring the love of God into our hearts, who truly unites us to Christ.

One of the countless ways this makes a difference is in our prayer life.  Often I hear and pray for God's help, but what is meant by "help" counts for everything in the extreme.  If help is just God giving me some kind of power or ability from a distance to face the difficulties of the day, I'm back to thinking of grace as a commodity or the life jacket.  But if I mean "help" in the sense "I need you Jesus today more than ever, please help walk through the day with you because I can do nothing apart from you," I'm relying on a person and not a flotation device.

Empty Glory

"Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!" was the cry of the large crowd who heard that Jesus was coming to the feast in Jerusalem.   There was no doubt what they thought of him, he was representing Yahweh, the promised king who would save Israel.

But their mindset of what all this meant was turned on its head.  Jesus in John 12 said, "the hour has come that the Son of Man (who was given by the Ancient of Days glory and authority over all creation) to be glorified."  But this glory isn't the glory they were expecting, it was the time where he would lose his life and be lifted up on the cross, so that he might draw all people to himself.  That is, the glory of God was seen with the Son of Man dead, naked on the cross.

Now this didn't go well with their expectations, how could this possibly be?  The Son of Man was to have power, dominion; the Christ was to live forever.  The idea that glory could be connected to death was absolutely impossible. Death is weakness and defeat.  It didn't compute, and even the disciples didn't understand Jesus until he was glorified.

This doesn't usually sit well with us either.  How could glory be connected to the humiliating cross? How could this be the hour that God is most clearly revealed?

There are many reasons for this, but let me offer two.  First, we tend to make glory about power, strength, dominion, pageantry, and a majestic brightness. Second, we see humility as weak, low in status and condition, and modest in spirit.  Yet, God doesn't seem to define humility or glory exactly like that.  Don't get me wrong, there are elements of these ideas in the Bible, but at mountain peak moments in the Bible these two words are dramatically redefined.

John 12 is one of these mountaintop moments, and Philippians 2 is another.  Paul defines humility as "counting others more significant than yourselves.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." After his instruction he offers the greatest example of humility by describing God's humility.   Now we are all fairly comfortable with Jesus' humility, but it's the Triune God's humility on display.

You might object: how could it possibly be about God's humility when the hymn ends with all tongues confessing and knees bowing to Jesus because "Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father"?

That's a great and perfect question to ask.   We see that God the Father exalts Jesus by giving him the name that is above all names.  That name is Yahweh, and all that goes with that name is synonymous with the name Jesus of Nazareth. Yes the God who said, "I am Yahweh and there is no other" and "every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance" (Isaiah 45:19, 23), has equated himself with Jesus of Nazareth, the poor, unnoticeable, suffering servant, who died as a criminal.  Yahweh's glory was displayed with death, even death on the cross.

Most importantly we see the ethos of the Father-Son-Spirit revealed by Christ on the cross. The glory they had before the creation of the world.  The Father delighting in and giving to his Son; the Son responding to his Father with the same other-centeredness; with the Spirit as the Uniter of the two.   The Triune God is humble, he isn't self-concerned but elevates the other above himself.

Therefore, elevating self isn't godly, nor is it glorious (Prov. 25:27). Jesus similarly states that "If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing" in the context where the Father glorifies the Son and Son glorifies the Father (John 8).  There's no self-seeking in God's glory.

So what should our response be to Christ's gospel?

Paul invites the Philippians to live out the attitude of Christ, to humbly esteem others more than themselves, which will unite them as one body.   This isn't a pragmatic suggestion, but an ontological reality for any person who is one with Christ.  The heartbeat of the Trinity is the heartbeat we have in Christ, a selfless love for the other.

Therefore, Paul would say, do nothing out of competiveness or conceit, which contradicts the mindset of Christ.  I think we get that competiveness, seeking to be better than someone else, will lead to fissures in a community.  But maybe we miss the contrast between God's nature and a conceited community.   Conceited could be translated as "vainglory" or even "empty-glory."  In other words, if you are focused on what satisfies self, over and against someone's interests, you lack the character of godly glory.  God's love humbly looks to the other, anything else lacks glory.

