Anhedonia

It’s amazing what happens when we try to shake things up.  I was listening to a broadcast from Focus on the Family, because it was playing while I did some dishes.  It was speaking about the condition of anhedonia, albeit speaking about it as symptomatic of pleasure overload, distraction and distortion overload.  I had to look it up, to see if it was being used correctly.  Turns out it’s the medical name for the condition of the victim of depression when they are unable to obtain normal or even abnormal joy from commonplace activities.  Now, this got me thinking about shaking things up, mostly because I’m in a sort of transition time myself.  Anhedonia does not allow for people to be shaken up.  They are melancholic and joyless, adrift in a world that seems to have nothing for them.  It’s the world’s name for spiritual depression, and it eliminates the quest and the boon of the Joy-Giver Jesus when it’s given that categorization.  I believe to the utmost that it is important to see Bible playing out in practical, real, and daily life.  So I call it spiritual depression when I detect it.

It’s hard to be told to become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know when a) you know a lot of people b) your temperament is melancholic c) You are looking for a reason for the joy you are told you should have.  Or, to rephrase, to have reason for the hope that we have.  That’s the Biblical version of what I’m saying.  I’ve been in a place of being demonstrative of all three of those…still am on many occasions.  But then it gets overcome with thanksgiving for the blessing of, for example, a beautiful day with a comparatively large amount of freedom from that which depresses.   Here’s hoping for beauty from the ashes, then.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Why I Changed The Title

This blog used to be called “TRUTH – Christ To A Post-Christian Culture (v. 3.0)”  Even before that, it was called “Seeking the Truth”.  I recently (in case you’re a new visitor or someone who spent hours wondering why the title had changed) re-titled it so it’s become “Christ To A Post-Christian Culture – Shifting Paradigms”  Because I’m casting about desperately for content since the ill-conceived H. Jackson Brown fiasco, I decided to spend this post on the very inane ‘why I changed the title’ subject.

A very pessimistic young man once wrote in his journal ‘life is change’.  In the years since I wrote it I’ve come to some pretty startling understandings about what it actually means, understandings which I hope that I can redeem from the culture that produced them and that you can receive as valid and worthwhile.

First – it qualifies nothing.  Yes, life is change, and when I was thinking about it I was also reading Dan Simmons’ Endymion, and his messiah for the human race condensed her message to two words – choose again, which probably influenced my thinking at the time.  I wanted to be concise in my understanding of the world. but that conciseness has been at the expense of a number of other things.  So to simply say ‘life is change’ is simply saying that things need not affect you, nor need you take them as formative or destructive. This opens the doors to some very strange understandings.

Second – It alleviates one from the responsibility to try and effect change, because it nullifies causality, distancing oneself from it.  Change happens, but what do you do about it?  How is it started?  Is it for the good or for the bad?

Lately, this belief has been coming back to haunt me.  But I’m going to use it for good, now.  Because life is change is also a very concise message of optimism.  You’re never anywhere, or in anything for long, and that can be very liberating.  I think of Tristran Thorne in Stardust, whose statement “I”m not a shopboy” is the rallying cry for taking the steps you need to take in order to effect that change.  And to truly believe that life is change is to truly believe that the condition in which we find ourselves is not a permanent one.

And that brings me ’round to why I changed the title.  “Paradigm’ means two things.  First, a paradigm is an example that serves as a model or standard by which to measure.  Secondly, it means a set of assumptions, concepts, values and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality.  These are very limited Wiktionary definitions, but their essence is important.  I’ve given this blog the title “Christ to a Post Christian Culture – Shifting Paradigms” for two main reasons.  First, it intimates that the message of Christ necessitates radical change.  The assumptions by which we govern the world must be altered to have as their foundation the call to take up our cross daily, to come from labour and heavy drudgery and receive rest.  The call to deny mother and father so that we might be counted worthy of Him, to count everything as loss that we might gain Christ.  Yes, even the call to suffer and rejoice that we have been counted worthy to do so in his name.  The call to do greater works than these.  The call to go out in the world and make disciples of all men.  We must demand of ourselves adherence to the new standard of Christ, by which we must measure all things.

