The cross does not merely inform us

True knowledge of God, therefore, does not come on a theological platter.  We are predisposed do distort things, to see wrongly, and to speak falsely.  We construct a doctrine of God amenable to our own projects.  So the only way to know God is through suffering, the suffering of the one who saves us.

God can be known and had only through suffering the divine deed of the cross.  The cross does not merely inform us of something.  It attacks and afflicts us.  Knowledge of God comes when God happens to us, when God does himself to us.  We are crucified with Christ.  The sinner, the old being, neither knows nor speaks the truth about God and consequently can only be put to death by the action of God.

In the cross, God has literally taken away from us the possibility of doing anything of religious merit.  Religiously, we like to look on ourselves as potential spiritual athletes desperately trying to make God's team, (having, perhaps, just a little problem or two with the training rules).  We have a thirst for glory.  We feel a certain uneasiness of conscience or even resentment within when the categorical totality of the action of God begins to dawn on us.  We are always tempted to return to the safety and assurance of doing something anyway. 

But to surrender the "wisdom" of law and works, or better, to have it taken away, is the first indication of what it means to be crucified with Christ. 

-- Gerhard O. Forde
On Being a Theologian of the Cross

Freedom = An indifference swept away

From the moment I resigned, two days before leaving the school, I discovered that several things were happening to me in my new state of freedom. I was recapturing the spirit of play – not the play of youth which is games (aggression under the restraint of rules), but the play of childhood which is all imagination, which improvises. I became light-headed. The spirit of play swept away the cynicism and indifference into which I had fallen. Moreover, a readiness for adventure re-awoke in me – for risk, for intruding myself into the lives of others, for extracting fun from danger.

Thornton Wilder
from his novel, "Theophilus North"

There are no standing lovers

There are no standing lovers: the only way to love is to lay down.

Lay down plans.

Lay down agendas.

Lay down self.

Love is always the laying down.

...

Love lets go of its plans — to hold on to a person.

--Ann Voskamp   (source: here)

   

“It is not your love that sustains the marriage —
 but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.”

--Deitrich Bonhoeffer

Borrowed from heaven, for our journey home

We enter the world crying, and suffering marks our path at every bend in the road towards home. When will we learn that joy on this road must be borrowed from heaven, not from earth? Joy, like redemption, comes from You, O Lord. Yet while we acknowledge the futility of attempting to earn our salvation, we are forever attempting to supply our own joy.

--Kellie
(from her "about me" page on her blog: here )

If we'll only allow for it

... [I told her the story of] the Israelites looking to the snake in the wilderness. Poisoned and dying, they were given a simple instruction. To look up at that snake on the pole and be healed. If they looked, they lived. If not, they died. Such is a picture of Jesus on the cross, I told her. We live when we look to His work on that cross for us. We do wonderful things when joy and thankfulness inspires us because of what He has already accomplished. Looking at ourselves, at our failures, and mistakes never got us anywhere.

How much of our lives revolve around this one simple truth I wonder? In teaching people how to sing, I am constantly reminded how our human nature is inclined at every step, to attempt things in our own power  ...  Our constant inclination is to try other things to make the whole process work. Maybe we'll sing better if we tighten the muscles in our jaw and face in order to manipulate the process. Maybe we'll sing better if our chest and shoulders are involved and we exaggerate the articulation of every word. Maybe... just maybe, we can work a little harder with the things we own and control, and it will all come into place for us.

I cannot tell you how many times my students are in awe of how easy singing is when it is correct. The breath does the work and we are all inclined to be shocked. That singing rightly should be so simple, so easy, so effortless-this seems wrong to us. Almost like we are stealing grace.

Yet there it is, again and again, in every part of our lives. Discovering what God has done for us is freeing, shocking, humbling.

To find out that we really don't have to make our throats hoarse if we'd like to sing for hours at a time. Why? Because He's put breath in our bodies to make the production of sound so very, very effortless, if we'll only allow for it.

And to find out that we really don't have to weary our spirits attempting to live a life that is pleasing to God. Why? Because He sent His Son to live a pleasing life in our place and die on a cross for us. This, believe it or not, can make our good deeds so very, very effortless, if we'll only allow for it.

Yet how inclined we are to find new man-made systems that will help us "be like Jesus." When in reality, becoming like Him comes of noticing Him. Of recognizing how much greater His work was and is than any of our own Christian muscle flexing.

...In the end, we obey out of joy because of what has been done, not to get something done. We're not called to prove that we're Christians, or know when we became Christians, or work a little harder every day to become better ones. All of that pales in comparison to the blinding beauty which flows from a life that has seen the cross.

...Are you afraid you won't really do good things for God if you relinquish your grip on the law and start looking to the cross?

I dare you to try it.

Begin gazing at Jesus. On the cross because of you. Lifted up like the snake in the wilderness to be your healing. If you don't start singing a new kind of life, I guarantee, you haven't really seen Him.

Just like my dear, driven, type A student has lost focus of breath every time her voice goes astray. We also, when we begin slipping, have lost focus of the cross. May we learn, in failure, not to focus on where we went wrong in our ability to adhere to God's standards but to look back at Jesus. It is a simple instruction. Who would ignore it?

Surprisingly, not all the Israelites looked up at the snake in the wilderness. May we heed their end. May we trust that the grace that has been given-this shocking, easy, joy-filled, living because He lived, this, THIS will transform us.