Jonathan Edwards says this better than most in his Treatise on Grace, "God's love is primarily to himself, and his infinite delight is in himself, that is, in the Father and the Son loving and delighting in each other."  Without the last section Edwards would be describing a God who only thought of himself and would be empty of biblical glory.  Instead we see a God who has existed since before the creation of the world in a selfless and giving ethos that Edwards invites us to worship.

May we gaze upon and know God's glory that shines out by his humble character displayed for all to see on the cross.

History is Devotional

There are many motivations to read history.  It's fun, if not downright hysterical to read stories that wouldn't be believable if they were made up.  History is educational.  You discover where you've come from.  You learn how things came to be as there are now.  You can avoid the mistakes of the past. There are numerous other reasons to read history (can you hear the bias of a historian?), but one I want to suggest here might shock you.  Reading history can be devotional.

Now you might object, "History is about dates, timelines, and museums, all are boring!! Only strange, dare I say "geeky", people like history. There's no way it can food for my soul."

Now there's no doubt that a lot of history is presented as meaningless dates and dull facts.  But I can say that history is devotional because of the perspective that can come from other people's thoughts about the same life concerns and faith challenges we face, even though they lived in a different time, in a different culture, and with different social tensions. The distance of time allows us to engage things of life without the hang-ups of our modern biases.

Lately, a Puritan named John Preston (1587-1628) has been a source of comfort and delight for me.  Yes, a Puritan's sermons have warmed my heart!  Even though some could rightly describe the puritans as "a pinched and frost-bitten lot: sour, picky, and bluntly, so boring pigeons cold roost on them (The Good God, 29)," John Preston was not. His two sermon series "A Breast Plate of Faith and Love" invited people to the assurance of faith and a love for Christ.  These 400-year-old sermons have helped me to direct my gaze onto the beauty of the Lord.

Maybe a couple of examples will help you to see where I'm coming from. First is one of my favorite moments in his first sermon on Galatians 5:6. Here he invites people to see seven motives to love Christ, and he saves the best for last.

"And last of all consider that the Lord loves you.  For that is the greatest motive to win us to love him. Just as fire generates fire, so love generates love.  This is the reason that Paul loved the Lord, "He that loved me gave himself for me (Gal. 2:20)." I will not live any more to myself, but to him who has loved me and gave himself for me.  He has loved me, and there was his testimony of his love, he gave himself.  I say, consider this love of the Lord, and let this generate in you a reciprocal affection for him.  Put all this together, and consider, the Lord worthy to be beloved.  And he that is so great appeals to you for your love.  He that is God, who planted love in your hearts, and therefore he does but call for his own. He that has done you so many kindnesses, that you are so engaged to him, that you are now united to, are you not now to choose, at least come to this, to say he is worthy to be beloved, bring your hearts to this, to desire to love him."  (Of Love, 47-8)

Preston here calls us to be won by Christ's love.  Our love for Christ isn't a volitional choice determined by our self-moved will.  Rather it's a heartfelt response, "a holy disposition of the heart, rising from faith, whereby we cling to the Lord, with a purpose of the heart to serve him, and to please him in all things (14)."  As we respond to Christ in assurance that he has saved us, and cling to him with a new affection we'll naturally desire to please and serve him.

For the people Preston was serving these were winsome words to their soul. At a time when people were burdened with the duty to prove their salvation, Preston invited people to enjoy Christ and delightfully strive to please him as a loving wife desires to please her husband.  Not for any benefit for herself but for him.

Much more could be said but I want to share one other gem.  Often issues of security, pleasure, acceptance of others, are affections competing with our affection for Christ.  Preston, looking to 1 John 2:15, shockingly calls these affections "a love for the world."

