Growing in Christ
Christian Life
Having joy in an abundance
04 months ago
For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
(Matthew 13:12 ESV)
This strikes me as one of the places C.S. Lewis plants one of the major columns of this thinking. Here the Lord lays plain the mathematics of joy in the mind of God. To the one who has joy, who has happiness in God, more will be given and he will have God in abundance. But from the one who does not have God, even the joy he does have (on account of good gifts given him by God’s common grace) will be taken away. Jesus holds out joy through knowing him as the serious business of his teaching. Lewis famously remarked, “Joy is the serious business of Heaven” (Letters to Malcolm). His abundant giving isn’t sparse either – merely giving enough to satiate the hungering soul for a moment. He gives in abundance, and invites us to ask for abundance of joy.
I have to confess that I read John Piper’s Desiring God about 5 or 6 years ago, and some of the main threads about delighting in God are just now beginning to click for me. I’m a dense guy I guess. Piper open’s the book with this quote from Lewis:
Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
I’m beginning to see the connections in Christ’s teaching of invitations to himself, and invitations to a joy that’s nature is a continual dog-pile of joy. Jesus speaks to us: If you’ve seen me, for who I am, you joy will not be stolen away, but will grow in exceeding abundance. The rewards of joy in Christ’s equation are more joy. New joys. Deeper joys. All from the same Jesus (Piper). I am far too often the half-hearted creature that Lewis paints. I fool around with ambitions to appear a certain way, or have certain adorations from people, or the darker desires of my heart.
Lewis elsewhere comments that there “is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes” (The Last Battle). Like the half-hearted creature I am, I am far too easily pleased to find and waste my joy on the offerings of easy, worldly joys. There is a seriousness about joy that I need. But this is the joy of the Gospel: Forgiveness of sins, cleansing of heart, and a glorious Son of Righteousness set before you for joy that is given, and given in abundance. This year, I pray I will be less satisfied with the mud pies of joy the world offers, and cash in the Lord’s promises of joy for more rewords of joy in Christ.
Harassed and Helpless Harvesting
05 months ago
There are times in the Bible, many in fact, where you get a clear insight into how God views mankind. All are dynamic, but some are especially insightful into the heart of God – they reveal both God and man’s intersection in Jesus. One of those is in the Gospel Account of Matthew, chapter 9 verses 35-28. As Jesus is looking over the crowds of people that are flocking to him, Matthew records:
And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
(Matthew 9:35-36 ESV)
Jesus has been getting the lay of the land, not merely as a man of the land, but as a man for the people. He’s a pastor, in a land filled with wandering sheep. It’s easy to get angry at dumb animals, so it’s even easier to get angry at dumb people being dumb about life. But Jesus has compassion for them. They weigh on his heart.
What’s interesting here is what Jesus commands next. He doesn’t prescribe a social agenda, or a political rally. Jesus says:
The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matt. 9:37-38).
Jesus prescribes pastors, missionaries, laborers for the bringing in of the Lord’s harvest of people. It’s interesting that Jesus told his disciples to “pray earnestly”. I’m not a Greek scholar, and I wouldn’t hang my hat on this too much, but this is the only instance of Jesus telling his disciples to “pray earnestly” (the parallel being Luke 10:2 – the same instance, both pre-missions statements). It initially strikes me as odd, and then strangely appropriate. God’s compassion for people isn’t expressed in petitioning Jerusalem, or fabricating unending bread and fish for the alleviation of suffering. God’s heart of compassion is expressed in his taking on of human nature, bearing our burdens, and walking along side mankind giving life and grace. This culminates in the ultimate expression of Jesus’ substitutionary death on the cross, bearing the burden of our sin’s justly deserved wrath.
Jesus, of all things to pray about, commanded “pray earnestly” for Gospel laborours as he looked out with compassion upon the lost and confused people in the crowds around him. Do you pray earnestly for your pastors? For church planters? For men in your church that God may be calling to care for the harassed and helpless harvest of people he’s longing to care for? It weighs heavily upon me in thinking about pastoral ministry and Christian faithfulness to labor for what God has on his own heart, for the helpless, harassed harvest he wants.
Pray for the helpless and harassed people in your life.
Pray for the laborers Jesus wants to raise up to care for them.
Pray to have the same heart of compassion Jesus has for people.
