Sincere, Blameless, Infants Concerning Evil

 

Let’s take another look at Philippians 1:9 – 11:

 

“And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

 

What do you think of the idea of being “sincere and blameless until the day of Christ”?

 

As I ponder these words, I think of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 14:20, “Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature.”

 

We live in a particularly voyeuristic age. I suppose we might say that we live in an age of voyeurism. Our airwaves are filled with this evil, as are books and conversations. Sadly, many in the professing church have lost sensitivity to evil, including the evil of voyeurism. It seems we can never have enough sordid details of pain, suffering, crime, and sin.

 

I have a dear friend to whom I have said about a “Christian” book, more than once, “The descriptions of temptation and sin in this book are unhealthy; they do not point people away from sin to Christ but rather entrench images of sin in hearts and minds.”

 

We are to be unapologetic infants regarding evil. We need not be ashamed that we don’t know the depths of sin and evil, that we don’t know the latest and greatest sins and evils in which humanity is engaged. Of course we ought to be aware of suffering, of oppression, of the need for deliverance from evil into the grace and love of Jesus Christ, but this is not the same as what amounts to exploring and absorbing sin and evil with unhealthy interest and curiosity.

 

We are called to be “sincere and blameless.” And so our love is to abound more and more with true knowledge and judgment – so that we may be blameless, so that we may be sincere, from now until that great Day when we bow before our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Discerning love, love that abides in true and real knowledge, produces lives “filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ (John 15:1ff), to the glory and praise of God.”  (See also Ephesians 3:14 – 19).

 

This takes us back to approving “the things that are excellent.” Our focus is to be on Jesus Christ in Whom is all excellence and beauty and true knowledge and discernment. Our passion is to be Jesus Christ. Our goal is to know Him in His fulness, to live in koinonia with Him and with one another. We learn to guard against evil soiling our lives and our relationship with Jesus Christ and others. We learn to flee the approach of evil and voyeurism – this includes turning the television off, this includes not continuing to watch a movie or read a book that reaches into our hearts and minds with tenacles of evil and shame…desiring to pull us into the abyss of darkness.

 

I imagine that I return more than half of the books I borrow from our public library and download on Kindle because of their content – I often borrow more than I think I’ll read because of this experience; I am pleased to keep one or two books out of every five books. Why? Because I want to be a child, and infant, concerning evil.

 

To be sure I’ve encountered evil, both within myself and in society. To be equally sure, I don’t need to know anymore evil than I already know. In fact, by God’s grace I’ve forgotten some of the evil I once knew – though the accuser of the brethren often attempts to drag me back into darkness – but Jesus Christ has eternal hold of me!

 

Are we encouraging one another to be “children concerning evil” and to be “sincere and blameless until the day of Christ”?

 

Dear, dear friends, let us not be ashamed that we don’t know the intricacies of the evil of this world, let us rather ask Christ to use us to bring others into the holy and pure light and life of Jesus Christ.

God’s Love Has Definition

 

Two dimensions of God’s love that are lost to our generation are its self-sacrificing nature and its knowledge and discernment. When you think of love, do you think of knowledge and discernment? Most of us probably don’t.

 

Can you think of a popular song about love that sings of knowledge and discernment? Can you think of a popular Christian book that focuses on love’s knowledge and discernment? When is the last time you heard a sermon about love’s knowledge and discernment?

 

Our culture, including the culture within the professing church, tends to view love as a feeling without form, as something nebulous and ambiguous. It is like water poured on the ground rather than into a vessel – it is poured out, it dissipates, and it is gone.

 

Think about these words from Philippians 1:9 – 11:

 

“And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

 

What do you see in this passage? What can we learn about love from this passage?

 

Note that love is to “abound still more and more in real knowledge and discernment.” That word “discernment” can also be translated “judgment”; love is to “judge”, to discern, to make distinctions. It is not to accept everything, it is not to approve everything, it is not to go along with everything, it is not to give its approval to everything – this should not surprise us because God’s love does not do these things – God’s love judges justly, it makes distinctions, it does not go along with everything – in fact, God’s holy love teaches us the difference between righteousness and sin, between good and evil, between the holy and the profane.