Now question with your own hearts about this [1 John 2:15], whether you love the world and the things of this world.  For if you do, the words are clear, "The Father is not in you."

"You will say, how shall I know this? You shall know it by these three things. [I'll offer one] First, by your delight in the things of the world, and your grief and sorrow and the loss of them after you have enjoyed them.  For if you find that you are overly affected about them, it is certain that you    love the world, and the things of the world..."

Ok, I get you might be thinking that this sounds more like the prickly-sort-of-puritan.  But Preston proclaimed we have so many things that get in the way of our love of Christ, who should be the greatest reason for our happiness.  If despair should set in from the loss of stuff it's most likely we love ourselves and love the things that please us more than Christ.  It's not that we shouldn't grieve or "we deny that man may grieve" at losses of jobs, money, our home, or social rejection. Instead, the assurance that we are Christ's and Christ is ours should be the main source of our happiness and joy.

Maybe I haven't convinced you, but I hope I have invited you to listen to the voices of the past.  Dr. Lloyd-Jones often went to Richard Sibbes and Jonathan Edwards when he needed to combat despair.  I would agree with him and add a couple of men chronologically between these two: John Preston and John Cotton.  Let me also recommend that you read Luther and Calvin, not what others have said about them, but what these men actually wrote or proclaimed. I trust these men will invite you to love Christ and have joy in him!

Superhero?

A couple of nights ago my three-year-old son came downstairs and in his best superhero voice said (just imagine his fists on his hips and chest pushed out), "I'm the strongman, I can do nothing!" With big smiles on our faces, we tried to correct him, "Don't you mean anything?" He replied, "No, I can do nothing!" We've been laughing about it for days.  The irony and the dissonance of it all is just plain funny and cute.

But, as I enjoyed the innocence of my son, I started to ponder the reality that I don't think much differently.  Instead my thoughts aren’t communicated out loud so directly, they're a whole lot sadder, no less ironic, and far more deadly. They go something like this, "I'm the weakman, and I can do anything!"  While, I might not consciously include the "weakman" part of the sentence, it's there nevertheless.

Why do I say this? Well, when fear, false-humility, etc. begin to bear fruit in my life, I know my thoughts have been abiding in the silly notion that I can do anything on my own.  That I, as an individual, can direct my own steps and I have no need of anyone else. Yet the fear that comes from this pride is rooted in something false.

One of the warning signs that anyone is living in the lie of Satan (that God can't be trusted, and I'm my own god) is their internal conversation.  If you find that your self-talk is a single voice, odds are its self-concerned and self-protective. Your thoughts are rooted in the lie "I can do anything" while protecting yourself from your inability to do so.  This often manifests itself in constantly comparing yourself to others, "I'm better than..." or "I'm not as good as... " These comparisons can lead to perfectionism, panic-induced paralysis, or prodigal licentiousness. The differing behaviors are only symptoms of the same disease, someone's habitual value that they are God.

Let's return to my son's insightful declaration. It’s essential to abide in the reality that we can do nothing on our own - that God is God, and we are not.  Now our flesh will immediately make this statement primarily about power.  I don't think it is, however.  It's a love issue. It's a trust issue. These are intimate companions, but for the sake of clarity let's talk about each one separately.

When living in the lie we believe that we're not loveable, and that God doesn't really love us. The truth, however, is that God does loves us and therefore we, the unloveable, are made lovely.  This love is not some cheap, fluffy, marshmallow love given to us from a transcendent distance.  No, its the God who stoops down to give us life in his Son, and to give us his Spirit who testifies to this by pouring God's love into our hearts.   When we respond to him with love, he abides in us and we in him.  And as our triune God is an other-centered communion with an eternal conversation between the Father and Son by their Spirit, it should be no surprise we should start to converse with him by his Spirit.  Our internal conversation becomes a true conversation with our Father and our Bridegroom.   It is a conversation based upon the delight that God is God and I'm not, and my God loves me unfailingly.