Get the compassion of Jesus for the one thing he said we should “pray earnestly” for.
Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.
__________
Recommended Resources:
The Gospel According to Matthew by Leon Morris
Commentary on Matthew – The Gospel of the Kingdom by C.H. Spurgeon
He’s planned your joy today
05 months ago
You are alive today because God has more grace and joy planned for you than yesterday. If it were not so, you would be in Heaven with Christ. He has your joy planned – even through trials and hardships, he has your happiness planned in the ledger of his grace for you today. Christ’s command that you exist today is not a bare grace, like a bare page in a calender – a place holder for existence. No. Christ’s command for your existence today is packed full with scheduled invasions of grace to point you to be happy in Himself. They may be joys, they may be sorrows – Jesus knows the road of both, and walks beside you in each. His aim is to make you happy in Him through each event, anticipated or not, through the day that He planned for you in his providence.
If you are in Christ, let it be known that the day you die it is because Christ has cashed in his claim on your joy with the Father, and has demanded his longing for your joy in his presence be satisfied. Your joy in Christ is God’s plan for you today, in all things, in all circumstances. Life tomorrow is not guaranteed. But if you do die tomorrow, you can have this hope today: The best joy is yet to come. Take comfort in this. This is what he prayed for you – the best joy today, and the best joy to come – when he prayed:
Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
(John 17:24 ESV)
Why you need the Holy Spirit
06 months ago
In doing a little research today, I ran across a section I’d marked in On Communion with God from a previous read that I thought I’d share. I tend to like lists, especially pithy ones that pack a lot of weight into a small amount of space. What I appreciate about what Dr. Owen says bellow is that he hits home on the mundain needs of the Spirit in daily life. We never drift towards godliness, and thus never drift towards a reliance on the Spirit. Thus, daily, I’m either content in Christ or complaining, hardened against sin or wooed by it, puffed up by performance or humbled by grace, taken in by the love of money and our sex-saturated culture, or fretting about the world around me. Without the Spirit, none of those distinctions have hope in them, but with the “consolations” or help of the Spirit there is the power of Christ to walk in wisdom and holiness.
In a word, in all the concernments of this life, and in our whole expectation of another, we stand in need of the consolations of the Holy Ghost.
- Without them, we shall either despise afflictions or faint under them, and God be neglected as to his intendments in them.
- Without them, sin will either harden us to a contempt of it, or cast us down to a neglect of the remedies graciously provided against it.
- Without them, duties will either puff us up with pride, or leave us without that sweetness which is in new obedience.
- Without them, prosperity will make us carnal, sensual, and to take up our contentment in these things, and utterly weaken us for the trials of adversity.
- Without them, the comforts of our relations will separate us from God, and the loss of them make our hearts as Nabal’s.
- Without them, the calamity of the church will overwhelm us, and the prosperity of the church will not concern us.
- Without them, we shall have wisdom for no work, peace in no condition, strength for no duty, success in no trial, joy in no state, — no comfort in life, no light in death.
~John Owen, On Communion with God, Works II: 261.
Other editions:
Puritan Paperback Series: On Communion with God by John Owen (with abridgments and edits to be easier to read)
Communion with the Triune God by John Owen, edited by Justin Taylor and Kelly M. Kapic
Prayer of a weary parent in the morning
07 months ago
Man’s highest happiness consists in holiness, for it is by this that the reasonable creature is united to God, the fountain of all good. ~ Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits, 39.
Dear Lord,
Your goodness crafts and molds every day, even this one that you have awoken me into preceded by restless sleep. By your grace, I do not doubt your goodness in this design, but I do see temptations in the day ahead. Keep my feet on the path of the fear of the Lord that I might not slander your goodness in how you have loved us today. I am disposed to find my pleasure in complaining and grumbling about exhaustion’s headache and sickness’s creaks. Lift my eyes to find Jesus more compelling, and rest in his loving providence for my life. Posture my heart to find my happiness in you, and not the venting of foolish complaints. In such a posture, grow me in holiness, for happiness in you is the source of true, lasting, sweet holiness. In such a posture, like an oak lifting branches to the sun, fill me with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ alone.
I am weary Lord, but you are good. Be my happiness today.
In Christ I come,
In Christ I live,
In Christ I hope.
Amen.
