When To Give Up (August 21, 2005)
When does the virtue of steadfast perseverance become the vice of fatal stubbornness?
Perseverance is a virtue, generally. God has put it in our hearts to admire those who stick it out in the face of adversity and refuse to give up. We cheer Winston Churchill's exhortation to students at the Harrow School in 1941: "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
Never?
Jesus recommended yielding to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy when he said that if you've got 10,000 men and your opponent has 20,000, seek peace (Luke 14:31-32). That's conditional surrender.
He commanded his disciples to give up preaching the gospel when they encountered hostility: "When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another" (Matthew 10:23).
He commanded his followers to give up on people who continually rejected the grace of church discipline: "Treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector" (Matthew 18:17).
And the Apostle Paul commanded giving up on a marriage when an unbeliever abandons the Christian partner: "If the unbeliever leaves, let him do so" - 1 Corinthians 7:15 (The Greek verb is imperative - it is literally a command to let go.)
So not all perseverance is good - not even perseverance in a self-denying cause. Perseverance that results in disobedience to God's Word is simple stubbornness, and must not be allowed to flaunt itself as virtue.
But perseverance that is neither disobedient nor foolish remains a worthy goal. I have been asked once or twice if, because of grave family sorrow, I would like to take a leave of absence from (temporarily give up on?) the ministry. It is a fair question, but my answer (which I hope springs from perseverance rather than stubbornness) is, "Absolutely not." I am commissioned by God to peach the Word "in season and out of season" (2 Timothy 4:2) - and though now the season is one of hurricanes, my house should be able to stand if it is built on the rock and made of stone. How dare I flee inland now? What kind of testimony would that be? If ever there were an hour to stand my ground, this is it.
At the same time, I acknowledge that "standing one's ground" is only good when God commands it. May God give all of us the grace to persevere in that to which he calls us - and the wisdom to know when we are merely behaving like stubborn fools.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Do We Always Benefit From Suffering? (August 14, 2005)
Do all bad circumstances work out for our personal good?
Some Bible verses lead Christians to believe so. St. James writes, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything" (James 1:2-4). So trials help us to persevere and be mature. St. Paul writes, "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). My mother always insisted, rightly, that "the good" of Romans 8:28 is defined in the next verse, "being conformed to the likeness of his Son." So in all circumstances, even bad ones, God does the good work of making those who love him to be more like Jesus.
I believe this. One qualification I would like to make explicit, however, is that it is not always our personal good that our trials and woes are bringing about. Maybe our bad circumstances are chiefly benefiting someone else.
After Joseph was nearly killed by his brothers, sold into slavery in Egypt, falsely accused of attempted rape and thrown into prison, he met up years later with these same brothers who had tried to ruin his life. By then Joseph had recovered, and, working as Pharaoh's right-hand man, administered a government food program during years of drought. He spoke graciously to his bad brothers, saying, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives" (Genesis 50:20). It is fitting that Joseph did not say, "God intended it for my good - now I'm rich and powerful because of what you did to me." That part seemed incidental. The main thing was that through the injustice he had experienced, starvation of the masses had been prevented.
Someday you may go through something profoundly unpleasant and it will be hard to conceive how it could ever be good for you - even in some ultimate, eternal sense. Let me encourage you to remember then that the good things that God is accomplishing in the world are not all about you. Your woes may leave you devastated, but still benefit other people in ways you could never imagine.
Missionaries Jim and Angela Beise are raising a severely handicapped child, Michael, along with their three "normal" children. But their three other children are not normal at all - they're exceptional. Angela writes, "My children are among the most unselfish people I have ever known. Brian, 19, Melissa, 17, and Rachel, 13, have made
sacrifices, too many and too big to count, for their disabled sibling. One would think that this would have made them bitter and discontented. Amazingly, it has done exactly the opposite. They are thankful, giving, and tolerant to difficult and unlovely people."
I do not know what good things God is doing in the soul of handicapped Michael. But I'll take his mother's word for it that through Michael's limitations God is perfecting his siblings. It works that way sometimes. Trials and sorrows and limitations that seem to do us no good at all might be God's perfect tools to do great good in others. We can thank him for that.