 

We also see that love is to abound in “real knowledge.” We often confuse information with knowledge and wisdom; information is simply data, but what is it to really “know” something and to know how to interpret and apply and integrate what we know? As love grows in real knowledge our real knowledge includes seeing all things in the light of Jesus Christ, for only in Him do we know people and events and things for who and what they really are.

 

Can we see that as love grows in knowledge and discernment that we are to “approve things that are excellent”? This is the antithesis of the notion that love approves all things and accepts all things. This is more than about approving things that are good, or things that are even better – this is about approving things that are the best, that are excellent. This can be a challenging thought in our generation when we are focused on the immediate, on the pragmatic, on things which will give us bang for the buck and instant results.

This passage shows us that true love, God’s love, has definition, it is not ambiguous, it has a form and a substance. We can learn to know God’s love when we see it and when we experience it, and as it grows within us. Love does not instantaneously grow in us; its maturation process takes a lifetime. It begins as an acorn, it can grow into an oak tree. It does not grow without pain, challenge, and self-sacrifice. It does not grow absent obedience to Jesus Christ. It does not grow without repentance.

 

It does most certainly grow as our lives are lived in koinonia with Jesus Christ and with one another, in fact, this is the only way it grows.

 

What else do you see about love in this passage?

 

God's Love

 

One of the passages that is likely to be quoted out of context, more than most, is 1 Corinthians Chapter 13, often known as The Great Love Chapter. It is usually read and understood as something separate and apart from chapters 12 and 14, which both speak of what our Christian community and gatherings ought to look like. Like a diamond, Chapter 13 is best displayed in a fine setting, and its fine setting is chapters 12 and 14 (though of course it is really the entire Epistle and then the entire Bible).

 

All of my Christian life I’ve seen people with heartburn about chapters 12 and 14, who conjure up no end of excuses to avoid confronting the anemic state of the professing church – the great gap between what should be normative and our actual condition. I’ve also seen those on the other end of the spectrum who run wild without wisdom, understanding, or teaching in chapters 12 and 14.

 

If the structure of 1 Corinthians says anything to us, we ought to acknowledge that Chapter 13 is the heart of love that beats so that chapters 12 and 14 come to life in mutual growth, edification, and glorification. After all, if we are indeed the Body of Christ, then Christ remains on this earth within His People and we should expect no less than to see our Lord living in His Body just as He lived in the body that came from Mary and was raised from the dead.

 

Paul writes that if he speaks in tongues, has the gift of prophecy, knows all mysteries and has all knowledge, and has all faith…but doesn’t have love “I am nothing.” This covers the spectrum, it includes the demonstrative and the cognitive, it covers the emotional and the intellectual – it doesn’t make any difference how much we know or what great things we can do, if we don’t have the love of God, we are nothing.

 

What do we think of this?

 

Are we living lives of love in our Lord Jesus Christ?

 

Are our relationships within the Body of Christ animated by love?

 

How is the love of God flowing through us to other members of His Body?

 

How is the love of God touching those around us at work, in family, in our neighborhood, in school? In our congregations?

 

God Is Love

 

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” 1 John 4:7.

 

“We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him.” 1 John 4:16.

 

I have a biography of Andrew Murray that is titled, Apostle of Abiding Love. As I ponder that title I can’t think of a better testimony, for Murray’s life was centered in the love of Jesus Christ; embracing Christ’s love, loving Christ, and loving others with the love of Jesus Christ. Could someone write that of me? Of you? Of us as the People of God?

 

This in turn reminds me of sisters Betsy and Corrie ten Boom, prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp for hiding and assisting Jews during WWII. Corrie, the younger of the two, asked Betsy, “How long will we be here?” Betsy replied (I’m relying on memory for this quote), “Until they can be taught to love. If they can be taught to hate, then they can be taught to love.”

 

At first Corrie thought Betsy was referring to their fellow prisoners, but then she realized that she was talking about the cruel guards.

 

Jesus says that the world will know we are His people by the love we have one for another, a love that is to be exactly like His – in fact, it is to be the very same love flowing through us to one another and to the world.