A meditation on the fruit of the Spirit
07 months ago
I was startled by little grammatical thing in Galatians 5 the other week. Have you ever noticed that we generally say “The fruits of the Spirit,” when the text actually puts it in the singular form, “fruit of the Spirit”? It’s not just a lack of the “s” on “fruits”, but the singularity of it is reinforced by the “is” – “the fruit of the Spirit is” – which means that whatever the “fruit of the Spirit” is, it’s equivocated as being equal to what follows (love, joy, peace, patience, etc.) as a whole, not as parts.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
(Galatians 5:22-23, ESV)
This observation got my mind on a trail of thought, let me see if I can spell it out to be of use to you.
If “the fruit of the Spirit” is equivocated with the list that follows as a whole and not parts, this means that where weakness and indulgence to the flesh exists (“fruits of the flesh”) in a believer, that there is a deeper principle in the soil that already indwells and exists in the soul for the sake of repentance, hope, and growth in that area.
There is no second-blessing godliness. We do not, in a real way, need to pray for the Lord to gift us love, joy, peace, etc. But rather, we need to pray for the Spirit who is living in us to continue to cultivate that area (where the weakness/sin is) in our soul (that he is already producing growth in!) so that we might experience and see the manifestation of the desired fruit of the evidence of his indwelling Life and presence.
The Spirit does not take up shop in our soul and wait for our requests for change to be made in just the right way to then send a mail-order off for that desired fruit of his presence. The Spirit moves in with life, a graciously, godly life that starts producing life immediately that brings forth fruit, which consists of every category in the spectrum of life: conviction, repentance, trust, and growth, feeling conviction for the lack of self-control is evidence that the Spirit is pushing up life into the soil of our hearts for the fruit of his living presence.
What a hope giving reality. No more second-blessing godliness. Life in the Spirit! There is nothing I lack – and the belief that I do is the inherent sin in second-blessing godliness – I have the Spirit. Whatever I need, God is already giving. It already exists in the Spirit’s indwelling life.
Review: Tempted and Tried by Russell Moore
18 months ago
It seems a little odd to me to try and make a bridge between us on the subject of temptation. If the news outlets are any indicator, Senators still face the temptations of infidelity, government heads still face the temptations to oppress and abuse power, mariages are still fraught with the temptations of adultery and financial anxieties, and on the whole, people continue to live in a fallen, broken world.
When it comes to understanding the nature of the temptations we face and how to find help and hope, there’s no better person to look to than Jesus. Jesus was tempted, and was tempted by none other than Satan himself, in the flesh. It’s this passage out of Matthew 4 about the temptation of Jesus that Russell Moore opens up for us in his book, Tempted and Tried: Temptations and the Triumph of Christ.
Maybe this seems like a strange angle to you in understanding your own temptations. How can Jesus, who was sinless, relate with someone like you and me? Deep down, maybe you whisper with me, “Isn’t learning from giving in to temptations and making mistakes just what it means to be human? So how can Jesus relate with that?”
Here is where Dr. Moore is helpful. In his book he plainly opens up the temptations Jesus faced in Matthew 4 and breaks them down so we see the full weight of what was at stake in each of Jesus’ temptations. At the root of every real temptation Jesus faced was a temptation I feel so desperately allured by every day. Have you ever just wanted to be provided for, protected, and given good things? If you’ve ever faced those desires, and the sinful temptations to get them apart from God, then you have an idea of the temptations Jesus faced.
But this is how Moore’s book is helpful. Jesus didn’t just come to endure the temptations we face on a daily, hourly basis, he came to conquer them. He came to be tempted and tried so that he could vindicate his people to new life. Where our father Adam failed, Jesus came to be faithful.
Ultimately, temptations are about identity – the call of where we’re going to find it, and who’s going to satisfy our cravings. But it’s not just about finding idenity, it’s about who that identity is in. Moore makes this brilliant insight into Jesus’ temptation, and implicitly, our own:
Satan was not just trying to temp Jesus; he was attempting to adopt Jesus. Satan, in all three temptations, is assuming the role of a father – first in provision, then in protection, and now in granting an inheritance. Satan didn’t just want to be Jesus’ lord, he wanted to be his father. (137)
At the root of temptations are the question: Who are you going to call your father? God or Satan. Bob Dylan once sand, “It might be the Devil, it might be the Lord, but your gonna have to serve somebody.” At the root of Jesus’ and our temptations are the question of who we’re going to serve and root our identity in. Moore is helps us see the real, raw, weighty nature of Jesus’ temptations, and how we are not only assailed by the same temptations, but how rooting one’s identity in Christ through repentance and faith, being a child of our Heavenly Father (rather than our satanic father) is key to walking in newness of life.