Do all bad circumstances work out for our personal good?
Some Bible verses lead Christians to believe so. St. James writes, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything" (James 1:2-4). So trials help us to persevere and be mature. St. Paul writes, "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). My mother always insisted, rightly, that "the good" of Romans 8:28 is defined in the next verse, "being conformed to the likeness of his Son." So in all circumstances, even bad ones, God does the good work of making those who love him to be more like Jesus.
I believe this. One qualification I would like to make explicit, however, is that it is not always our personal good that our trials and woes are bringing about. Maybe our bad circumstances are chiefly benefiting someone else.
After Joseph was nearly killed by his brothers, sold into slavery in Egypt, falsely accused of attempted rape and thrown into prison, he met up years later with these same brothers who had tried to ruin his life. By then Joseph had recovered, and, working as Pharaoh's right-hand man, administered a government food program during years of drought. He spoke graciously to his bad brothers, saying, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives" (Genesis 50:20). It is fitting that Joseph did not say, "God intended it for my good - now I'm rich and powerful because of what you did to me." That part seemed incidental. The main thing was that through the injustice he had experienced, starvation of the masses had been prevented.
Someday you may go through something profoundly unpleasant and it will be hard to conceive how it could ever be good for you - even in some ultimate, eternal sense. Let me encourage you to remember then that the good things that God is accomplishing in the world are not all about you. Your woes may leave you devastated, but still benefit other people in ways you could never imagine.
Missionaries Jim and Angela Beise are raising a severely handicapped child, Michael, along with their three "normal" children. But their three other children are not normal at all - they're exceptional. Angela writes, "My children are among the most unselfish people I have ever known. Brian, 19, Melissa, 17, and Rachel, 13, have made
sacrifices, too many and too big to count, for their disabled sibling. One would think that this would have made them bitter and discontented. Amazingly, it has done exactly the opposite. They are thankful, giving, and tolerant to difficult and unlovely people."
I do not know what good things God is doing in the soul of handicapped Michael. But I'll take his mother's word for it that through Michael's limitations God is perfecting his siblings. It works that way sometimes. Trials and sorrows and limitations that seem to do us no good at all might be God's perfect tools to do great good in others. We can thank him for that.
Sunday, August 7, 2005
“He Probably Deserved It” (August 7, 2005)
Being a Christian involves abandoning what I call the "justice instinct."
The justice instinct is the assumption that life is ultimately, cosmically fair. It is reflected in the speeches of Job's friends, who knew that somehow Job had to be responsible for the horrors visited upon him. It is seen in the question of the disciples concerning a blind man: "Who sinned, this man or his parents?" (John 9:2). It is seen in the attitude of the crowd in Luke 13:2-4 that believed that victims of disaster and slaughter must have been "worse sinners than others." It is seen in the reasoning of Maltese islanders, who briefly thought that the Apostle Paul was a murderer because a snake bit him. (They changed their minds when he lived - Acts 28:3-6.) It is seen in the rapture of Captain and Maria Von Trapp, who in The Sound of Music sing to each other, "Somewhere in my youth, or childhood, I must have done something good." It is touted in the Buddhist doctrine of karma, which extends Newton's third law of motion to the moral realm: "Every (good, bad) action has an equal and opposite (compensatory, punitive) reaction." In Buddhism you get what you deserve. Even the Dalai Lama has credited his personal happiness to the karma he has accumulated through good deeds.
The justice instinct is a terrible mistake and must be renounced, but I think I can see why it has universal appeal. First, because it is just too painful to acknowledge that life is unfair. We feel no grief when a villain dies, but we feel terrible when a good man does. So our minds work hard to reduce the sorrow, and one method of anesthetizing the mental pain is simply to assume that the sufferer got what he deserved.
