“Tears displacing thought is objectionable, when thought was called for, but similarly, thought instead of tears is objectionable, when tears were called for.”
N.D. Wilson & Douglas Wilson, The Rhetoric Companion, p. 55.
Abounding in the Faith with Thanksgiving
January 18, 2015 in Bible - NT - Colossians, Confession, Creeds, Meditations, Sanctification, Thankfulness, Word of God6 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 7 rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Colossians 2:6-7
Paul’s admonishes us to walk in Christ in the same way in which we received Him – and this, of course, means that we are to walk by faith. We are to reject all attempts at self-deliverance or self-justification; we are to reject moralism and legalism; we are to acknowledge our weakness and need for grace. In that posture, relying upon the help that only God can give, we are to do that which is good and pleasing in His sight.
Christ is the center: He is the center of history; He is the center of the biblical story; He is the center of our own personal lives. He has done for us what we could not do for ourselves; and, by the power of the Spirit, He continues to do in us what we cannot do on our own. So Paul urges us to be rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith just as we have been taught. Paul calls us to be faithful to the faith that was handed down in the churches, to (in his words to Titus) hold firmly to the traditions which we have been taught. Like Jude, Paul wants us to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.
This injunction that Paul gives the Colossians is one of the reasons that we, each Lord’s Day, recite one of the Creeds together. Our goal in reciting them each week is that these summaries of Scriptural teaching rest in our bones and become part of us through corporate confession. The goal is that each week we grow in our knowledge of Christ and our thankfulness for what God has done for us in Him.
You see Paul wants us not to be just rooted and built up in Christ, not just established in the faith we have been taught, but established in a certain fashion. And what is that? Note what he says: he wants us to be abounding in the faith with thanksgiving. First, consider that he calls us to be “abounding in the faith.” To abound is to “exist in large numbers or amounts.” Paul doesn’t want us just holding on to the faith; not just enduring; but abounding. Abounding in our study of the Word; abounding in our devotion to prayer; abounding in service to God, to His people, and to the world. So are you abounding? Are you striving to grow, week by week, year by year, in your knowledge of the faith and service to Christ?
Second, he wants us to be “abounding in it with thanksgiving.” It would be easy to work really hard and so appear to be abounding but to have an attitude in our work that is resentful or frustrated or bitter or empty. We are not to be abounding in the faith with bitterness, or with burn out, but with thanksgiving. How is this possible? Only if we recall, once again, that it is God who is at work in us to will and to do for His good pleasure. We walk by faith – faith in the Son of God who gave Himself for us and who poured out His Spirit on us.
So this morning as we enter into God’s presence, let us confess that we are often not abounding in the faith with thanksgiving. And let us kneel as we confess our sin to the Lord.
“Wise men see more with their eyes shut by night than fools can see by day with their eyes open.”
C.H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, Psalm 16, 1:196.
Grace and Merit
January 13, 2015 in Augustine, Election, Justification, Quotations, Regeneration, Sanctification“[G]race…is not given according to any merits, but is the cause of all good merits…”
Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints, NPNF, V:499.
The Rule of the Covenant
January 7, 2015 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Covenantal Living, Ecclesiology, Federal Vision, John Calvin, Justification, Quotations, Sanctification“No doubt, [God] adopted Abraham freely, but, at the same time, he stipulated with him that he should live a holy and an upright life, and this is the general rule of the covenant which God has, from the beginning, made with his Church. The sum is, that hypocrites, who occupy a place in the temple of God, in vain pretend to be his people, for he acknowledges none as such but those who follow after justice and uprightness during the whole course of their life.”
John Calvin, Commentary upon the Book of Psalms, Psalm 15.
“You will never find a spouse who is not affected in some way by the reality of the Fall. If you can’t respect this spouse because he/she is prone to certain weaknesses, you will never be able to respect any spouse.”
Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage, p. 69.
“The person who understands the evil in his own heart is the only person who is useful, fruitful, and solid in his beliefs and obedience. Others only delude themselves and thus upset families, churches, and all other relationships. In their self-pride and judgment of others, they show great inconsistency.”
John Owen in Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage, p. 64.
Looking for Evidences of Grace
November 27, 2014 in Holy Spirit, Marriage, Quotations, Sanctification“If my wife is more aware of where she falls short in my eyes than she is of how I am witnessing evidences of God’s grace in her journey of progressive sanctification, then I am a legalistic husband, akin to a Pharisee. Giving respect is an obligation, not a favor; it is an act of maturity, birthed in a profound understanding of God’s grace.”
Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage: What if God Designed Marriage to Make us Holy More than to Make us Happy?, p. 57.
Ordinary Time
November 24, 2014 in Bible - NT - Luke, Church Calendar, Creeds, Ecclesiology, Holy Spirit, Meditations, Postmillennialism, SanctificationLuke 13:18–19 (NKJV)
18 Then He said, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? 19 It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and put in his garden; and it grew and became a large tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches.”
As 21st century Americans who profess the Christian faith, we can often be tempted to muddle our Christianity with our Americanness. This temptation to mistake our cultural mileau for Christian piety is not unique to us, but the particular ways in which our culture influences us are unique. One way our Americanness affects our conception of Christianity is our love affair with that which is spontaneous or new or different. We tend to grow tired of, what we call, the “same old thing” and have a hankering for some new fad to bring life back into our Christian walk.
But what Jesus articulates for us in his parables of the kingdom is that the way the Holy Spirit works both in our individual lives and in the life of His Church is better pictured by the growth of a tree than the lighting of a sparkler. Sparklers, of course, are fun and exciting – they burn bright and shed their fire on all around them. But sparklers soon burn out while trees, planted and taking root, slowly grow over time; growing almost imperceptibly, soaking up the nutrients in the soil and increasingly displaying the glory of their Creator.
This steady, slow, natural growth is the way Christ typically works in the lives of His disciples. Normal Christian growth involves long periods of steady plodding – plodding that brings prosperity but plodding nonetheless. Steady plodding. Few sprints; mainly marathons. A long obedience in the same direction.
You may not know, but the last five months in the Church Year are called “ordinary time.” It is a time of year when there are no special feasts and celebrations; just the regular time of the Spirit’s work in the Church. After the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost, the Spirit began working in the Church, gradually transforming the people of God into the image of Christ. Hence the color of this period is green, a color of growth. Tree-like growth.
So one thing that you may have noticed, if you’ve been here a while, is that for these last five months we have used the same greeting, the same words of confession, and the same version of the Creed. For five months. Why have we done this? There’s no biblical requirement that we do so. We could have changed them weekly, monthly, or periodically. God has left such decisions to the wisdom of church officers. So why have we kept them the same? To highlight that the course of our Christian lives is only occasionally interrupted by unusual acts and works of God. More typically God works in our lives through steady plodding, slow growth, gradual transformation – through what theologians have called the ordinary means of grace: the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
Next week we’ll be introducing some changes: entering a new church year when Advent arrives and we’ll have a different Call to Worship, a different Confession, a different Creed. Before we change, I wanted to draw to your attention the fact that for these last five months we haven’t changed. Perhaps you noticed; perhaps you’ve wondered if this is ever going to change. And perhaps you’ve thought the same thing about periods in your own life and spiritual development. And the message of Jesus is that He is at work growing His kingdom and even growing you.
Reminded that Jesus’ work in our lives is often gradual, like the growth of a tree, we are alerted that often our hankering for something spontaneous or new or different is not an impulse of our Christian faith but our Americanness. And this reminds us that we need to confess our fickleness to the Lord and ask Him to enable us to practice a long obedience in the same direction. So let us kneel as we confess our sins together.