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Category: Doctrine of God

1

Published on 1 Comment on The Five ‘Alone’s of the Reformation: Sermon Series

Here's the text and audio for the five sola sermons.  Then a final thought:

Christ Alone
Audio

Grace Alone
Audio

Faith Alone
Audio

Scripture Alone
Audio

God's Glory Alone
Audio

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We refocus on these fundamentals not simply as an exercise in doctrinal purity.  The point is to rediscover the true God.  Because God is the God of the Gospel.  To drift from the gospel is to drift from God Himself.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the One who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.  (Gal 1:6)

When a person ditches the gracious gospel in favour of a different gospel, they ditch God.  Because God is the God of the Gospel.  Conversely when a person trusts the gracious gospel they aren't just converted to a different way of approaching God, they are converted to a different God.

Therefore the experience of hearing the pure gospel should not just be, "Ohh, so that's how the God-I-always-believed-in saves people, now I'll adjust my methods of attaining salvation."

No.  When we hear the gospel, the overwhelming response should be:  "Ohh, so that's what God is like.  I had Him all wrong."

In the gospel we don't just give people a different way to God.  We give them a different God.  The God of the Gospel.  And that's liberation.  It's not the surprise of seeing the-God-we-always-believed-in relating to us via some lovely principles - grace alone and faith alone.  It's the earth-shattering shock of looking to the throne and, utterly unexpectedly, seeing that there sits the gracious, trustworthy Gospel-God.

For the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their Shepherd; He will lead them to springs of Living Water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.  (Rev 7:17)

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Published on Leave a comment on He who loves his wife loves himself

I've just been at a wedding and was reminded again of one of my favourite marriage verses: "He who loves his wife loves himself." (Eph 5:28).

It occured to me that Paul could not have said this the other way around.  He who loves himself does not actually love his wife.  In the marriage covenant, other-love is self-love.  It's the only self-love allowed.  But the reverse is not true: self-love is not other-love

Now think of God.  If you really wanted to, you might want to talk about "God loving Himself."  But of course you'd only do so in the same way you'd talk about a husband loving himself.  How does a husband love himself?  He lays down his life for his wife.   How does God love Himself?  The Father commits all things into His Son's hands.

Any talk of self-love in God must be explicitly talk about triune relations - the Father loving the Son in the Spirit.  You simply can't talk about God loving Himself without emphatically underlining the multi-personal, other-centred nature of this God and this love.  Otherwise you make Him like the selfish husband.

In trinitarian theology there's an old argument about how you should proceed.  Should you "begin with the One" and then show how there are actually three Persons in this One God.  Or  should you "begin with the Three" and show how those Three are the One God?

Well surely we must acknowledge from the outset the tri-personality of this God.  Or else all that you say under the category of "The One God" will start to sound like the selfish husband who, from the overflow of His self-centredness, manages to love another!  So wherever we 'begin' three-ness must be on the table.  (More on this here).

There is a way from Trinity to aseity.  But there is no way from aseity to Trinity.

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Published on 13 Comments on But we're not all evangelists, are we?

Ok, so Christians and evangelism.  Is everyone supposed to look like this guy?

Or do we send those few nut-jobs out on the street so that we can get on with the the kumbaya's, the marshmallows, oh and "building the kingdom" (insert meaning here).

Well blog du jour seems to be modelling community on the trinity.  So here goes.

The Ultimate community-on-mission is God who is a multi-Personal union moving outwards.  Two things are important here.  First, mission is not just one of the things God does.  His ek-centric life is His very way of being.  Second, the Three do not take on identical roles but Each depends on the Others in order to corporately perform the work.

So now, we are swept up into mission as the Spirit unites us to the One Sent from the Father.  "As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you." (John 20:21)  We will also share these two characteristics.

First, mission is not just one of the things the church does.  We are sent ones commissioned by the Sent One.  We are created by mission and for mission.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.  (1 Pet 2:9)

It's not that church, from time to time, decides to act in a missionary way.  It is missionary, that is its nature.  So when we became Christians we joined an evangelistic organisation.  If we're in the body we need to know that the body is heading somewhere.  It's always going to the nations to disciple them.  You cannot 'buy into' Christ without 'buying into' evangelism.  The Christian's life and being is now oriented towards this mission.  There is not 'love' or 'unity' as well as 'mission.'  But rather there is love and unity in mission.

But second, as with the Trinity, we don't all do the same stuff.  Same mission, different roles.

