"Jesus: Sorrowful but Always Rejoicing"

Donald Macleod:

"Much has been made of the fact that Jesus is never said to have smiled or laughed. Linked to the description of the Servant as a ‘man of sorrows and acquainted with grieft’ it has furnished a basis for the idea that Jesus’ life was unremittingly joyless and stressful.

"But this is a serious over-simplification...."

See the entire blog post here.

"Ajith Fernando: On the Anvil of Suffering"

Tim Stafford's compelling profile of a remarkable Christian leader, Ajith Fernando:

'...For many in the West, a message of holiness and servanthood is hard to preach and difficult to hear. In an affluent, entertainment-driven society, an affluent and entertainment-driven church can't get much traction on those topics. We flee frustration.

'Through Fernando, we hear an authentic voice restoring the truth to us, like an echo from our past. It happens because he made the choice to stay.'

Read the entire CT article here.

"Is the Sabbath still relevant?"

From Ray Ortlund, Jr.:

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”  Exodus 20:8

Let’s not dictate Sabbath observance today.  The point of the Sabbath is a dress rehearsal for a future eternity of glad rest in God.  So, for now, every one of us can work out the details personally.  But in our frantic modern world, the Sabbath offers wisdom that has lasted since the beginning (Genesis 2:2-3).  It is not written on our calendars as much as we are built into its calendar.  It seems to be part of the God-created rhythm for weekly human flourishing.

If we did set apart one day each week for rejuvenation in God, we would immediately add to every year over seven weeks of vacation.  And not for doing nothing but for worship, for friends, for mercy, for an afternoon nap, for reading and thinking, for lingering around the dinner table and sharing good jokes and tender words and personal prayers.

How else can we find quietness of heart in today’s world?  If anyone has a more biblical (and more immediately beneficial) place to begin, I’m open.  But raising hermeneutical objections to the Sabbath principle doesn’t in itself actually help any of us.

I wonder if the very concept of “the weekend” is biblical.  It seems to me that “the weekend” turns Sunday into a second Saturday.  Home Depot may gain, but we lose.  It turns Sunday into a day to catch up on what we didn’t do Saturday or a day to ramp up for what’s ahead on Monday.  It hollows out our whole week, because it marginalizes God and church and sermons and all the other vital things that happen in our lives only when we make the vital things also the central things.  If we accept the concept of “the weekend,” we risk “fitting God in” rather than centering our every week around him.  We risk living soul-exhausted lives, and wondering why God isn’t more real to us, why we’re grumpy.

If we want to find our way back into quietness of heart and reality with God, the first step might be simple.  Bold, but simple.

The Excellency and Love of Christ

"The excellency of Christ, and the love of Christ, more appear in his yielding himself to be crucified for us, than in any other of his acts, so that these things, considered together, above all things tend to draw forth on our part the exercises of humble love."


— Jonathan Edwards
"The Excellency of Christ"

"Why Catechesis Now?"

...from Tim Keller:

"The church in Western culture today is experiencing a crisis of holiness. To be holy is to be "set apart," different, living life according to God's Word and story, not according to the stories that the world tells us are the meaning of life. The more the culture around us becomes post- and anti-Christian the more we discover church members in our midst, sitting under sound preaching, yet nonetheless holding half-pagan views of God, truth, and human nature, and in their daily lives using sex, money, and power in very worldly ways. It's hard to deny what J. I. Packer and Gary Parrett write:

Superficial smatterings of truth, blurry notions about God and godliness, and thoughtlessness about the issues of living---careerwise, communitywise, familywise, and churchwise---are all too often the marks of evangelical congregations today (Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way, 16).

Selfish to seek salvation??

“It is often ignorantly and frivolously charged against Christian men that it is selfish in them to seek heaven and glory for their own souls; but no man who is truly seeking salvation will be moved by that accusation.  When men really begin to seek their salvation, and to turn their faces to the glory of heaven, then it is that all selfish and ignoble desires receive their death-blow.  It is not selfish, surely, for the diseased to seek healing, or the hungry food, or the prodigal his father’s house.  So far from this being a sign that the heart is selfish, there is no surer sign that it is being sanctified.”

