Dead to the Law

So we die to the law in union with Christ when He dies. And in this union we have a new partner who is alive ... He's not a list! ... He's alive and He's in us, and He loves us. He's all over us. He's for us. He's power within, not pressure from without. And He's sweet and He's all satisfying and nothing compares to Him. And out of that union of us with our living, loving, all glorious, all satisfying Christ comes offspring, or fruit, called obedience.

Love, service, sacrifice, Christ-likeness ... Like fruit it comes, on a vine, not like tinsel on a tree. So many people try to do the christian life without knowing these things, experiencing these things, and the best they can do is take tinsel and put it on the tree of their lives. The tinsel of bible reading, and the tinsel of prayer, and the tinsel of going to church, and the tinsel of not committing adultery, and the tinsel of voting right. It has zero to do with Christianity. It's not Christianity.

-- John Piper
Sermon, (Audio version)
Dead To The Law, Serving In The Spirit - Part 1 (01-28-01)
Link

Confession and Absolution

Confession turns out to be something other than we thought. It is not the admission of a mistake which, thank God and our better nature, we have finally recognized and corrected. Rather it is the admission that we are dead in our sins - that we have no power of ourselves either to save ourselves or to convince anyone else that we are worth saving. It is the recognition that our whole life is finally and forever out of our hands and that if we ever live again, our life will be entirely the gift of some gracious other.

When God pardons, he does not say he understands our weakness or makes allowances for our errors; rather he disposes of, he finishes with, the whole of our dead life and raises us up with a new one. He does not so much deal with our derelictions as he does drop them down the black hole of Jesus' death. He forgets our sins in the darkness of the tomb. He remembers our iniquities no more in the oblivion of Jesus' expiration. He finds us, in short, in the desert of death, not in the garden of improvement; and in the power of Jesus' resurrection, he puts us on his shoulders rejoicing and brings us home.

--Robert Farrar Capon, "Kingdom, Grace, Judgment", p. 187-188

The Prodigal Son

So the youngest son gets the money and the older brother gets the farm. And off the younger brother goes. What he does, of course, is he spends it all—blows it all—on wild living. When he finally is in want and working, slopping hogs for a farmer and wishing that he could eat what he’s feeding the pigs, he can’t stand it. When he finally comes to himself he says, “You know, I’ve got to do something. How many hired servants of my father’s are there who have bread enough to spare and I’m perishing here with hunger? I know what I’m going to do.”

Almost every preacher makes this the boy’s repentance. It’s not his repentance. This is just one more dumb plan for his life. He says, “I will go to my father and I will say, ‘Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and before you.’” That’s true. He got that one right. “And I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.” Score two. He gets that one right. But the next thing he says is dead wrong. He says, “Make me one of your hired servants.” He knows—he thinks he knows—he can’t go back as a dead son, and therefore he says, “I will now go back as somebody who can earn my father’s favor again.

What happens next is that the father is now sitting on the front porch of the farm house. He’s sitting there and he sees the Prodigal, the younger boy, coming down the road from far away. He sees him coming. What does he do? He rushes off the porch, runs a half mile down the road, throws his arms around the boy’s neck and kisses him.

Now, this is all that Jesus does with this scene. The fascinating thing in this parable is that in the whole parable the father never says one single word to the Prodigal Son. Jesus makes the embrace, the kiss, do the whole story of saying, “I have found my son.” The fascinating thing also is that when the father embraces the boy who has come home from wasting his life, the boy never gets his confession out of his mouth until after the kiss, until after the embrace.

Nobody can earn forgiveness. The Prodigal knows he’s a dead son. He can’t come home as a son, and yet in his father’s arms he rises from the dead and then he is able to come to his father’s side.

--Robert Farrar Capon

These are snippets from a slightly longer article that is worth reading: here

From this truth I have rebelled

The title of this post is a line from a poem I found:

Old Bucket

All my life I’ve carried things.
So many falls so many springs.

Frosty mornings, cooler eves.
Boots below me kicking leaves.

Crooked handle, dented in.
Squeaks against the rusted tin.

Target practice, I’ve been there.
Years in barns with not a care.

Rediscovered, then re-used.
Refilled, hammered, and abused.

From this truth I have rebelled.
I’ve carried nothing. I was held.