 

Is this how the world identifies us?

 

What are we substituting in place of love for our identity?

 

Jesus is clear in John’s Gospel that we are to have two identifying marks, our love and our unity. How are we doing with that?

 

Note that both our love and our unity are communal – they are both a “one another” proposition. If we aren’t living in community we can’t demonstrate these marks, we can’t grow in them, we can’t learn from them, we can’t be transformed by them and in them. These marks are to be our Way of Life.

 

How are we doing?

 

O that we might receive the love of God, live in the love of God, and give the love of God to others.

 

Who shall we give the love of God to…today?

Heavenly Mindedness (49)

 

By it [the discipline of not yet receiving the fulness of the Promised Land in this life] they were led to reflect that, since the promise was theirs beyond all doubt, and yet they were not allowed to inherit it in its material form, that therefore it must in the last analysis relate to something far higher and different, something of which the visible and sensual is a mere image. Thus the conception of another sphere of being was introduced into their minds: henceforth they sought the better country. Not as if the things of sense were worthless in themselves, but because they knew of something transcendent that claimed their supreme affection.

 

Their tastes and enjoyments had been raised to another plane. The refinement of grace had been imparted to them. For bodily hands there had been, as it were, substituted spiritual antennae, sensitive to intangible things. They had come to a mountain that could not be touched and yet could be felt. In all the treasures and promises of religion the one valuable thing is this spiritual core.”  Geerhardus Vos

 

Consider what lies behind the logo of a corporation, think of Coca Cola or Toyota or Pillsbury or General Mills or Ford. Have you ever been driving down a busy highway, looking for a particular business, and ahead of you, down the road, you see the logo of the business you’re looking for? Among the dozens of signs and logos on the highway you are able to pick out a particular logo because you are looking for it; you can’t read the name of the business because it is too far away, but you can identify the logo.

 

Corporations vigorously guard their logos, for their logos represent who they are, they are their trademarks, they are known by their logos. When we see golden arches, we don’t need a name to tell us that a Big Mac awaits us if we go into that building.

 

Think about the shapes of traffic control signs; stop signs, yield signs, signs that indicate speed, they all have particular shapes and colors. Think about symbols on a weather map. Think about body language, how is it that we can “read” body language?

 

While we may not think about this, much of our communication and understanding is based on images, symbols, colors, and other non-verbal or non-written expression. No one has to sit us down at a particular age and have a conversation with us about communicating in various non-verbal forms because we naturally learn to do this, just as we naturally learn our native language. To be sure some of us have careers in these forms of communication and understand them better than the rest of us, just as English professors might justly cringe when they read some of my writing, but most of us function well in the world of non-verbal communication without having advanced training.

 

When Vos writes about “something of which the visible and sensual is a mere image. Thus the conception of another sphere of being was introduced into their minds…” and about being “sensitive to intangible things…” he is writing about God communicating the invisible to us via things which are visible. Again, while we may be unaccustomed to thinking and seeing like this, the ancients well understood that the things that we see represent things we don’t see. Consider Paul’s words to the Romans (Rom. 1:20):

 

“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”

 

Do we clearly see these things from creation? It’s probably fair to say that most of us don’t, which shows just how far we’ve fallen from the vision and understanding that previous generations have possessed. Rather than make excuses for our blindness, we ought to cry out to our Lord Jesus to open our eyes to the glory of His work in creation so that we may see Him more clearly.

 

Our Father is consistently communicating with us through all elements of life, all of life is sacramental, there is never a moment when Christ is not with us, when the Trinity is not living within the sons and daughters of the Living God. Both holistically God speaks to us, and in the particular God speaks to us. That is, God speaks through the forest and He also speaks through the individual trees of the forest. I recall once pondering an oak tree for thirty minutes, within which I saw a dance of creation consisting of birds and squirrels and leaves and twigs and branches and bark – that has been years ago, but I still visualize that dance.  

 

God our Father pours His grace into us throughout each day in myriad ways, and He gives us opportunities to share His grace with others; through prayer, through words, through deeds – if we are a holy priesthood then we are called to serve those around us every day. Our Father shares His life with us in every moment, and we are to share our lives with Him; we are also the share His life with others.