We, however, don't trust this enough.  I find that in 1 John 4:16 we miss the full-stop after "the love that God has for us."  We tend to do the Step Toe On the Pedal and roll by that God loves us onto what we need to do next, i.e. prove that we are lovers of God.  When we do this, we tend to read in 1 John that it's our responsibility to love our brother and to love God.  Now I wouldn't want to give the impression that these aren't important, they're vital to John's epistle.  Yet, John doesn't see these as a responsibility we have to force ourselves to do, rather he emphatically states we respond in love because God first loved us.  If we don't abide and dwell in the goodness of our God who is love, we can't help but make love a responsibility because we trust the statement "I can do anything on my own" rather than "I'm deeply loved, and I can do nothing on my own."

When we wholeheartedly trust that God is for us we'll begin to hear another voice in our internal conversation.  The voice will direct our gaze onto God's beauty. The Spirit will bear his fruit.  And we'll discover a desire to give ourselves away to others in the way God gave himself to us.

Here the internal conversation changes from being self-concerned, self-protective, or even self-determined.  Rather we'll depend on God for all things we do. We'll constantly ask God to join us in our daily activities. We'll ask God for help in every circumstance, difficult or easy.  We'll confidently take risks knowing that our identity isn't wrapped up in our performance or others’ opinions, but upon God's testimony of us, the God who's walking with us.   The possibilities are endless when our focus is upon the glorious love of the Trinity, which is manifested in Jesus depending on the Father for everything while fearlessly giving himself away.

I'm thankful my son was right, with one major addition, in Christ I am the strongman, and I can do nothing without him.  Let us confidently depend on Him, even in our internal conversation.

Don't Forget

The holidays for me, like many of you I'm sure, are a mixed bag.  Christmas is not only a wonderful season of thinking about the gift of God in the flesh.  It is also a time of tasty traditional foods, gift-giving, great fun with family and friends, and happy memories of previous holidays with those dear to us.  

Yet Christmas is also a time to remember the loss of loved ones. It’s a time to miss family traditions no longer possible because of long distance. It's a time to think about all that I could have done better in the past year.

So at moments, I'm filled with great joy of all that is before me.  But then at times feel the pain of what once was, what could be, and what I hope is better in the year to come. For much of the time when I'm in these moments, I've forgotten.  I'm not remembering.

Wait, how can you forget while remembering what once was?  Well, much of what I'm "remembering" is clouded and weighed down by my desire to change and control my current circumstances.  I unconsciously think that I know what would be best for me now.  I've forgotten that God is with me, that God's plans for me and my family are far better than I could determine for myself. I've forgotten God's promises that he's kept in the past.  I've forgotten all the promises I'm anticipating that he will fulfill.  I've forgotten that I'm not God, and that I desperately want God to be God.

This doesn't mean I can't think of and miss my grandmother who died on Christmas day five years ago. It doesn't mean I shouldn't think of the mistakes I've made this year and want to change in the next.  But what it means is that faith in God's presence, plan, and promises, regardless of life's circumstances, should always blanket all my thoughts and actions. When the eyes of my heart are focused on these truths then it's possible to rejoice always and be thankful in every circumstance, even in the situations that are painful and full of tears.

So what am I saying?

First, I'm saying there are two ways to remember: (1) we remember things wrongly when formulated on the foundation of wanting to be God, which is motived by our dissatisfaction with God; or (2) we remember rightly on the sure foundation that God is God and he is good.

Second, therefore, to remember properly is essential, not for just "surviving" the next go around of holidays with a good attitude but for living life between the now-and-not-yet.  To remember and not to forget is paramount to living by faith, to trust God's word, to rejoice in all circumstances, to defeat the enemy’s lies, to persevere, and to be the person God has made you to be.