A second reason the justice instinct appeals to us arises from the moral intuition God has placed in our hearts that we ourselves ought to be fair. We should judge justly, rewarding good and punishing evil. But many make a logical jump and assume that the way we should behave correlates directly to way Nature itself in fact behaves. Such thinking either projects our morality onto Nature, which is silly, or projects Nature's cruelty onto our morals, which is evil. In the former, we dupe ourselves into thinking that Nature is as pleasant and as kind as we ought to be. (It isn't; as Tennyson noted long ago, Nature is "red in tooth and claw.") In the latter, we find Nazis concluding that since Nature rewards the fit and weeds out the feeble, it is our moral duty to give allegiance to powerful tyrants while killing off the retarded and disabled.
However "natural" it might be to expect Nature to mirror our moral sense of fairness, a few moments' careful reflection should be enough to show that it does not. Therefore, for truth's sake alone, we must discard the justice instinct and actively resist it. But let me suggest a few more motives, beyond mere Reason, for getting rid of it.
1) The justice instinct kills compassion. It mutes mercy by permitting the strong to think, "That sufferer must be getting what he deserves (though perhaps I don't know exactly what he did to deserve it). Who am I to oppose the faultless judgment of the cosmos?"
2) The justice instinct creates false guilt. The sufferer compounds his own misery by succumbing to Satan-inspired self-accusation, and perhaps is tempted to lie against the truth by confessing sins he is not guilty of.
3) The justice instinct encourages pride. When a man who has prospered attributes his good fortune not to God's grace but to some cosmic reward for goodness, then he is closer to the gates of hell than he is to the kingdom of heaven.
4) The justice instinct slams the door on the gospel of Jesus Christ. Something that has always made Christianity a "hard sell" is the fact that its hero was executed. If you assume universal fairness, then he must have done something terribly wrong to deserve death. But the Bible insists that he "knew no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21); that he "committed no sin" (1 Peter 2:22); and that "in him is no sin" (1 John 3:5). Jews and Gentiles alike found the doctrine of crucified Perfection a contradiction in terms. It was a piece of foolishness, a stumbling block - who would ever dream of worshipping a God who gets crucified?
Only one who has disabled his justice instinct could manage to worship a crucified Lord. Those who persist in regarding present reality as "fair" will continue to stumble over the cross, and they will sin by judging people who are merely unlucky even as they praise people who are merely fortunate.
Being a Christian involves abandoning what I call the "justice instinct."
The justice instinct is the assumption that life is ultimately, cosmically fair. It is reflected in the speeches of Job's friends, who knew that somehow Job had to be responsible for the horrors visited upon him. It is seen in the question of the disciples concerning a blind man: "Who sinned, this man or his parents?" (John 9:2). It is seen in the attitude of the crowd in Luke 13:2-4 that believed that victims of disaster and slaughter must have been "worse sinners than others." It is seen in the reasoning of Maltese islanders, who briefly thought that the Apostle Paul was a murderer because a snake bit him. (They changed their minds when he lived - Acts 28:3-6.) It is seen in the rapture of Captain and Maria Von Trapp, who in The Sound of Music sing to each other, "Somewhere in my youth, or childhood, I must have done something good." It is touted in the Buddhist doctrine of karma, which extends Newton's third law of motion to the moral realm: "Every (good, bad) action has an equal and opposite (compensatory, punitive) reaction." In Buddhism you get what you deserve. Even the Dalai Lama has credited his personal happiness to the karma he has accumulated through good deeds.
The justice instinct is a terrible mistake and must be renounced, but I think I can see why it has universal appeal. First, because it is just too painful to acknowledge that life is unfair. We feel no grief when a villain dies, but we feel terrible when a good man does. So our minds work hard to reduce the sorrow, and one method of anesthetizing the mental pain is simply to assume that the sufferer got what he deserved.
A second reason the justice instinct appeals to us arises from the moral intuition God has placed in our hearts that we ourselves ought to be fair. We should judge justly, rewarding good and punishing evil. But many make a logical jump and assume that the way we should behave correlates directly to way Nature itself in fact behaves. Such thinking either projects our morality onto Nature, which is silly, or projects Nature's cruelty onto our morals, which is evil. In the former, we dupe ourselves into thinking that Nature is as pleasant and as kind as we ought to be. (It isn't; as Tennyson noted long ago, Nature is "red in tooth and claw.") In the latter, we find Nazis concluding that since Nature rewards the fit and weeds out the feeble, it is our moral duty to give allegiance to powerful tyrants while killing off the retarded and disabled.