If you’re like me, this can all begin to feel a little… invasive. But that’s the point – you and me need the invasion of a Healer, one who can fix our brokenness. This is how Moore’s book is so deeply helpful. Moore is clear and articulate in opening up Scripture, and he aptly exemplifies the sympathy of Jesus for sinners like us in the pastoral, caring heart of Christ he takes in his posture towards us in how he applies Scripture. This book is profoundly practical and rich with good insights into how we live.
I think that on the spectrum of books about sin in the Christian life, Moore’s Tempted and Tried is one of the most accessible books on the subject. Obivously John Owen has written a great deal about sin and temptation, but even abridgments and updates of his work can be rough reading. Moore’s angle of engaging the Christian life through the life of Christ is immediately helpful. If you want to overcome sin with simply more of Jesus, then entering in through the temptations and triumph of Jesus is the place to begin.
In the end, my only critiques of the book is that the chapters are long and that I despise end-notes (the constant flipping to the end of the book!). But, eh… that’s small beans, and I need to get over myself.
If you want to know more about the temptations of Christ and his compassion for sinners like us, read this book. If you want to overcome sin and temptation, but know that such a goal must require Jesus to succeed, read this book. If you’re weary of being beat over the head with moralistic rules on how to overcome weaknesses, read this book. If you want a profound adoration and love for Christ to be the powerhouse in working through temptations and sin, read this book.
—–
If you’d like to read a few selections from Moore’s book, I’ve quoted him here, and Tim Challies has put two selections up here and here.
Title: Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ
Author: Russell D. Moore
Boards: paperback
Pages: 196
Volumes: 1
Dust jackets: n/a
Binding: sewn and glue
Topical index: yes
Scriptural index: yes
Publisher: Crossway
Year: 2011
Price USD: $13.99 / $10.04 at WTSBooks
ISBN: 978-1-4335-1580-4
Danger: Seeing temptations as normal
19 months ago
I’ve had a realization about a way I’ve been reading the Bible all wrong.
I’m thoroughly enjoying Russell Moore’s latest book, Tempted and Tried, which is about the nature of temptation and how we find hope in Christ’s triumph over temptation (specifically in his time in the desert being solicited by Satan).
In a section of chapter two, Dr. Moore opens up James 1:13:
But the danger is that we might see our temptations as a normal part of the fabric of the universe, as the way things are supposed to be. That’s true for both believers and unbelievers. We must recognize that “each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (James 1:14). The human story, after all, starts with a man who blames God (“the woman whom you gave to be with me,” Gen. 3:12) for the fact that he fell into his own twisted desires. (37-38, bolding mine)
This hit me square in the face. How often do I excuse my own temptations as just a part of the way the universe is? Which is to implicate God, because this is just the way he’s made things to be – for my struggle… What Dr. Moore is doing here is two things:
- Helping us see that our desires are good and God given to be used and enjoyed how God designed them to be.
- Temptations that seek to pervert those desires are not the way God designed the universe to be.
This is to say that God designed us with good desires to enjoy the world around us. But God did not create us to satisfy our desires by our own designs. For example, it’s natural to desire friendship. It’s natural to desire to love others and to live in loving fellowship with them. What’s unnatural and twisted (and kinda creepy) is how I pervert those desires to be about my sense of feeling accepted, turning other people into servants to my sinful cravings and desires of how I want to be loved and adored. Instead of using my desires for friendship as God intended to love and delight in other people, I treat other people as though they have to serve my idols of anxiety and finding identity in their praise. (And if you’ve been around this whirling planet enough, you’ll know that this endeavor never works, and never satisfies.)