Forgetful Remembrance: When the Israelites were brought out of Egypt by the outstretched arm of the Lord it was an event to remember.  The Passover broke the stubbornness of Pharaoh long enough for a couple million people to flee Egypt.  It convinced the Egyptians to give them their silver, gold, and clothing.  And everything God did was motivated by compassion for his people, who groaned under the harsh slavery of Pharaoh.

Sadly this huge event was quickly forgotten. Many times, even in the context of miracles, out of fear or dissatisfaction with God's provision Israel questions his goodness.  In these moments they forget crossing the Red Sea on dry ground, but remember "the good old days" in Egypt.  They remember when they had water to drink and the "fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons ... but now there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.” (Num. 11)  In other words, God's provision is rubbish and Pharaoh's provision was delicious. They in their hardheartedness forget their good God's care in order to remember the "good food" of their former Despot.

If in moments of despair we forget who God is and what he has done for us, and only remember and ponder how things should be, we're no different than the immature Israelites. They, in the context of God's tangible care for them, begin to grumble in their tents "because the LORD hates us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt..."  (Deut. 1:27) Which again, forgets the truth that God "heard their cry for rescue from slavery," that "God saw the people of Israel--and God knew.” (Ex. 2:23-25)

Remembering through Thanksgiving:  In difficult situations and moments of despair our God doesn't expect us to do the impossible and volitionally stop feeling sorrow.  Rather we are called to remember something far greater.

Moses, in his farewell sermon, repeatedly called Israel to remember their rescue. By remembering that Yahweh had set his love on them, Moses explained, they would walk with him, keep his instructions, receive incredible blessing, and remain in the land.   To remember that God is with us allows us to boldly walk where he wants us to go, even in a land inhabited by powerful giants.

And Moses' plea is no different than Paul's in his letter to the Philippians.  To rejoice in every circumstance, to stand firm in all situations, is to remember all that God has done by being thankful for what he has done.  Remembering through thanksgiving can protect us from bitterness and depression, especially when you are living in or reliving your greatest fears and pain.

What sorrow or pain could be greater than the preposterous reality that the Father of the universe loves us even as he loves his eternal Son? What could be greater than Jesus, the Son of God, considering you and me more significant than himself?  So much so that he died on the cross for us when we hated him?  This God will never leave you nor forsake you, no matter what you've done or how you feel. This God will provide for your every need and knows your needs better than you do.

What a God to remember! What a great God to cling to more in the coming year and the next season of holidays!

Luther's Discoveries

For the past couple weeks I've spent time with a good friend, Martin Luther.  It's been a rich and fruitful time! I would encourage anyone to do the same.  As I was rereading Luther's Lectures on Galatians (1535) and Heiko Oberman's biography Luther: Man between God and the Devil (A must read!), I was struck by the dramatic change that was caused by Luther's personal discovery of God's character and what he would call the "white devil."

Before he became the famous Reformer, “stubborn and unbending” in his pursuit of Christ and standing up to both Emperor and Pope, Luther was not all that remarkable.  For example, he was not an outstanding student, finishing thirtieth of fifty-seven candidates in his first university exam.  He probably only received an education because of his mother’s social status and connections, rather than due to his abilities.  Luther was a normal man, nothing special.

So what happened?  What caused Luther, the unimpressive student, to become the remarkable Professor of Biblical Theology at Wittenberg?

Luther's Discovery of God's Righteousness: Prior to reading Augustine and Paul's letter to the Romans, the righteousness of God was "the grim wrath of God, with which he punished sin."  Haunted by the burden of God's righteousness, Luther hated Paul for writing that it was in the Gospel that the righteousness of God was revealed. But when Luther went back and continued to read that "the righteous shall live by faith," along with Augustine's thoughts on the text, Luther discovered that "the righteousness of God is His mercy through which he regards us and keeps us just. Thus I was comforted." He went from hating the "righteousness of God," to loving and treasuring it. (Luther, 153)

This new paradigm, that God's righteousness clothed us with His righteousness, freed Luther from the bondage of trying to appease the wrath of God with his works.  God's righteousness now gave him the great assurance that God was for him and that God only wanted "the gaze of our hearts" upon Christ not on our sin. (Gal, 29)

Luther discovered and experienced the reality of God's goodness--that is, God giving of himself to us.  By faith we are united to his Son, our Bridegroom, who paid for all our sin on the cross and we receive all that is his--life, glory, and love.  Having true union with Christ means that the Father relates to us as perfectly righteousness in Christ and faith is the certainty that this is true (despite still living in our fallen flesh with the enemy telling us otherwise).