Second, the understanding of shifting paradigms that I hold is that life is change for this reason – we are always in motion, at the physical, at the molecular, and at the spiritual levels.  We are always in the movement of sanctification, we are always changing.  But the object of that change must be Christ-likeness, and the fitting for the glory for which we hope.  Thus to bring Christ to a post-Christian culture means that we must be so different as to be intolerable to a world that already tolerates so much.  That we must be party to collapsing worldviews (even our own) and be there to preserve the hearts and minds of those who emerge afterwards.  And finally, to bring Christ to a post-Christian culture means that we need to understand that everyone else is always moving, too.  Or at least, always being moved.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Where ‘Self-Help’ Comes From

H. Jackson Brown has suggested 21 ways by which we can achieve success in our lives. I’m going to take issue with my own use of the word ‘we’ here, but I’m also going to take a brief look at the Biblical foundation for every one of these principles over the next little while. And, I’m going to be rather vocal about the frightening roads these ways of thinking can lead you down, and why these steps need to be carefully tested and approved in application. You can find the suggestions here. And I’m not going to spend 21 posts on these things alone, but rather, I’m going to alternate between these and some insights I’ve been having over the past few dry weeks.

First, my complaint about the use of ‘we’ is that it can be taken to imply that we are the only operative parties in acting towards the fulfillment of these parts of our lives. This is patently not true, and so I preface my remarks on Brown’s suggestions with this: It’s not in ourselves that we can find the fulfillment of these things – please, make no mistake, they are valuable points to consider and they do truly offer beneficial suggestions- but in Jesus Christ, His teachings and His life. And it is by looking towards Him that we are given a proper perspective on their value.

I also want to make it clear that the tile of this post is itself a comment on what I’m trying to say. ‘Self-help’ is impossible. It’s not within our abilities to save or to sanctify ourselves, though we have every possibility of damning ourselves to Hell if we try. Neither is it possible to fulfill the righteousness within which these things fall. Biblically, Christ lived a fully righteous life and that life is what provides redemption for our own unrighteousness in arrogance and pride. So I’m going to say it plainly. I believe that ’self-help’ is arrogance beyond belief. We cannot make ourselves ‘good people’ any more than we can pull the moon out of the sky. We can’t remedy the darkness in ourselves by ourselves.

I’m not going to go into the first of the suggestions for success tonight, but I will put it up for you to think about:

1. Marry the right person. This one decision will determine 90% of your happiness or misery.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Seeing the Journey, Not the Destination

I rarely take the bus; mostly because I prefer to walk.  In all weather, mind you, and with great satisfaction regardless of conditions.  But on occasion, taking the bus gives you time to simply enjoy the ride.  You’ve paid your fare, you’ve found a seat if you’re lucky or you’re not hitting peak times, and you can sit back and simply take in the people around you.  I know, I know.  Hard for most of us to think about a bus ride that way.  Most of the time,  we’re busy listening to our tunes, reading, looking out the window instead of at the faces of the crowd with whom, for this brief time, we are locked up.  If any of you will dare admit that they’ve seen Speed, you’ll understand what I’m talking about when I say that for the duration of the ride, you’ve become brothers in arms regardless of what may keep you apart in any other circumsctances.The interesting thing about a bus is that you can share your ride with the most varied people.  Students. commuters, grocery shoppers, travelers…nomads on city streets.  Most of the time, people will sit down and shut up, keeping things to themselves or amongst a small group of friends with whom they are travelling.  What a fertile ground for studying life, for watching the glances of love between couples, for imagining what thoughts are going through the minds of your seatmates.  But also, for sharing a word of comfort with those who gaze sadly out the window.  For learning the most amazing things about people.  And for, if the opportunity arises, making ever-so-brief connections in a world increasingly fragmentary and tribal, despite growing global citizenship and humanist rhetoric.  Which was, if you think about it, the main ministry of Jesus Christ.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Keeping Company with The Dead II

For fear of making even less sense than I normally do , I stopped early last night to sleep.  There are a number of things that I’m still thinking about regarding this whole concept of living among the dead.