Dr. Moore goes on:
We too often assume our current sinful status is what it means to be “real.” That’s because we’ve never known a world in which there is no sin. If you grow up all your life on a coastline near an uncapped oil spill, you might conclude that seagulls are covered in tar. As you read or travel, though, and see the birds in their natural state, you’ll discover your experience was abnormal; that’s not the way it’s meant to be. Too often we dismiss as ‘all too human” that is not human at all; it’s a satanic nature parasitically imposed on the human after the fall of Eden. (43-44)
What I began to see here is that those temptations I feel as so natural – from the craving to have acceptance with others, to the lustful look at a woman – is my way of blaming my sin on God. I think I’m far too often the type, as Dr. Moore points out, that thinks “blaming my temptations on God” is something people do who are in bed with their adulterous lover and they just “couldn’t help but follow their ‘soul mate’, this is God’s fault for sending love.” But I think James is aiming much closer to home.
Dr. Moore moves on to say this:
…[M]uch of what we include in “temptation” isn’t temptation at all. It’s beyond our good, created desires being appealed to. It’s instead those embryonic stages of sinful desire. (45)
I think the application here is simple:
Recognize where you and I are seeing temptations and sins as “normal” as anything but normal. The seagull isn’t supposed to be drenched in oil, no matter how long we’ve seen him like that. Our world and heart aren’t supposed to be drenched in temptation, no matter how long we’ve learned to live like they are.
Recognize that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). When we see that our desirse are twisted, we need to repent, and ask God to correct them to be the good gifts they were designed to be.
May God give us grace to do this.
—-
If you’re interested in Dr. Moore’s book, Tempted and Tried, I recommend you check it out here. You can also follow him on twitter. I’ll be writing a review about it in the days to come.
No bare life in Christ
01 year ago
I’m warning you, if you keep reading, you’ll be filled with the joy of Christ, but it won’t be easy.
With that said, I wanted to share one of those glorious gems I’ve come across in reading John Owen.
Neither does this living head communicate only a bare life unto believers, that they should merely live and no more, a poor, weak, dying life, as it were; but he gives out sufficiently to afford them a strong, vigorous, thriving, flourishing life (John 10:10). He comes not only that his sheep “may have life,” but that “they may have it more abundantly,” that is, in a plentiful manner, so as that they may flourish, be fat and fruitful. Thus is it with the whole body of Christ, and every member thereof, whereby it “[is] to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph. 4:15-16 – changed to ESV). The end of all communications of grace and supplies of life from this living and blessed head [Jesus Christ] is the increase of the whole body and every member of it, and the edifying of itself in love. His treasures of grace are unsearchable; his stores inexhaustible; his life, the fountain of ours, full and eternal; his heart bounteous and large; his hand open and liberal: so that there is no doubt but that he communicates supplies of grace for their increase in holiness abundantly unto all his saints.
Wow, ok, take a knee. We need a breather. Dr. Owen is saying that Christ did not save us to be dull Christians, who plod along. Jesus did not save us to have a “bare life”, but a life full of joy in him. I don’t know about you, but this is a continual struggle for me. I don’t experience the joy of Christ very much. I’m probably not what you would call a regularly happy Christian.
However, it is not through introspection that this spiritual demeanor changes. Change comes actually through seeing this grand reality that Owen holds forth. Growth comes through love; love for Christ and what he offers that makes us happy – Himself. Being united with Christ through faith means that we enter into enjoying the joy and love of God. Christ has paid what our sins deserve, that we might receive what he deserved: unending, ever increasing joy in God. And it is through Christ himself that we receive this life that is more than bare life. It is a life with God. It is a life of joy.
But yet, maybe you’re asking with me, “Yes, I know this is true, and have tasted it from time to time, but why do I feel that my faith is stale and weak, and that my joy in Christ is minimal at best?” Owen, in being a thoughtful pastor, got on to help us at this point.
Oftentimes Christ gives very much grace where not many of its effects do appear. It spends its strength and power in withstanding the continual assaultsof violent corruptions and lusts, so that it cannot put forth its proper virtue toward further fruitfulness…It is forced oftentimes to put forth its virtue to oppose and contend against, and in any measure subdue, prevailing lusts and corruptions. That the soul receives not that strengthening unto duties and fruitfulness which otherwise it might receive by it isfrom hence. How sound, healthy, and flourishing, how fruitful and exemplary in holiness, might many a soul be by and with that grace which is continually communicated to it from Christ, which now, by reason of the power ofindwelling sin, is not only dead, but weak, withering, and useless!