There was another critical discovery for Luther's personal reformation and the Reformation, a clearer and biblical view of "our adversary, who prowls around and seeks to devour us."

Luther's Discovery of the true Satan: The existence of the devil wasn't a question for anyone living in the medieval period.  However, just like the righteousness of God, the reality of the enemy and his deceptive methods were greatly twisted.

The medieval images of Satan as the red beast with horns and pointed tale surrounded by his demons are well known to us.  He enticed people to commit and participate in his evil so that he could have control over them in the fiery depths of hell.  This foe, the "dark devil," prompts people to "overt acts of evil" like murder, theft, drunkenness, etc. –an idea well known to Luther and his contemporaries. But Luther, as an overflow of his experience of God's true righteousness, suddenly was confronted with the real Satan, the "white devil."

Thus the black devil always emerges in the disguise and covering of all his works and tricks. But in the spiritual area, where Satan emerges not black but white, in the guise of an angel or even God Himself, there he puts himself forward with very sly pretense and amazing tricks.  He peddles his deadly poison as the doctrine of grace, the Word of God, and the Gospel of Christ. This is why Paul calls the doctrine of the false apostles and ministers of Satan a "gospel," saying, "to a different gospel." (Gal, 49)

The false gospel for Luther mixed the Law and the Gospel.  To preach righteousness and holiness is to "hate and condemn as evil and demonic the righteousness of Christ."

This means that sin isn't just vice, ruled and promoted by the dark devil, but also seemingly virtuous morality, ruled and promoted by the white devil--the real devil transformed into an angel of light.  Actually, then, vices of slander, adultery, covetousness, and others, for Luther, are "minor compared" with the world when "it is at its best in men who are religious, wise, and learned; yet in them it is actually evil twice over." (Gal, 40-1)

What did this mean for Luther? Luther realized that he lived in a constant tension between the truth of being in Christ by faith, yet with our flesh and the enemy enticing us to take our eyes off that truth.  The Law, then, had no place for him because it was a means to cause us to feel and know that we are sinners, the exact opposite reality of the Gospel.

Therefore the doctrine of grace simply cannot stand with the doctrine of the Law.  One of them must be rejected and abolished, and the other must be confirmed or substantiated.  But just as the Jews were inclined away from this doctrine of faith and grace, so we also are inclined away from it.  I personally would like to keep both the righteousness of grace as that which justifies and the righteousness of the Law as the basis for God's attitude toward me.  But, as Paul says here, confusing these means perverting the Gospel of Christ. (Gal., 54)

For Luther, it was no surprise that the Law and works would often win out.  It is the gravitational force of our flesh to prefer Law and works over grace.  This was the battle Luther recognized in this life.  However, God’s attitude toward us is constant, for we are always seen in Christ.  Thus the Father’s love for us can never increase or decrease.

How often do the world and our flesh tell us that what people think of us, combined with how we perform, determine who we are as a person?  The Gospel proclaims the exact opposite message: the Son of God is our Bridegroom, he has taken all our debts and given us all his riches!

This entry repeats my Cor Deo posting. Please post any reposes on that site (Click Here).

The Bible tells us that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.  So what do we do?  Typically we tell ourselves to act humbly until we are truly humble.  But this seems to highlight the problem, namely, our pride.  How prideful it is to think that we can, by our own volition, make ourselves humble. Yet this problem goes deeper than our thinking processes.  Our inner response mechanism is impossible to manage and incredibly subtle – it always prompts us to assume we must start to act humble in order to become humble.  Even if God is enabling that choice, we still tend to see ourselves as the instigator of the preferred attitude. We will always tend towards a quid pro quo relationship with God – as if we must earn the reward of grace by making ourselves humble.

The Problem: our inner Caligula.  Ok, you might say I don't have some despotic, insane, emperor that thinks he's God living inside me.  Are you sure?  We were created as heart-centered beings, lovers meant to be in an other-centered loving relationship with the Triune God that loves to communicate and share his goodness.  Our hearts always determine what we do.  So the question is whether or not our hearts want God, and therefore they are good? Or do our hearts want to be God, and therefore they are evil, or could I say, insane?

When Adam and Eve rejected God's love and mistrusted his word, they became like the serpent whom they trusted: one who is an independent, self-loving, hater of God.  This new disposition became their dictator, and, as their progeny, our inner evil dictator too. As a being that wants to live as an autonomous agent, our hearts misshape reality as we see fit and determine what we want to be good or evil.

We do what we want: Like it or not, recognize it or not, we all have an inner Caligula.  The third Emperor of Rome shortly after becoming princeps went mad and started spending the Empire's fortune so wildly that a financial crisis ensued. For instance, he ordered a two-mile floating bridge to be built in order to prove that his late uncle's friend was wrong. This friend had said that Caligula had a better chance of riding a horse across the Bay of Baiae than becoming Emperor.  Well, after becoming Emperor, Caligula had no choice but to prove him wrong, regardless of cost.

What does this first-century madman have anything to do with anything?

Think about all the logistics that went into such an endeavor.  Think about all the clever people who had to follow the orders of Caligula in order to gather the materials and organize the building of an extravagant two-mile floating bridge.   Consider all the logical planning and decisions that were made in order for this first century floating bridge to be made.

Our hearts and actions are no different.  Our affections dictate to our minds (the processor of our wants) and to our wills (the chooser of our wants), and they merely carry out the commands of the dictator--no matter how crazy.  We make everyday decisions from our wants, like deciding to have coffee or tea, or coming up with rational reasons to buy the car we can't afford.  Our hearts merely state what we want and expect their minions to make it happen (Matthew 15:10-20, Mark 7:14-23).

We think what we want:  But the despot's power doesn't end there.  Think of the many advisors and wise people who surround people of power, including Mr. Little-Boots (Caligula). A wise, open minded leader usually has people in the privy council or cabinet that have values in opposition to his or her values so that fully informed decisions may be made. But not in the case for madmen like Caligula, Kim Jong-Un, or our hearts, they have advisors and agents that tell them what they want to hear.  These advisors are instruments that take news, logic, etc. and color it in order for it to fit into the reality of the dictator's desires.   So, our minds will take logic and information, then twist it to fit with the reality that our hearts wants to be true.

Let's go back to the verse in James mentioned above, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."  It is our minds that take this text out of its context and immediately make it an application action point in order to receive our earned reward.  Again, the mind is only following the orders of the proud heart, which desperately wants to be autonomous and responsible for its rewards.  The text is actually about the inner disposition of our hearts and clearly states that if we love the world we are enemies of God, and to be proud is to be a lover of the world and a hater of God.  Only by responding to God's love and being his friend, and the world's enemy, will we be like God.  But this is missed when our hearts rationalize texts like this one and make it "about me, and my effort."

The solution: a new and greater dictator. Again, you might be thinking, "we don't need a new dictator, we need to get rid of the dictator entirely by ignoring our hearts, then we can start listening to our minds."  Well, this doesn't work and will never work since we are heart-centered beings, and again it's a prideful way of taking control of a reality we can't control.  It's amazing how hardened we are by the deceitfulness of sin! What we need is a new dictator with a greater affection for Christ than our mad affection for ourselves.  Praise God for His promise, “I will give them a new . . .”