Later in Peter's letter he speaks about two broad categories of gifting - speakers and servers (1 Pet 4:10ff).  And he implores them to get on with their particular giftings.

And that's great.  It's so unfortunate when people think of 'evangelism' simply in terms of the guy in the picture!  And it's tragic when  giftings aren't recognized and encouraged.  We want diversity and we certainly don't want to cram people into the same moulds.  So Peter speaks of different giftings - 'speakers' and 'servers'.  But let's not imagine that he has thereby set forth completely different spheres of operation!  That wouldn't be a very good model of the Trinity.

No, think of the diakonos kind of serving spoken of here (which most basically means table-serving, ie hospitality gifts).  And think of combining this with the speaking gifts?  What if the differently gifted church members collaborated in the missionary task - good food and hospitality and those good with words are liberally sprinkled around the place - what a powerful gospel work!

At such evangelistic dinner parties it is very true that some are performing quite different functions to others.  But they are all being thoroughly missionary.  It's a unified diversity and it's going somewhere - to the nations!

If we get our trinitarian styled mission communities wrong...

The Arian church will laud the noble few who do the real missionary work  (i.e. street preaching etc...)

The Tritheist church will have the speakers heading off by themselves and the servers serving a quite different agenda.

The Modalist church will forget giftings altogether and fit everyone into the same mould.

But the truly trinitarian church will allow the particular giftings to flourish in the service of the one missionary aim.

This post was prompted by this and this.  And I wrote some more about this back here.

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Published on 13 Comments on But we’re not all evangelists, are we?

Ok, so Christians and evangelism.  Is everyone supposed to look like this guy?

Or do we send those few nut-jobs out on the street so that we can get on with the the kumbaya's, the marshmallows, oh and "building the kingdom" (insert meaning here).

Well blog du jour seems to be modelling community on the trinity.  So here goes.

The Ultimate community-on-mission is God who is a multi-Personal union moving outwards.  Two things are important here.  First, mission is not just one of the things God does.  His ek-centric (outgoing) life is His very way of being.  Second, the Three do not take on identical roles but Each depends on the Others in order to corporately perform the work.

So now, we are swept up into mission as the Spirit unites us to the One Sent from the Father.  "As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you." (John 20:21)  We will also share these two characteristics.

First, mission is not just one of the things the church does.  We are sent ones commissioned by the Sent One.  We are created by mission and for mission.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.  (1 Pet 2:9)

It's not that church, from time to time, decides to act in a missionary way.  It is missionary, that is its nature.  So when we became Christians we joined an evangelistic organisation.  If we're in the body we need to know that the body is heading somewhere.  It's always going to the nations to disciple them.  You cannot 'buy into' Christ without 'buying into' evangelism.  The Christian's life and being is now oriented towards this mission.  There is not 'love' or 'unity' as well as 'mission.'  But rather there is love and unity in mission.

But second, as with the Trinity, we don't all do the same stuff.  Same mission, different roles.

Later in Peter's letter he speaks about two broad categories of gifting - speakers and servers (1 Pet 4:10ff).  And he implores them to get on with their particular giftings.

And that's great.  It's so unfortunate when people think of 'evangelism' simply in terms of the guy in the picture!  And it's tragic when  giftings aren't recognized and encouraged.  We want diversity and we certainly don't want to cram people into the same moulds.  So Peter speaks of different giftings - 'speakers' and 'servers'.  But let's not imagine that he has thereby set forth completely different spheres of operation!  That wouldn't be a very good model of the Trinity.

No, think of the diakonos kind of serving spoken of here (which most basically means table-serving, ie hospitality gifts).  And think of combining this with the speaking gifts?  What if the differently gifted church members collaborated in the missionary task - good food and hospitality and those good with words are liberally sprinkled around the place - what a powerful gospel work!

At such evangelistic dinner parties it is very true that some are performing quite different functions to others.  But they are all being thoroughly missionary.  It's a unified diversity and it's going somewhere - to the nations!

If we get our trinitarian styled mission communities wrong...

The Arian church will laud the noble few who do the real missionary work  (i.e. street preaching etc...)

The Tritheist church will have the speakers heading off by themselves and the servers serving a quite different agenda.

The Modalist church will forget giftings altogether and fit everyone into the same mould.

But the truly trinitarian church will allow the particular giftings to flourish in the service of the one missionary aim.

This post was prompted by this and this.  And I wrote some more about this back here.