It’s a hard thing to accept physical death.  All of us have experienced, at one time or another, the death of a friend, a family member, or someone else.  But at least there is a clear sense that something has passed away.  What happens, though, when we find ourselves walking among the dead?  To give you some sense of what I’m saying, I’ll briefly quote Matthew 8:18-22:

“Now, when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side.  And a scribe came up and said to him, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’  And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’   Another of the disciples said to him, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’  And Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.’”

Leave the dead to bury their own dead. What does this mean?  On the one hand, it doesn’t make any earthly sense.  How can the dead bury their own dead?  There’s no life to give them energy, no work that they can do if they’re physically dead.  That is, unless they’re zombies.  I could spend some time reflecting on what it means to be a zombie and how very closely related to the lives of many people the condition truly is.  But I won’t, for your sake and for mine.   On the other, we have a profound insight into the spiritual condition of the follower of Christ as opposed to the citizen of the world.  And an extemporization of the cost associated with such a radical lifestyle change.  But centrally, this passage speaks to me about one thing.  The necessity of considering eternal life in Christ as more important than anything that we or our enemy might raise up against it.

The second point of this whole idea of keeping company with the dead is the fact of the loneliness of the condition, the isolation and wretchedness of letting Satan have his way.  I’ve heard many observations about the fact that Christ crossed the sea of Galilee for one man…the demoniac who, in Mark and Luke becomes the messenger of the life-changing purpose of Christ.  But one thing I haven’t seen much on is the causality of the whole thing. Look at it with me for a time.

Christ has just come down from the Mount of Olives, having preached revolutionary ideas to a culture with hundreds of years of entrenched legalism.  He’s going to want to rest for a bit, because he’s just led a service of worship for five or six hours.  He still has time, however, to make two crucial statements to two different people regarding the essentially nomadic lifestyle that His followers must subscribe to. The first declares that He has no home, no place of permanent rest.  The rest of the follower of Christ is in Him.  The second statement declares the ultimate value of following Christ, that those who would follow him are called into life, while those whom we have lived with, been raised by and been loved by are left in death.  Jesus then asks for a boat to be made ready to cross the Galilee, is obeyed, and promptly falls asleep.  A storm blows up, during which Jesus remains asleep while his disciples, frantic, wake him up.  He rebukes them for having little faith, and calms the waters of the sea completely.  Finally, he arrives amidst the tombs of the region of the Gadarenes, meeting two men (more likely one man) and casts a legion of demons out of him.  I could spend a post on authority here, but the essential point I want to make is that, in my thinking, Christ is using this man as an example of rebirth, something that, until now, he had not demonstrated.  Furthermore, that this man is going to physically leave the houses of the dead that he has been living among and go to spread the message of rebirth to those who still live among the metaphorical dead.  Here’s the crucial part…Christ’s message hinders the men of privilege who ask Him if they may follow, but the men (or man) without even a home or a given name, who have nothing, are given health and wholeness.  The most despised and feared become the most readily transformed, and this after those who have willingly asked have found the cost too hard.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Bearing Witness II

As I said last time, we are, every minute of every day, teaching someone something. Not necessarily in words or concepts, but certainly in character. So living in the freedom of Christ takes on a whole new weight of meaning. So does just living in Christ. If we thought about this as much as we think about, say, for example, how others are mistreating us, I’m sure we’d be unable to act on anything. Thank the Lord, then, that we don’t think about it…and then pray for His grace on the fact that we don’t think about it.

This is an important point of being authentic. What does it say about Jesus when we sin in judging, for example, or mean-spirited argument? We know what He says about it from Matthew7:1-5, to name one example:

“‘Judge not, that you be not judged. for with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother ‘let mew take the speck out of your eye’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.’”

These verses are so often taken out of context, however, and are used to condone liberal thinking.  I’m of the mind that they are, in context, a guidebook on being wary of presuming a higher standard than anyone else, which contradicts Romans 3:19-26:

“Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.  For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.  But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it – the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.  For there is no distinction:  for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.  this was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.  It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

All have sinned, and no-one is of higher value in the eyes of God than His Son, whose righteousness is our propitiation.  We are not to presume a higher standing, or act in ways that might bring glory to ourselves.  This includes comments like “I don’t think you’re giving people what they need”…as if to presume that we know any better.  I’ve been feeling very convicted on this particular point of late, for a number of reasons.