However "natural" it might be to expect Nature to mirror our moral sense of fairness, a few moments' careful reflection should be enough to show that it does not. Therefore, for truth's sake alone, we must discard the justice instinct and actively resist it. But let me suggest a few more motives, beyond mere Reason, for getting rid of it.
1) The justice instinct kills compassion. It mutes mercy by permitting the strong to think, "That sufferer must be getting what he deserves (though perhaps I don't know exactly what he did to deserve it). Who am I to oppose the faultless judgment of the cosmos?"
2) The justice instinct creates false guilt. The sufferer compounds his own misery by succumbing to Satan-inspired self-accusation, and perhaps is tempted to lie against the truth by confessing sins he is not guilty of.
3) The justice instinct encourages pride. When a man who has prospered attributes his good fortune not to God's grace but to some cosmic reward for goodness, then he is closer to the gates of hell than he is to the kingdom of heaven.
4) The justice instinct slams the door on the gospel of Jesus Christ. Something that has always made Christianity a "hard sell" is the fact that its hero was executed. If you assume universal fairness, then he must have done something terribly wrong to deserve death. But the Bible insists that he "knew no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21); that he "committed no sin" (1 Peter 2:22); and that "in him is no sin" (1 John 3:5). Jews and Gentiles alike found the doctrine of crucified Perfection a contradiction in terms. It was a piece of foolishness, a stumbling block - who would ever dream of worshipping a God who gets crucified?
Only one who has disabled his justice instinct could manage to worship a crucified Lord. Those who persist in regarding present reality as "fair" will continue to stumble over the cross, and they will sin by judging people who are merely unlucky even as they praise people who are merely fortunate.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
The Slow Departure From Christ (July 31, 2005)
"Guard your heart."
I remember that admonition from a message given to a group of us pastors by the president of the Baptist General Conference some years ago. It is from Proverbs 4:23: "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." I don't remember much else of his sermon, except that he was concerned about Christian leaders who fall away, and he urged each of us to be vigilant about our own walk with Christ.
That phrase "guard your heart" came to mind after I tried to answer a missionary friend who asked me why another missionary had apostatized. I wrote, "I have no idea why she turned her back on God - any more than I know why Judas betrayed Christ, or why Hymenaeus and Alexander made shipwreck of their faith (1 Tim 1:19-20), or why Demas "loved this world" (2 Tim 4:10). I just know that it happens. Billy Graham's friend and fellow evangelist Charles Templeton became an atheist. I don't know why."
In the parable of the sower (Luke 8:5-15), Jesus said that some fall because the devil takes the word from their hearts; others because of trial and testing; and others because they care about life's "worries, riches and pleasures." Beyond that, I'm not sure the "why" question has an answer. Why do some succumb to the devil's attack, or break faith under pressure, or fall into temptation? God knows.
In one of his books C. S. Lewis notes that apostates never seem to reach their state of unbelief by careful reasoning and thought, or with decisive, conscious renunciations that are the reverse image of their conversions. Instead, they just gradually drift into their loss of faith. They find that they have rejected it almost by default, having crept away with slow, imperceptible steps that are inevitably joined to acts of disobedience. I think Lewis was right.
For the love of God, beware of those slow, imperceptible steps. Guard your heart. Read the Scriptures, pray daily, and don't even think about skipping church this Sunday. Do good and shun evil, and trust Jesus. I'm afraid my counsel is no more profound than that.
"Guard your heart."
I remember that admonition from a message given to a group of us pastors by the president of the Baptist General Conference some years ago. It is from Proverbs 4:23: "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." I don't remember much else of his sermon, except that he was concerned about Christian leaders who fall away, and he urged each of us to be vigilant about our own walk with Christ.
That phrase "guard your heart" came to mind after I tried to answer a missionary friend who asked me why another missionary had apostatized. I wrote, "I have no idea why she turned her back on God - any more than I know why Judas betrayed Christ, or why Hymenaeus and Alexander made shipwreck of their faith (1 Tim 1:19-20), or why Demas "loved this world" (2 Tim 4:10). I just know that it happens. Billy Graham's friend and fellow evangelist Charles Templeton became an atheist. I don't know why."
In the parable of the sower (Luke 8:5-15), Jesus said that some fall because the devil takes the word from their hearts; others because of trial and testing; and others because they care about life's "worries, riches and pleasures." Beyond that, I'm not sure the "why" question has an answer. Why do some succumb to the devil's attack, or break faith under pressure, or fall into temptation? God knows.
In one of his books C. S. Lewis notes that apostates never seem to reach their state of unbelief by careful reasoning and thought, or with decisive, conscious renunciations that are the reverse image of their conversions. Instead, they just gradually drift into their loss of faith. They find that they have rejected it almost by default, having crept away with slow, imperceptible steps that are inevitably joined to acts of disobedience. I think Lewis was right.
For the love of God, beware of those slow, imperceptible steps. Guard your heart. Read the Scriptures, pray daily, and don't even think about skipping church this Sunday. Do good and shun evil, and trust Jesus. I'm afraid my counsel is no more profound than that.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
What Is The Biggest Problem? (July 24, 2005)
The Indian tribe that I worked with in Colombia had all kinds of problems, like alcoholism, chemical dependency, child sex abuse, malnutrition, recruitment into left-wing guerrilla causes and fearful reprisals from right-wing death squads. So it was with some surprise that I heard my 20-year-old Arhuaco friend comment on the issue that he thought to be the most urgent one facing his people. It was jealousy!
I thought he was laughably wrong about that, but it was easy to see why he felt that jealousy was the biggest thing his people had to overcome. It was because he regarded himself as a victim of their envy. He had just graduated from high school and wanted to go to college. Other tribesmen thought that further education would make him insufferably proud, and so they opposed his dream. Jealousy, he concluded, was a cancer eating away at the Arhuaco soul, and it had to be defeated so his people could make progress.
Well, his people had other things to worry about too. But I noticed in my friend a tendency that I've seen often in other people and that no doubt exists in me as well: the conviction that whatever concerns me most should most concern you. My problem is the problem and why aren't more people doing something about it?
A couple years ago I attended a Christian conference where a well-known speaker told us that the biggest evil facing America was racism. Really? Racism? I would have picked abortion. I am sure that the speaker, a black man, endured racial profiling every time he hailed a cab or stepped into an elevator with a white woman. That's a
bad break, I know, but when it comes to a hierarchy of moral outrages in America, the simple fact is that we haven't killed tens of millions of blacks lately - we've killed tens of millions of babies. That's worse.
My favorite answer to the question "What is wrong with the world?" comes from G. K. Chesterton, who responded simply, "I am." "I" is the person whose bad behavior I must labor to find most troubling. The biggest problem in the world today is neither Muslim terrorism nor third world debt nor abortion nor racism nor jealousy, but my sin.
The Bible says, "Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others" (Philippians 2:4). Your issue is not the world's biggest issue. Other people have problems too, and they're as urgent or more urgent than yours. Worry about their problems. And when it comes to yourself, the biggest thing
you really have to worry about is your own sin.
The Indian tribe that I worked with in Colombia had all kinds of problems, like alcoholism, chemical dependency, child sex abuse, malnutrition, recruitment into left-wing guerrilla causes and fearful reprisals from right-wing death squads. So it was with some surprise that I heard my 20-year-old Arhuaco friend comment on the issue that he thought to be the most urgent one facing his people. It was jealousy!
I thought he was laughably wrong about that, but it was easy to see why he felt that jealousy was the biggest thing his people had to overcome. It was because he regarded himself as a victim of their envy. He had just graduated from high school and wanted to go to college. Other tribesmen thought that further education would make him insufferably proud, and so they opposed his dream. Jealousy, he concluded, was a cancer eating away at the Arhuaco soul, and it had to be defeated so his people could make progress.
Well, his people had other things to worry about too. But I noticed in my friend a tendency that I've seen often in other people and that no doubt exists in me as well: the conviction that whatever concerns me most should most concern you. My problem is the problem and why aren't more people doing something about it?
A couple years ago I attended a Christian conference where a well-known speaker told us that the biggest evil facing America was racism. Really? Racism? I would have picked abortion. I am sure that the speaker, a black man, endured racial profiling every time he hailed a cab or stepped into an elevator with a white woman. That's a
bad break, I know, but when it comes to a hierarchy of moral outrages in America, the simple fact is that we haven't killed tens of millions of blacks lately - we've killed tens of millions of babies. That's worse.
My favorite answer to the question "What is wrong with the world?" comes from G. K. Chesterton, who responded simply, "I am." "I" is the person whose bad behavior I must labor to find most troubling. The biggest problem in the world today is neither Muslim terrorism nor third world debt nor abortion nor racism nor jealousy, but my sin.
The Bible says, "Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others" (Philippians 2:4). Your issue is not the world's biggest issue. Other people have problems too, and they're as urgent or more urgent than yours. Worry about their problems. And when it comes to yourself, the biggest thing
you really have to worry about is your own sin.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Strength In Weakness - Devastating Weakness (July 10, 2005)
Two quotes came to mind as I continue glorifying God for the faithful love of the people of Faith Bible Church. One quote is from Osama bin Laden and the other is from the Apostle Paul.
Bin Laden, gloating over his 9/11 triumph, said to a room of supporters, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." This is true. Strength - animal or human, physical or abstract - is seductive. We gather around successful people and admire their power and hope to absorb some of it. The Bin Ladens and Hitlers of the world exploit this love of strength by their sheer brutal aggression. If they are strong and strike hard and win, they know that some people will like them and will follow them, and will only turn away if they become weak.
Christians, though, discipline themselves to be pleased with goodness no matter how weak its condition, and to be repelled by badness no matter how strong its form. Holiness, not power (or any other kind of success), must be that which delights and pleases and excites us - even if that holiness never seems to win any battle or finish first in any contest.
The Apostle Paul never would have been mistaken for one of bin Laden's "strong horses". Like Jesus he "had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him" (Isaiah 53:2). What could be appealing about a prison inmate in chains, dependent on others' charity and unable to control his judicial destiny? Who wants to get close to that? Well, a few saints were willing. In 2 Timothy 1:16 Paul writes, "May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains."
I have a fresh appreciation for those who are not ashamed of a man's “chains.” I know chains - at least metaphorical ones. I feel their weight dragging on me and their links constricting me, and I know how bad they make me look. But on Sunday mornings the iron grip lightens as faithful brothers and sisters in Christ gather with me and worship the Lord.
Thanks be to God for every noble soul who pities a weak horse, who delights to refresh a prisoner in chains. May our good God enrich you all with the rewards of Onesiphorus.
Two quotes came to mind as I continue glorifying God for the faithful love of the people of Faith Bible Church. One quote is from Osama bin Laden and the other is from the Apostle Paul.
Bin Laden, gloating over his 9/11 triumph, said to a room of supporters, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." This is true. Strength - animal or human, physical or abstract - is seductive. We gather around successful people and admire their power and hope to absorb some of it. The Bin Ladens and Hitlers of the world exploit this love of strength by their sheer brutal aggression. If they are strong and strike hard and win, they know that some people will like them and will follow them, and will only turn away if they become weak.
Christians, though, discipline themselves to be pleased with goodness no matter how weak its condition, and to be repelled by badness no matter how strong its form. Holiness, not power (or any other kind of success), must be that which delights and pleases and excites us - even if that holiness never seems to win any battle or finish first in any contest.
The Apostle Paul never would have been mistaken for one of bin Laden's "strong horses". Like Jesus he "had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him" (Isaiah 53:2). What could be appealing about a prison inmate in chains, dependent on others' charity and unable to control his judicial destiny? Who wants to get close to that? Well, a few saints were willing. In 2 Timothy 1:16 Paul writes, "May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains."
I have a fresh appreciation for those who are not ashamed of a man's “chains.” I know chains - at least metaphorical ones. I feel their weight dragging on me and their links constricting me, and I know how bad they make me look. But on Sunday mornings the iron grip lightens as faithful brothers and sisters in Christ gather with me and worship the Lord.