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6

Published on 6 Comments on The Way to Frame the World – Perichoretically

PLEASE NOTE:  John Frame is not 'a baddie'.  It would be hard to find a contemporary systematic theologian as engaging, clear and humble-hearted as Frame.  He is very easy to like.  And my beef here is down to a certain way of doing trinitarian theology and a certain dislike of scholastic theology and of the doctrine of simplicity in particular.  Those views of mine probably make me the baddie in many minds.  But hopefully we can get beyond caricatures and affirm what is good, be challenged where we need challenging and keep sharpening our intellects and softening our hearts.

What started me thinking about Frame was a great post Pete's written against the idea of "balance": Balance is tritheistic.  We do not seek to walk a tightrope between divine sovereignty and human responsibility or between transcendence and immanence or between unitarianism and polytheism or between faith and works or between evangelism and social action or between any other supposed polarities. As Pete says, such thinking assumes that the 'many' are over against the 'one' - it's tritheistic.

To view this as a trinitarian question is exactly right.  But at one point Pete speaks of 'perspectivalism' as though it was doing the same job as trinitarian thinking.  I don't think it does.  From my reading of Frame, perspectivalism  stems from a consideration of the three Lordship attributes (authority, control, presence) and how they are ultimately identical in the simple divine essence.  What's more when this kind of triadic thinking is applied to the actual Trinity you get modalism (as Frame admits).  Perspectivalism is triadic.  But then Plato's god is triadic.  Allah has an eternal word and a spirit.  Triadic doesn't mean trinitarian.  And I think we're missing a major trick if we think we're being trinitarian every time we co-ordinate a group of three.  There are right and wrong ways to do it.

My fear is that if 'perpectivalism' is seen as the answer to 'balance', then tritheistic balance will just be replaced by modalistic balance.   Both modalism and tritheism share a concern to uphold the equal deity of the Three.  The tritheist does it by cutting them loose from one another while the modalist does it by equally smushing them into the same divine stuff.  Balance for the former means equal air time for the three separate entities.  Balance for the latter means blurring the distinctions and saying they're all deep down the same.

And both are as bad as each other.

Perichoresis on the other hand is the way the ultimate Triad relates.  And I believe this provides a far more helpful way to co-ordinate other relations.  Not least because perichoresis upholds the need for a starting point and a structure.  With perichoresis there is a Beginning and a Way.  And you have to get the Beginning right (you can't start just anywhere).  And you have to continue according to the Way (you can't proceed any old how).

To know God you must begin with Jesus illuminated by the Spirit as He reveals the Father.  That is the only beginning you can make.  Because there is an inherent and non-reversible structure to the relation.  And as you proceed in your knowledge of God your method will be determined by the concrete and asymmetrical (functional) hierarchy of Father, Son and Spirit.

Perspectivalism won't give you this.  If perspectivalism pure and simple is your guide then you are meant to look deep enough into God's 'presence' and you'll get his 'control' and 'authority' thrown in.  Or you'll look deep enough into his 'authority' and you'll see the other two.  Perspectivalism won't give you a starting point or a method.  Not in any hard and fast sense.

But that's a problem.  Because in so many of those polarities mentioned above there are right and wrong ways to relate them.

Take for instance the way Keller uses perspectivalism in preaching.  We need preaching that is doctrinal (normative), personal (existential) and culturally transformative (situational).  Now perspectivalism might be able to tell you to hit all three bases but, by itself, it won't allow you to have a priority nor give you a right method for how to co-ordinate them.  But, in my opinion, you can't just preach cultural transformation trusting that, in the end, this perspective will naturally include the other two.  Rather I'd want to make a strong case for proclaiming Christ's finished work extra nos and only then, on that basis, making personal and cultural applications.  There is a Beginning and a Way inherent to those relations. 

Pete also mentions the relation between evangelism and social action.  I have some very particular views on this relationship.  We must not simply balance up the two "like two wings of a bird" as some would have it.  There is a Beginning and a Way.  The Beginning is gospel proclamation.  And the Way to continue in that relation is under the banner of explicit gospelling. 

Perhaps my biggest beef is in the realm of theological method.  Frame assiduously avoids talk of 'starting points' in theology.  (I'm sure it sounds all too Barthian!)  The centre of theology is, for him, every word that proceeds from God's mouth.  Yet Scripture speaks of matters "of first importance" (1 Cor 15:1ff) and in particular Christ is set forward as the Way, the Truth, the Word, the Image, the Revealer, the Mystery, the Hiding Place of God's revelation (John 14:6; John 1:1-3; Col 1:15f; John 1:18; Col 2:8f; Matt 11:25-27).  There is a perichoretic structuring of revelation that cannot be ironed out.  In theology the Beginning and the Way is Christ or else you have nothing of God. 