 

(And may I say that the reason professing Christians don’t witness isn’t that they don’t know how to witness; it is because they don’t know who they are nor that the Trinity lives within them.)

 

“They had come to a mountain that could not be touched and yet could be felt. In all the treasures and promises of religion the one valuable thing is this spiritual core.” 

 

Friends, the first commandment is to love God with all that we are; heart, mind, soul, and body. Love has feeling, it has emotion, it has depth, it has transcendence. Paul wanted the Ephesians “to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God.” (Eph. 3:19). He writes to the Romans that “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Rom. 8:14). We are called to live life in the Holy Spirit, called to live seeing the invisible, called to live sacramentally – a way of life in which we look beyond what we see with the natural eye into the realm of the unseen. We are called to live this Way as individuals, and we are called to live this Way as congregations…and yes, we are called to live this Way as Christ’s Church in this generation.

 

The church in Ephesus, in Revelation Chapter Two, had sound doctrine, but they had “left their first love,” and if they didn’t repent Christ was going to remove their candlestick. We can be doctrinally “correct” to the point where we have the equivalent of the world’s “politically correct” speech, and yet if we don’t love Jesus Christ and are not being led by the Holy Spirit and are not seeing the invisible – we have but a scribal form of Christianity.

 

I have been in doctrinally – oriented environments where everyone used the same language, the same phrases, and wrote the same way, even used the same speech patterns; there was little if any individual expression, everyone was the same – every “i” doted the same, every “t” crossed the same. How can this be if we are indeed the Body of Christ? Many of these environments would have heartburn with Vos writing “yet could be felt,” if people were to take these words seriously.

 

Picture please a group of fifty men, all married. The first one is asked to describe his wife and marriage, then the second, then the third, and so on until all fifty had described their wives and marriages. But then picture that the second man used the same description as the first, and the third the same as the second, and the fourth the same as the third – until all fifty had described their wives and marriages the same way with the same words and speech patterns. What would you think?

Would you think that these men really knew their wives? Would it be possible for them to have bought into a doctrine of what a wife and marriage should be and that they had been trained (and pressured) to mouth what was expected, what was considered “sound marital doctrine”?

 

And suppose number 27 really had a deep relationship with his wife, and that he really wanted to share about his wife and marriage in his own words – what are the chances that he would overcome the peer pressure and the risk of exclusion?

 

Friends, if we can’t put our relationship with Christ in our own words, and if we can’ read the Bible and put what it says into our own words (not to supersede Scripture, but to communicate Christ through Scripture), then have we really made Christ our own, has Scripture really come to live within us?

 

Vos speaks of feeling the reality of the invisible, and this includes the invisible God in Jesus Christ. Are we living as men and women whose citizenship is in heaven and who are not of this world, but rather of that City whose Builder and Maker is God?

 

Virtue

 All virtue is Christ, and Christ is all virtue. 

Values are ephemeral, we change them whenever we want to, we use them for our own ends.

Virtues cannot be changed, but they can change us...into the image of Jesus Christ. 

We can make values submit to us and our ways, but with virtues...we must submit to them if we are to know them and live them. 

All virtue is Christ, and Christ is all virtue.

Phil. 4:8; 2 Peter 1:5 - 11; Psalm 15; 

Heavenly Mindedness (48)

 

“We have already seen that even in the promised land the patriarchs remained tent-dwellers. God had a wise purpose in thus postponing for them personally the fulfilment of the temporal promise.” G. Vos (See previous post for full quotation to get context.)

 

The Patriarchs were ever on pilgrimage, even though they were in the Promised Land. Even though we are also in the Promised Land, our Lord Jesus Christ, we also are ever on pilgrimage; for though we know our Lord Jesus and are known by Him, we are called to know Him in ever-deepening communion and relationship. We travel many places in Him, pitching our tent in Galatians one day, Isaiah another day, 1 Samuel yet another, the book of Hebrews another. A time comes when we are enveloped in the fulness of the Word, when the many become one, when we “see” the Bible as a whole, a complementary unity, and when the image of Jesus Christ radiates from Genesis to Revelation.