Alexander Whyte, An Exposition on the Shorter Catechism (Fearn, 2004), page 138.

"The Purpose of Work"

A helpful essay from Gene Edward Veith on "The Purpose of Work"

Treating one another like God has treated us

from Ray Ortlund, Jr.:

“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.  Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”  Ephesians 4:31-32

The gospel is in these verses: “. . . as God in Christ forgave you.”  The rest of it is how we are to be true to that gospel, how not to be a living denial of the very gospel we profess, how to be living proof of that sacred gospel.

Faithfulness to the gospel is more than signing a doctrinal statement.  That’s a good thing to do.  But faithfulness to the gospel is more.  Far more.

Faithfulness to the gospel is also treating one another as God in Christ has treated us.  It is not that hard to sign a piece of paper or take a vow that we stand for the gospel.  Again, that’s a good thing to do.  But it is far more demanding to bear living witness to the gospel by denying the demands of Ego and treating one another with the grace God has shown us in Christ.

When the gospel actually sinks in, we change.  Winning no longer matters.  Getting in the last word no longer matters.  Payback no longer matters.  We now perceive such things as contemptible, compared with the display of God’s grace in Christ.

Unbelieving people are not impressed by our official positions on paper.  They will not pay attention – nor should they – until they see the beauty of the gospel in our relationships.

Jonathan Edwards, observing his wife under the influence of the Holy Spirit, noted this about her:

“There were earnest longings that all God’s people might be clothed with humility and meekness, like the Lamb of God, and feel nothing in their hearts but love and compassion to all mankind; and great grief when anything to the contrary appeared in any of the children of God, as bitterness, fierceness of zeal, censoriousness, or reflecting uncharitably on others, or disputing with any appearance of heat of spirit.”

Jonathan Edwards, Works (Edinburgh, 1979), I:377.

When God Graciously Blesses Us in Spite of Ourselves

J. I. Packer:

“It is certain that God blesses believers precisely and invariably by blessing to them something of his truth and that misbelief as such is in its own nature spiritually barren and destructive.

“Yet anyone who deals with souls will again and again be amazed at the gracious generosity with which God blesses to needy ones what looks to us like a very tiny needle of truth hidden amid whole haystacks of mental error. . . .

“Every Christian without exception experiences far more in the way of mercy and help than the quality of his notions warrants.”

—J. I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 21-22.

"The Bonds of Christian Freedom"

"There is paradox in the Christian understanding of what it means to be free."  A good essay from Roger Olson as part of Christianity Today's "Global Gospel Project."

Discerning Crucial Distinctions

"A fine distinction is like a fine painting or a fine poem or anything else fine; a triumph of the human mind. In these days when large-mindedness is supposed to consist of confusing everything with everything else, of saying that a man is the same as a woman and religion the same as irreligion, and the unnatural as good as the natural and all the rest of it, it is well to keep in mind the great power of distinction; by which man becomes in the true sense distinguished."

-- G.K. Chesterton

"Hell Grasped a Corpse, and Met God"

"Let no one lament persistent failings, for forgiveness has risen from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the death of our Saviour has set us free.

"The Lord has destroyed death by enduring it. The Lord vanquished hell when he descended into it. The Lord put hell in turmoil even as it tasted of his flesh.

"Hell was in turmoil having been eclipsed. Hell was in turmoil having been mocked. Hell was in turmoil having been destroyed. Hell was in turmoil having been abolished. Hell was in turmoil having been made captive.

"Hell grasped a corpse, and met God. Hell seized earth, and encountered Heaven. Hell took what it saw, and was overcome by what it could not see.

"O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory? Christ is risen, and you are cast down! Christ is risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead."

— John Chrysostom
An Easter Sermon
(HT: Michael Potemra)

Jesus vs. Paul?

“A most astonishing misconception has long dominated the modern mind on the subject of St. Paul.  It is to this effect: that Jesus preached a kindly and simple religion (found in the gospels) and that St. Paul afterwards corrupted it into a cruel and complicated religion (found in the epistles).  This is really quite untenable.  All the most terrifying texts came from the mouth of our Lord; all the texts on which we can base such warrant as we have for hoping that all men will be saved come from St. Paul.  If it could be proved that St. Paul altered the teaching of his Master in any way, he altered it in exactly the opposite way to that which is popularly supposed. . . .

The ordinary popular conception has put everything upside down.  Nor is the cause far to seek.  In the earlier history of every rebellion there is a stage at which you do not yet attack the King in person.  You say, ‘The King is all right.  It is his Ministers who are wrong.  They misrepresent him and corrupt all his plans — which, I’m sure, are good plans if only the Ministers would let them take effect.’  And the first victory consists in beheading a few Ministers; only at a later stage do you go on and behead the King himself.  In the same way, the nineteenth-century attack on St. Paul was really only a stage in the revolt against Christ.  Men were not ready in large numbers to attack Christ himself.  They made the normal first move — that of attacking one of his principal ministers. . . . St. Paul was impeached and banished and the world went on to the next step — the attack on the King himself.”

-- C. S. Lewis, in J. B. Phillips, Letters to Young Churches (London, 1955), pages ix-x.

HT: Ray Ortlund, Jr.

A hymn for when life is not terrific

When we are doing everything
which life and time demand,
eternal truths may soon depart
replaced with sinking sand.
Dangerous times so test us, Lord,
when Christ we cannot see.
Steady our nerve, O living Word
and teach us just to be!

When we are fighting smiling foes
who twist your word and ways,
help us repent when our sin grows,
o'erwhelmed by stormy days:
hardening our hearts with deadly force,
and lurking power of hell.
Bow our weak minds before the cross
to break, then make us well!

When we are broken send true friends
who love us for your sake:
patiently waiting, selfless prayers,
the warmth of real embrace.
Brothers' and sisters' words and deeds;
your gifts so kindly sent.
Calm our deep turmoil, bring us peace
which is your pure intent!

When we are shining like the sun
in bodies made to last,
glory to hold, your face to see,
all strife and suffering passed.
Then your full purpose will unfold,
all haunting questions gone;
Christ will be ours as we were told.
Come soon, eternal dawn!

A. Peter Dickson - September 2012

Ray Ortlund Jr. on Fairness in Church Discipline

“In every conflict there is wrong on both sides,” someone says.  In every conflict?  “There’s enough guilt to go around,” someone else says.  Well, I guess that’s that.  Discussion over.

"When a church suffers internal conflict, these glib assertions often pop up to the surface.  But they are not biblical and not helpful.

"Was there wrong on both sides when Cain murdered Abel?  Was there wrong on both sides when Korah opposed Moses, when Saul pursued David, when Ahab and Jezebel accused and murdered Naboth, when the prophets were opposed, when Sanballat plotted against Nehemiah, when Alexander harmed Paul, when all the apostles were mistreated in city after city?  Every one of these people on the receiving end was a sinner.  But does their sin explain, much less justify, what was done to them?  Not according to Scripture.

"A thoughtless slogan, however well intentioned, can create a Kafkaesque environment of injustice.  There is a reason why God said, “Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and righteous, for I will not acquit the wicked” (Exodus 23:7).  God our Judge instructs us that, even among sinners, categories like “false charge,” “innocent and righteous” and “wicked” are still meaningful and important to him — and to us.

"It is up to the elders in every church to slow the momentum of conflict down, get to the bottom of things, find out what is really going on, clear away every false accusation, and render a just judgment, so that their church can get back to positive gospel ministry in green pastures and beside still waters.

"Churches led by their elders into self-restraint and biblical clarity can create — or, if need be, re-create — a non-Kafkaesque environment of humaneness where everyone is safe from hasty misjudgments.  Such a church is where the presence of Jesus dwells."