Thanks be to God for every noble soul who pities a weak horse, who delights to refresh a prisoner in chains. May our good God enrich you all with the rewards of Onesiphorus.
Sunday, July 3, 2005
Christ, And Christ Alone (July 3, 2005)
One of my favorite verses is St. Paul's statement to the Corinthians: "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2). Though I have always loved those words, I admit that one of them used to strike me as odd. Why did Paul say that he resolved to know nothing but Christ - didn't he really mean preach or proclaim or discuss nothing but Christ? He seemed to suggest that while with the Corinthians he governed not only his words but even his thoughts to exclude anything that wasn't about Jesus. Why was that?
Maybe I understand a little better now. Thoughts bleed into words, and out of the heart the mouth speaks. That which occupies the mind will come forth in one's message, and what a man mentally acknowledges or mentally ignores will carve the channels through which his words flow.
There were many things that Paul could have worried about when he first visited the pagan city of Corinth and tried to plant a church there. Would he be able to preach eloquently? He would not think about it. He wrote, "When I came to you brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom" (1 Corinthians 2:1). Would his emotional and physical health hold out? He would not bother about that either. As a matter of fact, he wasn't able to hold himself together too well: "I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling" (1 Corinthians 2:3).
But neither fear of failure nor desire for success nor any other concern - substantial or trivial - would budge Paul from his main thought, which was that "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief" (1 Timothy 1:15). This was the conviction that he wanted to hold before his mind when all other thoughts conspired to exclude it. It was the thought that had to dictate and circumscribe his message to the Corinthian congregation, a church destined to experience a thousand distractions and a thousand temptations to dishonor the Lord.
Many of you who read this page will know about my own recent sorrows, that I too am "in weakness and fear and with much trembling," that the sun that now rises on my day seems cold and black. I embrace as my own Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 1:8: "We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life."
But I don't despair of eternal life. In my heart I know, if I know nothing else, that Jesus Christ was crucified for sinners, that he rose from the dead, and that - unworthy though I am - there is "laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at that day - and not to me only, but to all who have loved his appearing" (2 Timothy 4:8).
Pray for me. And, for the sake of the gospel that I preach, pray that like my namesake I will, when clouds gather, know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified.
One of my favorite verses is St. Paul's statement to the Corinthians: "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2). Though I have always loved those words, I admit that one of them used to strike me as odd. Why did Paul say that he resolved to know nothing but Christ - didn't he really mean preach or proclaim or discuss nothing but Christ? He seemed to suggest that while with the Corinthians he governed not only his words but even his thoughts to exclude anything that wasn't about Jesus. Why was that?
Maybe I understand a little better now. Thoughts bleed into words, and out of the heart the mouth speaks. That which occupies the mind will come forth in one's message, and what a man mentally acknowledges or mentally ignores will carve the channels through which his words flow.
There were many things that Paul could have worried about when he first visited the pagan city of Corinth and tried to plant a church there. Would he be able to preach eloquently? He would not think about it. He wrote, "When I came to you brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom" (1 Corinthians 2:1). Would his emotional and physical health hold out? He would not bother about that either. As a matter of fact, he wasn't able to hold himself together too well: "I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling" (1 Corinthians 2:3).
But neither fear of failure nor desire for success nor any other concern - substantial or trivial - would budge Paul from his main thought, which was that "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief" (1 Timothy 1:15). This was the conviction that he wanted to hold before his mind when all other thoughts conspired to exclude it. It was the thought that had to dictate and circumscribe his message to the Corinthian congregation, a church destined to experience a thousand distractions and a thousand temptations to dishonor the Lord.
Many of you who read this page will know about my own recent sorrows, that I too am "in weakness and fear and with much trembling," that the sun that now rises on my day seems cold and black. I embrace as my own Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 1:8: "We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life."
But I don't despair of eternal life. In my heart I know, if I know nothing else, that Jesus Christ was crucified for sinners, that he rose from the dead, and that - unworthy though I am - there is "laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at that day - and not to me only, but to all who have loved his appearing" (2 Timothy 4:8).
Pray for me. And, for the sake of the gospel that I preach, pray that like my namesake I will, when clouds gather, know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified.
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