My intent in this post, then, is simple.  To get my thoughts out on a particular point of living in Christ.  I’ve got one more, I think, about bearing witness, and then who knows.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer

Easter Sunday: The Resurrection Miracle – New Birth

It is tradition in many churches to observe a sunrise service on Easter Sunday, wherein those souls who really, really want to have a good cup of hot chocolate in the morning will get up at 5 or so to spend time with fellow silly people; or, if they’re particularly foolish, stay up all night, in preparation for the service. I fall in the latter category, because if I’m asleep, I like to be asleep. Regardless, the sunrise service is, hopefully, the first step in the redemptive resurrection of Jesus Christ. We walk in the steps of those women who, early in the morning, rose to go and prepare the body of their Lord, only to find that He had risen. We rise early because God’s mercies are new every morning, especially on this one. He is risen indeed.

This is the third and final Easter Weekend post, where I hope to put together the reflections of the past few days and come up with a tie-together to end part II of TRUTH. I’ll be turning to a new posting style come this week, as befits the new birth that I’m going to talk about briefly today.

Let me first say that A World Apart has given me some insight into a number of things, but that it’s reached its limit for now. There’s only so much you can say about rebirth, about resurrection and redemption – the three Christian R’s, intertwined but distinct. It’s a good idea to put them in the proper order. For our redemption, Christ was resurrected that we might be reborn. He is sole mediator. But what does that literally mean?

I find that I’m really not getting into the meat that I want to get into in these most recent posts. They’ve been completed out of a sense of obligation, but I don’t know to whom. They’ve been dealing with some of the truths of the Christian faith, but not in any way that you can really hear them. That, I can’t do. Most cuttingly, they’ve become too intellectual even for me. I find reading them is rather tiresome, and that’s not where I want to be with them. So onward and upward, as we’ll hear coming up in Prince Caspian, to be released very soon. I’m looking forward to it with a great deal of excitement and hope. It’s probably one of the most carefully thought-out allegories in Lewis’ Narnia, and I pray that Walden has remained faithful to it.

That’s slightly tangential, so I’ll move on. I was planning on looking at two major themes today: the legacy of Christ and His resurrection; and rebirth.

What is the problem most people seem to have with accepting the gospel? I’ve said that Christ is the gospel, and Him alone. If that is the case, then what do people find so repulsive or so worthy of conflict? If you look back at the passage from Isaiah in yesterday’s post, you’ll find that God knew what He was saying when he inspired Isaiah in prophecy. There is certainly nothing in the form of a whipped, crucified, bloody man that one would find appealing…at least not in any normal moral sense, so that is certainly true. Paintings, sculptures, classical understandings of Christ have beautified Him, making the suffering servant palatable and robbing the Isaiah passage of a great deal of its significance (Hmmm. Interesting thought for a later post). I read the passage in church on Good Friday and I could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in it, and I tried to convey some of that sensation to the congregation. It may have succeeded, and if so, to God be the glory. So on the one hand we have a stinging picture of our sinfulness punished in Chrsit, and on the other we have a feelgood, holiness-emphasizing canon of illustration regarding Christ. Where’s the joy in a holy (and wholly) unreachable God-Man, so pure in his appearance that we cover our eyes or avert them from his radiance? Well, I’d like to suggest that the joy comes from knowing that He’s alive, that He is as pure and good and holy as He looks, and that in Him, in the destruction and rebirth of something beautiful, sin is atoned for. With this in mind, let me return to the question of Christ’s appeal. I’d like to think that what people find repulsive is the knowledge of their own sin, their own shame and their own failure, all lifted up on the cross for all to see. That’s the core of repentance, by the way: Humility and maybe even humiliation, your darker places dragged out into the light for people to see. And that’s the core of what Christ did for us. He who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might be spotless before the radiant and holy Father. He dragged our sins out into the open and put them to death with His own death, and was then resurrected after having completed the task. ‘It is finished’ echoes through our minds once again in this.