 

Has our pilgrimage brought us to Nepal? Having arrived at Nepal, have we journeyed to base camp? Having journeyed to base camp, have we acclimated to the altitude and environment? Having acclimated, have we begun our ascent of Everest? Are we ascending in the company of others? Having ascended, are we now living as Sherpas, guiding others into the heights of Everest? Are we showing others the Way?

 

“Although Canaan was a goodly land, it was yet, after all, material and not of that higher substance we call spiritual. While capable of carrying up the mind to supernal regions, it also exposed the danger of becoming satisfied with the blessing in its provisional form. That this danger was not imaginary the later history of Israel testifies. In order to guard against such a result in the case of the patriarchs God withheld from them the land and its riches and made of this denial a powerful spiritualizing discipline.” Vos.

 

Just a word of caution, when we read, “it was yet, after all, material and not of that higher substance we call spiritual,” we want to be careful not to denigrate the natural and material, for God is the Creator and His creation, even in its fallen condition, remains His creation and is good – even though it is tossed and turned and in upheaval. Let’s remind ourselves that the entire creation is waiting for the manifestation of the sons and daughters of God (Romans 8:19).

 

Vos tells us that the Patriarchs had the blessing in a provisional form, that is, they were given a down payment, a foretaste of the fulness of what was to come. Even so we have been given the Holy Spirit as a foretaste of the fulness of our inheritance in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:13 – 14; 2Cor. 1:21 – 22). When Vos uses the word “provisional” he does not use it (I think) in the sense that the blessing may be withdrawn or lost, he uses it in the sense that we are living in a provisional time when the age to come overlaps the present age, and the blessing of the fulness of time in Christ (Eph. 1:9 – 11) reaches into our hearts and souls to draw us into its glory.

 

Vos points out two things that can occur as we experience God’s blessing of the age to come, we can either allow it to draw us upward and onward on pilgrimage in Jesus Christ, or we can settle for what we have and build a permanent home. If we make the immediate blessing our goal, if we are satisfied with a measure and not the fulness, then we will lose what we think we have and learn the ways of the people of Canaan, that which was to have been a land of promise will become a land of idolatry. On the other hand, if we allow the blessing to create greater desire for more of our Lord Jesus Christ, then our pilgrimage will continue and we will see Him in His unfolding fulness.  

 

When Israel ceased to conquer the land of Canaan, when they became satisfied with a measure of their inheritance, they learned the ways of the pagans and traded their inheritance for idols and promiscuity. We can allow God’s blessing to lift us up, or we can pull the blessing down and attempt to preserve it. God’s blessing is like manna, we are to consume it today trusting Him for more tomorrow; but if we attempt to hoard His blessing it will decay and rot.

 

We are to build on foundations, not live solely on foundations. We are to live in a house that is on a firm foundation, Jesus Christ and the Apostles and Prophets (Eph. 2:20), and we ought to be leery of attempting to introduce any other foundation (1Cor. 3:11). Foundations are laid so that buildings can be built, how strange it would be to see a community in which people lived on building lots with only the foundations laid; with no walls or roofs or windows or plumbing or electricity. Stranger still would it be if the citizens of this community considered this normal.

 

I think we have this strange condition throughout Christendom, for we have taken blessings given to others in previous generations and have frozen them in time, making them permanent homes, rather than building on them and allowing those blessings to draw us upward and onward into Jesus Christ. Show me a tradition, show me a movement, show me a denomination, and I can likely show you an illustration of what I’m saying. The very fact that we name ourselves after blessings and understandings given to previous generations, the fact that we make these names our identities, demonstrates this point. We think of ourselves as of this or that tradition before we think of ourselves as members of the Body of Christ. We don’t build on the past as much as we fossilize the past. We encase significant people who have gone before us in glass tombs, and we pay homage to them.

 

This is not pilgrimage, this it not living in tents – this is entombing ourselves.

