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Tag: anthropology

Published on Leave a comment on Change is not outside-in or inside-out. It's outside-up.

To change internally through external acts can be flesh.

But to change externally through internal devotions can be just as flesh-ly.

Conversely, the external application of word and sacrament can have a wonderful effect internally.

And an internal resolve to look away to Christ can brilliantly impact your externals.

Neither outside-in nor inside-out is the right method for change.  The division the bible makes is between flesh and Spirit.

The real issue is whether the Spirit is leading us to Jesus and His finished work. It's the Spirit who takes us outside to Christ who offers up our true standing before the Father.

I talk about this here in a recent sermon on Romans 8 (audio here).

13For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live,

What does it mean to put to death the misdeeds of the body by the Spirit.  Not by the law, not by the flesh, not by will power or human effort.  What does change look like that is by the Spirit?

Well, imagine you lie.  You lie to protect your reputation, you tell everyone you’ve done something that you haven’t done to sound like a big shot.  And afterwards you feel bad about lying.  And you want to stop lying like that because it’s getting to be a habit.

Now at that point – what is Christian about that resolve?  Non-Christians resolve to tell the truth too.  There’s nothing Christian about trying to be a better person.  There’s nothing Christian about putting sins to death.  It’s the WAY you put them to death that’s the real difference.

See, you could put it to death through the law.  You could say “The law says Thou shalt not lie.  I’ve broken the law.  I’ll punish myself and put myself under condemnation until I feel I’ve done my penance and then I’ll try really, really hard to be honest next time."

Two problems with the law approach.  First, it doesn’t work.  Second, I’ve just resolved to be my own Saviour.  I don’t need Jesus for this.  I don’t need the cross, I don’t need the Spirit.  I’m just trying to be more moral.  There’s nothing Christian about resolving to tell the truth.

But Paul tells me to put lying to death BY THE SPIRIT.

What’s that?  Well to figure out that, we need to figure out what the Spirit is up to in the world.  And verse 14 will tell us what we need to know.  Here’s what the Spirit is up to:

14 because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Verse 15 calls the Spirit "the Spirit of Sonship."  So the Spirit of the Son makes US sons and daughters of God.  The Spirit sweeps us up into Jesus so that we share Jesus’ relationship with God.  And what is Jesus’ relationship with God.  He is the Son, who calls out to God, “Abba, Father.”  And now, BY THE SPIRIT, so do we!

Abba is a word for Daddy in many middle eastern languages.  It’s intimate, it’s affectionate.  It’s also deeply respectful.  But here’s the question: Who on earth gets to call Almighty God, Abba?  Calling the Queen “Liz” is bad enough.  But at least calling her Liz doesn’t presume anything about your relationship to the Queen.  To call God “Daddy” you’re not only being incredibly intimate with God, you’re also making a claim on Him.  You’re saying “God, You are my Father and I am Your child.”  And children have certain rights.  In verse 17, Paul will tell us one of those rights – we have inheritance rights – as children of God we are heirs of the cosmos.

So that’s what the Spirit is up to – He’s communicating Christ to me, He’s testifying to me that I am in Jesus and in Him God is my Father, He’s communicating all that that means…

Now come back to verse 13 and ask “What does it mean to put to death the misdeeds of this Adamic body BY THE SPIRIT?”

Here’s what it means.  It means I open up my bible, I read the Spirit’s words and I allow Him to tell me:  “Glen, don’t you realize you HAVE the righteousness of Christ?!  You ARE God’s beloved child, unimprovably so.  So Glen, when you lied, who were you trying to impress?  Why lie?  You are dead to lying now, not because there’s an anti-lying law.  You’re dead to lying because, What need is there to lie?

The Spirit is constantly telling me, “I am a trillionaire walking around the millionaires club.”  And my lying exaggeration is like flashing around a counterfeit £50 note, trying to impress people.  That doesn’t impress people in the millionaires club.  And it completely forgets that I have a trillion pounds to my name?  What am I doing?

So put lying to death BY THE SPIRIT.

It works for all sins.

Put porn to death BY THE SPIRIT.  Why go after that counterfeit intimacy, when Jesus brings us into His eternal fellowship with the Father?

Put covetousness to death BY THE SPIRIT.  Do you really need the latest outfit or the latest gadget, when you’re about to inherit the universe?

Put anger and harsh words to death BY THE SPIRIT.  Don’t you realize you’re loved and appreciated and declared righteous in the heavenly realms?  Do you really need to assert your rights here and now?

Whatever the misdeeds of your Adam nature, put them to death BY THE SPIRIT.

To change by the Spirit means to have my gaze drawn to Christ who is my righteousness.  It means the Spirit re-reminding me that Christ is my standing before the Father.  All my sins spring from trying to live independently of Jesus and establishing my own standing in the world.  So look out to Christ who offers up the real you.  That's how Christian change occurs.