If we accept Christ’s sacrifice as genuine, then what we have now is the remnant, the carry-over once-for-all atonement. That, too is what people find so difficult about the gospel. That Christ has his eye on things and his intercessory cloak on right now, watching, weighing, judging. That we are part of the redemptive plan of the world, and that we can be forgiven. See, we like to live in our failures, not have them forgiven. We don’t think we can ever be worthy of what has been done for us. You’re right. We can’t. We like to wallow in failure because it proves our own points. With new birth, it’s all put away. The afterbirth is discarded, and the new child looks up into Daddy’s eyes and smiles.

Happy Easter, and Blessings;

Christ-bearer

Sabbath Sacrifice

Darkness covered the land from about the sixth hour until the ninth hour, it says. Voices were stilled, quiet descended only yesterday. Today, the Son of Man is dead. I’ve called this Sabbath Sacrifice because it was unlawful to touch or prepare a dead body on the day of Sabbath in the Jewish faith. Thus, Christ was laid in a tomb unwashed and unpreserved. A borrowed tomb, as he was unable even to afford a burial plot of his own. So perished the great Son of Man. A day of darkness indeed.

If any among you have seen the play or the movie “Amadeus”, you will recognize the analogy I’m about to draw. The final scene in the movie is the shrouded body of Mozart dumped unceremoniously into the grave of a pauper, shoveled over with a careless spill of lime and some dark earth. It helps to remember the life he lived in preparation for that scene, and on the Saturday of death in the Easter event it helps, too, to remember the life of Christ in the darkened tomb that haunts our inner vision. So as we meditate on Christ’s burial this day, focus on His life, focus on His accomplishment in both life and death. And in that meditation, bear one thing in mind, because that’s where I’m going to start: Christ, before he died, while praying in Gethsemane, spoke these words according to John:

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one”. (John 17:20-22)

Christ prayed not just for those whom he loved, his disciples, but also for those who would come to love Him through the words that they bore. One of the most transcendent prayers of glory in the Bible, prayed for all of those who have been redeemed in Him.

I wrote last time about the contemporaneous nature of Christ’s sacrifice, and tonight (still Saturday as I write this), I want to speak about that in greater detail, preparing you for part three, which is the resurrection miracle and the gift of re-presentation.

The sacrifice Christ made for us, that God made for His children, was and is in love. In Philippians 2, Paul writes these words:

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:4-11)

Which resonate in the pronouncement of Isaiah 52:13-53:12:

“Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you- his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind- so shall he sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard, they understand.
Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows; and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes, we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned — every one — to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. by oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.”

That’s a lot of Bible, but the content boils down to this (in three separate books by three different authors at three different times, no less): Jesus is the man of sorrows, who bore all of our suffering, all of our guilt, all of our wounds, that God might be glorified in Him. So as we turn again to the death of sin in the death of Christ, turn to it again with these thoughts.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Good Friday: "It is finished", Complete Atonement and Forgiven Debts.

This is the first of the Easter Weekend posts. I’m excited, because last year I wasn’t maintaining this blog with enough regularity to warrant such mediations. This year I can call them breaks in a pattern! I”m hoping to look at a few things in some detail for this one.

You may have noticed, over the past few months, that I’ve been sticking around several themes in Christianity. Centrally, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and peripherally, what results when Christ is preached and when He is allowed to change lives. Good Friday is the beginning of the three days that are the core of the Christian faith, the assurance of salvation, the completion of Jesus’ earthly ministry and heavenly mission, and the reason for the celebration of the Christian life. This post is part one of a three-part reflection on what this Easter weekend means to me this year. It’ll all come together in the end.

The title of this post is composed of three things: the words “It is finished”, the statement “complete atonement” and the acknowledgment of one part of the Lord’s Prayer as a central point of the day. I’m going to look at each of those briefly, and try to pull in some of the thoughts that have been arising as the last little while has been happening.