 

To live in tents is to be good stewards of that which we have inherited from those who have gone before us, to pass on what we are receiving in our own generation, and to allow Jesus Christ to transform us from glory to glory (2Cor. 3:17 – 18) so that we might leave an inheritance to others. There is a sense in which all blessing in this age is provisional, but its measure should be ever increasing as we are ever on pilgrimage.

 

We are all living in tents, let us not be deceived about this. When the Psalmist writes, “I am a stranger in the earth, do not hide Your commandments from me,” he is not only referring to the planet earth, but also to the body in which he lived. Peter writes, “I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder, knowing that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent…” (2Pt. 1:13 – 14).

 

Paul writes, “For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” (2Cor. 5:1). He then tells the Corinthians that “we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven.” Looking forward to that time when “what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.” Then Paul refers to the down payment, the foretaste that God has given us, “Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.”

 

How can we live like this? By learning to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2Cor. 5:7). We, by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, learn to “see” as we were meant to see, to understand as we were meant to understand, looking not at the things seen, but rather at the things that are unseen (2Cor. 4:18).

 

We all live in tents, we are all camping out. Are we allowing God to use this awareness to draw us closer and closer to Himself, deeper and deeper into Himself? O what a glorious future we have in our Lord Jesus Christ, unfathomable in its glory and joy, in its love and splendor. O how He loves you and me…and how He desires that we share His love with others.

 

 

Heavenly Mindedness (47)

 

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

 

“There are two more aspects of the patriarchal faith of heavenly-mindedness to be briefly considered. The first is its spirituality. Heavenly-mindedness is spiritual-mindedness. This pervades like an atmosphere the entire Epistle. We have already seen that even in the promised land the patriarchs remained tent-dwellers. God had a wise purpose in thus postponing for them personally the fulfilment of the temporal promise. Although Canaan was a goodly land, it was yet, after all, material and not of that higher substance we call spiritual. While capable of carrying up the mind to supernal regions, it also exposed to the danger of becoming satisfied with the blessing in its provisional form. 

That this danger was not imaginary the later history of Israel testifies. In order to guard against such a result in the case of the patriarchs God withheld from them the land and its riches and made of this denial a powerful spiritualizing discipline. By it they were led to reflect that, since the promise was theirs beyond all doubt, and yet they were not allowed to inherit it in its material form, that therefore it must in the last analysis relate to something far higher and different, something of which the visible and sensual is a mere image. 

Thus the conception of another sphere of being was introduced into their minds: henceforth they sought the better country. Not as if the things of sense were worthless in themselves, but because they knew of something transcendent that claimed their supreme affection. Their tastes and enjoyments had been raised to another plane. The refinement of grace had been imparted to them. For bodily hands there had been, as it were, substituted spiritual antennae, sensitive to intangible things. They had come to a mountain that could not be touched and yet could be felt. In all the treasures and promises of religion the one valuable thing is this spiritual core.”  Geerhardus Vos

 

Now we come to yet another “dense” passage in Vos, but of course the entire message carries a gravitas and density that we are unaccustomed to, whether we find ourselves in pews, in small groups, or standing behind a pulpit or lectern. I image we’ll take a few posts to work through the above…I wish I could teach this in person to a group.

 

As you carefully read and reread the above, what do you see? What attracts your attention? What makes little sense to you? What questions do you have? If you could speak to Vos right now, what would you ask him?

 

I’m sure we’ve probably heard the statement, “Some people are so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good.” That is a lie that we ought not to believe. Yes, some people are more practical than others, and some live in the abstract more than the concrete, but in the Biblical sense, to be supremely heavenly – minded is to be equipped to make a difference in the here and now. Peter, Elijah, Isaiah, Deborah, Mary Magdalene, Paul – they all had distinct personalities and distinct ways in which they displayed Christ and His glory; they were heavenly–minded and they made a difference to the people around them. Let me assure you, that the church’s problem isn’t that it’s people are so heavenly-minded that they are no earthly good; it is that we are so earthly-minded that we have lost our identity as the sons and daughters of the Living God.

 

Here is a little principle; to be earthly-minded seals us off from the heavens, while to be heavenly-minded opens up for us a sacramental view of earth. When we are earthly-minded we can’t see the heavens, but when we are heavenly-minded we see both the heavens and the earth.

 

What was the immediate effect of Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked…” (Gen. 3:7). Now I don’t fully understand this, I probably don’t understand it even a little, but what I do know is that the way Adam and Eve saw life changed when they disobeyed God and ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. There is irony in the words, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened,” in that this opening of their eyes to physical and material realities blinded them to eternal things, to the realm of the unseen.

 

And so Paul writes of not looking at things that are seen but unseen, for the things that are seen are temporal, while the things that are unseen are eternal (2Cor. 4:18). In other words, Paul learned, by the grace of God, to “see” differently than he had prior to knowing Jesus Christ. We can identify this theme throughout Scripture; from Noah, to Abraham, to Jacob, to Moses, to Samuel (a seer!), Elijah and Elisha, to Paul, and to John’s Revelation – throughout the Bible there are men and women who live in the heavens, see in the heavens, and who act and speak on earth with the Voice of Heaven.

 

Paul often speaks his of hearers receiving his teaching as the Word of God. The people who heard Jesus were amazed because He taught them with authority, and not as the scribes. If we are going to teach from heaven then we are called to do so with authority, as we live under the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Have you ever noticed that people who claim spiritual authority often have no business doing so, making things up as they go along, exercising their communication and marketing skills over people; while others who love Christ and His Word do not have the confidence in Him to speak as the Word of God?)

 

Paul writes that the “mind set on the Spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6). Paul also writes, “fix your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2). Vos says that heavenly – mindedness is the atmosphere of the entire Epistle of Hebrews; indeed the entire Bible has this atmosphere but we often lack the eyes to see and the ears to hear. God wants us to see what only He can see, what only He can reveal (see 1 Cor. Chapter 2).

 

Ponder this for a moment, have you ever considered that your heavenly Father wants you to see what only He can see? Have you realized that our Lord Jesus Christ wants us to hear what only He can hear?

 

“At that time Jesus said, I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matthew 11:25 – 27).

 

If we know anything that is eternal, we do not know it because we are smart or intelligent or have spent countless hours plumbing the depths of the cosmos; if we know anything of worth it is because it has been given to us by God. Most certainly, in any degree that we know the Father and Son, it is because they have chosen to reveal themselves to us through the Holy Spirit and the illuminated Word.

 

“Jesus answered and said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:13 – 14).

 

What is our source of life? Our source of water? Do we find it in the earthly or the heavenly? Vos tells us that to be heavenly-minded is to be spiritual.

 

Do we believe him?

 

More importantly, do we believe Jesus Christ when He tells us that we are not of this world? (John 15:18ff; 17:13ff).

Heavenly Mindedness (46)

 

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

 

“A religion that has ceased to set its face towards the celestial city, is bound sooner or later to discard also all supernatural resources in its endeavor to transform this present world. The days are perhaps not far distant when we shall find ourselves confronted with a quasi-form of Christianity professing openly to place its dependence on and to work for the present life alone, a religion, to use the language of Hebrews, become profane and a fornicator like Esau, selling for a mess of earthly pottage its heavenly birth-right.” G. Vos

 

Have we become the Church of Esau? Have we discarded “all supernatural resources”? Are we working for “the present life alone”?

 

In our need (as opposed to God’s direction) to be relevant and to attract people to our churches, have we become irrelevant? Has marketing and entertainment and therapy overwhelmed our vision of Jesus Christ and His Church? Has our parochial theology smothered Biblical theology and vision? Has our self-branding as upholding this or that “tradition” or “movement” blinded us to the image of the glorious Bride of Jesus Christ? Where is the supernatural?

 

We are now able, across the theological spectrum, to interpret the Bible without the aid of the Holy Spirit. We are so well trained that we can preach and teach without Him. Instead of throwing ourselves on the Holy Spirit for guidance we hire consultants who bring with them demographic studies and marketing plans. We design Sunday morning “experiences” that are so tightly woven that there is no space for anything to be amiss – we must control the time and the space.

 

Our Sunday school and small group curriculum is often mundane, poorly thought out, lacks Biblical epistemology as well as cohesive pedagogy; it is not designed for spiritual growth in Christ – which is why people can be in Sunday school all their lives and not have a deep relationship with Christ and the Bible…but this appears to bother few pastors, and it certainly does not concern publishers.

 

The Holy Spirit has left us and we don’t even know it. We can manufacture excitement. We can dot our “i”s and cross our “t”s regarding doctrine, we can live within whatever theological language and jargon suits us, but were we to pull the life-support lines from what we do we would stop functioning.

 

What else can explain the sad reality that so few professing Christians share Jesus Christ with others? (At least here in the United States). What else can explain the fact that the majority of people who have been in churches (which claim to have a high view of Scripture) all their lives, do not have a functioning knowledge of the Bible? What else can account for the fact that we are a divided people and that the Messiah’s prayer for Trinitarian oneness in John 17 has no room in our prayers, our preaching, our decision – making?

 

To what else can we attribute the absence of holiness in our people? We spend our money the way the world spends its money. We indulge in the same entertainments as the world. We have allowed ourselves to be politicized and nationalized and are willing accomplices in doing the bidding of this world’s powers and usurpers.

 

Where is the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:14)?

 

Is Jesus a threat to us? I think that He ought to be. I think that Jesus Christ ought to as much a threat to us as He was to the Seven Churches of Revelation. His threat is born of love and justice, and is made in righteousness. We can be perfect in doctrine, discerning between what is true and what is not, but if we have left our first love our candlestick will be removed. If we harbor sin in our midst, endorsing it, propagating it, our candlestick will be removed. If we are lukewarm and self-assured, thinking we are rich and thinking we “see,” while all the time we are naked and miserable and blind and poor – our candlestick will be removed.

 

Yes, the professing church in American has “become profane and a fornicator like Esau, selling for a mess of earthly pottage its heavenly birth-right.”

 

The Church of Jesus Christ is called to love God, build itself up into the image of Jesus Christ, and make disciples of all peoples, teaching them to obey all that Jesus commands us. (Mark 12:30; Eph. 4:11 – 16; Matt. 28:18 – 20).

 

We are not called to make excuses for our spiritual fornication. The idea that, “Well, the church is filled with sinners and is imperfect,” is simply not found in the Bible – that is certainly not the attitude of Jesus Christ and the Apostles – perhaps they were deficient in their understanding of who we are? As the sons and daughters of the Living God we are accountable to Him – consider again Revelation chapters 2 and 3, and of course the NT epistles. Christ is not our Grand Therapist, He is King of kings and Lord of lords and the Holy Spirit was given to us to empower us in worship, in edification, and in witnessing and teaching others to obey all that Jesus has commanded us.

 

Will you be faithful to Jesus Christ? Will you be faithful to Him even if the entire “Christian” world and “church” around you is selling its birthright? Will you love Him even if no one else loves Him? Will you love Him for who He is and not for what He can do for you?

 

Will you present yourself, your life, all that you have and all that you are to Him, daily, moment by moment…as a living sacrifice? (Romans 12:1-2)?

 

Jesus tells us that the Father is seeking those who will worship Him in Spirit and in Truth (John 4:23 – 24).

 

Will you raise your hand, will you raise your voice, will you lift up your heart and soul to Him and say, “Here I am holy Father, Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit – come to me! Draw me to you!”

 

Will your life in Christ be broken Bread and poured out Wine for others?

 

Ephesians 3:4 – 21.

 

Technical Housekeeping

 

To subscribers of my blogs:

 

There have been two ways to subscribe to my blogs, one is to have the posts emailed to you, and the other is via RSS feeds.

 

The firm that has been supplying the widget for email subscriptions will no longer support this service – this will happen sometime in July.

 

Therefore, if you are currently receiving blog posts via an email subscription you will need to sign up for an RSS feed – there is a widget for that in the lower right column of the blogs.

 

Otherwise, I hope you will check the blogs regularly to see what’s going on.

 

Because different browsers may have different ways to subscribe to RSS I’m not going to try to explain this, plus, I am not that familiar with the process.

 

Blessings,

 

Bob