-- by Kellie
excerpts from a blog post: here

The Free Gift

Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth: not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God.

--The Westminster Confession, chapter 11

First things first

If you will see sin’s sinfulness to loathe it, and mourn,
do not stand looking upon sin, but look upon Christ first,
as suffering and satisfying for it.

If you would see your graces, your sanctification,
do not stand gazing upon them;
but look at Christ’s righteousness in the first place;
see the Son and you see all.
Look at your graces in the second place.

--Thomas Wilcox
Honey Out of the Rock

Strength, weakness, and connecting the dots

We are too big in ourselves when we do well, and too little in Christ in our failings. O that we could learn to be nothing in ourselves in our strength, and to be all in Christ in our weakness!

--Samuel Bolton
The True Bounds of Christian Freedom

God's Promise: Not an offer, but our end

Virtually our entire existence in this world is shaped, determined and controlled by conditional promises and calculations.

We are brought up on conditional promises.
We live by them.
Our future is determined by them.

Conditional promises always have an “if-then” form…

If you are a good girl, then you can go to the movies.
If you do your schoolwork, then you will pass the course.
If you do your job, then you will get your pay.
If you prove yourself, then you will get a promotion.

And so on and so on, endlessly until at last we die of it, wondering if we had only done this differently, perhaps then…

Though such conditional promises are often burdensome and even oppressive, they are nevertheless enticing and even comforting in their own way because they give life its structure and seem to grant us a measure of control. If we fulfill the conditions, then we have a claim on what is promised. We have what we call “rights,” and we can control our future, at least to a certain extent.

So, we hang rather tenaciously onto these conditional promises. We hang desperately onto the conditional promises, hoping to control our own destiny. We live “under the law” and cannot get out–because we really don’t want to. We prefer to go our own way even up to the last barrier: death. Religion is most often just the attempt to extend this conditionality into eternity and to gain a certain measure of control even over the eternal itself.

But the saving act of God in Jesus Christ–comprehended in justification by faith alone–is an unconditional promise. Unconditional promises have a “because-therefore” form. Because Jesus has overcome the world and all enemies by his death and resurrection, therefore… you shall be saved. Because Jesus died and rose, therefore God here and now declares you just for Jesus’ sake… Because Jesus has borne the sin of the whole world in his body unto death and yet conquered, therefore God declares the forgiveness of sins.

Now, we have a desperately difficult time with such an unconditional promise. It knocks everything out of kilter. Is it really true? Can one announce it just like that? No strings attached? Don’t we have to be more careful about to whom we say such things? It appears wild and dangerous and reckless to us, just as it did to Jesus’ contemporaries.

The best we can do is to try to draw it back into our conditional understanding–so all the questions and protests come pouring out. But surely we have to do something, don’t we? Don’t we at least have to make our decision to accept? Isn’t faith, after all, a condition? Or repentance? Isn’t the idea of an unconditional promise terribly dangerous? Who will be good? Won’t it lead perhaps to universalism, libertinism, license and sundry disasters? Don’t we need to insist on sanctification to prevent the whole from collapsing into cheap grace? Doesn’t the Bible follow the declaration of grace with certain exhortations and imperatives? So the protestations go, for the most part designed to reimpose at least a minimal conditionality on the promise.

It is true, you see, that [as sons of Adam] we simply cannot understand or cope with the unconditional promise of justification pronounced in the name of Jesus. What we don’t see is that what the unconditional promise is calling forth is a new being. The justification of God promised in Jesus is not an “offer” made to us as old beings; it is our end, our death. We are, quite literally, through as old beings.

--Gerhard Forde
from the essay, "Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification"

God's purpose ... in my failures

The God of the Bible knows what he is doing.  His work is, as scripture says, “past finding out.”  He asks for no advice.  He is not holding question and answer press conferences.  He is not writing books of ten easy-to-understand bullet pointed explanations.  He has spoken, and it is up to me to hear, believe and live accordingly.

And for me, at least, it’s difficult.  It’s difficult knowing that I have failed in so many ways, hurt so many people, brought so many sinful consequences into my relationships… and God is at work, somehow, in all of it.

I want God’s purposes to be carried out through what I’ve done right.  I’ve studied, preached, taught, served, counseled, led, encouraged and lived for the Gospel for more than 35 years.  I don’t want God’s purposes to be about my failures, broken promises and abuses of others.  I want to put what I want on the table, and I want God to work with that. But that’s not the way it’s going to be. God is going to do what he wants to do, for reasons that can't fit into a sentence in the Bible, but which are far too mysterious to wrap my mind around.

Sunday night I’m going to preach on “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  I know what the text means, but I can’t read it without thinking that I am, in a way, fearful of what God is up to.  God is not invested in hearing me say what I “need.” If he wants to take away, he will take away, and his purpose will be for me to go on without whatever he took away.  The same with suffering, obscurity, humiliation and failure.  God cannot be manipulated into carrying out my plans with my selected materials. He is about carrying out his plans with whatever materials he chooses.

I am guilty of wanting God to make much of me rather than make me into a soul who makes much of him now and forever.  The quest is not for understanding, but is for joy. The promise is not that God will do what he determines, but that he is determined to satisfy me forever with himself.

My prayer is that I would trust God by exalting in his love, goodness and grace poured out in Christ and directed invincibly and irresistibly toward me.

-- Michael Spencer