The statement ‘it is finished’ is, interestingly enough, recorded only in the gospel of John, although all four gospels record Jesus uttering a loud cry just before he breathed his last. In all cases, there is a great gravitas in the final minutes of Jesus’ life, a sign of something pivotal happening in his crucifixion and death. John makes it clear what this is. With the great ‘it is finished’, Jesus is speaking to a number of things. It is firstly the fulfillment of Deuteronomy 21:22-23:

“And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.”

which raises some interesting points. For example, what crime did Jesus commit that would cause him to be put to death? And how is the land defiled if a man remains hung all night on a tree? These are areas of interesting speculation, but draw one away from the intent of this first point: Jesus was cursed by God in being hung on a cross. So, too, were the thieves beside him, but even in that curse, Christ could look at one and say today, you will be with me in paradise. In his death lay the potential for redemption even outside of the condemnation of the law

Jesus is also speaking to the work of redemption that God set in motion for man. In the crucifixion of His Son Jesus, God has declared the complete work of fall and redemption, atonement and justification. Christ came into history at a specific point by our reckoning, but (when you think about it), instantaneously in His. God sees both sin and redemption contemporaneously, and that’s what makes Christ’s atonement so incredible. I’ll look at that in just a minute. Hard to wrap your head around, but worth thinking about. Christ is the fundamentally important point of the entire work of the Bible, because it is in Him that everything is fulfilled.

Additionally, Jesus is speaking to the work of his earthly ministry. All that needs to be told about Him, all that is necessary, has been said. He is the gospel. Not his actions, because not all are recorded. Not his teaching, because he has said “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt.7:12). Not ‘this is what the Law and the Prophets mean,’ although that is implied, but that is what the Law and the Prophets are. No, what ‘It is finished’ speaks to is the truth that He has done what was required. Everything else is going to be trying to understand that.

Which brings us ’round to complete atonement. If the message of Christ is complete, and if He is the gospel truth, then all that we need to believe is that what we are told about atonement through the precursors in the Old Testament and the fulfillment in the New is valid and that it applies to us. Amazingly, it takes the comprehensive insights of multiple authors to arrive at that conclusion in the Word. To return to the point I suggested not too long ago, the contemporaneous understanding of Christ’s atonement means that by its very nature it is complete and universal. It covers all of mans’ sin because all of mans’ sin is that which is in perspective. I’m going to look a bit more at this on Saturday.

Finally, to round off this post (much longer than I had thought it would be), I want to look at the phrase forgiven debts, related as it is to the Lord’s prayer and to what I’ve been saying prior to this. Atonement is one of those fancy theological words that can be said much more simply in ways like this: Debt forgiveness, prices paid, account credited. Financial terms for a spiritual transaction. The great debt that we have towards God — for not killing us in our sin, for example, and for sacrificing His own Son to overcome it — and its only repayment in Christ Jesus is what truly needs to be thought about in this time. Today is the day of Christ’s death, and it is a cause for jubilee, because in it all debts have been forgiven and all credit history erased. Praise the Lord for what He has done.

Blessings;.

Christ-bearer.

A World Apart – The Offensive Christ

I like Star Trek, now and again.

I’ve long since lost all shame in admitting that, but I say it now because to many, the Ferengi may not stand out. Orange skinned, huge-eared, capitalist. A commercial society…no relation at all to the real world. One of their favourite pastimes is the sexual technique known as oo-mox – rubbing the lobes of their ears, which are erogenous zones. And, just like the Ferengi – remember, no relation at all to the real world , people like having their ears tickled. They like hearing that they’re good, that what they do is going to earn them a place in heaven or a higher state of enlightenment, or that it’s going to end up well for them regardless of how their life is lived. I’m going to say flat out that they are dead wrong. There is no hope past this life except for those who are in Christ Jesus. This is the essence of what it means to be Christian. To understand that Jesus is the only way, the only truth, the only life.

Doesn’t really tickle the ears that much, do it now? But this is the offensive Christ, the man crucified for the sins of the world, for its people, for all time. This is the Christ who was publicly humiliated, and who Christians should preach so that they might be aware of their own sinfulness and Christ’s untainted glory for them; his sacrifice, for them. In everything He is to be raised up, and that includes jobs, churches, schools, homes. Everywhere we are, so He is to be.

Yet people find it so hard to do. We can’t measure up, we say. We can’t do it. no. We can’t. But He did. And when this Christ is preached, when this Christ is preaching, then we are offended. We are shown who we are, and we don’t like it.

Christians love it. But they don’t always recognize that that love might be misplaced, that the love that we have for Christ should not be for the fact that He made us good, but rather that He was the only one good enough to cover our wretchedness. We have none of it. But yet, we love Him for showing us that He has prevailed. This is the offensive Christ.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer