God and Man; Love and Truth, Truth and Love

 

It is impossible for God to speak the Truth without Love or to Love without the Truth - for this is God’s Nature, such is God; God is One, His Being is One.

 

For mankind, for men and women; when we speak truth without love we have tyranny and self-righteousness; when we love without truth we have ethical promiscuity and moral licentiousness.

 

We will not discover what it is to live “speaking the truth in love” without abiding in the Vine – and then we will live it because of He who abides in us; we will experience what John writes, “As He is, so are we in this world.”

 

In the Divine Nature, speaking in human terms, there is He who IS, and out of the I AM we see He who does – He does because He IS.

 

The verb proceeds from the noun, if you will. The action proceeds from the nature.

 

Mary has “chosen that which is better.” She sits and listens and drinks in our Savior.

 

Hence, in Christ, we are becoming what we are. In Ephesians, we must know what it is to “sit in the heavens” in Christ before we know what it is to walk in the Church and the world – and certainly to stand against wickedness. This is a basic (Christianity 101) discipleship and spiritual formation pattern that we miss again and again and again.

 

Attempting to speak truth without love, or to love without truth, is like blowing bubbles in the air – neither is sustainable. We might as well clothe ourselves with a Superman cape and hurl ourselves from the Empire State Building. If we will look at the sidewalk below we will see the result of man attempting what only God can do, and God does it because God IS it – the marvelous and majestic beauty of a Nature of Truth and Love (I write as a limited, a very limited, man).

 

Knowing Him is everything, knowing about Him is dangerous – for we easily mistake knowing about Him for knowing Him. We easily mistake information for relationship. Better to know Him as a child than know about Him as an adult.

 

O how I want to know Him!

 

What about you?

Heavenly Mindedness (45)

 

Continuing our reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s Message on “Heavenly Mindedness” from Hebrews 11:9 – 10:

 

“Every task should be at the same time a means of grace from and an incentive to work for heaven. There has been One greater than Abraham, who lived his life in absolute harmony with this principle, in whom the fullest absorption in his earthly calling could not for a moment disturb the consciousness of being a child of heaven. Though, like unto the patriarchs. He had no permanent home, not event a tent, this was not in his case the result of a break with an earthly-minded past. It was natural to Him. In his mind were perfectly united the two hemispheres of supernaturalism, that of the source of power back of, and that of the eternal goal of life beyond every work.” G. Vos

 

How might you rephrase the above? How might you distill what Vos is saying?

 

What are the two elements that we should seek in everything we do? What are two principles? Two realities? Two experiences?

 

What are the two great questions Vos is asking? We might phrase the questions thusly:

 

Where are we going and how are we getting there? What is our goal and what is the power by which we shall reach our goal? What is our end and what means shall we use to arrive at our end? What is the purpose of life and how are we fulfilling that purpose?

 

In the context of Vos’s sermon, the goal is “the celestial city” where we shall see the Face of God (Heb. 11:10, 13 – 17; Rev. 22:4). Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matt. 5:8). This is not about geography or spatiality, it is about intimate relationship, it is about embracing and being embraced by the koinonia of the Trinity, it is about the glory of God shining in and through His People, it is about the celestial City being manifested on earth (Rev. 21:2; Matt. 6:10).

 

There is only one way to this City, and that Way is Jesus Christ (John 14:6). However, the fact that Jesus Christ is the Way means that our lives are to be conformed to the Way of Jesus Christ, and that Way is total and complete dependance on Jesus Christ just as Jesus Christ was totally and completely dependent on the Father. To know Jesus as our Way is to live in the Way of Jesus.

 

Jesus said that He could do nothing of Himself, but that He was completely dependent on the Father (John 5:19; 8:28; 12:49). Jesus also teaches us that we can do nothing of ourselves, but that we must abide in Him, live in Him, if we are to bear fruit (John 15:1-11).

 

Someone has said that “God does not appreciate what He does not initiate.” As Paul might say, “This is a trustworthy saying.” A reading of 1 Corinthians 3:10 – 15 should warn us about using our own building materials in this life (note the preceding passages about the “natural man” and living as “men of flesh”). Knowing Jesus as the Way is more than speaking His name, it is more than saying a short prayer, it is so much more than attending church, it is more than being baptized, it is much more than a dramatic experience – it is living in the Way of Jesus, living in Him as He lives in the Father.

 

Jesus becomes our means of living, He who is at the Father’s righthand lives in us and we live in Him. In fact, as we learn from John chapters 14 – 17, the Trinity lives in us and we live in the Trinity – individually and as God’s People, His Temple. We are becoming the celestial city that we seek, we are becoming the Temple of God (Eph. 2:2:19-22). But, as 1 Corinthians 3:10ff teaches, we cannot bring just any material into this City, and all material that we use will be tried by fire. Let us not be so foolish as to think that our ways are God’s Way, that our materials are God’s materials, that our measures are God’s measures.

 

We do not impress God. Our successes do not impress God. There is only One Person in whom the Father finds pleasure, and that is Jesus Christ. Yet, as we live in our Lord Jesus our Father finds pleasure in us, for we manifest His many-membered Son, indeed, we are that Son in Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 12:12; Rom. 8:29; Heb. 2:10-11).

 

Jesus Christ is “our means of grace,” and our “eternal goal” is to behold the Face of God in the celestial city. We look forward to that Day when we know, even as we are known (1 Cor. 13:12).

 

Scribal Christianity or Christ?

 

I first read A.W. Tozer when I was a teenager. His book, The Pursuit of God, is a Christian classic worth pondering throughout our lives. Tozer had a prophetic element to him in that he constantly challenged us to look to Jesus and beware of our man-made religious and theological status quos. He saw how our theological traditions could trump Jesus Christ and the Bible, and how scribal theological correctness without experiential relationship with Christ could trap us in a dry and parched Christianity.

 

Last night I concluded my reading of a dissertation presented to the faculty of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in March 2018, by James Joshua Tancordo, its title is A.W. Tozer: A Mystical and Confessional Evangelical. In the dissertation Tancordo explores the relationship between Tozer’s unapologetic mysticism and his affinity with Roman Catholic mystics, with his confessional Evangelicalism. Throughout the dissertation Tancordo is asking, “Was Tozer a confessional Evangelical?”

 

(I am just a bit amused by the term “confessional Evangelical,” because while many Evangelicals might consider themselves “confessional,” a great number of Evangelicals are of such an independent mindset that the concept of being “confessional” is foreign to them – in fact, they would no doubt resist it. However, Tancordo does a nice job defining what he means by the word “confessional,” though I think there might be a better word or description for what he means; I don’t think we can use the word “confessional” in its normal sense to describe Evangelicals, at least in the United States.)

 

As often happens with me, what I read last night helped me think about something I’ve been pondering. Also, yesterday, as I was rereading Greg Beale’s commentary on Revelation and his treatment of Christ’s prophetic message to the church of Ephesians, I read something else that spoke to the same subject – so Beale, Tancordo, and Tozer all gave me some help yesterday – thank you brothers.

 

I am not sure that I’m going to do a good job of explaining myself, and so I hope to look to Beale, Tozer, and Tancordo to assist me, but let me begin with this thought:

 

When I was a young Christian, sharing Christ with others, including church-going folks, contained the understanding that, “There is a difference between knowing about Jesus Christ and actually knowing Jesus Christ. There is a difference between knowing information about someone and having a relationship with that person.” This distinction has remained with me throughout the years and I have used it in sharing Christ with others in conversation, in teaching, and in preaching.

 

As I write this I am thinking of John Roughly, a man dying of cancer who I visited a number of times. During my first visit with John, I pointed out the distinction between knowing about someone and actually knowing the person, actually being in a relationship with that person. During my second visit, John told me that he had thought about the distinction and that he wanted to know Jesus Christ – he came to know Jesus and a few months later John died in the arms of Jesus.

 

In considering the distinction between “knowing about and actually knowing” I often mention my meeting the great baseball Hall of Fame player Stan Musial, and meeting former NASCAR racer Shawna Robinson. Though I had occasion to meet these two people, and though I recall each fleeting meeting, I am certain that neither of them remembered me after our brief encounters – simply meeting them was not the equivalent of having a relationship with them. This is a point I often make because people can misconstrue religious experiences or church attendance with a relationship with Jesus Christ (consider the Parable of the Sower).

 

In addition to the above, we can also know people, including Jesus Christ, but know them in an infantile way or a juvenile way, or even in an immature – adult way. We can know others in degrees, in limited ways; I suppose this is the way we know most people, the way most relationships are. Paul spoke of one day “knowing as I am known,” and he also chided others for remaining infants in Christ – there is a distinction between the former and the latter and we ought not to confuse the two and excuse ourselves, or others, if we are found among the latter for any length of time. Most professing Christians really do need to grow- up.

 

Now I want to add another layer to this, and that is the terrible realization that we can know the Bible and not know Jesus Christ at all, and that we can know the Bible quite well but not know Jesus Christ very well. Consider Jesus’ words in John 5:39 – 40:

 

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.”

 

Consider also how Jesus revealed Himself through the Scriptures in Luke Chapter 24, both on the road to Emmaus and later in Jerusalem; seeing Christ in the Scriptures was a new experience for the people with Jesus – as it should be with us on a continuing basis.

 

My point is that knowing the Bible and knowing Jesus are two different things, and while we may be uncomfortable in actually saying this aloud, or writing it, it is nevertheless true. The Bible can be alive or it can be inert, we can be alive to the Bible or we can be dead to the Bible, or deaf or blind to the Bible. If we are not seeing Jesus Christ throughout the Scriptures then we have a diminished understanding of the Bible, for seeing Jesus Christ is the true measure of seeing and experiencing the Bible as the Word of God that unveils Jesus Christ and transforms us into His image (individually and collectively).

 

I have a dear friend who recently “saw” the beauty of 2 Peter 1:4, God has given us “precious and magnificent promises [the Scriptures] so that by them you may become partakers of the Divine Nature...” The thing is that we often seem to garner Bible knowledge without partaking of the Divine Nature, just as the scribes and Pharisees did – and let us make no mistake about this, if we are partaking of the Divine Nature then we ought to be experiencing the Divine Nature – notwithstanding all the talk of “positional truth” which is often a cover for our lack of experiencing the “precious and magnificent promises” that God has given us in Christ. Did John know what he was writing about when he wrote, “We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us…By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (1 John 3:24b; 4:13)?

 

Is the indwelling Trinity (see especially John chapters 14 – 17) real or not? If it is real then let us not play theological games to explain away our anemic Christianity – if eating pizza or ice cream is more real to me than partaking of the Divine Nature then I think we have a problem.

 

I do not comprehend the nature of the Bible, and I would be a fool to attempt to fully explain its nature. It is the Word of God and yet Jesus Christ is the Word of God. As ink on paper it can be alive and the conduit of life, or it can be a source of judgment and the conduit of death, and it can also be…it seems…inert. As precious as the Bible is, however, the Bible is not Jesus Christ. I meet Christ in the Bible, Christ comes to me through the Bible, I meet my brothers and sisters in the mansion of the Bible, I revel in the Bible, I cry in the Bible, I dance in the Bible – the Word convicts me, encourages me, unveils Christ’s glory to me...but this is all only as the Holy Spirit illuminates God’s Word (John chapters 14 – 16; 1 Corinthians chapters 1 – 2).

 

As Jesus says, we can search the Scriptures thinking that by knowing them we have eternal life, yet if we do not see Him in the Scriptures all our searching is of no avail. This is not only true of scribes and Pharisees, this is also true of us, including those of us who purport of have a “high view of Scripture.” If we do not believe this is true of us who have a high view of Scripture, then we are in a dangerous place, a scribal place – for we are espousing a scribal Christianity.

 

To be continued….

 

 

Heavenly Mindedness (44)

 

Continuing our reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s Message on “Heavenly Mindedness” from Hebrews 11:9 – 10:

 

“It would be useless to seek it [the remedy to unsteady and ephemeral Christianity – see previous post in this series] in withdrawal from the struggles of this present world. The true corrective lies in this, that we must learn again to carry a heaven-fed and heaven-centered spirit into our walk and work below. The grand teaching of the Epistle that through Christ and the New Covenant the heavenly projects into the earthly, as the headlands of a continent project into the ocean, should be made fruitful for the whole tone and temper of our Christian service.” G. Vos.

 

Consider what Vos says ought to be “the whole tone and temper of our Christian service.” It is not pragmatism, it is not utilizing the motivations and methods of the world, nor employing the values of the world to measure success and fruitfulness; it is rather learning to “carry a heaven-fed and heaven-centered spirit into our walk and work below.”  

 

The chasm between the way of the world and the Way of God in Christ is as great as the chasm between the rich man in hell and Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham – they are two environments, two atmospheres; we can either breathe the air of heaven with the fragrance of Christ, or we can breathe the smog of this present age and the hell that is its origin. I realize this sounds hard to some of us, for we are accustomed to language of “live and let live,” to thinking that if something works it must be good, and that we ought not to be religious fanatics and offend anyone. Consider Paul’s words to the Romans:

 

“For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” (Romans 8:6 – 8; see also 1 Corinthians chapters 1 – 3).

 

Dear friends, we are either going to draw our life from Christ or we are going to draw our life from the present evil age; we are either going to live according to the life of Christ within us (John 15:1 – 11; Galatians 2:20), or we are going to live according to the spirit that animates the sons of disobedience (Ephesians 2:1 – 2; 4:17 – 24). We cannot overstate the distinction between these two ways of life (Psalm 1).

 

To “carry a heaven-fed and heaven-centered spirit into our walk and work below” means that we draw our life from Christ as a branch draws its life from the vine; it means that our thinking and actions are focused on Jesus Christ and His Kingdom; it means that we live as citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20); it means that the salvation of others is paramount in our thinking; it means that we sing and live the words “take the whole world but give me Jesus.”

 

If the world is to see what it looks like when “the heavenly projects into the earthly,” it must see it in us; in you, in me, and particularly in us as the People of God. Just as Jesus says, “He who as seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9), so we must live in Christ in such a Way that when the world sees us, it sees our Lord Jesus Christ. However, as Vos says, this can only come about through Christ and the New Covenant – that is, as Christ lives in us and we live in Christ, and as we live in the reality of the New Covenant as set forth in Hebrews.

 

Do we functionally live in the New Covenant? Do our lives and teaching conform to the New Covenant, as set forth in Hebrews, or do we still insist on living in the Old Covenant? Are we living and ministering according to the order of Melchizedek or according to the priesthood of Aaron? Is the “power of an endless life” filling us every day and anointing our thoughts and actions, or are we mired in perpetual guilt and carrying the stench of the world, the flesh, and the devil?

 

Are we in the vanguard of the heavenly projecting itself into the earthly, of the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, or do we cower in the rear ranks of the saints while others go before us, taking the land in the name of Jesus?

 

In the Old Covenant we have the constant reminder of sins and sin, in the New Covenant we have the glory of consciences cleansed from sin and completeness in Jesus Christ. In the New Covenant we can fulfill our calling as the sons and daughters of the Living God. In the Old Covenant we live as sinners; in the New Covenant we live, in Christ, as saints. In the New Covenant, in the Cross, we learn in Christ to be both priest and sacrifice – we live as broken Bread and poured out Wine…the Bridegroom and His Bride give their lives for the life of the world.

 

Dear friends, contrary to what you may have heard, it is only those who are heavenly minded who can be of any earthly good.

 

The doors of heaven are open for us to live in the power of an endless life, the veil has been rent and we are called to live in the Holy of Holies, in the koinonia of the Trinity.

 

And while this is a question for all of us, let me especially ask this of pastors and teachers, are you serving God and His People according to the Levitical Priesthood, or according to the Order of Melchizedek?

 

Where are we living today?

 

The Carnal and the Therapeutic

I've haven't been posting much because of the particular season of life I'm in, I'll spare you the details.  I hope to get back to Vos's Heavenly Mindedness soon. 

Here is a note I sent a friend this morning, a follow up to a phone chat we had recently. Maybe there is something here for you.

Dear Friend,

 

I’ve been thinking a bit about Paul and the circumcision of the flesh since our recent chat. It was interesting to me that you brought the subject up because for a few months I’ve been thinking the unthinkable, that the therapeutic has so captured us (the Church) that we can no longer think in Biblical terms regarding our transformation into the image of Christ, of discipleship.

 

Passages such as 1 Cor. 2:1 – 3:4 are incomprehensible to us, the nuances and shades of language used make no sense to a people who look to the therapeutic for their healing. Nor to a people who are convinced that they will always have the prime identity as sinners until they leave this life.  

 

Haddon Robinson used to say that the question for a guest speaker isn’t, “What do you want me to speak on?” But rather, “Tell my about my audience.”

 

If Paul and company wrote to saints – in both the devoted (holocaust) offering sense and the righteousness of Christ sense (Romans 12:1-2, 2 Cor. 5:21), then perhaps we are missing something if our words and message are not also directed to saints. John wanted his readers to know that they had eternal life, not that they were miserable worms destined to life in the earth.

 

I am so tired of hearing therapeutic and sociological responses to Biblical questions of obedience and calling and mission; as well as hearing the toxic refrain, “Well, we’re all just sinners.” My goodness, I fail to see that in Christ’s words to the Seven Churches; I fail to see that in the matrix of the Epistles, or of the Gospels. I fail to see that in the Book addressed to the Covenant People of God from Genesis to Revelation.

 

Transformation into the image of the Firstborn (Romans 8:29) is much less about “sin” than it is about being transformed from the earthly to the heavenly – from the carnal to the spiritual, from the natural to the supernatural. It is about Galatians 2:20 and John 15. We owe the sarx nothing (Romans 8), we are now the sons and daughters of the Living God.

 

But we have been robbed of Biblical thinking, taken captive by the therapeutic and by a mindset that refuses to glorify Christ by embracing the fulness of His work in His People...this is a tragedy. Little wonder the NT book of Hebrews is a mystery to most of us.

 

We insist on remaining Jacob when our Lord Jesus calls us Israel.

 

So how can we engage in the kind of thinking we see in 1Cor. Chapters 1 – 3? Philippians 3:1 ff? How can we speak about Col. 2:9 – 13? Galatians 2:20; 6:14?

 

I don’t know the answer to this.

 

Perhaps one of many reasons I am refreshed by the Patristics is that they usually operate in a broad and transcendent Biblical universe, with Christ as the center they navigate the heavens and bring the heavens to earth, lifting the earth up to the heavens. Even when they stub their toes you can see their souls, their hearts, on pilgrimage into the eternal…desiring to take others with them, equipping others in Christ…serving the Church, the Bride, the Temple. In the midst of social, political, and religious upheaval they strive to fix their eyes…and the eyes of their people…on Jesus.

 

If we still had the language and understanding of the sarx, the carnal; of “living just like men,” perhaps we could better work through some of the chaos around us, but we don’t, we’ve lost it. “Teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you,” has become I’m not sure what…therapy? A surrender to the false identity of still being sinners even though we are now in Christ? A return to the Old Covenant with its endless reminders of sin (as we see in the Epistle to the Hebrews)?

 

Lamentations 4:1 – 2.

 

Much love,

 

Bob