6

Published on 6 Comments on Change is not outside-in or inside-out. It’s outside-up.

To change internally through external acts can be flesh.

But to change externally through internal devotions can be just as flesh-ly.

Conversely, the external application of word and sacrament can have a wonderful effect internally.

And an internal resolve to look away to Christ can brilliantly impact your externals.

Neither outside-in nor inside-out is the right method for change.  The division the bible makes is between flesh and Spirit.

The real issue is whether the Spirit is leading us to Jesus and His finished work. It's the Spirit who takes us outside to Christ who offers up our true standing before the Father.

I talk about this here in a recent sermon on Romans 8 (audio here).

13For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live,

What does it mean to put to death the misdeeds of the body by the Spirit.  Not by the law, not by the flesh, not by will power or human effort.  What does change look like that is by the Spirit?

Well, imagine you lie.  You lie to protect your reputation, you tell everyone you’ve done something that you haven’t done to sound like a big shot.  And afterwards you feel bad about lying.  And you want to stop lying like that because it’s getting to be a habit.

Now at that point – what is Christian about that resolve?  Non-Christians resolve to tell the truth too.  There’s nothing Christian about trying to be a better person.  There’s nothing Christian about putting sins to death.  It’s the WAY you put them to death that’s the real difference.

See, you could put it to death through the law.  You could say “The law says Thou shalt not lie.  I’ve broken the law.  I’ll punish myself and put myself under condemnation until I feel I’ve done my penance and then I’ll try really, really hard to be honest next time."

Two problems with the law approach.  First, it doesn’t work.  Second, I’ve just resolved to be my own Saviour.  I don’t need Jesus for this.  I don’t need the cross, I don’t need the Spirit.  I’m just trying to be more moral.  There’s nothing Christian about resolving to tell the truth.

But Paul tells me to put lying to death BY THE SPIRIT.

What’s that?  Well to figure out that, we need to figure out what the Spirit is up to in the world.  And verse 14 will tell us what we need to know.  Here’s what the Spirit is up to:

14 because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Verse 15 calls the Spirit "the Spirit of Sonship."  So the Spirit of the Son makes US sons and daughters of God.  The Spirit sweeps us up into Jesus so that we share Jesus’ relationship with God.  And what is Jesus’ relationship with God.  He is the Son, who calls out to God, “Abba, Father.”  And now, BY THE SPIRIT, so do we!

Abba is a word for Daddy in many middle eastern languages.  It’s intimate, it’s affectionate.  It’s also deeply respectful.  But here’s the question: Who on earth gets to call Almighty God, Abba?  Calling the Queen “Liz” is bad enough.  But at least calling her Liz doesn’t presume anything about your relationship to the Queen.  To call God “Daddy” you’re not only being incredibly intimate with God, you’re also making a claim on Him.  You’re saying “God, You are my Father and I am Your child.”  And children have certain rights.  In verse 17, Paul will tell us one of those rights – we have inheritance rights – as children of God we are heirs of the cosmos.

So that’s what the Spirit is up to – He’s communicating Christ to me, He’s testifying to me that I am in Jesus and in Him God is my Father, He’s communicating all that that means…

Now come back to verse 13 and ask “What does it mean to put to death the misdeeds of this Adamic body BY THE SPIRIT?”

Here’s what it means.  It means I open up my bible, I read the Spirit’s words and I allow Him to tell me:  “Glen, don’t you realize you HAVE the righteousness of Christ?!  You ARE God’s beloved child, unimprovably so.  So Glen, when you lied, who were you trying to impress?  Why lie?  You are dead to lying now, not because there’s an anti-lying law.  You’re dead to lying because, What need is there to lie?

The Spirit is constantly telling me, “I am a trillionaire walking around the millionaires club.”  And my lying exaggeration is like flashing around a counterfeit £50 note, trying to impress people.  That doesn’t impress people in the millionaires club.  And it completely forgets that I have a trillion pounds to my name?  What am I doing?

So put lying to death BY THE SPIRIT.

It works for all sins.

Put porn to death BY THE SPIRIT.  Why go after that counterfeit intimacy, when Jesus brings us into His eternal fellowship with the Father?

Put covetousness to death BY THE SPIRIT.  Do you really need the latest outfit or the latest gadget, when you’re about to inherit the universe?

Put anger and harsh words to death BY THE SPIRIT.  Don’t you realize you’re loved and appreciated and declared righteous in the heavenly realms?  Do you really need to assert your rights here and now?

Whatever the misdeeds of your Adam nature, put them to death BY THE SPIRIT.

To change by the Spirit means to have my gaze drawn to Christ who is my righteousness.  It means the Spirit re-reminding me that Christ is my standing before the Father.  All my sins spring from trying to live independently of Jesus and establishing my own standing in the world.  So look out to Christ who offers up the real you.  That's how Christian change occurs.