Source: here

The Incarnation

The incarnation is the complete refutation of every human system and institution that claims to control, possess and distribute God. Whatever any church or religious leader may claim in regard to their particular access to God or control over my experience of God, the incarnation is the last word: God loves the world. God has come into the world in the form of those of us who bear God’s fingerprints and live in God’s world. God has come to all of us in Jesus. The incarnation is not owned, controlled or distributed by a church. It belongs to every human being. In Jesus, God comes to every one of us with no one else and nothing else in between. The incarnation is not being sold or downloaded. It is a gracious gift to every person everywhere, religious or not.

source: here

Forgiveness

Source: here

I had a remarkable experience of forgiveness last week. I was simply horrible to someone very dear to me and I was horrified. I hadn't acted that way toward someone in many years (if ever), and worse yet, it was toward someone I have only known a short while. I had no past hurts to draw upon to justify my action, nothing I could point to that would mitigate the offense. It was pure and simple meanness that came solely and completely from me, unprovoked and undeserved.

I rarely get upset or treat my friends badly, but when I am hurt I can be very nasty. It is only after this very unique experience where there was not any harm done or even intended that I realize I have forgotten a big piece of forgiveness, the undeserved and unmerited nature of it.

With so many of my friends and family forgiveness has become routine. Its weight and significance lessened because I have turned it into a quid pro quo rather than forgiveness. Instead of wiping the slate clean, the scales are balanced. Instead of loving, I am enduring. I start to think that I deserve to be forgiven because others are wronging me.

This is not the love or the forgiveness that God offers us through the merit of Jesus. There is never wrong done to me by God and there is always wrong done by me to God. Yet I am forgiven. The slate is wiped clean, my relationship is restored, and I am loved, declared a son of God, an heir with Jesus. I am not overwhelmed by anxiety wondering when I will go too far and sin too much and step outside the bounds of God’s forgiveness…I am simply forgiven. Loved.

This reality crushes me to the core, but I am distracted by my feeble imitation of “forgiveness.” And yet, there are moments like this past week when I am reminded of what I have actually been given and I can scarcely breathe. I am overwhelmed by love, by forgiveness, by grace.

So thank you K. for your inspired forgiveness and grace.

--Kris Opat
Source: here

While we were yet without strength

Now do not aim at great things. Be satisfied to have a faith that can hold in its hand this one truth, "While we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." (Rom 5:6) He laid down His life for men while as yet they were not believing in Him, nor were able to believe in Him. He died for men, not as believers, but as sinners. He came to make these sinners into believers and saints; but when He died for them He viewed them as utterly without strength. ... It is not great faith, but true faith, that saves; and the salvation lies not in the faith, but in the Christ in whom faith trusts.

- C.H. Spurgeon, "All of Grace", pp 74-75.

The Good News - Did you know about this?

Back in February of 2007, The Internet Monk wrote about his dad:

My dad grew up in a large family, and his younger brother became a very popular preacher. There was a lot of Appalachian mountain religion in him: emotional, fatalistic, mysterious, full of a God that couldn’t really be known or loved, but had to be dealt with anyway. He was converted, but he also left his first wife and family, living for years in shame, anger and dread over what that kind of failure meant. He wrestled with whether he was a Christian, and always wept at prayer. (Hearing my dad pray at night before he went to bed is a memory that always stays with me, especially knowing he was praying for me.)

The above quote is really just an introductory snippet. This post is really meant to point you to the full story (not long): HERE

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An Either-Or, not a Both-And

Either sin is with you, lying on your shoulders, or it is lying on Christ, the Lamb of God. Now if it is lying on your back, you are lost; but if it is resting on Christ, you are free, and you will be saved. Now choose what you want.

-Martin Luther

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He is the Way

It's easier to go through a legal transaction. It's easier to find a tidy little world where Republicans are right and Democrats are wrong. It's easier to follow a leader as if he were the mouthpiece of God. It's easier to fight for one's favorite social justice issue, or follow the latest revival trail. I swear, it's easier to write a one-thousand page systematic theology book than it is to walk down the dirty unkept path of Love.

He is the real narrow road, the one that is almost hard to see because it's so little, so unassuming. It's the humble little dirt path that follows a small gurgling stream, and it is the Way we are called to walk. This is the stuff of following Christ. Simple. Very very simple. We grow in love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness and self-control. We grow because the God in us grows us in those things and we don't fight Him, or, at least, we try not to.

-- Source: here