Waiting to Feel Better: The Greatest Snare in the Christian Life

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in his typical hyperbolic preaching style, explains how important it is for Christians to know who they are:

“The whole matter of putting on the new man is in essence the application of truth to ourselves. It is the most important thing that one can ever discover in the Christian life. The real secret of Christian living is to discover the art of talking to yourself. We must talk to ourselves, we must preach to ourselves, and we must take truth and apply it to ourselves, and keep on doing so. That is the putting on of the new man. We have to hammer away at ourselves until we have really convinced ourselves. In other words, this is not something that you wait for passively. If you wait until you feel like the new man it will probably never happen. We must be active in this. There is no greater snare in the Christian life than to entertain the idea of waiting until we feel better, and of then putting on the new man. On the contrary, we have got to go on telling ourselves the new man is already in us. In his Epistle to the Romans the Apostle Paul says, ‘Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God’ (6:11).” Darkness and Light, An Exposition of Ephesians 4:17-5:17, 191-192

How to Come to Jesus

Jonathan Edwards answers,

“If ever you truly come to Christ, you must see that there is enough in him for your pardon, though you be no better than you are. If you see not the sufficiency of Christ to pardon you, without any righteousness of your own to recommend you, you never will come so as to be accepted of him. The way to be accepted is to come–not on any such encouragement, that now you have made yourselves better, and more worthy, or not so unworthy, but–on the mere encouragement of Christ’s worthiness, and God’s mercy…You must come as a patient comes to his physician, with his diseases or wounds to be cured. Spread all your wickedness before him, and do not plead your goodness; but plead your badness, and your necessity on that account: and say, as the psalmist in the text, not Pardon mine iniquity, for it is not so great as it was, but, ‘Pardon my iniquity, for it is great.’” ["Great Guilt No Obstacle to the pardon of the Returning Sinner" in Hendrickson's *The Works of Jonathan Edwards*, Vol. 2, 113]

Come to Jesus not when you get better, but as you are right now no matter how you are right now. Spread your sin before him, and let him spread his massive grace over you.

Abortion: President Obama’s Position, Dr. Gosnell’s Practice, & All of Us

Recently more and more of the press are picking up on the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his abortion practices, and many are being left horrified by them because of his treatment of both women and babies. But the parallels between this practice and that of late-term abortion (partial-birth abortion) should not be ignored.

The most stringent gate-keepers of pro-choice rights have defended late-term abortion because they know that if late-term abortion is banned more and more abortion practices could be banned and the “rights” of women to these medical procedures could be diminished. For instance, when President Obama was a senator he voted no on banning late-term abortion for the following reason: “…not because I don’t recognize that these are painful issues, but because [he] trusts woman to make these decisions.”

 

In a fundraising letter in 2004 Michelle Obama argued that her husband would fight for women’s rights and against the then rising conservatism in America, and used his denial of the partial-birth abortion ban to establish it.

So what’s the difference between “terminating” [medical procedure of late-term abortion] a fetus inside the womb and killing [crime of infanticide] a baby born outside of it? Tim Carney, of the Washington Examiner, shows that there is none:

…late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart, who operates in Germantown, Md., snips their spines with scissors.

In his first U.S. Senate race, Obama used Carhart’s procedure as a fundraising pitch. In a 2004 campaign mailing, Michelle Obama tried to rally the donor base by explaining how Republicans were trying to ban partial-birth abortion, “a legitimate medical procedure,” as Michelle put it.

The most substantive difference between the partial-birth abortions on which Obama fundraised and Gosnell’s abortions is this: Dr. Gosnell did the snipping outside of the mother’s birth canal, while Dr. Carhart reaches his scissors inside the woman’s vagina to snip the baby’s spine.

This fact points us to the most likely reason the mainstream media ignored the story as long as possible: The Gosnell story has an inherent pro-life bias, because the Gosnell story leads us to discussing abortion procedures.

When you discuss the act of aborting — even perfectly legal abortions — you have to discuss the blood, the scalpels, the scissors. You might use terms like “dilation and extraction” or “dilation and curettage.” Think through those terms (“curettage” is defined as “a surgical scraping or cleaning”) and recall that what is being extracted or scraped has a beating heart.

Discussing Gosnell threatens to start a discussion on abortion procedures — and that’s not good for anyone in the abortion industry.

The argument is often made that pro-choice candidates don’t like abortion and that they hope to see abortions dwindle. I am not arguing that President Obama or any other vigorous pro-choice defenders “like” abortion at any term during a woman’s pregnancy and a baby’s development in the womb, but I am noting, as Carney put it, that there is no “substantive difference” between Dr. Gosnell’s practice of “snipping” and the President and other advocates of late-term abortion rights positions.