Published on Leave a comment on Loved, Decorated, Rotting

That is Adam's race.  Cut off from its LifeSource.  It flourishes for a while.  It can look and smell good.  We can dress it up with all kinds of bling.  We can surround it with feasting and fun.  But there's no life in it.  It's decaying by the minute.  And it's end is the rubbish dump.

 

Published on Leave a comment on Who sounds sillier – Stephen Baldwin or Richard Dawkins?

Stephen Baldwin has been ridiculed for his comments on Celebrity Big Brother regarding evolution.  He said:

If we're descended from apes, how come there are still apes?

Ok, a misunderstanding of the theory.  But is the theory more or less silly than the misunderstanding?

Here's Richard Dawkins answering the very objection Baldwin makes.  See if you can watch it with a straight face:

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh0F4FBLJRE"]

What we have here is a Professor of Zoology faced with a line up of four apes and an accountant from Swindon.  And he refuses to identify the odd one out.  The whole story he invests his life in says that none are superior to any other - all are equally well adapted to their environment.  It's just 4 monkeys and Pam sitting in a tree -  M-U  T-A-T  I-N-G.

To say that Dawkins has put Baldwin right is like saying:

Ohhh.  Sorry for thinking your theory was nuts.  I thought you believed in alchemy.  Now I realize you have a magical goose to lay your golden egg.

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Published on Leave a comment on We've got the whole world in our hands

Walking through a London train station yesterday I had to weave my way through hundreds of protestors.  Their favourite placard seemed to be this one:

photo from here

The message reads: Our climate is in our hands.  And at least 20 000 gathered in the capital to remind us of this: we've got the whole world in our hands.

Maybe it's coincidence but it's pretty close to a Guardian headline this week that said, regarding Copenhagen,  "Our destiny is still in our hands."

Wouldn't we love that to be true!?  How we long to be this world's solution!  And therefore, however costly it might be, we are eager to cast ourselves as the problem.  (See this former post entitled 'Anthropogenic')

The cost we seem willing to pay to keep ourselves at the centre beggars belief.  The Spectator reports the cost of making good on pledges agreed at the G8 summit:

A high global CO2 tax starting at $68 could reduce the world economic output by a staggering 13% in 2100 - the equivalent of $40 trillion a year.  That is to say, it would cost 50 times the expected damage of global warming. (Bjorn Lomborg, The Spectator, 5/12/09)

But hey - that's the price you pay when you take your destiny into your hands.  And you pay it willingly and with self-righteous zeal.  Because you are coming of age.  To this you were born.  We are the ones we've been waiting for, and all that.

But Christmas tells a different story.  He is the One we were waiting for.  And the government is upon His shoulders. (Isaiah 9:2-7).

Yet whenever we turn from Him we become slaves to the devil's lie: 'Be like God'.  And the result is a captivity to fear and an incessant struggle to make the world work.  We end up as slaves and we willingly pay for the honour.  Eventually in blood.  But no cost is too dear in order to secure our own messianic delusion.

I don't know about the science involved here.  But if you ever wonder whether a skeptic's approach to the debate could  account for the so-called scientific consensus on warming or why people would be willing to pay so much if it's unnecessary - I think the gospel has ready answers for this.

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Published on Leave a comment on We’ve got the whole world in our hands

Walking through a London train station yesterday I had to weave my way through hundreds of protestors.  Their favourite placard seemed to be this one:

photo from here

The message reads: Our climate is in our hands.  And at least 20 000 gathered in the capital to remind us of this: we've got the whole world in our hands.

Maybe it's coincidence but it's pretty close to a Guardian headline this week that said, regarding Copenhagen,  "Our destiny is still in our hands."

Wouldn't we love that to be true!?  How we long to be this world's solution!  And therefore, however costly it might be, we are eager to cast ourselves as the problem.  (See this former post entitled 'Anthropogenic')

The cost we seem willing to pay to keep ourselves at the centre beggars belief.  The Spectator reports the cost of making good on pledges agreed at the G8 summit:

A high global CO2 tax starting at $68 could reduce the world economic output by a staggering 13% in 2100 - the equivalent of $40 trillion a year.  That is to say, it would cost 50 times the expected damage of global warming. (Bjorn Lomborg, The Spectator, 5/12/09)

But hey - that's the price you pay when you take your destiny into your hands.  And you pay it willingly and with self-righteous zeal.  Because you are coming of age.  To this you were born.  We are the ones we've been waiting for, and all that.

But Christmas tells a different story.  He is the One we were waiting for.  And the government is upon His shoulders. (Isaiah 9:2-7).

Yet whenever we turn from Him we become slaves to the devil's lie: 'Be like God'.  And the result is a captivity to fear and an incessant struggle to make the world work.  We end up as slaves and we willingly pay for the honour.  Eventually in blood.  But no cost is too dear in order to secure our own messianic delusion.

I don't know about the science involved here.  But if you ever wonder whether a skeptic's approach to the debate could  account for the so-called scientific consensus on warming or why people would be willing to pay so much if it's unnecessary - I think the gospel has ready answers for this.

.

Published on Leave a comment on Application – the evangelical cure-all

habits

 

Like coathangers, we own a hundred bibles but have no idea how they came to be ours.  One of them is called a "Life Application Bible." 

As far as I can tell, it exists in order to footnote every biblical indicative so that a moral imperative may be added.  This is, we are assured, the cure to our spiritual malaise.  Just listen to this endorsement on the back cover:

Evangelical Christianity is suffering from an acute case of spiritual malnutrition.  The symptom is well known - defection in personal standards of living.  The cure - Vitamin A - application of God's Word.

This remedy is both refreshing and realistic, calculated to change the will.  Not merely satisfying curiosity or making us smarter sinners, the Scriptures were given to make us more like Jesus Christ.

Wha?? 

What's the understanding of the bible here?  The Spirit's testimony to the Son?  Christ's love-letter to His bride?  The deposit of faith given to the church for the sake of proclaiming Christ to the world?  No.  At base the bible is, apparently, given for individual piety.

What kind of anthropology is this?  Change the will and you'll correct the 'defection in standards of living.'  ! 

What kind of salvation is offered?  Apparently we are not to become merely 'smarter sinners' - well what then?  Do we become subtler sinners?  more self-righteous sinners?  self-satisfied sinners?  There's one option that is assuredly closed to us - that of ceasing to be sinners!  So why not a smarter sinner?

This approach to Scripture and to Christian faith is not good.  And yet, doesn't this kind of thinking throb away beneath much of what passes for evangelicalism?  Isn't the majority of 'evangelical' preaching informed by just such beliefs?  I'd say our spiritual malnutrition is not because of a lack of this kind of application.  We're spiritually anaemic precisely because we have turned the Scriptures into moralistic or therapeutic self-help.  No wonder other Christians deride us as simplistic legalists.

For a thought on what good application is, go here.

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Published on Leave a comment on The resurrection came also by a man

It's common to hear people speak of the death of Jesus as simply according to His human nature.  This is insisted upon because it is assumed that His 'divine nature' could have nothing to do with death.  It's less common to hear the same people trumpeting the resurrection as simply according to His human nature.  Why?  Because the resurrection is tied in the closest possible way to Christ's divine identification:

He was declared with power to be the Son of God, by His resurrection. (Rom 1:4)

God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. (Acts 2:36)

For many it seems that the death of Jesus is quite a human thing.  And His resurrection something more divine.  But this is wrong.

First, Jesus death is considered similarly to be an identification of Jesus' divinity:

e.g.  "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM WHO I AM." (John 8:28)

Second, Jesus divinity is not spoken of as separate from His humanity at any point, including (and perhaps especially) His crucifixion:

They... have crucified the Lord of Glory. (1 Cor 2:8)

In a loud voice they sang: "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise!"  (Rev 5:12)

Third, the whole of salvation - incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension - is accomplished by the Man Christ Jesus.  And at the same time He is never anything less than the eternal Word of the Father.

Fourth, we just don't have a high enough view of Man.  Man is the true ruler of the cosmos (Psalm 8).  Man is the Head of creation.  Seated on the throne of the world is Man - and this has always been God's intention.  Though Adam was a corrupted and corrupting king, even so God showed the importance of man.  God took Adam's rule very seriously. He tied the destiny of the whole creation to the actions of this king.  And now with Adam's Lord - the true King, the heavenly Man (1 Cor 15:47-49) - comes the restoration of all things:

Since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead came also through a man.  For as in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive. (1 Cor 15:21-22).

Adam and Christ

Christ's work in reversing Adam's failures could be nothing other than the work of Man - true Man.  And at the same time His triumph could be nothing other than the triumph of God - redeeming, reconciling, ruling.  To be true Man can never be at odds with 'the divine nature.'  The divine nature shines forth at its strongest in this Man - the Head of the New Creation.

So this easter rejoice in Man restored.  Rejoice in the true King and Head who summed up all your Adam-ness and put it away for good.  He rose up again as King, bringing His Kingdom with Him.  His resurrection renewed Himself, His people and the whole earth. 

In the meantime you have your flesh from Adam and your Spirit from Christ.  You are, for now, the scene of an almighty struggle.  You groan.  Creation groans.  The Spirit of God groans.  But when Christ is revealed so too will His Kingdom be revealed.  You and the whole earth will be reborn and renewed under the rule of Man.

Praise God

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