Jesus is the Word of God
What do you look like when you hold out your arms to obstinate people? (Rom 10:21) You look like a jerk. You look completely foolish.
But God makes this arms-outstretched, suffering love His glory. In spite, not because of us.
If we're going to oppose synergism (and we should) let's be thorough-going about it. Just a thought.
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If Jesus really died for me / Then Jesus really tried for me
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How do you say the first line with conviction without the second line sounding like a well-meaning but ineffectual gesture? That's at the heart of the debate between limited and universal atonement. Well put Robbie.
Pity the song's rubbish.
I like the way Peter put it:
4 to whom coming -- a living stone -- by men, indeed, having been disapproved of, but with God choice, precious, 5 and ye yourselves, as living stones, are built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 Wherefore, also, it is contained in the Writing: 'Lo, I lay in Zion a chief corner-stone, choice, precious, and he who is believing on him may not be put to shame;' 7 to you, then, who are believing is the preciousness; and to the unbelieving, a stone that the builders disapproved of, this one did become for the head of a corner, 8 and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence -- who are stumbling at the word, being unbelieving, -- to which also they were set. (1 Peter 2:4-8, Young's Literal Translation)
Christ through His cross is really set forth as Cornerstone. And His proper office is to build up a spiritual house. But, get this. His effect (in an accidental rather than proper sense) is also to determine those in unbelief. Not even unbelievers can 'set themselves' against Jesus. Instead they are set in their unbelief. They do not avoid the Stone, but stumble over Him. They cannot escape His atonement. They cannot free themselves from the Stone. Either they fall on Him or He crushes them (Luke 20:18). One way or another they are determined by Him. In fact they find that even their rejection of Him makes Him to be the Capstone. The cross is precisely the point where rejection is made to further not thwart His saving agenda. Through His cross, Christ shows Himself to be so great His enemies serve His purpose. This is the universal effectiveness of the cross. What a crazy gospel! But wonderful. The Lord has done this and it is marvellous in our eyes.
Therefore Christ's atonement is for universal salvation - that is its proper effect. Jesus did not come to condemn the world but to save it. There is though an accidental and incomprehensible effect - rejection. Yet even this rejection is taken up at the cross and through the cross to serve the saving purposes of God. It is universally effective.
Jesus really died for you. And Jesus more than tried for you. At the cross He has entirely determined your existence..
I preached that verse about a month ago (Ps 18:19). And you know my first reaction as I was preparing?
Hmmm, tricky, how on earth should we understand this...?
I hope you're all saying: But why Glen - it seems perfectly straightforward.
Well, there's the slightly tricky part about how we take the verse on our own lips. Clearly it's Christ speaking of His Father. But once we're all happy to sing the Psalm in Christ then I hope you're all saying to yourselves: Glen, it's perfectly obvious. The Lord saves us because He loves us. What could be difficult about that?
Ah, but you see I regularly fall into a foolish and horrible error - perhaps you're the same. I start thinking that Jesus died so that God could love me. I imagine that God saves in order to love. He cleans me up a bit and then gives me His grace. His atonement leads to love, (rather than love leading to the atonement). Do you see my error?
And so when Psalm 18 spoke of the Lord delighting in me and therefore rescuing me? Well it seemed backwards. And so I really had to let the word confront me again.
Because in the bible God loves the world and so sends the Son to save (John 3:16-17). In the bible it's 'because of His great love for us that God makes us alive', even when we were dead in sins (Eph 2:4). In the bible God demonstrates His own love for us in that Christ died for powerless, ungodly, sinful enemies (Rom 5:6-11).
Do you see what these verses are saying? God loves and so He saves. It does not say - God saves and so He loves.
Why's that important? Well for one thing it means that Christ loves me - SINNER THAT I AM. It's not a case of Christ loving the saved me (though of course He does). But it's the radical gospel truth that Christ has loved me at my putrid worst. He doesn't clean me up in order to love me. He loves me and so cleanses me through His atoning death.
Which means when I ask myself, 'Does God love me?' - I can look to the cross alone. I don't have to check my own saved status. I don't have to worry whether the cleansing has taken sufficient effect to allow me entrance into His affections. I can simply look at Christ crucified and say - God loves me. There is His demonstration - a love for sinners at war with Him. He has not fixed His love on me at my best. He has fixed His love on me at my worst.
My salvation - won through His blood alone - proves His love for me. His love is not a bonus for the godly but is specifically aimed at enemies. Such love is the very ground of all He does. If I'm looking at the Son lifted up on the cross then I'm seeing God's love for me because there I'm seeing my salvation. This salvation in Christ is infallible proof of God's immovable, inexhaustible and unfathomable love for me.
He rescued me because He delighted in me. (Ps 18:19)
Christian, God speaks that word to you right now. Believe it.
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I think, actually, [Richard Dawkins is] a pre-Christian atheist, because he never understood what Christianity is about in the first place! That would be rather like Madonna calling herself post-Marxist. You’d have to read him first to be post-him. As I’ve said before, I think that Dawkins in particular makes such crass mistakes about the kind of claims that Christianity is making. A lot of the time, he’s either banging at an open door or he’s shooting at a straw target.
Terry Eagleton (via Halden)
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But before we feel smug. Let's allow him (and others) to critique a knee-jerk theism that too often passes for Christian apologetics:
[Conservative Evangelicals] despise Richard Dawkins while actually believing in the kind of God he rightly rejects, as if the existence of God were, in principle, demonstrable, as if the proposition “God exists” were a hypothesis to be affirmed or denied, as if God were simply the hugest of individuals.
Kim Fabricius (I object to his other points, but this one has a lot of truth to it).
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Dawkins himself says that all he does is stretch his disbelief one God further than the Christians.
Which is absolutely right. Both Dawkins and the Christian reject Thor and Vishnu and the Flying Spaghetti Monster and any other super-being you care to imagine. The task of the Christian apologist is not to establish a deity but to proclaim the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
As Mike Reeves recommends - the question for the atheist is 'Which God don't you believe in?'
And once they've described it, the response to have ready is 'I don't believe in that either, let me tell you about the cross.'
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... the ultimate plague (i.e. judgement) (Ex 11:1)
... judgement upon the gods (Ex 12:12)
... the defeat of the Enemy (Ex 6:1)
... liberation from slavery to overlords (Ex 13:14)
... liberation to the service of the LORD (Ex 8:1)
... the cause of unparalleled sorrow for the enemies (Ex 11:6)
... the cause of great joy for the redeemed (2 Chron 30:21)
... the distinction between the LORD's people and the world (Ex 11:7)
... in darkness (Deut 16:6)
... a sacrifice (Ex 12:27)
... substitutionary (Ex 12:13)
... bloody (Ex 12:13)
... a sign for the LORD's people (Ex 12:13)
... for the LORD Himself to see (Ex 12:13)
... to be memorialized in perpetuity (Ex 12:14)
... community-defining (Ex 12:47)
... open to non-covenant people (Ex 12:49) but...
... for those who enter the covenant and own its sign (Ex 12:48)
... time renewing (Ex 12:1)
... the ultimate revelation of the LORD (Ex 6:7)
Any more??
What is the cross? The same.
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"I wish I never sinned" said the Israelite at the head of the queue.
The others waiting to make their sacrifices nodded.
The priest narrowed his gaze. "Why do you wish you never sinned?"
The Israelite was amazed that the priest would ask. The answer was so obvious it hardly needed saying. "So I don't have to keep returning to this altar."
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Have you ever heard or ever spoken about Christ's cleansing of lepers? Have you ever heard it said that, in the OT, you never got a good infection, only a bad one? In other words the teaching says - holiness and cleanness never travels to the unholy/unclean thing. Instead it's always the unholy/unclean thing that defiles the holy/clean thing. Ever heard that or said it?
The advantage is that then you can say 'But Jesus gives the world's first ever good infection.' The disadvantage is that it's a damned dirty lie.
Exodus 29:37 - after the altar is purified, atoned for, christed and consecrated, whatever touches it shall become holy.
Exodus 30:22-33 - the sacred anointing oil christs (i.e. anoints) the tent of meeting, the ark, the table (and utensils), the lampstand (and its utensils), the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offering (plus utensils), the basin and its stand. And just as Scripture says that anything that touches them becomes holy, it says to christ Aaron and his sons with it. No ordinary person is to be anointed with this oil, only priests.
Leviticus 6:18,27 - the priests' sin and grain offerings will both make something holy if it touches them.
So it's far better to say that there are rare occasions on which the unholy can receive a good infection. The altar, certain anointed ones and certain sacrifices can make something holy.
So if you want to be made holy come to the cross, come to The Anointed One, come to His priestly sacrifice. There you will receive a good infection. As He receives a bad one.
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It's an age-old question, but it's taken the Flight of the Conchords to pose it again with aching poignancy:
What man? Which man? Who's the man?
When's a man a man?
What makes a man a man?
Am I a man?
Yes... technically I am.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLEK0UZH4cs]
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On reflection there were two models of masculinity on show at the London Men's Convention on Saturday.
The first was communicated in mainly non-verbal ways. As John has put it, there was, at times, a 'Top Gear' spirituality (Top Gear is a popular British TV programme where middle aged men salivate over an array of sports cars). You can guess the kinds of things - jokes about sports teams, jokes about baldness (lots of them!), jokes about scrotums. All the usual stuff. There was an uncomfortable insistence on making fun of the main speaker (Tim Keller) in a laddish kind of, 'Hey, you big bald son of a gun. Not much hair on you is there? Baldy. You big bald son of a bald man. Ha!' That kind of thing. Graciously Keller did not call down bear attacks as was his right as prophet of the LORD. Now that really would have sorted out the men from the boys.
(Just as an aside - British men, the cruelty that passes for 'banter' among men is quite shocking for foreigners to cope with. On one hand I speak as someone who's lived here half his life and, for better and for worse, speaks the lingo. I also speak as an Australian male. But I confess that even we hard-headed convicts gape in wonder at the incessant jibes about 'Fatty' and 'Who ate all the pies?' when the man in question is only slightly overweight. Or 'baldy', when we're really dealing with a high forehead. Or - and I dare not even name what red-heads are called in this country. I would try to dissuade anyone with auburn hair or lighter from stepping foot in the British Isles. The word "Ginger" could be followed by any number of appellations, most of them four-letter. And this kind of culture is rife in the church too. Last night in the pub I heard two Christian men speak about another Christian friend in shockingly unChristian ways. But it was completely in keeping with this lads culture.)
Under this first model of masculinity we're told that we have a God given masculinity to be lived out. Which is true. We're told what a huge problem it is when men aren't real men. Which is true. But then it's basically assumed that everyone knows what a real man is.
So Mark Driscoll bemoans the prevalence of 'chickified' men in church.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSrZVF3FEUQ]
Apparently the real men are those "watching a ball game, making money, climbing a mountain, shooting a gun, or working on their truck." And these are the men that are getting it done in the world. So Driscoll wants these kind of men in the church.
Well. Alright. It'd be great to have them in church. And yes, in some limited sense they'd make a welcome change from the other kind of false masculinity that abounds. But let's be clear - all natural masculinity is wicked. Masculinity as it occurs in its natural state is horribly and dangerously perverted. Whether the perversion occurs in the cowardly retreat direction or the aggressive domination direction, it's a perversion.
The other model of masculinity came in Keller's talk on the cross. He took us to Gethsemane where Jesus was at His wits end, craving the support of friends, crying, sweating blood contemplating the cross. The furnace of God's wrath lay ahead of Him. He begged His Father for another way. But there was no other way to save us. The prospect was simple: It was Him or us. And so Jesus said 'Father, Let it be me.'
That's a man.
Laying down His life for others, bearing shame in their place, accepting weakness to strengthen them. None of these things looked impressive. He looked like a total failure, naked and choking to death on a cross. He did not look manly. And men from all sides told Him so. They had all sorts of opinions about what Jesus needed to do to be a real man. They were all wrong. He reigned from that tree. Here was the manliest thing ever done.
And it has nothing to do with back-slapping dudesmanship. It's not about being mechanical or sports-loving. And it's not threatened by aesthetic sensitivity or quiet thoughtfulness. It's defined by heart-felt, loving, sacrificial service. It's stepping into the roles Christ has for us and saying 'My life for yours. My weakness for your strength. Father, Let it be me.'
Oh for real men! Oh to be a real man. But not like those 'real men' we're told to be.
More posts on masculinity:
Is the fruit of the Spirit too sissy for real men?
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An incredible 7th century old English poem. (Rood means cross)
Listen! The choicest of visions I wish to tell,
which came as a dream in middle-night,
after voice-bearers lay at rest.
It seemed that I saw a most wondrous tree
born aloft, wound round by light,
brightest of beams. All was that beacon
sprinkled with gold. Gems stood
fair at earth's corners; there likewise five
shone on the shoulder-span. All there beheld the Angel of God,
fair through predestiny......Then best wood spoke these words:
"It was long since--I yet remember it--
that I was hewn at holt's end,
moved from my stem. Strong fiends seized me there,
worked me for spectacle; cursèd ones lifted me.
On shoulders men bore me there, then fixed me on hill;
fiends enough fastened me. Then saw I mankind's Lord
come with great courage when he would mount on me.
Then dared I not against the Lord's word
bend or break, when I saw earth's
fields shake. All fiends
I could have felled, but I stood fast.
The young hero stripped himself--he, God Almighty--
strong and stout-minded. He mounted high gallows,
bold before many, when he would loose mankind.I shook when that Man clasped me. I dared, still, not bow to earth,
fall to earth's fields, but had to stand fast.
Rood was I reared. I lifted a mighty King,
Lord of the heavens, dared not to bend.
With dark nails they drove me through: on me those sores are seen,
open malice-wounds. I dared not scathe anyone.
They mocked us both, we two together. All wet with blood I was,
poured out from that Man's side, after ghost he gave up.
Much have I born on that hill
of fierce fate. I saw the God of hosts
harshly stretched out. Darknesses had
wound round with clouds the corpse of the Wielder,
bright radiance; a shadow went forth,
dark under heaven. All creation wept,
King's fall lamented. Christ was on rood......May he be friend to me
who here on earth earlier died
on that gallows-tree for mankind's sins.
He loosed us and life gave,
a heavenly home. Hope was renewed
with glory and gladness to those who there burning endured.
That Son was victory-fast in that great venture,
with might and good-speed, when he with many,
vast host of souls, came to God's kingdom,
One-Wielder Almighty: bliss to the angels
and all the saints--those who in heaven
dwelt long in glory--when their Wielder came,
Almighty God, where his homeland was.Translation copyright © 1982, Jonathan A. Glenn
Read the whole thing here
May you know that young Hero - God Almighty - close this day.
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Maybe this is well known but I was intrigued by finding this in a second hand bookshop:
Chalke wrote it in 1995. On the cross he writes this:
"...to complete the rejection, [Jesus] was abandoned by God the Father. To a large extent, it was this emotional torture which killed Jesus... It shows the completeness with which he was prepared to pay the price of human sin."
This from a man who in 2003 denied a penal substitutionary view of the cross. Having quoted John 3:16, Chalke says
"...how then, have we come to believe that at the cross this God of love suddenly decides to vent his anger and wrath on his own Son? The fact is that the cross isn't a form of cosmic child abuse - a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith" (The Lost Message of Jesus, p182).
Anyone know if Chalke has ever explained his earlier explanation of the cross in the light of this later one?
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