When it comes to pro-life arguments, like the one I’m making, Dr. Gosnell is an easy target and late-term pro-choice politicians like the President and his wife are too. The particularly gruesome details of abortions under Dr. Gosnell’s practice and the similar though more, dare I say, conveniently hidden (via in the birth canal) practice of late-term abortion, puts on display the horror of all abortion in general. It’s easy to be sickened by the obvious violent killing of babies under Gosnell’s regime, but what is truly sickening is that all of us are not equally disgusted by the 50 million abortions that have taken place in the US during the last four decades at any term.

These are not just digits. These are babies. And Gosnell’s trial throws this up in our faces.

Judgment, Grace, & Religion on Good Friday & Easter

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German martyr of World War II, reflected on God’s grace and judgment in a sermon in 1928 as Easter and Good Friday approached,

Good Friday and Easter–the days of God’s overpowering acts in history, acts in which God’s judgment and grace were revealed to all the world–are just around the corner. Judgment in those hours in which Jesus Christ, our Lord, hung on the cross; grace in the hour in which death was swallowed up in victory. It was not human beings who accomplished anything here; no, God alone did it. He came to human beings in infinite love. He judged what is human. And he granted grace beyond any merit. [Meditations on the Cross, 20]

John Stott explains how what God accomplished at the cross by judgment and grace is different than what any other religion offers because it is no religion at all:

No other system, ideology or religion proclaims a free forgiveness and a new life to those who have done nothing to deserve it but a lot to deserve judgment instead. On the contrary, all other systems teach some form of self-salvation through good works of religion, righteousness or philanthropy. Christianity, by contrast, is not in its essence a religion at all; it is a gospel, the gospel, good news that God’s grace has turned away his wrath, that God’s Son has died our death and borne our judgment, that God has mercy on the undeserving, and that there is nothing left for us to do, or even contribute. Faith’s only function is to receive what grace offers.” [The Message of Romans, 118]

Religion itself has been crucified at the cross. The only thing human beings accomplished on Good Friday was demonstrating their own wickedness, while God accomplished the salvation of every wicked person who would simply receive his resurrected Son.

A Scholar’s Take on Miracles, Raising the Dead & The God of Elijah

Prolific New Testament scholar Craig Keener’s recent gargantuan work, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, discusses the New Testament descriptions of miracles and also reports contemporary testimonies of healing and, in the following portion, dead-raising:

While writing this book I have come across claims of nearly three hundred raisings, from well over 150 different sources

Again, recall the accounts of raisings from the dead surveyed earlier, which I will recall but not elaborate again here. A number of claims date from the early twentieth century, but again I focus on the far more numerous more recent ones. These accounts also involve Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the West. A number of these accounts involve persons who have been dead for many hours or sometimes even more than a day. Some are from people I not only interviewed but also knew personally, or met through my wife’s family knowing them personally; where possible I cross-checked interviewees’ testimony with other witnesses. Witnesses range from those participating in the prayers to a person raised herself. While writing this book I have come across claims of nearly three hundred raisings, from well over 150 different sources…

These sources may vary in their reliability, but a high proportion reflect reports from eyewitnesses that one would normally deem reliable. I am particularly impressed with reports from individuals whose character I know and trust. I do not include in the count cases of which I was informed…yet not permitted by my sources to uses because of the security situation in their countries. [p. 749-750. Also, Keener details the claims and evidences of several supernatural healings experienced through testimony of those he personally knows in a chart on p. 752-756 ]

In Keener’s conclusion he describes what his study for the book and his own past experience as an an atheist and his present experience as a Christian academic have led him to:

When I started writing the book, I felt some competition between my theistic theological sympathies…and the intellectual skepticism and reservations characteristic of my academic training…My earlier background as an atheist who valued only naturalistic empiricism probably reinforced some of the latter predilections. Despite having witnessed some healings in conjunction with prayer, especially in earlier years, more recent disappointments and (in my academic work, especially recently) imbibing an Enlightenment hermeneutic of suspicion had me primed for a significant degree of skepticism…

As a Christian I believed in miracles in principle but wondered about the veracity of many claims today…My training makes it easier to evaluate critically than to trust, but at some point the intellectual honesty valued in my training also compelled me to go back and critically evaluate the reasons why I found it so much easier to exercise skepticism than to exercise faith, even in the face of enormous evidence in favor of faith…

People are hurting and in tremendous need. Like Elisha, I want to cry out, “Where is the God of Elijah?”

…as a Christian, I believe that the Jesus of the Gospels is alive and still has compassion for the suffering. I yearn to watch God touch the broken today.