Owen’s point is this. Often, the people of Christ bemoan their own weakness, minimal growth in grace, and lack of joy in Christ, all the while Christ is at work! They forget to see that the grace that would be working fruitfulness in their lives is actually working to prevent them from growing worse in sin. Owen gasps with us at how healthy many Christian souls would be, how happy they would be in Christ, if the grace they would be enjoying weren’t attacking their primary enemy: sin!
This Christ that we love is so full of grace towards us that he is working in us even in (especially in) those moments when we least feel it. Christ is killing and holding back our sinful nature that he has conquered, even when we don’t think to ask him to do it. (And then I go and moan to God about not feeling his presence… all the while he’s preventing me from becoming a worse wretch than I would naturally be.)
When we see the “life abundantly” that God has for us in Christ, the moments of weakness are filled with the confidence that Jesus is with us, even when we don’t know the joy of his presence, so that we can find even more joy and happiness in him. He is our fountain of life.
——-
My quotes come from Overcoming Sin and Temptation by John Owen, edited by Kelly Kepic and Justin Taylor. You can pick it up at Westminster Books for a bare $13.67. I highly recommend it! It will have a profound impact on your walk with Christ and your joy in the Holy Spirit.
Hello, I’m a pessimist.
01 year ago
I don’t mean to be this way, but I guess I am. Hello. I’m a pessimist.
Well, that’s not entirely accurate…It’s not the sort of thing I intended to be, but in reflecting on how I view people and my life, I’m at least a pessimist. And yet, the term seems to fall short by a few shades of gray as to what I actually believe and do.
While my wife and I were out last night on our weekly date, I made the throw away comment about something we were discussion, “oh, I guess it’s because I tend to view everything I’ve done in the past in a negative light.” She picked up on this, and while we were in the car gently said, “You know love, I know you were kinda joking when you said that, but that’s really not good or glorifying to God.”
The issue that prompted this was a simple one: I had gotten a gift for Michelle a couple years ago, and I was talking lightly about how I’ve felt guilty lately about getting her the book because I felt it was a Gift-for-me-to-you gift. But she countered and reminded me that, no, while she hadn’t read the book in question, that it was still a thoughtful gift, and that I had her best intentions in mind when I had gotten it.
As we began to open up the issue, she was pointing out that viewing all of my past decisions through a negative lens distorts the truth in a couple ways.
Grace
In viewing things through a presumptively negative lens, I completely discount the reality of God’s grace. God takes the whole of a Christian’s life and showers them in grace from beginning to end when they are in Christ. You aren’t as bad as you could be, and thank God for it! To view things negatively, I foster a heart of ungratefulness and subtly feed unbelief that God is not at work. I feed unbelief by completely divorcing the grace, mercy, and love of God to work in all things by thinking the worst of any or all of life’s actions.
Gospel
By being at least a pessimist in how I view my life, I’m fundamentally not believing what the Gospel says about my life. Do I screw up and make bad decisions? Yes. But the Gospel comes in and says that my life is “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). Who I am is no longer defined by me. That’s kinda strange. You mean, those sins that I do, are no longer the defining mark of who I am as a person? Nope. You mean, being stupid doesn’t define me? Nope. What does? Jesus. To be a Christian is to fundamentally be “in Christ” and have all the things that define Jesus, define us. (This is, by the way, why Paul’s writing is absolutely saturated with “in Him” language. It’s important. Don’t miss it.)
When I view my decisions in the past, present, or future as the absolute worst they could be, and associate myself with them as my fundamental identity, I’m not functionally believing the Gospel. My actions, contrary to popular belief, do not define me. Jesus does. So to look back on a bad gift, feel really bad for it, and think , “Man, I’m such a block head!” is tantamount to saying “Man, Jesus isn’t enough!” That is, when I have that perspective and am not prompted to gratefulness and joy for Jesus being my identity. I am a block head – that’s for sure – but Jesus is better. And I’m in Jesus. So that’s enough.
So let’s do this again.
Hello. I’m in Christ.
__________
Resources
If you’d like to read some more on this subject, let me point out a couple of resources:
- If you’d like to learn how to better serve your spouse in helping them grow in Christ without being their personal Holy Spirit, let me point you towards a sermon recently preached at my church: Spousekeeping.
- If you’d like to learn more about this “in Him” theology from someone who’s so helpful in making it practical and real to our lives, I’d recommend David Powlison’s Seeing With New Eyes.