I commonly hear people reacting against 'starting points' and 'christocentric methodology' and often this objection is registered with Frame's name somewhere on the horizon.  "Because of perspectivalism we shouldn't get too hung up on certain ways of approaching X, Y and Z."

That's a major, major pity.  And it's absolutely wrong.  The ultimate relational principle is not perspectivalism.  It's perichoresis.  And this gives us every reason to approach theology (and everything else!) expecting structure and hierarchy, beginnings and ways.  Our starting points and methodology are absolutely crucial - the trinitarian nature of reality guarantees it.

A fuller essay on Frame is here

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Published on 4 Comments on Participating in God means participating in the cross

Last time I finished on this thought:

It’s a wonderful thing to participate in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).  But the very essence of it is taking up your cross and following Christ (Mark 8:34)

It got me thinking about the three 'Abba, Father's of the New Testament.

In Galatians 4:6 we read about the Spirit of adoption praying the Son's prayer within us - 'Abba, Father.'  If anything is 'participating in the divine nature' it's this.  God adopts you into God's communion with God.  And He carries on His life of union and communion in us.  Deeper than your heartbeat is the Spirit's cry within you.  This is your true spiritual pulse.  Abba, Father.  Abba, Father. Abba, Father.

In Romans 8:15 we join in with the Spirit.  Adding our Amen, we make Christ's prayer our own and call out to the Father in that same childlike dependence. Again, this is wonderful participation in God.

But what about the original 'Abba, Father'?  Mark 14:36 - Christ is sweating blood at the prospect of drinking the cup.  With loud cries and tears He prays with reverent submission, "Your will be done." (cf Heb 5:7).  The original 'Abba, Father' is prayed in the midst of Christ's total self-offering.

It's this prayer that is placed within us.  Not just any intimacy with the Father but the intimacy of the obedient Son, obedient even to death on a cross.

Now our co-crucifixion with Christ is something that's graciously happened entirely outside ourselves.  It's first happened for us and then been applied to us.  But now that we've granted this we must confess it's something that happens in us too.  The gift of participating in God is the gift of participating in the obedient self-offering of the Son.  It's not a warm bath and a cup of herbal tea.  It's much more earthy and glorious than that.  In fact it's much more profoundly joyful than that.  We will experience fellowship in the communion of the trinity as we experience fellowship in Christ's sufferings.

10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.  (Phil 3:10-11)

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Published on 5 Comments on Triune Glory is Cruciform Glory

A meandering waffle...

Recently I've written about the glory of the triune God.  This glory is His other-centred love.  When He acts for this glory it's not because He or His glory are self-centred.  No He is other-centred and His glory is His grace.  But just because this is so, when God acts for the sake of His glorious grace He is simply determining to be Giver.

From eternity the nature of the triune God has been deferral and other-centred praise.  When faced by creatures, even creatures who would ignore and spurn such love, this God determines to love with an almighty 'nevertheless'.

It's like the mother who is faced by a naughty and manipulative child.  She could cave in to the tantrum or she could withdraw and ignore the child altogether.  But she condescends in love, not because the child is good (he's not) and not because she's weak (she's not).  She acts in accordance with her gracious motherliness, to love the child in spite of himself and in this way to lift him from his misbehaviour.

Put it another way, it's like the man who is struck on the right cheek by an aggressor.  By nature his instincts are fight or flight - strike back or withdraw.  But instead he stands his ground and offers his left cheek also.  He opens himself out in grace and continues the offer of relationship.  This is God-like glory.

Put it another way, it's like Christ crucified.  He might have remained in heaven or merely sent us to hell.  Instead He acted for the sake of His glory.  He absorbed our blow and rather than retaliate He offered reconciling love.

The cross was the triune love laid bare.  And this is not simply because the Persons demonstrated how much they love and act for one another.  More than this, they demonstrated how the glory of grace encounters what is outside this love.  In costly sacrifice the triune glory suffers what is outside in order to draw it in.

How do we respond to this glorious God?  Well we rejoice in the grace of Jesus shown to us - the terrible children and violent aggressors.  And we pass on the divine glory we have received.  Out of the fulness we have received we empty ourselves (which is precisely the dynamic we have seen from the triune God in the cross of Christ).  Out of the strengthening of Christ's Spirit we will adopt cross-shaped love towards others and in every circumstance imaginable practise costly cheek-turning.  (More on cheek turning here, here and here).

In this sense "What would Jesus do?" is exactly the question to ask in every ethical situation.  Just make sure your answer is always: To receive the grace of the Father and lay down our lives for the unworthy.  Once you're looking for opportunities, it's surprising how often you'll be able to apply the wisdom of the cross in daily, practical cheek-turning.  And this is what it means to 'glorify God.'  The glory of the cross lived out is the glory of the triune God applied.  Because the triune glory is the cruciform glory.

It's a wonderful thing to participate in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).  But the very essence of it is taking up your cross and following Christ (Mark 8:34)


Published on Leave a comment on Casting crowns

Revelation 4 shows the 24 elders casting their crowns before the throne (Rev 4:10).  Though these have been given by the Almighty Father Himself, all the elders can think to do with them is throw them to the ground in His presence.  We can almost hear them singing Psalm 115 as they do it: "Not to us, O LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness."

The love and faithfulness of the LORD has raised them them to incalculable honour - robes and thrones and crowns.  Yet they gladly abandon all back to Him. Verse 10 is like a freeze-frame of the life of heaven.  All honour given and all honour returned.  It's an everlasting circle of deferral and praise.

On Trinity Sunday we remember that this is not simply the life of the future.  And it's not simply the dynamic of the creature and its Creator.  This eternal deferral to the Other is the everlasting life of God.  The Father commits everything into the hands of His Beloved.  The Son casts His crown before the Father, desperate that all honour be ascribed to His Name.  The Father lifts Him up and establishes Him as King over all.  The Son hands all power and authority back to the Father.  And the Spirit inspires and empowers this loving reciprocity.  Heaven is nothing but a participation in this other-centred glory.

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Published on Leave a comment on Running away from the God of love

Harry Moorehouse was an English evangelist known as "the Boy Preacher" on account of his youthful looks.  Moody wasn't particularly keen, but Moorehouse invited himself to Moody's church in Chicago to preach.

Moorehouse was to have a massive impact on Moody's preaching, but Moody wasn't even present for his first sermon.  However his wife, Emma, was.

The following is an extract from the biography D.L. Moody by William R. Moody:

"When I got back Saturday morning I was anxious, to know how he got on. The first thing I said to my wife, when I got into the house, was, 'How is the young Englishman coming along? How do the people like him?'

“'They like him very much.' '

“'Did you hear him'?'

"'Yes.”

“'Well, did you like him?'

“'Yes, I liked him very much. He has preached two sermons from that verse of John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life," and I think you will like him, although he preaches a little differently from you.'

“'How is that?'

“'Well, he tells the worst sinners that God loves them.'

“'Then,' said I, 'HE IS WRONG.'

“'I think you will agree with him when you hear him,' said she, 'because he backs up everything he says with the Bible.'

"Sunday came, and as I went to the church I noticed that everyone brought a Bible. The morning address was to Christians. I had never heard anything quite like it. He gave chapter and verse to prove every statement he made. When night came the church was packed. 'Now, beloved friends,' said the preacher, 'if you will turn to the third chapter of John and the sixteenth verse, you will find my text.' He preached the most extraordinary sermon from that verse. He did not divide the text into ' secondly' and ' thirdly' and ' fourthly'; he just took the whole verse, and then went through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation to prove that in all ages God loved the world. God had sent prophets and patriarchs and holy men to warn us, and then He sent His Son, and after they killed Him, He sent the Holy Ghost. I never knew up to that time that God loved us so much. This heart of mine began to thaw out; I could not keep back the tears. It was like news from a far country; I just drank it in. So did the crowded congregation.

I tell you there is one thing that draws above everything else in this world, and that is love. A man that has no one to love him, no mother, no wife, no children, no brother, no sister, belongs to the class that commits suicide.

"It's pretty hard to get a crowd out in Chicago on a Monday night, but the people came. They brought their Bibles, and Moorhouse began, 'Beloved friends, if you will turn to the third chapter of John and the sixteenth verse, you will find my text, and again he showed on another line from Genesis to Revelation, that God loved us. He could turn to almost any part of the Bible and prove this great fact. Well, I thought that was better than the other one; he struck a higher note than ever, and it was sweet to my soul to hear it.

He just beat that truth down into my heart, and I have never doubted it since. I used to preach that God was behind the sinner with a double-edged sword ready to hew him down. I have done with that. I preach now that God is behind him with love, and he is running away from the God of love.

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Published on Leave a comment on We did it all for the glory of love – part six

Part one - God does all things for the sake of love

Part two - Glory according to John Piper

Part three - God's glory is His love

Part four - Isaiah 42 and Ezekiel 36

Part five - Ephesians 1

Let me conclude with a few points of application.

My basic contention has been this - God's glory is His grace.  The Trinity's overflowing life of other-centred love is the glory that shines out of all He is and does.  It therefore makes no sense to think of His glory in self-centred terms.

But having said that, let me affirm something vitally important from Scripture.  Once we're clear that God's glory is His grace, we should also say that there's a significant sense in which God acts for the sake of this glory and not for our sake.

Huh?

Didn't I just say that God's glory is His other-centredness?  Indeed.

And therefore if God acts gloriously won't that mean acting other-centredly?  That's right.

Then how can I say that the triune God acts for this glory and not for our own sake?  Well think of John 10:17-18.  Jesus says "I lay down my life."  And then He says "No-one takes it from me."  It's really important to hold onto both.  It is His eternal glory to lay down His life (v17 is amazing!).  And yet all this happens at His initiative.  He really and truly becomes a Victim - the Victim.  But no-one makes Him a Victim but He Himself.  This is truly an offering not a wage.  Truly a gift and not a pay-off.  It's the Saviour's push not the sinner's pull that's driving things.

And that's so important because one of the things John Piper is so keen to fight is our natural self-centredness.  And it's absolutely right that we resist human narcicism.  We'd love to think that Christ's an old softy who can't help himself when he sees a damsel in distress like us.  We'd love heaven to confirm our own assessment of worth and be as besotted with us as we are.  But the God of Scripture reminds us that His lavish other-centredness is not because we've twisted His arm (see my post on Ezekiel 36:16-32).

Let me put it in these two sentences - the first resists Piper's definition of glory, the second upholds his desire to fight narcisism:

The triune God acts for the sake of His gracious glory - not the glory of His self-centred, self-regard.

BUT ALSO

The triune God acts for the sake of His gracious glory - not for the sake of our self-centred, self-regard.

Essentially I'm saying it's right to oppose our human narcicism.  But we don't do that by positing heavenly narcisism.  Instead we proclaim the heavenly other-centredness of God which is not a confirmation of our self-obsession but liberation from it.

As an illustration I can't do better than Craig's story of modern day chivalry (thanks Craig).  He was once walking down a corridor and as he neared the door he noticed a woman behind him.  So - being the benevolent, other-centred guy he is - he opened the door and let her through.  Apparently she scowled and said "I hope you're not opening the door for me because I'm a lady."  Craig replied "No, I'm opening the door because I'm a gentleman."

That's what I'm talking about.

This act of grace was not motivated first and foremost by what was in the recipient.  It was motivated by what was in the giver.  The giver desired to be this kind of giver, in many ways regardless of the recipient. But he still determined to be giver.

In the same way the triune God acts in creation and redemption first and foremost "because he's a gentleman" not "because we're a damsel in distress."  And so, at bottom, the Father loves us not because of anything in us but because He is Father.

So we see that all of this glory talk is just another way of upholding sola gratia (grace alone).  But that's only natural because God's grace is His glory.

I am finding more and more ways of applying this kind of thinking pastorally.

Think of the parent faced with a manipulative child.  On the one hand they might go soft and cave into the child.  On the other they might harden themselves to the childs demands.  But motivated by the glory of grace another way is opened for them.  There is a way of loving the child in an even more costly way that counters their self-absorption.

Think of the nagging wife of Proverbs.  A dead-eyed husband might say "Yes dear" and confirm her in her manipulative ways.  On the other hand he might cut her down to size and fail to be her lover.  Or, motivated by the glory of grace, he can seek ways of leading in love that resist her manipulation but that actually call on more love from him, not less.

Think of the "pull" someone exerts in a pastoral counselling situation (see here for Larry Crabb's thoughts on "pull").  How do we resist manipulative demands people put on us (which won't ultimately help them) without retreating from them?  How do we love without loving being 'caving'?

I don't have all the answers but I do believe that as we meditate more on the LORD Christ's fierce determination to be Lover we will be able to pass on such love.

So in conclusion, Piper is right to oppose human self-centredness.  But we mustn't do that by proclaiming a divine self-centredness.  We will be truly released from self in the glorious other-centred love of our God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

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