People are hurting and in tremendous need. Like Elisha, I want to cry out, “Where is the God of Elijah?” The point of this book has been to demonstrate the plausibility of miracle claims in the Gospels and Acts, with a secondary purpose of suggesting that these claims need not all be explained solely by recourse to natural causation. But for me personally as a convert to the Christian faith, work on this book has also brought afresh to my attention the dramatic, moving character of human need, as well as the desire of a compassionate and living God to meet those needs. It has reminded me how the Gospel accounts’ emphasis on healings is consistent with a God of compassion who cares about real issues of human life and death, issues that theology, philosophy, and exegesis in their most academic forms sometimes forget. I know that miracles often do not happen and that not every prayer is answered affirmatively  But whether through using medicine, prayer, or both, I now long more than ever to see those desperate human needs met. [p. 766, 767, 768.]

The Most Important Verb in the Gospel of John

“that all might believe” (Jn. 1:7)

Frederick Dale Bruner writes,

This is the first appearance of the most important verb in the Gospel of John–“believe.” (Interestingly, the noun “belief” and its synonym “faith” never occur in this Gospel.) It is also significant that in the Gospel of John the verb “believe” (pisteuein) is never supplied with an adjective or adverb to intensify believing (like “deeply” or “entirely” or even “sincerely” believe), because adverbs and adjectives have unavoidable tendency to turn beleving into a good work that persons must perform. But, quite the contrary, believing is first the receiving, not the performing of a good work, and then it is a receiving that someone else constantly gives, and does.

Jesus did it all. Believing receives it all.

…Surely the Evangelist was tempted to add adjectives or adverbs to “believing” or even to add other verbs besides “believing,” but he resisted the temptation in his every use of the word. Believing says it all, does it all, receives all that is given, motivates all that issues from it, and is as simple and as concrete as the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who, like believing, needs no supplementation. Jesus did it all. Believing receives it all. This is the Gospel according to John. (Solus Christus, sola fide.) [The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Eerdmans, 2012), 21, 22.]

Christian, Stop Generalizing the Love of God

If a Christian is anything they are ones who are loved of God.

There is a general John 3:16-kind-of-sense in which God loves the whole world—every person, believer or unbeliever, without exception—but there is also a unique way in which God loves the Christian. When Paul writes to the Christians in Rome and calls them “beloved of God” (Ro. 1:7), he is not saying to them that God loves them just like he loves everyone else on the planet. He is making a distinction between them and other unbelieving Romans.

The fact that he addresses the letter specifically to Romans who are “beloved of God” and “called to be saints” (1:7) explicitly shows that he is not talking to everyone in the city. He is talking about Christians. He is writing to those who have received the good news of the gospel and trusted God’s Son, Jesus.

At the outset of the letter, Paul is identifying the believers in Rome and reminding them of who they are at the level of their identity. He is saying to them that God uniquely loves them. Please do not misunderstand. Certainly God loves all people, no matter what they might think of him, but not all men and women are the beloved of God. To put it another way, God loves everyone enough to invite them to the wedding, but not everyone is his Bride.

None of us emphasizes God’s magnificent love for everyone enough, but I am also convinced that because we tend to speak of the love of God in such a general way we underestimate the exceptional love God has for the believer. By speaking so much of all who are loved of God we minimize the inimitable beloved of God.

From what I gather (and I’m no Greek scholar), the background for this word “beloved” is revealing. It contains the following:

• Especially loved.
• Dearly loved. Or: even dearest love.
• A one-of-its-class kind of love.
• Particularly cherished.
• Something like loved squared. That is, love to the second, third, fourth, etc., power.

This same word Paul uses here for God’s people in Romans is used of Jesus at his baptism in the Matthew’s Gospel:

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Mt. 3:17)

If we really believed this it would change everything about us. So much of our identity is caught up in so many other things, even good and important things, like construction worker or teacher or pastor or dad or mom. We often tie our identity to these significant things, but it is not the most important thing about us. God’s love is. We can even get used to biblical categories of identity like disciple or saint, but what safety, what endearment, what grace is found in being the beloved of God. To be loved eternally, no matter what, unleashes massive confidence and freedom. This should permeate all our other identities and inform their significance—not the other way around.

There is something about being loved by anyone that is overwhelmingly powerful to the human soul, but to be loved by the Creator of heaven and earth who gave himself for us and to us, though we often ignore, belittle, and reject him, is flabbergasting. If you know Jesus, stop thinking of God’s love for you in some general way, it is personal, elective, husband-like love.

The Nineteenth century evangelist D.L. Moody wrote,

I know of no truth in the whole Bible that ought to come home to us with such power and tenderness as that of the Love of God; and there is no truth in the Bible that Satan would so much like to blot out. (Source)

Satan and your own sin will try to get you to minimize and blot this out of your heart everyday. Fight with all your might against this. Stop generalizing the love of God as some impersonal category. Set as a seal upon your heart the marvelous reality that you come at each and every day—with all that you do, don’t do, and should have done—“wrapped in the love of God the Father” (Jude 1:1, NET).